By Mr Jonathan Hill (The last standing Methodist missionary in Zimbabwe)

Below is an account of the people whose names were used in naming games houses at Thekwane High School

Perpetua and Felicitas

Perpetua and her slave Felicity (or Felicitas) were third-century Christians who bravely faced martyrdom together. They are remembered for their steadfast faith in the face of suffering and are named saints of the Catholic Church. Their story is recorded in “The Passion of St. Perpetua, St. Felicitas, and their Companions,” which is thought to be written by Perpetua herself, along with an editor/narrator who begins and ends the account.

 

Vibia Perpetua was a 22-year-old noblewoman who lived in Carthage, North Africa. She was recently married and the mother to a nursing infant. Because her husband is never mentioned in her diaries, many historians assume she was already a widow as well. Perpetua followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a Christian in AD 203, despite major discouragement from her pagan father. When he begged her to abandon Christianity, she asked him if he could call a water jug by any other name than what it was. When he said no, she told him, “Well, so too I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian” (“Perpetua,” www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/martyrs/perpetua.html,  (accessed 7/7/21).

 

Not much is known about Felicity except that she was a young slave-woman who was eight months pregnant at the time of her arrest. Perpetua and Felicity were arrested along with three other catechumens—Christians who had not yet been baptized—Revocatus, Saturninus, and Secundulus. Their teacher in the faith, Saturus, chose to share in their punishment and submitted to arrest as well.

 

The prison was hot and crowded, subjecting the believers to intense suffering, the worst of which was Perpetua being separated from her baby. Two deacons in Perpetua’s church were eventually able to pay the guards to place the prisoners in a better cell. The prisoners’ faith, strength, and courage then convinced the warden to allow family to visit, and Perpetua could finally feed her child again. The testimony of these Christians would eventually lead the warden to faith in Christ as well.

 

The execution of the prisoners was scheduled to take place during the military games celebrating the birthday of Emperor Septimius Severus. Felicity was worried she would not be able to die with her companions because it was illegal to execute a pregnant woman in the Roman Empire. She did not want to give birth too late and die at a later date with common criminals. Her fellow prisoners did not want to leave so “good a comrade” behind, either.

 

Miraculously, Felicity went into labor two days before the execution. The guards made fun of her pain, telling her much worse was coming. She calmly responded, “What I am suffering now, I suffer by myself. But then another will be inside me who will suffer for me, just as I shall be suffering for Him.” She gave birth to a little girl, who was adopted by another woman in the church (“The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas,” www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/perpetua.html, (accessed 7/7/21).

 

During Emperor Severus’s military games, the prisoners were placed in the arena, where the men of the group were mauled by bears, leopards, and wild boars. Perpetua and Felicity were stripped of their clothes and forced to face a rabid heifer. The crowd called out that they had seen enough, so the women were removed and re-clothed.

 

Then Perpetua and Felicity were thrown back into the arena with gladiators. Perpetua’s last recorded words before they met the sword were, “You must all stand fast in the faith and love one another, and do not be weakened by what we have gone through” (ibid.). Perpetua and Felicity died side-by-side in the arena, faithful martyrs for the gospel.

 

Such cruelty and injustice toward two young mothers in front of an approving crowd is almost incomprehensible. But Jesus identified the reason the world hated Perpetua and Felicitas so much: “You do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you” (John 15:19).

Slessor

Mary Slessor was a hard working Scottish mill girl and an unorthodox Sunday School teacher, who, inspired by David Livingstone, became a missionary in Calabar, Nigeria, an area where no European had set foot before. Despite several bouts of illness and constant danger, she lived with the tribes, learned their language, and traditions, earning their respect and putting an end to some barbaric practices, such as the killing of twins. She adopted many Nigerian children (particularly twins) who had been left to die.

When Southern Nigeria became a British Protectorate, she became the first ever female Magistrate in the British Empire and a skilful diplomatic emissary.

Mary died in 1915, aged 67, with great mourning amongst the tribes to whom she had dedicated her whole life.

Leith

I don't know about Leith. It is a common surname in Scotland, so it might be the name of a Scottish missionary, but I'm only guessing.

Aggrey

Aggrey was born in Anomabu, the son of Princess Abena Anowa of Ajumako and Okyeame Prince Kodwo Kwegyir, the Chief Linguist in the court of the master chieftain King Amonoo IV of Anomabu. In June 1883, he was baptized in a municipality in the Gold Coast and accepted his Christian first name James. His full name was given as James Emman Kodwo Mensa Otsiwadu Humamfunsam Kwegyir Aggrey. He attended Wesleyan High School (now Mfantsipim School) Cape Coast, where the teachers noted that he was precocious, already studying Greek and Latin, and he subsequently rose to become the school's headmaster.

 

In 1898, at the age of 23, Aggrey was selected due to his education to be trained in the United States as a missionary. On 10 July 1898, he agreed, and left the Gold Coast for the United States, where he settled in Salisbury, North Carolina, and attended Livingstone College. He studied a variety of subjects at the university, including chemistry, physics, logic, economics and politics. In May 1902 he graduated from the university with three academic degrees. Aggrey was very talented at languages and was said to have spoken (besides English) French, German, Ancient and Modern Greek, and Latin.

 

In November 1903, he was appointed a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Salisbury. In 1905 he married Rose Douglas, a native of Virginia, with whom he had four children. In the same year he began to teach at Livingstone College. In 1912 he earned his doctorate in theology, and in 1914 followed a doctorate in osteopathy. In the same year he transferred employment to a small municipality to North Carolina. Between 1915 and 1917 Aggrey took up further studies at what is now known as Columbia University, where he studied sociology, psychology and the Japanese language.

 

In 1920 Paul Monroe, a member of the Phelps Stokes Fund offered Aggrey the opportunity to attend a research expedition to Africa to determine which measures were necessary for the improvement of education in Africa. Aggrey accepted and visited what are now ten different countries in Africa, where he collected and analyzed education data. In 1920 he visited Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gold Coast now Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. In 1921 he visited the Belgian Congo, Angola and South Africa.

 

During this journey Aggrey made a significant impression and underscored the importance of education among some people who would become important figures in Africa, including Hastings Kamuzu Banda, later president of Malawi, Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of Nigeria, and Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana.

 

In Ghana, Aggrey delivered a lecture that persuaded Governor Guggisberg that Achimota College should be co-educational:

 

"The surest way to keep people down is to educate the men and neglect the women. If you educate a man you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation."

 

In South Africa, Aggrey delivered a lecture that used the keys of the piano as an image of racial harmony:

 

"I don't care what you know; show me what you can do. Many of my people who get educated don't work, but take to drink. They see white people drink, so they think they must drink too. They imitate the weakness of the white people, but not their greatness. They won't imitate a white man working hard ... If you play only the white notes on a piano you get only sharps; if only the black keys you get flats; but if you play the two together you get harmony and beautiful music."

 

This image was the inspiration for the name adopted by the journal of the League of Coloured Peoples, The Keys.

 

In 1924, Aggrey was appointed by the Gold Coast governor Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg as the First Vice Principal of Achimota College in Accra. Aggrey designed the emblem of Achimota College. He resettled with his wife and children at the college, north of Accra.

 

In May 1927 he returned to the United States, and in July admitted to a hospital in Harlem, New York, where he died later that month.

 

Aggrey is buried in Oakdale Cemetery in Salisbury, North Carolina.

 

Carter

Hebert Carter was the leader of the first missionaries that landed in Thekwane. They asked for land from the local villagers and were granted the same. They set up a mission station and called it Tegwani. Tegwani is a corrupt from of the name Thekwane, the Hammer kop bird which was common in the area.

 

Khumalo and Hlabangana

I don’t quite know who these were. Maybe with further research we can find out who they were and their brief history.