COE Exchange

I had planned a trip back to South Africa this summer after various queries to friends and family about mostly safety, as well as how radical change had been over the past seven years. I was eager to recharge my batteries with a dip into my recollections of authentic conversations and genuine people. In an email, Professor Davis directed my attention to a New York Times article on South African education.¹ This unexpected development forced me to journey back to South Africa rather unexpectedly.

Having just read Michael Eric Dyson’s comment that, “Nostalgia, at least in the light, is an attempt to exercise sovereignty over memory, to force it into redemptive channels away from the tributaries of trauma that flood the collective black psyche,”²  I was hesitant to confront the possibility of my own nostalgic hankering for my erstwhile community and Motherland. Committed to provide some commentary on the article, I read it. In the article, Celia W. Dugger describes a post-apartheid South Africa that has failed to address the education needs of its most needy citizens, and leaves them languishing in an education system that has not moved beyond the one experienced in the heyday of apartheid. In retrospect, I was surprised at the personally emotive response I had to the article. Sometimes a simple glance back can strip away years of scabs. In part, I felt emotional because I felt vindicated in leaving South Africa with my son in 1998. After voting for the first time in 1994, I could not see that equity in education could ever be achieved despite all the good will of the African National Congress Government and the leadership of Nelson Mandela. The divide between was too great, and I wanted to give my son a chance to have a decent education. Personally, the decision was a win-win, as both my son and I are both furthering our education at college today.

I also felt emotional because what those students in Khayelitsha are experiencing affirmed my own recollection of education in South Africa. I feel that many students in South Africa’s townships realize that education is one of the few gateways to redemption for them. Unfortunately the road to that gateway is strewn with too many obstacles. Obstacles such as an education system that has not risen to meet the needs of the youth they are supposed to serve, a government that is either out of touch or does not consider education a priority, and personal circumstances that are extremely challenging. The first election of a truly democratic government in the 1994 elections led to a “Grab for power, jobs, and money,”³ and created a class of political elite, but has left the ordinary citizen pretty much mired in the status quo of economic powerlessness. The inequalities of wealth still exist, and have not changed much since the inception of a democratic government. Power is not easily relinquished, and the vote has not leveled the playing field for students of color seeking a way out by obtaining a meaningful education. Of course, money has been thrown at the problem. My feeling is that money in itself (without a coherent plan, and the willpower to institute authentic change) would not effect any long-standing change in education.

In a way, the student-led riots that led to the overthrow of the Apartheid regime, was a double-edged sword. Political successes were achieved at great personal cost, but education and the general uplift of communities lagged seriously behind the right to vote. The right to vote did not ensure the right to succeed. The student protests against Apartheid were both violent and non-violent. Much of the culture of protest, violence, and disdain for authority (in many cases justified in the past), still exist. To me this is tantamount to allowing soldiers back from the battlefield without access to resources to address the issues they encountered during the decades of struggle. As the article also asserts, it did not mean that educators in the “new” South Africa were any more qualified than before. But to dismiss the work of most teachers who persevered under the burden of “Bantu education” has been counterproductive. It fails to recognize the successes of those who succeeded despite the inequalities. Hadn’t Nelson Mandela, and many others been products of this system? The decision to close Teacher Colleges was, in my opinion, a mistake. Many of the teachers I encountered on my personal educational road were products of Teacher Colleges. An effort to improve the system of Teacher Colleges should have been part of a broader education reform process.

South Africans may all enjoy the right to vote, but this has not meant that there has been any substantive change in education policies that would ensure the success of students. A parallel of sorts can be drawn to Brown vs Board of Education and the current state of education in urban America. The vehicle of change is there, it’s just that it is in “Park.” In the same breath one can say that just because we have a black president, does not mean that we now live in a post-racial America. Many of the same institutions and feelings still exist despite the change.

The new South Africa has enabled its people to vote and rightly feel like full citizens. It has done little to ensure that young people have access to a quality education which would enable them to break the vicious cycle of poverty and powerlessness they find themselves in.

Footnotes

1. Celia Dugger, “Eager Students Fall Prey to Apartheid’s Legacy,” NY Times Online, September 19, 2009 [↩]
2. Dyson, Michael Eric, Open Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture and Religion, (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003), 157-158. [↩]
3. Celia Dugger [↩]

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