The founders had seen the winds of change sweeping across Africa and felt they had to provide high quality education, equivalent to what Europeans were receiving, for the future leaders of an independent Rhodesia. The whole idea behind the school was to bring up well-rounded African leaders in areas of finance, industry, business, education, medicine, law, military and politics. Rt. Reverend Cecil Alderson, like his predecessor Bishop Edward Paget, realised the need for a senior college for Africans had become increasingly urgent, and within a few weeks of his translation from the Bloemfontein Diocese, Bishop Alderson began to investigate ways of meeting it. At the same time Canon Robert Grinham had been working to see the existence of schools for Africans whose facilities equaled or approximated to those of Ruzawi, Springvale and Peterhouse. To this end he devoted his energies after his retirement from Springvale.