The history of the parishes in the Diocese of Eshowe
People of the small district town of Nkandla approached Bishop Thomas Spreiter in the late thirties asking him to establish a mission hospital in the village. The bishop, seeing this as an opportunity for the Catholic Church to get a foothold in the district, bought a small property with a dwelling at Nkandla and opened a mission on February 8, 1939.
Right from the beginning, the missionaries put great emphasis on caring for the sick in the region. They revamped an old building, turning one of the rooms into a dispensary and equipping several others with hospital beds. The tiny "hospital" opened its doors for patients on August 17, 1939. The Benedictine brothers continued to make extensions and improvements to the building. Twelve months later, in mid-1940, it looked like a proper, albeit small, hospital. Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing came to Nkandla in June 1940 and took charge of the nursing service. The number of patients remained low for the first few years. Only seventy-five were registered in 1940 and about twice as many in 1945. A new hospital was built and opened in 1946. It had space for forty-five beds. After another wing was added in 1962, the hospital could accommodate ninety patients. A further extension, completed in 1975, provided ample space for a children's ward. The total number of beds was thereby increased to 220.
Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing Sisters ran the hospital for almost nineteen years. On January 10, 1959, they withdrew from Nkandla and handed everything over to the Nardini Sisters. In 1978, the Nkandla Mission Hospital became a government institution. Since then the Nardini Sisters who work in the hospital are government employees. A new convent was built for the sisters in 1982/83. Bishop Mansuet Biyase blessed it on March 5, 1983. Part of the old convent building (erected 1947/48) was pulled down, the other part revamped and integrated into the new convent. The improved facilities enabled the Nardini Sisters to accept and train candidates at Nkandla. They opened a novitiate in 1987.
Five years after the foundation of Nkandla, the Benedictines built a provisional church at the mission. It was blessed by Fr. Theodos Schall in 1944. Soon it proved to be too small and was eventually replaced by a proper church twelve years later. Bro. Candidus Mayer drew up the plans for the church and Bro. Venantius Schneider built it. The foundation stone was laid in August 1956. The shell of the building was completed by the end of the same year. Bishop Aurelian Bilgeri blessed it on November 24, 1957, and dedicated it to the Holy Trinity.
The mission school of Nkandla has a relatively short history. It was opened in 1947 and became known as Mpandleni School. In 1953, it had for the first time a Std. 5 class. Attached to it were boarding houses for boys and girls. The school was handed over to the government in 1977. As they had done at Cassino, the Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing heeded the plea of white parents and kept a school for white children going at Nkandla for a short period of time. It opened in June 1943, but was discontinued in December 1948 because the small number of white children did not really justify all the effort.
The property which the Benedictines bought in Nkandla in 1939, comprised only two hectares. This was far too small to support a mission of the size of Nkandla. Fr. Theodos Schall therefore bought a 640-hectare farm about five kilometres away from Nkandla in order to make the mission station selfsufficient. A large part of it was used as grazing for a herd of dairy cattle. The rest was set aside for maize production and a black wattle plantation. The efforts paid off. The farm became a good source of income. In the early sixties the government declared the farm to be a "whiteowned property in a black area" and ordered the bishop of Eshowe to sell it for incorporation into Kwazulu. The mission was left with just a small piece of land.
The parish of Nkandla is made up mainly of small villages and scattered kraals in the hill country between the Tugela river in the south and the Umhlatuze river in the north. By 1990, it had become by far the biggest parish in the Diocese of Eshowe with twelve outstations and 7900 Catholics. Other parishes in the diocese (such as Nongoma and Mahlabatini) may have more outstations but none has nearly as many registered members as Nkandla.
Parish Priests of Nkandla
Assistant Priests at Nkandla
Benedictine Brothers at Nkandla
This page was last updated on 12.06.02 17:24:59
