Physical Education Origins

During the nineteenth century, European missionaries, working in isolation from one another, increasingly introduced formal education for indigenous people in the Cape Colony. These missionaries established schools maintained by grants from the public treasury, yet neither a pure missionary system nor a pure state system of education ever developed. Physical education opportunities for children, classified as coloured, were in some way always associated with this hybrid missionary education system. The defeat of the British during the First South African War (1880–1881), the discovery of gold in the then Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek (later Transvaal Colony and Province) and Cecil John Rhodes’s dream of a British Africa from Cape Town to Cairo led to the desideratum at the Cape by British colonial authorities for a strong military force loyal to the Crown. It was against this backdrop that the editor of the South African Sportsman wrote in 1892 about the desirability of introducing a programme of physical training in the Cape Colony. The tone of the writing indicates a fervent Muscular Christianity influence, where moderation in participation in uniquely English games, manliness and the promotion of the competitive spirit were foregrounded: