March for quality education in S.Africa    P. Courtesy

There were numerous crimes committed against South Africa’s majority Black population during the Apartheid Era, but none has had such a lasting effect than the deprivation of education suffered by South Africa’s Children, from 1958, when the Bantu Education System was introduced. We all know Hendrik Verwoerd’s ideology that Black People need to be literate, but only to the level that is necessary for their station in life; that is, to be subservient to White domination and provide a labour force for the White economy. This was a brilliant ideology by all accounts, much better than slavery in the American South, where Slaves were prevented from obtaining even the most basic literally standard.

Verwoerd planned to ensure three main objectives: that Black People have the educational standard that allows the permeation of a foreign culture through language and other cultural nuances of their oppressors; to hold the culture of the oppressor in awe while discarding and disregarding their own; and to be ready to serve the oppressor’s economy in specially defined roles.

Even Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany did not devise a plan of equal brilliance. He simply devised a plan to eliminate those he deemed inferior. This was doomed to fail as history has shown, because eliminating a whole race or races of people is too ambitious a plan. Verwoed’s carefully mapped out master plan was more likely to succeed; to compel Black people to submission and to acquiesce to their predetermined roles in society.

The master plan fell apart on the untimely death of Verwoed. It is my thesis that the rest of Afrikaanerdom had no idea what to do next in order to maintain the Black population in perpetual submissiveness. More significantly, to maintain the suppression for the thirst of knowledge and progress that was the unintended consequence of educating Black People, even to the degree to which they were being educated. How does one curb aspirations of a people, the natural evolutionary process of transformation, from submissiveness to dominance? This was the predicament facing Afrikaaner ideology after Verwoerd. The plan of separate development and the creation of Bantustans was a mere “band aid” that was meant to buy Afrikaanerdom a bit of time.

Enter the ANC and majority rule in 1994

Notwithstanding the death and massacre of the 1976 Generation of Children over education, or lack thereof; the requirement to learn Afrikaans, the language of the oppressor at whatever cost, educational poverty is still prevalent in South Africa. Education has been top of the agenda for South Africa’s democratically elected governments since 1994. Nearly twenty years later, the nation that is the custodian of the Mandela legacy, one of the most revered of our time, is no way near, not only unravelling the Apartheid system, but also putting in place a systematic programme of action that is likely to result in an education system able to sustain and propel the noble democratic principles on which it was formulated.

Our children are being expeditiously de-educated. There is a serious lack of a clear strategy to ensure that the education system produces well balanced citizens, able to participate and compete in the modern world. Granted, there is a lot of “catch-up” South Africa needs to do. But there are also fundamental issues in the education system that are not being addressed. The curriculum has been changed several times since 1994. The changes have been largely cosmetic and trial by error, failing to address structural issues, from the training of teachers to standardising performance indicators.

The system is broken and needs more than just a “band aid” to put it right. There is a need to go back to basics; identify the country’s needs in terms of human capital and responsible citizenry and allocate resources accordingly. Identifying needs also means identifying what is not needed. Afrikaans for example is hardly contributing to producing individuals able to participate in mainstream global economic activity, at least not as a compulsory subject in our schools. Clearly, the 1976 generation’s efforts were in vain, because the intellectual and economic capital still being spent on Afrikaans is disproportionate to the demands of the modern world, such as mathematics, science and commerce.

When something is broken to the degree that South Africa’s education system is, the only option is to discard the broken pieces rather than trying to piece them together. It begs for one to rather start all over again. Education is much too important a part of the future of our children to leave it to dysfunctional local political structures. Leadership and control at a national level is required to set standards, take control, be held to account, (whether it is for the failure of the delivery of text books, pregnant school girls or falling standards) and demand a return on investment. Pouring more financial resources is not the answer. Someone needs to know what they are doing and right now no one does. What is clearly apparent is that someone is playing with the lives of our children.  

Given that South Africa is even lower down the scale than Zimbabwe, one can only conclude that the political will is only piecemeal. As long as education is seen as “ticking boxes” to boast about the Matric pass rate, when there is a dissonance between the product and the requirements of the real world, we are no better off than those who were brought up under the Bantu Education system. The current system has failed dismally to close the social and economic inequalities of South African society. The former “model C” schools are still performing a little better thus perpetuating the inequalities between the classes and races more than ever, making one wonder what is so difficult about, at least, using the model of these schools if not the seemingly unobtainable standard of other countries in our elk.

As for rural children, they may as well forget about moving out of the quagmire of illiteracy, poverty and economic inequality. Rural communities are sinking deeper into obscurity from the transformation agenda, not only in terms of education, but also in terms of land ownership, basic services and sustainable economic activity in general. (The land issue is a subject for another day). Education permeates right into the core of the most pertinent issues facing our society, such as health, child mortality, family values, teenage pregnancies and HIV, to name but a few. The discord between rural and urban communities is widening dramatically despite the government’s acknowledgement that a strategy to address rural underdevelopment cannot be delayed any longer.

The Townships that were created by the Apartheid regime are sinking further into breeding grounds of despondency, despair and unfulfilled expectations. Admittedly, a culture of entitlement and instant gratification exists among the “born frees” and the youth in general. However, our leaders are not leading by example either. Apartheid eroded family values and the fundamental basis of African culture; Ubuntu. Instead of reviving and promoting this noble humanistic credence that is the driving force of our civilisation as a people, a more extraneous cultural reference has been allowed to drive our trajectory to maturity as a democratic nation. There are numerous examples of this trend; from ill-mannered, so called, “youth leaders”, to a total disregard for human life. Heinous crimes are being committed by our youth without remorse every day. These are not children born without a soul. The idea that there is no hope of getting out of the quagmire of poverty and degradation propels them into a state of despair and indifference. Life becomes cheap. What is in fact the real heinous crime committed against our children in South Africa is the denial of a good standard of education at every level. 

The Matric examinations have come to an end for the” born frees”. As they await the promise of a brighter future pledged in the political rhetoric of 1994, we all await in hope that Mandela’s Children will see the other side of the rainbow in their life time – “where dreams come true” -so goes an old song.

Perhaps the Arab Spring was not enough of a lesson for African Leaders South of the Sahara; that breeding a population of citizens who are dissatisfied with unfulfilled expectations is bound to result in an unfortunate end of the type seen in Libya in recent times. That would really be a shameful end to the African Dream that so many gave their lives for.

By Gugulethu Manyoni-Mhlanga BA (Hon) (Kingston University, U.K.) Post Grad. Development Studies (University of Bath), U.K.

The author Gugulethu.mhlanga1@gmail.com  is a Marketing and Communications professional and an independent commentator on African economic and political issues.