African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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Segregation, science and commissions of enquiry: The contestation of native education policy in South Africa 1930-36
(1996-04-29) Krige, Sue
This paper focuses on debates around African education which emerged from two State initiated commissions and an education conference in the period 193 0-193 6: the 1932 Natives Economic Commission (NEC), the 1935-6 Interdepartmental Committee into Native Education (Welsh Committee) and the New Education Fellowship (NEF) Conference of 1934. The paper highlights the responses of the English-speaking Protestant missions to two major and intermeshing trends which affected African education during this period, secularisation and segregation. In the history of South African education, a clear but neglected theme which emerges in the period after the First World War is the desire of the mission churches to resist State control, and to retain control of their schools in terms of administration, appointment of staff and curriculum content. Implicit in the struggle over control of African education were important issues such as the location and nature of expertise, what constitutes worthwhile knowledge, the most appropriate schooling system for imparting knowledge and the political consequences of such policy. Through the lens of debates around African education, global and colonial trends such as the rise of science, the secularisation of knowledge and the concomitant emergence of the "expert" can be seen. This paper argues that church responses to these trends incorporated more than merely an outdated reliance on nineteenth century Cape liberalism and notions of assimilation. They drew on an emerging critique of segregation and the illiberal use of science and expertise which emerged both from South Africa and from the British colonial experience elsewhere in Africa.
The state, bureaucracy and gender equity in South African education
(1998-08-17) Chisholm, Linda; Napo, V.
South Africa's transition to democracy has highlighted the role of the state and bureaucracy in tackling gender inequalities in education. New initiatives at national and provincial level have focused on the establishment of an extensive machinery to institutionalise gender concerns. Gender equity has found pride of place in the new constitution and legislative frameworks based on it. And yet there is also evidence of continuing conflict and resistances around gender issues at the level of both the state and civil society. In this context, how, to what extent and with what effect new initiatives are addressing gender inequalities becomes a key question. The state has historically been a crucial agency in the subordination of women. It is now seen as an agency and instrument in the liberation of women. To what extent it is actually capable of being so requires much closer scrutiny. The role of the state and bureaucracy can be addressed in a number of ways. On the one hand, it is possible to sketch the actual changes in constitution and legislation and examine the extent to which gender relations and inequalities appear to have altered inside the education system. While helpful and important, such an analysis will simply describe what needs to be explained: the role of the state and bureaucracy in shifting gender relations. On the other, it is possible to draw on an extensive body of feminist literature in other contexts on constraints and possibilities of transformation through the state. In so doing, new light may be cast not only on the extent to which gender inequalities are and can be addressed, but also on the nature of the transitional state in South Africa. This paper will thus proceed by examining new initiatives by the state and bureaucracy to address gender equity in education against the backdrop of the principal insights emerging from the feminist literature on the state. It will look specifically at efforts to mainstream gender and two case studies illustrating the limited reach of the state in addressing the full complexity of gender relations in educational institutions. It will argue that the majority of new initiatives can be described as classically liberal feminist, and are bound to encounter many of the difficulties already pointed to in the literature. The South African state remains a deeply patriarchal state; as such there are significant contradictions between the policy discourse and actual interventions. In analysing these, the paper will make use of Stromquist's differentiation between those gender policies in education which are essentially coercive and not transformative, those which are supportive and those which are constructive, and embody new attempts to change the ideological processes and values which underpin gender inequality (1997). The paper will first examine feminist theories of the state and bureaucracy. It will then consider the discourse of gender equity in education in South Africa and follow this with an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of efforts to mainstream gender including here a brief consideration of the role and position of gender machinery and women in the bureaucracy. It will conclude with a brief analysis of two incidents of gender violence in schools.
Apartheid's goals in the 1960s: the creation of the University of Port Elizabeth and the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit
(1995-03-06) Beale, Mary
In the 1960s the National Party (NP) government established two new universities for whites. These were the dual-medium University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), which opened in 1965, and the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit (RAU), which opened in 1968. In this paper I describe these initiatives in the 1960s and argue that they form the third phase of the NP government's policies regarding university education. This phase is distinguished from the earlier two phases by the processes through which the policy emerged, and the goals of the policy. In conclusion, I question the implications of the history of the third phase of apartheid university policies for the analysis of the goals of apartheid in the 1960s more generally.

African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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