St. Bernard's High School (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe)

"'St. Bernard's High School, Bulawayo is a Catholic schoo located in Pumula, a high density suburb of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It was founded in 1965. In 2000 it opened its first A-Level classes (form 5 and 6). One of its founding teachers and principals, Sister Ignatius Julie of the Sisters of Notre Dame (SND), died in 1993. She was still the school principal at the time of her death.The school is mostly renowned for it's academic capabilities.Although it started having A-Level in 2004, it is making big strides and has produced top-class students., notably Gift Dube who is now at Rhodes University in SA,Peacemore Mhodi who is at the university of Kwazulu-Natal and Khethiwe Ncube who is at Venda University which is also in SA.Another former student who is also at Rhodes is Mzokuthula Mbuyisa, who did his A-Levels at Mpopoma High. These two, Dube and Mhodi were joint highest for the 2006 A-Level results.Gift Dube is also considered one of, if not the best, Public Speakers and poets ever to emerge from St Bernard's and indeed Bulawayo, if not Zimbabwe.He later went on to teach these arts as a temporary teacher at St Bernard's wher he groomed budding speakers like Perceverance Khumalo and Prince Siziba among others. St Bernard's has a tradition of balancing the spiritual development of students along with their academic development.The current headmistress of the school is Miss Cecelia Ngwenya who is deputised by Mrs P.Dube. These two ladies are doing their best to preserve the traditions of the school despite the harsh econiomic situation of the country.But no mention of the school would be complete without talking about Sister Ann, the oldest teacher at the school. She is a nun, and is a reminder of the past generation. She has been around for over four decades and is a guiding light on the spiritual principles of the school which are based on a Catholic foundation.