From Bantu Education to the Fight for Socially Just Education

Abstract

This article illustrates the transition from Bantu Education to social justice education in South Africa. I argue that education reform in post-apartheid South Africa has made important changes during this transition, although inequalities persist. Large disparities in resources between black township (still segregated) and formerly white (now desegregated) schools remain. There is also discrimination in formerly white schools, and curricula remain unrepresentative of black ethnic groups’ cultures and epistemologies. The findings show that marginalized parents fight relentlessly to achieve social justice in education for their children. I conclude that parents’ decisions to fight for socially just education also come with a price.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Michael Parsons who gave this manuscript a close read on several occasions. I also thank Beth Blue Swadener for the feedback. I thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this journal for encouraging me to tighten the arguments. I want to acknowledge the Compton Foundation who funded this study and express my sincere appreciation to the black parents for making this study possible.

Notes

1. Apple (2003), Buras (2009), Chapman (2005), and Lubienski (2008) make this point clear on the marginalized parents’ concerns about the education of their children in the U.S.

2. I acknowledge my colleague, Kristen Buras, who reminded me of this important point.

3. In 2012, the exchange rate between the USD and South African Rand (ZAR) is approximately $1 = R8.50

4. I acknowledge Jonathan Jansen who brought the issue of non-tuition costs to my attention.

5. Apple (2001) and Lubienski and Garn (2010) have argued at length about school choice and markets in education in the United States; Lauder and Hughes (1999) document this phenomenon in the U.K. and Espínola (1993) does the same in Chile.

6. See also Pampallis (2004) and Woolman and Fleisch, (2006)

7. Indeed, Bhorat's (2004) study of labor market and unemployment trends in post-apartheid South Africa shows the continued increase of unemployment amongst students from poor schools. The number is high (47%) among black South African children who attend poor schools and low (9%) among white South African children who attend wealthy schools.

8. I chose focus group interviews because I did not want to have strictly formal interview sessions. Fontana and Frey (2000) contend that a focus group technique straddles the line between formal and informal interviewing. Thus, this allows for a welcoming environment for participants to perceive themselves as part of the project rather than as distant subjects.

9. This is perhaps one of the unique aspects of the methodology in this study because I engaged black parents in their indigenous languages. I elaborate on this topic in Ndimande (2012).

10. This study was not focused on the age or sex of the children of these parents. However, I believe such a focus is important and warrants further research.

11. I do not suggest that all black parents in the township are poor; social class status is a complicated category (Bourdieu, 1984). As Apple (1995) reminds us, class is both structural and lived. Even if we can rely on the socioeconomic status, there is no precise indicator that can tell us about people's social class with certainty.

12. Let me hasten to acknowledge that the democratically elected government in South Africa came out of the struggle against Bantu Education and apartheid; hence, it has shown a commitment to achieving socially just education in this nation. However, inequalities persist, and it is not clear why the government has taken this long to address them, although some of these issues have been brought to the attention of the Ministry of Education for solutions.

13. All names used in this article are pseudonyms.

14. In South Africa, the school academic year begins late summer (in the southern hemisphere), that is, in the middle of the month of January, and ends late November or early December, in the beginning of the summer.

15. Data from this study suggest that most of the formerly white-only schools do not have a diverse group of teachers who can understand the cultural practices of the diverse student population they now teach.