Patrick Van Rensburg: Rebel, Visionary and Radical Educationist, a Biography

This sensitive and compelling biography of Patrick van Rensburg does justice to a giant of a man, controversial throughout his life but undeniably a hero

Born in KwaZulu-Natal into what he described as ‘a very ordinary South African family that believed in the virtue of racism’, Patrick van Rensburg was to become a rebel with several causes. In his case they were, initially, the fight against apartheid and, later, a unique contribution to education, which, as he would tell his audience when he accepted the prestigious Right Livelihood Award, ‘as I saw it then, was a necessary tool of development’. Exiled from South Africa because of his involvement in the boycott campaign in London that gave birth to the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Van Rensburg went to Serowe in Botswana (then Bechuanaland), where he founded co-operatives, provided vocational training and was one of the earliest people to espouse the discipline of development studies. Perhaps his best-known legacies were Swaneng Hill School, in which he involved his pupils in building their school, running it, providing their own food and making their own equipment and furniture, and ‘brigades’ to provide an educational home for primary school ‘dropouts’ through a curriculum that combined theory and practice, mental and manual labour. This sensitive and compelling biography does justice to a giant of a man, controversial throughout his life but undeniably a hero.