Creating an ‘educated workforce’: Inkatha, big business, and educational reform in KwaZulu

Abstract

In parallel with its attempts to mobilize popular support through an appeal to ethnic nationalism, Inkatha has used its control over the KwaZulu homeland administration to advance its political and economic programme. The following article assesses the impact of Inkatha's strategy on education in KwaZulu. The KwaZulu government's approach to educational reform was shaped both by Inkatha's need to consolidate a popular political base and by its desire to negotiate a closer alliance with big business. Through campaigns to expand and improve educational facilities, to reform the school curriculum, and to restructure the educational system, Inkatha sought to legitimate its claim to have ‘liberated’ homeland education from the central government's Bantu Education policies. At the same time, Inkatha's ideological and structural position rendered it eager to accommodate big business’ growing interest in educational reform as a mechanism for reproducing the social and economic conditions conducive to the survival of capitalism and to corporate profitability. Thus, educational reform became one site of the convergence of Inkatha and big business agendas. This process was marked, one the one hand, by Inkatha's responsiveness to the educational priorities of big business and, on the other, by increased corporate commitment to Inkatha's educational initiatives. These initiatives also coincided with — and, in some cases, occasioned — Inkatha's attempts to intervene directly in KwaZulu schools to use them as a vehicle for political recruitment and discipline. The author concludes that Inkatha's educational reforms may ultimately enhance the political influence of individuals sympathetic to the party's political and economic programme.