Reading and creating critically leaderful schools that make a difference: the post‐apartheid South African case

Abstract

My interest in critical leaderful educational practices emanated from my experiences as a researcher in a South African National Department of Education project that piloted the White Paper on Inclusive Education Policy from 2001–2003 and in 2006 when I worked as a volunteer consultant with Twenty30, an independent, not for profit organization that works with schools in disadvantaged communities in Johannesburg, South Africa. Based on my work with the National Department of Education and Twenty30, in this paper I briefly sketch the profiles of Sunshine Primary and Dullsville Primary, two schools which operate within similar contexts of social fragmentation but which display two very different sets of behaviours. I sketch the legacy of racial segregation in South African schools and the resource infrastructural climate that characterized apartheid South African education. The sketch is meant to serve as a contextual background to understand the behavioural patterns of Sunshine Primary and Dullsville Primary in terms of how they negotiate the discriminatory apartheid script: one school which has resisted the negative script conferred upon it by apartheid and its legacy and the other school which has habitualized and internalized the debilitating script of apartheid engineering. Through reflection on the ethos of these two schools I conceptualized a proposed research project that I will conduct with a group of principals in Johannesburg, South Africa. The proposed study aims to explore how women school principals navigate the complexities of educational leadership in disadvantaged communities ravaged by HIV/Aids, poverty and child and woman abuse while also negotiating their status within the education fraternity that has historically relegated them to second‐class citizenship.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my sincere thanks to the Center for the Education of Women, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA for supporting my postdoctoral studies with a Jean Campbell Visiting Fellowship. This paper grew out of research conducted during my fellowship.

Notes

1. Until 1991 South African law divided the population into four major racial categories: Africans (blacks), whites, coloureds and Asians. Although this law has been abolished, many South Africans still view themselves and each other according to these categories. Black Africans comprise about 79% of the population and are divided into a number of different ethnic groups. Whites comprise about 10% of the population. They are primarily descendants of Dutch, French, English and German settlers who began arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in the late seventeenth century. Coloureds are mixed race people primarily descended from the earliest settlers and the indigenous peoples. They comprise about 9% of the total population. Asians, descended from Indian workers brought to South Africa in the mid ninteenth century to work on the sugar estates in Natal, constitute about 2.5% of the population and are concentrated in the KwaZulu‐Natal Province.

2. South Africa has 12.3 million learners, some 386,600 teachers and 26,292 schools, including 1098 registered independent or private schools. Of these schools approximately 6000 are high schools (Grades 7–12), with the rest being primary (Grades 0–6). In government funded public schools the average ratio of students (known as ‘learners’ in the terms of the country’s outcomes‐based education system) to teachers (‘educators’) is 32.6 to 1, while private schools generally have 1 teacher for every 17.5 students (http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info_sa_glance/education/education.htm).

3. The statistics show that one in every four South African women, or 25%, are assaulted by their partner every week. The average age of girls who have been sexually abused is 11 years old (http:www.tricky.org/POWA/stats.htm). At a gathering organized jointly by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and ActionAid International in May 2006 to focus on the problem of gender violence in schools it was reported that girls in African schools are three times more likely to be abused than boys. Verbal and sexual abuse at the hands of male teachers, who often collude with male students, was one of the reasons for a high incidence of dropping out, pregnancy and HIV infection among girls. ActionAid studies announced at a conference in 2006 that across Africa and Asia girls’ education was disrupted by the ‘physical and emotional trauma, low self‐esteem, anger, depression, anxiety, guilt, and hopelessness’. The findings also showed that girls were not encouraged to report abuse, and when they did they often experienced further victimization by teachers and parents or, in many cases, their allegations were dismissed. The dominance of a patriarchal system in the region was a major stumbling block. Rape is seen as illegitimate sex and, depending on the age of the abused girl, the community would frequently encourage the abuser, if a teacher, to marry the complainant because they perceive rape as an expression of love for the abused child (http://www.mopane-tree.com).

4. The level of unemployment in South Africa is 28% and approximately 60% of students who complete school cannot find jobs. Two out of every three South African women who are employed earn less than R500.00 (US$ 72) per month. In rural areas four out of every five South African women have no employment (http:www.tricky.org/POWA/stats.htm).

5. In the middle of 2006 it was estimated that seven million South Africans are living with HIV, with the highest prevalence rates among young people, especially teenage girls. This figure represents 11% of the national population of 48 million people. Since 1990 life expectancy in South Africa has fallen to below 50 years of age as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This life expectancy is 13 years lower than previously predicted for South Africa. Throughout South Africa the AIDS epidemic is affecting large numbers of adolescents, leading to serious psychological, social, economic and educational problems. When it is considered that 40% of the South African population is less than 15 years of age and that 15.64% of South African youth between the ages of 15 and 24 is infected with HIV, one recognizes that HIV/AIDS represents a devastating pandemic among the youth of South Africa. There were 885,000 AIDS orphans as of 2002 (Coombe 2002).