Education and Time

Republic of South Africa

Historically, education in South Africa was centered in each village, where children were taught the survival skills necessary to subsist in a subtropical climate that is home to “The Big Five”: buffalo, rhino, lion, leopard, and elephant. Early African education was not institutionalized, and black African families were multigenerational. Women were considered subservient and were often subject to spousal violence. For centuries, both boys and girls learned their roles from their elders in the language spoken in their own regions.

with the 17th century came white dominance. White Afrikaners (Dutch South Africans) reigned supreme, and in the mid-1800s ethnic-specific boarding schools were established with the dual purpose of producing laborers and precluding uprisings among the natives. Literacy was not a priority in these schools, cost was a factor to poor families, and children from rural areas had little opportunity to attend. In contrast, white children were educated in private schools, many of British origin. The disparity between black and white schools increased with the institution of apartheid in 1948. The Christian-based National Party denied blacks access to any white-only areas, particularly schools, and imposed Christianity on students regardless of their religious affiliations. Blacks were not allowed to travel freely. In 1953, the Bantu Education Act was passed, further discriminating against blacks and resulting in only 1% of all funding to reach black schools. Students were coerced into learning the Afrikaans language, and they continued to be educated to do manual labor. In 1976, while the United States was celebrating its bicentennial, 600 South African students were massacred in riots while protesting against inferior schools and the unwelcome heavy use of Afrikaans in the school system.

[Page 382]Since the fall of apartheid in the late 1980s, measures have been taken to integrate the schools and to revise the curriculum to include literacy, mathematics and science, life skills, history, and geography. Lessons began to be taught in English and in a native language of choice: Ndebele, Sepedi, Zulu, Setswana, Xhosa, Venda, Swazi, Xitsonga, Tsonga, or Sesotho. Budgets for educational improvements were astronomical. with the election of Nelson Mandela as president in 1994, marking the official end to apartheid, school populations grew to over 12 million black and white students in more than 30,000 schools. Presently, 87% of males and 86.7% of females over age 15 can read and write. Desmond Tutu coined the phrase “the Rainbow Nation” to illustrate the diversity of the South African people. And, so that they did not die in vain, President Mandela's new government declared June 16 as Youth Day in memory of the 600 protestors who died in Soweto.

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