By 1969, international public opinion had begun to turn against the apartheid policies of the white minority regime in South Africa. This included leaders of the international scout movement who had originally been relatively sympathetic to the South… [more]

Rover scouting was a branch of the movement for young men in their late teens and early twenties who were too old for regular scout troops but wished to maintain their ties to scouting. It stressed service and leadership while offering a measure of… [more]

Many African boys, teachers, and community leaders were genuinely inspired by scouting and founded their own unauthorized independent troops. In other cases, individuals dressed as scouts to claim the benefits of belonging to the movement. Scout… [more]

The top photograph shows members of a South African scout troop specifically for blind adolescents and young men c.1950. The bottom photograph is of non-commissioned officers from the King's African Rifles in the mid-1950s. Note that both groups wear… [more]

Imperial scout headquarters and the national and territorial scout associations were deeply concerned with ensuring that only respectable and responsible men became scoutmasters. In colonial Africa, this meant that potential scoutmasters had to also… [more]

This article by Baden Powell in a 1936 issue of the Journal of the Royal African Society refers to the compromise in South Africa that split scouting into four racially based "sections": European, Coloured, Indian, and African. Bringing the African… [more]

Almost immediately after learning of Baden Powell's creation of the Boy Scout Movement in 1907, the leaders of African and ethnically mixed communities (known as "Coloureds" in South Africa) began to found their own informal scout troops. The South… [more]

This chart shows the official lines of authority in the imperial Boy Scout movement. In theory, the Imperial Scout Headquarters had direct control over local versions of scouting through its territorial associations. Scouting was like a secular… [more]

Like much of the public in turn-of-the-century Britain, Baden Powell was fascinated by "primitive" cultures. Although he claimed an expert knowledge of Africa from his service in colonial wars, Baden Powell was hardly an authority on Zulu customs.… [more]

This module examines the founding principles of Robert Baden-Powell's Boy Scout movement in terms of its vision for decreasing social tensions and fostering adherence to generationally transmitted values; the module illustrates the complexities of the Scouting movement among African youth living under European colonial rule.