Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work

The Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work was the first institution to train black social workers in South Africa.

History
The Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work started operating on January 15, 1941 in Eloff Street, Johannesburg, under directorship of Congregational minister Rev. Ray Phillips. The School was funded with help from the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and the Afrikaner philanthropist Hofmeyr. Hofmeyr was Minister of Finance and of Education under Jan Smuts in 1939, and also president of the YMCA.

Phillips had travelled from the United States, of which he was a citizen, to South Africa as a representative of the American Missionary Board. He was completely convinced of the equality of all races. Until 1947 the School was housed in the same building as the Bantu Men's Social Centre, which Phillips had also helped found (Healy 2001:23, Cobley 1997).

The idea of training black social workers was first raised in 1932 by Max Yergan, an African-American who organized on behalf of the YMCA in South Africa. Phillips and YMCA national secretary T.J.R. Ponsford worked on the idea, with input from J.D. Rheinalt Jones, Edgar Brookes, and Hofmeyr. Phillips proposed to the YMCA national council in April 1939 that there should be a YMCA school to train black Africans for welfare work. Coble comments that Phillips' version of the school watered down Yergan's idea for an institution independent of white control (Cobley 1997:145). Funds from the sale of the YMCA building constructed under Yergan's initiative at Fort Hare, in Alice (Eastern Cape) was to be sold and the funds used for the School of Social Work (Cobley 1997:148).

The demand for black African social workers was so great that the initial goal was soon surpassed. From 1945 the School's courses ran over three years, instead of the two it had offered up to that point. In 1947 the School moved from the Bantu Men's Social Centre to rent-free space in a municipal building that also housed the Johannesburg City Council's Jubilee Social Centre. From 1949 the school functioned independently from the YMCA (Cobley 1997:148-49).

After the National Party gained power in 1948, the apartheid state stopped subsidizing private education, and the Jan Hofmeyr School was forced to close in 1960 (Gray and Mazibuko 2002:198).

Alumni
Students who had trained at the School included:
 * Gibson Kente (1932-2004), playwright
 * Ellen Kuzwayo (1914-2006), 1953, educator, social worker, activist, member of the Committee of Ten
 * Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela, 1953, a former wife of Nelson Mandela, social worker, activist
 * Joshua Nkomo (1917-1999), ca. 1942, Zimbabwean politician
 * Louis Petersen [1917-2002], music administrator
 * Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane (1920-1969), class of 1948, educator and founder of the Mozambique Liberation Front (1962)