Shifting Trends in Nursing Education in High Commission Territories: The Case of Ainsworth Dickson Nurse Training School in Swaziland, 1948–1967

ABSTRACT In 1948, the High Commission territories (HCTs) of Bechuanaland, Basutoland, and Swaziland (present-day Botswana, Lesotho, and Eswatini, respectively) formed an inter-territorial nursing council responsible for accrediting nursing schools and nurse registration. This article focuses on the Ainsworth Dickson Nurse Training School in Swaziland that was under the council’s charge. The article argues that the medical personnel and epidemiological conditions in Swaziland before 1948 informed and shaped the development of the education of nurses afterwards, during the last two decades of colonial rule. Accredited nurse education led to a gradual emergence of fully trained nurses with the same kind of training as that required for the nurse certificate issued by the neighbouring South African Nursing Council. The article examines the origins of Swaziland’s public health problems and traces the evolution of accredited nursing in relation to these problems. It illuminates the shifts that occurred in the development of nurse education programmes and analyses these shifts in relation to the historical context of the time. It demonstrates how epidemiological, historical, political, and economic context of the time led to a collapse of the racial barriers in nursing so that African nurses could dispense biomedical services even to European patients.