Contemporary conflict in black teachers politics: The role of the Africanization of the Apartheid education structure, 1940-1992
Date
1992-08-31
Authors
Vilardo, Philip
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Abstract
On April 4, 1988 the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), along with the
World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession (WCOTP), initiated the
teacher unity process by bringing the major "recognized" and "emergent" black teachers
organizations together in Harare with the intention of forging a unitary, non-racial, nonsexist,
and democratic teachers union (1). Two years later, on October 6, 1990, the South
African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) was launched as the culmination of a difficult
negotiation process between these recognized and emergent teachers organizations. Ironically,
the formation of SADTU marked the end rather than the begining of teacher unity. The first
blow came when the 35,000 member Transvaal United African Teachers Union (TUATA)
and the Transvaal Teachers Association, an organization of white english speaking teachers,
announced in the week before the launch of SADTU that they would be unable to sign the
unity accord. On March 1, 1991, just five months after participating in its launch, the
predominantly "coloured" Cape Teachers' Professional Association (CTPA), with a
membership of 22,000, also withdrew from SADTU. Monica Bot has attributed the failure of
the teacher unity process to three fundamental differences of opinion between the established
and progressive teachers' organizations: a preference on the part of recognized teachers'
organizations, such as the CTPA, for professionalism over trade unionism; their demand that
SADTU be a federal rather than a unitary structure; and an objection to the "charterist spirit"
of the new teacher body (2). This understanding of the breakdown of the teacher unity process
takes at face value the explanations of the teachers organizations themselves without delving
into the more deeply rooted divisions that I will suggest have doomed teacher unity from the
outset.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 31 August 1992
Keywords
Teachers, Black. Political aspects. South Africa, Africanization. South, Educational sociology. South Africa. Effect of apartheid on, Apartheid. South Africa