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Abstract
During the 1960s and early 1970s Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto had probably its most successful years. It produced good quality education and graduated numerous students who went on to university and became professionals. It was among the top two most prestigious high schools in Soweto. After a series of politically related closures the school regained some stability in the 1980s and 1990s but never really achieved the success or prestige of the previous era. This paper attempts to explain how Morris Isaacson managed to be so successful in spite of the newly implemented Bantu Education system which was designed to provide mass schooling but blunt black aspiration. It notes, among other things, the relatively manageable enrolment in the 1960s, the importance of institutional discipline and good leadership, and the prestige of the teaching profession and the quality of high school teachers in Soweto, especially in the context of the professional limitations imposed by the colour bar. The paper then analyses why high schooling, while expanding, declined dramatically in effectiveness in Soweto in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Acknowledgement
The funding I receive from an NRF rating was helpful in carrying out this research.
Notes
1 The various contributions to Peter Kallaway’s two edited volumes on apartheid education perhaps best exemplify this tradition of literature. See P. Kallaway, ed., Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans ((Johannesburg: Ravan, 1984); P. Kallaway, ed., The History of Education Under Apartheid, 1948–1994 (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 2002). Among many others, see also Pam Christie, ed., The Right to Learn: The Struggle for Education in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1991); J. Hyslop, The Classroom Struggle: Policy and Resistance in South Africa 1940–1990 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1999).
2 See C. Glaser, ‘Soweto’s Islands of Learning: Morris Isaacson and Orlando High Schools Under Bantu Education, 1958–1975,’ Journal of Southern African Studies, 41, 1, 2015, 159–172, 159–160, for a brief overview of this debate. For a very useful recent reflection on the legacy of apartheid, see D. Isaacs and S. Franklin, ‘“Worse than Apartheid”? Measuring Progress in Schooling in South Africa Since Democracy’ (unpublished paper, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, September 2016).
3 Glaser, ‘Soweto’s Islands of Learning’. For an important recent study which makes a similar argument, see D. Magaziner, The Art of Life in South Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016).
4 Quotation from S. Dubow, Apartheid 1948–1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 118–119.
5 Some of the best-known alumni from that period include poet Wally Serote, nuclear physicist Gordon Sibiya, advertising entrepreneur Peter Vundla, television producer Mfundi Vundla, photographer Santu Mofokeng, artists Patrick Mautloa and Winston Saoli, soccer mogul Irvin Khosa, and activist/politician/businessman Murphy Morobe. Perhaps more importantly, though, were the dozens of less famous doctors, teachers, academics, nurses, social workers, optometrists, engineers, lawyers, accountants and entrepreneurs who were given their professional start in life by the school. In most cases their careers only really started to flourish in the late 1980s and 1990s when the legislated colour bar fell away.
6 Interview with Omry Makgoale, Johannesburg, 15 April 2016, (all interviews with the author unless otherwise stated).
7 Note that the school is often regarded as being at the epicentre of the 1976 Soweto uprising and therefore became a key location for uprising commemoration in the post-apartheid era.
8 See Glaser, ‘Soweto’s Islands of Learning’ for more detail.
9 Although Morris Isaacson is locally famous for its important role in the 1976 Soweto uprising, it is a difficult institution to research. The school suffered two major fires (in 1977 and 1991) which destroyed administrative records. With limited resources, the school did not produce an annual yearbook. While I am convinced that there is Department of Education material lurking somewhere deep in the state or Gauteng Department of Education archives, it is almost impossible to track it down with the current indexing system. I have been able to find scattered material on the Jabavu school board, lists of employees, some maintenance and financial records, but little else. Local newspapers, which carried occasional stories about the school, have proved useful. Private papers and memoirs contributed to the general picture. It is also possible to get helpful contextual material from archives of student organisations and professional associations. But, ultimately, my research has depended heavily on oral history, much of which has been facilitated by my relationship with the school’s alumnus association. I do not have space here to go into the complexities of oral history research, but suffice to say that I have tried as far as possible to draw conclusions based on a wide sample of corroborating accounts.
10 This is neatly captured in Dubow, Apartheid, 99–120.
11 For a detailed account see J. Ball, ‘“A Munich Situation”: Pragmatic Cooperation and the Johannesburg Non-European Affairs Department During the Early Stages of Apartheid’ (MA diss., University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2012).
12 For general histories of Apartheid education policy and expenditure, see J. Hyslop, ‘State Education Policy and the Social Reproduction of the Urban Working Class: The Case of the Southern Transvaal, 1955–1976’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 14, 3 (1988); The Classroom Struggle; K. Hartshorne, Crisis and Challenge: Black Education 1910–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
13 See Historical Papers Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Feldman Papers A804, Db 2(a), ‘The Story of Morris Isaacson Education Foundation’ by Richard Feldman.
14 Interview with Joseph Malapela (interviewer V. Khumalo), Johannesburg, 8 March 2008.
15 Interview with Qedisizi Buthelezi, Johannesburg, 30 October 1991.
16 Interview with Mfundi Vundla, Johannesburg, 8 April 2016.
17 Interview with Christina Moabelo (interviewer V. Kumalo), Johannesburg, 28 May 2016.
18 Interview with Makgoale.
19 Interview with Kefilwe Mathibe, Johannesburg, 25 June 2016. There is a similar narrative in other interviews: see Interview with Malapela; Interview with Mary Mxadana, Johannesburg, 31 January 1992; Interview with Phala Modise, Johannesburg, 28 January 2016; Interview with Patrick Mabena (interviewer V. Kumalo), Johannesburg, 14 February 2016.
20 Senior classes, depending on subject, ranged in size from about 20 to 35: Interviews with Malapela; Buthelezi; Mxadana; Makgoale; Vundla; Modise; Mabena.
21 Interview with Vundla.
22 This story is recounted by Brooks Spector, who was a junior diplomat at the United States Embassy in the 1970s. See J.B. Spector, ‘Of the Rebelliousness of Youth and the Dulling Effect of Time’, Daily Maverick, 21 June 2011.
23 Interviews with Malapela; Buthelezi; Mxadana; Makgoale; Vundla; Mabena; Interview with Fanyana Mazibuko, Johannesburg, 5 December 1991; Interview with Munyane Mophosho, Johannesburg, 9 June 2014.
24 Another interesting example is Simon Hadebe, a notorious and controversial figure in Morris Isaacson’s history. He was a much-admired head prefect in 1972, returned as a teacher in the mid-1970s, and was widely alleged in late 1976 to be a police informer: Interviews with Modise; Makgoale.
25 Interviews with Buthelezi; Mabena; Modise; Makgoale; Vundla; Interview with Esther Langa, Midrand, 5 May 2016.
26 Interviews with Makgoale; Mabena.
27 Peter Vundla, eulogy at Dan Pitje’s funeral, Johannesburg, 10 July 2014.
28 Interviews with Buthelezi; Vundla.
29 Interviews with Buthelezi; Vundla; Interview with Michael Gardiner, by telephone, 28 March 2014.
30 Vundla, eulogy at Dan Pitje’s funeral. See also P. Vundla’s memoir, Doing Time (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2014), 40–43.
31 Interview with Malapela.
32 Interviews with Buthelezi; Mxadana; Makgoale; Modise; Mabena; Vundla; Malapela; Interview with Santu Mofokeng, Johannesburg, 2 October 1991. Mabena also recalls playing Cetswayo in a ‘Zulu play’.
33 For a more detailed discussion about corporal punishment at the school see C. Glaser, ‘Nostalgia for a Beating: Discipline, Generational Authority and Corporal Punishment at a Soweto High School, 1960s–2000s’ (paper submitted to the South African Historical Society Conference, University of the Witwatersrand, 24–26 June 2017).
34 This is a term used by Khehla Shubane: Interview with Khehla Shubane, Johannesburg, 24 August 1992.
35 Interviews with Shubane; Modise; Mabena; Makgoale; Mazibuko; Langa. Interview with Oliver Shivande (interviewer S. Rai), Johannesburg, 16 February 2017. Mr Mlokoti, the deputy principal under Mathabathe, was remembered as the harshest exponent of corporal punishment.
36 Interviews with Buthelezi; Makgoale; Modise; Vundla; Mabena; Mophosho; Langa.
37 Interviews with Mazibuko; Modise; Makgoale; Mabena; Mxadana; Shubane. I have written extensively about these school-gang confrontations in the early 1970s in Soweto: see C. Glaser, Bo-Tsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto 1935–1976 (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 2000), esp. 162–166.
38 Interview with Vundla.
39 This picture is confirmed by virtually all of the interviewed alumni from the Kobe-Mathabathe period. The Tiro story has received a great deal of attention in political histories, but for most alumni it was simply consistent with a well-entrenched pattern.
40 For more detail see Hyslop, ‘State Education Policy’; Glaser, ‘Soweto’s Islands of Learning’.
41 Interviews with Modise; Makgoale; Mabena. C. Mlokoti is listed as the headmaster of Daliwonga Junior Secondary in Soweto in 1977 (see Rand Daily Mail, 29 September 1977) but I have not been able to confirm that it is the former Morris Isaacson teacher.
42 As early as 1968 Kambule was complaining that low salaries and emerging employment opportunities were making it difficult for OHS to recruit and keep science graduates ‘who were offered twice their salaries by laboratories in the city. He said he had lost five graduate teachers last year […]’: see Rand Daily Mail, 17 January 1968. This problem would only get worse in the 1970s.
43 Interviews with Modise; Makgoale.
44 Ibid.
45 Interviews with Modise; Makgoale; Mabena.
46 C. Glaser, ‘Learning Amidst the Turmoil: Secondary Schooling in Soweto, 1977–1990’, South African Historical Journal, 68 (2016), 415–436, esp. 416–421.
47 See Rand Daily Mail, 29 September 1977 for a full list of the resigning teachers.
48 See The Star, 4 September 2003.
49 Interviews with Thabiso Ramasike and Linda Madida, Johannesburg, 15 March 2016; Reginald Mazibuko, Johannesburg, 26 January 2016; Elias Mashile, Johannesburg, 7 February 2016. See also obituary to Madida in Sowetan Live, 15 March 2007, http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/sowetan/archive/2007/03/15/madida-produced-great-leaders?filter=all_comments, accessed 29 April 2016.
50 Hyslop, The Classroom Struggle, 169–170. Before the Soweto uprising the ratio had been around 18:1.
51 Glaser, ‘Learning Amidst the Turmoil’, 426–430.
52 Ibid., 428–429, 431–432.
53 Ibid., 424–425.
54 Interview with Mashile. On the drift to Model C schools (focusing mostly on Durban) see M. Hunter, ‘Racial Desegregation and Schooling in South Africa: Contested Geographies of Class Formation’, Environment and Planning, 42, 11 (2010), 2640–2657.
55 Jonathan Jansen emphasises this point in J. Jansen, ‘Autonomy and Accountability in the Regulation of the Teaching Profession: A South African Case Study’, Research Papers in Education, 19, 1 (2004), 51–66. Conference Matseke, a former student and teacher at MIHS who later became a departmental inspector in a Soweto district in the second half of the 1980s, relates how he was repeatedly denied access to schools in this period. On one occasion he was even kidnapped by politicised staff and students for an entire working day. Interview with Conference Matseke, Johannesburg, 22 November 2017.
56 In the Johannesburg district, the DET pass rate for matric in 1990 was 31%, with only 5% achieving university exemption. This compared with generally poor nationwide figures of 45 and 8% respectively. See Race Relations Survey 1991/1992 (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1992), 207–208.
57 Interviews with Mashile; R Mazibuko; Ramasike; Interview with Pule Thulo (interviewer M. Malabela), Johannesburg, 30 August 2017; Interview with Nkateko Peterson (interviewer S. Rai), Johannesburg, 10 December 2016.
58 On early teacher union activity, see P. Garson, ‘Labour Relations in Education’, in Glenn Adler, ed., Public Service Labour Relations in a Democratic South Africa, (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2000), 203–222; S. Amoako, ‘Teacher Unions in Political Transitions: The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) and the Dying Days of Apartheid, 1990–1993’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 49, 2 (2014), 148–163.
59 For an overview of the problems faced in Gauteng schools see L. Chisholm and S. Valley, The Culture of Teaching and Learning in Gauteng Schools: Report of the Committee of Learning and Teaching (Commissioned by the Gauteng Ministry of Education: Education Policy Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, 1996).
60 See Jansen, ‘Autonomy and Accountability’.
61 See e.g. G. Bloch, The Toxic Mix: What’s Wrong with South Africa’s Schools and How To Fix It (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2009); Jansen, ‘Autonomy and Accountability’.
62 City Press 27 April 2014, ‘How SADTU sells its posts’; City Press 4 May 2014, ‘More jobs for sale in SADTU racket’; 17 May 2015, ‘SADTU selling principal principal posts’.