The Relationship between Racism and Education in South Africa

E R N E S T F. D U B E State University of New York at Stony Brook Ernest F. Dube traces the relationship between racism and education in South Africa in light of the numerous racist policies and practices that the South African government has pursued and continues to implement. He postulates that, contrary to a general belief that racism is practiced primarily by the Afrikaners, the English-speaking South Africans have also been racist. Dube describes the introduction of Bantu Education and draws attention to the intended and unintended outcomes of this system. He offers his insights into the gravity of the situation andforecasts that serious consequences will result from the oppressive educational practices that exist today. English-speaking South Africans, from my experience, tend to suggest that in South Africa the "true" racists are the Afrikaners. As for themselves, they claim that they are not racists and that the absence of racism among them is due to a "British liberal tradition," which is absent among Afrikaners. T o make this believable, they often attribute Afrikaner racism to what they call a "Laager mentality," which is meant to indicate that Afrikaners have closed minds as opposed to the English-speakers' open-mindedness on issues of race. T o the majority of nonwhite South Africans, in particular the Africans, such claims are seen as a myth, if not a deliberate lie. The Africans, drawing from their own historical experience, claim that as a people they have never experienced this so-called liberal tradition — either from the British during their tenure as the colonizers or from their descendants. From the African point of view, the only difference, if any, between Afrikaner racism and the racism of the English-speaking in South Africa is that, whereas the Afrikaners display their racism as a badge of honor worn with pride, the English-speakers are more circum­ spect, often deferring to the Afrikaners' open displays of discrimination. The usual manner in which the overt racism of the English-speakers is displayed takes the form of paternalism. For example, in this view an African never grows up; he or she always remains "my boy" or "my girl." The purpose of this essay is not to discuss South African racism with all its ramifica­ tions but to discuss it as it specifically relates to education. The foundations of racism

Harvard Educational Review Vol. 55 No. 1 February 1985 Copyright © by President and Fellows of Harvard College 0017-8055/85/0200-0086$01.25/0

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in South African education were laid by the British and their descendants, referred to in this article as English-speaking South Africans. T o avoid confusion as to who is an Afrikaner and who is an English-speaking South African, it is necessary to explain that in South Africa there are two white communities. One is the Afrikaansspeaking community who refer to themselves, and are referred to by others, as Afri­ kaners. These people are for the most part descendants of the Dutch who came to settle on the western Cape as servants of the Dutch East India Company in 1652. Among these early European settlers were also a sprinkling of British, French, Ger­ man, and other European citizens. During the late seventeenth century, these people were joined by a new group of immigrants, the French Huguenots, who had come to South Africa to escape religious persecution. Together these groups developed a hybrid language called Afrikaans, whose root is Dutch. Thus, an Afrikaner is not necessarily a person who is a descendant of Dutch parentage but one who identi­ fies with the Afrikaners and speaks Afrikaans as his or her first language. O n the other hand, the English-speaking South Africans are descendants of the 1820 British settlers who used their mother tongue. In later years this group was augmented by a variety of new European immigrants who, upon arriving in South Africa, chose English as their first language. These immigrants consisted of Jews from France, Italy, Greece, and Poland. As in the case of the Afrikaners, the Englishspeaking South African of the present day is also not necessarily of British descent but one who identifies with the English-speakers and speaks English as his or her first language. T o maintain their identities, the two white communities have tended to send their children to Afrikaans-speaking and English schools respectively. This division begins with day one of schooling and continues through the university. Only a few parents cross this language barrier in considering schooling for their children, and such crossings, when they do occur, often take place in the Cape and Natal provinces (Harrison, 1981, p. 198). In terms of population numbers, the Afrikaners have always been the majority, except in Natal where the English-speakers are the majority. Today, of the 4.5 million whites, the Afrikaners constitute 2.8 million. The Republic of South Africa is composed of four provinces: the Cape Province, which was the first area to be colonized by the Dutch in 1652 and was later taken from them by the British in 1806; the Orange Free State, first colonized in the 1830s by the Afri­ kaners, descendants of the first Dutch settlers who moved into the hinterland to escape British colonialism and who are known as the Trek Boer; the Transvaal Province, also colonized in the 1830s by the Trek Boer; and Natal Province, which began with a small British settlement on land granted to them by his Majesty Shaka Zulu, the King of the Zulus, in 1825. In 1879 this small British settler group, with help from the Cape, colonized Zululand following a bloody war between the British and the Zulus, thus completing the colonization process. Following the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the four territories were joined together in 1910 to form what was then called the Union of South Africa and which, in 1961, became the Republic of South Africa. In spite of their historical divisions, however, when it came to the nonwhites, especially the Africans, the two white communities forgot their differences and united to keep both political and economic power in their own hands. Both the formation of the Union by the British and other white settlers and the change to a republic

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completely ignored the interests of the majority of the indigenous inhabitants, the Africans. Today, ironically, the whites are by far outnumbered by the Africans. In 1983 there were 4.5 million whites compared to 23 million Africans.

Racism in South Africa In the preceding discussion I have used the word racism without offering a definition for this concept. The concept of racism, in my opinion, is derived from the myth that mankind is divided into racial subspecies. There is, however, no credible scien­ tific evidence to support this concept. The evidence produced by physical anthropolo­ gists has been speculative, while that from biologists has been the kind of evidence which can be explained in terms other than race. Racism, however, is a reality for millions of people. It is a psychological phenomenon rooted in the belief that there is a causal relationship between certain inherited physical traits and certain aspects of personality and intellect. Combined with this is the notion that some "races" are inherently superior to others. At times, the notion of superiority takes the form of superior virtue, which ultimately is believed to be a biologically inherited trait common only to the virtuous "races." The first part of this definition is character­ istic among the covert and overt racists, and the second part is characteristic among the groups I label as reactive racists. In the above delineation of racism, only race-based prejudice is considered to indicate racism. Other prejudices — ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, and national — do not indicate racism for the purposes of this article. Although there are some similarities between race prejudice and other prejudices, they are not identical. For the various other prejudices to become racism, they must first be converted to a prejudice based on the concept of race. A good example of this conversion occurred in Nazi Germany when the German Jews were first depicted as a separate "race" in order to define them in a way that placed them apart from the ethnic Germans, who, in turn, were also redefined as members of the Aryan "race." Racism, then, describes a prejudice of a particular kind, one that remains unalterable even by acculturation. Whereas acculturation often changes other forms of prejudice, it is my contention that acculturation by itself does little to alter race-based prejudice. I have mentioned that there are three manifestations of racism. I will offer a short description of each to help the reader understand that the three, though different, are still parts of the same whole. Overt Racism This is the form of racism that is most often labeled as racism. It is acted out by those people who are often described as racist bigots. Their racism is open and up front, and they wear it publicly. A few examples of this form can be seen in the Nazi regime under Hitler, the Afrikaner Nationalists in South Africa, and the K u Klux Klan in the United States. Covert Racism This very subtle form of prejudice often escapes the label of racism because it is not easily identified. A n example of people who practice covert racism would be the South African mine owners who manipulate white workers into believing that

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racism is in their interest, that it protects them against the minority groups who are always ready to take away their jobs at a lesser wage or pay. Another example can be seen in scientists who use their prestige to fashion pseudoscientific theories in order to support their own racism. They begin with a prior belief, such as racial inferiority, and then devise experiments whose results can be used to justify that belief. When the experiments themselves are pseudoscientific, the interpretation of results takes unwarranted leaps (such as rating individual or group intelligence when no test has yet been invented to directly study that innate quality called intelli­ gence), and so corroborates a priori racist assumptions. Reactive Racism This form of racism is hardly discussed in the literature; in fact, it is hardly acknowl­ edged as a form of racism. This type of racism is often displayed by people who themselves have been or may still be victims of racism. Examples in this category include the narrow-minded African Nationalists, some segments of the Black Mus­ lims, and those in the right wing of the Zionist movement who share the belief that they are the only virtuous people on earth. In their different ways, unfortunately, these groups use the same exclusionary tactics as those who have practiced racism against them. In order for racism to become self-perpetuating, young children must be educated at home, in houses of worship, and in schools about how to perceive the target people. Many children never question the stereotypes they have been taught. In overtly racist societies the teaching is unflatteringly blunt, but in covertly racist societies it is done through the medium of literature and through a twisted history which subtly justifies and reinforces the society's racism. In this way children are turned into unthinking followers.

The History of European-Influenced Education in South Africa There is today a general agreement among South African educational historians that the European form of education was introduced into South Africa by mission­ aries, and that the foundation of this form of education was laid by the Glasgow Mission Society in 1821 (Shepherd, 1941; Haile, 1933; Horrell, 1963, 1964). Some writers claim that education in South Africa began earlier. They point to what was essentially religious instruction, which, they claim, had the same value as formal education. Among those writers who do not draw a distinction between the two are DuPlessis (1911), Behr (1952), and to some extent, Pells (1938). For instance, DuPlessis, in his book A History of Christian Missions in South Africa, offers as evidence of education prior to 1821 the following entry from the diary of Jan V a n Riebeeck (cited in Horrell, 1964, p.8), the manager of the Dutch East India Company and the leader of the first settler group: "Began holding school for the young slaves . . . to stimulate the slaves to attention while at school and to induce them to learn the Christian prayer. . . ." Pells, in his book Three Hundred Years of Education in South Africa, writes: "Until the British permanently occupied the Cape in the 19th century, formal education was synonymous with the doctrine of the Dutch Reformed Church, in Bible history, psalm singing and reading and writing sufficient for qualification for church member­ ship. The only secular subject was a little simple arithmetic" (Pells, 1938, p. 12).

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The two citations from DuPlessis and Pells clearly indicate that the purpose of instruction was toward confirmation rather than toward secular education as found in Europe and North America. Apart from this type of schooling there were other limited forms of education, mostly directed toward artisanship, introduced by the London Mission Society. Africans in South Africa today tend to see these schools as having been started for the purpose of making the Africans better servants for the colonialist and not as educating for education's sake. Prior to 1821, the ruling white settlers showed no interest in the education of any children, be they non-European or European, other than religious training. As a result of this lack of interest, the task of providing education for South African children fell into the hands of the missionaries, who used education as part of their method of African Christianization. As the missionary schools were the only schools available in South Africa (these schools were initially intended for African children and were built in mission stations located in African areas), white children who wanted education went to the mission schools, where they were taught the same lessons, by the same teachers, in the same classrooms with the African children. The best-known school was set up by the Glasgow Mission Society in Lovedale, named after Dr. John Lovedale, the founder of the London Mission Society, who later became the chairman of the Glasgow Mission Society. The pioneering work of the Glasgow Mission Society in the field of education was soon followed by the efforts of missionaries from various denominations and countries. The competition for converts led to the formation of many mission organizations such as the American Board of Missions, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Among the early missions that followed the Glasgow Mission Society's example was a mission station set up by a Methodist missionary, Reverend John Ayliff, who had come to the Cape with the British settlers. Reverend Ayliff set up a mission station at Fort Beaufort and later established Healdtown School, which, like Lovedale, became one of the best schools in South Africa. Following in the footsteps of Lovedale and Ayliff, a number of other mission­ aries established both missions and schools in different parts of the Cape. In Durban, Natal, the first school was started by Captain Allen Gardener in 1833. Two years later, Dr. Newton Adams, a representative of the American Board of Missions, established a mission and a college. Adams College became one of the foremost educational institutions for black people in South Africa and later produced such notables as Nobel Prize recipient Chief Albert Lutuli and Professor Z . K. Matthews, renowned anthropologist and educator. In Natal, as in the Cape, a number of other missions sprang up. The Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians all established missions and schools in Natal. A similar but slower development also took place in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. In the early days of missionary-sponsored education, schools in South Africa were not segregated; that is, children of all "races" attended the same missionary schools. Only the dormitories and the eating facilities were segregated. Important questions, then, are when and why were racial segregation and different syllabuses introduced? T o answer these questions, it has to be understood that institutionalized racism did not happen overnight. It began slowly, manifesting itself in the white settlers' treatment of the native population. Furthermore, several missionaries had made themselves "unpopular by their battle [with the white settlers] to establish legal rights

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for the Khoikhoi and Coloureds, a battle which culminated in the passing of Ordi­ nance 50 in 1828" (Wilson & Thompson, 1969, p. 247). Ordinance 50 gave equal rights to all British subjects in South Africa, regardless of their color. This equality pleased neither the British nor the Afrikaners on the Cape, who wanted to enact laws that would force natives to work for menial wages. In Natal, increasing levels of racism publicly surfaced in 1863 with the trial of John William Colenso, who in 1853 had been appointed a bishop of Pietermaritzburg. Bishop Colenso's alleged crimes were his refusal to segregate parishioners and his translation of the Bible into Zulu. He was charged with heresy and was convicted in absentia, but he appealed to the Privy Council in England, which overruled the South African ecclesiastical court decision. Another piece of evidence that racism had become institutionalized in South Africa is the report of an 1892 commission, half Afrikaner and half British, appointed by the lieutenant governor, Benjamin Pine. Among the points made in this report, which was signed by both groups, are the following: When not effectively restrained and directed by the strong arm of power, the true and universal character of the Kafirs, as framed by their education, habits, and associations, is at once superstitious and warlike. Their estimate of the value of human life is very low; plunder and bloodshed are engagements with which their circumstances have rendered them familiar since their childhood; they are crafty and cunning; at once indolent and excitable; averse to labour; but bloodthirsty and cruel when their passions are inflamed. They pretend to no individual opinion of their own but show the most servile compliance to the rule of a despotic chief, when it is characterized by vigour and efficiency (Wilson & Thompson, 1969, pp. 383-384). 1

By 1892 racism was clearly entrenched in the educational system. The reasons for this development are numerous. First, both the Afrikaans and English-speaking whites were displeased that missionaries had insisted on the legal rights for the Khoik­ hoi, Coloureds, and Africans. Since missionaries were playing an active part in the education of the Africans, white conservatives feared that integrated education would threaten white supremacy. Second, the settlers realized that educated Africans could bargain and choose from a range of employment opportunities and tended to have more resources than uneducated Africans, or knew how to manage their resources better. Educated Africans were, therefore, not easy to satisfy with meagre wages. Third, if Africans were given the best educational opportunities, they would compete with whites economically. Fourth, educating Africans in the same schools as whites would result in a multiracial society where whites would be minorities and, therefore, politically dominated by Africans. Whites believed that ignorance of Western political strategies among the Africans would dampen any quest for political liberation and prevent the traditional chiefs from publicizing to the interna­ tional community the atrocities to which their people were being subjected. School Segregation School segregation as a stated policy began in Natal, a predominantly English-speak­ ing colony which prided itself on its British heritage. A similar policy was adopted 1

Kafir has its origin in an Arabic word meaning nonbeliever and is used disparagingly to refer to a South African of black ancestry.

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in the Cape region soon afterward. In 1884 Natal made large sums of money available to mission schools, thus introducing government-aided schools for whites. These schools also permitted some nonwhites to attend, those who could "conform in all respects to European habits and customs" (Wollheim, 1943). Since the majority of African children were then still living in rural areas, where indigenous traditions were all that they knew, the conditional acceptance of African children into these white schools can be described as nothing more than a smokescreen to shield racism. The intent of the provision was to keep out the African children. There seems to have been no other reason for introducing segregated schools in both the Cape and Natal other than racism. There was no argument presented to indicate friction between white and black children, nor was there any to indicate that black children were failing to learn as well as white children. Regarding the latter point, the existing evidence suggests equal competence. For instance, Horrell (1963) cites Dr. James Stewart, a principal at Lovedale, who wrote that "excellent examination results were achieved by white and African students at Lovedale" (p. 13). Other evidence in support of equal competence of white and African children comes from Dr. R. H . W . Shepherd, also a principal at Lovedale, who wrote, "Ac­ cording to the records of the Cape Education Department between 1884 and 1886, Lovedale had 597 passes in Standards III, IV, and V, a higher number than was achieved by any of the 700 schools in the Colony. Its closest competitor was Welling­ ton, a white girls' school with 411 passes" (Horrell, 1963, p. 13). Although it might be argued that both Stewart and Shepherd were blowing their own horns, there can be no doubt that the majority of students at Lovedale were Africans, and therefore the larger number of successes were registered among African children. The effect of equal ability in school performance was seen by the colonialists as undermining the social perception of Africans as "inferior." Children who see firsthand the contra­ diction between social stereotypes and reality are not likely to embrace those stereo­ types. The aim of segregation, then, was to prevent white children from learning of the true African ability directly through social intercourse at school. The questions remain as to when and why the segregation of schools was intro­ duced in South Africa. With regard to the first question, we can refer to Shepherd's comment, "In about 1892 the nonracial policy of Lovedale and certain other mission institutions received a 'mortal blow' when Sir Thomas M u i r , the Superintendent General of Education, ruled that white students who were training there as teachers could not sit the examination" (Horrell, 1963, p. 13). Sir Thomas Muir was British. The answer to the second question can be found in a combination of factors: the creeping racism in the Cape and Natal; the devastating drought in South Africa in the late 1880s, which led to the emergence of "poor whites"; and the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley in the 1870s and gold in the Rand in 1886, which led to the growth of the mining industry and the development of towns and cities. The poor whites had been small farmers and were forced to move into new towns in search of work for survival. These whites were largely illiterate and without job skills. About this time, Africans also began to move into these towns, driven not only by drought but also by the colonization of their lands by whites. Added to this was an influx of European immigrants, the only group with industrial skills such as machinery operation. The poor whites, the new European immigrants, and

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the Africans had to be prevented from forming any sort of coalition, and so overt racism was imposed by the ruling colonialists. T o reinforce racial stereotypes, in 1904 both the Cape and Natal enacted laws introducing compulsory education for all white children between the ages of seven and sixteen. The law was not extended to the nonwhites. Furthermore, in 1909, both the Afrikaaners and the English-speaking South Africans joined with the British in depriving nonwhite South Africans of a just say in the formation of the Union of South Africa. These laws barring nonwhite children were enacted before the forma­ tion of the Afrikaner Nationalist Party and long before the advent of the purified Nationalist Party of apartheid, the more radically conservative party which gained power in 1948 and which is the ruling party in South Africa today (Horrell, 1963). Native Education The introduction of "Native Education," around 1920, for Africans in South Africa was a logical route to follow for a society that was already committed to racist prac­ tices. Its main purpose was to handicap African children with the introduction of an inferior syllabus, coupled with inadequate learning conditions and poorly educated teachers. These combined factors were intended to reinforce the existing belief of white superiority while simultaneously making African children believe that their lowly position in society was due to their inferior mental ability. Moreover, this system of education was intended to make both African and white children believe that they, by nature, have different destinies. Whereas segregated education was intended to impose mutual ignorance of each others' customs, values, and lifestyles upon white and African children, the curriculum for native education was designed to retard the intellectual development of Africans. The arguments for the introduction of Native Education were couched in a manner that concealed their real purpose to an unsuspecting observer. A careful reading, however, betrays their true intent. For instance, in the 1894 Cape Parliament it was argued that the overall system of education was so divorced "from Native policy in general that the European primary school syllabus was imposed upon Native schools without any account being taken of the needs and possibilities of Native life, still less of the new demands which the provisions of the Glen Grey Act were to make upon the Natives. Courses in civics and agriculture — the latter to form the basis for the new land tenure scheme - rather than in arithmetic and English grammar, would have been more appropriate" (Pells, 1938, p. 135). The Glen Grey Act mentioned in the argument established individual land tenure in a number of districts rather than the communal landholding traditionally practiced by Africans. In these districts, landholdings were deliberately intermingled by alter­ nately placing white and African property owners. This practice separated Africans from their traditional leaders, since previously African villages had been homoge­ neously occupied. Native Education, then, was a contradiction of a fundamental assumption of the Glen Grey Act — racial integration — by specifically suggesting that there should be segregated education for Africans. It might also be noted that stressing the training of Africans in agriculture, where African labor was in great demand, indicates that whites had already felt that no other forms of education were necessary for the native population.

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In Natal, the argument for Native Education was less crude than that used in the Cape. In Natal, the government argued that English was a foreign language to African children and thus placed undue strain on their learning potentials. It was proposed that the mother tongue be used as a medium of instruction for African children in lower primary schools, with English taught as just another subject. At higher primary levels, English would be introduced as a medium of instruction and the mother tongue taught as just another subject. This argument was persuasive to many of the white people. The most serious handicaps of Native Education, however, were the poorly trained teachers and the inadequate learning conditions for African children. The latter point was highlighted by Dr. O. D. Wollheim in his report on learning conditions under Native Education. By 1943 Wollheim was reported to have said: Native Education has been in appalling condition. . . . Buildings in most cases consist of tin shanties or wattle daub huts into which are crammed two or three times the number of pupils which the room should hold. The equipment is corre­ spondingly pitiful. . . . The salaries paid to teachers are likewise appalling. . . . The teachers are seriously overloaded, and one teacher will occasionally be found to be teaching from eighty to one hundred pupils in two or three different standards all in the same room.(Horrell, 1963, p. 55)

Six years later, in 1949, the conditions were still unchanged, as the following report from the South African Institute of Race Relations indicates: Existing schools are inadequate both in quality and quantity for the school popula­ tion which they presently house. Classrooms are packed and overcrowded, some teachers handle a hundred children, ventilation and light are often very poor. There are seldom assembly halls, cloak rooms, wash basins, or the facilities which modern school hygiene demands. (Horrell, 1963, p. 55)

If the purpose of Native Education was to show concern for African children, why were these appalling conditions allowed? Why was there no improvement in school funding for African schools comparable to the funding for white schools? Everything in Native Education supported the consolidation of racism in South Africa. Consider the following: African children had to be six years old to begin their schooling, while whites began at five years of age; African children had to spend two years in preschool before beginning their standardized primary education, compared to one year in preschool for white children; African children spent, on the average, thirteen years in school before qualifying for entrance to a university, while white children spent an average of only eleven years. The African children's syllabus was discontinuous, beginning with Native Education and then making a transition to general education, while the white children began with a syllabus that was continuous through to the university. Native Education failed to prepare Africans in mathematics and the physical sciences, while the white children had this foundation laid in lower primary classes which continued in higher primary grades. Finally, those African children who persevered and overcame the appalling conditions of the lower primary classes and who had also succeeded in making the transition into the upper grades found that their poor preparation deprived them of the possibility of continued studies in the physical sciences at university level.

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Clearly, then, Native Education was intended to be "a road to nowhere" insofar as higher education was concerned. For most African children, all that was intended was that they should gain enough education to read labels and become better laborers.

Bantu Education Native Education was introduced by whites with hidden aims. Bantu Education, by contrast, was introduced without any attempt at pretense. Its aims were clearly stated by its architect, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, then minister of Native Affairs under which the Department of Bantu Education was to be administered. When Verwoerd introduced the Bantu Education Bill before the all-white parliament in 1953, he opened the debate with an attack on missionary education, which he accused of teaching African children false expectations and directing them to "green pastures they would never be allowed to graze." African education, according to Verwoerd, must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities, mindful of the sphere in which they live. Furthermore, education must have its root entirely in the Native areas, Native environment, and in the Native community. The African, he thought, must be guided to serve his own community in all respects; there was no place for him in the European community above the level of certain forms of labor (Harrison, 1981, p. 100). Clearly, Verwoerd had seen Native Education as not doing what it ought to do, which for him was to lower the Africans' expectations. There can be no clearer racist statement than Verwoerd's declaration of the aims of Bantu Education: Bantu Educa­ tion was designed to meet labor demands of the growing secondary industries in South Africa. While Africans were needed for their labor, they were nonetheless made aware that they should aim no higher than certain forms of labor; they did not belong to the white community but to a separate group. Indeed, the Bantustans later were established as political entities. Questions might now arise as to why the Afrikaners thought it necessary to intro­ duce Bantu Education at all, and what Bantu Education was to achieve which Native Education had not. The problem with Native Education, insofar as the Afrikaner Nationalists were concerned, was that there were loopholes which could be exploited by Africans. One of those loopholes was that beginning in general education at Form II (corresponding to grades in the American system), Africans used the same syllabus as whites. The gap between the preparation Africans received in Form I under Native Education and the academic demands of general education in Form II could be overcome through trained and experienced teachers who adopted a sympa­ thetic approach in teaching African children at this level. As it turned out, the mis­ sionary schools, in their competition for high results, began to recruit highly trained and experienced teachers, mainly from abroad. These teachers were joined by a growing number of newly qualified African teachers from Fort Hare University, who from their own personal experiences both understood the problems of the African child and approached their teaching tasks with a political commitment. The combination of these two factors began to be noticed in the years 1945-1950 in matriculation results. African institutions in Natal — Mariannhill and Inkamana (both Catholic), Inanda Seminary, Adams College, and to a lesser extent, Pholela

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Institution — began to show excellent results. In Transvaal, St. Peters (an Anglican in­ stitution), Madibane High, and Orlando High also excelled. Similarly, in the Cape, Lovedale, Healdtown, Emfundisweni, and others produced excellent results. Since the examination for all students — whites, Africans, Coloureds, and Indians — was the same, taken at the same time, with the results published alphabetically by school in the same newspapers all over South Africa, it was possible to compare not only the schools but also the grades. Furthermore, since schools such as Mariannhill, Inkamana, Inanda, St. Peters, Lovedale, and Healdtown were not only competing very well with top white schools but were actually surpassing many of them, the African schools' success challenged the whites' image of superiority. In order to prevent these embarrassing comparisons, the overtly racist system of Bantu Education was introduced. Teaching the Afrikaans language became com­ pulsory and was raised to the level of English as a subject, even though Africans hated Afrikaans since they associated it with oppression. Unlike Native Education, which was introduced without any opposition from the Africans, Bantu Education was immediately met by strong opposition from parents and from the African Na­ tional Congress, a liberation movement formed in 1912 (Hirson, 1979, p. 47). In time, however, other issues became more important than Bantu Education. For instance, the restriction of movement among Africans had been extended to include women as well as men. Therefore opposition to Bantu Education was temporarily diverted. It was only to be taken up again by university students in 1959, when the apartheid principles involved in Bantu Education were extended to universities (Harrison, 1981, p. 196). The other problem the Afrikaners saw in Native Education was that the mission­ aries taught a larger student population than the government-run schools. This meant that larger numbers of African children were in the hands of missionaries—the people the racist Afrikaners saw as teaching the wrong kind of expectations (Thompson & Prior, 1982, p. 116). The figures in Table 1 were reported in 1953 by the depart ment headed by Verwoerd. TABLE 1 Number of African Pupils Attending School

The large number of African children in missionary schools and the fact that the leaders of the opposition to white supremacy tended to be the products of mission­ ary schools — especially Adams College, Lovedale, Healdtown, and St. Peters — made those schools targets for Afrikaner attacks (Thompson & Prior, 1982, p. 117).

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Racism and Education in South Africa ERNEST F. DUBE

The inferiority of education for African children under the Bantu Education system created in time a further and unexpected opposition — primary school and high school children rebelled. This was unexpected because, as previously mentioned, Bantu Education was intended to make African children accept their low position in society as divinely fated and not as a white social decision. In 1976 the Afrikaners introduced a policy whereby half of all subjects in secondary schools would be taught in Afrikaans (Kane-Berman, 1979, p. 13). This led to a class boycott by a Standard IV group of children, ages eleven and twelve. The boycott tactic was soon adopted by other primary schools and, within a few days, by secondary-school children all over S O W E T O (South Western Township). Later, because of the number of deaths among children caused by police shootings, there were sympathy strikes all over South Africa. The total number of dead following the June 16, 1976, student riots, as they were later called, was reported by Africans in South Africa to have been around 1,300, most of them African children. Since 1976 the opposition to Bantu Education has continued to be led by children, thus creating a unique situation in which eleven-year-olds have been brought into government opposition. Between April and September 1984, more than 900,000 students have been involved in school boycotts over the issue of Bantu Education. Between August 20 and October 3, 1984, it was reported that 57 people died in South Africa, mainly children. In addition to this number, during early October, eight miners were shot dead by the police while they were exercising their legal right to strike when their demands were not being met by their employers. The killing of children in 1976 led to a mass exodus of African children from South Africa to the bordering states of Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, and Angola. Most of these children, over a thousand of them, left home seeking to join Umkhonto Wesizwe (The Spear of the Nation), the military wing of the African National Con­ gress (ANC). These were angry children who had seen their brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends killed or wounded by police bullets. They wanted revenge, though not all of them were old enough legally to carry arms. Some were too angry to make good soldiers of liberation, but others were and are now opponents of South African apartheid (Kane & Berman, 1978, p. 144-145). The exodus of so many children, from age eleven to young adulthood, caught the ANC unprepared. There were no arrangements for such a number, let alone for those so young. Most of these children left South Africa clearly intending to join the ANC freedom fighters. The ANC knew that the vast majority of them were either too young or politically unprepared for the tasks of the liberation army. The alternative was to get most of these children to school. The ANC was fortunate — so it believed initially — to find the Nigerian government prepared to take most of the children into its schools. The others were shared between Liberia, Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland. The ANC was, however, soon to discover that the South African children in Nigeria were experiencing a culture shock which they could not endure. T o make matters worse, a government minister, who did not understand that these children were rebels and thus would find any imposition of authority unacceptable, tried to impose a student leader on them. When he left the hall where he had called them together to be addressed by this "leader," the students also left, en masse, to confront the ANC representative with a demand for tickets to go back to ANC headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia. The students had not come to the ANC office in Nigeria to plead but to serve an ultimatum: either give them tickets or they would

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walk to Lusaka — just as they had walked from South Africa to Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland. As a result of the students' demands, the officials of ANC discovered for the first time that, although they had spoken of education in their Freedom Charter, they had never decided on the form that education would take. Since Zambia could not accommodate more than six hundred students all coming in at once, the alternative was to build a school for these South African children and others that might follow. The first thing the ANC officials did was to approach the governments in the Front­ line States for land to build a school. Next, they established an education council to create a syllabus for the school. The first education council meeting took place in Tanzania on the site where the school was to be built. Since then, the council has met once a year to review the syllabus.

T h e Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College ( S O M A F C O ) The school in Tanzania is named after Solomon Mahlangu, one of the African stu­ dents who left South Africa after the June 16, 1976, student riots. Solomon Mahlangu was eighteen years old when he left home to join Umkhonto Wesizwe of the African National Congress. Together with two other comrades, he had returned to South Africa following their military training to establish bases inside the country. They were discovered by the security police and a gun battle ensued which left two civilians dead. Solomon and another comrade were captured. Solomon's captured comrade was so beaten up and tortured that the South African court found him unfit to stand trial—he was judged insane. This meant that Solomon stood trial alone. Promises were made to him upon the condition that he denounce the ANC and accuse it of forcing him to enter their military camps and of indoctrinat­ ing him. He refused to do this and instead blamed the battle on apartheid. Even though Solomon was not accused of having killed the two civilians, he was accused of being an accomplice, and on April 6, 1979, at the age of twenty-one, he was the first freedom fighter to be sentenced to death and hanged. Throughout his ordeal Solomon displayed uncommon courage. For this courage the ANC named its school in Tanzania after him. The ANC instructed the council that it wanted the syllabus of Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College to be biased in favor of the natural sciences, to counter both Native and Bantu Education. Further, the students at S O M A F C O were to be prepared to enter universities all over the world. This meant that S O M A F C O students would have to take either a Tanzanian General Certificate of Education examination or the British General Certificate of Education. The decision was to do both, with the aim of testing the children's performance on these examinations. The council also discussed the language to be used as the medium of instruction and the level at which such use should begin, whether mathematics and arithmetic should be taught as separate subjects, which subjects should be required of all students and which should be left to the students' desires, which subjects other than those required for examination should be taught, and the form of teaching to be followed. The council began with the understanding that all South African education was transplanted from Europe and the United States and thus had totally ignored the African child's cultural experience. At S O M A F C O this was to be remedied. The council easily resolved that there was no evidence that learning from concrete objects

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hinders a child's understanding of abstract concepts, or that superior learning resulted from learning out of context. So concreteness was to be the style of teaching. The major educational issues were resolved. First, English was to be the medium of instruction from kindergarten to matriculation. The reason for this was that there are five major languages in South Africa other than English, and a choice of one could lead to protest. Even if there were enough teachers to teach all African lan­ guages, there were not enough students to justify this. Second, it was decided that separation of mathematics and arithmetic was artificial and therefore unnecessary. Third, all students were required to take mathematics, English, the development of society, and the history of liberation struggle in South Africa. Optional subjects, such as biology, general science, geography, and agricultural science, were to be taught as well. Last, innovative teaching methods that were better suited to the learning styles of African children were developed. The S O M A F C O model was thought to meet the educational needs of African children more adequately than the racist systems that had existed before, and thus was adopted by the ANC as the most suitable prototype for further developments in education. Conclusion In this article I have made the following points. First, racism in South African educa­ tion began in 1892 with the segregation of students on the basis of race. Second, racism is not solely an Afrikaner phenomenon but one in which both white communi­ ties — Afrikaner and English-speaking — are guilty. Third, it is also clear that both white communities in South Africa have used education to further their racism. The English had earlier disguised their racism in education by pretending that Native Education was intended to help the African children through instruction in the mother tongue at the initial stages of their education. Later, the Afrikaners' introduction of Bantu Education was a blatant attempt to further racism in that it intended to close the loopholes which allowed Africans to advance. However, instead of African children accepting their lowly position in South Africa, they became politicized early in their lives. It is noteworthy that the politics of these children, the recipients of Bantu Education, was and continues to be different from the politics of children schooled in Native Education. The difference is that, whereas the graduates of Native Education favor peaceful change, the present younger generation realize at a tender age that white racism will not reform itself. T o many of these African children, it is through the use of violence, which has been the monopoly of the whites, that change will take place. From this generation of freedom fighters, it seems clear that there can now be no way to end racism in South Africa other than by bloodshed. The question for them, then, is not whether there will be bloodshed in their country, but how much of it.

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Hirson, B. (1981). Year offire, year of ash, the Soweto revolt: Roots of revolution? London: Zed Press. Horrell, M . (1964). A decade of Bantu education. Johannesburg Insititute of Race Relations. Horrell, M . (1963). African education, some origins and developments. Johannesburg: Institute of Race Relations. Kane-Berman, J. (1978). South Africa, the method in the madness. London: Pluto Press. Pells, E . G . . (1956). Three hundred years of education in South Africa. Johannesburg: Jutas. Shepherd, R . H . W . (1941). Lovedale South Africa, 1841-1941. Lovedale: Lovedale Press. Thompson, L., and Prior, A . (1982). South African politics. New Haven, C T : Yale University Press. Wilson, M . , and Thompson, L. (1969). The Oxford history of South Africa. London: Oxford University Press. Wollheim, O . D . . (1943). "Crisis in Native Education," Race Relations Journal, 10.

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This article has been cited by: 1. María de la Luz Reyes, John Halcón. 1988. Racism in Academia: The Old Wolf Revisited. Harvard Educational Review 58:3, 299-315. [Abstract] [PDF] [PDF Plus]