Early life and opposition to apartheid
Born in South Africa, Patrick van Rensburg initially served as a civil servant and foreign diplomat abroad. However, shocked by the apartheid policies, he resigned from his post as South African Vice-Consul in the Belgian Congo in 1957. He subsequently joined the Liberal Party of South Africa. During a private trip to Britain, he became closely involved with the campaign to boycott South African goods, which preceded the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Returning to South Africa, his passport was confiscated, and after the Sharpeville shootings, he was forced to flee the country.
After a brief period in Britain, where he wrote and published Guilty Land, van Rensburg relocated to Bechuanaland, now Botswana, of which he became a citizen in 1973.
Founding of the Swaneng Hill School and Brigades Movement
In Botswana, van Rensburg founded the Swaneng Hill School and, following its success, two other schools in collaboration with the Botswana government. He also established the Swaneng Consumers Cooperative and the Brigades Movement. His approach to education was revolutionary, blending traditional academic subjects with practical skills such as agriculture, building, carpentry, metalwork, and technical drawing. He also introduced development studies, encouraging students to apply their knowledge to socially useful, productive work.
The Brigades Movement, consisting of vocational training institutions, aimed to make education affordable by producing goods and services for public sale, offering a self-sustaining education model for the community.
The Foundation for Education with Production (FEP)
Van Rensburg’s experience with the schools and Brigades led him to establish the Foundation for Education with Production (FEP) in 1980. FEP sought to combine theory and practice in education, spreading its concepts through workshops, conferences, and publications across Southern Africa and even the Caribbean. The Foundation aimed to identify socially beneficial activities to integrate into education while developing relevant curriculum content in subjects like Cultural Studies, Development Studies, and Applied Mathematics.
FEP collaborated with reputable certification institutions to assess and examine these subjects and provided training to teachers. It also published textbooks to support this educational approach.
Later work and legacy
In the mid-1980s, van Rensburg revived the newspaper Mmegi (The Reporter), transforming it into a successful national weekly. In the 1990s, he returned to South Africa, where he continued to promote education with production as a model for community development.
Patrick van Rensburg passed away in Botswana on May 23, 2017. His life and work were later documented in Kevin Shillington’s biography Patrick van Rensburg – rebel, visionary and radical educationist (Wits University Press, 2020).
