Sport at Wesley College, Cape Town, South Africa, as a Descriptive Twentieth-Century African History Education Project

Local school sport history is neglected or even outright ignored in African teacher training curricula at institutions of higher learning. In order to rectify this in South Africa, research is needed that speaks to the history of local spaces in relation to racial politics advanced by colonialism and apartheid regimes. History also provides opportunities for examining institutional culture, creating heritage sites and advancing sport history education, research and transformation scholarship. One institution of interest in this regard is Wesley Teachers’ Training School (commonly referred to as Wesley College) in Cape Town, South Africa. Dating back to 1913, it was established as a Methodist mission training school for students classified as coloured. Over the years, this college was attended by students who became pillars for sport development in local communities. Throughout its history, it faced a constant onslaught from segregation. Most South African students are, however, unfamiliar with the institutional history of arguably the most important sport school in Cape Town’s oppressed communities prior to 1961. This chapter recovers a twentieth-century descriptive sport institutional history of this institution with the aim of including local sport history in African teacher training curricula. It does so by presenting results of competitions, names of key persons and biographies of two athletes who shaped athletic history in South Africa.