The Jaded Rainbow Dream

“Education was viewed as a part of the overall apartheid system including ‘homelands’, urban restrictions, pass laws and job reservation. This role was one of labourer, worker, and servant only. As H.F Verwoerd, the architect of the Bantu Education Act (1953), conceived it:

“There is no place for [the African] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. It is of no avail for him to receive a training which has as its aim, absorption in the European community””

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently spoke of hewers of wood and drawers of water and asked if it was not time to move forward, to alter our thinking to allow blacks to share in the riches that traditionally seem to be a white prerogative.  Why is this concept so difficult to accept, he wondered.

The white right immediately responded with a long-winded diatribe about corruption, how inept this government is, how bleak the outlook is for South Africa, take your pick of any one of these or a mix thereof.

Understanding the role and consequences of the Bantu Education Act, I believe, is pivotal in the situation that prevails. The disparity in education across the races impinges not only in South Africa, but across the continent. The colonial powers may not have legislated separate development, but it existed, nonetheless. The inflated opinion that only Europeans knew, or still know, how best to govern Africa seems deeply entrenched.

When Africa first began to be colonised, huge tracts of land, mainly after the second World War, were handed without conscience to pioneers and settlers, willing to try their hands at farming, hunting, anything to escape post-war Europe. The blacks, well, useless bunch that they were, were simply displaced. Those who were employed by the new rulers were regarded as ignorant, their customs primitive, an opinion confirmed when they did not immediately understand bwana’s instructions, leading to the conclusion that Africans generally are underserving of any rights.

I return to the Bantu education act, altered a couple of decades after it was first crafted.

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.

The impossible logistics of this change of policy can only be imagined. Then Afrikaner business complained that the workforce was only being taught in English, and they needed their workforce to understand Afrikaans. The rest, as they say, is history.

There is little recognition given to this part of our history today, general thinking apparently considering that 30 years of independence is enough to redress the unfairness of past policies. How can that be? We are still labouring the weight of those decisions, those beliefs, both by the oppressor and the oppressed. Tell a child often enough they are stupid, and they will believe you, and it can take a lifetime to change that self-belief.

If only they hadn’t killed Steve Biko! Being taught that wrong is right and right is wrong has long tentacles. Complaining and demeaning does no good. What will make a difference is learning and being willing to stretch our hands across that which divides us and decide to walk this path together.

The same argument applies to the apparent inability of our people to plan for maintenance operations. What experience have they had, what training to prepare them for these tasks? What homes did they live in? How were they maintained? Oh! I forgot. It was always ‘their’ fault that nothing was repaired, that they weren’t worth the effort – we learn by example and the example set for most of us is pretty dismal.

The facts are there, supported by figures. The inequality between white and black is glaring, the greater wealth owned by a disproportionately small percentage of our population. The problems inherent in a society where the majority of its people is living in impoverished circumstances need to be addressed, and this is not the responsibility of the government alone.

I long for the day when comprehension comes, that like it or not the wrongs of the past haunt us and until we look at them squarely in the face, acknowledge they exist and need redress, we will struggle to move forward into the rainbow future that is every citizen’s rightful dream.