In South Africa rural descent and urban ascendency, which distinguishes rural and urban spaces today, dates as far back as the early settler/colonial period. This process was politically and socially engineered through legis- lated racial separate development (Morrow 2007). Colonial education policy and practice was purposefully designed to perpetuate racial and geo-locational difference and exclusion. The foundation of deficit think- ing about African education and rural education in particular was
constructed and consolidated by the Afrikaner Nationalist Party in 1948.
During this period, normally referred to as the era of Native Education (Jansen 1990), rural education was characterised by a rapid structural deterioration of black schools and segregated curricula. As noted by Masinire (2019), the educational neglect of African schooling was in line with the British colonial education policy which they pursued across their colonial territories in Tropical Africa. The purpose of this colonial policy was to ensure minimum or no financial burden for the imperial master. To offload the financial and administrative burden, the British Secretary of State for Colonies (W. Ormsby-Goref) promulgated a policy,
… where African Education had to be adapted to the mentality, aptitudes, occupations and traditions of various people, conserving as far as possible all sound and healthy elements in the fabric of their social life, adapting them where necessary to the changed circumstances and progressive ideas as an agent of natural growth and evolution. (Education Policy in British Tropical Africa 1925, p. 4)
The Welsh Report (1936) and the Eiselen Report (1951) were deriva- tives of the above imperial policy on education. The Welsh Report (1936) provided for two separate education systems, one suited for blacks (ser- vants) and one suited for the whites (masters) on the understanding that an equivalent education to the Whites would make the Blacks lazy and unfit for manual work and make him cheeky and less docile as a servant, and it would estrange them from their own people and often lead them to despise their culture. A diluted version of education for the Blacks was justified on the grounds that,
the two social orders for which education is preparing White and Black people are not identical and will for a long time to come remain essentially different, … the education of the White child prepares him for a life in a dominant society and the education of the Black child for a subordi- nate society.
The relegation of African education to marginal status was sealed by the Eiselen Report (1951) which established the theoretical foundation
and justification for Bantu Education. Separate and different education systems for the racial groups were promoted because,
Attention, however, must be drawn to the fact that much of what is taught and learnt in Bantu schools is never applied in practice, because the eco- nomic incentives which should operate when children leave school are either absent or of such a nature as to undo the work of the schools. The reform of these economic conditions cannot be the function of the Department of Education, but the success of the work of the schools is dependent upon the existence of social and economic opportunities for absorbing the products of the schools.
The differences between urban and rural schools were not just a policy matter, but rather manifested themselves materially into gross inequali- ties in terms of teacher qualifications, teacher-student (Soreto 1999).
And more significant, the disparities could be seen in educational out- puts. Rural learners still perform dismally in national assessment tests.
More than two and half decades after the fall of apartheid the urban-rural educational inequalities still persist in South Africa, if not widening, unaffected by the injection of huge capital inflows from the government.
A damaging consequence of apartheid/colonial education as noted by Morrow (2007) is that,
Apartheid as a form of oppression has disempowered its victims. By persis- tently treating them as objects of policy, by refusing to see them as wholly and rightfully human, as beings who have moral titles and standing, apart- heid has dehumanised its victims; their dignity and self-esteem as persons, and their intellectual and moral confidence and autonomy, have been dam- agingly undermined. (p. 142)
Similar sentiments about the effect of racial segregationist policies have also echoed by Martin Luther King Jr. (1963): “One of the damaging effects of racial segregatory policies was setting up of an ‘I-it’ relationship thus ending up relegating persons to the status things …all segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.” To assume that such deep psycho-social identities disap- peared with the stroke of political freedom and democracy in 1994 would
be an underestimation of the long-term and enduring effects of apart- heid. The persistence of apartheid legacy is noted by van der Berg (2005) when he claims, “…the new government inherited a situation of large- scale educational inequality whose effects are likely to remain pervasive for decades” (p. 1).
An equally violent response to colonial oppression epitomised the colonial/
colonised relationship, as pointed out by Frantz Fanon in his caricatured maxim, “It is only violence that the colonizer will understate.” Bantu Education policy was contested not only discursively but politically. The zenith of such contestation culminated in the tragic 1976 Soweto stu- dent uprising.
With respect to teacher training, the EPBTA mandated,
… the training of teachers for village schools should be carried out under rural conditions, or at least with opportunities of periodical access to such conditions, where those who are trained are in direct contact with the envi- ronment in which their work has to be done. (p. 6)
In South Africa rural teacher education colleges were established; their purpose was to churn out back teachers who would fill the posts in rural schools. Their urban counterparts produced teachers for the privileged white community.