DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA
3.5 APARTHEID ERA LANGUAGE-IN-EDUCATION POLICY
It is evident that the colonial language-in-education policies would lead to grumbling and solidarity of the apparently disadvantaged racial groups in South Africa. Following their ignominious defeat in the Anglo-Boer War and their subsequent losses (from land to administration), the Afrikaans speaking South Africans regarded all state policies – the language-in-education policy included – with indignation. Thus, the National Party takeover of government in 1948 quickly resulted in efforts to elevate Afrikaner culture and consciousness. The government hoped to achieve this, partly by engaging in what Alexander (2002, p. 13) describes as a “grotesque attempt of the white nationalist leadership to
Afrikanerise South Africa”. This move was aimed to go a long way in diminishing the dominant position which English had assumed in South African language policy through the efforts of Milner.
The apartheid language-in-education policy was founded on the “mother-tongue principle” (Barkhuizen & Gough, 1996, p. 454). This principle was in direct correlation to the basic ideological position of the National Party whereby
“separate development” was to be promoted. Basically, through pseudo-scientific racial anthropology, the racial and ethnic classifications were to have strong boundaries such that each classified group would lead a life that did not, at least theoretically, interfere with that of another. Thus, in a way, the government recognised and took advantage of the richness of South Africa’s diversity.
Regarding the issue of language, this diversity “was used as an instrument of control, oppression and exploitation” and therefore it was being “perversely celebrated” (Webb, 2002, p. 2). Therefore, the apartheid language-in-education policy should be considered more as ideological than as educational. For instance, it was on the grounds of such a policy that having separate learning institutions for separate ethnic groupings could be justified. In other words, no one would have to bother attending a school wherein the language of instruction was not their mother tongue. However, the expenditure on each ethnicity’s education system was grossly unequal and mirrored the group’s classification in the racial and ethnic hierarchy of South Africa.
3.5.1 Divisive nature of Apartheid
The divisive nature of the apartheid language-in-education policy was manifested even amongst the white South Africans, in spite of them being at the top of the apartheid racial hierarchy. Although all people classified as white had to study both English and Afrikaans as school subjects, the medium of instruction could be one of the two. This was in essence a case of additive bilingualism if it is looked at from a language as subject point of view. From a language as medium
of instruction point of view, this could be viewed as a form of multilingualism.
Thus, the privileged racial group in the apartheid system ended up divided amongst itself when it came to issues of language.
For the people classified as black South Africans, the results were more telling.
Granville et al (1997, p. 18), argue thus:
The medium policy was a powerful political move for two reasons. Firstly, it stopped the widespread use of English as LOLT in the black mission schools.
Secondly, it divided African people along apartheid lines of language and ethnicity.
This policy was reinforced by the Bantu Education Act of 1953 which effectively pronounced education for the Africans inferior. While colonial policy had depicted a form of “benign neglect”, the apartheid policy showed malevolent interest. The Bantu Education Act was also crucial in terms of the conceptualization of race and ethnicity in relation to education during the apartheid education and this will be discussed later. Suffice to say that this “blatantly inferior and humiliating curriculum was being mediated through the indigenous languages” (Alexander, 2002, p. 56). While the African people had to study English and Afrikaans as school subjects, it was imperative that they study in their mother tongue. As a result, they were learning three languages at school and, given the limitations of Bantu Education, it meant that learners’ development in all three languages became stunted. As a result, the mother tongue language-in-education policy would be of great utility when it came to excluding Africans from university education. Exclusion of blacks from higher education was espoused in Hendrik Verwoerd’s claim that there was no need for Africans to get a higher education when there would be no prospects for them to get jobs after all, hence black
people had to be educated “in accordance with their opportunities in life”
(Erasmus, Swanepoel, Van Wyk & Schenk, 2003, p. 49).
In spite of the Afrikanerisation endeavor by the National Party to push for the use of Afrikaans, the hegemony of English remained virtually intact. A drastic step was therefore announced whereby Afrikaans would be the medium of instruction in all black schools in 1976. But from black learners the response towards the policy was not positive.
According to Alexander (2002, p. 14), “In their eyes, Verwoerdism came to have the same enemy status as Milnerism had had for Afrikaners at the beginning of the 20th century”. The language-in-education policy became central to the Soweto uprising of 1976 with learners boycotting classes demanding the withdrawal of the language policy, amongst other issues (Barkhuizen & Gough, 1996). While this case was not necessarily about language in higher education, it had a huge bearing on black learners’ prospects for qualification into tertiary institutions. In addition, as Alexander (2001) argues, such a move on an already weak Bantu Education curriculum with poor funding would hamper all-round linguistic development of the learners. The uprisings culminated in compromises on both sides, with the government agreeing to do away with Afrikaans as a mandatory medium of instruction for non-Afrikaans mother-tongue students. In addition, mother tongue education would only be compulsory in the first three grades of primary school. What were the “compromises” on the other side?
However, for the white learners, Afrikaans remained a compulsory subject which English speakers had to pass in order to be enrolled at university (Granville et al, 1997). Such a scenario was the case when apartheid ended in 1990.
It can be argued thus far that the language-in-education policy of the apartheid government was not necessarily uniform from 1948 to 1990. It was based on the mother-tongue principle, but then it was also bilingual, largely in the form of
subtractive bilingualism. Language was used as one of the vehicles through which separatist ideologies were imposed on the people of South Africa. Mother tongue education, in spite of its weaknesses, was eye-opening such that during its practice, according to Alexander (2002), the matric results went up positively.
This has become, in a way, a basis for the present-day academics’ calls for the use of mother-tongue instruction at all levels of education.