In a speech given to the Sandton Historical Association in the late 1970s, Councillor Bill Hedding mentioned a very special historical site in the area - a school that managed to survive the onslaught of apartheid legislation and was connected to some of the most influential people in South Africa at the time. It also appears that part of the school is one of the few, if not the only, memorial to US President John F Kennedy in Africa.
No story about the schools in Bryanston would be complete without relating the story of the school which has had the biggest battle to survive. I refer to the Witkoppen School for Blacks [now Witkoppen Primary School], which though it is not in Bryanston, has been the concern of Bryanstonians and others for many years. A Mr Mason, who had started the nucleus of a school in 1927, donated two acres of his farm on which it stood to the African people of Witkoppen. The Anglican Board of Management controlled the new school.
Main Entrance to Witkoppen Primary School (The Heritage Portal)
In 1955 the Bantu Education Act was passed and the then Bishop of Johannesburg, the Rt Rev. Ambrose Reeves, decided to close the school rather than hand it over to the state. The Principal, Mr Jack, called a meeting of...
