Abstract
D.Litt. et Phil.
In an examination of the training of nurses in Swaziland from 1927 – 2007, this study argues that the actions of the Church of the Nazarene (CON) and the state, as well as local conceptions of gender, contributed to the introduction and advancement of training of young Swazi women as nurses at the Ainsworth Dickson Nurses’ Home. Aiming at opening a medical mission at Bremersdorp in the Manzini District in Swaziland in 1925, the CON entered into an agreement with the British Colonial government, whereby the latter provided the CON with a piece of land on which to establish the first hospital in Swaziland, which it would staff with a British physician and white nurses. This agreement began an enduring relationship between the CON and the Swaziland government, which saw not only the establishment of the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital (RFM) but also the inauguration of nursing training in 1927. This study argues that the endurance of this training programme was largely dependent on the government’s financial support and on the provision of medical workers by the CON. From the 1930 onwards, the government not only paid salaries for the teaching staff, but also provided funding for nursing students. Following the example of Florence Nightingale, the CON and the Swazi government agreed, in the 1930s, to train only Swazi girls as nurses on the job, using the RFM as the teaching hospital. This agreement proved very suitable to the Swazi context, where cultural understandings precluded the training of boys as nurses, yet, from the beginning, marking the training of nurses in terms of gender...