education in south africa apartheid

Cape Town Project Center

Active 2007 through 2015.

• CTPC Overview
• Cape Town: Many Cities in One
• How Will We Build Our Project Website?
• Resources for Project & Website Development
• What is Shared Action Learning?
• Projects Overview & Search
• Expanding Early Childhood Development Opportunities in an Informal Settlement
• Exploring New Outreach Models for Early Childhood Development
• Fostering Community at the Canterbury Street Lot
• Providing More than a Meal at Service Dining Rooms
• Upgrading the K2 Informal Settlement through Community Collaboration
• Women’s Empowerment through Increased Access and Understanding of Technology
• Safe House Empowerment
• Early Childhood Development in Flamingo Crescent
• Energy Entrepreneurs at Creches
• The Big Issue Vendor Profiling
• WaSH-UP Livelihoods and Business Operations
• Expanding WaSH-UP Services
• Reflection and Growth during the IQP Journey
• Blue Sky Recycling Programme
• Community Mobilisation Through Reblocking in Flamingo Crescent
• Early Childhood Development Connection
• MGV Park Redevelopment
• Capacity Building of a Community Based Organisation in Maitland Garden Village
• Envisioning a Black River Pathway: Creating a Heritage Destination through Social Development
• Supporting Reblocking and Community Development in Mtshini Wam
• Laying the Foundation for a Resilient Partnership: Innovative Upgrading in the Informal Settlement of Langrug
• Rooftop Gardens for Sustainable Livelihoods in Cape Town
• Black River Corridor: Visions for Restoration and Recreational Use
• Supporting Asset Based Community Development in Maitland Garden Village
• Envisioning the Future of Oude Molen Eco Village
• Greywater Management in Langrug
• Sustainable Livelihoods Through Beekeeping
• WaSHUp: Innovating Water Sanitation and Hygiene Upgrading in Langrug
• Profiling Community Assets
• Collaborative Construction
• Stormwater Management
• Strengthening Spaza Shops
• Supporting Early Childhood Development
• Initiation Site Development
• Co-Researchers
• Mapping and Planning
• Water & Sanitation
• Communications
• Mapping & Planning
• Laundry Centre
• Sustainable Housing
• Flood Risk Management
• Informal Trading
• Transportation
• Recreational Facilities
• Resource Library

• Act III Scene I: Adding Color (November 16, 2015)
• Slideshow Test
• “Bawawethu” (December 3, 2015)
• Social Enterprise
• Acronym Dictionary
• What is an IQP?
• How do we do an IQP in South Africa?
• Where do we start?
• How do we start?
• What do we actually do?
• What do we actually do — take two?
• What’s the hard part?
• How do we communicate what we are doing and learning to others?
• What is the difference between doing and learning?
• Your Project Homepage
• Context Pages
• Connecting Pages
• Planning Pages
• Acting & Observing Pages
• Our First Liaison Interview – Spaza Team Example
• First Community Encounter – Culture Team Example
• Executive Summary
• Resources for Project & Website Development
• CTPC Partners and Sponsors
• Cape Town Creche Registration
• Building a WaSH-UP Facility
• WaSH-UP Programme Services and Management
• Assessments and Proposals
• Greywater and Stormwater Drainage
• Informal Settlement Upgrading
• Energy Systems and Options
• Background Research
• Methodology and Planning
• Partnership
• Process Narrative
• Accomplishments
• Project Resources
• Student Guide to Acts and Scenes 2014
• Academic and Published Resources
• Projects Overview
• Challenges Facing Early Childhood Development
• Crèche Registration
• Case Study: Little Paradise Educare Centre
• Shared Action Learning
• Participatory Development and Adaptation Process
• Mission and Objectives
• Ethical Considerations
• Meet the Partners
• Meet the Steering Committee
• Meet the Team
• “One Hand Must Wash the Other”
• On the Same Page
• Little Toy Guns
• There’s no “I” in Team
• Celebrate Good Times, Come On! It’s A Celebration!
• Closing Time
• More Interactions
• Sustainability
• Importance of ECD
• Exploring Various Approaches to ECD
• Cast of Characters
• Planning and Implementation
• Putting it All On the Table
• First Walkthrough of Vygieskraal
• Thinking Inside the Box
• Branching Out in Vygieskraal: Meeting the Committee
• A People of Great Hope & A Hidden Paradise
• Combining Two Worlds: FCW Staff Meets the Committee
• Goodbye for Now
• All Scenes (Password Protected)
• Proposal to FCW (password protected)
• Philosophy Behind Helping the Homeless
• Belonging and its Psychological Impact on Street People
• Establishing Social Inclusion in the Street Community
• Understanding Homelessness’ Role in Urban Development
• Investigating the Effect of Public Spaces on Cities
• Creating a Sense of Community Through Green Areas
• Commemorating the Street Community’s Lives
• Co-Developers
• Khulisa Social Solutions
• Additional Partners
• Objectives and Process
• Shared Action Learning (SAL)
• Ethical and Safety Considerations
• Challenges of Being Outsiders
• The Cape Town Partnership Takes the Initiative
• Emotional Impressions
• The Memorial Comes to Life
• A Wall Full of Life and Color
• Understanding Different Perspectives
• Additional Scenes
• Homelessness in South Africa
• Resources Available to Street People in Cape Town
• US Soup Kitchens
• Interior Design Methodologies for the Homeless
• Arts and Music Programmes for the Homeless in the U.S.
• Meet the Co-researchers
• Meet the Sponsors
• Meet the Cast of Characters
• Safety Considerations
• Scene 1: First Day Observations
• Scene 2: Dominos
• Scene 3: Tessa’s Stories
• Scene 4: Music
• Scene 5: Art Viewing
• Art Gallery
• K2 Informal Settlement and Participatory Action in Informal Settlements
• Upgrading Efforts and Early Childhood Development
• Objectives and Participatory Processes
• Meet the K2 Community
• Meet the WPI team
• Act I Scene I: New Beginnings (October 22, 2015)
• Act I Scene II: Getting lost in the K2 Maze (October 23, 2015)
• Act I Scene III: The Outsiders (October 26, 2015)
• Act II Scene I: Touring Tuesday (November 10, 2015)
• Act II Scene II: Trouble in K2 (November 16, 2015)
• Act III Scene I: Luncheon: A Change of Scenery (November 17, 2015)
• Act III Scene II: Adding Colour (November 20, 2015)
• Act III Scene III: “Bawawethu” (December 3, 2015)
• Act III Scene IV: Financial Contribution: One Step at a Time (December 7, 2015)
• Project Outcomes
• Challenges and Opportunities as a Result of Technology
• Adult Learning Philosophies and Strategies
• Asset Mapping
• Co-researchers
• Sponsor and Liaisons
• Objective 1
• Objective 2
• Objective 3
• Objective 4
• Introducing Our Fifth Member (October 29, 2015)
• The Teachers Take a Leap (October 30, 2015)
• A Change in Course (November 16, 2015)
• An Attempt at Teaching Methods (November 24, 2015)
• Getting on the Map (December 9, 2015)
• Act 1 Scene 1
• Act 1 Scene 2
• Act 1 Scene 5
• Act 1 Scene 6
• Act 2 Scene 1
• Act 2 Scene 3
• Act 2 Scene 4
• Reflecting on Relationships: Insights Gained and Lessons Learned
• Increasing Understanding through Peer and Project-based Learning
• Increasing Access through Asset Mapping
• Understanding and Access Sustainability: From Pilot Programme to Technology for Women’s Empowerment Programme
• Cape Town Project Centre Context
• Domestic Violence: A Larger Context
• Objective 5
• Scene i: A Proper Introduction
• Scene ii: Meeting the Entire Crew
• Scene iii: Breaking Ground
• Scene iv: What a Girl Wants
• Scene v: Our First Goodbye
• Scene vi: Peacock Crown
• Scene i: Painting the Town
• Scene ii: The Return of Gershwin
• Scene iii: The Final Coat
• Scene i: Off to a Rocky Start
• Scene ii: Hidden Talents
• Scene iii: Divide and Conquer
• Scene iv: Full Steam Ahead
• Scene v: Power Struggles
• Scene vi: Hard Work Yields Results
• Scene vii: The Countdown Begins
• Scene i: The Home Stretch
• Scene ii: The more we get together…
• Vendor Mentors: Co-Researchers
• Vendors Of The Month
• The Big Issue
• Street Papers
• Interviewing
• Participatory Video
• Connecting Activities
• Mentor Group Activities
• Interview Questions
• Privacy and Consent Considerations
• 1. From 0 to 60
• 2. Starting Off On The Right Foot
• 3. Getting Techie
• 4. Seeing Through A Vendor’s Eyes
• 1. Emotions Run High
• 2. Vendor Mentor Pilot
• 3. Take Two
• 4. Breaking It Down
• 5. Becoming A Family
• 6. Sharing A Coke With…Friends
• 1. Making A Business Deal
• 2. “It Is Such An Honor Having The Opportunity To Learn”
• 3. Taking It To The Streets
• 4. An Old House Of Memories
• 5. Mentor Pilot Program
• 6. Vendors Have Their Voices Heard
• 7. Graduation Day
• Ari’s Reflection
• Challenges of Early Childhood Development in South Africa
• Crèche Regulations and Finances
• Best Practices for Crèche Development
• Determinants of Crèche Quality
• The Effect of Playground Design on Child Development
• The Effect of Playground Design on Communities
• Developmental Benefits of Recreational Space
• Public Space Inequality in South Africa
• Recyclable Playgrounds
• Flamingo Crescent Informal Settlement
• Asset-Based Community Development
• Project Philosophy
• Mission Statement & Objectives
• Meet the Community
• Scene 1: When in Africa…
• Scene 2: Communication Troubles on the Forefront
• Scene 3: “Hallo Gemeenskap”
• Scene 4: Pulling Strings
• Scene 5: Progress Behind Closed Doors
• Scene 1: From the Outside…
• Scene 2: Home Alone
• Scene 3: Pushing for Progress
• Scene 1: Another Day, Another Design
• Scene 2: Community Initiative
• Scene 3: Gettin’ Down and Dirty
• Scene 4: Where is the pipe?
• Scene 1: Steering to Paradise
• Scene 2: On a Roll…
• Scene 3: Leaving a Little Handprint
• Scene 4: A Promising Start to the Park
• Scene 5: Let There Be Playgrounds!
• Scene 6: “To my new family!”
• Scene 7: Life Through Murals and Trees
• Scene 8: Closing Time
• Team Flamingo Reflections
• Introduction
• Issues Resulting From Energy Practices in Informal Settlements
• Interactive Qualifying Project Center Context
• Methods of Financing Business in Low Income Communities
• Strategies for Implementation in Low Income Communities
• Methodology
• Mission & Objectives
• Interview with Sizwe
• Interview with Yolanda
• Interview with Auntie Marie
• Second Interview with Yolanda
• Scene 1: First Introductions
• Scene 2: Getting to know Wonderbags and Building Networks
• Scene 3: Sharing Ideas and Findings
• Scene 4: Cooking with the Wonderbag
• Scene 1: Creating Interest in Wonderbags
• Scene 2: First Trip to an Informal Settlement
• Scene 3: Looking for New Products
• Scene 4: Gathering Community Energy and Crèche Information
• Scene 5: A Visit to Flamingo
• Scene 6: Just Do It: Three Crèche Visits
• Scene 7: The Reality of Low Income Areas
• Scene 8: A College for Kiddies
• Scene 1: Pilot Program
• Scene 2: A Second Pilot Program
• Scene 3: Sustainable Sales
• Scene 4: Low Income Energy Services Task Team Meeting
• Scene 5: Lunch at the Crèche
• Scene 6: Exploring Other Products
• Scene 7: Graduation
• Scene 8: Enjoying Electricity
• Scene 9: Collaboration for Future Implementation
• Scene 10: Keep Smiling
• Tati’s Reflections
• Alex’s Reflections
• Business Model
• Entrepreneurial Support Packet Overview
• Wonderbag Business Guide
• Wonderbag Safety Flyer
• Wonderbag Sales Log
• Energy Savings Advertisements
• Pilot Program Contract
• Wonderbag Advertisements
• Pilot Program Log
• Pilot Programs
• Findings Report
• Cape Town Sanitation and Health Programmes Context

History of Education in the Context of Apartheid

• The Relationship between Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Education
• The Relationship between Education and Career Development
• Health Promoters®
• Other Community Members
• WaSH-Serv Co-Researchers
• Act 1 Scene 3
• Act 1 Scene 4
• Act 2 Scene 2
• Act 2 Scene 5
• Act 2 Scene 6
• Act 2 Scene 7
• Act 3 Scene 1
• Act 3 Scene 2
• Act 3 Scene 3
• Act 3 Scene 4
• Act 4 Scene 1
• Act 4 Scene 2
• Act 4 Scene 3
• Act 4 Scene 4
• Act 5 Scene 1
• Act 5 Scene 2
• The Concept: What is WaSH-UP?
• Challenges: Where can it go wrong?
• So What Does This Mean? Lessons Learned from Langrug
• Important Lessons Learned: Working in Challenging Communities
• What Works? Successes in Surprising Places
• Where do we go now? Some Musings on the Future
• Heather’s Reflection
• Informal Settlements in South Africa: Langrug Community
• Community Assets
• Cooperative
• For Profit Small Business
• Opportunity International
• Savings for Health Expenditures in Kenya
• Village Savings and Loan Association in Malawi
• How to Start a Small Business in Informal Settlements
• Micro-Enterprise: An Example
• Research Question 1
• Research Question 2
• Research Question 3
• Research Question 4
• Sources and References
• Act 1: The Journey Begins
• Act 2: Getting the Business Up and Running
• Act 3: The World Isn’t All Sunshine and Rainbows
• Act 4: Money- A Universal Problem to Overcome
• Act 5: Progress in Adversity
• Act 6: We’re In Business!
• Act 7: Is This Worth Fighting For?
• Act 8: The Journey Continues
• Cast Of Characters
• Project Focus
• Scene 1: First Day on the Job
• Scene 2: A Tour of the Facility
• Scene 3: A Day in the Field
• Scene 4: Talking About Expansion
• Scene 5: Buy Backs Centres and Expansion
• Scene 6: A Working Buy Back Centre and Successful Picker
• Scene 7: Helping the Community, no matter the Business Value
• Scene 8: TrashBack offers an Interesting Opportunity
• Scene 9: Hoist Manufacturers
• Scene 10: CommSell Helps Digitize the Paperwork Process
• Meet our City Sponsors
• Meet the NGO Partners
• Meet the Student Team
• An Introduction to Informal Settlements
• Flamingo’s Current State
• The Infrastructure Research
• The Social Development Research
• Scene 1: First Meeting with Levona
• Scene 2: An Introduction to 7de Laan
• Scene 3: Beginnings of Turmoil
• Scene 4: Finding Hope
• Scene 5: A Motivation for our Work
• Scene 6: Red Hill Settlement Tour Highlights Opportunities
• Scene 7: City Mission Visit Illuminates the Option of Reblocking
• Scene 8: Meeting the Key Planners
• Scene 9: First Weekly Meeting Causes Confusion
• Scene 10: Subcouncil Meeting Eases Worries
• Scene 11: A Raw and Unexpected Story
• Scene 12: Ethiopian Experience
• Scene 13: Shack Demolition
• Scene 14: Engineering the Future
• Scene 15: Public Meeting in 7de Laan
• Act 1 Reflection
• Scene 1: A Taste of Flamingo
• Scene 2: Getting to know the Community Leaders
• Scene 3: Cluster Meetings in Flamingo
• Scene 4: Introduction to Mtshini Wam
• Scene 5: Kuku Town Visit Provides Example
• Scene 6: All Parties Come Together
• Scene 7: Library Networking
• Scene 8: Communication and Enumeration
• Act 2 Reflection
• Scene 1: Meeting the Contractors
• Scene 2: Breaking Ground
• Scene 3: If You Build It They Will Come
• Scene 4: Visiting ELRU Opens Doors for a Crèche in Flamingo
• Scene 5: A Living Virtue
• Scene 6: Meeting a New Potential Stakeholder
• Scene 7: Meeting with the CECD: “Let’s do it.”
• Scene 8: Bringing Green Innovation to the Crèche
• Scene 9: Final Stakeholder Meeting
• Scene 10: Saying Goodbye to Flamingo Crescent
• Act 3 Reflection
• Charles’ Reflection
• Mike’s Reflection
• Zach’s Reflection
• Resources and References
• Building a Background Through Research
• Liaison Discussions
• On-site Observations
• Community Discussions
• Visiting Other Communities
• City Mission
• Springfield Road
• Imizamu Yethu
• Freedom Park
• Mtshini Wam
• Nametag Activity
• Language Bridge
• Cultural Exchange Through Photographs
• Likes and Gripes Drawing Activity
• Profiling Community Members
• Participatory Photography
• Cluster Meetings
• Talking Circles
• Facilitate Access to Government Resources
• Strengthen Ties to Local Resources
• Develop Relations with NGOs
• Collaborate with Cape Town Project Centre Teams
• Document Resources for Future Use
• Improve Document Circulation and Accessibility
• Improve Communication – Involve Community Members
• Periodically Assess Progress
• Meet with all Stakeholders
• Working Professionally
• Show your Team’s Investment
• Enumerate the Settlement
• Formalize and Solidify the Layout Process
• Facilitate Construction Progress
• Our Partners
• Centre for Early Childhood Development
• Kiddies College Preschool
• Langrug: Connecting ECD with WaSH
• Final Presentation Materials
• Challenges of Early Childhood Development
• Models of Early Childhood Development
• Resources for South African Creches
• South African Government Regulations and Policies for Registration of Early Childhood Development Centres
• Visual of Early Childhood Development
• Scene 1: First Day of School at Kiddies College Preschool
• Scene 2: Hit the Ground Running
• Scene 3: Visiting the New Location
• Scene 4: Getting the Word Out
• Scene 1: Nobathembu’s Crèche
• Scene 2: Sudden Realizations
• Scene 3: Just One Grain of Sand
• Scene 1: Getting To Know Nobathembu
• Scene 2: A Lunch with David
• Scene 3: All Hands on Deck
• Scene 1: Back to Langrug
• Scene 2: A Kiddies Graduation
• Scene 3: Meeting with the CECD
• Scene 4: Blessing in Disguise – Promoting Health in Langrug
• Nick’s Reflection
• Cast of Characters: Who’s Who in This Project
• Educational NGO’s
• Important Informational Links
• Registering a Crèche in Cape Town
• Meet the WPI Team
• Project Coordinators
• Co-Research Teams
• Meet the Parks Department
• Early Childhood Development
• Park Design
• Design Process
• Community Involvement
• Research Questions
• Scene 1: Arriving in Maitland Garden Village
• Scene 2: First Sight
• Scene 3: Meeting with the Project Members
• Scene 4: Community Survey
• Scene 5: Working with Co-Researchers
• Scene 6: Village Day
• Scene 7: Monday’s Meeting with Jude
• Scene 8: Monday’s Meeting with Co-Researchers
• Scene 9: Discouraging Moment
• Scene 10: Setting up the Fantasy Playscape Activity with the Crèche
• Scene 1: New Faces
• Scene 2: Fantasy Playground
• Scene 3: Cape Town Park Tour
• Scene 4: Design Meeting
• Scene 5: Park Clean-Up
• Scene 6: Park Depot Visit
• Scene 7: Spreading the Word
• Scene 1: Friday Fun Day
• Scene 2: Maitland Garden Village Community Meeting
• Scene 3: Steering Committee Comes Together
• Scene 4: Planting the Seeds
• Scene 5: Last Day in Maitland Garden Village
• Personal Reflections
• Preparation Research
• WaSH-UP Principles
• Langrug Community
• How Does the Enviro Loo Toilet Work?
• Mission Statement and Objectives
• Scene 1: And So It Begins… Touring Informal Settlements
• Scene 2: Connecting with the Women of Langrug
• Scene 3: Learning from the Past
• Scene 4: Laundering an Agreement
• Scene 5: Doodling to Improve
• Scene 6: Nailing Down Improvements
• Scene 1: A Loo with a View
• Scene 2: Not Reinventing the Wheel
• Scene 3: Toilet Viewing at Signal Hill
• Scene 4: Meeting Nobathembu
• Scene 5: Children of Langrug
• Scene 6: Exploring with Paula
• Scene 1: Alfred’s Worries
• Scene 2: Scott’s Discovery
• Scene 3: Multitasking
• Scene 4: Hendri and Harold
• Scene 5: The People’s Place
• Scene 6: The Signal Hill Exchange
• Scene 1: Meeting with Stephen
• Scene 2: Moving Forward with Enviro Loo
• Scene 3: Meeting With Joey
• Scene 4: The Pilot Project
• Scene 5: Extracting Elevations and Pitching the Pilot Program
• Scene 6: Launching the Public Health Programme
• Scene 7: “Do You Trust Us?”
• Scene 8: Leaving Langrug
• Mackenzie’s Reflection
• Joe’s Reflection
• Morgan’s Reflection
• Assessment of the 2012 Mandela Park Facility
• Proposal for New Dry Sanitation Facility in Zwelitsha
• References and Acknowledgements
• Garden Village Affiliated Football Club
• Garden Village Residents’ Association
• Scene 1: First Encounter with Maitland Garden Village (MGV)
• Scene 2: Tour of Maitland Garden Village
• Scene 3: Ronell’s Sight into the Help Centre
• Scene 4: First Look at the Potential Venue
• Scene 5: Getting to Know the People We are Working With
• Scene 6: Tour Of Oude Molen
• Scene 7: Village Day
• Scene 8: Monday Morning Meeting
• Scene 9: Meeting at MGV Community Centre
• Reflection and Moving Forward
• Scene 1: Green Light Project Meeting: Brainstorming Session
• Scene 2: After School Programmes
• Scene 3: Advice from the Community Plough Movement
• Scene 4: Guidance from Basil
• Scene 5: Community Meeting Part I
• Scene 6: Community Meeting Part II
• Scene 1: Meeting With Property Management
• Scene 2: Meeting with Ibrahim
• Scene 3: First Music Meeting
• Scene 4: Meeting with Sponsor
• Scene 5: Figuring Out a Programme for the Concert
• Scene 6: Meeting With Naiela
• Scene 7: Training Session with the Kids
• Scene 8: The Final Presentation and Concert
• Surrounding Communities
• Black River 2011
• Objective 1: Developing Relationships
• Objective 2: Collaboration for Agricultural Plans
• Objective 3: Collaboration for a Pathway Vision
• Sponsors and Liaisons
• Notable Organisations
• Scene Eight: Maitland Garden Village Day
• Scene Five: Faces of Oude Molen Eco Village
• Scene Four: First Meeting with our Sponsors
• Scene One: The First Pathway Experience
• Scene Seven: Visiting Company’s Garden
• Scene Six: A Presentation to our Sponsors
• Scene Three: Walking the Desire Lines
• Scene Two: Tour of Maitland Garden Village
• Scene Four: Desire Lines Tour with Martin
• Scene One: Weekly Meeting with our Sponsors
• Scene Three: Sustainable Livelihoods Meeting
• Scene Two: Heritage Interviews
• Scene One: Meeting with Jonno
• Scene Three: TRUP Committee Meeting
• Scene Two: Weekly Meeting with our Sponsors
• Scene One: Mapping the Pathway at 44 Wale Street
• Scene Two: Weekly Meeting with our Sponsor
• Scene Three: Visit to Harvest of Hope
• Scene Four: Meeting with Storm Water Management
• Scene Five: Meeting with Parks and Recreation
• Scene Six: Two Rivers Urban Park Steering Committee Meeting
• Scene One: Meeting with Property Management
• Scene Three: Additional Meeting with Sponsors
• Scene Four: Weekly Meeting with our Sponsors
• Scene Five: Trip to the Liesbeek River
• Resources & References
• Historical Context
• Reblocking Efforts
• Urine Divergent Systems
• Pit Latrines
• Dehydrating Systems
• Flush Toilets
• Fire Hydrants
• Laundry Stations
• Rainwater Collection
• Detailed Mission and Objectives
• Multi-Stakeholder Involvement
• Initial Steps in Building Strong Relationships
• Designs and Planning Stages
• Construction and Implementation
• Long-Term Management
• Models to Learn From
• Meet the Langrug Project Team
• Meet the Municipality of Stellenbosch
• Meet the CORC Representatives
• Meet the Langrug Working Team
• Greywater Health and Maintenance
• Multi-purpose Community Centre
• WaSH Facility
• Initial Tour Highlights Many Contrasts
• First Partnership Meeting: Tensions Emerge
• A More Positive Start to Day Two
• Challenges of Reblocking
• Envisioning a Multi-purpose Centre
• Zwelitsha’s Unique Problems
• Reporting Sets a Precedent for the Future
• The WaSH Team’s View
• Discussing the Needs of the Community and How the MPC Can Help
• Making the Decision to Move Forward with the Multi-Purpose Centre
• Reblocking Guidebook Discussion
• Re-Measuring for Reblocking
• Spacing Out ReBlocking
• Fire In Zwelitsha
• Lunch Scene
• Working Team Arguments
• Playing Games
• Introductions at the Municipality: A Revelation
• Amanda Realises the Importance of Documentation
• The Working Team Presents to the Municipality
• How Simple Office Supplies Can Spark Progress
• Further Difficulty with Planning
• Learning How to Do (and Teach) a Cost Analysis
• Working Group Expresses Community Urgency
• Impromptu Meeting with Dawie
• Meeting with Scott: Ending a Day of Confusion
• Partnership Meeting 13 November
• Alfred’s Presence in Langrug
• Realising the Greywater Cleaning Problems
• Working Group’s Apparent Lack of Trust in the Municipality: Putting Together a Report
• Tensions Regarding Community Contributions and the MPC
• Conversation with Koko
• The Farmers’ Strike in Langrug
• Act 5: Our Reflections
• The Sponsors
• Professor Robert Hersh
• Problem Statement
• On The Ground in The Sky
• Developed a Framework for the Programme
• Monetary Outputs and Inputs
• Market Investigation
• Raising Awareness
• The Farm in the City
• Laying the Foundation
• Reflections and Recommendations
• Ethical Consideration
• Acknowledgements
• Analysis of Potential Roofs
• Harvest of Hope
• RUAF Foundation
• Preparation Phase References
• Leader Profiles
• Additional Resources For Mtshini Wam
• Scene 1: Day One in Mtshini Wam
• Scene 2: “Before you leave, leave us with something”
• Scene 3: Planning with the Community – Shared Action Learning
• Scene 4: Realization of Project Assumptions
• Scene 1: Complexities of the First Major Reblocking Process – 11.6.12
• Scene 2: Meeting With The City, CORC, and ISN – 11.9.12
• Scene 3: First Meeting with Stephen Lamb – 11.12.12
• Scene 1: Pressing Forward Despite Little Progress – 11.12.12-11.13.12
• Scene 2: Mini-Projects for Community Development in Mtshini Wam – Gardening and Carpentry
• Scene 3: Big Day Implementation and Collective Learning
• Scene 4: Profiling the Mtshini Wam Community Leaders, 12.3.12-12.7.12
• Informal Settlement Context
• Joe Slovo History
• Lessons Learned in Early Cape Town Upgrading Projects
• Prospective Projects
• Interview Methodology
• Meet the Greywater Team
• The Beginning
• Building a Channel in J-section
• The Process – Step 1
• The Process – Step 2
• The Process – Step 3
• The Process – Step 4
• The Process – Step 5
• The Process – Step 6
• The Process – Step 7
• The Process – Step 8
• The Process – Step 9
• Applying the Process in I-section
• Lessons Learned
• Moving Forward
• Mission Statement & Design Criteria
• Results: Visions and Rationale
• Final Vision
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: What is the best way to aid a community in a sustainable and positive way?
• Village Day
• Conducting Interviews
• History of the Crèche
• Details of the Crèche Work
• Chapter 5: What is the best approach to gain governmental participation in preparation for a community programme?
• Green Light Program Committees
• Chapter 7: How can MGV continue to develop through mutually beneficial relationships with neighbouring communities?
• Epilogue: What does the future hold?
• Sydney Baker
• Bryan Karsky
• Emilee Kaufman
• Lauren Laboissonniere
• Nathan Sarapas
• Photo Gallery
• Downloads and References
• Acknowledging Our Partners
• Our Findings
• Mapped Facility 1
• Mapped Facility 10
• Mapped Facility 2
• Mapped Facility 3
• Mapped Facility 4
• Mapped Facility 5
• Mapped Facility 6
• Mapped Facility 7
• Mapped Facility 8
• Mapped Facility 9
• Mapped Facility 11
• Mapped Facility 12
• Mapped Facility 13
• Mapped Facility 14
• Mapped Facility 15
• Mapped Facility 16
• Mapped Facility 17
• Mapped Facility 18
• Mapped Facility 19
• Mapped Facility 20
• Mapped Facility 21
• Alternative Facilities
• Documentation of Co-researcher Interaction
• Gujarat and Kerala, India
• WaSHUp Process
• Multi-Purpose Centre Preliminary Drawings
• Supplemental Material
• Cultural/Social
• Institutional
• Safety and Security
• Infrastructure
• Personal Profiles
• Recommendations for Continuation: Training Community Facilitators
• Asset-Based Community Development Background
• Methodology and Conclusions
• Stakeholders
• Building Guide: Step-By-Step
• Function and History of B-Section Community Hall
• Future Building Advice
• B-Section Hall-Female Team Member Reflection
• B-Section Hall-Male Team Member Reflection
• ABR- Chemical Process
• Future Plans
• Sanitation Step-By-Step
• Sanitation: Female Team Member Reflection
• Sanitation: Male Team Member Reflection
• Playground Background
• Construction Pictures
• Our References
• Description of Project
• Communicating Results through Documents Method
• Generating Alternative Designs Method
• Identifying Flooding Hot Spots Method
• Interview Method
• Measuring and Modeling Hot Spots Method
• Future Recommendations
• Project Diagrams and Models
• Alexandra Settlement
• Ondo Town, Nigeria
• Porto Alegre, Brazil
• Monwabisi Park Spaza Market
• Focus Group Discussion
• Informal Conversations
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• Reference List
• 1. Toilets, Urinals, and Primary Waste Management
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Apartheid in South Africa: Effects on Life and Education

The National Party gained power in South Africa in 1948, approximately 30 years after its founding. Originally, the National Party was created as a new, opposing political party to the ruling South African Party in 1913-14 by General JBM Hertzog (Carter, 1955, “Apartheid and reactions to it”, n.d.). Louis Botha, the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, founded in 1910, and leader of the South African Party, was an advocate for the English-speaking white South Africans. General Hertzog contrastingly advocated for the Afrikaans, an ethnic group comprised mainly of Dutch descendants. Members of the National Party believed in political freedom from Britain, whom South Africa was directly connected to as a Union, cultural superiority of Afrikaans, and complete nationalism (“Apartheid and reactions to it”, n.d.).

General Hertzog obtained the position of Prime Minister under the National Party in 1924. Daniel F. Malan, a dedicated member of the Party, became the Minister of the Interior, Public Health, and Education and soon became a leading figure in the politics of South Africa. After the Great Depression and other events, the original differences between the South African Party and the National Party seemed to disappear as they were working toward common goals (“Apartheid and reactions to it”, n.d.). The two parties soon merged to become the United Party. Daniel F. Malan and some others, upset by this joining, left to create the Purified National Party, the same one that introduced apartheid to South Africa. (“National Party”, n.d.).

In 1948, Daniel F. Malan transitioned into Prime Minister and under his leadershipapartheid was instituted in South Africa. Literally defined, apartheid means separateness in Afrikaans (Spaull, 2013). In practice, this existed as the systematic segregation of non-white people from white people concerning everything from political and economic rights to living boundaries. Mark Saunders, author of Remembering Apartheid , described apartheid as a group of policies that slowed social and economic development (2005).Whereas former policies separated races economically and socially, apartheid “cruelly and forcibly separated people, and it had a fearsome state apparatus to punish those who fought against it” (“Apartheid and reactions to it”, n.d.). Despite increasing opposition, such resistance was internalized and occasionally dismissed due to apartheid’s harsh repercussions and segregation’s historical presence. In other words, apartheid was not much different superficially but in the way it was executed.

While apartheid was a major political and social shift, there were distinct acts that contributed to the cruelty and intensity of it, specifically for those of a non-white race. The Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act of 1950 forced citizens to register as a specific race, either black, Indian, or coloured, so they would be treated “accordingly”, including separation and relocation based on skin color. Thousands of families were moved to “correct” areas of living. An important example is the area of District Six (“Apartheid and the reactions to it”, n.d.).

The area known as District Six was considered a slum, an impoverished area populated mainly with blacks and people of color, but its cultural community was lively and well known. During the apartheid regime, it was declared as a white only area, therefore most of the initial inhabitants were forced out. Some qualified for accommodation from the Community Development Board, but many were left without housing options. Years after the District Six population had been relocated, the area was still going unused. It was soon destroyed, leaving behind little to remember the community that once thrived (Dorsett, 1999).

In addition to a multitude of other policies, a major source of concern was the Bantu Education Act of 1953, a foundational piece of the apartheid regime. These policies separated blacks from whites in school and provided non-whites with inferior education that kept them economically and politically lower, with fewer opportunities for advancement (Spaull, 2013). Blacks were educated to meet their “cultural standards”, as established by white government officials. Thus, the curriculum was created to keep blacks poor in factories and as manual laborers under white control. The effects of this incredible discrimination are still relevant twenty years later (“Bantu Education Act No 47 of 1953”, Spaull, 2013).

How education has changed in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Even after apartheid was revoked in 1994 and the African National Congress (ANC) took power, the effects of years of segregation and inferior education remained intact. E.B. Fiske and H.F. Ladd, authors of Elusive equity: education reform in post-apartheid South Africa (2004) considered revamping the entire education system as the main way to accomplish post-apartheid success (Kanjee and Sayed, 2013, Spaull, 2013). This required protecting white education, but bringing black, Indian, and coloured schools up to par. Challenges the ANC faced included a lack of funding and an absence of centralization of the departments of education. Much of the country budget was already allocated to education, so increasing that amount would prove challenging. Additionally, there were multiple departments to oversee the different racial segments of education. Compiling them into a cohort under the Department of Education was difficult, but a necessary part of education reformation (Spaull, 2013, Kanjee and Sayed, 2013). The Policy Framework for Education and Training (1994) was developed to help the government give equal opportunities in schools, change curriculum in areas such as early childhood development and special education, and break down the barriers of cultural and racial prejudice (Fiske and Ladd, 2004). Yet still, twenty years later, the urban poor of South Africa are struggling.

Anil Kanjee and Yusuf Sayed(“Assessment policy in post-apartheid South Africa” 2013) consider the greatest challenge of the South African government to be changing the curriculum through a system of improved policies and judging one’s ability to advance to higher levels of education. The effective implementation of these new policies has been the downfall of the education reform. Although the policies of apartheid have been revoked, non-white schools still suffer from dysfunction and lack of leadership past the local level, according to Nicholas Spaull, writer of Poverty and Privilege (2013). They are informally run by communities and are constantly facing “disorder, distrust, rebellion, and lack of cooperation” due to apartheid effects on education (Spaull, 2013).

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Bantu education and the racist compartmentalizing of education

In 1949 the government appointed the Eiselen Commission with the task of considering African education provision. The Commission recommended ‘resorting to radical measures’ for the ‘effective reform of the Bantu school system’.

In 1953, prior to the apartheid government’s Bantu Education Act, 90% of black South African schools were state-aided mission schools. The Act demanded that all such schools register with the state, and removed control of African education from the churches and provincial authorities. This control was centralized in the Bantu Education Department, a body dedicated to keeping it separate and inferior. Almost all the mission schools closed down. The Roman Catholic Church was largely alone in its attempt to keep its schools going without state aid. The 1953 Act also separated the financing of education for Africans from general state spending and linked it to direct tax paid by Africans themselves, with the result that far less was spent on black children than on white children.

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 white universities (mainly the universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand). Separating tertiary institutions according to race, this Act set up separate 'tribal colleges' for black university students. The so-called ‘bush’ Universities such as Fort Hare, Vista, Venda, Western Cape were formed. Blacks could no longer freely attend white universities. Again, there were strong protests.

Expenditure on Bantu Education increased from the late 1960s, once the apartheid Nationalist government saw the need for a trained African labour force. Through this, more African children attended school than under the old missionary system of education, albeit grossly deprived of facilities in comparison with the education of other races, especially whites.

Nationally, pupil:teacher ratios went up from 46:1 in 1955 to 58:1 in 1967. Overcrowded classrooms were used on a rota basis. There was also a lack of teachers, and many of those who did teach were underqualified. In 1961, only 10 per cent of black teachers held a matriculation certificate [last year of high school]. Black education was essentially retrogressing, with teachers being less qualified than their students.

The Coloured Person's Education Act of 1963 put control of 'coloured' education under the Department of Coloured Affairs. 'Coloured' schools also had to be registered with the government. 'Coloured' education was made compulsory, but was now effectively separated from white schooling.

The 1965 Indian Education Act was passed to separate and control Indian education, which was placed under the Department of Indian Affairs. In 1976, the SAIC took over certain educational functions. Indian education was also made compulsory.

Because of the government's ‘homelands’ policy, no new high schools were built in Soweto between 1962 and 1971 -- students were meant to move to their relevant homeland to attend the newly built schools there. Then in 1972 the government gave in to pressure from business to improve the Bantu Education system to meet business's need for a better trained black workforce. 40 new schools were built in Soweto. Between 1972 and 1976 the number of pupils at secondary schools increased from 12,656 to 34,656. One in five Soweto children were attending secondary school.

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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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Mullis, I. , Martin, M. , Foy, P. , and Arora, A. ( 2012 ) ‘ TIMSS 2011 International Results in Mathematics’. Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College, https://timss.bc.edu/timss2011/international-results-mathematics.html .

Mullis, I. , Martin, M. , Foy, P. , and Hooper, M. ( 2016 ) ‘ TIMSS 2015 International Results in Mathematics’. Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College, https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2015/international-database/ .

Mullis, I. V. S. , Martin, M. O. , Foy, P. , and Hooper, M. (2017) ‘PIRLS 2016 International Results in Reading’, TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center website: http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/pirls2016/international-results/ .

Mullis, I. , Martin, M. , Gonzalez, E. , and Chrostowski, S. ( 2004 ) ‘ Findings From IEA’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study at the Fourth and Eighth Grades’. Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College, https://timss.bc.edu/timss2003i/mathD.html .

Mwabu, G. and Schultz, T. P. ( 1996 ) ‘ Education Returns Across Quantiles of the Wage Function: Alternative Explanations for Returns to Education by Race in South Africa ’, American Economic Review 86(2), 335–9.

Patrinos, H. and Ariasingam, D. ( 1997 ) ‘Decentralization of Education: Demand-Side Financing ’. World Bank Directions in Development Paper, No. 17047. Washington DC: World Bank.

Piper, B. and Korda Poole, M. ( 2010 ) ‘ Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) Plus: Liberia. Program evaluation report’. (Prepared for USAID/Liberia.) Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI International, https://www.rti.org/publication/early-grade-reading-assessment-egra-plus-liberia-program-evaluation-report .

Pritchett, L. and Amanda Beatty, A. ( 2012 ) ‘ The Negative Consequences of Overambitious Curricula in Developing Countries ’. Working Paper 293, Center for Global Development.

Schollar, E. ( 2015 ) ‘The Primary Mathematics Research Project: 2004–2012. An Evidence-Based Programme of Research into Understanding and Improving the Outcomes of Mathematical Education in South African Primary Schools’. Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town, https://nicspaull.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/eric-schollar-thesis-final-library-copy-27_may_2015.pdf .

Seekings, J. and Nattrass, N. ( 2005 )  Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa . New Haven: Yale University Press.

Snilstveit, B. , Stevenson, J. , Phillips, D. , Vojtkova, M. , Gallagher, E. , Schmidt, T. , and Eyers, J. (2015) ‘Interventions for improving learning outcomes and access to education in low-and middle-income countries: a systematic review’, http://www.3ieimpact.org .

Sparks, A. ( 1996 )  Tomorrow is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa’s Road to Change . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Spaull, N. and Hoadley, U. ( 2017 ) ‘Getting Reading Right’. In L. Jamieson, L. Berry, and L. Lake (eds), South African Child Gauge 2017 . Cape Town: Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town.

Swartz, R . ( 2004 ) School Management, Teacher Development and Support: Proceedings of a Conference held at Eskom Centre, Midrand, 18–19 August 1994. Johannesburg: Education Policy Unit, University of the Witwatersrand.

Unterhalter, E. ( 1991 ) ‘Changing aspects of reformism in Bantu education 1953–1989’. In E. Unterhalter , H. Wolpe , T. Botha , S. Badet , T. Diamini , and B. Khotseng (eds), Apartheid education and popular struggles (pp. 53–72). Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

Van der Berg, S. and Gustafsson, M. ( 2017 ) ‘ Quality of Education. A Report to Working Group 1 of the High Level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation ’. ReSEP (Research on Socio-Economic Policy), Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch.

Welsh, D. ( 2009 )  The Rise and Fall of Apartheid . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Welsh, F. ( 2000 ) A History of South Africa . London: Harper Collins.

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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• Introduction

Unequal education: apartheid's legacy

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The Europeans who colonized Africa generally viewed the natives as intellectually and morally inferior, and exploited the labor of the local populations. Thus it was no surprise that when, in the early 20th century, colonial governments instituted public education systems, the goal was to prepare young Africans to be compliant laborers. In Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), for instance, the formal British education policy aimed to “develop a vast pool of cheap unskilled manual labor.” [1] The result was, in effect, two school systems: one appropriately subsidized, and the other chronically under-resourced.

In South Africa, the minority white population retained control of the government when the then-Union of South Africa gained full independence from the United Kingdom in 1931. At the time, the education system was segregated and unequal. As one history recounted, “While white schooling was free, compulsory and expanding, black education was sorely neglected. Underfunding and an urban influx led to gravely insufficient schooling facilities, teachers and educational materials as well as student absenteeism or non-enrollment.” [2]

In 1948, 90 percent of the few black South Africans who went to school attended mission schools that were answerable to the country’s provincial governments. That year, the Afrikaner-dominated National Party won control of the white government and instituted the infamous apartheid system. Under apartheid, the government forced everyone to register her or his race and further restricted where nonwhites could live and work. It also established separate public amenities for whites and nonwhites similar to the US South during segregation. Education was a key component of apartheid, and the Bantu Education Act of 1953 centralized black South African education and brought it under the control of the national government. [3] The public schools that replaced the mission schools were funded via a tax paid by black South Africans; the monies raised were inadequate to maintain the schools properly. In 1961, just 10 percent of black teachers had graduated from high school. By 1967, the student-teacher ratio had risen to 58 to 1. [4]

© African National Congress, via Twitter

Soweto. In June 1976, high school students in Soweto, a black township on the southwest side of Johannesburg, organized a mass protest against unequal education. On June 16, thousands of students marched through the streets on their way to a rally at a stadium. The South African police broke up the march using dogs, batons, tear gas and, ultimately, gunfire. The police action and ensuing confrontations with the police left hundreds of students dead and more than a thousand injured. [5] The events of the day sparked a nationwide uprising, made Soweto an emblem of the anti-apartheid movement, put the apartheid education system in the spotlight, and cemented the role of students in the nation’s political struggle.

Nearly two decades later, on April 27, 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) won South Africa’s first democratic election, ending apartheid and the era of white minority rule. The country’s new constitution declared that all children had the right to a basic education. But overcoming apartheid’s legacy of severe educational inequality was a monumental task. In the first years after the constitution’s adoption, formerly nonwhite schools, meaning black, colored and Indian, graduated far fewer students than formerly white schools. Formerly black schools, which remained nearly 100 percent black, had abysmal matriculation rates.

As of 2000, 10 percent of formerly black schools graduated fewer than 20 percent of their students, 35 percent graduated 20-39 percent, 32 percent graduated 40-59 percent, 16 percent graduated 60-79 percent, and just 7 percent graduated 80-100 percent of their students. In contrast, 2 percent of formerly white schools graduated 60-79 percent of their students, and 98 percent graduated 80-100 percent. [6]

[1] Dickson A. Mungazi, Colonial education for Africans: George Stark's policy in Zimbabwe , New York: Praeger, 1991.

[2] Bantu Education Policy , South African History Online. See http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/bantu-education-policy

[5] South African History Online lists 383 names as casualties of the uprising. See: http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising?page=8

[6] Servaas van der Berg, “Apartheid’s Enduring Legacy: Inequalities in Education,” Journal of African Economies , Volume 16, Number 5, published online August 2, 2007, pp. 849–880.

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Education After Apartheid

Once imprisoned for his ideas on reform, ihron rensburg is now implementing them..

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Courtesy Ihron Rensburg

Ihron Rensburg spent much of the late 1980s detained without trial in South African prisons for his antiapartheid work with the United Democratic Front (UDF). “Solitary confinement for nine months at a stretch poses an enormous challenge to one’s intellectual, physical and spiritual faculties,” says Rensburg, MA ’94, PhD ’96. “But my colleagues and I never saw prison as something that would stop us. We knew that eventually we would dismantle the old regime and bring in nonracist, nonsexist democracy.”

His intense drive to “deracialize” the educational system carried Rensburg through the dangerous period prior to the establishment of democracy in 1994. As general secretary of the UDF’s National Education Crisis Committee, he led negotiations with apartheid administrations to reform a system that severely discriminated against black students. After earning his degrees in international development education, Rensburg became deputy director general of South Africa’s department of education. For six years he helped change K-12 curriculum to better educate and empower black citizens culturally, politically and economically.

Rensburg was named vice chancellor of the University of Johannesburg last year and has worked to merge the two university campuses and a technical school that now form UJ. His vision is to turn the univer-sity into one of the world’s premier educational institutions.

Freelance writer Marguerite Rigoglioso spoke by telephone with Rensburg at his home in Johannesburg.

What are the big challenges facing higher education in South Africa today?

To understand today’s challenges, we need to go back to the apartheid years. Thirteen years ago, with the coming of the new democracy, we had 36 higher education institutions, 21 universities and 15 polytechnics, all state run. All of them were ethnically and racially unintegrated, with schools that black, colored and Indians attended being hopelessly under-resourced, and those that whites attended being well resourced.

The challenges we had then we continue to face today, although we’ve made much progress. At that time, the participation rate of black students was not commensurate with their share of the population. Student retention and graduation rates were low. The quality of academic programs and teaching was uneven, as were academics’ qualifications and capacities.

What kind of progress have you made in addressing these problems?

In 1994, we had about 500,000 students enrolled at these 36 institutions; by 2005, that number had increased to 734,000, and we expect it to reach 800,000 in 2010. This has been part of our effort to widen and deepen participation of our citizens in higher education, the target being an 18 percent participation rate for the 18-to-24 age group. That number sat at 5 percent in 1994; now we’re in the region of 13 percent. So we’re well on track with all of these goals. The number of black students at higher education institutions has doubled in the process. In 1994, about 55 percent of the student population was black; in 2005, it was 75 percent.

We now also have a council for higher education that regularly conducts institutional audits to assess the quality of universities, academic programs and teaching. Many programs have come through with good reviews, but several were deregistered for not meeting standards. We’re driving quality up rather than being satisfied with mediocrity.

What has been your most significant improvement in creating greater access for blacks?

We’ve created a national student financial aid scheme, particularly for students from disadvantaged and black communities who are academically deserving. We’ve gone from committing 20 million rand [$2.82 million] to committing 1.2 billion rand [$148.12 million] to this program annually. It’s an astronomical investment, and probably one of the greatest success stories of the postapartheid higher education transformation program.

What areas still need work?

We have a system that still reflects a two-nation society, a society comprising those in the formal and informal sectors, the rich and the poor. Some institutions are reasonably okay, while others, those that have historically been disadvantaged, are not in a position to grow into great universities.

We also need to focus on research. We still have a racially balkanized situation here, with 12 or so traditionally white universities producing the bulk of the research output, and the bottom institutions hardly contributing. This is the result of a complex history of inadequate attention to investment in these institutions.

In the most disadvantaged part of the system, graduation rate targets are way behind the national goal. The polytechnics in particular are also struggling because most of their academics have only a master’s degree or less. So we’re challenged to drive up their qualifications to the PhD level.

In general, significant physical and financial resources will need to be invested between now and 2014, the second decade of our democracy.

What is the government’s policy in this regard?

Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen a steady decline in the real value of state investment in our education. Only in the last year or two have we seen an upturn. But we still have a ways to go. Prior to 1985, the state contributed 80 percent of the cost of the university, leaving the university to obtain the rest through student tuition and residence fees, and third-stream sources such as partnerships with research institutions, and donor and alumni contributions. We’re now sitting with a 55 percent [government] contribution. As a result, universities have had to increase tuition fees significantly. But 75 percent of our students are black, and at least half are financially disadvantaged. So any significant increases in tuition could make universities inaccessible to many students.

The expectation is that the state will lift all institutions at least up to the aggregate level of the top 10 research institutions. To do that will require considerable resources, investments and time.

Is the government willing to invest more?

The treasury has never been in a better position. They’ve become extraordinarily effective in collecting taxes as well as widening the tax base. We now have a balanced budget and a surplus. We’re in a position to expand spending. So it’s not a matter of not having the cash. It’s still the historically disadvantaged institutions that have not yet seen effort or investments put into them. But I’m much more optimistic than I would have been two years ago, based on my conversations with the education minister and senior officials in government.

Why has South Africa decided to merge a number of universities?

One of the driving forces was the need to achieve efficiency. We had polytechnics and universities with 5,000 students, and they could not operate at the appropriate scale. So we merged our universities from 36 down to 23.

How will the merger benefit the University of Johannesburg?

It allows us to build a new institution, one that brings together a polytechnic structure into a university structure. I’m confident we’ll become the benchmark in a decade’s time for institutional productivity and responsiveness in South Africa. The top five universities that have not gone through such mergers miss the dynamism and energy that is enabling us to rethink our institution.

What models have you drawn on?

We look to the new generation of universities in the United Kingdom formed in the 1980s—for example, Manchester, Warwick—institutions that were born out of polytechnics and have become giant universities. And, of course, going further back, we look to MIT and Caltech in the United States, two excellent examples of the direction we’re leading UJ in.

What might other countries learn from South Africa’s experience promoting diversity and equal opportunity in education?

You have to dream of the possibility of building institutions that are truly embracing. And you have to begin with creating the social conditions that enable widened and deepened participation, not only as a political imperative, but as a social requirement, while also maintaining and strengthening your academic standards. You must rethink the culture of the university. Does it affirm individual differences? Or does it force people to come into a particular cultural space and live with it?

You also have to look at ways to identify at-risk students early on. You have to put in place the academic support services and systems, the student-counseling system, the language resources, to enable this wider participation to be successful. It’s one thing to widen participation; it’s another to widen success. These are some of the big challenges that face all universities as we move toward greater inclusion. It’s an international phenomenon.

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School Enrollment in Apartheid Era South Africa

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It is well known that one of the fundamental differences between the experiences of whites and Blacks in Apartheid-era South Africa was education. While the battle against enforced education in Afrikaans was eventually won, the Apartheid government's Bantu education policy meant that Black children did not receive the same opportunities as white children.

Data on School Enrollment for Blacks and whites in South Africa in 1982

Using data from South Africa's 1980 census, roughly 21 percent of the white population and 22 percent of the Black population were enrolled in school. There were approximately 4.5 million whites and 24 million Blacks in South Africa in 1980. Differences in population distributions, however, mean that there were Black children of school age not enrolled in school.

The second fact to consider is the difference in government spending on education. In 1982, the Apartheid government of South Africa spent an average of R1,211 on education for each white child (approximately $65.24 USD) and only R146 for each Black child (approximately $7.87 USD).

The quality of teaching staff also differed. Roughly a third of all white teachers had a university degree, the rest had all passed the Standard 10 matriculation exam. Only 2.3 percent of Black teachers had a university degree and 82 percent had not even reached the Standard 10 matriculation. More than half had not reached Standard 8. Education opportunities were heavily skewed towards preferential treatment for whites.

Finally, although the overall percentages for all scholars as part of the total population is the same for whites and Blacks, the distributions of enrollment across school grades are completely different.

White Enrollment in South African Schools in 1982

It was permissible to leave school at the end of Standard 8 and there was a relatively consistent level of attendance up to that level. What is also clear is that a high proportion of students continued on to take the final Standard 10 matriculation exam. Opportunities for further education also gave impetus to white children staying in school for Standards 9 and 10.

The South African education system was based on end-of-year exams and assessments. If you passed the exam, you could move up a grade in the next school year. Only a few white children failed end-of-year exams and needed to re-sit school grades. Remember, the quality of education was significantly better for whites.

Black Enrollment in South African Schools in 1982

In 1982, a much larger proportion of Black children were attending primary school (grades Sub A and B), compared to the final grades of secondary school.

It was common for Black children in South Africa to attend school for fewer years than white children. Rural life had significantly greater demands on the time of Black children, who were expected to help out with livestock and household chores. In rural areas, Black children often started school later than children in urban areas.

The disparity in teaching experienced in white and Black classrooms and the fact that Blacks were usually taught in their second (or third) language, rather than their primary one, meant that back children were much more likely to fail the end-of-year assessments. Many were required to repeat school grades. It was not unknown for a pupil to re-do a particular grade several times.

There were fewer opportunities for further education for Black students and thus, less reason to stay on at school.

Job reservation in South Africa kept white-collar jobs firmly in the hands of whites. Employment opportunities for Blacks in South Africa were generally manual jobs and unskilled positions.

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• Apartheid 101
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• What Was Apartheid in South Africa?
• South Africa's National Holidays
• Biography of Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu, South African Activist
• Quotes From PW Botha, Prime Minister of South Africa
• Racial Classification Under Apartheid
• Group Areas Act No. 41 of 1950
• Grand Apartheid in South Africa
• The Origins of Apartheid in South Africa
• Pre-Apartheid Era Laws: Natives (or Black) Land Act No. 27 of 1913
• Biography: Joe Slovo
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The History and Devolution of Education in South Africa

Cite this chapter.

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• Joshua Y. Meek  

Part of the book series: CERC Studies in Comparative Education ((CERC,volume 24))

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Since the changeover from South Africa's apartheid system and government (which had been heavily influenced by South Africa's elite Afrikaner leaders and the secret Afrikaner society the Broderbond ) in 1994, much has been expected of the post-apartheid government in terms of greater equalization of opportunities in all aspects of life. This includes education. Although South Africa's education system is definitely structured differently than it was prior to the end of apartheid, unfortunately, access to high-quality education for all citizens regardless of race has yet to be fully realized. Wealthy and middle-class Blacks have been able to access the best education available to any White child, but for poor and working-class Black families which make up the majority of South African citizens by the tens of millions, this is not the case. In part, this is because the roots of separate and unequal education are so deeply embedded in South African society. However, the key factor on which these inequalities rests now tends to be socioeco-nomic class rather than race. Given that the poorest and least educated of all South Africans during the apartheid regime were Black, class distinctions tend to be tantamount to the same racial distinctions that existed during apartheid. However, a very small proportion of South African families in professional and managerial jobs, as well as in political leadership, now have access to the same educational opportunities as middle- and upper-class White families by attending South Africa's best educational academies.

Later in this chapter, we will explain why the system—and educational opportunity for all citizens—has changed so little since democracy was extended to all of South Africa's citizens. First, however, we need to understand the history of education in South Africa especially as it was designed, structured, and administered during the apartheid era.

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Meek, C.B., Meek, J.Y. (2008). The History and Devolution of Education in South Africa. In: Holsinger, D.B., Jacob, W.J. (eds) Inequality in Education. CERC Studies in Comparative Education, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2652-1_22

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 20, 2023 | Original: October 7, 2010

Apartheid, or “apartness” in the language of Afrikaans, was a system of legislation that upheld segregation against non-white citizens of South Africa. After the National Party gained power in South Africa in 1948, its all-white government immediately began enforcing existing policies of racial segregation. Under apartheid, nonwhite South Africans—a majority of the population—were forced to live in separate areas from whites and use separate public facilities. Contact between the two groups was limited. Despite strong and consistent opposition to apartheid within and outside of South Africa, its laws remained in effect for the better part of 50 years. In 1991, the government of President F.W. de Klerk began to repeal most of the legislation that provided the basis for apartheid.

Apartheid in South Africa

Racial segregation and white supremacy had become central aspects of South African policy long before apartheid began. The controversial 1913 Land Act , passed three years after South Africa gained its independence, marked the beginning of territorial segregation by forcing Black Africans to live in reserves and making it illegal for them to work as sharecroppers. Opponents of the Land Act formed the South African National Native Congress, which would become the African National Congress (ANC).

Did you know? ANC leader Nelson Mandela, released from prison in February 1990, worked closely with President F.W. de Klerk's government to draw up a new constitution for South Africa. After both sides made concessions, they reached agreement in 1993, and would share the Nobel Peace Prize that year for their efforts.

The Great Depression and World War II brought increasing economic woes to South Africa, and convinced the government to strengthen its policies of racial segregation. In 1948, the Afrikaner National Party won the general election under the slogan “apartheid” (literally “apartness”). Their goal was not only to separate South Africa’s white minority from its non-white majority, but also to separate non-whites from each other, and to divide Black South Africans along tribal lines in order to decrease their political power.

Apartheid Becomes Law

By 1950, the government had banned marriages between whites and people of other races, and prohibited sexual relations between Black and white South Africans. The Population Registration Act of 1950 provided the basic framework for apartheid by classifying all South Africans by race, including Bantu (Black Africans), Coloured (mixed race) and white.

A fourth category, Asian (meaning Indian and Pakistani) was later added. In some cases, the legislation split families; a parent could be classified as white, while their children were classified as colored.

A series of Land Acts set aside more than 80 percent of the country’s land for the white minority, and “pass laws” required non-whites to carry documents authorizing their presence in restricted areas.

In order to limit contact between the races, the government established separate public facilities for whites and non-whites, limited the activity of nonwhite labor unions and denied non-white participation in national government.

Apartheid and Separate Development

Hendrik Verwoerd , who became prime minister in 1958, refined apartheid policy further into a system he referred to as “separate development.” The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 created 10 Bantu homelands known as Bantustans. Separating Black South Africans from each other enabled the government to claim there was no Black majority and reduced the possibility that Black people would unify into one nationalist organization.

Every Black South African was designated as a citizen as one of the Bantustans, a system that supposedly gave them full political rights, but effectively removed them from the nation’s political body.

In one of the most devastating aspects of apartheid, the government forcibly removed Black South Africans from rural areas designated as “white” to the homelands and sold their land at low prices to white farmers. From 1961 to 1994, more than 3.5 million people were forcibly removed from their homes and deposited in the Bantustans, where they were plunged into poverty and hopelessness.

Opposition to Apartheid

Resistance to apartheid within South Africa took many forms over the years, from non-violent demonstrations, protests and strikes to political action and eventually to armed resistance.

Together with the South Indian National Congress, the ANC organized a mass meeting in 1952, during which attendees burned their pass books. A group calling itself the Congress of the People adopted a Freedom Charter in 1955 asserting that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black or white.” The government broke up the meeting and arrested 150 people, charging them with high treason.

Sharpeville Massacre

In 1960, at the Black township of Sharpeville, the police opened fire on a group of unarmed Black people associated with the Pan-African Congress (PAC), an offshoot of the ANC. The group had arrived at the police station without passes, inviting arrest as an act of resistance. At least 67 people were killed and more than 180 wounded.

The Sharpeville massacre convinced many anti-apartheid leaders that they could not achieve their objectives by peaceful means, and both the PAC and ANC established military wings, neither of which ever posed a serious military threat to the state.

Nelson Mandela

By 1961, most resistance leaders had been captured and sentenced to long prison terms or executed. Nelson Mandela , a founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the military wing of the ANC, was incarcerated from 1963 to 1990; his imprisonment would draw international attention and help garner support for the anti-apartheid cause.

On June 10, 1980, his followers smuggled a letter from Mandela in prison and made it public: “UNITE! MOBILIZE! FIGHT ON! BETWEEN THE ANVIL OF UNITED MASS ACTION AND THE HAMMER OF THE ARMED STRUGGLE WE SHALL CRUSH APARTHEID!”

Key Steps That Led to End of Apartheid

A combination of internal and international resistance to apartheid helped dismantle the white supremacist regime.

Nelson Mandela: His Written Legacy

Read excerpts from letters, speeches and memoirs reflecting on each stage of his life—from the innocence of a tribal village boy to the triumphs and pressures of being South Africa's first black president.

How Nelson Mandela Used Rugby as a Symbol of South African Unity

In a nation bitterly divided by apartheid, Mandela used the game to foster shared national pride.

President F.W. de Klerk

In 1976, when thousands of Black children in Soweto, a Black township outside Johannesburg, demonstrated against the Afrikaans language requirement for Black African students, the police opened fire with tear gas and bullets.

The protests and government crackdowns that followed, combined with a national economic recession, drew more international attention to South Africa and shattered any remaining illusions that apartheid had brought peace or prosperity to the nation.

The United Nations General Assembly had denounced apartheid in 1973, and in 1976 the UN Security Council voted to impose a mandatory embargo on the sale of arms to South Africa. In 1985, the United Kingdom and United States imposed economic sanctions on the country.

Under pressure from the international community, the National Party government of Pieter Botha sought to institute some reforms, including abolition of the pass laws and the ban on interracial sex and marriage. The reforms fell short of any substantive change, however, and by 1989 Botha was pressured to step aside in favor of another conservative president, F.W. de Klerk, who had supported apartheid throughout his political career.

When Did Apartheid End?

Though a conservative, De Klerk underwent a conversion to a more pragmatic political philosophy, and his government subsequently repealed the Population Registration Act, as well as most of the other legislation that formed the legal basis for apartheid. De Klerk freed Nelson Mandela on February 11, 1990.

A new constitution, which enfranchised Black citizens and other racial groups, took effect in 1994, and elections that year led to a coalition government with a nonwhite majority, marking the official end of the apartheid system.

The End of Apartheid. Archive: U.S. Department of State . A History of Apartheid in South Africa. South African History Online . South Africa: Twenty-Five Years Since Apartheid. The Ohio State University: Stanton Foundation . 

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The National Party and apartheid

• Resistance to apartheid
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• Mbeki steps down
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• Zuma’s resignation
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• The 2019 national election
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• The 2024 national election

• What is Desmond Tutu best known for?
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After its victory the National Party rapidly consolidated its control over the state and in subsequent years won a series of elections with increased majorities. Parliament removed Coloured voters from the common voters’ rolls in 1956. By 1969 the electorate was exclusively white: Indians never had any parliamentary representation, and the seats for white representatives of Blacks and Coloureds had been abolished.

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One plank of the National Party platform was for South Africa to become a republic , preferably outside the Commonwealth . The issue was presented to white voters in 1960 as a way to bring about white unity, especially because of concern with the problems that the Belgian Congo was then experiencing as it became independent. By a simple majority the voters approved the republic status. The government structure would change only slightly: the governor-general would be replaced by a state president, who would be chosen by Parliament. At a meeting in London in March 1961, South Africa had hoped to retain its Commonwealth status, but, when other members criticized it over its apartheid policies, it withdrew from the organization and on May 31, 1961, became the Republic of South Africa.

The government vigorously furthered its political goals by making it compulsory for white children to attend schools that were conducted in their home language, either Afrikaans or English (except for the few who went to private schools). It advanced Afrikaners to top positions in the civil service , army, and police and in such state corporations as the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It also awarded official contracts to Afrikaner banks and insurance companies. These methods raised the living standard of Afrikaners closer to that of English-speaking white South Africans.

Following a recession in the early 1960s, the economy grew rapidly until the late 1970s. By that time, owing to the efforts of public and private enterprise, South Africa had developed a modern infrastructure , by far the most advanced in Africa. It possessed efficient financial institutions, a national network of roads and railways, modernized port facilities in Cape Town and Durban , long-established mining operations producing a wealth of diamonds, gold, and coal, and a range of industries. De Beers Consolidated Mines and the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa , founded by Ernest Oppenheimer in 1917, dominated the private sector, forming the core of one of the world’s most powerful networks of mining, industrial, and financial companies and employing some 800,000 workers on six continents. State corporations (parastatals) controlled industries vital to national security. South African Coal, Oil, and Gas Corporation (SASOL) was established in 1950 to make South Africa self-sufficient in petroleum resources by converting coal to gasoline and diesel fuel . After the United Nations (UN) placed a ban on arms exports to South Africa in 1964, Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor) was created to produce high-quality military equipment.

The man who played a major part in transforming apartheid from an election slogan into practice was Hendrik F. Verwoerd . Born in the Netherlands, Verwoerd immigrated with his parents to South Africa when he was a child. He became minister of native affairs in 1950 and was prime minister from 1958 until 1966, when Dimitri Tsafendas, a Coloured man, assassinated him in Parliament. (Tsafendas was judged to be insane and was confined to a mental institution after the murder.) Verwoerd’s successor, B.J. Vorster , had been minister of justice , police , and prisons , and he shared Verwoerd’s philosophy of white supremacy . In Verwoerd’s vision, South Africa’s population contained four distinct racial groups—white, Black, Coloured, and Asian—each with an inherent culture . Because whites were the “civilized” group, they were entitled to control the state.

The all-white Parliament passed many laws to legalize and institutionalize the apartheid system. The Population Registration Act (1950) classified every South African by race. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and the Immorality Act (1950) prohibited interracial marriage or sex. The Suppression of Communism Act (1950) defined communism and its aims broadly to include any opposition to the government and empowered the government to detain anyone it thought might further “communist” aims. The Indemnity Act (1961) made it legal for police officers to commit acts of violence, to torture, or to kill in the pursuit of official duties. Later laws gave the police the right to arrest and detain people without trial and to deny them access to their families or lawyers. Other laws and regulations collectively known as “petty apartheid” segregated South Africans in every sphere of life: in buses, taxis, and hearses, in cinemas, restaurants, and hotels, in trains and railway waiting rooms, and in access to beaches. When a court declared that separate amenities should be equal, Parliament passed a special law to override it.

“Grand apartheid,” in contrast, related to the physical separation of the racial groups in the cities and countryside. Under the Group Areas Act (1950) the cities and towns of South Africa were divided into segregated residential and business areas. Thousands of Coloureds, Blacks, and Indians were removed from areas classified for white occupation.

Blacks were treated like “tribal” people and were required to live on reserves under hereditary chiefs except when they worked temporarily in white towns or on white farms. The government began to consolidate the scattered reserves into 8 (eventually 10) distinct territories, designating each of them as the “homeland,” or Bantustan , of a specific Black ethnic community . The government manipulated homeland politics so that compliant chiefs controlled the administrations of most of those territories. Arguing that Bantustans matched the decolonization process then taking place in tropical Africa, the government devolved powers onto those administrations and eventually encouraged them to become “independent.” Between 1976 and 1981 four accepted independence— Transkei , Bophuthatswana , Venda , and Ciskei —though none was ever recognized by a foreign government. Like the other homelands, however, they were economic backwaters, dependent on subsidies from Pretoria .

Conditions in the homelands continued to deteriorate, partly because they had to accommodate vast numbers of people with minimal resources. Many people found their way to the towns; but the government, attempting to reverse this flood, strengthened the pass laws by making it illegal for Blacks to be in a town for more than 72 hours at a time without a job in a white home or business. A particularly brutal series of forced removals were conducted from the 1960s to the early ’80s, in which more than 3.5 million Blacks were taken from towns and white rural areas (including lands they had occupied for generations) and dumped into the reserves, sometimes in the middle of winter and without any facilities.

The government also established direct control over the education of Blacks. The Bantu Education Act (1953) took Black schools away from the missions, and more state-run schools—especially at the elementary level—were created to meet the expanding economy’s increasing demand for semiskilled Black labor. The Extension of University Education Act (1959) prohibited the established universities from accepting Black students, except with special permission. Instead, the government created new ethnic university colleges—one each for Coloureds, Indians, and Zulus and one for Sotho , Tswana , and Venda students, as well as a medical school for Blacks. The South African Native College at Fort Hare, which missionaries had founded primarily but not exclusively for Blacks, became a state college solely for Xhosa students. The government staffed these ethnic colleges with white supporters of the National Party and subjected the students to stringent controls.

The Take: Lessons from the student anti-apartheid movement

How a campus boycott movement helped toppled apartheid and the lessons it holds for today.

A powerful campus protest and boycott movement in the US played a crucial role in helping to bring down apartheid in South Africa. Today, many US student activists are heading back to school, ready to continue the fight to end what they refer to as Israeli apartheid and genocide. What lessons do the veterans of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement see echoing today?

In this episode:

• Erin Lawson, Student Organizer
• Pearl Robinson, Professor of Political Science at Tufts University
• Bill Minter, Editor of AfricaFocus Bulletin
• Thula Simpson, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pretoria

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Amy Walters, with Ashish Malhotra, Shraddha Joshi, Hagir Saleh, Duha Mosaad, and Natasha Del Toro, in for Malika Bilal.

The Take production team is Amy Walters, Ashish Malhotra, Catherine Nouhan, Chloe K. Li, Duha Mosaad, Hagir Saleh, Khaled Soltan, Marcos Bartolomé, Sarí el-Khalili, Shraddha Joshi, Sonia Bhagat, and Tamara Khandaker.

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik and Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.

Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.

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Friday, September 6, 2024

Lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty: Lessons for South Africa from China

President Cyril Ramaphosa during a state visit to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping ahead of the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC). Picture: GCIS / September 3, 2024

Published Sep 5, 2024

By Wiseman Magasela

President Xi Jinping of China hosts African leaders for the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit. President Cyril Ramaphosa is on a state visit to China and will participate in the Summit.

South Africa is a key strategic partner in this forum and there are important policy and policy implementation lessons to learn from the Chinese state. South Africa and China have a Ten-Year Strategic Programme of Co-operation covering the period 2020–2029.

High levels of poverty persist in South Africa three decades after democratic rule. South Africa’s six administrations since 1994 have all proclaimed commitment to alleviating poverty.

The newly formed Government of National Unity has made the commitment ‘to reduce poverty and tackle the high cost of living’ as part of three strategic priorities.

The two leaders issued a joint statement in which one of the points is that ‘China is committed to sharing with South Africa experience in poverty alleviation and rural revitalisation; in building poverty alleviation model villages and offering support for South Africa’s co-ordinated urban and rural development’.

South Africa adopted an anti-poverty strategy in 2008 with a national war on poverty campaign launched the same year. South Africa committed to both the MDGs and SDGs and the National Development Plan: Vision 2030 aims to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030.

South Africa is a member of BRICS. One of the objectives of the BRICS partnership, through the BRICS Think Tanks Council is, as captured by former minister of Higher Education of South Africa, Dr Blade Nzimande, to ‘form a platform for the exchange of ideas’, to present ‘policy recommendations’ as well as ‘policy insights and informed analysis on how we could navigate some of the key challenges that continue to confront us nationally, regionally and indeed on a global scale and develop national policies that are configured to address poverty, inequality, and high levels of unemployment within our own countries’.

Among BRICS members, China stands out as a country that made great strides in addressing deep levels of multidimensional poverty (lack of basic human needs such as adequate income, food, safe drinking water, sanitation, health, shelter, education, employment, etc). China offers important policy lessons that can be adapted to local South African conditions and context in the fight against poverty.

In 1949, at the founding of the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong, China was a backward, largely rural, agrarian country. These conditions persisted for decades until decisive action at political, policy, administration and implementation levels was taken.

As Martin Ravallion, an expert on international poverty analysis, mentions ‘China in 1980 was one of the poorest countries in the world’. Remarkably, by 2018, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, using the international poverty line of $1.90 per day, the poverty rate had declined to below 0.5 percent.

In the joint study ‘Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead’ published in 2022, the World Bank and China’s Ministry of Finance report that over a 40 year period, ‘the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty – has fallen by close to 800 million’.

On 25 February 2021 Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that China had achieved ‘complete victory’ in its fight against poverty. This has been described as a ‘miracle’ that will ‘go down in history’, a ‘major victory’, an ‘unprecedented’ achievement and ‘China’s battle against poverty has benefited the largest number of people in human history’.

China’s success echoes Nelson Mandela’s insightful comment in 2005 when he said ‘like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural, it is man made, and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings’.

China is not South Africa. Globally, in policy choices and policy making at national level, lessons on policy success from other societies present powerful and convincing examples to learn from and adapt to the unique national environment.

China has become the world’s second largest economy described as ‘a giant workshop for the global economy’. Writers on China’s development remark that China today is a ‘powerhouse of the world economy’ as in 2009, China replaced Germany, Europe’s largest economy, as the number one global exporter.

A survey of writings on China’s success is clearly a study in unshaking political will, deep thinking, conceptual clarity, commitment, planning, institutional relations, execution, coordination, objective measurement of progress and uncompromising accountability.

An outline of the broad contours and characteristics of China’s approach that has brought about this monumental achievement points to observations that fall into several categories – political, administrative, implementation and coordination, accountability, rigorous monitoring and evaluation of impact of adopted policies.

At the political level, President Xi Jinping speaking at the Central Conference on Poverty Alleviation and Development in 2015, asserted that, in the battle against poverty there is a ‘firm resolve and solid goals’.

Tracing developments on China’s path in the fight against poverty, Dongxin Shu of the School of Marxism Studies, Yancheng Institute of Technology, speaks of ‘evolution of anti-poverty ideas’ that ‘emerged and developed from the battle against poverty since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949’ and ‘generations of top CPC leadership have enriched anti-poverty ideas in the war on poverty’ with a sustained commitment to the ‘development of a collective economy’.

In China’s Uniquely Effective Approach to Poverty Alleviation, Shu warns that in the fight against poverty ‘sloganeering and empty rhetoric must be avoided’. There is ‘strong leadership at all levels of government’ with ‘clear lines of accountability for results’ and leadership at all levels is ‘monitored under a rigorous annual evaluation’.

In a functioning state, policy decisions by the executive are expressed through official policy documents. In China, at the policy level, ‘poverty reduction is promoted as a national strategy’. The formulation of policy, strategies and plans to address poverty are based on ‘getting to the root causes of poverty’ which implies thorough, in-depth analysis, focus and commitment to appropriate and workable solutions.

Policy decisions and the policy process are routed and flow through the state’s established administration – ts institutions, agencies, departments and internal systems. At the centre of the administration are civil servants, government officials who carry out the actions towards the realisation of political and policy goals.

In South Africa government officials are at national, provincial, district and local levels. Writers on China’s progress tell us that ‘China’s state is endowed with high administrative capacity’ and a ‘capable and effective government’. At all levels of government there is good and effective governance and this is achieved through ‘a wide variety of mechanisms’.

Lessons from China show that striving towards a common goal is a critical element in relation to implementation and co-ordination as these are fundamental components of successful policy making with impact.

Highlighting the importance of implementation and co-ordination observation is made that the war on poverty ‘has been won through concerted, co-ordinated, and innovative strategies’. In 1986, the State Council’s Leading Group for Poverty Reduction and Development was established ‘to provide coherence to a large number of poverty reduction initiatives’.

According to the World Bank and Ministry of Finance of China, over the years, this body has helped to ‘facilitate interagency co-ordination within and across various levels of government in implementing policies, and mobilise non-government stakeholders to co-operate in achieving policy objectives’ and ‘greater horizontal co-ordination and synergy emerged among government departments’.

China’s elimination of extreme poverty benefited from international knowledge, harnessing global expertise in ensuring rigorous approaches and processes. China’s success is notable in that it fulfils the three aspects, human, social and economic development.

As South Africa enters its 4th decade as a democracy, poverty levels remain high, and this remains a potential threat to social and political instability.

In a 1997 judgement, 27 years ago, the Constitutional Court was apt when it affirmed that the aim and aspiration of the post-apartheid, democratic state is to ‘transform our society into one in which there will be human dignity, freedom and equality’, and South Africa was then, and still is, a society in which ‘millions of people are living in deplorable conditions and in great poverty’ and ‘for as long as these conditions continue to exist that aspiration will have a hollow ring’.

* Dr Wiseman Magasela holds a DPhil in Social Policy from the University of Oxford, a former deputy director general and adviser in the government of South Africa. He is current Executive Director of Clermont Analytics, a strategic research, policy development and policy advisory firm.

** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the ideas of IOL or Independent Media

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The Global System for Distributing Mpox Shots Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It

F rom its epicenter in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa’s mpox epidemic is spreading fast, reaching a dozen other African nations so far. The single most important tool for extinguishing the fire is mpox vaccination, which prevents infection and illness. Until yesterday, not a single dose of mpox vaccine was available in Congo. Few shots are available anywhere on the continent.

Congo’s health minister Samuel-Roger Kamba says his country urgently needs 3.5 million doses to stop its outbreak, while 10 million doses are needed for the whole African continent. Without these shots, mpox will continue to spread.

And here’s the kicker. While adults and children in 13 African nations are getting infected, sick, and in some cases dying, several rich nations are sitting on large stockpiles. The U.S., for example, is believed to have stockpiled 7 million doses by mid-2023, while Spain has 2.5 million doses . If a rich country were to become affected, it could immediately launch a vaccination campaign to protect its own citizens—as we saw during the 2022 U.S. mpox outbreak, when the government mounted a robust vaccine campaign, distributing more than one million shots by the end of the year.

The return of “vaccine apartheid”

It is painful to watch history repeating itself. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed what Winnie Byanyima, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS, called “a global vaccine apartheid”—a profound injustice in which rich countries were the first to get vaccines and boosters, while low- and middle-income nations were left behind. Now we are witnessing mpox vaccine apartheid.

Beyond being unfair and causing preventable illness and deaths in the 13 affected nations and counting, this vaccine inequity also hurts rich nations in two important ways. First, an adage in public health is that an outbreak anywhere can become an outbreak everywhere. In other words, if the outbreak is not contained, it will continue to spread, including to rich nations.

Read More : What It’s Like to Respond to Mpox in Africa Right Now

We’re already seeing this happen. The outbreak centered in Congo is of an mpox strain targeting adults and children called clade I, which is thought to cause a more severe illness than clade II, the strain that caused a multi-country mpox outbreak in 2022-2023. Cases of clade I mpox have recently been identified as far away as Sweden and Thailand , in people who had traveled to African countries.

Second, when vaccine apartheid causes a pandemic to smolder, it hurts the entire global economy by disrupting supply chains, imports, and exports. It is not just low- and middle-income countries that suffer this economic pain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, one study estimated that about half of the global economic losses caused by vaccine apartheid were borne by rich nations, mostly through suppressed exports.

Mounting an urgent mpox vaccination campaign in the countries affected in the African region is in the whole world’s interest. Why is it not yet happening? Understanding the reasons is critical—not just to control Africa’s current mpox epidemic, but to ensure we do not make the same grave mistakes again.

Mpox shots are made in rich nations and must “trickle down” to low-income countries

At its heart, the reason for mpox vaccine inequity is that the shots are made by companies in rich nations—Denmark’s Bavarian Nordic and Japan’s KM Biologics—and their high costs (around $200-$400 per course ) means they are largely unaffordable to low-income nations like Congo. The affected countries in the African region that are unable to afford the high prices are therefore left to rely on charitable donations of shots from rich nations’ current stockpiles. Even if an affected African nation had enough cash in hand now, vaccine makers are likely to sell doses to the highest bidders first. That’s exactly what’s happening: rich countries are now buying up mpox doses, and low-income countries are at the back of the queue.

This is topsy turvy. In the middle of a devastating epidemic in Africa, why on earth is the region dependent on mpox vaccines “trickling down” from the rich world? Instead, there should be capacity built within the region to manufacture mpox shots locally and have them close to those most affected. Affected countries in Africa should also be making investments to ensure they are better prepared to respond to future mpox outbreaks with a well-trained workforce and the right tools: vaccines, medicines, and diagnostic tests.

Read More : What to Know About Mpox in 2024

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Africa’s mpox epidemic to be a global emergency (what it calls a “public health emergency of international concern”), there’s a powerful case for waiving the intellectual property rights on mpox vaccines to allow any company worldwide to make the shots. Sadly, there is no indication that a waiver is on the table. But at the very least, Bavarian Nordic and KM Biologics should share the technology with African manufacturers and support them to scale up manufacturing as soon as possible. Even if these manufacturers do not produce mpox vaccine doses immediately, such technology transfer would ensure that lasting capacity is built on the continent for this endemic disease.

In the long run, as we discuss in our recently published “roadmap” on improving the development of medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics worldwide, a concerted global effort is needed to build vaccine manufacturing capacity in all regions of the world. If there’s a new infectious disease epidemic in Africa, Latin America, the Asia Pacific, or any other region, the fastest and most affordable way to get shots in arms is to make doses locally. No more going hat in hand begging for doses from the rich world.

The system for approving pandemic vaccines isn’t fit for mpox

Since it looks like mpox vaccine manufacturing won’t be up and running in the African region in the coming days, weeks, or perhaps even months, in the short term, the only feasible avenue for beating the epidemic is a well-structured donation program. Yet even on this front, the international community can’t get its act together.

The only realistic avenue for a large vaccination campaign is one led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and UNICEF . Because of their existing relationships with manufacturers, and their positioning as the two major agencies that buy and deliver vaccine shots at large scale to low- and middle-income countries, they are best placed to strike a deal the quickest. But right now, they are paralyzed.

UNICEF and Gavi’s rules mean they are only allowed to buy vaccines that have been approved by WHO—yet while the U.S., Europe, and a few African nations have approved them, the WHO has still not approved mpox vaccines. Sania Nishtar, Gavi’s Chief Executive Officer, told The Lancet in late August that “we are still weeks away from any vaccine being approved for emergency use by WHO and even then, it will take time for manufacturers to supply doses in large quantities.”

Read More : A New Era of Special Education Begins with Inclusive AI

It is hard to believe we are in this situation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved an mpox vaccine in September 2019. The European Medicines Agency approved an mpox vaccine in July 2022. Bavarian Nordic says it met with WHO in August 2022 to discuss approval of its vaccine, Jynneos. But here we are, two years on, and WHO still has not given the green light through its approval system known as pre-qualification.

While WHO pre-qualification is important in helping ensure the safety and effectiveness of medicines and vaccines, the delay in approving mpox vaccines indicates that the system is too slow, risk averse, and inflexible.

With UNICEF and Gavi hampered by these bureaucratic hurdles, a handful of rich-country governments have stepped in to pledge doses, although others won’t release any of their stockpile. For example, last week the U.S. donated 10,000 doses to Nigeria—the first shots to arrive anywhere on the continent—and yesterday 100,000 doses arrived in Congo, donated by the European Union, but other rich countries have not committed to release any of their stockpiles.

But there’s another sorry twist to the tale. The regulatory agencies in Congo and Nigeria have both approved the mpox vaccine, so these countries can start vaccination as soon as doses arrive. But many affected African nations have not yet approved it, so even if shots were to be donated, they can’t go into arms immediately. In a situation in which a country has not approved it, it relies on WHO approval, which, as we have seen, comes with its own challenges. Regulatory agencies in low-income nations must work together to jointly assess not just mpox vaccines but all medicines and vaccines, reducing dependence on WHO approval as the only avenue.

History will keep repeating itself unless we act now

Each time there’s a new epidemic or pandemic, the international community pledges to “make it the last.” But this is a pipe dream unless we see a concerted, coordinated effort to invest in building a global system of vaccine development, manufacturing, and distribution that benefits everyone.

In addition to urgently streamlining the WHO prequalification process, over the long run, the regulatory agencies in low- and middle-income countries that assess and approve vaccines and other medicines should continue to build local capacity and expertise. Richer countries should provide technical and financial support to national and regional regulatory agencies, such as the newly formed African Medicines Agency, to ensure that these agencies can effectively perform core regulatory functions. Equally, African nations should invest in health systems strengthening and ensure that national budgets meet the annual financial commitments made in declarations such as the Abuja Declaration committing 15% of annual budgets to health. Cross-collaboration between regulatory authorities within the region, as well as with those abroad, will also be critical to build this capacity.

With strengthened national and regional regulation, increased research and development, and scaled-up local manufacturing, we can start to see meaningful progress towards the end of vaccine apartheid.

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