The state of education and politics in SA, and 16 June

This week, our country commemorated the 44th anniversary of the 1976 students’ uprising, one of the darkest chapters of South Africa’s recent history.

Reflections on the significance of the anniversary are as welcome as they are necessary.

They tease out the challenges before us and, in doing so, hopefully re-energise us in the process of managing and solving social dynamics and problems.

For obvious reasons, the first point of any discussion about 16 June ought to be about the state of primary and secondary school education.

We cannot but ask how far we have travelled as a nation in dismantling the legacies of Bantu and Christian national education and constructing, in their place, a system of unquestionable pedagogical quality whose values deliberately set out to promote our constitution’s humanist and democratic ideals in all areas of social life.

Values are crucial because education is as much about teaching skills as it is about the promotion of values. Mahatma Gandhi sought to illustrate this when he cited “Science without humanity” and “Knowledge without character” among his seven deadly sins.

And for a country which has had race and racism as its main organising principle for more than three centuries, some of the values which our education system ought resolutely to promote are antiracism, gender equality, antixenophobia and related intolerances.

In its appraisal of education in the post-apartheid era, the National Development Plan (NDP) noted “great strides” with respect to eliminating “race and gender disparities” in “access to education”.

In the same vein: “Despite many positive changes since 1994, the legacy of low-quality education in historically disadvantaged parts of the school system persists.”

The document also said: “The grade promotion of [pupils] who are not ready in the primary and early secondary phases leads to substantial drop out before the standardised matric examination.”

Pupils in the historically disadvantaged part of the education system “which still serves mainly black and coloured children … typically exhibit low proficiency in reading, writing and numeracy”. In contrast, “the schools that historically served white children produce educational achievement closer to the standards of developed countries”.

Other systemic problems and limitations included “weak capacity” among teachers, principals and “system-level officials”. Since it is the nation’s agreed appraisal of itself which was adopted unanimously by parliament in 2012, the NDP’s critique of post-apartheid education is of practical relevance to this year’s and future 16 June commemorations.

As we have seen from the NDP’s appraisal, South Africa is somewhere between amber and the red danger zone. While we have made progress, it has not been substantial. The racial and class inequalities in terms of quality education bequeathed by apartheid are yet to be eradicated.

For this reason and depending on rates of economic growth, it is likely that in a few years from now, South Africa may become a net importer of skilled labour.

This is to say nothing of existing social and political problems that will be exacerbated by an education system that is incapable of pulling people out of the margins of society. As the NDP put it: “Education, training and innovation are not a solution to all problems, but society’s ability to solve problems, develop competitively, eliminate poverty and reduce inequality is severely hampered without them.”

And not many of us are any the wiser about the progress registered since the NDP’s adoption. Shouldn’t the department of basic education regularly report back to society about governmental and the sector’s overall programme of action to address the problems identified by the NDP so we can keep track of the journey towards 2030?

The Presidency would also be well advised to insist this of every government department. Besides being important for government accountability, such reports by government departments would also help to inform public debates, which would further illuminate the road to 2030.

Politics writ large

The second point about 16 June is that in as much as it was about education, it was also about politics. Both cannot be pigeonholed and there is a price to be paid for their vulgarisation, as we are still experiencing from the construction of systems that promote racial superiority.

Whereas the majority of its speakers are black and not the whites who were the captains of apartheid until 1994, the National Party in its arrogant folly defined Afrikaans as the language of apartheid oppression. Generations of African youth would come to identify Afrikaans in those terms to their and the language’s detriment. Their detriment in that it is one’s gain to learn any language, and the language because politics came to place a ceiling on the potential for its cultural and other influences, including its capacity to be influenced.

But if politics divides, politics can also unite. There could be multiple political, cultural and social programmes on which black and white young South Africans across the political divide might consider engaging each other to promote national unity and cohesion. Such endeavours could include the promotion of multilingualism as one of the facilitators for an inclusive South African identity.

Still politics…

Politics can also assist society to achieve objectives or contribute to their withering on the vine. Consequently, there is need for reflection on the extent to which our national and intraparty party politics facilitate or hinder the implementation of the NDP.

This would include questions such as how the formation and structure of administrations since 2012 has been informed by the NDP’s targets, intraparty or external considerations.

Politicians are more than likely to be inclined towards a retort pointing out the impact of such factors on the broader national terrain. But statespersonship is also about privileging the national over narrow interests, including the interests of individual parties.

Mukoni Ratshitanga.

• Ratshitanga is a consultant and a social and political commentator

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