Apartheid and Education in South Africa: Select Historical Analyses

Introduction Before the arrival of the first European invaders in the South African Cape in 1652, the country was populated by African peoples such as the San and the Khoikhoi, generally known in their derogatory European labeling of Bushmen and Hottentots, respectively (Morris-Hale, 1996). The Dutch settlers, sent by the East India Dutch Company, and religious persecution-fleeing French Huguenots were not the first Europeans to set foot on South African soil, but were the first to permanently reside in the country (Behr, 1971, p. 1). Before the new settlers came, the traditional African society did not have European based systems of learning. What they had, instead, were situationally successful, informal programs of education that were formulated and selectively implemented by the African population. As such, one could objectively say that these programs of learning, not only in South Africa but also elsewhere in pre-colonial traditional Africa, were responsive and responding to the needs of the African environment in which they were being undertaken (Rodney, 1982). Keto (1990, pp. 19-20) describes those indigenous programs of teaching and learning: African societies in South Africa had invariably created their own institutions and processes of socialization and education before the Dutch settlers arrived in 1652. That process of education began by learning of the young from family members. Later, the young were trained in manners, roles, responsibilities, and history as well as the importance of military and fighting skills. In this essay, I will focus on the post-settler period (briefly) and apartheid systems of education, with the central objective of showing how these systems of "mislearning" have situationally, or more appropriately, deliberately thwarted the environmentally based social development of indigenous populations. Social development in this and similar contexts would comprise educational, economic, political, cultural, technological and spiritual advancements and/or the sustainability of all of these in the management of a given community's resources and livelihood possibilities. At one or more points of analytical convergence, the essay attempts to connect the history of South African education with the present difficulty of educational transition. Here, despite the well deserved appreciation of the political triumph of majority rule in the country, problems of enrolment, rampant illiteracy, and depressed rates of matriculation and matriculation exemption (i.e., admission into universities), as well as the overall qualitatively problematic realities of African education, abound (South African Institute of Race Relations, SAIRR, Fast Facts, 1998, No 2, p. 1; O'Meara, 1997; Saunders, 1996). Making sense of how European systems of education overtook African modes of learning in the tortured history of the South African people requires a sensitive understanding of the original cultures that the two concerned groups were hailing from. The social background of the Dutch settlers was more competitively shaped in its socioeconomic and political arrangements than was the case in communally based pre-colonial traditional Africa. More importantly, environmental pressures to learn, cope with and prepare for an unknown future were being exerted more upon the new invaders in the Cape in the mid-seventeenth century. Accordingly, therefore, the new settlers had to deal with more complex life systems and successfully survive than was the case for the indigenous population. Undoubtedly then, the European settlers were more prone, in every sense of the term, to assume an aggressive and predatory outlook to procure resources and livable space "by any means necessary". When these circumstances clashed with the generally peaceful and accommodating African worldview, the European groups assumed the upper hand, thus imposing their educational, political and socioeconomically order on the indigenous population. …