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Apartheid - SL English : Education

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Apartheid in South Africa - education

Essential Questions: 

  • What were the nature and characteristics of discrimination in the apartheid system?
  • How did the apartheid system impact the lives of South Africans?
  • How was language used to further separate & divide people during the Apartheid era?
Petty apartheid - Describes the era of the 1950s when laws similar to “Jim Crow” laws in the United States prohibited inter-racial sex and marriage and strictly segregated residential areas, schools, trains, buses, beaches, toilets, parks, stadiums, ambulances, hospitals, and cemeteries. Brutally enforced by police (see “pass laws”).

The Bantu Education Act, No 47 of 1953

This act legalized an educational system for Africans designed to fit them for their role in apartheid society. Designed by H.F. Verwoerd and made law with the Bantu Education Act of 1953, Bantu Education placed the apartheid government in control of African education. Financing for Bantu Education was removed from the general government budget and linked instead directly to the taxes paid by Africans, which resulted in far less money spent on educating black children than white children. Though this system was put in place to isolate Africans and keep them from “subversive” ideas, indignation towards the inferior educations they received led to large-scale resistance to Bantu Education, the most notable example being the Soweto Revolt.

Nelson Mandela as a young man

Nelson Mandela

Under the [Bantu Education] Act ... African teachers were not allowed to criticise the government or any school authority.  It was "intellectual baasskap", a way of institutionalizing inferiority.  Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, the minister for Bantu education, explained that "education must teach and train people in accordance with their opportunities in life".  His meaning was that Africans did not and would not have any opportunities, therefore, why educate them?  "There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour," he said.  In short, Africans should be trained to be menial workers, to be in a position of perpetual subordination to the white man.

Image attribution: Unknown author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Young_Mandela.jpg

Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Reprinted ed., London, Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

Hendrik Verwoerd Hendrik Verwoerd

Hendrick Verwoerd served in the South African government as the Minister of Native Affairs from 1950 - 1958 and the Prime Minister from 1958 - 1966.

Verwoerd's speech in Parliament, 17 August 1953

"What is the use of subjecting a native child to a curriculum which is, in the first instance, traditionally European?  What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot be used in practice?

If the native is being taught to expect that he will live his adult life under a policy of equal rights, he is making a big mistake."

Image Attribution: Afrikaners in die Goudstad, deel 2 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/HF_Verwoerd_Transvaler_%28cropped%29.jpg
Mulholland, Rosemary. South Africa 1948-1994. Cambridge, Cambridge UP., 1997.

Per capita spending on education in South Africa from 1950 to 1980

South Africa per capita spending on education from 1950 to 1980

Understanding Apartheid. Cape Town, Oxford UP Southern Africa, 2006. p. 48