PERIOD 1948 TO 1994
3. EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA DURING THE PERIOD 1948 - 1994 The major characteristic of the South African educational system (school and
3.1. Schooling
Segregated and, therefore, inferior black education have been common traits from the 1
i
h century to the first half of the 20th century. Much of the pre-l948 education system was under missionary control. Gradually the state began to exert greater influence over African, Coloured and Indian -education achieving final control from14
1953 onwards. The conception was that education should be racially differentiated so that it provided elementary skills for Africans to meet the needs of industry and ensure that blacks would not compete with whites for the skilled jobs in the labour market.
The Nationalist Party victory in 1948 launched an extraordinary determination to gain firm control over all educational institutions for blacks. The Bantu Education Act of 1953, the Coloured Person's Education Act of 1963, and the Indian Education Act of 1965 were all pieces of legislation designed to ensure a differentiated and inferior education for blacks. The philosophy underpinning education for Africans is contained in Verwoerd's statement during the parliamentary debate on the Bantu Education Bill in 1953 that, "education must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live." He went on further to say that there was no place for the African "in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour." Even though no such specific reference was made of Indians and Coloureds it can be safely assumed, given South Africa's racial caste system, that their role and position was defined in similar terms as can be evidenced in their concentrations in certain occupations (Fatima Meer quoted in Nkomo 1990:294).
The Bantu Education Act of 1953 led to an education for blacks, and especially Africans, characterised by under-spending, lack of facilities, overcrowded classrooms, unqualified or poorly qualified teachers. There was also a shift in the curriculum because "by blindly producing pupils trained on a European model, the vain hope was created among Natives that they could occupy posts within the European community despite the country's policy of 'apartheid'." (South Africa. Parliament. 1954. Debates.
Verwoerd). The Act introduced a system of education for African people designed to provide them only with skills that will serve the white economy.
The Bantu Education Act of 1953 proposed that all schools would fall under the control of the state and no school may be established without the prior approval of the Department. This meant that African primary and secondary schools operated by the church and mission bodies were given the choice of turning over their schools to the government or receiving gradually diminished subsidies. With the exception of the Roman Catholic Church, most churches either closed their schools or, under protest, handed the schools to the state.
In this new educational dispensation the State undertook to supply readers in the mother tongue and the two official languages to all primary schools. However, pupils in
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post-primary schools had to buy all the schoolbooks they needed. All other school requisites, including pens and exercise books, in both primary and secondary schools, had to be provided either by the children, the Bantu authority or the parents association.
Children without these school requisites were not to be enrolled in school. In this new educational dispensation Afrikaners occupied key official positions.
Nkomo (1990:2) lists the following objectives that apartheid education sought to achieve:
1. To produce a semi-skilled black labour force that would minister to the needs of the capitalist economy at the lowest cost possible. A related strategy was the intention to create a black middle class who would act as a buffer between the white minority regime and the vast disenfranchised black populace.
2. To socialise black students to accept the social relations of apartheid as natural. That is, to accept among other things, the supposed supremacy of Western civilisation (read white) and the "inferiority" of their own.
3. To promote white consciousness and identity for the purpose of forging solidarity between white labour and capital and to incorporate politically and ideologically white youth and workers into the state.
4. To promote the acceptance of racial or ethnic separation as the "natural order of things." This was achieved through the imposition of separate ethnic schools to instill ethnic distinctiveness and pride enforced through separate ethnic residential townships in the urban areas and the Bantustans in the rural areas.
5. To promote intellectual underdevelopment by minimising the allocation of educational resources for blacks while maximising them for whites.
Nkomo describes apartheid education, at best, as a policy of benign neglect, at worst, as a policy that promoted compulsory ignorance. Examining the per capita expenditure on education for the different race groups provides an indication of the inequality of the education system.
Table 1: Per capita expenditure on education in South Africa (SAIRR Surveys, quoted in Christie 1987: 100)
Year African Coloured Indian White
1953-54 R17 R40 R40 R128
1969-70 17 73 81 282
75-76 42 140 190 591
77-78 139 253 513 913
82-83 146 498 711 1211
83-84 169 639 1112 1792
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Nkomo illustrates the effects of the apartheid education with the following figures for 1984: the per pupil expenditure rate was at least ten times greater for whites as it was for blacks; there was a 50% attrition rate among African students by grade seven and barely 2% of these students successfully completed the twelve year school programme; a high illiteracy rate among blacks in general and Africans in particular;
blacks made up only 34.2% of the university population and yet they formed 80% of the country's population.
The outcome of these policies in the work situation is that while blacks (Africans, Indians and Coloureds) constituted about 85% of the population; in 1985 they comprised 32% of the high-level manpower category, up from 25% in 1965 (for Africans as a separate class of this category the average is significantly lower) (National Manpower Commission 1987, quoted in Nkomo, 1990:295). The high representation in occupations such as nursing, education and government ministry somewhat skews the percentage. The rates are dismally low in such areas as engineering: 0% in 1965 and 0.1 % in 1985; science: 0.6% in 1965 and 5.5% in 1985; medicine: 2% in 1965 and 8%
in 1985; law: 0.9% in 1965 and 6% in 1985; architecture: 0% in 1965 and 3% in 1985 (National Manpower Commission 1987, quoted in Nkomo 1990:233). This situation arose in the context of the policy of separate development that no courses should be offered in the African ethnic universities for which employment opportunities did not exist within their "own societies."
Nkomo (1990) discusses the contradictions of an apartheid education. Four decades of apartheid have produced, on the one hand, hundreds of thousands of illiterate and semi-literate blacks who lack effective control over their lives. On the other hand, it has created, paradoxically, a serious structural problem for the economy due toit lack of skilled manpower. When Bantu Education was introduced the goal was to regulate African education to provide basic skills for use at the lower end of the occupational structure. At the same time restricted educational opportunities were available at the tertiary level to ensure the production of petty bureaucrats (clerks, interpreters, police etc) to run or manage apartheid structures, as well as social service professionals (doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers and so forth).
3.2. Higher education
By 1948 there were 950 (4.6% of the total enrolments) black university students (Malherbe 1977:731). This figure reflects the under-development of both higher education and the pre-higher education sector. Most of the black students attended the South African Native College (later called Fort Hare) established by the Scottish Church in 1916. A small number of students also attended the white English-language universities of Cape Town, Witwatersrand and Natal and some enrolled through the correspondence institution, the University of South Africa. Although the white universities exercised autonomy over whom they taught, admission of black students was not encouraged (WUS/AUT quoted in Badat, 1999:49). The white Afrikaans language universities "rigidly refused to admit black students, although none of their charters, except that of Potchefstroom, prevented them from doing so" (WUS/AUT quoted in Badat, 1999:49).
In keeping with the apartheid philosophy of separate development for the different race groups and for an education in which whites would play the leadership role, the government passed the Extension of the University Education Act of 1959 (EUEA) which established racially and ethnically based universities. With this Act, the University of the North was established for Sotho, Venda and Tsonga speakers; the University of Zululand was established for Zulu speakers; the University of Fort Hare was restricted to Xhosa speakers; the University of Western Cape was for Coloureds and the University of Durban-Westville was for Indians. The EUEA formally restricted entry to universities according to race. Black students could be admitted to white universities only in cases where equivalent programmes were not offered at the black universities and only after ministerial permission was obtained. The period between 1976 and 1990, saw the establishment of several universities in the independent homelands. In 1976 the Medical University of South Africa opened in the homeland Bophuthatswana. Universities opened in the Bantustans of Transkei (1977);
Bophuthatswana (1979); Venda (1983) and QwaQwa (1983). In 1983 Vista university campuses, for blacks, opened in the urban areas.
These ethnic universities were deliberately located in impoverished rural areas with limited social infrastructure and amenities. "Itis the policy of my department that education would have its roots entirely in the Native areas and in the Native
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enviroll..'I1ent and the Native community" (Verwoerd in the Senate of the South African Parliament: 7 June 1954).
The establishment of these universities along ethnic lines was consistent with the consolidation of Afrikaner hegemony and the production of a subservient black population. Black universities were not meant to sharpen the critical skills of students as was the case at white universities; they were meant to train "an African administrative corps to manage ethnic institutions in the homelands and, increasingly, to fill token middle management positions that have little impact" (Nkomo 1981: 129). In keeping with the apartheid policies, the black universities were constructed largely as undergraduate teaching universities.
In 1959, on the eve of university education being segregated along racial and ethnic lines and placed under tight state control, there was a total of 4207 (this constituted 10.7% of the total university population) African, Indian and Coloured students registered at higher education institutions. Of these 4207, Africans constituted 44%, Coloureds 20% and Indians 36% of the students. Black students were registered predominantly in the humanities and education and were severely under-represented in the scientific and technical fields.
Between 1960 and 1976 there was a considerable increase in black student enrolments at universities. Enrolments at black universities rose by almost 400%
between 1960 and 1965, doubled over the next 5 years and increased more than 100%
between 1970 and 1976. Low fees, state bursaries and loans, expansion of the primary and secondary student enrolments facilitated access. On the economic side, in the 1970's, the country began to feel the shortage of skilled labour. There was now recognition that blacks would have to be skilled, trained and involved in the labour market.
During the same period (1960 - 1975), black women were under-represented at universities. In 1968 they constituted 11.3% of the total black enrolments; in 1970 it was 18.9% and in 1975 it was 21.6%. From the inception to 1975 the new ethnic universities remained overwhelmingly male institutions in relation to students and academic staff.
After 1976/1977 there was a large amount of corporate capital invested in education. One aspect of corporate capital was to expand the number of bursaries for black students and increase the amount 'of money allocated for scholarships.
Programmes offering black students scholarships at overseas universities were also initiated and expanded. After 1976, there was an expansion in the number of first generation university students from working class families.
Table 2: University enrolments inSouth Africa, 1969-1983 (SAIRR Surveys quoted inChristie 1987:118)
1969 1974 1976 1983
Black students in white univ:;)rsities, incl. UNISA 4886 9196 12565 28 129
African students in African universities 1581 3541 5204 12550
Coloured students in Coloured universities 774 1440 2508 4487
Indian students in Indian universities 1621 2342 3124 5388
Total black students in all universities 8862 16519 23401 50554
Total white students 68550 95589 105879 126609
There was strong state control at the black universities. White universities despite some limitations, enjoyed a considerable degree of academic freedom and administrative autonomy. Black universities were under the control of the Department of Bantu Education, Coloured Affairs and Indian Affairs. They were subject to extensive and authoritarian control with the responsible minister enjoying defacto control over both academic and administrative appointments. After the 1959 EUEA, all Rectors appointed to the black universities were committed Afrikaner nationalists. The state strategy was "to appoint their own men, some of them recent graduates, invariably from the Afrikaans medium universities and promote them rapidly" (Balintulo 1981 quoted in Badat 1999:71).
The severe restrictions on the administrative autonomy and academic freedom at black universities impacted in different ways: it conditioned the racial composition and ideological character. of staff at the black universities and shaped the curriculum content. In 1970, black academics represented only 19% of the total academic staff at black universities and in 1974 it was 28.8%. At the African universities, in 1976, only 9 of the 105 professors and 14 of the 146 senior lecturers were black. At the level of junior lecturer there was greater parity between black and white (Badat 1999:72).
The conditions also served to structure the form of struggle and resistance that students would take - both in the formation of student political struggles and academicl intellectual struggles. Within this environment the three student organisations that impacted on the lives of the participants of this study were the National Union of South African Students (NUS AS); South African Students Organisation (SASO) and the Student Christian Movement (SCM).
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Badat (1999) provides a description of these organisations. NUSAS had been formed in 1924 as a union of students at white universities. The majority of its members were white (in 1970 there were 27 000 white students and 3000 black students) (Biko 1978:27) and it had a strong support base among white leftist and liberal students at the English speaking universities. In the 1960's the Student Representative Councils (SRC) at some of the black universities affiliated to NUSAS. During this time, NUSAS provided one of the avenues to express its opposition to apartheid. Itcame under attack from the government and right-wing students. In the 1960's many black students felt a frustration and disillusionment with NUSAS and felt that it could not serve the immediate or long-term aspirations of black students. The South African Students Organisation (SASO) was formed in 1968. SASO became a loosely organised body whose task was the psychological upliftment of the black community. Africanness, positiveness and solidarity became its rallying point. In 1967 the Student Christian Movement (SCM) was formed as an inter-denominational organisation to explore what the church and individuals could do to bring about change in South Africa. On campuses there were close working relationships between SASO and the SCM.
With the ending of apartheid in 1994, the country set up a unitary system of education. All 21 universities fall directly under the jurisdiction of the Minister of National Education. While there are no restrictions as to who attends universities access is limited by the availability of funds. There are still many inequalities in the South African higher education system.
Bunting (1994) highlights some of them: access to higher education is skewed in favour of white people. In 1992 about 60% of whites aged between 18 and 22 were registered at a university or technikon or teacher training college, compared to only about 9% of Africans in this age group. In 1992 whites constituted 12% of the total population in South Africa, but had the following share of enro1ments of higher education institutions: technikons 60%, universities 50%, teacher training colleges 15%.
In 1990, 91 % of all those in South Africa who held doctorates were white; 90% of those holding Masters degrees were white and 89% of those holding bachelors degrees were white. About 50% of students at Historically White Universities (HWUs) were enrolled for degrees specialising in fields which were supposed to be readily marketable - science, technology, business and commerce - compared to an average of less than 15%
for Historically Black Universities (HBUs). In 1990, 45% of the academic staff at
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HWUs and 23% of academic st8ff at the HBUs had doctorates as their highest qualification.
3.3. Research in South Africa
In South Africa the production of knowledge is largely in the hands of white intellectuals at the historically white institutions. [he under-representation of blacks and women in research is a concern. There is a broad body of research documenting this under-representation (Qunta 1987; Evans 1991; Jansen 1991, Pityana 1993; Seepe 1993;
Reddy 1995; Lewin 1995; Dyasi 1995; Naidoo 1996). The under-representation of blacks and women in research is also a concern to research funding councils and this is reflected in the mission statements of the Foundation for Research Development and Human Sciences Research Councill.
Research conducted by Reddy (1995) reviews the status of research in science and mathematics education. In this research Reddy examined who were the authors of science and mathematics education research papers presented at the SAARMSE2 conference. The proportion of SAARMSE paper authors according to race and gender over the period 1992-1994 is: white authors constitute about 60% and black authors about 40% of the total; females constitute 43% and males 57% of the total; black females constitute 14% and white females 29% of the total. African males constitute 17% and African females 5.5% of the total. Statistics in the Foundation for Research Development'sScience and Technology Indicators (1993) show that the largest number of Masters and Doctoral students in the science and engineering fields are white. The picture with respect to Masters and Doctoral students' enrolment at university in Natural Science and Engineering (excluding Medical Sciences) is as follows: In 1991 enrolment for Masters and Doctoral programmes by race showed there were 252 Africans, 161 Indians, 106 Coloured and 4639 Whites. Genderwise 1060 females and 4102 males had enrolled. There are no statistics for race and gender in the science and engmeenng graduate studies but we can extrapolate that there are very few black females.
Another research concern relates to the underlying epistemological, theoretical and methodological assumptions of many of the research studies. Many papers on black
IThese are now combined to form the National Research Foundation.
2SAARMSE is the acronym for Southern African Association of Research in Mathematics and Science Education.
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education have portrayed the black student (especially the science student) in negative terms; such as having a lack of cognitive ability, poor study habits or lack of motivation to study science. Jansen (1995) in a keynote address to the SAARMSE raised concerns about science and mathematics education (SME) research in SOLlth Africa. Two of the concerns are the charges of racism and sexism in SME research. Jansen relates his experiences "... I was in a meeting recently where a noted South African scholar insisted that Indian students under-perform in science because of an innate (ethnic) reliance on memorisation." And, "I recently reviewed a paper titled 'Zulu students' conception of electricity', suggesting of course that Tswana or Sotho students would simply by virtue of their ethnic identity share a similar conception of light."