Mpondozankomo campus was established in the year 1980 operating by the name of Mpondozankomo (a Nguni coinage of two words “Mpondo and Nkomo” that could loosely be translated into an English phrase “cow horns”) Technical College. In 1980 the college was housed at the premises of the current Highveld Steel Company which is about 15KM from the current location with about 80 students enrolled for engineering studies. Due to the increase in student numbers, the college had to be moved over to occupy the premises of the current Sibukosethu Primary School offering both Nated (N) business and engineering studies. The college subsequently moved over to its new building in 1990 at No 1 Schonland Drive, Ferrobank.
In our case, the name Mpondozankomo is metaphorical in the sense that it means at “dawn” as opposed to the earlier literal and loose translation of “cow horns”. This emanates from the facts of the past that it was dawn for black students to be trained in engineering studies with the aim of becoming artisans. In other words the initial purpose of the college was to train black students in technical skills so that they could eventually qualify as artisans.
Like many other public technical colleges of the past, Mpondozankomo Technical College was affected by the introduction of merger process whereby in 2003 had to merge with the other three colleges in the region to form one Nkangala TVET College. The current focus areas of the campus are Electrical Engineering as well as engineering and Related Design. Today the campus is enrolling about 800 students a year, on average.
