The politics of hair and the negation of the norms of black beauty in South African white schools

Previous articleNext article No AccessShifting to the Right: The Evolution of Equity in the South African Government’s Developmental and Education Policies, 1990–1999Everard WeberEverard Weber Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 46, Number 3August 2002 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/341158 Views: 150Total views on this site Citations: 17Citations are reported from Crossref © 2002 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Shireen Motala, David Carel Educational Funding and Equity in South African Schools, (Nov 2019): 67–85.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18811-5_4Shadrack T Mzangwa, Yüksel Dede The effects of higher education policy on transformation in post-apartheid South Africa, Cogent Education 6, no.11 (Apr 2019): 1592737.https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2019.1592737Daniel Hammett and Lynn Staeheli Transition and the Education of the New South African Citizen, Comparative Education Review 57, no.22 (Jul 2015): 309–331.https://doi.org/10.1086/669123Yusuf Sayed, Shireen Motala Equity and ‘No Fee’ Schools in South Africa: Challenges and Prospects, Social Policy & Administration 46, no.66 (Apr 2014): 672–687.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9515.2012.00862.xEverard Weber Policies shaping South African scholarship: production and reproduction, or diversity in the pursuit of knowledge?, Oxford Review of Education 37, no.44 (Aug 2011): 525–542.https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2011.601101H. van der Merwe A formal mentoring programme to align equity mandates with research outputs: A case study, Africa Education Review 8, no.11 (Jul 2011): 17–37.https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2011.586139Diane Brook Napier Education, Social Justice, and Development in South Africa and Cuba: Comparisons and Connections, (Nov 2009): 33–48.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3221-8_3Pam Christie The complexity of human rights in global times: The case of the right to education in South Africa, International Journal of Educational Development 30, no.11 (Jan 2010): 3–11.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.06.006Diane Brook Napier African socialism, post-colonial development, and education: Change and continuity in the post-socialist era, (Mar 2015): 369–399.https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3679(2010)0000014017Shireen Motala Privatising public schooling in post‐apartheid South Africa – equity considerations, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 39, no.22 (Mar 2009): 185–202.https://doi.org/10.1080/03057920902750459Richard Tjombe Tabulawa Education reform in Botswana: reflections on policy contradictions and paradoxes, Comparative Education 45, no.11 (Feb 2009): 87–107.https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060802661410Anthony Lemon Indian identities in the ‘rainbow nation’: Responses to transformation in South African schools, National Identities 10, no.33 (Sep 2008): 295–312.https://doi.org/10.1080/14608940802249916Pam Christie Changing regimes: Governmentality and education policy in post-apartheid South Africa, International Journal of Educational Development 26, no.44 (Jul 2006): 373–381.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2005.09.006Monica Hendricks Literacy and social justice, Education as Change 8, no.11 (Jul 2004): 109–145.https://doi.org/10.1080/16823200409487083Eleanor Lemmer, Noleen van Wyk Schools reaching out: Comprehensive parent involvement in South African primary schools, Africa Education Review 1, no.22 (Jan 2004): 259–278.https://doi.org/10.1080/18146620408566284Nicole E. Brown The Shift from Apartheid to Democracy: Issues and Impacts on Public Libraries in Cape Town, South Africa, Libri 54, no.33 (Jan 2004).https://doi.org/10.1515/LIBR.2004.169Diane Brook Napier Implementing Educational Transformation Policies: Investigating Issues of Ideal Versus Real in Developing Countries, (): 59–98.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3679(04)06003-7

The Segregated Schooling of Blacks in the Southern United States and South Africa

Dans cet article, l'auteur se propose d'analyser les similitudes dans l'education des Afro-americains et sud-africains noirs durant les periodes de segregation et d'Apartheid. La nature de l'oppression en milieu scolaire permet de lier les approches des Etats-Unis et de l'Afrique du Sud en matiere d'education pour les populations visees ainsi que l'usage par les communautes noires, dans ces deux contextes, de l'education comme ascenseur social, permettant de depasser les limites imposees par la segregation. Il est a noter egalement les strategies identiques, dans ces deux environnements, mises en place par les parents, les chefs d'etablissements et les enseignants pour encourager les eleves a depasser le contexte de l'oppression...

In its hasty retreat from a racialized and racist South Africa, democratic South Africa was intent on embracing the newly formed ‘rainbow nation’. It would be a nation free from all forms of oppression, and unshackled by anger and hatred, as made visible in the life of Nelson Mandela – the first president of a non-racial, democratic South Africa. It made sense to open schools to all races, inviting children, once divided along lines of race, ethnicity and cultures, to share a uniform, share a school and learn together. Admissions determined on the basis of race and ethnicity, were considered part of an apartheid past. Given the newly established landscape of desegregated schools, many teachers opted for posts at schools where they were previously not allowed to teach. This meant, for example, that coloured teachers began teaching at White schools, and Black teachers at Indian schools. Although not in the same numbers as learners, teachers began to migrate across racial lines in terms of teaching posts. This paper draws on research conducted with what the authors refer to as minority group teachers. These are teachers who do not form part of the majority group in the school in terms of race and ethnicity. In exploring the issues of race and ethnicity of minority group teachers at schools, this paper examines how the silence around conversations on race, ethnicity, religion, culture and language – what its authors call the identity of ‘otherness’ – leads to an invisibility that pretends there is no difference. In other words, if the identity of ‘otherness’ is not discussed, it does not exist. Secondly, this paper explores how this invisibility of ‘otherness’ experienced by teachers affects their teaching in diverse classroom settings. Thirdly, in exploring a conception of ‘otherness’, it is not the intention of this paper to advance an argument in defence of deracialized schooling. Instead, it looks for a language that can break the silence around race and racism – one that is not necessarily constituted by race. As such, this paper argues for a language of ‘otherness’ that is constituted by conceptions of infancy, potentiality and becoming – a language that will re-imprint itself on a re-imagined consciousness of post-apartheid citizenship.

Research over the last few decades has supported the contention that ‘there are different literacy practices in different domains of social life ….[and] these change over time’_x000D_ (Hamilton, Tett, & Crowther, 2012, p.3). In this article, we use ‘political literacy’, as conceived by Paulo Freire, as a theoretical lens through which to consider non-formal education in the changing context of South Africa. After considering the influence of Freire’s thinking in the black consciousness (BC) movement in South Africa during the 1970s, we consider a current BC-aligned non-formal education intervention in Freedom Park, a township outside Johannesburg, drawing on research conducted in 2018. This used snowball sampling and qualitative data collection methods, including observation of a ‘political class’ currently run in the community. We found that, in contrast to ways in which Freire was used in the BC movement in the anti-Apartheid struggle, the ‘political class’ leaned towards what Freire termed the authoritarian left.

"Born-Frees" on South Africa's Memory TrapsThe Year in South Africa Nick Mdika Tembo (bio) Can an entire community, or country, be trapped by its own memories? For a society like South Africa—a country that is still struggling with the legacy of apartheid, rising rates of concentrated poverty, the slow pace of the ANC's economic reforms, xenophobic or Afrophobic violence, and a poorly funded education system—the answer might be "yes." At least, in part, this is the sense one gets in reading Clinton Chauke's Born in Chains: The Diary of and Angry 'Born-free' and Malaika wa Azania's Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation. In this review I focus on Chauke's diary, as well as recent developments in the new black consciousness movement in postapartheid South Africa, exploring how the complicated and fragmentary nature of racial identities and related memories manifests in the narrative context of the book. The author of Born in Chains is a young man who, like most of his generation of black South Africans, finds the "born-free" label a misnomer. For him, there is a dissonance between living as a black person in post-1994 South Africa—the environment blacks live in—and the idea of freedom. The black person's freedom seems to amount to a contrived abstraction generalized to the point of meaninglessness: Chauke maintains that Democratic South Africa has only produced political freedom; socioeconomic freedom remains a myth. In a review of the book, journalist and novelist Niq Mhlongo also concurs that "because it marked the dawn of our new democracy, the year 1994 is misconstrued as the marker of the end of apartheid, racism and even inequality" ("The Biography"), even when South Africans still contend with what Chauke himself calls "centuries of racial, tribal and religious oppression" (Chauke 60). Chauke acknowledges that it is going to take time for the black-and-white problem to be fixed in South Africa because the problems "are neither black, nor white nor coloured, but problems people face—problems people could overcome" (262). His book is a sobering, realistic, and at times humorous [End Page 140] read, wistfully calling on black South Africans to "humble [themselves], and try to consolidate power with the children of the victors, and teach one another to live together" (261). As a diary, Born in Chains is what Rachel Langford and Russell West call "an uncertain genre uneasily balanced between literary and historical writing, between the spontaneity of reportage and reflectiveness of the crafted text, between selfhood and events, between subjectivity and objectivity, between the private and the public" (8). Yet, as Langford and West also observe, the diary is "a public text" in so far as it sparks powerful memories in its readers of what they, too, might have gone through at some point in their lives (10). It is an assertion that seems to resonate with Mhlongo's life, who has since admitted that reading Chauke's diary "sparked some very powerful memories for me, as I also completed my education at a poor rural school in Limpopo. Through Chauke's book, I am able to compare the standard of education and living that I experienced during the apartheid era with the post-1994 democratic period—and find that not enough has changed." Diaries capture life as it is lived, according to Niall Bolger et al. In the narrative context of Born in Chains, this lived reality is full of emotional and introspective accounts of what it means "to be young and black in South Africa" (214). In Chauke's view, black South Africans have always grappled with racial/ethnic stereotypes that have at times threatened to invisibilize and exclude them from dominant national discourses. These stereotypes are rooted in the apartheid past, understood by Trevor Noah as the epitome of hatred: "Apart hate is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all" (3). One of the main functions of this system of control and observation was to encourage disaffection—those who think about South African history today often do so not to glorify...

The movement of school teachers to primary and secondary schools around South Africa and its Bantustans in the early and mid-1970s was an intentional part of the project of propagating Black Consciousness to school learners during this period. The movement of these educators played a key role in their ability to spread Black Consciousness philosophy, and in the political forms and methods they chose in teaching it. These were shaped by their own political conscientization and training in ethnically segregated colleges, but also in large part by the social realities of the areas to which they moved. Their efforts not only laid the foundation for Black Consciousness organization in communities across South Africa, they also influenced student and youth mechanisms for political action beyond the scope of Black Consciousness politics. This article explores three case studies of teachers who studied at the University of the North (Turfloop) and their trajectories after leaving university. All of these teachers moved to Turfloop as students, and then away from it thereafter. The article argues that this pattern of movement, which was a direct result of apartheid restrictions on where black South Africans could live, study and work, shaped the knowledge they transmitted in their classrooms, and thus influenced the political consciousness of a new generation.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the critical need for the inclusion of development, cultural and social issues within the MBA curriculum of South African Business Schools. Hitherto, South African Business Schools have copied the models engineered by European and Western Business Schools. This was largely due to the imposition of Western models of education in South Africa, due to the policies of repressive colonialism and of apartheid. Given the all embracing reality that the fundamentals of business education must not be compromised in articulating the core curriculum of the MBA because, of its universal application and acceptability. The call in this paper is that South African Business Schools must begin to think out of the box, not mimic, all aspects of Western models and attempt to focus on the global political and African economy with particular reference to development, cultural and social issues that permeate African educational discourse. Global and national South African rankings use a range of indicators to rank universities. Many of these criteria are abstract and not relevant to the so – called ‘Third World” but, in reality should focus more on the many important and critical development challenges that confront South Africa and African countries in general. It is therefore, a clarion call to South African higher education authorities and, to the administrators of the South African Association of Business Schools, and the African Association of Business Schools (controlled largely by South African White functionaries), including the administrations of the traditional white South African Business Schools of universities, to engage with the wider South African and African community, and not to solely rely on business research initiatives, but to meet the requirements of South Africa’s and the continents development and social needs. The paper therefore, outlines the major objectives of critical management studies which must be included in the MBA programme in South Africa which has been paid scant reference to in the past and continues to do so. It also enunciates the importance of culture to MBA teaching and its impact on technology. The paper very briefly articulates and underscores the thesis that, Western interpretation of education models, Western technology and political domination have served to hinder rather than help African economic growth. Design / Methodology / Approach: The paper does not use the traditional methodology used in classical research, but attempts to synthesize the thought processes of the writers from observation and experience with particular reference to South Africa. However, the researchers use some literature to garner their thoughts, in order to examine the issues raised in this paper. The paper does not aim to capture all issues that permeate this controversial and debatable issue, but attempts to place this crucial issue on the agenda of MBA programmes in South Africa and the continent, in order to stimulate reasoned discussion. Findings: There are no explicit findings that emanate from this paper and discussion. The findings are therefore dispersed throughout the discussion in this paper. However, the distinct findings, conclusions and recommendations are made at the end of the paper. These are synthesized through observations, experiences and the critical thinking within the ambit of the paper, which indicates an overt bias and thinking in South African MBA programmes, which are heavily loaded towards a Eurocentric bias. This bias has therefore, led to a lack of appreciation of the developmental dynamics and socio – economic realities that confront South Africa, post 1994, given its historic past and, the challenges that confront the continent of Africa, since 1957, when Ghana became the first African country to gain independence. It is against this background that the discussion in this paper is formulated and discussed. Originality Value: The original value of this paper exemplifies the reality of thinking out of the box and, in some ways challenges the status quo in terms of the subject matter taught in MBA programmes in South Africa and, the continent of Africa. The paper therefore, calls for new thinking and remedial action, in terms of the course offerings within traditional MBA university programmes, in South Africa in particular. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n27p108

What colour is the South African rainbow? The ANC’s racial transformation Irina Filatova (bio) Over two decades ago, after De Klerk’s famous speech of 2 February 1990, announcing the formal end of apartheid, journalists started to speak of the ‘South African miracle’ – the almost unthinkable possibility of a peaceful transition to a democratic future in a united society. Not every black South African was happy about the fact that, after long and difficult negotiations, the new national anthem featured ‘Die Stem’ together with ‘Nkosi Sikelela Afrika’, that several representatives of the National Party became ministers in the government of national unity and that, having become president, Nelson Mandela did not show any willingness to revenge himself upon old enemies. Not every white South African was happy about the new constitutional arrangements in the wake of the negotiated settlement. But the expectations of the black majority were so high, and the feeling of relief among their white compatriots so overwhelming, that petty grudges did not matter. For a few years the country lived in a state of euphoria, and Bishop Desmond Tutu proclaimed that South Africa had already become a ‘rainbow nation’. Alas the term did not last: it is only with irony that ‘the rainbow nation’ is mentioned today. The miracle has not yet happened: a high proportion of both blacks and whites are disillusioned and disappointed. The national reconciliation that seemed almost a reality at the time of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, when former torturers asked their victims for forgiveness and cried together with them in front of the TV cameras, still evades South Africans, and South African society is still divided by law, emotions, economy, ethnicity and policy. So, what has gone wrong? Why is it that the ‘rainbow nation’ obstinately does not want to form? There are [End Page 23] many reasons for this, but one has to begin with the ideology and policy of the ruling party. Ideology The ANC has been conceptualising South Africa’s ethno-racial1 relations from its inception in 1912, and they remain the focus of the party’s ideology to the present day. This is not surprising in the context of the nature of the ANC as an African nationalist organisation and of the history of a country whose state structures were based on race discrimination for centuries and on apartheid’s racial engineering for more than four decades. The ANC’s approach to ethno–racial issues in South Africa significantly changed over time – the process that has been sufficiently covered in the academic literature.2 There is, however, one aspect of the ANC’s ideological baggage which continues to define its policy on race today that deserves to be mentioned here: a contradiction between two approaches to the race issue as defined in the ANC’s two policy documents and thus between its two images of South Africa’s society and its future. One document is the Freedom Charter which has been the party’s programme since its adoption in 1955 and which asserted that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white’ (Karis and Carter 1977: 205). The other is Strategy and Tactics of the ANC, adopted by the party’s conference in Morogoro in 1969. This second document which repeated the main points of the 1962 Programme of the South African Communist Party (South African Communist Party 1963), stated that the main contents of the struggle in South Africa was the ‘national liberation’ of the biggest and worst exploited group of South Africa’s population – the African people (African National Congress 1970). The authors of the Freedom Charter saw South Africa as one society, though deeply unequal and divided by race and class. For them the struggle was for political and social equality. The authors of the Strategy and Tactics assumed that South Africa was a colony, albeit of a special type, because it was situated on the same territory as its colonial power. For them, the ANC’s struggle was a national revolution – the ‘national democratic revolution’ (NDR), as it was called, following the Soviet lead. 3 Equality and ‘internationalism’ were to come later, at the second stage of...

Studying together, living apart: Emerging geographies of school attendance in post-apartheid Cape Town

South Africa failing people displaced by xenophobia riots

An under-researched dimension of the exile politics of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC-SA) revolves around how they reacted to the rising Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) during the 1970s. While much has been written about the ANC-SA’s relationship with the Pan African Congress (PAC), similar attention has not been given to how the ANC-SA reacted to BCM’s rise outside South Africa. From what has been written, the dominant narrative argues BCM was not a serious threat and that despite some early tensions was eventually absorbed into ANC-SA structures. This hegemonic narrative continues by arguing those who refused to be absorbed constituted a ‘Third Force’ that was being supported by international elements unfriendly to the ANC-SA. Both components of this dominant narrative downplay the real anxieties felt by the ANC-SA in exile concerning its own ineffectiveness in the early 1970s. At this time global recognition was not assured as BCM’s growing influence inside South Africa had many international allies of the ANC-SA questioning how relevant the ANC-SA was inside the country. My research has found that it was the ANC-SA who considered BCM a threat to its influence and in response proceeded to systematically discredit and marginalise it internationally.

Students' perceptions and value orientation could assist curriculum developers to design and implement a Physical Education (PE) curriculum that would address the needs of post-independent South African schools. PE and School Sport (SS) in South Africa demonstrate extremes and inequities. Contrast is visible in all aspects of South African life, but most significant in education. White and urban schools are relatively problem free, whereas black and rural schools have been adversely affected by the past governments' apartheid and separate development policies. Some schools have well developed facilities, while the majority has next to nothing. PE teachers are qualified in some cases and grossly unqualified in many others. PE programmes in white schools and urban cities offer a wide and balanced variety of activities while in others opportunities are limited to a few movement activities. PE as a school subject has been neglected, misunderstood, seen as being of little importance and regarded as inferior when compared to other subjects in the school curriculum. In order to find out the perceptions of PE and school sport among school children aged 7-15 years, we administered the modified Sport in Education (SpinEd) project questionnaire to 923 school children in two provinces and contrasting geographical locations in South Africa. The questionnaire focused on five main domains referring specifically to aspects of children's perceptions and understanding of PE and SS. The results showed some disparity in the perceptions and understanding of PE and SS among the respondents by gender, age group and geographical location, specifically with regard to feeling about PE and SS, outcomes of PE and SS, comparison of PE and SS with other school subjects and perceived competence in PE and SS. Results are discussed in the light of their implications for provision of quality PE and SS in South African schools.

Globally, the idea of inclusive democracy is synonymous with the participation, deliberation, and representation of citizens in the management of the affairs of nation-states. In the light of this global picture, South Africa's constitutional democracy and its inclusive education policy ensure the right to education for school-going children (from foundation, to the intermediate and senior phases). Unfortunately, the zones of exclusion (i.e. difficulties to exercise the right to education) have shown that in post-apartheid South African schools, inclusive education gains have not been enjoyed by the intended recipients-the learners. This means that despite the formalisation of inclusive education policies by the state, substantive inclusion (i.e. active participation, deliberative engagement, and participatory representation) remains a distant dream for many school-going children in South Africa. Against this backdrop, the authors show that formal inclusive policy in schools in South Africa is split between social changes on one hand, and political democracy on the other. Consequently, the authors support the call for a continual struggle by (or for) educable learners who fall within the zones of exclusion in post-1994 South Africa. Ultimately, the authors argue that the realisation of substantive inclusive education depends on the protests of the excluded, who struggle in the interstices of zones of exclusion that have created and deepened the gulf between the ideal and the achievement because democratic inclusive education is at a crossroad; it is extended and dragged in opposite directions in post-1994 South Africa schools.

Ethnic minorities pose important challenges for nation-building in post-apartheid South Africa. Indian/black African accommodation is examined through the microcosm of former Indian secondary schools in Pietermaritzburg. The development of Indian identities since the beginnings of indenture in the 1860s reflects an accommodation along predominantly ethnic rather than class-based lines. Whereas the shared educational experience of Indians under apartheid has served to reinforce ascribed ‘Indian’ identity, internal divisions are reflected in fragmented Indian voting behaviour since 1994. Fieldwork on patterns of desegregation in five former Indian secondary schools reveals critical differences between staff and governing bodies committed to transformation and more narrowly focused concerns of often conservative or apolitical parents. These differences are consistent with historic socio-political divisions among Indian South Africans. Transformation of former Indian schools embraces challenges, which, if successfully negotiated, could help to enable Indians to forge an identity of their own making in post-apartheid South Africa.