A picture of the first 16 students (all boys) with the first headmaster. 3 Feb, 2021On Wednesday 3 February 2021, Waterford Kamhlaba will celebrate the school's 58th birthday through an online event. There will be an alumni panel featuring:
Those who would like to register for the
event can do so through the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpcu-vrj4uG9WwAO4nHkdCIDiNdsDZkyir
Waterford School was opened on a mountainside at the edge of Mbabane in
February 1963, after founding headmaster Michael Stern spent 6 years teaching
in South Africa, first at an all-black school (St. Peter’s, which was closed in
1956) then at an all-white school (St. Martin’s, on the same site as St.
Peter’s, where he was the founding headmaster), under the Apartheid Regime.
Michael Stern came to South Africa to teach in 1955 after responding to an
article written by Father (later Archbishop) Trevor Huddleston called, “And the Church Sleeps On” but he became
increasingly dissatisfied and frustrated with the pervasive environment of
racial intolerance. In 1961, after several years of St. Martin’s work camps in
the then British Protectorate of Swaziland, and after it was clear that Michael
could not teach and live his ideals in South Africa, he committed himself to
the idea of a multiracial school in Swaziland (now Eswatini). Waterford was established
in clear and expressed opposition to the South African Apartheid regime and its
laws of racial segregation.
