Worldwide, February is known as Black History Month – a month during which black people celebrate their rich cultural heritage, triumphs and adversities that are an indelible part of the history of their communities, both in Africa and the Diaspora. During February 2024, Moretele Times and the Temba Heritage Project will publish a series of articles that seek to (re)tell the untold history and heritage of the Temba community since its establishment as a new black settlement in 1942.
Residents of Itireleng School for the Blind were amongst the first settlers of Temba. The relocation of the school from Roodepoort to Temba was facilitated by a missionary of the Anglican Church. Father Blaxall on behalf of the Transvaal Society for the African Blind. Itireleng School for the Blind was built at what used to be called Spookhuis Building (opposite Makgetse High School) and Phaphama Commercial College (now used as Phelang School for the Disabled).
The second batch of the early settlers of Temba was a larger group of 269 families who were forcefully relocated from Alberton to the newly acquired Bezuidenhout farm in Hammanskraal. These families were temporarily housed in army tents with several large marquees serving as communal amenities. In 1948 all the early settler families were finally allocated their brick houses from Blocks A to T in Oustad, the oldest section of Temba.
Temba later developed through the building of new five-, four and two-roomed houses (which were designed differently from the Oustad houses) from the 1960s to the 1980s. Leboneng was established in 1956, a new residential suburb where families could build their own houses with a 99-year lease option.
Bongani Madondo, a former resident of Leboneng, aptly describes the place as a “renaissance, middle class upscale, if not all of it economically but all of it quite cultured and refined in sensibility. Leboneng was truly the first full black free settlement suburb in the Transvaal, if not South Africa. Even the so-called first suburbs of Dube and Pimville were nowhere near the stature of Leboneng. But the name of the place says it all: the place of light.”
Temba Primary School was completed a year earlier in 1947 for foundation schooling from Sub A&B up to Standard 6. The first principals were headmasters Bango Thobejane and Ntate “Bottom” Setshedi. Standard 7 to 12 were offered at Ratshepo High School which was later renamed Hans High School in nearby Majaneng village. The first principal was headmaster Lekgetha. The name “Ratshepo” was later reclaimed for the establishment of Ratshepo High School located in Temba. The building of other new schools grew to 15 schools between 1960 and the year 2000.
Built-in 1955 with leftover rocks collected from the old Temba Primary School (which was built in 1947), the Dutch Reformed Church (popularly known as “Kereke ya Mokoko”) was the first church to be constructed in Temba. The Old Baptist Chapel, the Reformed Church (opposite the Afri-Spot Mall) and the St Peters Seminary were officially built in 1964.
From 1942, the Red Cross provided primary health care services at one of the marquees erected for this purpose at the makeshift tented village. The first community clinic was established at house Q216 in Oustad. The community clinic was run by Dorah “Biki” Mashiane (who lived in house Q217) who was the first black nurse in Temba.
Jubilee Mission Hospital was established by the Baptist Missionary Society doctors in 1956. The first superintendents of the new hospital were Doctor Orchard, Doctor Robertson and later the celebrated Dr Malan who served Jubilee Hospital for many years. The first black nurses at Jubilee Mission Hospital included Dorah “Biki” Mashiane, Nurse Kwena Gweneth Mahlare, Meisie Kgaphola and Nursing Sisters Mmakou, Lekgetha and Thobakgale.
The Babelegi Industrial Park was established during 1969/70 at Leeuwkraal farm 92 JR belonging to the Amandebele-a-Moletlane. From its operations around 1970 to its gradual decline in the late 1990s, Babelegi Industrial Park employed almost 25,000 workforce who contributed to the rapid economic development of Temba and the Greater Hammanskraal. The establishment of Babelegi Industrial Park indirectly contributed to the development of the Renstown Suburb which was established as a white residential township for the housing of white managers and industrialists who owned factories at Babelegi.
From its early years as a new residential settlement to date, the Temba community has organically shaped its unique history and heritage that has contributed to the diverse, resilient and vibrant community that Temba has become over the years – as a place called “home”. In her research “Blurred Borders of Belonging Hammanskraal Histories 1942 (2015) Sarah Godsell describes ”home” as the point where people place themselves, the place that people see as their place, and the place from which people construct different identities (and cultural experiences)”.
So, who are the people who contributed to the shaping of the cultural heritage of the Temba community?
Note: The subsequent articles will focus on the people and places that have contributed to the becoming of Temba as a place of hope, resilience and prosperity. Let us write about it. Through this initiative, Moretele Times and the Temba Heritage Project will provide the Temba community the opportunity to showcase tell and retell the unique stories through the representation of its people, places, culture and heritage.
Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if there is to be a world … Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don’t pass it up. Don’t pass it up …
Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black