history essay about bantu education

Bantu Education in South Africa Essay

Introduction, views of structural functionalists on education, neo-marxist perspective on education, nature of bantu education, criticism of bantu education, works cited.

Education is an important aspect of development in any society. It contributes towards societal development by preparing learners with the relevant skills, values and attitudes they require to take occupational roles in their future lives. This implies that educational systems play a vital role in determining the well-being of a country.

For many years, South Africa was exposed to discriminatory actions resulting from the apartheid system. This was extended to the education sector through the introduction of the Bantu Education. This Essay focuses on the nature of the Bantu education system and its shortcomings in the eyes of structural functionalists and neo-Marxist sociologists.

There are different structural-functionalist approaches used in the study of sociology of education. However, the most important ones are derived from the works of famous sociologists Durkheim and Parsons. Until the late 1960s and early 1970s, sociological thinking on matters of education was dominated by structural functionalism. Functionalist sociologists of education look at how education contributes towards the well-being of the society.

The provision of social solidarity and value consensus is the strongest of the functional contributions that education makes to the society. Education as socialization is associated with transmission of culture, values and norms that enable people to stick together and facilitate social life in highly traditional social communities. Similarly, the modern education system is supposed to hold modern societies together.

This thinking is founded on the need to deal with the characteristics associated with the transition from simple traditional to complex and modern societies. Complex modern societies involve a change from a homogeneous life based on rural kinship into concentrated but heterogeneous populations in societies which live in urban areas and characterised by differentiated division of labor.

Mass education is a tool that can be used in such societies to instill proper rules and curricula in children that bind them and the new form of society together. This makes it possible for non-kinship -based, consensual and cooperative lives to be established. This was the argument of sociologist Durkheim (Martin 6).

After the establishment of industrial capitalist society, Parson advanced an argument that the function of education was to create a bridge between the primary socialization that took place at home and adult life preparation. He focused on the role of the school in equipping children with universalistic values as opposed to the particularistic ones obtained from the family.

Particularistic roles are the ascribed ones such as the role and status of an individual, such as his/her place in the family. Universalistic roles on the other hand emphasize the teachings that on the basis of birth, nobody is better than the other. According to structural functionalists, education is the basis of modern society where it socializes children and equips them with the necessary skills for adult life and to function in a modern society marked by universalistic values.

They also believe that education plays an important role in modernizing the society as opposed to mere transition from simple to modern. In addition, the role of education in helping the society adapt to changes in the broader environment such as the competitive advantage cannot be underestimated.

There are numerous neo-Marxist approaches to education but the most influential ones are those of Bowles and Gintis who argue that the education system leads to the production of a capitalist society. According to them, the purpose of education in a capitalist society is to reproduce capitalist relations of production meaning profit, capitalist power and capitalist control of power. They believe in a correspondence principle which explains how the school corresponds with work that serves this purpose.

Its function is to reproduce labor in the sense that it provides enough quantities of the different labor types capitalists need. In addition, it reproduces the right type of the labor required by capitalists since it dampens the desire towards class struggle and instead isolates pupils into the highly class-stratified roles they will occupy in the job market once they leave school. Ideally, the purpose of the school is to isolate and integrate pupils into the capitalist society (Blackledge and Hunt 136).

Neo-Marxists argue that for both capitalist and working class children, schools take over from families and socialize the child into the primary societal values, norms, roles and attitudes. The correspondence they talk of between the school and workplace is meant to prepare pupils to assume occupational roles. Schools are organised in a hierarchy and run along authoritarian lines. Learning is also extrinsically motivated rather than being intrinsically motivated.

These characteristics of schools the neo-Marxists argue that are replicated in the workplace where the workers follow the orders given by their bosses without questioning. There motivation is only an extrinsic one in the form of the wages they get.

While formal curriculum is mandated with the task of giving pupils the basic literacy and numeracy they require in their future jobs, the correspondence between school and work is a form of hidden curriculum that prepares them to politically and ideologically embrace life in a capitalist society.

They are prepared to be obedient, docile, passive and loyal to authorities and hierarchy. According to the neo-Marxists, the bottom line is that only a revolutionary transformation of the capitalist mode of production as a whole can lead to a transformed education system.

After the national party came into power in 1948, the neglect and limitation that had characterised native education from 1910 paved the way for strict state control for black education. This control marked the disappearance of the mission school system which was faced by many challenges despite the fact that it was an important educational institution.

The national party government was committed to eliminate the tolerant laissez-faire perceptions towards black education. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 made it possible for the enactment of legislation that was aimed at promoting Christian National Education separate development.

Bantu Education in South Africa was intended at providing the ruling elites with a cheap and submissive labor. In addition, it aimed at resolving the urban crisis that had developed in the 1940s and 1950s due to industrialisation and rapid urbanisation. This was caused by the collapsing homeland agriculture and the expansion of secondary industrialisation after the Second World War. Transport, housing and wages were not enough for the increasing number of working class people who lived in towns.

The response to the breakdown of these services and poor conditions was squatter movements and the formation of trade unions. Radical oppositions to political activities became the norm, accompanied by the leadership of the African National Congress. The increasing levels of poverty became a threat to the physical productivity of the white elites. Social stability in the 1940s was either obstructed by the presence of education or lack of it (Hyslop 80).

Educationalists attributed the increase in crime rates and the defiant nature of youths to the lack of enough schools. They were afraid that political mobilisation was going to be on the increase. Bantu education was therefore ideally aimed at exercising social control over youth and especially those who were working. In addition, there was the need to socialize them in relation to the norms that were regarded as appropriate by the ruling elites alongside producing properly trained and trainable labor.

The uniqueness of Bantu Education was in its adherence to non-egalitarian and racist education. Intellectually, it was believed that such a system of education was important in spreading the idea that the mentality of a native made him suited for repetitive tasks. Such ideas were important in producing a mass education system that was characterised by constrained spending. Although Bantu Education was regarded as a racist-based cheap education, ironically, Africans were responsible for the costs.

They suffered additional taxation in order to fund the cost of African education. The contribution of the state was an annual grant that originated from the general revenue. Taxes raised were used in supplementing the grant where a small percentage was used to develop Bantu Education. The government policy of financing Bantu Education and the increase in the number of students affected the quality due to the worsening of the pupil-teacher ratio.

During the early years of Bantu Education, a lot of effort was made to use the wages earned by Africans as the basis of funding the education instead of taxing employers. Although the national party was not willing to endorse adequate academic training and skills training, the education served the interests and needs of the industry hence there was no ill relationship between capital and the state.

Anybody was in a position to tell that the educational policies of the government were intended at ensuring that black people secured very few opportunities with regard to employment. They were only prepared to render ready unskilled or skilled labor. This was the relationship between the Bantu Education and the industry (Ballantine 55).

Later in the 1950s, Bantu Education was compatible with the significant expansion of the capitalist economy. However, in the 1960s, the educational policies of the state brought about friction between the government and the industry.

The state used force to give its organisational and ideological interests the first over more particular interests of business and the industry. Under the guise of concentrating growth of secondary, technical and tertiary education in the homelands, the government succeeded in using the urban school system as a tool of influx control. Education was used to propagate apartheid policy.

The purpose of any educational system is to equip pupils with relevant knowledge that prepares them for future occupational roles and transforms the society as a whole. However, the Bantu Education that was practiced in South Africa was a faulty education system that could not transform the society.

In the eyes of structural functionalists and neo-Marxist sociologists, it was detrimental to the social and economic development of the country. The main focus of structural functionalists is to look at how education contributes towards the well-being of the society. It plays an important role since it forms the basis of modern society by equipping learners with relevant skills that prepare them for adult life.

However, according to structural functionalists Bantu Education was devoid of this important function of education. It was racist in nature and could not bring the society together. It was inspired by apartheid and instead of preparing the learners for a cohesive society, it led to more divisions. The system was aimed at ensuring that the black people did not get jobs that were regarded as white men’s. In this structural functionalist perspective, the education system was detrimental to the social and economic development of South Africa.

In the eyes of neo-Marxist sociologists, Bantu Education was still harmful to the social and economic development of South Africa. Education to them is supposed to equip the learners with the right attitudes, values and norms that allow them to thrive in a capitalist society.

However, Bantu Education was only interested in giving learners skills that could not allow them to thrive in a capitalist society. For instance, the skills that were being passed to them could only allow them to be used in the provision of cheap unskilled or semi-skilled labor.

Neo-Marxists also believe that education is supposed to equip learners with the right skills to provide various labor types required by capitalists. On the contrary, Bantu Education provided learners with skills that could only be applied in limited areas. It was even a disadvantage to the capitalists since they could not get skilled labor whenever they required it. The education system was therefore detrimental to the social and economic development of South Africa.

Education plays an important role in preparing children for their future occupational roles by equipping them with the right values, norms and attitudes. This enables them to make positive contributions in the society. Although structural functionalists and neo-Marxists hold some differing views on the purpose of education, they both share a common belief that education plays an important role in transforming the society.

However, the Bantu Education in South Africa was discriminatory in nature and prevented societal development. According to the two groups of sociologists, it was detrimental towards the social and economic development of South Africa.

Ballantine, Jeanne. The sociology of education: A systematic analysis, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993.Print.

Blackledge, David and Barry Hunt. Sociological interpretations of education, London: Routledge, 1985.Print.

Hyslop, Jonathan. The classroom struggle: policy and resistance in South Africa,1940-1990, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1999.Print.

Martin, Ruhr. The Sociology of Education, Pretoria: University of South Africa, 2006.Print.

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History of Apartheid Education and the

Abstract This paper outlines the rationale of Bantu education that was available for South African Blacks from 1953 to 1992. The paper is of the opinion that challenges of constructing a new education system in post‐apartheid South Africa cannot be fully grasped without a proper understanding of the pervasive impact of Bantu education on the majority for a period of almost 60 years. It also discusses the educational vision and goals of the important organizations in the liberation movement such as the African National Congress, the Azanian People’s Organization, and the Pan Africanist Congress that continue to shape educational debates in the present educational reform context. The paper argues that the present curriculum by its very history and origins does not address the problems that have been created by the ideology of the former South African education system. Salient to these problems is the over‐emphasis on Christian/European education that is not realistic in many regions of South Africa. The paper argues that curriculum has to reflect the cultural and racial diversity in South Africa, and further suggests that all languages and cultures in South Africa are essential in the building of an anti‐racist and anti‐sexist society. The monitoring of academic activity in a democratic education system can be confusing to teachers who have been trained within the confines of an apartheid (Bantu) education. The paper therefore suggests that more funds will have to be put aside by the government to upgrade the pedagogical approach of teachers so that they can be able to deal with their new role of leadership and the developing of content, and tackle issues of sexism/racism both in and out of the classroom. Keywords Apartheid education, Bantu education, Black Consciousness, democracy, pedagogy

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This article considers the legacies of apartheid education and new directions taken since 1994 by first problematising the concept of an apartheid legacy, and then examining it within the broader historical context of the emergence of a racially differentiated system of mass schooling under specific political and economic conditions in the twentieth century. The principal legacies that new policy in the post-apartheid period accordingly intended to address included (i) The racially-segregated and unequal financing, organization and provision of education; (ii) poor quality of education for black people; (iii) high youth unemployment and (iv) low levels of participation in adult, technical and higher education. The article shows how new initiatives for the reorganization of education, teacher policy, curriculum, skills development and higher education were introduced under specific economic and political conditions and argues that they have not shifted broader inequalities and have demonstrated continuities as far as learning outcomes are concerned. Contrary to apartheid denialist positions, this contradiction is explained by reference to the strong presence of the past in the present, the contradiction between educational intentions and outcomes and the dependent role of education in any social order.

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This policy brief is part of the larger research project that I am conducting in the Unit of Knowledge Transfer and Skills Development in the Research Division of the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), entitled Deconstructing Eurocentric education: Teaching African-Centred curriculum at the Universities of Cape Town and Fort Hare: A comparative study with the University of Ghana, Legon. The two selected South African universities are, firstly, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of Fort Hare (UFH). The rationale for selecting UCT is twofold: firstly, because of the colonial heritage of the institution; and secondly, because as a result of some authorities wanting to preserve that heritage, the Centre for African Studies (CAS) at UCT exploded into the public in 1997 concerning the topics that should constitute the African Studies programmes. This explosion stimulated questions about the lack of African-centred education in the university in the post-apartheid era. The second university is the University of Fort Hare, chosen for its relation to and place in the history of the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, and for the educative role it played in the leadership of those struggles And for being the sole custodian of the historic archives of the liberation movements of South Africa. While the focus of this current research in South Africa is the universities of Fort Hare and Cape Town, in general the study will also seek interviews with the leadership of other universities in South Africa, such as Dr Mamphela Ramphele, Professors Malegapuru W. Makgoba, Jonathan Jansen, and others – black and white – who are involved in questioning the continuation of the Eurocentric nature of the education system in the liberation period in South Africa. Furthermore, I draw from my own experience of university education curricula in South Africa and abroad. The massive challenges in our education system were made acutely aware to me during my own experience of education at the various institutions of higher learning and training during my own academic education. Throughout this period I recognised that the education system that had been legally endorsed by the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, with its colonial and apartheid mind-set is for the most part still in place in South Africa today – 17 years after the inauguration of Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela in 1994.

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Abstract This paper probes the problems of pedagogy within the South African context. The paper is written against the backdrop of the South African educational system that is at the crossroads regarding its adoption of a participatory form of education (i.e., an educational system that is rooted on egalitarian ideals) or a system of education that is more elitist and has little, if any, to do with the uplifting of the historically marginalized. Since the paper is based on a conceptual analysis of theories of non-formal and/or adult education, the praxis of the argument is informed by philosophers who have written extensively on the subject. Solid and educational policies are also compared in order to formulate conclusions and strategies based on the analysis of educational trends that encourage democratic ideals. Keywords Education for socio-economic change, egalitarianism, language and power, democracy

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Following the onset of democratic rule in South Africa in April 1994, it soon became clear that the transition was a political one, in the narrowest sense of the term. Specifically, the new South African government has been, and indeed continues to be, beset with the longer term and more inertial consequences of apartheid. These consequences can be represented generically as the economic outcomes engendered by the policy of legislated racial exclusivity.

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2 The Transformation of South Africa’s System of Basic Education

Published: September 2018
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As background to the rest of the book, the chapter describes and analyses the main structural transformations that took place in post-apartheid education in South Africa. The chapter provides analytical context to the rest of the book. It focuses on three key transformations: governance, school funding, and curriculum. For each, the chapter provides historical background, describes the transformation in some depth, and attempts to answer whether the transformation ‘worked’, and in what sense. The chapter concludes that some of the transformations worked, in that they were actually implemented and had some of (in some cases, such as finance, most of) the immediate intended impact (e.g. increase in equity of resource allocation). In some cases, such as curricular change, the immediate impact was elusive. The chapter concludes that the transformations have not yet had the desired impact in terms of either average achievement or equality achievement, but there are hopeful signs.

2.1 Introduction

Since 1994, South Africa’s education sector has undergone a process of far-reaching transformation. The principal goal of the research presented in this book is to explore at the micro level some political and institutional dimensions of this transformation. However, these micro-level dynamics played out within a broader context of far-reaching change—and are best understood in the context of that change. The aim of this chapter is to provide the requisite background on this broader context.

The transformations wrought by the ANC government, and its civil society partners, on South Africa’s education system in the mid-1990s could be argued to be among the most far-reaching of the second half of the twentieth century anywhere in the world. Nineteen administrative racial systems had to be joined and then re-shaped into nine geographical provinces; funding had to be put on a rational footing that did not provide white children with ten times as much per-child support as African children; large-scale ambition had to be tempered against fiscal realities; salary scales had to be unified; curricula revamped; boundaries between provinces re-established; capital planning systems streamlined; exam systems re-calibrated; and procurement, tendering, and payroll systems unified. The key changes all took place within a few critical years, between roughly 1995 and 1998.

This chapter describes these transformations, suggests some reasons for the key decisions, and details some of what the results for post-apartheid South Africa have been. We do not purport to assess whether other decisions might have produced a better outcome; rather, we argue that the most important transformation choices were to a large degree driven by circumstances, as perceived at the time. The set of circumstances, to be explored as hypotheses that determined the transformational policy choices, include:

The felt need to transform education sector governance by decentralizing certain elements of decision-making to both new provinces and schools. As section 2.3 details, these decisions were not always taken for purely technocratic reasons. Some were political compromises needed to keep important social groups involved in governing the country by giving them a share of the governance, especially over their own spheres of action.

The broader fiscal context which prevailed as of the end of apartheid and the dawn of democracy, discussed in section 2.4. These did not concern only fiscal aggregates, but also the fact that there were other social sectors, affected by apartheid inattention, that were perceived to be in a far sorrier state than education, at least judging from an enrolment criterion and in comparison with other countries.

The necessity of transforming the education curriculum—both to expunge the apartheid legacy, and in response to strong global trends in professional opinion on ‘what works’ in education, as mediated by South African intellectuals, sometimes isolated, as they were, by apartheid sanctions and relative lack of intellectual exchange with the rest of the world during the height of the sanctions in the 1980s and early 1990s. How this played out in practice—and some of the implications for learning outcomes—is the focus of section 2.5.

Before turning to the details of these transformations, we first set the stage by describing the legacy of extreme dualism that was a consequence of South Africa’s dismal apartheid history.

2.2 South Africa’s Education Sector—A Legacy of Dualism

Though it is fairly common to look for the origins of South Africa’s education problems under the explicit apartheid policies that were introduced in the late 1940s, and culminating in the Bantu Education Act of 1953, in reality the attitudes, policies, and issue-treatment that determine the dynamics of the system until the end of the twentieth century go back at least three centuries—in fact, nearly all the way back to the founding of the Cape Colony in 1652. In this brief historical sketch we pause at the very beginning, 300 years ago, just to ‘prove’ how deeply ingrained and historical the problems are; we then ‘fast forward’ to the formalism of apartheid in the 1940s and 1950s, and end up with a look at the situation towards the end of apartheid, providing a quick snapshot of the result of the dynamics of forces over 300 years.

2.2.1 Some Deep Background

The first school in the Cape Colony was started in 1658, just six years after the founding of the colony. As it happens, this coincided with the first arrival of slaves from outside the Cape itself. Already then, van Riebeeck (Commander of the Cape Colony from 1652 to 1662) ‘saw the need to establish an institution…[that] would teach slaves sufficient linguistic skills, in order to promote a greater understanding of their master’s orders…In addition, these slaves would also be indoctrinated in their master’s religion, which would teach them the values of servitude, discipline, and obedience’ (Molteno, 1984 : 45, cited in Moore, 2015 : 20). (Of course, this may not have been so different from how European children were schooled in those days, either in Europe or in the Cape—the influences of Montaigne and Comenius would have been distant indeed. The more interesting point is that this would be done in separate institutions which would presumably allow different interpretations for these curricular values—some for citizens, others for slaves—and interpretation is everything.) The first officially separated building would be opened in 1685 (Moore, 2015 : 20). Later, (some) missionary schools might have had a relatively more humanistic attitude towards education. But, interestingly, this led to conflict with trekboer policies which forbade missionary activities in the Eastern Cape, as a way to not ‘disseminate unsettling ideas of human equality as taught in [one presumes some] missionary schools’ (Moore, 2015 : 21, citing Welsh, 2000 : 109).

2.2.2 Fast-Forward 300 Years

Up until the middle of the twentieth century, the ‘history’ of (African, or in general) education policy in South Africa has to be interpreted as a quilt of various colours, and tendencies, where big ‘Policy’ can only be seen as the accretion of the policies of many different, localized, time-bound policies of particular bodies, some official, some not (e.g. missions). Even so, the tendency for education for Africans to be distinct and inferior, often by design, was self-evident to even casual observers working from the 1960s onward. But it is only in the early 1950s that ‘policy history’ becomes much more easily interpretable via the documentary evidence—the historical documentation leaves no doubt as to the intent of policy, and by then one can now mean Policy with a capital ‘P’—though even so, academics find ways to disagree about ‘deep’ motivations. Some ascribe high apartheid policy to be mostly aimed at the limitation of Africans to be providers of cheap, relatively unskilled labour; others ascribe it to serving the needs of apartness first and foremost. But in the end, the impact is similar.

The guiding policy document was the Bantu Education Act, passed in 1953. This Act, while decisive for education, embodied much of what was criticized about apartheid in general. Under the guise of providing the opportunity for separate development in separate ‘nations,’ it laid out a framework of centralized control, bureaucracy, physical apartness, inferior funding, and paternalism. In the words which many anti-apartheid activists have engraved in their minds, F. W. Verwoerd, one of the architects of apartheid, noted in a Senate speech in regard to the Bantu Education Act: ‘There is no space for him [the “Native”] in the European Community above certain forms of labour. For this reason it is of no avail for him to receive training which has its aim in the absorption of the European Community, where he cannot be absorbed. Until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his community and misled him by showing him the greener pastures of European Society where he is not allowed to graze’ (Maree, 1984 : 149).

According to one of its key tenets, the Act centralized control of Native Education in the Department of Native Affairs. Mission schools, whose curricular offerings were seen as suspect by the new apartheid government, were brought under the control of the state, and subsidies were eliminated, forcing many to close down. Efforts to create ‘Bantustans’ (quasi-independent ‘reservations’ or ‘homelands’) were initiated in the 1950s. These entities were theoretically able to devise their own education systems, but in fact largely operated in accordance with Bantu Education. Indeed, the intention behind the creation of the Bantustans can be seen as mirroring the Bantu education curriculum: ‘to limit and reorient African political, economic and social aspirations away from a common political and economic life and towards a separated, rurally-oriented, ethnically-based life’ (Chisholm, 2013 : 408). In addition, it would be soon discovered, the Bantustans offered abundant opportunities for populist and patron–client politics. Under the guise of separate development, for instance, high schools were created in the Bantustans, but not so much in the areas where Africans lived within the Republic of South Africa ‘proper’ (though later this policy was rescinded); similarly, each Bantustan was to be given a teacher training college.

Under this legislative regime, per student funding for black schools was much lower than that for other ethnic groups, school feeding disappeared and the state largely placed the burden of the costs of the expansion of schooling on local black communities themselves. Hartshorne ( 1981 ) gives an indication of the inequalities of the system. In 1969, the gap between the unit cost of black and white education reached its widest, at a ratio of 20:1 white to black. At the same time as financing of black education was being squeezed, the government attempted to increase enrolment. In 1972, responding to the crisis in African schooling, the structure of financing changed, and slowly per capita spending differences between black and white children were reduced. However, little additional funding reached primary schools, although in some provinces there was a significant reduction in the number of double-shift schools. Although some gains were made in the retention of children in primary school, quality remained dire. Schooling was further disrupted through the late seventies in widespread student protest action, reaching a climax in the 1976 Soweto school uprising.

In the 1980s, under P. W. Botha, there was an effort to ‘modernize’ apartheid education, largely in response to human capital demands. This was a period of great expansion of schooling, with large increases in African enrolments in both primary and secondary schools. By 1985 the number of secondary students was four-fold that of 1975; 76 per cent of children aged 5–14 were enrolled in primary school (Unterhalter, 1991 : 39). Enrolments, expenditure and the number of African matric passes continued to increase over the 1980s. By the late 1980s the ratio of white to black spending had been decreased to 1:6, although with enormous variations within the ‘black’ category (see below).

Changes in curriculum over the course of apartheid largely mapped onto the shifts in broader ideological discourses and the shifting economic context of the rising and declining apartheid state. Curriculum broadly moved from a culturally oriented curriculum, with a strong emphasis on content and education for the rural, racially distinct ‘native’ and manual labourer in the 1930s and 40s, to a progressively more technicist orientation, and an emphasis on vocational education and the development of skills for a modernising economy. From early on, however, different curriculum knowledge was distributed to different race groups less through different syllabuses and more through different institutionalized forms of provision, especially the lack of broad subject offerings, teaching resources, and qualified teachers in schools for black, coloured, and Indian students.

Schools were governed through nineteen racially separated departments of education for different racial and geographical groupings. Information systems were poor, examination systems dysfunctional and often corrupt, and a draconian inspectorate system was the only accountability and performance management mechanism within the system (Swartz, 2004 ). The Hunter Report (DOE, 1996 ) showed the dismal state of school infrastructure in 1995 after years of neglect. Increasingly, and especially after 1976, black schools, in particular those in urban areas, were largely dysfunctional, the material conditions deplorable, and teacher morale decimated. The apartheid-based curriculum was rejected, and any progressive or state-driven reform became unacceptable. Inspectors were driven from schools. Exams were regarded as illegitimate. Especially in urban areas, student protest action made many schools ungovernable in this wide-scale rejection of apartheid schooling.

2.2.3 Educational Inputs and Outcomes at the Dawn of Democracy

The educational inputs and outcomes at the end of apartheid were a legacy of inequity and, not often noted, also inefficiency. These views influenced important technocrats in the new government. A perspective on both inefficiency and inequity is provided by Figure 2.1 , which shows both expenditure per student in 1990, and a simple ‘instantaneous’ indicator of internal school efficiency, namely the ratio of enrolment in Standard 5 (Grade 7, the last grade of primary) to enrolment in SSA (Grade 1 in the new parlance as an informal measure of the ‘survival rate’ to Standard 5). The results of the relationship are graphed in Figure 2.1 . 1 As the figure shows, there were huge differences in spending per pupil across the systems (far from the ‘5 to 1’ that is often noted with regard to White/African in general)—with the massive additional per pupil spending going to white schools doing nothing to increase ‘survival’ rates. With no comparative data available at the time on learning outcomes, this led some observers at the time to question whether the ‘white windfall’ was achieving much beyond providing pleasant surroundings and ‘posh’ infrastructure.

School efficiency by racial department towards end of apartheid

Aside from the implicit efficiency critique of having to spend so much more on white schools than seemed strictly necessary, there is the equity or equality critique of spending so little on the poor schools, an issue to which we return in section 2.3.

Matric exams are also revealing. Cronje ( 2010 ), using data from the Institute of Race Relations, tracked the performance of black African matric pupils from 1955 to 2008/09. In 1955, only 598 black Africans sat for their matric exams and only 259 achieved a pass. Through the 1960s, the number of black Africans sitting the matric exam increased rapidly, as did the proportions of those pupils obtaining passes and university entrance passes. By 1970, 2,846 black Africans wrote matric and of this group, 1,865 (or 65.2 per cent) passed and 1,103 (or 35.6 per cent) achieved a university entrance pass. The 1960s had therefore seen significant increases in the number of black Africans writing their matric exams. In 1980, 29,973 black African pupils wrote matric. In 1985, 82,815 wrote and by 1990 the number of black African pupils writing matric had rocketed to 255,669. At the same time, however, and through the 1980s and early 1990s, the pass rate and university exemption rate began to fall. In 1993 the pass rate touched a record low of 37 per cent and the exemption rate bottomed out at 8 per cent. The decline in the pass rate is generally attributed to increasingly disrupted schooling through the 1980s, mainly due to political struggle and the breakdown in the culture of learning and teaching in most schools. Some spoke of a ‘lost generation’ of youth who had forgone years of schooling in service of the struggle.

Figure 2.2 extends the analysis by trying to compare not just matric pass rates, but by taking into account the percentage of pupils who reached Standard 10 (Grade 12 in modern parlance). In that sense, what cognitive disadvantage had apartheid education created for the least advantaged in society, as measurable towards the end of apartheid (the early 1990s)? This question is more difficult to answer than it might appear at first. Looking only at the matric pass rates (Senior Certificate Examination pass rates) is not enough, because the proportion who even made it through to Grade 12 varies a lot by population group. To get at that, one might rely on data about persistence in school. But surveys tended not to ask, of those attending school, which grade they were in, and asked instead the highest grade achieved ever, which creates a timing issue. It is difficult to derive completely clear answers, but one can derive a range of estimates of advantage, triangulating various sources. Figure 2.2 , which focuses on the extremes of whites and Africans so as to unclutter the graphics, shows a range of interpretations. Panel A in Figure 2.2 shows the percentage of twenty-one-year-olds having achieved Standard 10 (Grade 12 in today’s parlance), plus various certificates or higher. It shows that for the white population, this was 91 per cent, while for the African population the percentage was 55 per cent: a 1.65 ratio (91/55) in advantage for whites. The 55 per cent strikes us as a little high, but not extremely so, as Panel B confirms. But, in any case, Panel A has the advantage that all the data come from a single source. Panel B shows decrements in percentages achieving certain ‘bars’ according to increments in quality or ‘demandingness’ of those bars. The first two columns show the ratio of enrolment in Standard 10 in 1994 to population of eighteen-year-olds for Africans and whites. In addition, data for senior certificate passes and exemptions were obtained for the early 1990s. Applying the pass rates to the first two columns and the exemption rates to the same two columns gives all the other values. According to these data, whites had advantages over Africans of 1.41, 3.3, and 5.9 respectively, depending on how high the bar in question was. All this provides less optimistic conclusions than the usual pass/writer conception of the pass rate, as the denominator is not those who sit or write the exam, but the whole population, and thus takes into account dropping out prior to Grade 12. A grosso modo , the white/African difference was about 4 to 1 at the end of apartheid.

Educational success, by race, as proportion of populations

This disparity cannot be attributed to differential labour market returns from passing matric; numerous studies have shown that rates of return to secondary and tertiary education range from about 10 per cent to 18 per cent, are similar for whites and Africans (actually higher for Africans), and the returns from post-secondary education are relatively high (Bhorat, 2000 ; Crouch, 1996 ; Mwabu and Schultz, 1996 ). The differential access to matric was therefore a socially inefficient and inequitable phenomenon, depriving society and individuals of access to production and income.

Further insight into the South African patterns of access to education at the dawn of democracy is provided by a comparison for 1989–94 with a selected group of international comparators. 3 As Figure 2.3 shows, relative to these comparators, South Africa was a little—not hugely—skewed, but in ways that are revealing of the racial differences. South Africa’s access to primary education was, at 115 per cent, above the ‘efficient’ maximum for the age cohort—a sign of low quality in the early grades particularly in the African parts of the system, which induced repetition and excess enrolment. Some provinces, largely those where Bantustans had been located, had Grade 1 enrolments which were more than 50 per cent above the age cohort. Secondary enrolment was low in comparison with other countries, but was rapidly (one could say more rapidly than quality could keep up with) catching up (especially in the African portions of the system) and had essentially caught up by 1994. However, the low pass rates highlighted above resulted in a low tertiary enrolment rate relative to the comparators.

Comparative performance of South Africa on access to education

2.3 Transforming Education Sector Governance

The 1996 the South African Schools Act (SASA) and the new Constitution (1996) both transformed radically the institutional arrangements governing the country’s system of education. It replaced the pre-existing, fragmented and racially ordered institutional arrangements with a unified, multi-tiered system:

The national (central) level was assigned responsibility for policymaking, for resourcing the system, and for setting the overall regulatory framework.

The provincial level was assigned responsibility for implementation—spending the budgetary resources made available from the centre, and employing the teachers, administrators, and other personnel who comprised the vast majority of employees in the system.

Substantial school-level responsibilities (including the recruitment of the school principal and senior teachers) were assigned to school-governing bodies (SGBs) in which parents were required to be in the majority.

This transformation in the structure of governance seemingly was consistent with both a technocratic and a political logic. The apartheid state was seen by new technocrats as not only unjust, but also inefficient in its racial decentralization combined with administrative centralization. Decentralization of power, in the framework of a new Constitution and, in the education sector, a new Schools Act, along with a fiscal framework to go along with it (the ‘equitable shares formula’ and the ‘school funding norms’, on which more in section 2.4 ), were seen as a way to both load-shed some responsibility for finances, encourage important social groups to ‘keep skin in the game’, and encourage sub-national levels of government (all the way down to the school) to take substantial responsibility for decisions. Two funding contrasts between SASA and the Bantu Education Act (and its remnants) are especially noteworthy: in the new South Africa, poorer schools would be supported out of the central fiscus (through inter-governmental transfers and the requirements of the school funding norms), instead of depending on supposedly local taxes; and independent schools which attended to the relatively poor and maintained certain quality levels would be funded, instead of deprived of funding as the mission schools had been.

At the time when South Africa’s new education sector governance arrangements were put in place, there was a strong reformist impulse worldwide for downward delegation of education governance to subnational and school levels 4 (e.g. Bray, 1996 ; Fiske, 1996 ; Patrinos and Ariasingam, 1997 ). Even so, a narrowly technocratic perspective is misleading. The South African Schools Act (SASA) was promulgated in the same year in which the country’s final constitution was formally approved. Indeed, the new institutional arrangements for South Africa’s school system aligned well with broader political imperatives which were at the heart of South Africa’s 1994 transition from apartheid to constitutional democracy.

South Africa’s extraordinary transition from racist, apartheid minority rule to a new competitive, rule-of-law based political settlement was one of the most inspiring democratic miracles of the 1990s (a decade of many inspiring democratic miracles). En route to a democratic election in 1994, and the promulgation of a new constitution in 1996, the apartheid-era governing National Party agreed to give up its stranglehold on power; the exiled African National Congress agreed to end its armed struggle and pursue a negotiated settlement; and multiple other protagonists, including large-scale organized business, played influential roles in facilitating the transition. The complex story of what brought these protagonists to the table, and how they reached agreement, has been well told elsewhere 5 and goes way beyond the scope of the present exercise. For present purposes, the crucial insight is that the institutional arrangements incorporated into SASA were explicitly designed to be responsive to the central concerns vis-à-vis the education sector of both black South Africans who were about to become the majority in the emerging constitutional democracy, and white South Africans who were negotiating away their monopoly control over government.

The African National Congress was a mass-based political party, committed to ending South Africa’s system of racial discrimination. In 1994, it received a sweeping electoral mandate, winning almost 63 per cent of the vote nationally. Universal access to education, the move to non-racial institutions in the sector, and the elimination of racially discriminatory practices in the allocation of public funds were all non-negotiable political imperatives. As subsequent sections of this chapter will detail, all of these indeed were achieved under the new institutional arrangement for the sector established by SASA.

For white South Africans, a central concern was agreement on a system of governance which could sustain the quality of the public 6 schools which historically had served their children. The institutional arrangements laid out in SASA were responsive to these concerns in two ways. First, consistent with the broader constitutional logic of the political settlement, the delegation of substantial authority to nine provinces served as a check on at least some aspects of discretionary decision-making by central government. The second, more direct way in which the concerns of the white minority were addressed was via the delegation of substantial authority to the school level. This delegation included, in subsequent regulation, the ability to vote, at the local level, fees to be paid by parents at school level, and for these fees to stay at school level and to be used there with considerable discretion, including the appointment of extra teachers.

SASA (and the South African constitution more broadly) incorporated an overarching principle of non-racialism in admissions policy—although the details were left ambiguous as to how decisions should be made regarding who had the right to attend individual schools for which there was more demand than available places. But beyond this, parents of children in elite public schools (which historically had served the white minority) were well-placed to leverage the authority granted to SGBs to ensure that the schools would remain well managed. Further, as noted, the autonomy provided by SASA included the right to top up public funds with self-financing by the parent body—ensuring that elite schools need not be starved of resources as a result of the racial equalization (indeed, the pro-poor skewing) of certain public expenditures.

To be sure, keeping middle class and elite children in the system was not only in the interests of the relatively privileged minority. There is strong evidence from around the world that ensuring that multiple classes (not only children of the poor) are served by a public system is a crucial buttress for the system’s efficiency and budgetary defence. Further, both delegation to provinces, and participatory school-level governance aligned well rhetorically with the embrace by all parties of the principles of constitutional, democratic governance. In practice, though, as this book explores in detail, the gap was substantial between this rhetorical alignment and the reality of the challenges of governing the education sector in a way which served effectively the disproportionately poor majority of the country’s citizens. And the evidence in Chapters 8–10 suggests that efforts to turn this rhetorical embrace of participation into genuine empowerment of parents and communities, beyond the already-empowered elites, were disappointingly scant.

2.4 Transforming Education Financing

Compared to other upper-middle income countries (UMICs), particularly those that went on to grow robustly, South Africa’s finances were in a dismal state in the period roughly five years before the new government took power. 7

The economy was not growing. In the period 1990 to 1994, immediately preceding the start of the democratic government, South Africa’s economy shrank at an average annual rate of −2.2 per cent, while comparators’ economies grew at 1.8 per cent: a 4-percentage point difference.

The fiscal deficit was high. In the same period, South Africa’s deficit was, on average, 5.9 per cent of GDP; that of its comparators was 0.9 per cent of GDP. South Africa’s deficit peaked at 9 per cent in 1993—it was the highest of any of the comparator countries in that year.

Because debt was accumulating, interest payments as a proportion of total government expense were high, and rising fast. Payments as a proportion of government expense were 15 per cent in South Africa, only 9 per cent in the comparator countries. What’s worse, in South Africa they were rising by half of a percentage point per year, whereas in the comparator countries, interest payments were going down by 1.3 percentage points per year.

Apartheid had left in its wake some urgent social crises outside the education sector. Under-five mortality rates were 183 per cent higher in South Africa than in the comparator countries, and were worsening rapidly. By contrast, as noted earlier, there was already universal access to primary education, and in education the percentage of the population enrolled in secondary education was only a little lower in South Africa than in comparator countries (70 per cent versus 83 per cent), and was growing rapidly.

In short, as detailed further below, relative to other UMICs, South Africa’s fiscal effort in education was relatively high, and enrolment already high. Given the other economic and social challenges, and a pervasive sense (notably including on the part of some influential public officials 8 ) that resources for education were not well used, it followed that there would be no ‘end-of-apartheid’ dividend in terms of increases in aggregate public spending on education relative to GDP. The overwhelming fiscal challenge was to put in place new fiscal formulas which could assure high levels of access to education and reverse the stark inequalities in expenditure inherited from the apartheid years, but without putting too much pressure on the fiscus. The subsections which follow detail how this was addressed, and what was achieved.

2.4.1 New Fiscal Formulas

The fiscal solutions to this dilemma, arrived at by the new technocracy (with particular relevance to education) were two, which worked to complement each other. First, an ‘equitable shares formula’ would create a division of centrally sourced revenue and provide those shares to the provinces and local governments. The formula would consider the weight of certain needs (total population, enrolment, the size of the economy, the need for a certain fixed cost to run a province) to create shares of funding. After keeping a certain amount of funds for financing national-level activities, and a certain amount for subnational activities (the ‘vertical’ break), the central government created a ‘horizontal’ division for the provinces. From within their share, the provinces were free to allocate to various sectors with considerable freedom. Some chose to devote relatively more funding to education, others to health, and so on, as they saw their needs. This allowed the central government to be perceived as responding strongly to a pressure for equity and transparency, while promising only ‘shares’ (but fair shares) of the fiscal fortune, and thus enabling a certain degree of austerity.

In a similar manner, the norms and standards for school funding, as well as the post provisioning norms for educators, provided policy direction from the national Department of Education as to how provincial education authorities should assign resources to schools in an equal (in the case of teachers) or even pro-poor manner (in the case of non-personnel, non-capital expenditure). Schools would typically not be mandated as to how to spend the funds, and some could even procure their own inputs. Echoing the ‘equitable shares formula’, the basic idea was to mandate equity in the shares of per student spending going to schools of different levels of poverty, but not to mandate absolute amounts of per student spending. At the same time, the funding norms allowed schools to self-assess fees, under certain conditions, to keep the funding at their own level, and to meld this private funding with their public funding into a unified vision of the school’s budget under the (presumably) strong supervision of the school governing body. Both ‘formula-driven’ solutions thus focused on equity and shares, without making promises about absolute levels of expenditure. The results seem to have been pro-equity, encouraged the maintenance of an upward trend in enrolment, and did prevent a privatization of middle-class schooling.

As Figure 2.4 makes clear, funding for education remained reasonably constant as a proportion of GDP, at least over the longer haul. Thus, in that sense, the ‘trick’ of keeping the middle classes involved in public education ‘worked.’ Compared to other upper-middle income countries, South Africa spent a high proportion of GDP on education and it maintained this proportion throughout the late 1990s and onwards, as other countries caught up. The result was that by 2015 the expenditure patterns of South Africa and the comparator countries were similar to one another.

Funding for education, South Africa and comparator countries

2.4.2 Trends in Access to Education

After and before apartheid, what did the spending buy for South Africa and for other countries, in terms of access to education (enrolment)? As section 2.2 detailed, as of the end of apartheid, access to primary education was ‘raw’ (‘raw’ in the sense that though access was high, quality was highly variable, and almost always poor for low-income black South Africans).

As Figure 2.5 shows, access to secondary enrolment, already high in comparison with other UMICS, continued apace after the end of apartheid. The percentage of South Africa’s youth cohorts attending secondary education was known to be rising (though the figure makes it hard to see this precisely in the early 1990s, because South Africa was not and in any case reporting in the late 1980s showed South Africa to be nearly on par with the comparators). The rise in attendance at secondary education in the early 1990s had obviously nothing to do with any policies set in place by the democratic government, and much to do with a sort of populist expansion of investment in the Bantustans (which included also the creation of large numbers of teacher training colleges). But the approaches put in place by the democratic government allowed those trends to continue and for secondary enrolments to essentially catch up to the comparator UMICs by 2010 or so.

Access to secondary education, South Africa and comparator countries

Figure 2.6 shows both the growth in enrolment as a proportion of the more-or-less enrolable age groups and, importantly, changes in the pattern of enrolment within those age groups. 9 Given constancy in spending, South Africa showed relative constancy in both enrolment and in composition of enrolment: the end of apartheid had hardly any discernible impact. The comparator countries showed much more growth in total enrolment and that enrolment came about both because of more spending, but also because of a reorganization of enrolment between sub-sectors, with a strong relative shrinking of primary education and an expansion in other levels, achieved partly by increasing the internal efficiency of primary education. Countries in other regions, particularly in Latin America, became more and more convinced of the importance of human capital in generating growth and combatting inequality, and spending was stepped up, particularly in sub-sectors such as early childhood. (Also stepped up in South Africa, but not quite as much, and, perhaps, with not—yet—much demonstration of cognitive results.)

Composition and relative size of enrolment by level, South Africa and comparator countries

2.4.3 Equity in Resourcing

It is clear that resourcing came to be far more pro-poor after democracy. Being pro-poor correlates very closely with being pro-African, but note that the funding norms in South Africa (both in the sense of funding from centre to provinces, and from provinces to schools) were (naturally) de-racialized after democracy, and were set in terms of poverty or were poverty- and race-neutral at best (with one proviso: formerly richer schools typically kept more expensive teaching staff, even if the numbers of teaching staff publicly provided were de-racialized). Data can be tracked by province as well, and, with some assumptions, by race. But the important categories are poverty and province. Strong evidence of the fast changes in, for example, public funding, can be found in Department of Education ( 2006 : 36), and is reproduced as Table 2.1 .

Two summary measures of inequality are presented in this table: a Gini coefficient and a Coefficient of Variation (CV). Both show radical reductions in the inequality of public funding—roughly 75 per cent to 80 per cent in just fifteen years, with most of the change coming in the space of just ten years (1990 to 2000, roughly). Naturally, the provinces did not exist in 1990, but their constituent ‘homelands’ and RSA departments did, their enrolments and their per capita expenditures were known, and so it is possible to present a fairly complete and accurate picture of matters towards the end of apartheid and the progress in the years immediately after. Note that we do not necessarily know the intra-provincial spending inequality, so these numbers may overstate (or conceivably understate) progress. Spending increased faster in the provinces whose internal inequality would have been greater; on the other hand, the school funding norms were already operating and were already reducing intra-provincial inequalities, and if spending increased faster in provinces whose internal equality was improving faster, then Table 2.1 could be understating total equalization.

Table 2.1 makes it clear that the apartheid inheritance disproportionately favoured Gauteng and the Western Cape; so the rebalancing meant spreading their ‘excess’ resources to the other provinces. The Northern Cape, being very small in enrolment terms, did not contribute much in absolute terms to the re-balancing, but gives further evidence that the formula-based cutting back of the ‘bigger spenders’ worked transparently and without much favouritism. However, note also that because the poorer provinces were also among the largest, cutting back on the spending in the higher-spending ones could not result in big per pupil increases in spending in the lower-spending provinces. (Also, recall that how much to spend on education was, according to the equitable shares formula, a matter for the provinces to prioritize, so these numbers are a result both of equity drivers in the central funding, the equity drivers in the school funding norms, but also of provincial decisions on how much of their fiscal share to spend on education.)

Another take, using the actual homelands data from Buckland and Fielden ( 1994 ) and Department of Education ( 2006 ), gives the Lorenz curves shown in Figure 2.7 for inequality of public recurrent expenditure in terms of the fourteen departments that spent money on pupils in a distinguishable manner (i.e. ignoring provincial differences in HoA spending). The curves are approximate, because for the erstwhile administrative departments the curve is plotted with population by expenditure level on the horizontal axis. Nonetheless, the results are striking: the dashed black spending curve for 2004 is nearly exactly equal to the 45-degree line of equality, whereas the lower line for spending in 1991 yielded a Gini coefficient of 0.33.

Changes in inequality curves for distribution of public resourcing of public schools

Naturally, given that the system allowed schools to charge individual fees (determined at local level, and therefore much higher for the higher income groups), these numbers under-state the amount of inequality reduction achieved. Nonetheless, such a rapid reduction in inequality in public spending is unequalled in modern history, to our knowledge. Remaining inequalities, though, surely account for some important differences in performance (van der Berg and Gustafsson, 2017 ).

2.5 Curricular Trends and Learning Outcomes Implications

Among the many transformations of South Africa’s education system, the transformation of the education curriculum was perhaps the most far-reaching in terms of its implications for day-to-day practice in the classroom. This section describes this transformation, reports on the consequences (of the full set of transformations, curricular and otherwise) for learning outcomes, and also on some recent, perhaps somewhat encouraging trends.

2.5.1 Curriculum under Apartheid

Over the forty-eight years of National Party rule, syllabuses, examinations, and prescribed instructional practice changed significantly, adapting to both shifts in political economy and broader international trends in curriculum. The shifts in curriculum can be seen in the changes in the ‘imagined’ learner of different curricula across time. As outlined earlier, early mission and colonial curricula were concerned with the conversion of the ‘heathen indigene’. Industrialisation and the onset of mining focused the curriculum on the development of manual skills and docility (the ‘moral’ and ‘industrious’ learner). In the 1930s, in the light of international debates, the notion of the (indigenous) colonial subject became tied up in issues of cultural specificity and questions of the mind of the ‘native’. Here, strong culturalist notions of the learner, whose language and traditions should be preserved through education, provided the platform for Bantu education and the apartheid ideology of separate development. With the modernization of the economy, higher skills were sought and the curriculum focus became increasingly vocational. In the later 1980s and early 1990s the imagined learner of the curriculum became something quite different—the individual learner of no determinate race on the one hand, and a worker for a growing and diversifying economy on the other. These last reform attempts of the apartheid government, came, however, late in the day and given the intensified political protest and breakdown of teaching and learning in schools, reached only the minority white sectors of schooling.

Despite these shifts, a number of general points can be made about curriculum, especially from the mid-1950s onwards. Firstly, different knowledge was distributed to different race groups, accomplished less through different syllabuses and more through segregated provision, and differences in the material and symbolic resources available to different race groups in different schools. The fact that the curriculum was very similar on paper was used to mask inequities. The Minister of Bantu Education in the late 1970s proudly claimed that his department ‘had not only adopted the same curricula and syllabi as were used by Whites, but Black and White students were now writing the same senior certificate and matriculation exams’ (Marcum, 1982: 21, cited in Jansen, 1990 : 202). Black students, however, received watered-down, minimal or narrower curricula than children in the white department of education. There were different subjects on offer in white and black schools, more academic in white schools, and more vocationally oriented in black schools. The distribution of teachers capable of teaching more demanding subjects was also quite different. Secondly, the issue of language was paramount and would become the flashpoint for intense protest in the 1970s. The language issues are complex, and shifted over time, but crucially had to do with the imposition of Afrikaans on African language speaking learners as the language of instruction and testing. Language was also used, especially in the primary school, as a means for establishing the cultural particularity and apartness of black learners; while white, Indian, and coloured children had to learn two languages, African children had to learn three (for long periods, as early as the third grade). Third, curricula contained racial biases favouring whites, and the stereotyping of the black population as tribal, rural and backward. Ideological content was added to the syllabuses specifically for black learners presenting a narrow (largely rural) and static view of ‘Bantu society’, and referencing some folk and historical heroes as well as contemporary apartheid arrangements and governing institutions for the black population. Fourth, and throughout the period, curricula constructed during apartheid were subject-based and content-driven, with minimal explicit conceptual content-skill relationships made. Knowledge across curriculum reforms was regarded as ‘given’ and strong boundaries were maintained between different subjects.

Among South Africa’s education sector pedagogical thought leaders, there was an enduring progressivist thrust in curriculum, both inside and outside of the state, sustained through the decades up until the transition to democracy in 1994. To be sure, official attempts at curriculum innovation in the 1970s and 1980s were largely piecemeal—often consisting of taking out contents or adding in new contents in different subjects. But there also were ongoing micro-reforms, often influenced by trends in the United States and United Kingdom, notably ideas arising out of progressive reforms there. Galant ( 1997 ) gives the example that, between 1974 and 1984, at least five new syllabuses were introduced in South Africa following the ‘new maths’ movement in Europe. However, these largely had effect in white schools only. There was also a significant amount of curriculum work being done outside of state institutions, as alternatives to the traditional curriculum forms developed during the apartheid era.

2.5.2 A Radical Curriculum for Democracy

The first post-apartheid curriculum, Curriculum 2005 (C2005), introduced in 1998, was a radical constructivist curriculum that emphasised a learner-centred, outcomes-based approach to teaching and learning. It backgrounded prescribed knowledge content, leaving it to teachers and learners to select the appropriate content or precise method in order to achieve specified outcomes. Textbooks and testing were regarded as authoritarian and backward-looking, and were dispensed with (apart from the Grade 12 examination). C2005 was framed as a ‘radical break’ from the apartheid past. It was essentially a reform focused on pedagogy—intent on shifting authoritarian relations of classrooms, defined by bureaucratic routine, deferential ritual and whole class, choral production of knowledge at a very low level of cognitive complexity. In the process of addressing issues of pedagogy, knowledge and its specification was lost.

What is often missed in the accounts of the shift from apartheid to C2005 is that although the changes introduced represented a radical departure from the past for black schools, for white schools (which had been part of the final progressive curriculum reforms of the apartheid era) there was much continuity between the new curriculum and established pedagogic practices (Harley and Wedekind, 2004). Thus, the schools where teachers were in the first place less qualified, were also the schools who were most disadvantaged by the very unfamiliar terms of the new curriculum.

2.5.3 Reforming the Reform

The new curriculum, C2005, quickly came under severe criticism. What became clear in its implementation was its complexity, incomprehensible to many, and inappropriate for the majority of classroom contexts (Jansen and Christie, 1999 ). The system was unprepared for the shift to a radical, learner-centred, outcomes-based curriculum—introduced in a very short space of time, with very little training. A review of the curriculum followed in 2000, presenting the central critique of C2005 as barring access to school knowledge for both learners and teachers. The fact that the curriculum had removed most of subject content, and replaced it with outcomes expressed as generic skills, meant that teachers were expected to select the appropriate content and design ‘learning programmes’ themselves. Teachers in more advantaged schools were confident, well advised, and could rely on past experience and training in selecting content from their field of specialisation to construct appropriate learning programmes for students. However, in the majority of schools, poor prior training, and a lack of school-level support made this impossible. Pedagogic practices of the past, entailing the communal production of low level, localised content, persisted. The central difference was that learners sat in groups—group work becoming for many teachers a graspable outward form of the curriculum they could implement, masking real change in the classroom.

The 2000 review introduced a second iteration of this curriculum, the National Curriculum Statement. It retained the outcomes-based framework, but delineated more clearly content knowledge and appropriate methodologies for teaching. It also attempted to reassert the importance of summative assessment (tests and examinations). The retention of outcomes, however, would prove politically contentious and pedagogically problematic. Under increasing pressure of poor student academic outcomes and stringent public criticism of the outcomes-based education framework, a further review was initiated in 2009; in 2012 the current curriculum, the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) was implemented. In this curriculum, outcomes-based education was abandoned in favour of clear, per grade content stipulation, as well as specified pacing and sequencing requirements for the curriculum. The importance of textbooks as key pedagogical resources for both students and teachers was reasserted. A programme of distributing curriculum-aligned workbooks to all learners was entrenched. CAPS thus established a clear and stable curriculum-based signalling system for teacher training, the development of textbooks, and accountability for classroom practice. The highly specified curriculum would also lay an important basis for experimentation in instructional reform, discussed below.

Teacher training did not receive the same levels of attention as curriculum reform—and was complicated by the under-stipulated nature of C2005. Thus, teachers schooled and trained through Bantu education under apartheid lacked opportunity to overcome the legacy of a very poor preparation for teaching. Without teachers gaining a better content understanding of subjects to be taught, not simply new and complex ways in which to teach them, there was unlikely to be significant change in classroom practices and learning outcomes. Although more recently there has been some shift in instructional practices (Hoadley, 2018 ), especially in the number of texts in classrooms, many of the practices dominant under apartheid, the communalized, slow pace of learning and low level of classroom content, persist in the majority of classrooms (Hoadley, 2012 ). The clear specification in the CAPS of what content is to be covered when and in what order has promise to shift these practices both directly in classrooms and through defining subject-specific teacher training requirements more precisely.

2.5.4 Cognitive Achievement after the Transformation

This is a complicated story, and much depends on what countries one compares South Africa with, and on what issues. One can start with the most commonly held and alarming part of the story: that South Africa, in comparison with the world as a whole, or at least in comparison with the parts of the world that participate in assessments such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) or Progress on International Literacy Study (PIRLS) (repeated approximately every three years since 1995), performs badly, in absolute terms (last or nearly last—but noting that most countries that participate in these assessments are wealthy countries with long-established education systems), but also, perhaps more alarmingly, relative to its level of per capita income and the level of fiscal effort devoted to education. In exercises predicting results in TIMSS Grade 4 Mathematics for 2015, and PIRLS 2016, using GDP per capita and public spending on education as a share of GDP as predictors, for instance, South Africa’s actual performance is much worse than expected—in fact, South Africa is perhaps one of the ‘worst’ outliers. Figure 2.8 shows predicted performance on the horizontal axis and actual performance on the vertical axis. South Africa is clearly a negative outlier—and this is at least fifteen years after the end of apartheid, when the system has had at least ten years to ‘practice’ with improving lives for the children who take this assessment.

South Africa as an efficiency outlier in TIMSS and PIRLS

In the case of SACMEQ III (2007) data, South Africa appears not so much as an under-performing outlier. Part of the reason for this is that in making comparisons in SACMEQ, the total score achieved by students is affected by the degree to which the country has a high primary school completion rate: countries with a higher completion rate are making a bigger ‘access effort’ in reaching out to previously un-served portions of their populations, and are thus trying to educate those who are harder to educate (e.g. may be first-generation literates in their families). Once this is corrected for, 10 what is interesting is not so much that South Africa is a negative outlier (as is the case in TIMSS 2015 and PIRLS 2016) but that (as Figure 2.9 shows) there seem to be positive outliers, namely Kenya, from which South Africa could perhaps be learning (but generally has not been, or had not been until recently). Chapter 10 explores this issue further.

Kenya as positive outlier in SACMEQ

Almost any way one looks at it, the internal distribution (the cognitive equality) of South Africa’s scores is quite poor, at least in comparison with other countries taking part in assessments such as TIMSS, PIRLS, and SACMEQ. However, using various rounds of TIMSS, inequality has decreased, even markedly if one believes the data. Taking the score produced by children at the ninety-fifth percentile of the score distribution, subtracting the score produced by children at the fifth percentile, and dividing the result by the score produced by children at the middle of the distribution is a reasonable measure of relative inequality. Typically, developing countries with low averages will tend to show higher relative inequality (because the denominator is low). Wealthier, more educationally developed countries will tend to show less inequality, both because they actually apply more effort to improve things at the bottom of their distributions, and because their averages are higher.

Table 2.2 shows some examples, and shows South Africa’s placement both at a given point in time and over time. The data are sorted from the most equal country in 2003 to some of the most unequal in 2003, 2011, and 2015. It is clear that South Africa is among the most unequal, though there are sometimes one or two that are just a bit more unequal. Table 2.3 shows the data for PIRLS 2016, showing that South Africa, has, if not quite the worst inequality results (using our index), close to it. Some developing countries which have done more work on improving equality are shown. Chile, for instance, in 2016, has nearly 40 per cent less inequality as South Africa does in PIRLS 2016. (But note only about 25 per cent less in TIMSS 2015 Grade 4 Mathematics.)

The inequality in South Africa looms particularly large also in comparison with other countries in the SACMEQ region. Figure 2.10 shows each country’s average reading and mathematics scores in 2007 (SACMEQ III) in the bars. Differences, in each country, between the performance of high and low SES students are shown as lines. One line (solid) shows the absolute difference, that is the difference in points scored, between the high-SES and the low-SES students. Another line (dotted) shows the difference divided by the average score: a more thorough indicator of inequality, if perhaps a slightly harder one to understand. 11 Countries are shown ranked from left to right in order of overall performance. This helps make it clear, comparing the size of the bars and the slope of the lines, that in general (in the case of SACMEQ—no such assertion can be made for other cross-country assessments) there is an association between increasing average scores and increasing inequality. South Africa is seen to be of middling performance in terms of the total score. But the most striking thing is that in spite of South Africa’s average performance being only middling, its inequality as measured using either of the measures noted, was distinctly the highest, especially taking the relative (dotted) measure into account. 12

South Africa as an inequality outlier, SACMEQ data

2.5.5 Recent Upticks in Performance

The low results for South Africa, especially when one controls for fiscal effort made in favour of education and for GDP per capita, and also the inequality in the results distribution, have been alarming, especially as they are evident ten to fifteen years after the changes that would supposedly benefit the children were crafted. Some, as noted above, foresaw likely low impact from early on. However, more recently there have been some signs of hope. First, as van der Berg and Gustafsson ( 2017 ) have shown, recent levels of improvement of South Africa in TIMSS are quite fast, comparable to Brazil’s improvements on PISA—themselves quite fast. Table 2.2 shows that, at the fiftieth percentile (the median), South Africa’s TIMSS performance between 2011 and 2015 improved by about twenty points. Van der Berg and Gustafsson ( 2017 ) explain that Brazil’s improvement in PISA, of about 0.06 of a standard deviation per year, is at about the upper limit of how quickly countries can improve, and that South Africa’s improvement is on a par with Brazil’s. Whether these trends will continue, and how truly solid they ultimately are (they seem to be) would be hard to say. But for now they seem to bode well. The same authors show improved results in the equity of matric results in more or less the same period (roughly 2008 to 2015). And this lines up well with the evidence on the reduced inequality in TIMSS results presented in Table 2.2 .

At the same time, at the pilot project level, it seems as if fast improvements are possible and are documented, even in underprivileged schools, via what Fleisch ( n.d. ), and Fleisch ( 2016 ) calls a ‘turn to the instructional core’ and sometimes the ‘triple cocktail’ of simplified curricular lesson plans, vastly improved and intensified coaching of teachers, instructional and curricular materials that (perhaps for the first time) are aligned a) with the lesson plans and with vastly improved and increased coaching and b) are available in the home language of the learners. 13 A description of the components of these early grades reading projects is to be found at Department of Basic Education ( 2017 ). To some extent, these efforts represent the most serious attempt, perhaps since the end of apartheid, to reverse the litany of cogent critiques of classroom instruction presented by Hoadley ( 2012 ) and are documented perhaps most succinctly and accessibly in Spaull and Hoadley ( 2017 ). 14 Even earlier, however, critics of C2005 had experimented with methods of direct instruction that seemed to work well, at least at imparting basic concepts (Schollar, 2015 ).

Now, one might over-read into these glimmers of hope, because of the usual ‘external validity’ problem of pilot projects and randomized controlled trials. However, there is a lot of evidence from other countries that the basic ‘formula’, elsewhere referred to as ‘structured pedagogy’, (Snilstveit et al., 2015) used in these particular efforts in South Africa, does work in general, and are thus less of a concern over what one might call pedagogical or cultural external validity. 15 This is part of a broader worldwide trend towards ‘teaching at the right level’ while eschewing the damage created by curricula and teaching and lesson approaches that are theoretically ambitious but very badly implemented in practice. 16 While strong evidence would suggest that these programs do not suffer from much of a pedagogical or cultural external validity problem, they could suffer from the usual ‘exhaustion when taken to scale by government problem’, whereby, when a programme is implemented by government, the necessary fidelity which can be guaranteed by good governance and accountability is lost, as has been documented in other cases (see Bold et al., 2013 ).

But serious concerns remain. The glimmers of hope noted above seem real enough. But they are either not big, or if big, not sustained (yet) over any serious length of time. Or, the changes refer only to pilot projects, sometimes without rigorous randomized controls (though sometimes with). South Africa’s educational outcomes are so far behind other middle-income countries, as noted above, that stronger remedies seem necessary, and most commentators on the scene do not see them. Either the lists of remedies scholars provide are very long, or the remedies would seem to require using up quite a bit of political capital. The pedagogical dysfunctionalities observed in the classroom and reported by Hoadley ( 2012 ) are many and profound. Nick Taylor, writing for DPME/Department of Basic Education ( 2017 ), notes that time management in schools remains poor, teacher content knowledge is way below what is needed to sustain instruction, formative assessment is weak, and teaching and learning materials are not always present. He lays particular blame on corruption, nepotism, and usage of union power to select often inappropriate teachers—in essence, governance and management problems.

2.6 Tentative Conclusions

To speak of the results of the transformation as if they could be causally traced to the transformation would be mistaken. Policy changes as massive as those wrought in South Africa are hardly controlled experiments; any mention of causality therefore should be seen with suspicion. We occasionally lapse into language that seems to assign causality because it is inelegant to be qualifying constantly. But the proviso holds throughout.

The thesis of this section, and hence of the whole chapter, could be put something like this:

Governance was reformed and unified in ways which were responsive to both the imperatives of South Africa’s broader political settlement, and to normative conceptions of ‘good practice’ which prevailed at the time, both globally and within South Africa.

The government succeeded in transferring resources in a sharp manner. Perhaps not as much as would have been desired by progressive educationists, but to an extent that is unprecedentedly large relative to the international experience and, strikingly, was achieved within a framework of severe macroeconomic constraint.

The curriculum was reformed and unified so as to do away with odious apartheid implications and at the same time to ‘modernize’ it according to the dominant global and national perceptions of the day, recognizing that even under apartheid certain ‘modernizing’ reforms had already started.

Yet, at least by the middle 2000s, or approximately ten years after the formal end of apartheid and the start of the transformations, there seemed not to be much to show for the effort, particularly viewed from the twin lenses of efficiency and equity. Numbers (‘access’) had increased a little (in some sub-sectors a lot). But learning outcomes, and their inequality, in particular, seemed largely stuck, in spite of some glimmers of hope.

The general view continues to be that the overall effort has been a failure. Indeed, almost immediately upon the announcement of the reforms, especially the curricular reforms, critics such as Jansen ( 2001 ) had noted these reforms could not possibly work, or at least not to the extent of the hopes pinned upon them.

The conclusion might be that the better-off segments of the system, at the outset of the transformations, were able to weather the changes in funding, either by self-funding or by becoming more efficient. It is also possible to conclude that they were able to either tune out some of the least useful of the curricular reforms, had already adapted them (given that some of the curricular reforms pre-dated the end of apartheid), or were able to adapt them in light of what they saw as more sensible, given that these segments of the sector had much better-trained teachers, and given that the governance of these schools trusted (and had good reasons to trust) the professionalism of the teachers (and principals). These segments of the system were those where ‘good governance’ (defined elsewhere in this book) was common.

In other segments of the system, however, neither teachers nor other officials within the education bureaucracy had the training, background, and incentives to put in the hard effort it would have taken to interpret the new curricular and teaching/learning dispensations in a manner that made sense to them and for their environment. Nor, of course, notwithstanding the enhanced role afforded them vis-à-vis school-level governance, were parents in a position to provide support for implementation of the new approaches. Schools on the whole seem unable to make much use of the extra non-personnel funding allocated via the Funding Norms. Informality and maybe even corruption seem to be playing a role in preventing good management.

But things continue to evolve. Some pilot research has shown that, at least in the lower grades, there are sensible ways to simplify and structure the curriculum so that children learn better. These simplified approaches are also easier, in principle, for parents to supervise and in that sense might fit better with a governance model that provides School Governing Bodies considerable power—though the whole notion of the sorts of stable, idealized ‘parenthood’ envisioned in the South African Schools Act might be problematic in the South African context. In that sense, presuming that additional study and evidence confirms the seemingly compelling evidence from pilot projects, curricular simplification or, at any rate, clearer specification of lesson plans and more direct teaching (along with delivery of more and better learning materials and capacity building for teachers) could be nicely made to coincide with a revamped role for localized parental accountability, if governance could be improved along the lines explored in later chapters of this book.

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The figure uses both a formally estimated semi-logarithmic fit of results (the ‘survival’ rate to Standard 5) on the vertical axis and inputs (cost per student) on the horizontal axis, as well as a casually estimated ‘envelope’ or ‘near envelope’ of the data.

For reasons explained below, we prefer to assure the integrity of international comparisons by using one standardized international database, in this case the World Bank’s, which derives from data reported by countries to UNESCO. If one debates the SA data, then in principle one could similarly debate the data for every single country, and these kinds of comparisons would become either impossible or very tedious to read. The point of using a large number of comparators is to support fairly general statements such as those we make here.

See n. 7 for a discussion of the comparator countries.

A Google search for ‘World Bank interest in education decentralization’, for instance, produces, at the top of its search results, five documents, all produced between 1996 and 1998, some by prominent and influential thinkers such as Mark Bray, Edward Fiske, and Harry Patrinos (Bray, 1996 ; Fiske, 1996 ; Patrinos and Ariasingam, 1997 ).

See, for example, Mandela (2004), Sparks (1996), Marais (1998), Seekings and Nattrass (2005), Gevisser (2007), and Welsh (2009).

In South Africa, public education dominates, both historically and to the present day; as of 2016, about 95% of school-going children were enrolled in the public system. See https://www.education.gov.za/Portals/0/Documents/Reports/School%20Realities%202016%20Final.pdf?ver=2016-11-30-111439-223 , p. 3.

For this section, we constructed a set of comparator countries consisting of countries that were a) upper-middle income in the period 1990–95, according to the World Bank’s classification for that period, b) were ‘big enough to have complexity and interest’ (our judgement—examples include Antigua and Barbuda, Malta, etc.), and c) not oil-rich (Gabon, Saudi Arabia, etc.). The resulting comparator countries were Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Malaysia, Mexico, Slovenia, South Africa, and Uruguay. As is often the case in using international databases, not all countries have data for all variables in all years, so the medians for the comparators have to be interpreted with caution: only for the overall sense of direction. Note that in principle, it would have been possible to use South African data for the South African case, but we opted to use World Bank data for all countries, as this would provide a standardized set where data would, hopefully, be maximally comparable to each other.

For instance, Andrew Donaldson (1992), who would become a prominent actor in the Ministry of Finance, was already noting in the early 1990s that the education system in South Africa was notoriously inefficient: ‘“Internal efficiency” is of course not the only aspect of the economic efficiency of the education system, but it is all too easily neglected…And in South Africa, improved educational opportunities must be afforded to some 10m children…although available financial resources are stretched more or less to their limits. In these circumstances, improving the “internal efficiency” of the education system is the only way forward…I take the view that there is scope for improvements in the way schooling and training are organized and provided in South Africa, that this is an arena in which the post-apartheid state can meet substantially the rising expectations of the new electorate, and that reorganising the education industry will lay an important foundation for sustainable long-term economic growth’.

The age groups in question are three to twenty-four, to take into account pre-primary and even pre-Grade 0 pre-primary all the way up to tertiary.

Using SACMEQ data we have corrected for ‘access effort’ by creating a simple index of human capital contemporaneously produced by the country, by taking the SACMEQ score (averaging reading and mathematics) times the primary school completion rate (divided by 100, to keep the numbers in the same range as the scores). This score is then controlled by the speed with which the completion rate has been improved (increasing the completion quickly would presumably drain resources away from improving learning outcomes), the fiscal effort the country devotes to education (education expenditure as a share of GDP), and GDP per capita.

Note that the scores and the absolute differences between the low and high SES levels are shown as bars on the left-hand vertical scale, whereas the relative differences (high minus low divided by the mean) are shown as lines, on the right-hand vertical scale.

Inequality also happens to have increased between 2000 and 2007, though this is not shown in the graphic. Inequality seems to have increased in all countries, but it increased most for South Africa.

See https://internationalednews.com/2015/06/10/brahm-fleisch-on-building-a-new-infrastructure-for-learning-in-gauteng-south-africa/ . Also see Spaull’s weblog on the ideas behind Early Grade Reading projects in South Africa, at https://nicspaull.com/ .

It is important to note that the ineffective techniques noted by these various authors, which the pilot projects are reversing, are not necessarily ‘due’ to post-apartheid curricular reforms. These practices have been endured by poor South African children for many decades; but the confused idealism of the post-apartheid curricular reforms did nothing to improve on the situation or, in some cases, could have made it worse. This would be especially the case where parents are not able to understand the nature of the transformations and are under-equipped to hold teachers accountable for ineffective practices, teachers found the new practices bewildering, and districts were unable to help.

See literature such as Piper and Korda ( 2010 ) from Liberia and Freudenberger and Davis ( 2017 ) from Kenya. Kelly and Graham ( 2017 ) mention many other country cases. Patrinos describes the Papua New Guinea case ( https://hpatrinos.com/tag/papua-new-guinea-education-early-grade-reading/ ).

Banerjee et al. ( 2016 ) and Pritchett and Beatty ( 2012 ) discuss the global experience.

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Home > The Review > Vol. 2 (1999)

Article Title

Bantu Education

Andrew Phillips , St. John Fisher University Follow

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African History | Education | Race and Ethnicity

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph. South Africa has had to deal with issues of racial differences since colonial times. British settlers came into this foreign country and claimed it as their own. Until recently, these settlers were able to treat the black people of South Africa as a subservient and inferior race as a result of the system of apartheid. Many different strategies were needed to keep this imbalanced system in place. One such strategy was employed through education, or a lack thereof. As long as blacks received a lower quality education than whites, they could not hope to become the political or social equals of whites.

Recommended Citation

Phillips, Andrew. "Bantu Education." The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research 2 (1999): 22-27. Web. [date of access]. <https://fisherpub.sjf.edu/ur/vol2/iss1/6>.

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"In 1953 the government passed the Bantu Education Act, which the people didn't want. We didn't want this bad education for our children. This Bantu Education Act was to make sure that our children only learnt things that would make them good for what the government wanted: to work in the factories and so on; they must not learn properly at school like the white children. Our children were to go to school only three hours a day, two shifts of children every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that more children could get a little bit of learning without government having to spend more money. Hawu! It was a terrible thing that act." Baard and Schreiner, My Spirit is Not Banned, Part 2

There is no space for him [the "Native"] in the European Community above certain forms of labor. For this reason it is of no avail for him to receive training which has its aim in the absorption of the European Community, where he cannot be absorbed. Until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his community and misled him by showing him the greener pastures of European Society where he is not allowed to graze. (quoted in Kallaway, 92)

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Guide: Writing a Conclusion for an Essay on “Why the Bantu Education Act Is Interesting or Important to Know About Today”

Guide: Writing a Conclusion for an Essay on “Why the Bantu Education Act Is Interesting or Important to Know About Today:

Writing a conclusion for an essay about the Bantu Education Act requires not only a summary of the points discussed but also a reflection on the act’s lasting impact and its relevance in today’s society. The Bantu Education Act, implemented in 1953 in South Africa, was a law designed to systematically segregate education by race, significantly disadvantaging black South African students. Understanding its implications helps to grasp the roots of educational disparities and racial attitudes in contemporary South Africa and beyond. This guide will help you craft a compelling conclusion that underscores the significance of this law and its relevance today.

Step 1: Restate the Thesis

Begin your conclusion by succinctly restating your thesis statement , reminding the reader of the primary argument of your essay . This restatement should reflect on why it is crucial to understand the Bantu Education Act in the context of current issues.

Example: “The Bantu Education Act was not just a policy of its time but a deliberate attempt to institutionalize racial inequality through education, the effects of which resonate in today’s ongoing struggle for educational equity.”

Step 2: Summarize Key Points

Briefly summarize the key points made throughout your essay that support your thesis. Highlight how the Act was designed, its impact on black South African communities, and the legacy it has left on the educational system.

The Act’s aim to limit black South Africans’ access to quality education.
The systemic creation of educational disparities between races.
The long-term effects on employment and socio-economic status for black South Africans.

Step 3: Reflect on the Current Relevance

Discuss the current relevance of understanding the Bantu Education Act. This could include drawing parallels between past educational policies and current disparities, the importance of historical context in addressing racial inequalities, or how the Act informs present-day educational reforms and societal attitudes.

Example: “Today, the Bantu Education Act serves as a stark reminder of how laws can entrench societal inequalities and highlights the importance of education in shaping societal values and opportunities.”

Step 4: Emphasize the Importance of Awareness

Argue why awareness and understanding of the Bantu Education Act are crucial for current and future generations. This can involve a call to action, a reflection on the importance of learning from history, or a discussion on the role of education in societal change.

Example: “Recognizing the enduring legacy of the Bantu Education Act is essential not only for rectifying past injustices but also for guiding current efforts towards creating a more equitable educational landscape.”

Step 5: Conclude with a Strong Closing Statement

End your conclusion with a powerful statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. This should tie back to the broader implications of the essay and the significance of the topic.

Example: “As we reflect on the Bantu Education Act and its consequences, we are reminded of the profound impact of educational policies on the fabric of society. Understanding this piece of history is crucial in our collective journey towards an inclusive and equitable future.”

Final Tips:

Keep it concise: Your conclusion should be succinct and to the point, ideally no more than a few sentences or a paragraph.
Connect to the present: Make sure to articulate why this historical issue remains relevant today.
End on a hopeful note: While acknowledging the challenges, try to conclude with a message of hope or progress, emphasizing the possibility of positive change.

By following these steps, your conclusion will effectively underscore the significance of the Bantu Education Act, engaging readers with its historical importance and its implications for contemporary society.

Examples for Writing a Conclusion for an Essay on “Why the Bantu Education Act Is Interesting or Important to Know About Today”

Example 1: the significance of the bantu education act.

In conclusion, the Bantu Education Act remains a critical chapter in South Africa’s history, serving as a clear example of apartheid’s dehumanizing policies. By institutionalizing racial disparities in education, this Act not only curtailed the potential of generations but also laid the groundwork for enduring socio-economic divides. Today, its legacy prompts a critical examination of current educational inequalities and the importance of implementing policies that foster genuine equity. Awareness and understanding of this Act are indispensable for both acknowledging the injustices of the past and ensuring they are not repeated. It stands as a testament to the power of education as a tool for liberation or oppression, emphasizing the responsibility to cultivate learning environments that uplift all members of society.

Example 2: Understanding the Bantu Education Act Today

The Bantu Education Act’s historical context and its ramifications are not merely academic; they are vivid reminders of how systemic injustices can shape societies for decades. This Act’s deliberate undermining of black South Africans’ educational opportunities has left scars that are visible in today’s educational and economic landscapes. Recognizing the Act’s role in apartheid’s broader strategy of segregation is essential for comprehending the complexities of current racial disparities. As we move forward, this understanding underscores the urgency of dismantling remaining barriers to equality in education, reaffirming the principle that education should empower, not exclude. Hence, reflecting on the Bantu Education Act enlightens the path towards a more equitable future, making its study both interesting and imperative.

Example 3: The Legacy of the Bantu Education Act

Reflecting on the Bantu Education Act reveals much about the persistent challenges within South Africa’s education system and the global struggle against racial injustice. By marginalizing a significant portion of the population from quality education, the Act contributed to a cycle of poverty and disenfranchisement that continues to affect millions. Its examination today is not just about historical curiosity but about understanding the roots of inequality to effectively address them. In bringing awareness to such laws, we are reminded of the importance of vigilance in protecting the rights and dignity of all individuals. The Act’s enduring significance lies in its lesson that the fight for educational equity is ongoing, requiring continuous effort and dedication.

Example 4: The Continued Relevance of the Bantu Education Act

The Bantu Education Act offers more than a glimpse into apartheid’s cruel machinations; it serves as a critical lesson on the impact of education—or the lack thereof—on societal development and individual potential. In today’s world, where knowledge is power, understanding this Act’s consequences highlights the need for inclusive educational policies that recognize and celebrate diversity. It challenges us to question who has access to education and on what terms, prompting reflections on our progress towards truly democratic societies. By delving into the Act’s history, we not only pay homage to those who suffered under its regime but also commit to a future where education is a tool for unity and growth, not division.

Example 5: The Importance of the Bantu Education Act in Modern Discourse

In summarizing the impact of the Bantu Education Act, it’s clear that this policy was more than an educational framework; it was a systematic approach to suppress a population’s aspirations and freedoms. Its relevance extends into the present day, serving as a cautionary tale of how legislation can be used to perpetuate inequality. Studying this Act allows us to appreciate the strides made towards equality and the pitfalls that remain. It embodies the imperative to remain vigilant in safeguarding the right to education for all, ensuring that future generations are empowered through learning. As such, the Bantu Education Act is not just a relic of the past but a cornerstone for understanding and overcoming the challenges of today.

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The Historic Impact of Ruby Bridges on American Education

This essay about Ruby Bridges highlights her role as a symbol of courage and resilience in the fight for racial equality. In 1960, at just six years old, Ruby became the first African American student to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, facing intense hostility. Her actions not only challenged segregation but also inspired future generations to continue the struggle for justice and equality in education.

How it works

In the rich tapestry of American history, few stories interweave the threads of bravery, perseverance, and the pursuit of equality as profoundly as that of Ruby Bridges. Born into a world starkly divided by race, Ruby emerged as a beacon of hope and defiance amidst entrenched segregation and systemic injustice.

The year was 1960, a pivotal period in America’s turbulent journey toward racial equality. Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, six-year-old Ruby Bridges stood on the precipice of history as she prepared to enter William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans.

Unbeknownst to her, she was about to undertake a journey that would leave a lasting imprint on the landscape of American education.

With her head held high and her spirit unyielding, Ruby stepped into the school, escorted by federal marshals who protected her from the hatred and hostility that awaited outside. The image of her solitary figure, dressed in a pristine white dress and clutching her schoolbooks, epitomized the courage and determination of an entire generation of African Americans who dared to challenge the status quo.

Day after day, Ruby faced a torrent of jeers and taunts from angry protesters, undeterred in her quest for knowledge and equality. Her steadfast resolve in the face of adversity captured the hearts and minds of people nationwide, igniting widespread support for the desegregation of schools.

But Ruby’s impact reached far beyond the symbolic act of integrating a single school. Her actions catalyzed a seismic shift in American education, dismantling the barriers of segregation that had long separated black and white students. In classrooms across the country, her legacy inspired a new generation of activists to champion equality and justice in education.

Yet, Ruby’s journey was fraught with challenges. Despite the legal victories achieved in the courts, the reality of integration often proved difficult and met with resistance. In many communities, white parents opposed the presence of black students in their schools, clinging to the remnants of segregation.

Nevertheless, Ruby refused to be intimidated by the opposition. Armed with nothing but her courage and determination, she pressed forward, determined to create opportunities for herself and future generations of African American students in the hallowed halls of American education.

In the ensuing decades, Ruby Bridges emerged as a tireless advocate for equality and justice in education. Through her work as a speaker, author, and activist, she ensured that the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement were not forgotten but rather served as a beacon of hope for future generations.

Today, as America grapples with the enduring legacy of racism and inequality in its educational system, Ruby Bridges’s story serves as a poignant reminder of the progress made and the work that remains. Her courage and resilience stand as a testament to the power of ordinary individuals to effect extraordinary change, and her legacy continues to inspire all who dream of a more just and equitable future.

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Stephen Bantu Biko

Introduction

Stephen (Steve) Bantu Biko was a popular voice of Black liberation in South Africa between the mid 1960s and his death in police detention in 1977. This was the period in which both the ANC and the PAC had been officially banned and the disenfranchised Black population (especially the youth) were highly receptive to the prospect of a new organisation that could carry their grievances against the Apartheid state. Thus it was that Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) came to prominence and although Biko was not its only leader, he was its most recognisable figure. It was Biko, along with others who guided the movement of student discontent into a political force unprecedented in the history of South Africa. Biko and his peers were responding to developments that emerged in the high phase of Apartheid, when the Nationalist Party (NP) , in power for almost two decades, was restructuring the country to conform to its policies of separate development. The NP went about untangling what little pockets of integration and proximity there were between White, Black, Coloured and Indian people by creating new residential areas, new parallel institutions such as schools, universities and administrative bodies, and indeed, new ‘countries’, the tribal homelands.

Though Biko was killed before his thirty first birthday, his influence on South Africa was, and continues to be profound. Aside from the BCM, he is also credited with launching the South African Students Organisation (SASO) , which was created as a Black alternative to the liberal National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) . It is necessary to disambiguate this move, as Biko is frequently misunderstood to have been ”anti-White.” This categorisation is demonstrably untrue, as Biko had no issue with White people per se - his target was always, ultimately white supremacy and the Apartheid government. The decision to break away from NUSAS and the formation of the BCM was rather to create distance from liberal sympathisers who could attempt to speak for their Black counterparts but were nonetheless, by virtue of their race, beneficiaries of an iniquitous system. Biko is best remembered for empowering Black voices, installing a sense of Black pride similar to Césaire and Senghor’s ‘Negritude’, and for taking the liberation struggle forward and galvanising the youth movement.

Childhood and Schooling

Biko was born in Tarkastad in the Eastern Province (now Eastern Cape ) on 18 December 1946, the third child of Mzingaye Biko and Nokuzola Macethe Duna. Mzingaye worked as a policeman, and later as a clerk in the King William’s Town Native Affairs office. An intelligent man, he was also enrolled at the University of South Africa (UNISA), the distance-learning university, but did not complete enough courses to get his law degree before he died. In 1948, the family moved to Ginsberg Township, just outside of King William’s Town in today's Eastern Cape. The Bikos eventually owned their own house in Zaula Street in the Brownlee section of Ginsberg - this despite Nokuzola's meagre income as a domestic worker.

Mzingaye died suddenly in 1950, when Steve was four years old. His mother subsequently raised the children on her own, working as a cook at Grey’s Hospital.

Steve’s elder brother, Khaya, was politically active as well as enjoying sports. He started a rugby club called Sea Lions, which later morphed into the Star of Hope rugby club. Khaya was well-read and well-spoken, and he became a reporter for the school newspaper at Forbes Grant School, and got involved with the local branch of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) , a political tendency which had a strong presence in the area. After coming under the influence of Malcolm Dyani, who was also at Forbes Grant, Khaya was made the secretary of the local branch, and he tried to use the Star of Hope rugby club to recruit people into the PAC.

Steve was known as a joker by his friends and schoolmates, Zinzo Gulwa, Ndikho Moss, Sipho Makwedini and Siphiwo Ceko. Around 1952 (the exact date varies from source to source), he went to Charles Morgan Higher Primary School when he started Standard Three (Grade Five). His teacher, Damsie Monaheng, who remembered him as a naughty boy who was always barefoot, recommended that he be promoted to Standard Five, so he skipped Standard Four. Although his friends never saw him study, he was one of the brightest kids in the class, and he would help the other kids when they did not understand their lessons.

Steve passed Standard Six in 1959 and in 1960 he went on to Forbes Grant, a school through which many passed to become prominent figures in post-apartheid South Africa. At Forbes, Steve eventually befriended Larry Bekwa, who had been expelled from Lovedale College after he took part in a strike protesting against South Africa’s becoming a republic in 1961. Steve proved to be a studious high school student, excelling in mathematics and English. In 1962, at the age of 16, Steve and Larry completed their Junior Certificate (Grade Ten).

Steve then went to Lovedale, where his brother Khaya, was already a student. However, in April, Steve was taken into custody by the police, who came to the school to arrest Khaya, who was suspected of being involved with Poqo , the armed wing of the PAC. The police took both brothers to King William’s Town, 60km away, and Khaya was charged. He was given a sentence of two years, with 15 months suspended, and served his term at Fort Glamorgan jail near East London .

Steve was released and returned home, but he ran away from Ginsberg to live with his friend Larry Bekwa in Peddie (Eastern Cape) for the rest of the year. Nevertheless, he continued going to classes at Lovedale, where he became friends with Barney Pityana , who was at the school on an Andrew Smith bursary. The political tensions at Lovedale were palpable, as Steve arrived at the school soon after Thabo Mbeki had been expelled, following strikes by students. Following Khaya’s arrest, Steve was interrogated by the police and subsequently he was also expelled from Lovedale after only attending for three months. This incident inculcated in Steve a "strong resentment toward White authority", which would shape his political career.

Khaya was barred from attending any school after his release from prison, so he began to work as a clerk for a law firm. Concerned about his younger brother’s education, he wrote to various schools and got Steve accepted at St Francis College (a Catholic boarding School outside Durban ) in Marianhill in Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal ) in 1964, where he began doing Form Four. By now, after his brush with the police, Steve had become politicised. Khaya remembered:

“Steve was expelled for absolutely no reason at all. But in retrospect I welcome the South African government’s gesture of exposing a really good politician. I had unsuccessfully tried to get Steve interested in politics. The police were able to do in one day what had eluded me for years. This time the great giant was awakened.”

Steve was in illustrious company at Marianhill, and he thrived, becoming the vice chair of the St Francis College’s Literary and Debating Society. He became friends with Jeff Baqwa , who described Steve’s burgeoning analytical and political capacities during a discussion about Rhodesia’s (now Zimbabwe ) unilateral declaration of independence [UDI]:

“We needed clarity on UDI in Rhodesia, and that’s where Steve shone. And when Churchill died Steve was there to describe the political implications. He was able to make all these connections and link them to what was going on in South Africa.”

Steve underwent the traditional Xhosa initiation rites at his uncle’s house in Zwelitsha, King William’s Town in December 1964, and “returned to St Francis as a man in 1965,” according to the author Xolela Mangcu.

University and NUSAS

After matriculating from St Francis with very good grades, Steve was admitted to Durban Medical School at the University of Natal Non European section (UNNE) at the beginning of 1966. Known as Wentworth, Steve lived in the Alan Taylor Residence, the segregated living quarters for Black students at Natal University (now known as the University of kwaZulu-Natal–UKZN).

The Black Section had its own Students Representative Council (SRC), which was a member of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). Steve was elected to the SRC in his first year, and he became involved in NUSAS politics, attending the annual NUSAS conference for the first time. But even before he went to the conference, he was engaging in debates about the role of NUSAS, especially since White students dominated the body, there being more Whites than Blacks at South African universities at the time. The African National Congress (ANC) aligned African Students Association (ASA) was in favour of remaining in NUSAS, while the PAC-aligned African Students Union of South Africa (ASUSA) was in favour of breaking off from the supposedly national student body.

At this time, Steve befriended Aubrey Mokoape, who had been involved with the PAC, and they engaged in frequent debates about the NUSAS question. Mokoape was against remaining in NUSAS, while Steve argued that it was useful to belong to the organisation – because of its resources, if not for any other reason.

The NUSAS Conference of July 1967

In July 1967, the young Steve went to the NUSAS conference at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, his second appearance at the annual gathering. The Wentworth students travelled to Grahamstown by train, and debated the affiliation issue during their trip, resolving to pull out of NUSAS if the organisers adhered to Apartheid legislation by housing the Black students separately.

Biko recalled the circumstances while giving evidence at the SASO/BPC trial in 1975:

“It so happened that when we got to Rhodes University, in the first instance the conference organiser could not quite say where we were going to stay. We were all put in the hall in different places, and we eventually noticed that all the White students went first, then some of the Indian students, then eventually he came to us to say he had found a church where we could stay. At that moment I felt we had ample reason to stick by our decision on the train.”

In a letter to SRC presidents written in February 1970, after Steve had been elected president of SASO, he wrote:

“In the NUSAS conference of 1967 the Blacks were made to stay at a church building in the Grahamstown location, each day being brought to the conference site by cars etc. On the other hand their White “brothers” were staying in residences around the conference site. This is perhaps the turning point in the history of Black support for NUSAS. So appalling were the conditions that it showed the Blacks just how valued they were in the organisation.”

The students were indeed fed and housed separately, in accordance with the Separate Amenities Act. The Black students were aggrieved, but when the NUSAS executive condemned the University for the Arrangements, the Black students were divided over whether to withdraw their participation.

When the conference opened the next day, Steve stood up to deliver his regional report, and he did so in isiXhosa, to drive home the point about Black students’ alienation from the NUSAS agenda. The President of the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) SRC, Robin Margo, proposed a motion to condemn the University Council, which the conference passed.

Steve then proposed that the conference be suspended, because the NUSAS organisers had known in advance that the students would be housed separately. After a long discussion, his motion was rejected.

The Black students felt disadvantaged by their small number, by the use of English as the medium of the conference, and by the distance between their concerns and those of the White students. Steve and his fellow Black students walked out.

Steve left the conference and went to Port Elizabeth , Eastern Cape to see Barney Pityana, who had just attended the launch of the University Christian Movement (UCM) in Rosettenville, in Johannesburg , Transvaal (now Gauteng ). A law student at Fort Hare University, Pityana was one of many students later expelled from that university, in 1969.

The UCM was led by Colin Collins and Basil Moore, both radical priests who introduced the ideas of Black Theology to South Africans. They forged links with the South African Council of Churches (SACC) , with the Christian Institute (CI) and with the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) . The UCM would play an important role in facilitating the birth of SASO.

Steve travelled throughout the country to caucus for the creation of a Black-only student body. Pityana was initially opposed to the idea, but was swayed by Biko, after which he became a staunch supporter of the idea and Biko’s most important lieutenant.

Stutterheim, 1968

At the UCM conference in Stutterheim in July 1968, Steve and his Black comrades were faced with a situation similar to the one at the Rhodes conference a year earlier. The students had to leave the venue after 72 hours, travel to a Black township, and then return – all this so they would not break the law that prevented Blacks from being in a White area for more than 72 hours. The move irritated Biko, who felt it was hypocritical.

After the conference Steve, Pityana and others met at Biko’s home in Ginsberg, 35km from Stutterheim, to discuss the launch of a Black-only student body. Steve was tasked with the mobilisation of Black students from all the Black campuses.

They went to Fort Hare to attend a meeting of Black Christian student bodies where Basil Moore was to be the main speaker, but Moore was not allowed to speak, and Steve was asked to be the main speaker. The meeting was meant to see the establishment of a UCM branch at Fort Hare, which did take place, but more importantly, students there resolved to join in the formation of the South African Students Organisation (SASO).

At Fort Hare, students were polarised between those who wanted to re-establish the SRC and those opposed to the move, with Justice Moloto supporting the former and Pityana the latter. Moloto became the president of UCM, and was thus well-positioned to provide financial aid for SASO when it emerged.

Despite these developments, Steve was still open to NUSAS, hoping to form a pressure group within the national organisation rather than severing ties with it.

Meanwhile, Biko was living at the Alan Taylor Residence, where his close friends included Vuyelwa Mashalaba, Charles Sibisi, Chapman Palweni and Goolam ‘Gees’ Abram, an Indian medical student from Benoni, east of Johannesburg. Later the group was joined by Ben Ngubane and Ben Mgulwa.

Through Vuyelwa Mashalaba Biko met Mamphela Ramphele , who began her second year medical studies at UNNE in 1968.

Wits University Congress 1968

For the NUSAS congress at Wits University in 1968, the president of the Wits SRC, John Kane Berman, ensured that problems regarding accommodation would not be repeated, and the Congress was largely uneventful, according to Biko. But when an Afrikaner student delivered his report in Afrikaans, Gees Abram delivered a report in Urdu, while Steve delivered his in isiXhosa. When, at the conclusion of the proceedings, the White students sang the South African anthem, Die Stem, the Black students sang Nkosi Sikelele iAfrika. Duncan Innes, a close friend of Biko, was elected president of NUSAS after Biko nominated him for the position.

When Innes was elected president of NUSAS, Biko congratulated him in a letter on 22 August 1968. Biko wrote: ‘I would like to convey to you congratulations from our local committee on your election as President and a declaration of support and full co-operation during your term of office.’

In November 1968, Steve again assured Innes that he was not in favour of disaffiliation from NUSAS, but his plan to properly establish SASO continued.

Steve sent out invitations to all the Black student bodies he had been in contact with, on 14 October 1968, asking them to attend the launch of SASO from 1-3 December that year. The students met at Marianhill in December 1968, and officially founded SASO.

SASO’s founding Congress

SASO’s founding congress was held at Turfloop, Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo ) in July 1969, and Steve was elected the first president, with Petrus Machaka as deputy president.

Steve’s presidential address was titled ‘SASO – Its Role, its Significance and its Future’, and as the title suggests, he spelt out the reasons the organisation came into being, and what role it was meant to play. Steve spoke of the organisation being forged by those treading a middle path, between Black militants who rejected any links with NUSAS and White students who saw the organisation as rejecting the liberal stance towards multiracial interaction. At this stage, Steve emphasised that SASO was not aiming to replace NUSAS as a national student organisation, and that they accepted the role of NUSAS in that capacity. But he also said:

“What SASO objects to is the dichotomy between principle and practice so apparent among members of that organisation (NUSAS). While very few would like to criticise NUSAS policy and principles as they appear on paper, one tends to get worried at all the hypocrisy practised by the members of that organisation. This serves to make the non-White members feels unaccepted and insulted in many instances.”

Steve went on to talk about the fact that NUSAS was dominated by White students, both in terms of numbers and leadership, in a country where Blacks were in the majority – in 1969 there were 27,000 White students at universities, while Black university enrolment totalled 3,000.

Steve also feared there would be a swing to the right within NUSAS, and that the influence of Black students had to be brought to bear on the organisation. For these and other reasons SASO would not become an affiliate of NUSAS. Indeed, NUSAS had been undergoing stormy conflicts from the beginnings of apartheid: its leaders were far more radical than the rank and file members and in 1964, Jonty Driver delivered a speech that reflected the schism, and there was a reaction that saw more moderate students begin to edge out the radicals. Ultimately the BCM exerted a radicalising influence on NUSAS, with many later leaders drawing on the ideas of the Black militants.

Around this time Biko began to have a romantic relationship with Mamphela Ramphele, who was becoming increasingly conflicted as she was betrothed to Dick Mmabane, whom she had met while in high school. With their two families already making wedding arrangements, Ramphele got married to Mmabane in December 1969. Biko was devastated.

The split from NUSAS, 1970

Steve did not attend the NUSAS conference at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 1969, as he was busy travelling to the Black campuses trying to caucus support for SASO. But the Black student leaders who did attend embarked on a walkout. Neville Curtis , far more radical than previous White Presidents, was elected President of NUSAS for the 1969-70 terms. Together with Horst Kleinschmidt , Paula Ensor and others, he engaged in radical activities that eventually resulted in all of them being banned. Sheila Lapinsky, Paul Pretorius, Clive Keegan, Chris Wood, and Philip le Roux were also banned.

Steve began a relationship with Paula Ensor, who fully supported the creation of SASO. Writing about Biko and SASO years later, she said:

“The withdrawal of SASO and the transformation of NUSAS were outward manifestations of Biko’s influence on White student politics. But his influence was also felt in more personal ways, especially by students based in Durban at that time, as I was - for a small group of White students, SASO represented the re-emergence of radical politics and needed to be actively supported.”

Steve attended the 1970 NUSAS congress in Eston, Natal, as an observer and as a delegate from SASO. Paul Pretorius proposed a motion that NUSAS recognise SASO “as the body best able to represent the views and needs of Black students in South Africa.” The motion also recommended closer ties between SASO and NUSAS, with ‘maximum contact and co-operation’, and confirmed that both organisations were committed to non-racialism even if they had different methods of achieving this state. The motion caused an uproar, with the Wits and UCT delegations threatening to walk out of the congress. While the president, Neville Curtis, tried to foster a compromise, the majority of the students rejected the proposition. At this point, Ensor embarked on a piece of anti-apartheid theatre that stunned the congress: she went across to Biko and sat on his lap, effectively announcing that she and Steve were involved in an illegal relationship under Apartheid law.

In his personal life, Biko had met Nontsikelelo ‘Ntsiki’ Mashalaba, a cousin of Vuyelwa, and they married in December 1970 in King William’s Town at the Magistrate’s Court. They held a celebration at his mother’s house. Their first child, a son, Nkosinathi, was born in 1971.

SASO Takes Off

In July 1970, at the 1st General Students Council of SASO, Barney Pityana was elected President, and Steve was elected Chair of SASO Publications. Biko began to publish articles using the pseudonym Frank Talk, under the heading ‘I Write What I like’, in the SASO newsletters. In the August/September newsletter, he published the piece ‘Black Souls in White Skins’. After painting a picture of a more or less homogeneous White community, he turns his attention to the ‘Black souls in White skins’, ‘that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms, that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names, liberals, leftists etc.’. Steve goes on to set out a history of liberal involvement in Black politics, further honing his critique of South African liberalism.

By now the need to appease NUSAS was dispensed with, and the SASO leaders voted to withdraw from NUSAS, refusing to recognise the body as the national student body.

Mamphela Ramphele has described the years from 1969 to 1971 as “the trial period” marked by experimentation with community projects in and around Durban. The students embarked on a series of community-upliftment projects, assisting squatters near the Phoenix settlement, north of Durban, operating a clinic outside Wentworth, south Durban and launching literacy, health and agricultural programmes. These projects continued over the next few years, and helped not only to improve material conditions, but to instil a sense of self-empowerment and self determination, one of the central aims of the BCM.

At the 2nd General Student Council in July 1971 the students set out the aims of Black Consciousness. The students passed a resolution on Black Theology, and rejected the Christianity of the White electorate, which they saw as upholding the structures of oppression. By now SASO was also considering the launch of other bodies, such as national political movements and trade unions.

In the December 1971 holiday period, students conducted a survey in the Winterveldt area near Pretoria , to gather statistics and knowledge that would inform community development projects. They also helped at the Mabopane private clinic and studied gathering places such as bus and taxi ranks, and informal markets. In the north, Turfloop students helped at the nearby Monkwe clinic and developed important relations with the surrounding community.

Meanwhile, an event that was to project SASO onto the national stage occurred in April 1972 at Turfloop. Onkgopotse Abram Tiro was expelled after delivering a speech containing a scathing critique of Bantu education and racist practices at universities and in society in general. Students embarked on a solidarity strike, boycotting their classes, until many were expelled. When they were allowed to return to campus, SASO was suspended, and was only revived in 1974 by Pandelani Nefolovhodwe and his comrades, but they were forced to base themselves off-campus.

At the 3rd General Student Council in July 1972, SASO president Temba Sono delivered a speech that recommended better relations with Whites and with some homeland leaders, provoking outrage among the students. Steve introduced a motion of censure, arguing that the speech was ‘contradictory to SASO policy’ and to the spirit of the policy. Pityana proposed that Sono be expelled from the organisation.

The 3rd council also saw the question of armed struggle hotly debated, with some, led by Keith Mokoape, pushing for SASO to join the military struggle. They were told to ‘search for other grazing lands’ as SASO was determined to remain an above-ground organisation.

On the other hand, the council took strong positions against Apartheid institutions, particularly the Bantustan/homelands system, and Bantu education.

Black People’s Convention (BPC)

During the period from 1970, SASO’s leaders were beginning to consider the limitations of organisations confined to student membership, and the idea of a broader community formation took root, one which would result in the launch of the Black People’s Convention (BPC) . Members of six organisations met in Bloemfontein in April 1971 to discuss the issue, including leaders of the Interdenominational African Ministers’ Association (IDAMASA) and the Association for the Advancement of African People of South Africa (ASSECA). A steering committee was established at a subsequent meeting in August of the same year, with editor of The World and ASSECA President MT Moerane tasked with drawing up a constitution. After a report-back meeting at the Donaldson Community Centre in Orlando in December 1971, a second steering committee was established under the leadership of Drake Koka, which met in Lenasia, south of Soweto , on 13 January 1972.

Throughout these deliberations, there was debate about the nature and function of the proposed body: some saw it as a simple umbrella body that served a co-ordinating function, while others wanted BPC to act as a vanguard body, leading the people in a thoroughly political project, ultimately to take power. Steve was somewhere in between, and he was concerned that decisions were being made without consulting other members of the Black community, especially in Indian and Coloured communities. It was important to Steve to add substance to the non-racial nature of the ‘Black’ as defined by the BCM.

Biko approached Saths Cooper and Strini Moodley to join the second steering committee, which met again in Dube and later at Wentworth in May 1972. After a number of preparatory meetings, BPC was launched at its first national conference in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, in December 1972. With 1,400 delegates from 145 organisations present, the conference proposed to ‘unite all South African Blacks into a political movement, which would seek liberation and emancipation of Black people from both psychological and physical oppression’.

From its beginnings, Steve was active in the affairs of BPC. More formally, he was employed as BPC's full-time youth coordinator.

Black Community Programmes (BCP)

The Black Consciousness Movement, together with the Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society (Spro-cas), set up a branch for community activities, called Black Community Programmes (BCP), in January 1972. Bennie Khoapa, a social worker at the YMCA, was elected to drive the organisation. With funding from Rev. Beyers Naude’s Christian Institute, the BCP embarked on a series of projects, including community development programmes in King William’s Town, Winterveldt and other areas.

Biko, after quitting his medical studies in August 1972, was heavily involved in BCP activities. He described the rationale of the organisation thus:

“Essentially to answer [the] problem that the Black man is a defeated being who finds it very difficult to lift himself up by his boot strings. He is alienated; He is made to live all the time concerned with matters of existence, concerned with tomorrow. Now, we felt that we must attempt to defeat and break this kind of attitude and instil once more a sense of dignity within the Black man. So what we did was to design various types of programmes, present these to the Black community with an obvious illustration that these are done by the Black people for the sole purpose of uplifting the Black community. We believed that we teach people by example.”

Mamphela Ramphele, who was one of Biko’s main lieutenants in BCP, wrote:

“The Eastern Cape office was set up in response to Steve Biko’s banning and restriction to that area in 1973. Offices in the Transvaal and Natal followed in 1974 and 1975 respectively, but the Eastern Cape emerged as the dominant region in terms of projects and the calibre of staff it employed.”

Importantly, BCP became the publishing arm of the BCM, producing Black Review, annual reviews and other publications, such as Creativity in Development and Black Perspectives, as well as Black Viewpoint, through Ravan Press, an arm of Spro-cas.

Bannings: State reaction to BCM’s successes

The BCM was becoming a presence in the country and not only at tertiary institutions – it was visible in the media, at schools, at community theatres, and in events that broke the pattern of quiescence that followed the banning of the ANC and PAC. But the movement also began to suffer casualties, with Tiro perhaps the first of these when he was expelled from the Turfloop University.

Another setback came with the tragic death of Mthuli Shezi in December 1972, when he was pushed onto the path of an oncoming train after defending Black women who were being abused by a railway official. Although not an official response to BC, the incident demonstrates the challenges BC activists faced in trying to achieve normal relations in an abnormal society. What Shezi did was simply to halt one of countless incidences of everyday brutality that the Black population had become accustomed to, and which BC was trying to reverse.

BPC’s plans for myriad sectorial affiliates – unions, women’s organisations, school-based student representative councils, organisations dealing with theology, arts and culture, among others – presented a growing threat to the state’s determination to implement the homeland policy and ensure that Blacks were not allowed to become anything more than ‘temporary sojourners’ in the cities and White areas.

In March 1973, the state cracked down, banning Drake Koka and Bokwe Mafuna , who were engaged in union projects. Biko and Pityana were banned in the same month. In August 1973, Mosibudi Mangena was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly recruiting two policemen to join the armed struggle. Tiro followed the way of Shezi when he was killed in January 1974 by a parcel bomb after he went into exile in Botswana , reflecting a new ruthlessness on the part of the security agencies.

The leaders who replaced those banned in March 1973 were in turn banned in August of the same year. Those who replaced these leaders were themselves banned in October.

Nevertheless the BCM continued to exert a growing influence on the politics of the country, and some decisions brought further repression from the state. The Frelimo Rallies precipitated another huge confrontation between the state and the BCM (more on this below).

The growth, development and outlawing of the broader BCM, which cannot be dealt with in detail in this article, can be read here. Suffice to say that Steve continued on a path that saw his involvement in the movement grow and develop in many directions.

Steve Biko: personal life, politics and return to the Eastern Cape

Steve’s medical studies suffered as a result of his political activism, and he was excluded from the medical school during the course of 1972. Having given up the idea of becoming a doctor, Steve enrolled for various courses at the distance-learning university, Unisa, and in 1973 he began studying law and political science, subjects more relevant to his political involvement.

Throughout this early period, Steve had been based in Natal, and the BCM had offices in Beatrice Street in the town centre.

By 1971 Ramphele’s marriage had broken down, and she resumed her romantic relationship with Biko, who by now had a son, with his wife Ntsiki Mashalaba. The situation proved to be stressful for all concerned, and added to the pressures of their political activities.

The state banned Steve in March 1973 and confined him to the magisterial district of King William’s Town. He returned to Ginsberg, and moved for a while into his mother’s house in Leightonville, the address to which he was restricted by his banning order.

With Steve working for the Black Community Programmes, earning a stipend, the family relied on the income of Ntsiki, who had been the main breadwinner for some time. But with the move to Ginsberg, the Apartheid authorities ensured that Ntsiki would not easily find a job, and the family struggled to make ends meet.

Steve asked Malusi Mpumlwana, who had been his constant companion in Durban, to join him in King William’s Town to help set up an office for the BCM. Mpumlwana went, according to Lindy Wilson, “thinking he could spare a couple of weeks. The weeks turned into months and years; in fact he never left.”

Steve met up with an old friend, Fikile Mlinda, and asked him to help in the establishment of a BPC branch in Ginsberg. They held their first meeting in St Andrews Church, where Anglican priest David Russell was based.

A core of strong comrades from all over the country attended the meeting, including Malusi Mpumlwana, Mapetla Mohapi , Peter Jones and Tom Manthata. Mlinda was soon arrested, evidence that the security agencies were keeping a close eye on Steve’s activities. But members of the local community were encouraged by the strong turnout, including the comrades from far-off regions.

The venue, the Anglican St Andrew’s Church, was provided by David Russell . Steve was drawn to Russell, who became his confidant. Russell had for some time been involved with people forcibly removed from Middelburg and Burgersdorp to Dimbaza , which was part of his parish. Russell had engaged in protests against the forced removals, in one instance going on a fast to draw attention to the hunger of the people moved to a barren area with no infrastructure. But Russell moved from the area in December 1973, depriving Steve of a close and trusted friend.

Steve was also in frequent contact with Father Aelred Stubbs, who had moved to Alice when he began serving at the Federal Seminary. Stubbs, an Anglican priest, came to South Africa to teach at St Peter’s in Rosettenville, Johannesburg. He also became a confidant, and Steve frequently wrote to him when Stubbs was moved back to Rosettenville in 1972.

Besides his BC comrades, Steve was lucky to have his family around him to provide a strong support system. His mother, Mamcete, and sisters Nobandile and Bukelwa all played a part in keeping not just Biko but his comrades in good health and spirits. The Biko family house was a gathering place for the movement, but also a place where they had meals, drank and enjoyed socialising.

Steve engaged in several projects in the area. BCP ran projects that created home industries, Njwaxa Home Industries being one of these. These were attempts, often successful, to create businesses and employment. Njwaxa manufactured leather goods and clothes, employing about 50 people in 1974. A further 70 people were employed by the Border Council of Churches, in collaboration with BCP.

Steve set up the Ginsberg Educational Fund, which provided bursaries for students, many of them going to Fort Hare University. The fund, run by Malusi and Thoko Mpumlwana, Nohle Mohapi and Charles Nqakula, grew to include recipients in other Eastern Cape areas.

Steve also helped revive the Ginsberg Creche to look after toddlers whose mothers needed to leave their homes to go out to work.

Zanempilo Clinic

The Zanempilo Health Clinic, in Zinyoka village, 10km outside King William’s Town, was established with the help of a donation from a South African citizen of German origin. Steve approached B ka T Tyamzashe, who asked Rev James Gawe to help. Steve and BCP were given permission to build the clinic on Gawe’s church land. Steve had a good relationship with Tyamzashe, who was a composer of choral music which Steve was drawn to.

Zanempilo, which opened its doors in January 1975, became the nerve centre of BCM activities. Activists would converge on the site from all over the country, and Ramphele writes that it became a “guesthouse for visitors from far and wide that came to see the project and consult with Steve over a range of issues. These visits increased as Steve’s stature grew both nationally and internationally.”

Steve Biko and Donald Woods

With the emergence of the BCM, several White commentators and institutions reacted to the development of what they saw as a separatist Black grouping that conformed to the wishes of Apartheid plans for an intensified segregation. Donald Woods , the editor of the East London based Daily Despatch, was one of these. Woods, an honorary president of NUSAS, published several pieces condemning SASO and the BCM for their rejection of Whites, arguing that the movement was doing exactly what Apartheid prescribed. Increasingly irritated at Woods’s disparaging comments and arguments for the kind of liberalism he was critical of, Steve sent Mamphela Ramphele to meet with Woods and set him straight on the true nature of the BCM.

The meeting is remembered differently by each of the two protagonists. Ramphele recounts that she explained what BC was all about and urged Woods to meet with Steve so the latter could explain the philosophy, strategy and practices of the BCM. Woods remembers a confident, feisty, woman whose straight talk and intelligence forced him into a reconsideration of BC.

Woods met Steve sometime after Zanempilo opened its doors. The two hit it off, and became firm friends, with Woods and his family becoming frequent visitors to Zanempilo. Woods gave Steve a regular column in the Daily Despatch, but the articles went out under the name of one of Steve’s closest friends, Mapetla Mohapi, since Steve was banned and not allowed to publish anything. Mohapi was later arrested and killed while in detention.

The Frelimo Rallies and the BPC/SASO Trial

With the first generation of BC leaders officially – but not effectively – prohibited from political activity, a second generation of leaders emerged, among them Muntu Myeza. Appointed SASO secretary general for 1974, Myeza came up with the idea of holding rallies to celebrate the transitional government of Frelimo, and the impending independence of Mozambique.

The students decided to hold rallies at Curries Fountain in Durban, and at Turfloop University in the north near Pietersburg (today’s Polokwane). The rallies were banned soon after they were announced, but Myeza and his colleagues were defiant, determined to hold the rallies nonetheless. Biko was cautious, arguing that they were putting the lives of supporters at risk. He was backed by Mapetla Mohapi and Malusi Mpumlwana, but the younger leaders ignored their advice, and the Curries Fountain rally went ahead, with Myeza addressing 5,000 people. At Turfloop, students clashed with the police.

The State’s response was swift: 200 BCM activists were raided by the security police, and 13 leaders were put on trial. After charges against four of the leaders were dropped for various reasons, the State proceeded to put the remaining nine on trial: Saths Cooper, Muntu Myeza, Strini Moodley, Patrick ‘Terror’ Lekota, Nchaupe Mokoape, Pandelani Nefolovhodwe, Nkwenkwe Nkomo, Kaborone Sedibe and Zithulele Cindi. The trial, officially named ‘the State vs Cooper and eight others,’ quickly became known as the SASO/BPC trial, and became a major political event in the history of resistance politics.

Steve was subpoenaed as a defence witness, and he appeared in the dock at the Pretoria Supreme Court from 3 May to 7 May, 1976 for an entire week. He was faced with a difficult task: he had to present Black Consciousness as a progressive anti-apartheid movement, but he had to take care not to provide the state with ammunition to find the defendants guilty of ‘terrorism’ or incitement to insurrection, which were the charges the state levelled against the accused.

This was the first time Steve spoke in public after being banned in March 1973.

According to Lindy Wilson:

“The prosecutor constantly led arguments in which he attempted to connect BC, and those charged, with the politics of the banned movements and their leaders. Biko was called at the very time that the BPC was embarking on its unifying role aimed at making contact with those banned organisations, and his genius lay in the way in which he kept many balls in the air at once, not compromising, not intimidating and yet maintaining the attention of the judge. Not everything he said was exactly the way it was.”

The country was gripped by the reports of Steve’s testimony, which some analysts have described as a ‘seminar on Black Consciousness’. Steve’s friend Ben Khoapa said to Aelred Stubbs: ‘Overnight, Steve became the toast of the Soweto shebeens. Here at last was the authentic voice of the people, not afraid to say openly what other Blacks think but are too frightened to say.’

The accused were all sentenced to terms ranging from five to six years on Robben Island – it is possible that they would have received harsher sentences were it not for Steve’s testimony.

Steve Biko’s Last Years: 1975-1977

Steve was still highly active in the everyday operations of BCP, and he was frequently consulted on issues relating to the larger BC movement, with activists making trips from the larger centres to confer with him. He kept abreast of developments throughout the country, and his appearance at the SASO/BPC trial brought him to the attention of the international community. He became a leader that foreign diplomats sought out to get a picture of the political situation in South Africa.

In August 1975, Steve’s elder sister Bukelwa died at the age of 33. A nurse at Fort Beaufort Mental Hospital, she came to Zanempilo complaining of chest pains and was sedated. But she returned home and died of a heart attack the next morning.

In 1975 Steve was arrested and detained for 137 days – but he was not charged or put on trial.

Meanwhile, the BPC held its fourth national conference in King William’s Town.

At the beginning of 1976, Biko’s banning order was tightened, and he could no longer operate as the director of BCP, a responsibility that was passed on to Ramphele. To testify at the SASO/BPC trial in May, special arrangements were made as he had been subpoenaed by the defence.

Following his testimony at the SASO/BPC trial, students in Soweto, who had throughout the year been protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, organised a huge protest on June 16, 1976. Police, confronted by thousands of angry school pupils opened fire, killing hundreds of pupils. The Soweto youth uprising, and the police’s brutal response, sent shockwaves throughout the world, and the Apartheid regime was condemned even by its allies in the West.

A severe crackdown on BC activists followed the uprising. Mapetla Mohapi was arrested on 15 July 1976, and was killed three weeks later, a development that deeply disturbed Steve. Mpumlwana, Mxolisi Mvovo, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Thoko Mabanjwa were arrested in August. On 27 August 1976, at the height of the Soweto uprising , Steve was arrested and held in solitary confinement for 101 days.

Soon after his release, Biko met American Senator Dick Clark in December 1976, one of a string of diplomats who wanted to get a sense of Black thinking at the time. The chair of the Senate Sub-committee on Africa, Clark was an influential contact, but some BC leaders, especially those based in Cape Town , disapproved of the meeting with an American diplomat.

Steve was also close to the Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh, who often consulted Steve on political matters in South Africa, using the latter’s insights to inform Australian policy towards South Africa.

Steve was thoroughly immersed in community activities, both formal and informal, simply helping whenever and however he could. When five boys were accused of burning down Forbes Grant School in 1977, he organised lawyers to defend them, but they lost the case and were sentenced to terms of five years on Robben Island. Among the lawyers Steve roped in was Griffiths Mxenge .

But there was play as well as work. Biko enjoyed socialising with friends and people from the area. He frequented local shebeens, such as Getty’s Place in the Tsolo section of Ginsberg, where he was on many occasions protected by the patrons when the security police came in search of him.

Steve was close to Sonwabo Yengo, who lived in Zaula Street, where they would have gumbas (parties). The group loved singing, and Steve in particular loved the song by Donny Hathaway, To be Young, Gifted and Black, but they also sang struggle songs and choral classics. His favourite freedom struggle song, according to Xolela Mangcu, contained the lyrics: ‘We are leaders of Africa. Rise up, leaders, and let us move forward.’

When Yengo last saw Steve, he was bruised and limping, and told his friend he had been beaten by White men – it is unclear if they were policemen or ordinary people. He said to Sonwabo: ‘These Whites are really beating me now, Tshawe. But I am fighting back. But they are going to kill me at the rate they are going.’

Attempts to forge unity between the various tendencies

Perhaps the most significant activities Steve was involved in at this time were attempts to forge some kind of working unity between the various liberation organisations, especially the ANC, the PAC and the Non European Unity Movement (NEUM) . Steve began his efforts sometime in the mid-1970s – Malusi Mpumlwana and Mapetla Mohapi were especially active in these attempts, and it later emerged that Mohapi had recruited people into the ANC, among them Brigitte Mabandla

According to Lindy Wilson, Mpumlwana and Mapetla were driving from Pretoria to Natal after Mapetla was released from detention in 1975 when they “debated the role that BPC might now play. An idea grew that it (BPC) should explore its potential as a catalyst for uniting the liberation movements. This idea emerged for several different reasons: the logic that BC’s evolving ideology should develop from psychological unity to political unity; the fact that, in spite of the bannings, SASO and BPC still had mobility and continued to operate nationally on the ground; the recognition that the ANC and PAC were the established political movements and that BPC would not act as a third force but would endeavour to create a national consciousness involving all existing historical political movements against the common enemy.”

The idea was shared with a select group of BC leaders: Thami Zani, Tom Manthata and Kenny Rachidi among them. Steve met with banned PAC leader Robert Sobukwe, and also with Griffiths Mxenge, who was at the time an underground ANC operative. Both were sympathetic to the idea, and agreed to speak to their counterparts.

But some BC leaders were already moving to the view that the ANC was paramount and that the BPC should act to realise the aims of the Freedom Charter. At a workshop in Mafikeng (then Mafeking) in May 1976, Diliza Mji, Norman Dubazana, Nkosazana Dlamini and Mafika Pascal Gwala argued against Steve’s vision of BPC playing a central role in unifying the movements.

There were plans for Steve to meet with ANC leader Oliver Tambo . Harry Nengwekhulu , who had left the country after he was banned in March 1973, was tasked with securing a meeting with the leader of the ANC in exile. The plan was for Steve to leave the country for the meeting, perhaps through an invitation from a Western government. But the logistics and security issues proved too difficult, and several planned meetings had to be cancelled. According to Mark Gevisser, in his biography of Thabo Mbeki, Steve was to meet with Mbeki as well, but the security situation was not conducive.

Barney Pityana was also set to meet with Tambo after he left South Africa in 1978. He was to be accompanied by Ben Khoapa to Lusaka for the meeting, which had been arranged by Craig Williamson , purportedly the chief of the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF). Pityana and Khoapa met in Lesotho , where they were told that they would meet with Tambo in Lesotho, flying via Bloemfontein.

Fortunately for them, however, they suspected a trap had been laid, and stayed away. Indeed, the next day the newspapers, informed by security police, published a story saying the two had been detained, when in fact they never boarded the plane and abandoned the mission. This episode revealed that Craig Williamson was indeed an Apartheid spy.

In 1977, Steve was made the honorary president of BPC. Mpumlwana recounts the role Steve was to play in forging a broad movement together with the exiled organisations:

“It is here that you begin the process of looking out to negotiate with other organisations. It is here that you begin to see the need of having some kind of central figure. That’s why we decided to make Steve the honorary president of the BPC. Before that he had no formal authority, it was all about charisma and the influence he had as an individual.”

The state was desperate to prevent relations between the BCM and the exiled organisations, and Steve was questioned about supposed contacts when he was detained. This partly explains why Biko was detained so often during the last two years of his life. In March 1977 Biko was arrested and once again released. Mpumlwana was also arrested in March, and held for four months. Mamphela Ramphele was also banished to Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo).

With so many comrades neutralised, the plan for unity talks faltered. Steve asked Peter Jones, a BPC activist based in the Western Cape , to travel to King William’s Town to help run the local BPC offices. It was a fateful move. Jones and Steve, in consultation with their colleagues, decided to meet Neville Alexander in Cape Town, a trip that would end with the pair being detained.

The Trip to see Neville Alexander

Soon after midnight on the morning of 17 August 1977, Steve and Jones set out for Cape Town. Steve wanted to meet with Neville Alexander and with his BC counterparts in the city. The latter, led by Johnny Issel, had been critical of Steve’s meeting with Dick Clark and of economic policies Steve had contemplated.

The pair arrived in Cape Town by 10am, and after resting at Jones’s home, Steve drove to meet Fikile Bam , who was a close comrade of Alexander. Jones meanwhile drove to see Alexander, who informed him that he could not meet with Biko. When Jones returned, Bam decided that the trio would go to Alexander’s house despite his decision. They drove there and parked in Alexander’s yard while Bam went into the house to convince Alexander to meet with Steve.

Alexander was reluctant for several reasons: both he and Steve were banned and it would be a crippling blow to the movement if they were caught and convicted. Also, he was heeding the recommendations of Cape Town’s BC activists. He later recalled:

“Fiks tried every trick in the book to convince me to meet with Steve. But I would not budge. In order to put pressure on me he said Steve was sitting in the car in the backyard. But I was instructed by my guys not to meet Steve because of problems within the Black Consciousness Movement in Cape Town. I did not want to be caught in the crossfire.

Steve decided to immediately drive back to King William’s Town on the same evening – August 17. Jones and Steve undertook the 12-hour journey and reached the outskirts of King William’s Town when they were stopped by a police roadblock. They were identified after a heavily disguised Steve, realising the hopelessness of denial, decided to announce that he was indeed the man the police were looking for.

Jones was taken to Algoa Police Station and Steve to Walmer Police Station, both in Port Elizabeth. Jones underwent severe torture over a prolonged period, and never saw Steve again.

The Death of Steve Biko

Steve was stripped and manacled for 20 days before he was transferred to the Sanlam Building in Port Elizabeth, where the Security Police were based. He was told to remain standing, but he defied his captors and sat down. Infuriated, a Captain Siebert manhandled him, but Steve fought back.

Steve was badly beaten, and between the night of 6 September and the morning of 7 September, he sustained a brain haemorrhage. Despite his injury, the police kept him shackled to a grille, still naked. When doctors examined him, they yielded to the security police by glossing over Steve’s injuries. Dr Ivor Lang could find nothing wrong with Steve on 7 September. When specialist Dr Benjamin Tucker examined Steve, he suggested that the badly injured detainee be taken to hospital, but he backed down when police objected.

Lang did not object when police said they were driving Steve to Pretoria, 700km away. This they did, on 11 September, in the back of a van, with Steve still naked, frothing at the mouth, and unable to speak. In Pretoria, a district surgeon examined Steve and tended to him, but it was too late.

Alone in his cell, Steve died some time on the night of 12 September 1977.

The reaction to Steve Biko’s death

Steve’s death was announced and there was outrage from many quarters. The government was at pains to contradict the obvious interpretation of the event – that the police had killed Steve.

On Wednesday, 14 September, a Rand Daily Mail report read:

“Mr Steve Biko, the 30-year-old black leader, widely regarded as the founder of the black consciousness movement in South Africa, died in detention on Monday (12th). Mr Biko, honorary president of the Black People’s Convention and the father of two small children, is the 20th person to die in Security Police custody in 18 months.”

The report quoted a statement by the Minister of Justice, Jimmy Kruger, in which the minister presented the government’s version of Steve’s death, saying that he had been on a hunger strike since 5 September, refusing food. Kruger acknowledged that a district surgeon had been called to examine Steve on 7 September ‘because Mr Biko appeared unwell’. The medic, Kruger continued, found nothing wrong with Biko.

Kruger continued his account, glossing over the serious injuries Steve sustained while in detention. Later, addressing a National Party (NP) congress on 14 September, Kruger announced: “I am not glad and I am not sorry about Mr Biko. It leaves me cold. I can say nothing to you. Any person who dies; I should also be sorry if I die.” There was laughter at this last sentence. Kruger went on to justify the detention of Steve, saying that he had been found in possession of pamphlets inciting arson and violence. He proceeded to give a ridiculous and fictitious account of Steve’s detention and death.

According to Donald Woods: “The next day Kruger implied that Steve had died of a hunger strike, but I knew this couldn’t be true because he (Biko) had once said he would never take or endanger his own life in detention, and that if he were to die in jail, and it was claimed he had hanged or suffocated or starved himself or cut his wrists, I was to know it was a lie.”

Die Burger, an Afrikaans government-supporting newspaper, presented the government’s sentiments regarding the death of ‘the black power activist Steve Biko’: “Concern over detainees’ deaths becomes deep dismay when the hysterical propaganda against authorities is observed. A vehement campaign is in progress which surpasses all previous protests. The venomous suggestions are of such an extravagant nature that it fills an objective observer with trepidation: The purpose is to discredit the security police.”

Similarly, the state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), took the government’s version as fact, and speculated that if Steve had committed suicide, this would have fitted the pattern of many recent detainee suicides. It went on: “To their critics the police point out that so far a court of law has never established that the police have been responsible for torturing and killing a single detainee.”

There was international outrage at Steve’s death, with many governments making statements and sending condolences.

Donald Woods published a moving portrait of his friend Biko, saying:

“In the three years that I grew to know him my conviction never wavered that this was the most important political leader in the entire country, and quite simply the greatest man I have ever had the privilege to know.”

A post-mortem was carried out soon after Steve’s death was announced, but the Biko family’s pathologist was informed only after the autopsy had begun. Newspapers reported that Steve had sustained brain damage. Woods challenged Kruger about the hunger-strike claims, and “got a reliable tip-off that he (Kruger) had received the coroner’s report on Steve’s post-mortem, that it revealed that Steve had died of brain damage, and that although Kruger had had his report for more than a week he had not yet ordered an inquest or corrected his ‘hunger strike’ story.”

The funeral

A nation weeps. Mourners gather to pay their last respects as Steve Biko's body lies in state in his home before the funeral, attended by 20,000 mourners at King William's Town, November 1977. Photo: Bailey's African History Archives)

Steve Biko’s funeral, on 25 September 1977, was attended by about 20,000 people, although the mourners would have numbered many more if police had not turned many away at scores of roadblocks around King William’s Town. Police blocked all the routes into the town, and thousands were turned away by the heavily armed officials. Convoys in the major cities were stopped even before they set out for the funeral.

People from the Transvaal who managed to get through had to pass through seven roadblocks before arriving in King William’s Town. According to Hilda Bernstein : “One of the speakers, Dr Nthato Motlana , who flew from Johannesburg after he was blocked off when attempting to travel by road, said at the funeral that he had watched as black policemen hauled mourners off the buses in Soweto and assaulted them with truncheons. The physician said he had treated 30 of the mourners, some for fractured skulls, and said he had witnesses who would testify that a number of young women were raped.”

Yet, the authorities could not hide or dampen the significance of the occasion, which was attended by diplomats from 13 Western countries – from the United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Holland, Canada, Australia, Brazil and the Scandinavian countries. A small number of South Africans also attended, including Woods, his wife Wendy, and her brother Peter Bruce. Members of the Progressive Federal Party included Helen Suzman , Zac de Beer and Alex Boraine .

The funeral was marked by passionate denunciations of the apartheid regime, and became something of a political rally, lasting more than six hours. Mourners thrust their fists into the air and shouted ‘Power!’ when Steve’s coffin was lowered into the grave.

The Inquest

Calls for an inquest were made by many individuals and organisations, and the Minister of Justice eventually relented. The inquest began on 14 November, two months after Steve’s death, at the Old Synagogue in Pretoria. But already, in October, two attorney-generals, of the Transvaal and the Eastern Cape, announced that there would be no criminal proceedings related to the findings of the inquest.

The inquest sought, ostensibly, to determine how Steve had died, and was presided over by a magistrate, Marthinus Prins, with the Deputy Attorney-General Klaus von Lieres acting as prosecutor to lead the evidence. But Hilda Bernstein, in her booklet No. 46 – Steve Biko, writes:

“This was no ordinary inquest. It was in essence a conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice; a conspiracy in which almost all the witnesses and most of the court officials joined. Their purpose was not to establish the cause of death but to conceal it; not to discover who might be responsible, but to hide them.”

Bernstein quoted the impressions of the Past President of the British Law Society, Sir David Napley, who had been invited to observe the inquest by the Association of Law Societies of South Africa:

“I may be wrong but I came away with the clear impression that, on such occasions as he (Deputy Attorney-General Von Lieres) intervened, his questions were directed to preserve the position previously taken up. To this end on occasions he intervened to support the police and doctors, although they were already represented by other counsel.

Bernstein goes on to paint the scene: “The inquest was high drama. Never before at an inquest of someone who died in detention have there been television cameras and reporters from so many countries: every day a crowd of black spectators sang outside the Synagogue.”

Over the next few days the security policemen, doctors and pathologists presented their testimonies about the sequence leading up to the death of Biko. In his submission, Deputy Attorney-General Klaus von Lieres said:

“Our respectful submission is that you (the judge) will come to the conclusion that in this particular case there is no positive evidence that the deceased’s death was caused by an act or omission of any person.”

The judge repeated these words, almost verbatim, in his final ruling.

Although his death was attributed to "a prison accident," evidence presented during the 15-day inquest into Biko's death revealed otherwise. During his detention in a Port Elizabeth police cell he had been chained to a grill at night and left to lie in urine-soaked blankets. He had been stripped naked and kept in leg-irons for 48 hours in his cell. A blow in a scuffle with security police led to him suffering brain damage by the time he was driven naked and manacled in the back of a police van to Pretoria, where he died.

Two years later a South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) disciplinary committee found there was no prima facie case against the two doctors who had treated Biko shortly before his death. Dissatisfied doctors, seeking another inquiry into the role of the medical authorities who had treated Biko shortly before his death, presented a petition to the SAMDC in February 1982, but this was rejected on the grounds that no new evidence had come to light. Biko's death caught the attention of the international community, increasing the pressure on the South African government to abolish its detention policies and calling for an international probe on the cause of his death. Even close allies of South Africa, Britain and the United States of America, expressed deep concern about the death of Biko and added their support to those asking for an international probe.

It took eight years and intense pressure before the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) took disciplinary action. On 30 January, 1985, the Pretoria Supreme Court ordered the SAMDC to hold an inquiry into the conduct of the two doctors who treated Biko during the five days before he died. Judge President of the Transvaal, Justice W G Boshoff, said in a landmark judgment that there was prima facie evidence of improper or disgraceful conduct on the part of the "Biko" doctors in a professional respect.

The Aftermath

Soon after Steve’s death, the state banned 18 organisations on 17 October 1977, the majority of them allied to the BCM. These included, SASO, BPC, BCP and many others. The Christian Institute (CI), led by the Reverend Beyers Naude, was also banned, as was Reverend Naude himself. Scores of BC activists were banned, and Donald Woods was also served with a banning order.

The BCM launched the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO) in 1979, but the organisation was also banned soon thereafter. By the early 1980s the Black Consciousness Movement was in decline, eclipsed by the re-emergence of the Congress movement, most notably in the shape of the United Democratic Front. Steve’s dream of uniting the various liberation organisations never came to fruition; rather, the Congress Movement took the reins of the anti-apartheid struggle and eventually the ANC became the ruling party after the first democratic elections in 1994.

Steve is survived by his wife, Ntsiki, and their child, Nkosinathi. He also had a child, and Samora, with Mamphela Ramphele.

His son Nkosinathi launched the Steve Biko Foundation, which has become a non-profit organisation with a large presence in the Eastern Cape. In 2013, the institute celebrated the opening of a large community centre in Ginsberg, in King William’s Town. The foundation promotes debates on current issues and is growing into a valuable resource in Biko’s hometown.

Former Nelson Mandela paid tribute to Biko in 2002, saying:

“Living, he was the spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa. His message to the youth and students was simple and clear: Black is Beautiful! Be proud of your Blackness! And with that he inspired our youth to shed themselves of the sense of inferiority they were born into as a result of more than three hundred years of white rule.”

Arnold, Millard (editor) 1978: The Testimony of Steve Biko, Panther: Granada Publishing|Badat, Salim (2009): Black Man, You Are On Your Own, Steve Biko Foundation, Sue Publishers|Bernstein, Hilda (1978), No. 46 ”“ Steve Biko, London, International Defence and Aid Fund|Bizos, G. (1998). “Steve Biko” in No one to blame?: in pursuit of justice in South Africa|Gevisser, Mark (2007): The Dream Deferred, Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers (Pty) Ltd|Karis, Thomas & Gerhart, Gail, (1997): From Protest to Challenge, A Documentary History of African Politics in SA, 1882-1990, Volume Five, Nadir and Resurgence, 1964-1979|Mangcu, Xolela (2012): Biko, A Biography, Tafelberg|Mzamane, Mbulelo Vizikhungo; Maaba, Bavusile; and Biko, Nkosinathi, ‘The Black Consciousness Movement’, in The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 2, 1970-1980, UNISA Press|Pityana, Ramphele, Mpumlwana & Wilson (Editors) (1991): Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko & Black Consciousness, David Philip: Cape Town.|Woods, Donald (1980): Asking for Trouble, Autobiography of a Banned Journalist, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd|Bernstein, H. (unknown): No. 46-Steve Biko [online]. South African History Online|Mufson, S. (1990): Fighting Years: Black Resistance and the Struggle for a New South Africa, Boston: Beacon Press|Ndlovu S. M. (1978): The Soweto Uprisings: Counter-memories of June 1976|Woods Donald (1978): Biko, London: Penguin

Youth and the National Liberation Struggle 1894-1994 June 16th Soweto Riots and the Youth Struggle Steve Biko: The Early Years - Photo Gallery Video interview segment with Ahmed Kathrada (Part 1) Video interview segment with Ahmed Kathrada (Part 2) Video interview segment with Ahmed Kathrada (Part 3) Video interview segment with Ahmed Kathrada (Part 4)<

The grim legacy of Steve Biko's killer , Nosipiwo Manona and Nicki Gules, City Press, 2017-09-17

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Bantu Education Act
Bantu Education Act, South African law, enacted in 1953 and in effect from January 1, 1954, that governed the education of Black South African (called Bantu by the country's government) children. It was part of the government's system of apartheid, which sanctioned racial segregation and discrimination against nonwhites in the country.. From about the 1930s the vast majority of schools ...
Bantu education and the racist compartmentalizing of education
In 1954—5 black teachers and students protested against Bantu Education. The African Education Movement was formed to provide alternative education. For a few years, cultural clubs operated as informal schools, but by 1960 they had closed down. The Extension of University Education Act, Act 45 of 1959, put an end to black students attending ...
Bantu Education Act, 1953
The Bantu Education Act 1953 (Act No. 47 of 1953; later renamed the Black Education Act, 1953) was a South African segregation law that legislated for several aspects of the apartheid system. Its major provision enforced racially-separated educational facilities; [1] Even universities were made "tribal", and all but three missionary schools ...
The "Bantu Education" System: A Bibliographic Essay
"Bantu Education" in the Union 1949-1959. Capetown: University of Capetown, School of Librarianship, 1965. ... Pretoria: J. D. Van Schaik, 1967. (Papers read at the Educational Conference at the University College of Fort Hare, Sept. 14, 1966.) Google Scholar. 120. Lekhela Ernest P. Tendencies in the History of "Bantu Education" in ...
PDF In a Class of Their Own: the Bantu Education Act (1953) Revisited
South Africa where Bantu Education is being heralded as "better" than the current education system by some individuals, there is a need to revisit the texts regarding Bantu Education in greater depth, in order to contextualise the educational milieu that South Africa faces today. Marnie Hughes-Warrington affirms the importance of
To What Extent Did the Bantu Education Act Change the System of Black
The essay examines the provision of education prior to Bantu Education; the implications that the policy had on schooling, administration, teachers and students, and the views held against it After analysing and evaluating the various aspects of the law, its consequences and its impact on the system of black education, the conclusion reached is ...
The history of Bantu education: 1948-1994
This thesis is a critical analysis of the history of Bantu education under apartheid. Bantu Education was implemented by the South African apartheid government as part of its general policy of separation and stratification of the races in society. This research, using historicalcomparative methodology, examines the role of ideology in education and the state, the shifts in ideology and ...
A NOTE ON BANTU EDUCATION, 1953 TO 1970
In 1954 Hendrik Verwoerd, one of the main architects of the apartheid system, said that blacks ought not to be trained above certain "forms of labour". These words, often quoted out of context, are c...
The "Bantu Education" System: A Bibliographic Essay
A Current Bibliography on African Affairs. This essay will attempt to identify and describe materials pertinent to the study of the system of "Bantu education" implemented by the South African government after the passage of the Bantu Education Act in 1953. The included works discuss the background, structure and implications of this system.
Bantu Education in South Africa
For many years, South Africa was exposed to discriminatory actions resulting from the apartheid system. This was extended to the education sector through the introduction of the Bantu Education. This Essay focuses on the nature of the Bantu education system and its shortcomings in the eyes of structural functionalists and neo-Marxist sociologists.
History of Apartheid Education and the
History of Apartheid Education and the. Tsoaledi Thobejane. Abstract This paper outlines the rationale of Bantu education that was available for South African Blacks from 1953 to 1992. The paper is of the opinion that challenges of constructing a new education system in post‐apartheid South Africa cannot be fully grasped without a proper ...
"Bantu Education or the Street" by Norman Levy
This article was taken from the book The Final Prize by Norman Levy (Chapter 11) "Bantu Education or the Street". The first half of the 1950s was the formative period of apartheid and the liberation movement fought simultaneously on four fronts against a new wave of fascist measures that restricted education, movement, residence and work.
Bantu Education Act, Act No 47 of 1953
Bantu Education Act, Act No 47 of 1953. The Act was to provide for the transfer of the adminiustration and control of native education from the several provincial administrations to the Government of the Union of South Africa, and for matters incidental thereto. Click here to download.
The Transformation of South Africa's System of Basic Education
The guiding policy document was the Bantu Education Act, passed in 1953. This Act, while decisive for education, embodied much of what was criticized about apartheid in general. Under the guise of providing the opportunity for separate development in separate 'nations,' it laid out a framework of centralized control, bureaucracy, physical ...
Bantu Education: Apartheid ideology or labour reproduction?
This becomes clearer when the relationship between Bantu Education. and the reproduction of labour is examined more closely. The reproduction of labour is a two-fold process, involving on the one ...
Bantu Education
Bantu Education . Abstract . In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph. South Africa has had to deal with issues of racial differences since colonial times. British settlers came into this foreign country and claimed it as their own. Until recently, these settlers were able to treat the
"Bantu Education" by Andrew Phillips
In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.South Africa has had to deal with issues of racial differences since colonial times. British settlers came into this foreign country and claimed it as their own. Until recently, these settlers were able to treat the black people of South Africa as a subservient and inferior race as a result of the system of apartheid. Many different ...
Bantu Education
Bantu education denigrated black people's history, culture, and identity. It promoted myths and racial stereotypes in its curricula and textbooks. Some of these ideas found expression in the notion of the existence of a separate "Bantu society" and "Bantu economy" which were taught to African students in government-run schools.
The June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising
The June 16 1976 Uprising that began in Soweto and spread countrywide profoundly changed the socio-political landscape in South Africa. Events that triggered the uprising can be traced back to policies of the Apartheid government that resulted in the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953. The rise of the Black Consciousness Movement ...
PDF Research Bank : Research Bank
Research Bank : Research Bank
The "Bantu Education" System: A Bibliographic Essay
"Bantu Education" in the Union 1949-1959. Capetown: University of Capetown, School of Librarianship, 1965. ... Pretoria: J. D. Van Schaik, 1967. (Papers read at the Educational Conference at the University College of Fort Hare, Sept. 14, 1966.) Google Scholar. 120. Lekhela Ernest P. Tendencies in the History of "Bantu Education" in ...
Guide: Writing a Conclusion for an Essay on "Why the Bantu Education
Examples for Writing a Conclusion for an Essay on "Why the Bantu Education Act Is Interesting or Important to Know About Today" Example 1: The Significance of the Bantu Education Act. In conclusion, the Bantu Education Act remains a critical chapter in South Africa's history, serving as a clear example of apartheid's dehumanizing policies.
The Historic Impact of Ruby Bridges on American Education
Essay Example: In the rich tapestry of American history, few stories interweave the threads of bravery, perseverance, and the pursuit of equality as profoundly as that of Ruby Bridges. ... Her actions catalyzed a seismic shift in American education, dismantling the barriers of segregation that had long separated black and white students. In ...
Stephen Bantu Biko
Tylden, Eastern Province (now Eastern Cape) 12-September-1977. Introduction. Stephen (Steve) Bantu Biko was a popular voice of Black liberation in South Africa between the mid 1960s and his death in police detention in 1977. This was the period in which both the ANC and the PAC had been officially banned and the disenfranchised Black population ...

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2 The Transformation of South Africa’s System of Basic Education

2.1 Introduction

2.2 South Africa’s Education Sector—A Legacy of Dualism

2.2.1 Some Deep Background

2.2.2 Fast-Forward 300 Years

2.2.3 Educational Inputs and Outcomes at the Dawn of Democracy

2.3 Transforming Education Sector Governance

2.4 Transforming Education Financing

2.4.1 New Fiscal Formulas

2.4.2 Trends in Access to Education

2.4.3 Equity in Resourcing

2.5 Curricular Trends and Learning Outcomes Implications

2.5.1 Curriculum under Apartheid

2.5.2 A Radical Curriculum for Democracy

2.5.3 Reforming the Reform

2.5.4 Cognitive Achievement after the Transformation

2.5.5 Recent Upticks in Performance

2.6 Tentative Conclusions

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