Overcoming Apartheid-Era Education System in South Africa
Emmanuel Matambo
The post-apartheid order in South Africa has tried to redress the socio-economic injustices of the apartheid era , but old fissures and strata remain stubbornly prevalent . A good number of previously disadvantaged individuals have joined the ranks of wealth and privilege , but the majority remain trapped in persistent poverty . The persistence of an unjust educational system , to the detriment of the long-suffering black South Africans , contributes a great deal to South Africa ’ s lopsided society .
When the Afrikaner-led National Party won the 1948 election in South Africa , the circumstances of the long-suffering black South Africans became even more desperate , and racism in South Africa became even more barefaced . In Long Walk to Freedom , Nelson Mandela describes apartheid as a new codification of an old idea . Even when South Africa was under the British Crown , racial injustice was the zeitgeist . What the National Party did was to formally stratify long-standing racial divisions .
Education , the general acquisition of knowledge , is one of the most important tools for one ’ s or for society ’ s emancipation . Thus , withholding it is an effective way of maintaining edifices of segregation , such as apartheid . The National Party knew this , and so in 1953 it introduced the Bantu Education Act . With the aid of this pernicious edict , the South African government wrested mission schools from churches and forced them under government control . After the Act was passed , churches were confined to providing religious instruction . This was
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