The preamble to the Constitutions of the four Associations within the Boy Scouts of South Africa makes clear the movement's policy in [racial matters]. It reads:

Here then is the true conception of the Inter-relation of colour. Complete uniformity in ideals; absolute equality in the paths of knowledge and culture, equal opportunity for those who strive; equal admiration for those who achieve; in matters social and racial a separate path, each pursuing his own race purity and race pride; equality in things spiritual, agreed divergence in things physical and material.

. . .

Each of the race groups has its own Association, with its own Chief Scout's Commissioner and Headquarters Council. These Councils are empowered to make their own plans and formulate their own programmes, subject only to the overriding control of the Chief Scout, on matters of policy.

. . .

The European, Coloured and Indian sections have, despite their option to differentiate, adhered to a common form of training for boys. The African section on the other hand has exercised its option to devise a programme better suited to the background of the African boy.

Departure from East London

I left East London on Sunday, 30 January 1949 for Edwaleni Technical College. . . . The weather that day was cloudy and rain fell intermittently. I was taken by car to Down Station where I found the District [Scout] Commissioner and many scouts waiting for me. . . . The scouts and I hold [a] short farewell meeting where I was given a good sum of shillings for my provision. . . . As the train left Down Station I said goodbye to everybody who had come to see me leave for the Province and College unknown to me far, far away.

Arrival at Umtata

We arrived at Umatata at 4 a.m. on Monday. I waited at the station for a bus which was to leave for Port St. Johns. At the station there were students going to [schools] in Natal, others were going to Lovedale, St. Matthews, etc, and also workers who were going to Natal especially Durban.

Port St. Johns

We arrived at Port St. Johns at 10 a.m. on the same day. In the rail I took my luggage to a boarding house. . . . The town is full of trees. Some houses are half covered with trees and as you walk along the streets you can hear good melody from the frogs. . . . It is almost like a jungle. I found the climate here tropical. Bananas are cheap and galore. . . . The next morning I went to the Pontoon [Bridge], but the Pontoon was not working, only boats were used to take the people across. I crossed the river and waited for the bus. . . . In the bus I made friendship with T.K. Ntshiyantshiya a lawyer's interpreter who had been to Port St. Johns with his master.

At Lusikisiki

There are no boarding houses here, I had to sleep outside in a verandah of a shop but Ntshiyantshiya came to the rescue, took me to his relatives – 2.5 miles out of Lusikisiki. We got a bus for Port Shepstone. . . and from there to Umtamvuna, which is the boundary between Cape Province and Natal. . . . [From my destination at Rice's Halt] we went on foot to the school. . . . This is the first time [I visited] the institution. I arrived on the 3rd February 1949. The journey was one which gives one experience and many shocks, and jars I found on the way are nothing to one who has a bit of scout training. I was not disappointed on my way but I kept on saying to myself 'Be Prepared for anything you come across.'

During the past year the Chief Guide and I have visited Egypt and the Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, the Union, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, St. Helena, Ascension, and the Canaries on a tour of inspection of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides.

You who know South Africa can realise in a way impossible for anyone who has not lived there the intense feeling which prevails on the colour question. For various reasons it has been far more acute here than in other countries.

Therefore our policy of Scouting being open to all "regardless of class, creed, or colour" was found to be impossible in practice. White parents would never allow their boys to consort with black. Any attempt on the part of the Scout movement to bring this about would have meant its boycott by the whites. Locally the question was asked: "Are the blacks to be catered for in preference to the whites?"

An amendment had been suggested to the Constitution of the Scout organisation in South Africa to emphasise the fact that the movement was open only to European boys.

One could not feel that this was in accordance with our professed open door to all sorts of boys, or that it visualised future developments of relationships between the races.

With the introduction of European rule the tribal system was largely broken down, and a transition from savagery to civilisation was brought about.

In many cases, however, the change has been almost too sudden; if you take former hunters and warriors away from their kraals and traditional discipline and place them as workers in mines and cities, with freedom from moral restraints, you thrust upon them the temptations and vices of the underworld of civilisation without having given them any education in character for facing these.

While education is as yet only in its early stages, the natives generally are quickly responsive to it. Those who were formerly segregated from one another by language and distance have now the facilities of a common tongue and improved communications and are thus coming into closer mutual touch.

Through gaining a wider outlook on life they are becoming race conscious and sensitive to justice or injustice. Indeed, influences are already at work among them persuading them that they have not been treated with fairness by their white rulers.

The colour prejudice is further complicated also by the fact that in addition to the natives there is a considerable half-caste element in the population, locally known as the "coloured" people. In addition to these there is a large section of Indians, descendants of earlier immigrants from India but now naturalised South Africans. Also a goodly proportion of Malays similarly circumstanced.

Already these different sections were beginning to feel themselves neglected if not repelled by not being accepted in the Boy Scout movement. The native youth had begun to organise themselves on Scout and Guide lines under able and sympathetic white leaders, calling themselves "Pathfinders" and "Wayfarers " since the name Scouts and Guides was denied them. The Indians had also started a Scout movement of their own.

At the Conference of the Union Scout Council which I attended in February the whole question came up for consideration. The various pros and cons-and there were many of them were discussed in excellent temper and in the true Scout spirit of fairness and wide outlook.

After two and a half days of earnest deliberation the conclusion was unanimously arrived at that, instead of making the Scout movement a closed Association for Europeans only, a Federation should be formed of the respective sections of Pathfinder Scouts, Coloured Boy Scouts, and Indian Boy Scouts; each section to be a separate self-governing unit, but all to be registered under the controlling authority of the Union Boy Scout Council.

This arrangement has met with the enthusiastic approval of all the bodies concerned.

This Federation, as now constituted, supplies at any rate a sound framework on which future developments can be made to meet the needs of future times.

The step is a big one and full of promise and possibilities. Its successful initiation has been largely due to the broad-minded outlook of missionary and education officers working in co-operation with white Scout leaders and in the face of much prejudice on the part of some of the public.

It is too soon yet to speak of any results, but one cannot help looking forward and hoping that this comradeship of the Scout and Guide movement will contribute to an improved mutual relationship between the different elements in the population and so tend to bring about the unity necessary for making an united South African people in the future.

The Boy Scouts Association
Imperial Headquarters
25 Buckingham Palace Road
London, S.W. 1

5 May 1923

Dear Sir,

This College is the training College for English Church boys (native and coloured) for the whole of the Transvaal and so far back as 1915, the present Bishop of St. Alban's, who was then Bishop of Pretoria, encouraged the idea of the formation of Native Scouts in connection with this College, which would spread eventually to other educational centers in the Diocese. For some time the proposal hung fire, mainly because we were handicapped during the war in the matter of staff; but after the war we were fortunate enough to get on our staff two keen experienced Scoutmasters, the Rev. S. P. Woodfield and Mr. W. E. Wilkinson, who took the matter up with enthusiasm. When, however, we applied to the Transvaal Scout Association in Johannesburg, a meeting was summoned in which we were told courteously, but quite plainly, that not for any reason whatsoever would we be allowed to call ourselves scouts, be affiliated to the Association as scouts, or wear the scout badge— and this, simply because our boys were BLACK— that was all. . . . We were allowed to affiliate ourselves as Pathfinders on condition that we did not wear the same uniform or badge, or call ourselves Scouts. I am not a member of the Association, and so appalled was I at the flagrant breach of what I considered the fundamental principle of Brotherhood that I was for leaving the whole things alone and starting an independent [scout] association, but the two scoutmasters, on the principle that at all costs it was vital to come under the control of the [British] Imperial [Scout] Headquarters, accepted what to me was a compromise of the Johannesburg [scout] executive steeped in racialism and colour prejudice.

Now, to our amazement, we find that our Association "cannot come under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Headquarters:" the only advantage we have apparently is affiliation with the Transvaal authorities of Boy Scouts, the body which has made no secret of its determination not to admit into the brotherhood of Scouts, the black and half-caste boy. To me, the ineptitude and shortsightedness of the whole thing is amazing. Our Native students went overseas; our Coloured Corps did most wonderful work during the [First World] War, but simply and solely because of the Colour prejudice their children are excluded from an Association whose first principles are of Brotherhood. Chinese and Japanese boys may be Scouts, but not boys living as an integral part of the British Empire. . . . The result is that all over South Africa, associations of Native Scouts are being formed – having no connection with any central organisation whatsoever. The native boy today sees the illustrated papers and knows that all over the world, irrespective of colour, boys are being enrolled as Scouts. His racial self-consciousness is one of the most marked features of South African life today. Is he likely to be satisfied with an Association having no connection with the great body of world Scouts, and admittedly based on colour prejudice of the most pronounced type, or to be deprived of the right to wear officially a uniform which he knows other black boys in Africa are wearing with credit, and full relationship with the Headquarters at home?

I fully appreciate the difficulties of the Scout Headquarters in Johannesburg; South Africa is full of racial prejudice, but I should have thought that the object of the Scout Association was to create an atmosphere in which racial prejudice cannot thrive, and not help to perpetuate it.

I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,


Reverend Canon William A. Palmer
Principal of the Pretoria Diocesan College
Director of Native Missions in the Diocese of Pretoria

Scouts form up in one line with the leader in front, each holding his staff in the right hand, and his left on the next man's shoulder.

Leader sings the Een-Gonyama song. Scouts sing chorus, and advance to their front a few steps at a time, stamping in unison on the long notes. Into the centre [a Scout] steps forward and carries out a war dance, representing how he tracked and fought with one of his enemies. He goes through the whole fight in dumb show, until he finally kills his foe; the Scouts meantime still singing the Een-Gonyama chorus and dancing on their own ground. So soon as he finishes the fight, the leader starts the 'Be Prepared' chorus.

Then they commence the Een-Gonyama chorus, and another Scout steps into the ring, and describes in dumb show how he stalked and killed a wild buffalo. While he does the creeping up and stalking the animal, the Scouts all crouch and sing their chorus very softly, and as he gets more into the fight with the beast, they simultaneously spring up and dance and shout the chorus loudly.

The Een-Gonyama song should be sung in a spirited way, and not droned out dismally like a dirge.

1. Brown, Arthur. "The Development of the Scout Movement in Nigeria." African Affairs 46 (1947), 38-42.
   Written by a Nigerian Scout official, the article provides a useful survey of the scope of scouting in colonial Nigeria.
2. Baden Powell, Lord Robert. Scouting for Boys. 13th ed. London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1957.
   This is the 13th edition of Baden Powell's original manual on scouting that launched the movement. He revised it regularly in later editions, but it remained scoutings' central canon.
3. Baden Powell, Sir Robert. "White Men in Black Skins." Elders Review of West African Affairs 8, no. 30 (July 1929), 6-7.
   Baden Powell published hundreds of books and articles on scouting, but this piece offers a frank and rare glimpse into his views on race.
4. Gaitskell, Deborah. "Upward All and Play the Game: The Girl Wayfarers' Association in the Transvaal 1925-1975." In Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans, edited by Peter Kallaway. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984.
   There are very few scholarly works on the Pathfinder movement, but this article covers its sister movement, which was known as the "Wayfarers."
5. Proctor, Tammy. "'A Separate Path': Scouting and Guiding in Interwar South Africa." Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 3 (July 2000), 605-31.
   Written by a historian specializing in modern Britain, this article is useful for comparing the South African versions of scouting and guiding to their metropolitan British counterparts.
6. Parsons, Timothy. Race, Resistance and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.
   This is the only book length treatment of the Boy Scout movement in colonial Africa. It focuses primarily on scouting in English-speaking eastern and southern Africa.
7. PAXTU: International Web Site for the History of Guiding & Scouting, http://www.paxtu.org/index.html (accessed May 16, 2008).
   This website tracks the most current scholarship on international Scouting and Guiding.

by Elizabeth Ten Dyke
(Suggested writing time: 50 minutes)

In the introduction to this unit, author Tim Parsons writes, "Scouting was thus both an instrument of colonial authority and a subversive challenge to the legitimacy of the British empire." In other words, scouting would "train" African boys to accept colonial power as well as empower Scouts to use the movement to resist or oppose colonial power. Write a well-organized essay drawing on evidence from three primary sources that helps you support this point of view.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following institutions for primary sources

• Eagle Press,
• East African Standard,
• Imperial War Museum, London,
• Journal of the Royal African Society,
• Oxford University,
• South African Scout Association,
• Tanzania National Archives,
• Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, and
• University of Witwatersrand.

About the Author

Tim Parsons is a Professor at Washington University. Parsons is the author of several books including: Race, Resistance and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial Africa; The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa; The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Service in the King's African Rifles, 1902-1964; and The British Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A World History Perspective.

About the Lesson Plan Author

Elizabeth Ten Dyke has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology. She is Director of Instructional Services for the Kingston City School District, and is the author of Dresden: Paradoxes of Memory in History.

Conceived by General Sir Robert Baden Powell to reduce class tensions in early 20th-century Britain, the Boy Scout movement evolved into an international youth movement that offered a romantic program of vigorous outdoor life for boys and adolescents as a cure for the physical decline and social disruption caused by industrialization and urbanization. One of scouting's main goals was to create social stability by dealing with the complex problem of adolescence. Every generation fears that the generation that comes after it will not respect its rules, values, and division of property. As a uniformed and disciplined youth organization, the Scout movement taught young males in the difficult years between childhood and adulthood to respect older generations and accept their place in society. By the 1920s most of the nations of the world had embraced the movement as a way to teach young people to be loyal to the state and respect their elders. While governments worldwide utilized scouting to reinforce political and social authority, such was not the case in colonial Africa where marginalized groups and social outsiders used scouting to challenge dominant institutions.

Scouting began in 1907 with Robert Baden-Powell's creation of a youth organization aimed at promoting physical, moral, and imperial fitness among British youth by capitalizing on their fascination with "frontier woodcraft" and "tribal" life. He incorporated these elements into scouting in order to inspire young Britons to emulate what he interpreted to be the most praiseworthy aspects of African life. A diverse and eclectic mix of tribal peoples that included Amerindians, Arab Bedouins, and New Zealand Maoris served as inspirations for the movement, but Africans occupied a central place in Baden Powell's thinking. A 20-year career fighting colonial wars made him a self-proclaimed expert on "tribal" cultures, which he claimed to have incorporated into the scout movement.

At first, Baden-Powell did not have a specific ideology for scouting. But eventually several key themes emerged in his thinking and became the central core of the scout creed. Concerned that urban slums and vice were undermining British security, he aimed to prepare younger generations to defend their nation and empire. Just as life on the imperial frontier taught virility, resourcefulness, and self-control, scouting was a "school of the woods" that would instill these same ideals in British youth. By adopting the values and discipline of "tribal" peoples, scouting would teach the vital manly qualities that consumerism and materialism had drained away from "civilized" western society.

Similarly, Baden Powell also believed that class tensions led to national weakness. He therefore envisioned scouting as a way to teach working-class boys to accept their place in society by stressing obedience, discipline, and simplicity. This helps to explain the Fourth Scout Law: "A Scout is a Brother to every other Scout." Baden Powell never intended for this brotherhood to lead to social equality; rather it was a sense of fraternity in scouting that would defuse social tensions by reducing friction between rich and poor boys.

In the tense years before World War One, the movement's critics charged that scouting secretly prepared young men for military service. Baden Powell emphatically denied the charge, and after the war he recast scouting as an international peace movement. More significantly, he also acknowledged that non-Europeans could also be scouts and gave his blessing to administrators and educators who introduced scouting throughout the empire to teach imperial loyalty, encourage African and Asian students to accept their place in colonial society, and reduce the political and social friction that came with foreign imperial rule. By the inter-war era, colonial administrators and educators had begun to fear that student unrest, urban migration, and juvenile delinquency were products of a growing social crisis in local African communities. British administrators relied on local allies and chiefs to govern the African majority, and they worried that the younger generation's rejection of their elders' authority threatened widespread political and social instability.

The Boy Scout movement promised to correct this imbalance by teaching students and city boys to respect colonial authority throughout the continent. In French-speaking Africa, Baptist missionaries in the Belgian Congo tried to substitute scouting for secret male initiation ceremonies, which they considered immoral, while Catholic educators sought to use the movement to train "Christian knights" to assist in converting the wider African population. Similarly, in the French colonies the authorities tried to use scouting to train a small African elite that would help them control the rest of colonial society.

In eastern and southern Africa, British officials claimed that the authority of their African allies stemmed from "tribal tradition." But they also introduced western schooling to train the young Africans to help run the colonies and to demonstrate that they were "civilizing" their "primitive" subjects. The scout movement never achieved a mass African following, but it targeted the students, juvenile delinquents, and urban migrants that were the greatest threat to British rule. Colonial educators and administrators worried that these "detribalized" Africans were politically dangerous, particularly when they flaunted "tribal tradition" and aspired to live a western lifestyle alongside European settlers. The colonial authorities turned to scouting to "retribalize" African adolescents by teaching them to remain in the countryside and accept the authority of their "native chiefs." Ironically, they looked to scouting to teach African boys how to be "tribal."

Yet Africans also used scouting to claim the rights of full citizenship. They invoked the Fourth Scout Law, which declared a scout was a brother to every other scout, to challenge racial discrimination. Rather than making colonialism run more smoothly, then, scouting offered African boys a way to resist the discriminatory laws and social barriers that made them second-class citizens. Rejecting the authority of official colonial scout associations, they formed their own unauthorized troops to claim the power and legitimacy of the scout movement for themselves. Scouting was thus both an instrument of colonial authority and a subversive challenge to the legitimacy of the British Empire. The African Scout experience thus demonstrated how marginalized groups and social outsiders could use the movement to challenge these very same institutions.

Baden Powell would have been dismayed by how these independent troops twisted and reinterpreted the scout canon to demand rights, respect, and eventually independence. In Kenya, some African troops ventured into politics during the early 1950s by supporting the anti-colonial Mau Mau rebellion, which was essentially a civil war between landless Kikuyu young men and the wealthy Kikuyu chiefs and landowners who were allied with the British colonial regime. While some African boys who wanted to join the movement illegally acquired uniforms they donned, others used scout clothing to exploit the colonial authorities' assumption that they were trustworthy. Dressed as scouts, they could travel more freely about the colony and were often able to collect money for "scout" activities. Scouting thus simultaneously bolstered colonial authority and challenged the legitimacy of the British Empire.

Despite the challenges they posed during the 1950s, most territorial scout associations in Africa grew and prospered by allying with the colonial authorities. European scout leaders demonized African nationalists and were caught by surprise when these men came to power after independence in the early 1960s. It seemed likely that the movement's close ties to British imperialism would lead to its demise in post-colonial Africa, but the Africans who inherited control of the scout associations reinterpreted the scout canon to transfer their loyalty to the new nationalist regimes. The survival of scouting in the nationalist era thus demonstrates that the movement's vulnerability to re-interpretation by outsiders was also one of its great strengths. Once the new lines of political authority were clear, the scout associations made African nationalist regimes the focus of their second law ("A Scout is Loyal"). Even modern South African scouting, which lost popular African support for its unwillingness to challenge apartheid, has successfully reinvented itself as a force for economic and social development in the new South Africa.

The Boy Scout movement exposes the tensions and divisions in any given society. Official scouting seeks an alliance with authority, and scout leaders interpret the scout canon to reflect prevailing values and social norms. Conversely, unofficial local modifications of scouting can express political and social opposition. National scout associations usually prevail in the struggle to define scout orthodoxy when their ties to political authority remain intact. Problems arise when the political and social terrain shifts before official scouting has time to react. As a result, scout authorities have become embroiled in controversies ranging from the civil rights struggle in the American South, nationalist resistance movements in India, and the contemporary American debate over gay rights.

In colonial Africa, scouting exposed the hypocrisy and instability of British imperial rule. Administrators and educators hoped to use the movement to teach young Africans to accept their subordinate place in colonial society, but the Fourth Scout Law, which declared that all scouts were brothers, gave Africans the means to reject this second-class status. Thus, the two central themes that emerge from colonial African scouting are: 1) the movement's official role in imperial governance and administration, 2) African moves to take scouting over for their own purposes.

Discussion Questions

• What was the official purpose of the scout uniform? Why would boys in general, and African boys in particular find it appealing? How did the scout uniform and badges both reinforce and disrupt British colonial rule in Kenya and South Africa?
• Why did the South African Scout Association force African boys to become Pathfinders instead of regular scouts? How did the segregated South African scout movement reflect the larger racial divisions in South African society? Why did Africans find the movement appealing despite its official ties to the apartheid regime?

Lesson Plan: ".. . And a Brother to Every Scout."

by Elizabeth Ten Dyke

Time Estimated: three 50-minute classes

Objectives

1. Discuss the influence of colonial experience on Baden Powell's decision to found the Boy Scouts
2. Describe activities related to scouting in Africa
3. Explain how a cultural tradition (scouting) can express social conflict and political struggle in a particular time and place.

Materials

• Five sheets of chart paper
• Markers
• Copies of the "Introduction" to this module for all students, plus one extra
• Tape/glue
• Copies of each primary source, sufficient for all students
• Copies of "Fact or Fib" worksheet, sufficient for all students
• Blank paper
• Colored pencils

Preparation

Take the "Introduction" to this module and cut it into five sections—two paragraphs per section. Attach each section to a sheet of chart paper. Label the charts A through E. Post the chart paper around the room, or set each on a different desk or table.

Day One

Hook
Introduce the lesson by asking the students, "What do you think of when you think of the Boy Scouts?" Students may think of the uniforms of scouting, the rules and traditions, loyalty, activities such as camping, and awards including Eagle Scouts. They may mention Christian and anti-gay aspects of the scouting movement. Particularly if these subjects come up, ask students to speculate about how or why scouting has become an activity mired in disagreements about moral issues in our society today.

Instruct
Explain to students that they will learn about the history of the Boy Scouts (when, where, and why it was founded). They will study primary sources that illustrate some of the tensions and conflicts that occurred when scouting expanded into colonial Africa. This lesson will help students see how cultural traditions can reflect complicated social situations in which different groups of people express disagreement and exercise competing interests.

Activity
Give each student a complete copy of the introduction. Break the students into five groups, one at or near each poster. Assign each group the two paragraphs of reading that correspond to their poster. After they have completed their reading, they should make a bulleted list on the chart paper in which they outline the main ideas of the assigned passage. Have each group present their summary in turn. Students who are listening as others speak should take notes on the material.

Discussion Questions

• Chart A (paragraphs 1, 2): What tribal peoples served as inspiration for the scouting movement? What was scouting supposed to teach the young people who participated in it?
• Chart B (paragraphs 3, 4): What concerned Baden Powell about his nation’s youth? What values did he hope the Scouts would learn through their participation? Explain the Fourth Scout Law "A Scout is a Brother to every other Scout."
• Chart C (paragraphs 5, 6): Explain how scouting became an international movement. How was scouting supposed to help British colonial authorities maintain their power in places like Africa?
• Chart D (paragraphs 7, 8): Which young people were targeted for the African scouting movement? Why them? Give two examples of how "Africans . . . used scouting to claim the rights of full citizenship."
• Chart E (paragraphs 9, 10): How did scouting become involved in the 1950 Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya? Explain what happened to African scouting after British colonial rule came to an end. Did scouting come to an end as well? Why or why not?

Homework
Working from their class notes, students should summarize information about how the basic values and goals were part of the Boy Scout movement early on. They should describe the goals of British colonial authorities as scouting was brought into Africa, and they should give one example of the way in which the Scouts went against British power.

Day Two

Activity #1

• Distribute copies of primary source: The Scouts' War Dance--Baden Powell's adaptation of a Zulu chant, c. 1910
• Distribute blank paper, colored pencils

Have students look at the introduction to this primary source. Point out that Tim Parsons writes, the "odd ritual" of the war dance "was just the sort of thing that Edwardian schoolboys loved for it allowed them to play at being Africans in a thoroughly modern context." Ask students to speculate about what the author means by this statement.

Have the whole class carefully read the description of the dance. Working in pairs, students should:

• Restate the different steps and parts of the dance in their own words.
• Draw or sketch an image of the scouts participating in this dance.
• Discuss what elements of the dance incorporate stereotypes about African culture.
• Discuss what elements of the dance incorporate scouting traditions.

As a whole class: share sketches and discuss "How would this dance help Baden Powell achieve some of his goals for scouting?"

Activity #2

• Distribute copies of primary source: "Appeal for African Scouts: Canon William Palmer to Imperial Scout Headquarters May 5, 1923."

Using a pen, pencil, or highlighter, underline passages in the letter that answer the following questions:

• Who is the author of the letter? To whom is it addressed?
• Where in Africa (what territory) was the author of this letter and his students?
• Why were the students not allowed to call themselves Scouts?
• What were they allowed to do?
• What are three points the author makes to demonstrate that this is unfair?

Homework
Respond in writing to the following question: "What does this conflict (over who may be a Scout) reveal or show about society in the Transvaal at this time?" Support your response with evidence from the document.

Day Three

• Discuss the previous day's homework, focusing on the ways students used documentary evidence to support their point of view.
• Distribute primary source: "Legal Protection for Scout Uniform 1935: Tanganyika Government Ordinance."
• Distribute copies of the "Fact or Fib?" worksheet.

Have students read the legislation with the worksheet in front of them. For each question on the worksheet, they should write a correct response (fact) and an incorrect response (fib).

The entire class should address each question in turn. The student who answers may give the correct response, or the student may give an incorrect response. The other students should listen carefully. If the response is correct they should call out "Fact!" If the answer is false, they should call out "Fib!" Then, when asked, a student who identified a fib may give the correct information.

Discussion
Based on your reading of this legislation, infer some of the problems that were occurring with Scouts in this time and place. In other words, what may have been going on that that government felt it was necessary to create this ordinance?

Distribute copies of primary source: "Organization of British Imperial Scouting" (table, 1951)/

As a whole class discuss:

• What are the four groups of troops at the bottom of the chart?
• How many levels of authority were above them?
• What was the highest level?
• What was the second highest level?
• What does this chart show about the relationship between the British Empire and Africa?

Day Four

DBQ Essay