Abstract
In 1954 Hendrik Verwoerd, one of the main architects of the apartheid system, said that blacks ought not to be trained above certain “forms of labour”. These words, often quoted out of context, are commonly interpreted as based on a view of black inferiority and as designed to keep blacks in a position of servitude. This note argues that other considerations should also be taken into account, including the need for providing appropriate labour on a mass basis in an industrialising society and for establishing control over urbanised black youths.
JEL Classification: N17, N37 N97
Keywords: Education, labour, racial inequality, racism
1. INTRODUCTION
In 1953 Hendrik Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs, 1950-1958 and Prime Minister from 1958-1966, piloted the Bantu Education Act through parliament. It introduced an education policy that is some times depicted as one “based on the assumption of an inferior potential in African minds” and as “explicitly designed to prepare blacks for an inferior place in society” (Davenport and Saunders, 2000:674). To substantiate this, a remark Verwoerd made when he spoke on the new education system in 1954 is often cited: “There is no place for [a black man] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. Within his own community, however, all doors are open” (Pelzer, 1966:83).
In this speech Verwoerd attacked the previous education policy, which, in his view, showed the black man “the green pastures of the European but still did not allow him to graze there”. He criticised the policy as uneconomic because money was spent on education “with no specific aim”. He claimed that gave rise to much frustration among educated blacks because they could find no employment acceptable to them. The new educational system should have its roots “in the spirit and being of a Bantu society” and “serve the respective ethnic communities” (House of Assembly Debates, 1953, cols. 3585-3585).
This note discusses the implementation of Bantu education between 1954 and 1967. In this period there was a strong emphasis on the provision on a mass basis of basic literacy to black children as a preparation for semi-skilled jobs. A feature of analyses of Bantu education is the tendency to judge the speech not in the socio-economic context of the 1950s, but against the background of the shortages of skilled labour that would develop by the second half of the 1960s as a result of unexpected high economic growth and the policy’s rejection by black youths, starting in the early 1970s. The analyses also lack a comparative dimension. As Hyslop (1999:55-56) has pointed out, there are similarities between Verwoerd’s policy and the introduction of mass education in industrialising societies in the USA and Britain, where governments saw a special needfor social control and appropriately trained labour. As in many other countries where a process of rapid massification of the provision of education occurred, there was too little money, and too few teachers and classrooms.
Another major problem in the literature is the tendency to judge the issue almost purely in terms of interracial equity and fairness, and not in terms of the political and financial constraints that those in power faced. Van den Berge (1965) depicted South Africa and the American South during the first half of the twentieth century as Herrenvolk democracies – democratic for the exclusively white electorate but tyrannical for the subordinate groups. There is some validity in this, but while both societies imposed unjust and indefensible restrictions on the advancement of blacks, neither drew their inspiration from an ideology similar to National Socialism. Verwoerd was, in fact, a moderniser inspired by the experiments with social engineering that he first encountered on a visit to the United States. As a politician he tried to reconcile the determination of the white minority to retain its political supremacy with the social and economic requirements of a rapidly industrialising society.
The United Party government (1933-1948) had introduced some improvements to the black education budget, but had failed to come to grips with the challenge of bringing the system under state control. Representing a party even more conservative than the UP, Verwoerd faced the problem of persuading white taxpayers to shoulder the burden of educating a group four times more numerous than itself at a point where they themselves still enjoyed only a fairly rudimentary education.
Analyses of the policy have tended to assume that the policy and its pedagogic and political assumptions remained the same over time. There was, however, a clear break between the policy that was implemented in the first stage, and the one that was in place after 1970, when the department’s focus was on extending secondary education and narrowing white-black disparities. The article focuses on the policy and its underlying assumptions in the initial period.
Read the full article here: A Note on Bantu Education, 1953 to 1970
