South Africa

Basic Data
Official Country Name:	Republic of South Africa
Region:	Africa
Population:	43,421,021
Language(s):	Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu
Literacy Rate:	81.8%
Number of Primary Schools:	20,863
Compulsory Schooling:	9 years
Public Expenditure on Education:	7.9%
Foreign Students in National Universities:	12,625
Educational Enrollment:	Primary: 8,159,430
	Secondary: 3,571,395
	Higher: 617,897
Educational Enrollment Rate:	Primary: 133%
	Secondary: 95%
	Higher: 17%
Teachers:	Primary: 224,896
	Higher: 27,099
Student-Teacher Ratio:	Primary: 36:1
	Secondary: 29:1
Female Enrollment Rate:	Primary: 131%
	Secondary: 103%
	Higher: 17%

History & Background

The Republic of South Africa is a constitutional parliamentary democracy of many years standing, which was dramatically transformed in 1994 when the previous Apartheid system of racist segregation was formally abolished. Situated at the southernmost end of the African continent, South Africa measures 1.2 million square kilometers. Bordered by Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe to the north and Mozambique to the northeast, South Africa's southern half is surrounded by water: the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest. In its own northeastern region South Africa almost entirely encircles Swaziland; in its central eastern region South Africa territorially surrounds Lesotho. South Africa has a semi-arid climate, except for the east coast, where the climate is subtropical. The country's terrain consists of a large interior plateau surrounded by sharp hills and narrow coastal plain.

Cultural Background & History: Poised in a geographically strategic location, South Africa for centuries was the object of battles fought between European invaders and the indigenous Africans. South Africa today is a rich kaleidoscope of people, languages, and cultures. The first census of the post-Apartheid era, which began in 1994 with Nelson Mandela's election, was conducted in 1996 and indicated that South Africa had a population of 43 million people, 22 million of them women. While the next actual census would not be taken until October 2001, statisticians estimated South Africa's population in July 2001 to be approximately 44.6 million (not taking into account possible additional deaths due to HIV/AIDS), with the following composition of 'races' (i.e., socially determined categories invented by the European colonizers): 78.8 percent Africans/blacks, 8.7 percent "Coloureds" (i.e., persons of mixed 'race'), 2.5 percent Indians/Asians, 10.2 percent "Whites" (i.e., persons of European ancestry), and 0.1 percent "Others and unspecified." Regarding religious affiliation, 28.5 percent of South Africa's population at the turn of the millennium adhered to indigenous and animist beliefs while 68 percent of the population was Christian, 2 percent was Muslim, and 1.5 percent was Hindu.

With its extremely ethnically diverse population, South Africa has 11 official languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, and Zulu. Of the original African peoples who lived in the southern African tip, only a few members of the San ('Bushmen') and Khoi Khoi communities (Hottentots ) have survived. Anthropologists describe the majority of South Africa's indigenous people as Bantu-speaking people. (However, since aBantu refers to people and Isintu to language, this group of Africans should more accurately be designated Sintu-speaking people.) The Bantu include the Nguni, two-thirds of the African population who speak closely related 'languages' (more accurately, dialects of the Nguni language—isiZulu, isiXhosa, isiNdebele, and siSwati). The second largest group of indigenous South Africans is the Sothospeaking group, while the Tsonga and the Venda are smaller groups. The "Coloureds," along with the Afrikaaners (descendants of mainly Dutch, French Huguenot, and German settlers), speak Afrikaans, a language developed from Dutch by Khoi Khoi and Malaysian slaves as a pidgin language. South Africans of British and other European descent (notably, Jews from the Baltic states) identify themselves as English-speaking South Africans, while the Indian South African population mainly speaks Tamil, Hindi, and Gujarati.

Archaelogical sites in South Africa contain evidence of very early human settlements, invalidating the notion of terra nullius so beloved by the European colonial settlers who liked to consider themselves the first humans to inhabit the region. In the summer of 1995, geologist Dave Roberts discovered a set of fossilized footprints 117,000 years old in the sandy slopes of Langebaan Lagoon, on the Atlantic coast of South Africa, dating back to the period when the first anatomically modern humans emerged. For most of the past 100,000 years, the southern African region has been host to nomadic groups of hunter-gatherers living in nuclear families—the San. These groups lived in delicate ecological balance with their environment and knew, for example, how to aggregate and disperse in response to ecological necessity. They left posterity the benefit of their beliefs and rituals, outlooks, and activities in rock art found throughout the region. Some 2,000 years ago a group of agro-pastoralists, the Khoi Khoi, also took up permanent residence in the region. About 1,500 years ago, the iSintu-speaking people, who had migrated from the Great Lakes region of Africa, began to cultivate the soil, mainly in the summer rainfall river valleys of the southeastern part of Africa, introducing and developing techniques of growing edible crops such as millet and gourds. The domestication of cattle approximately 1,000 years ago in southern Africa created new possibilities for societal development, and political systems arose among the decentralized kingdoms of the region.

The arrival of Europeans in southern Africa was by far the most traumatic experience the indigenous communities had ever experienced by the 1600s. In 1652 the Dutch set up a mainland base in the territory of the Khoi Khoi for their East India Company (VOC) as a victualling station for their own passing ships. Observing the building of a stone castle and the settling of farmers on their land, the Khoi Khoi realized that the Dutch intended to stay and thus resisted bartering with them by withholding their own livestock and fought off the attempts of VOC expeditions to take their livestock by force. Thus began the systematic dispossession of indigenous populations that sparked off the Wars of Dispossession (the "Kaffir Wars") in the 1770s which lasted 100 years in the region—or more accurately, more than 3 centuries, terminating only with the establishment of South Africa's democratic government in 1994. Gradually the Dutch settlers overwhelmed the indigenous Africans by seizing their streams, land, and cattle and by incorporating the Khoi Khoi as farm laborers and into their militia, destroying the Khoi Khoi's political economy. The urgent need for labor experienced by the Dutch was reinforced by the 1688 arrival of French Huguenots, escaping religious persecution in Europe, and within the first decade of their arrival the Dutch brought in slaves from their Asian colonies, mainly from Malaysia, and from eastern and western Africa. These slaves became the nucleus of the subsequent "coloured" community.

The British occupied the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa in 1795 during the French revolutionary wars to prevent the southernmost part of Africa from falling into French hands. They returned it to the Dutch in 1803, only to reoccupy it in 1806. In 1820 British settlers came to live mainly in the eastern Cape, 1,000 kilometers east of Cape Town. As the original European settlements expanded from the coastal area into the interior, the Europeans inevitably came into conflict with the indigenous populations they encountered, due to the newcomers vying for the land and livestock of the original owners. The Kaffir Wars gradually gave the Europeans the upper hand, as the Europeans had more effective weapons of mass destruction than did the indigenous Africans. By the late 1800s they had managed to control all the territories previously belonging to the African people.

Although the British and Dutch shared a common purpose in oppressing and dispossessing the indigenous peoples of southern Africa, certain tensions between the European settlers soon resurfaced. In consequence, beginning in 1836, the Dutch settlers embarked on a more deliberate emigration to escape British colonialism. This event, called the Great Trek, moved them from the Cape Colony into the interior. The interior land, however, was not empty; rather, it already was inhabited by Africans, fertile and well watered, and provided a potentially cheap supply of labor, as the Dutch Voortrekkers soon discovered. This led the incoming Dutch to establish two republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, while the British took possession of the Cape Colony and Natal.

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 near the place where the Orange and Vaal Rivers meet and of gold in the Tati area, then in the eastern Transvaal in the 1870s, and in Witwatersrand brought the arrival in 1886 of European prospectors, mainly from Britain, and drew in African migrant workers as well. Resolving to extend their control to the new Boer republics of the Dutch settlers, the British eventually engaged the Dutch in the Anglo-Boer War, which lasted from 1899 until 1902 and ended with British victory in the battlefield, though the Boers officially won the peace—a compromise to ensure the unity of the Europeans against the African indigenes to foster European control of the region. Agreement between the British and the Boers was reached in 1909 to establish a single country by combining the territories each group controlled into one nation. The Union of South Africa, known today as South Africa, came into being in 1910.

Racial differentiation in education took root from the beginning of European colonization in South Africa, with separate schools established for the different 'racial' groups. Essentially, the education system was designed to elevate Europeans above all other groups, who were programmed and socialized for subordinate roles in the European-dominated commercial and administrative systems to further the goals of South Africa's colonial overlords. As most of the early schools established for Africans were missionary institutions, an added objective was to proselytize to the Africans and assimilate them into Western culture and especially into Christian values of obedience and subservience to those in authority. By 1945 approximately 4,400 church-related schools were offering instruction in South Africa, compared with only 230 government schools. African culture, history, religion, values, botany, zoology, medicine, and so on provided no points of reference for African education, whether in the secular system or in missionary schools. European-administered education for Africans was designed for alienation and underdevelopment with all genuine educational opportunity reserved for the Europeans themselves.

To contest European domination, including in the schools, indigenous Africans established the South African Native National Conference (which later became the African National Congress) in 1912 as the first pan-tribal organization on the continent and resolved to gain their country back politically. Determined to master European learning as a tool to win the contest against the Europeans for control of southern Africa, the African poets and authors of the period, notably Citashe and W. B. Rubusana, voiced their new aspirations in their oft quoted slogan, Zemk' iinkomo magwalandini ("Your cattle are gone, you cowardly countrymen"). Their new call to arms favored the pen over the spear.

The uneasy coalition of the British and the Boers persisted further into the twentieth century and led to the formation of the National Party by the Boers, who by then were calling themselves Afrikaaners and their language Afrikaans. Organized politically in 1933, the National Party came into power in 1948 on a ticket of Apartheid—a policy of complete separation between Europeans and all others. This began the most intensive period of anti-African legislation South Africa had ever experienced. During the period of Apartheid, a system of so-called "Homelands" was established that relegated particular ethnic groups to separate parts of the country, and a pass system was set up that was strictly enforced to maintain official segregation shaped by the racist ideology of the National Party's adherents. By 1961 the National Party was withdrawing South Africa from the British Commonwealth. Over the next several decades South Africa witnessed its own increasing exclusion from world bodies and international fora, including representation in the United Nations, in response to its deliberate insistence on an unrelenting course of racism and the abuse of the majority of its citizens' human rights.

Resistance to segregation and Apartheid among Africans after the collapse of African kingdoms toward the close of the nineteenth century essentially emerged in several phases. During the first phase, the ANC, since the time of its formation, tried to petition the British crown against African exclusion from power and sent delegations to Britain to lobby the British government. Internally, the ANC sent the South African government similar pleas and even participated in Native Representative Councils set up as advisory councils to the South African government. All pleas to ameliorate the oppressive and exploitative conditions fell on deaf ears, however. When petitions and delegations failed to produce the desired effect, a group of powerful future leaders arose in 1944, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Robert Sobukwe, to form the ANC Youth League. Calling for a Program of Action to challenge European state control directly through protest, they launched the Defiance Campaign Against Unjust Laws in 1951-1952 and employed passive resistance to make their mark on the government and history of education in South Africa.

In 1960 the state outlawed the ANC as well as an ANC splinter group, the Pan African Congress (PAC), led by Robert Sobukwe which had been formed a year earlier to protest the inclusion of Europeans in the liberation movement, whom PAC members accused of watering down the demands of the oppressed African masses in order to safeguard the interests of whites. The broad liberation movement went underground and embarked on guerrilla warfare. The government had hoped that it had completely fragmented resistance from the disadvantaged and oppressed and that it had separated these downtrodden groups from their white liberal sympathizers, especially those from the "open universities." In reality, these universities became hotbeds of revolution. Calls for a "Black Consciousness" rose in the late 1960s from every segregated campus that were at first welcomed by the government because they seemed to accord with the government's own policy of complete separation of the races. The emergence of the South African Students' Organization in 1968, a breakaway group under the leadership of Steve Bantu Biko from the multiracial and patronizing National Union of South African Students was the harbinger of a new revolutionary spirit among the oppressed that was to sweep across South Africa and eventually bring Apartheid down to its knees. The students at the segregated universities, along with students in primary and secondary schools, far from being socialized to accept Apartheid and its design for them, offered what increasingly became the most potent challenge to white domination in South Africa.

Overt African resistance inside South Africa was mounted largely by the Black Consciousness Movement in its various formulations with a base among students mobilized to rise against Apartheid through such actions as the "Soweto" uprising of 1976. The following year, however, the Apartheid regime outlawed Black Consciousness just as it had done to the ANC and the PAC. The Movement's most eminent leader, Steve Biko, was murdered in police detention, an event that created a fresh outburst of anger. A final push began under the umbrella of the United Democratic Front formed in 1983, the labor movement that had been legalized in 1979 only "to bring the unions out into the open and crush them." Notwithstanding brutal repression under a State of Emergency first proclaimed by the South African government in 1985, the strategy to undermine workers failed and resistance on the ground swelled as never before with growing international support and economic sanctions, eventually leading to the capitulation of the Apartheid state. In February 1990 President F. W. De Klerk, South Africa's last non-indigenous head of state, removed the ban on the ANC and the PAC and announced the release of all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, as well as an amnesty on exiles associated with the liberation movement. This set the stage for a negotiated settlement finally reached in 1994.

The Homelands system was abolished with the end of Apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela as president. However, the social and economic disruptions caused by the Homelands Act and the brutality of South Africa's official structures during the years of National Party rule—not to mention the resultant fragmentation of African families and communities—are likely to take generations to overcome. The work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa during the 1990s and beyond has focused in large measure on repairing the extensive damage done not only to the physical integrity of South Africans and their country's social infrastructure but also on mending the South African soul, seeking the means to help heal the trauma caused by years of torture, murder, and abuse at the hands of a racist state that previously would not permit individuals of different 'races' even to legally marry.

Social Conditions: In 2001 approximately 52.7 percent of South Africa's population lived in urban areas. The major cities of the country include Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Pretoria, the national capital (though Cape Town is the legislative center and Bloemfontein the judicial center. With an average population density of about 34 persons per square kilometer in 1999, South Africa has experienced rapid population shifts and changes in the age structure of its population with the demise of the Homelands system of the Apartheid era and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. With the spread of this disease magnified by relative government inaction until the turn of the millennium, harsh discrimination and mistreatment often meted out by society to those infected with the disease, and certain dangerously mistaken beliefs and abusive practices concerning protection from the disease, the scale of infection and deaths in South Africa from HIV/AIDS exceeds that in most other countries, including those in the developing world.

South Africa had an infant-mortality rate of 62 per 1,000 live births in 1999 and an under 5 years child-mortality rate of 76 per 1,000 the same year. The total fertility rate was about three (i.e., a woman bearing children for her entire childbearing years at the current fertility rate would produce three children). Nearly one third of the population (32.5 percent) in the year 2000 was 14 years old or younger, more than three-fifths of South Africans (62.8 percent) were between 15 and 64 years of age, and less than 5 percent was 65 or older, although these figures varied markedly by racial group. The life expectancy at birth of the population in the year 2000 again varied significantly by race and was very difficult to estimate accurately due to South Africa's extremely high HIV/AIDS infection rate (by some counts, one person in eight in 2001) and the accompanying loss of life. The estimated years of life expectancy at birth for the population of the country as a whole in 1997 was 54 for males and 58 for females. Examining specific racial groups and gender categories separately, however, the following life expectancy figures for 1997 were obtained: Black men, 52; Black women, 55; Coloured men, 59; Coloured women, 68; Asian men, 65; Asian women, 72; White men, 70; and White women, 77. Life expectancy also differs considerably depending on income level and on the area of the country in which one lives. In 1999 the adult literacy rate for South Africa was estimated at 87 percent, although literacy actually varied widely, depending on income level, racial group, province, and gender.

Economic Status: South Africa has been both blessed and cursed with an abundance of natural resources—blessed since the potential exists for rich development and the sustenance of a large population at adequate if not high standards of living, but cursed because the wealth endemic to the land attracted European invaders who subjugated the indigenous population for centuries, creating wide economic disparities and vast suffering for most of the country's population. The country's abundant natural resources include precious and industrial metals (including platinum, gold, and chromium), gem minerals such as diamonds, and valuable energy sources such as coal and natural gas. In 1999 about 25 percent of the labor force was employed in industry, 30 percent in agriculture, and 45 percent in services. The GDP at market prices was estimated at US$131.1 trillion with about 5 percent of the GDP derived from agriculture, 35 percent from industry, and 60 percent from services. Annual per-capita income in South Africa was US$3,170 (using the Atlas method of calculating GNI per capita). The unemployment rate in South Africa was roughly 30 percent, although again, as in nearly all population measures, wide discrepancies exist in unemployment rates across population groups.

Constitutional & Legal Foundations

South Africa is a parliamentary democracy with a strong presidency, established in its most recent form by the new constitution adopted by the South African parliament in May 1996, certified by the Constitutional Court on 4 December 1996, and signed by President Nelson Mandela six days later, coming into effect on 3 February 1997. South Africa has a legal system based on Roman-Dutch law and the British common law system. All citizens of South Africa 18 years and older are eligible to vote; men are also eligible for military service at age 18. According to the Bill of Rights contained in the new South African constitution, everyone has a right to basic education, including adult basic education, which the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible to all citizens through a single, unified, national education system.

At the national level, the president is both head of the government and chief of state, democratically elected by the National Assembly to a five year term of office. On 16 June 1999, Thabo Mbeki became the second president under the new constitution, chosen by unanimous acclamation of the National Assembly. The executive branch of the national government also includes an executive deputy president, who since 17 June 1999 has been Jacob Zuma, and a cabinet appointed by the president.

The national legislative branch is a bicameral parliament composed of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. The National Assembly consists of 400 members elected through proportional representation by popular vote to 5 year terms in office; the National Council of Provinces has 90 seats filled by 10 members elected from each of the 9 provinces, also to 5 year terms. This second house of the national legislature replaced the previous Senate, when the new constitution came into effect, with the same representatives and party affiliations but a new responsibility: to look after the interests of the regions and the cultural and linguistic traditions of the ethnic minorities residing in each of the provinces. The third branch of the national government, the judicial branch, consists of a Supreme Court of Appeals, a Constitutional Court, High Courts, and Magistrate Courts. Sub-national affairs are administered through a system of nine provinces—Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, North-West, Northern Cape, Northern Province, and Western Cape—whose peoples, levels of economic development, and characteristics differ widely.

Concerning interethnic and international relations, South Africa today is working actively to create a society built on mutual respect and cooperation. The country now enjoys very good relations with the international community, in contrast to the negative consequences of its poor reputation internationally during the Apartheid years. Belonging to numerous international organizations and conferences and working collaboratively with governmental actors and nongovernmental organizations from around the world, South Africa is finally beginning to reap the benefits of the many years of sacrifice and struggle by which indigenous South Africans threw off the bonds of social segregation and racist policies. Many international relationships grew out of efforts made during the Apartheid era to support South Africans working to break the Apartheid system and to realize social justice for the peoples of this southernmost African country. Banned for years from participating in international events, organizations, and conferences, due to the racist politics of the National Party, South Africa now participates in many regional and international organizations, including the African Development Bank, the World Bank, United Nations agencies, the Group of 77, and countless other bodies too numerous to name. Receiving international support in the form of technical and financial assistance to assist the country's democratic transformation and socioeconomic development, the South African government and people and a panoply of civil society organizations have drawn widespread support from abroad, especially in the area of education and in other social welfare domains.

With the start of the new era in South African governance and development in 1994 and the new South African constitution, the educational system of South Africa began a transformation of monumental proportions. Significant reforms have been required particularly because of the previously destructive policies, legislation, and practices implemented under Apartheid that kept black students and other ethnic and racial minorities apart from whites and at a severe educational, social, and economic disadvantage. Complete government control over African education had started with the passage in 1953 of the Bantu Education Act. One of Apartheid's chief architects, Dr. Verwoerd as Minister of Bantu Administration and Education, declared in the debate on the bill that Africans should be taught there was no place for them "above certain forms of labor" in areas of South Africa taken by European settlers for themselves. Verwoerd intended to devise an educational system for Africans that would ensure their perpetually remaining "hewers of wood and drawers of water." There was no point, others in the House said, in teaching African children mathematics or science for they had no need of such expertise. This Act formed the basis for the acute technical skills shortage post-Apartheid South Africa is experiencing. The Act did not propose free and compulsory education for African children such as that available to white children. Despite the appalling levels of poverty among Africans, education for indigenous Africans never was made free, and the state spent on African education only a small proportion of the money it lavished on the education of white children. Nonetheless, the 1953 Bantu Education Act was passed over the objections of Africans and began eroding even the small gains Africans had made through the education they had received from the missionaries, whose schools were taken over by the new Ministry of Bantu Education. Efforts by leaders of the African National Congress to open independent schools were frustrated through legislation that forbade such schools and prescribed severe punitive measures for flouting the law.

A series of South African government laws followed over the next two decades that placed indigenous Africans at a substantial disadvantage compared with whites in the area of education. By 1979 only 29 percent of black pupils were completing their primary and secondary schooling, compared with 81 percent of white pupils. A number of these legislative acts established separate universities for blacks, coloureds, and Asians and put higher education increasingly under the long arm of the state. The National Educational Policy and the Act on Educational Services passed in 1967, and the 1969 Act on the Training of Teachers established a new Department of National Education that retained control of all tertiary educational institutions: universities, colleges of advanced technology, technical colleges and institutes, and other colleges offering postsecondary certificates. This completed government encroachment on university autonomy especially on such matters as admission of people from other racially defined groups.

The Constitution of 1996 and a comprehensive, integrated series of education laws enacted under the administrations of Presidents Mandela and Mbeki have been transforming the South African educational system at all levels. For example, the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996 provides for a uniform system for the organization, governance, and funding of schools. The Act is intended to "redress past injustices in educational provision, provide an education of progressively high quality. . ., advance the democratic transformation of society, combat racism and sexism and all other forms of unfair discrimination and intolerance, contribute to the eradication of poverty and the economic well-being of society, [and] protect and advance [South Africa's] diverse cultures and languages." The 1996 South African Schools Act also spells out the new democratic government's plans for educational reform. The Act provides for: 1) compulsory education for learners between the ages of 7 and 15 or learners reaching grade 9, whichever occurs first; 2) two categories of schools, namely public and independent schools, as well as the establishment and maintenance of public schools on private property; 3) criteria for the admission of learners to public schools; 4) governance and management of public schools, 5) the election of governing bodies and their functions; and 6) funding of public schools.

A new Higher Education Act passed in 1997 (Act 101) provides a policy and legislative framework for higher education. The Act established a Council of Higher Education (CHE) to advise the minister on the structure, planning, and governance of higher education; funding formulae; financial aid and student support services; quality control and assurance; and language policy. The Act requires the minister to provide reasons in writing for turning down the recommendations of the CHE on any of these matters. There are 21 universities and 15 technikons in South Africa—relatively few for a population of 43 million people, although intense debate is underway over the "shape and size" of the higher education sector. Universities and technikons are autonomous and answerable to their councils. Private Acts of Parliament establish each university, and there is minimum interference from the government. The Higher Education Act also legislates the establishment of private technikons and universities, which must register, however, with the Ministry of Education. An earlier Technikons Act (Act 125 of 1993) had enabled technikons to offer degrees as well as their previous three year diplomas.

South African language policy as it applies to education is still evolving and the subject of intense debate. Under the Apartheid system South Africa had two official languages, English and Afrikaans, which were used as the languages of commerce, science, and higher learning. Indigenous languages were elevated to official status only after South Africa's first truly democratically elected government came to power in 1994. In July 1997, a new language policy was released that accords with the language clauses of the 1996 Constitution. The new language policy stipulates that students have a right to be taught in the language of their choice. When applying for admission to a school, a student may stipulate in which of South Africa's official languages the student wishes to be taught. Schools are expected to take the language preferences of students into account and, "within reasonable measures," respond to the language choice of the students they admit. According to the policy, only official languages may be used for instruction; from grade 3 onwards, learners have to study the language they are taught in, as well as at least one other approved language; language may not be used as a barrier to admission; governing bodies must stipulate how their schools will promote multilingualism; and failing a language will result in failing the grade one is in.

Concerning the new language policy in schools, under the new South African Constitution of 1996, all children and youth are allowed instruction in the language of their choice, as selected from among the 11 official languages of the country. It is left to the individual school districts and institutions to manage the practical accomplishment of this task—one of the great challenges yet to be adequately addressed by the school reform measures underway in the early twenty-first century. The new language policy nonetheless lays the groundwork for some of the potentially most empowering legislation the new government will pass to strengthen the previously marginalized African language communities.

Educational System—Overview

In the year 2000 approximately more than 52 million children and youth (50.5 percent of them female) were enrolled in 29,386 primary and secondary schools in South Africa. In addition, 125,000 students (youth and adults) were enrolled in technical colleges, 300,000 students (54.6 percent female) were enrolled in universities, and 190,000 students (45.5 percent female) attended technikons (vocational and technical tertiary level schools). Formal education in South Africa falls into three categories:

1. General Education and Training, incorporating a preparatory year and students up through grade 9.
2. Further Education and Training, covering grades 10 through 12 for regularly enrolled youth, out of school students, adult learners, youth and adults enrolled in technical, youth, and community colleges, industry-based education and training initiatives, and other nonformal instructional programs.
3. Higher Education, which includes a broad range of educational institutions and programs leading to certificates, diplomas, and degrees.

The three levels of education are integrated in a National Qualifications Framework as outlined by the South African Qualification Authority Act of 1996 that aimed to establish a seamless system of education for South Africans of all ages and instructional levels. Nearly all the schools at the primary and junior secondary levels were publicly funded. Enrollments in private primary schools represented only 1 percent of the total primary enrollment in 1995. At the preprimary, senior secondary, and tertiary levels, growth in the number of private institutions has been observed since 1994, particularly with the educational reforms stimulated by the various education acts passed in the 1990s and later.

Preprimary education for children up to age six is optional in South Africa. Nine years of government-paid, compulsory basic education is provided to pupils between the ages of 6 and 15, where 6 grades of primary schooling are offered to pupils generally between the ages of 6 and 12 (though many older students also are enrolled at this level), followed by 3 grades of junior secondary education for children between the ages of 12 and 15. The first year of junior secondary schooling takes place in the primary school setting while the next two years are delivered in senior secondary schools. Senior secondary schools provide either academic training or vocational and technical education and training. They are designed to accommodate students between the ages of 16 and 20 (though many older students attend), with general education programs generally lasting three years and vocational and technical training programs lasting 2, 3, or 4 years. Higher education institutions of various types provide education and training opportunities for students after the senior secondary level who have graduated with the appropriate secondary level certificates, diplomas, or degrees to qualify for admission.

In the South Africa of the post-Apartheid era, the education system has been undergoing major reforms to more equitably distribute educational opportunities to all South Africans—blacks, coloureds, and Asians as well as whites—and to heighten educational quality at all levels. The most significant education innovation introduced since 1994 perhaps has been the new curriculum design, Curriculum 2005. Based on the concept of Outcomes Based Education (OBE), Curriculum 2005 identifies the new national curriculum framework introduced in grade 1 in 1998 and progressively being added to subsequent grades of basic education over several years. Intended to replace the "banking concept" of education characteristic of education in South Africa during the Apartheid era and first years of the new South African regime, OBE regards learning as an interactive process between and among educators and learners, with the learner at the center and the teacher as facilitator. Stressing cooperative learning, especially group work on common tasks, OBE focuses on what learners should know and do. The goal is to produce active, lifelong learners with a thirst for knowledge and a love for learning.

Preprimary & Primary Education

Although some provinces provide preprimary education, the scale is limited and the field of early childhood development is dominated by the nongovernmental sector in South Africa. Preprimary schools must be registered with local authorities, and their operations fall under the control of provincial educational departments, who oversee both public and private preschool programs. In reality, insufficient numbers of trained teaching staff at the preprimary level were available in 2001, whether through publicly or privately funded institutions, to mount an effective preprimary education program.

School enrollments in general are very difficult to specify and compare in South Africa due to the fact that ratios vary markedly by racial group, gender, income level, and geographical location. Additionally, the manner in which age levels are defined and students of particular ages are included or excluded further complicates the reliability of measures and their comparability across regions, sources, and time. That said, 1 estimate of South Africa's primary gross enrollment for 1995 was 131 percent, whereas a UNICEF fact sheet updated in December 2000 noted the gross enrollment rate at the primary level to be 98 percent for boys and 86 percent for girls, with corresponding net enrollment rates of 88 percent for boys and 86 percent for girls. In 1995 approximately 49 percent of pupils enrolled in primary school were girls. Under the new educational reforms of the 1990s the average class size at the primary level was to be 35 students, much lower than the earlier number in impoverished communities though significantly higher than the prevailing class size in white majority schools. This goal reportedly had been met by 2001, according to the Department of Education.

Children are admitted to primary school at age six. There is a junior primary school phase that lasts for three years and a senior primary school phase that also lasts for three years. In the first three years, children learn to read, write, and count. A start is also made at learning a second language. The next phase stresses reading and oral proficiency in one's first language and in the second language taught. In addition, primary pupils are taught mathematics, general science, history, geography, and skills such as needlework, woodwork, and art.

Secondary Education

A 1995 estimate of the gross enrollment ratio for South African secondary schools was 94 percent. About 54 percent of students enrolled at the secondary level were female that year. In December 2000 UNICEF reported secondary level gross enrollment ratios as 76 percent for males and 91 percent for females.

Secondary education in South Africa, like primary education, is divided into junior and senior phases. Senior secondary schools offering general knowledge last three years, broadening and deepening students' understanding and skills in various academic subjects to prepare them for their choice of career or for further study. In addition to studying languages (normally two to three per student), students choose a minimum of four subjects from the following mainstream areas: general studies, commercial studies, natural sciences, technical studies, the arts, and agricultural and domestic science. In grade 12 students take a qualifying examination at the higher, standard, and lower grades (i.e., the three tracks in which students have been studying). Because of the underpreparedness of mainly African students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, the failure rate in grade 12 has been dismal, reaching the 50 percent mark. Moreover, many students are taught virtually no science and mathematics, making the skills shortages in the science, engineering, and technology areas particularly acute. Besides the general education programs offered at the senior secondary level, vocational and technical programs lasting two, three, or four years can also be followed by senior secondary students.

Higher Education

A discussion of higher education in South Africa must begin with a retrospective look at how the university system was constructed, considering the powerful impact of segregation and Apartheid on the educational opportunities of South Africans at the tertiary level. The establishment of the South African College at Cape Town in 1829 for people of European descent marked the beginning of tertiary education in South Africa. During the nineteenth century, a number of secular and religious institutions of higher education were established in South Africa to serve the interests of the Europeans who resided there. The provision of higher education for Europeans was accelerated after the formation of the Union of South Africa to provide equitable training for both the English and the Afrikaaners. The University Act was passed in 1916, the same year the Joint Matriculation Board was established to design the matriculation curriculum and regulate examinations for entry into university. The board members were invariably drawn from among the white representatives of provincial, university, and other educational authorities. In 1918 the University of South Africa was established with its six constituent colleges.

Over the next 40 years new universities came into being, increasing the likelihood that Europeans would remain in power over the indigenous population, since the majority of university offerings were available only to whites. In 1955 control of European education was divided between the union government and the provincial legislatures, with the provinces governing primary and general secondary education and agricultural and teacher training colleges while vocational and technical training at the secondary level and higher education were placed in the central government's hands. The Vocational Education Act, also passed that year, placed tertiary education under the control of the Ministry of Education, Arts, and Sciences. In 1965 the University of Port Elizabeth was established, offering instruction in English and Afrikaans. Two years later, the Rand Afrikaans University opened. UNESCO figures from 1968 showed that after the United States, South Africa had the second largest number of white university students per 100,000 inhabitants in the world. At the time 30,000 students were enrolled in the segregated English language historically White universities alone while only 3,000 Africans studied in all the historically black universities put together. Before the demise of Apartheid, 11 universities in South Africa served predominantly white students. They were, as divided according to the language of instruction: five Afrikaans universities (Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Orange Free State, and Rand Afrikaans); four English language universities (Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Natal, and Rhodes); and two bilingual universities (Port Elizabeth and the University of South Africa). Several segregated colleges for advanced technical training also were created, mainly in the major urban areas, preparing students directly for work and offering a wide variety of programs in the agricultural sciences, commerce and industry, public service, military, and health sectors. Job reservation laws passed in the mid-1950s protected most of these professions for whites and ensured the employability of graduates of these programs.

The idea of higher education for Africans was first hatched around 1880 in the eastern Cape by James Stewart, head of the Lovedale Mission Station of the United Free Church of Scotland. Stewart was the first to forcefully articulate the need for an institution, run on Christian lines, that would provide university education for Africans. He garnered support for his idea from the churches, government, business, and some African leaders, notably John Tengo Jabavu (founder of Imvo zabantsundu, "African Opinion," an isiXhosa newspaper) and the Reverend Walter B. Rubusana. In 1916 the South African Native College at Fort Hare (across the river from Lovedale) was opened as the first university for Africans south of the equator. The college was subsidized by the government of South Africa. Like the secondary schools in the country that served as feeder institutions to the university, Fort Hare became a university of African leaders in east and southern Africa, producing in a single generation the heads of state of Botswana (Sir Seretse Khama), Lesotho (Dr. Ntsu Mokhehle), Uganda (Professor Yusuf Lule), Zimbabwe (Robert Mugabe), and South Africa (Nelson Mandela). Many of the first cabinet ministers appointed after independence in Kenya, Malawi, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Zambia had been educated at Fort Hare. Before 1959, all of South Africa's English language universities, referred to as the "open universities," had admitted in all disciplines a small number of African students and others who were not of European descent. In 1950, a medical faculty for Africans, including those of mixed and Asian descent, was opened at the University of Natal, becoming the only medical school to admit them following their exclusion from the other open universities until the segregated Medical University of South Africa was founded. The University of South Africa continued to admit an increasing number of Africans who could not raise enough funds or otherwise afford to attend a residential university.

Self-governing status was granted in the mid-1970s and early 1980s to the territories of the Transkei, Ciskei, Venda, and Bophuthatswana, and three new ethnic universities were built for these newly "independent countries:" the University of Transkei, originally a satellite campus of Fort Hare later taken over by Ciskei; the University of Venda, similarly set up under the University of the North; and the University of Bopthutswana. Vista University was established with campuses in South Africa's sprawling dormitory towns in the segregated African townships around Johannesburg, Pretoria, Benoni, Port Elizabeth, and Bloemfontein to accommodate urban Africans the government had wished to pretend did not exist.

Now that the Apartheid system has ended, the imbalances in tertiary education across racial groups created through the unequal education system of the Apartheid years are being addressed but will be difficult to correct. The official languages of instruction at the tertiary level, for example, are English and Afrikaans, the two principal languages of the European colonizers, yet many South African students speak an alternative mother tongue. Figures for the mid-1990s released by South Africa's Human Science Research Council (HSRC) showed that even with the demise of the Apartheid system, groups describing themselves as white accounted for 85 percent of all university graduates in South Africa, despite the fact that their proportion as a percentage of the population was no more than 15 percent. The impact of the segregated educational system established under white majority rule and the Apartheid years has been enormous. The HSRC survey indicated that by the mid-1990s the unemployment rate in South Africa hovered around just 2 percent for white graduates of tertiary institutions but was nearly 25 percent for black tertiary graduates.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education released in August 1999 show that a growing number of South Africans are opting to study at technikons rather than universities, a phenomenon that may be attributed to a variety of factors including the vocational nature of most technikon qualifications and the lower entrance requirements at the technikons. Between 1993 and 1997, enrollments at the technikons increased by 46 percent, while at the universities they increased by only 8 percent. Overall enrollments in higher education grew from 496,000 in 1993 to 594,000 in 1997. African students enrolling at historically white institutions of higher learning rose from 41 percent to 57 percent but enrollments at the historically black universities began to fall quite considerably, causing concerns over their future viability. Private universities also have siphoned students away from the historically black universities. Technical colleges also offer postsecondary vocational training in a wide range of subjects, attracting career-oriented students and adult learners interested in improving their qualifications in marketable skill areas.

In 1998 the Ministry of Education started a process that is continuing and will take a few years to complete, namely, to incorporate colleges of education, agriculture, and nursing into the higher education system. A number of such colleges have chosen to affiliate with specific universities, thus enabling their students to earn college credits toward university degrees. Articulation among the various sectors of education is improving in South Africa with the National Qualifications Framework and the South African Qualifications Authority providing growing opportunities for cumulative learning and continuing accreditation.

Administration, Finance, & Educational Research

South Africa's Department of Education and the Ministry of Education are the primary government bodies that deal with education at the national level. The Constitution of 1996 has also vested substantial powers in each of the nine provincial legislatures and governments to run educational affairs, other than the universities and technikons, whose administration remains the responsibility of the national level organs. The national government is responsible only for matters that cannot be regulated effectively by provincial legislatures and others that need to be coordinated in terms of national norms and standards. The Ministry of Education has overall responsibility for government policy on education and training. Relations with provincial departments are regulated by a national policy framework and national legislation within which the provincial departments set their own priorities and programs. In addition, other government ministries such as the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Health collaborate with the above government bodies in relevant areas, depending on the focus of educational work (for example, public private partnerships in training and apprenticeships to meet labor market needs and cooperative ventures to tackle the monumental problem of HIV/AIDS education and awareness among students and educators in the country). A full range of departments, commissions, and offices attached to the principal government bodies charged with formulating and implementing educational policies and practices also exists. Assisting with the development and implementation of higher education policies and practices and coordinating the provision of education at the tertiary level are the South African Universities' Vice-Chancellors' Association (SAUVCA) and the Committee of Technikon Principals, both located in Pretoria.

The budget for education is adopted at the national level and disbursed to the provinces. In 1996 public expenditures on education in South Africa equaled 7.9 percent of the gross national product (GNP). In 1999-2000, the education sector was allocated R46.84 billion (US$1= R7), 21.3 percent of the total government expenditure that year, equivalent to 6.5 percent of South Africa's gross domestic product (GDP). About one-sixth of the budget went to universities and technikons, including a National Student Financial Aid scheme.

About 85 percent of the national budget for education is allocated to the provinces. New National Norms and Standards for School Funding became policy on 1 April 1999, applying uniformly across the nine provinces. The norms and standards are aimed at achieving equity in the distribution of resources by progressively redistributing non-personnel expenditures in schools. Education departments in the provinces are required to direct 60 percent of their non-personnel and non-capital resources toward the poorest 40 percent of schools in the province. Schools are divided into five categories based on need, with the poorest 20 percent (i.e., the bottom quintile) receiving 35 percent and the richest 20 percent (i.e., the top quintile) receiving 5 percent of the resources available to each provincial department of education. New criteria have also been established by which independent schools are subsidized in inverse proportion to the fees they charge students, where the higher the fee a school charges, the lesser the subsidy it will receive.

Nonformal Education

A policy and legislative framework for Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) is being developed via a White Paper for ABET and a new Bill of Law. During 1999 provincial education departments provided services to an estimated 300,000 adult learners. Between the 1995-1996 and 1998-1999 school years, expenditures on ABET increased from R160 million to R343 million. The need for upgrading adult education in South Africa and for addressing the undereducated masses of South Africans of adult age who require basic and secondary level training before going on to higher education and training opportunities is clearly apparent and the subject of new government initiatives for the twenty-first century.

In terms of the inclusion of educational technology in school programming and the level of development of technology in the country, South Africa resembles developed Western countries in some respects much more than it does other sub-Saharan African states. For example, the telephone system in South Africa is more advanced than in some Western European states. By 1999 South Africa had 33 Internet hosts for every 10,000 persons, 58 Internet service providers operating in the country, and 55 personal computers for every 1,000 persons. Televisions and radios are in widespread use and have been incorporated in attempts to provide greater access to education to South Africa's population throughout the country. In 1998 there were 14 AM radio stations operating in South Africa, 347 FM radio stations (plus 243 repeaters), and 1 short-wave radio station. The previous year 556 television broadcast stations (plus 144 network repeaters) transmitted television programming in South Africa. In 1997 about 5.2 million televisions and 13.8 million radios existed in South Africa. Innovative educational programming using radio transmissions has been developed in South Africa and put to good use for a number of years through the Open Learning Systems Education Trust (OLSET), founded in 1990 to facilitate the application of educational technology for the benefit of impoverished South Africans. The main activity of OLSET is the Radio Learning Project, which is used to provide education to primary level pupils and to train teachers through a combination of radio broadcasts, printed materials, and face to face instruction.

Correspondence courses leading to formally recognized degrees and post-graduate qualifications are also widely available in South Africa, where about 35 percent of the students enrolled at the tertiary level in the late 1990s were taking courses of this type. The University of South Africa provides such coursework in English and Afrikaans through a modular education system that can yield degrees as high as the doctorate. Qualifications earned through this method are considered equivalent to those earned in more traditional tertiary settings and arrangements. The Technikon South Africa provides distance education via English or Afrikaans that leads to degrees at the Bachelor's and post-graduate level, as long as the Bachelor's program includes a component of inservice training.

Teaching Profession

Teacher training traditionally has been provided at Teacher-Training Colleges located in the provinces, but at the start of the twenty-first century South African educational reforms also included the relocation of teacher training to the National Department of Education and various Universities running three or four year diploma courses for those who wish to teach in primary schools. Certain universities and technikons also provide teacher education of this sort. Secondary school teachers are trained at universities and technikons through degree level courses. Tertiary level educators often receive their credentials at the same universities where they eventually become employed. In the late 1990s, for example, UNESCO noted, "40 percent of academic staff obtained their highest qualification at the University in which they are employed, 30 percent at another South African University, and 30 percent at a foreign university."

Teachers' unions and associations covering a wide range of political perspectives and advocating a variety of visions for the future of South African education have long been active in South Africa and continue to enjoy widespread popularity among professional educators in South Africa. Coming from a long tradition of labor organizing and civic activism, much of which developed out of the struggle to end Apartheid, many South African educators belong to unions and organizations representing their professional interests and intended to facilitate the negotiation of policies beneficial to them and their students as the country charts its course through new waters in the educational field.

Summary

South Africa faces a number of formidable challenges in the years ahead in the realm of education. Some of the newly proposed and developed educational reforms in South Africa, including OBE and Curriculum 2005, involve sophisticated educational concepts that require better-skilled teachers than were produced in South Africa under the Bantu education system as well as resources most schools cannot afford. Additionally, many of the new education policies are as yet unenforceable (e.g., provisions for free and compulsory education and the language policy), although they express the ideals and common values that underlie education in post-Apartheid South Africa and provide guidelines for further action. Resource constraints, both human and material, on implementing the new policies and their associated programs will limit the speed at which the educational system can be reformed and high quality education can be made accessible to all in South Africa, especially for the very poor. The major constraints in most sectors of South African education, as already noted, are trained personnel and adequate material resources. Strategies have to be evolved for training the trainers at just about every level education if the outcomes envisaged by the Ministry of Education are to be realized. Turning around the legacy of Apartheid education in South Africa in all probability will take several generations.

Furthermore, the as of yet immeasurable impact of HIV/AIDS will likely be devastating on the entire educational system, debilitating and destroying the lives of countless teachers, administrators, and other educational staff either directly or indirectly in the years to come and diminishing the number of students able to participate in education as the rates of infection and death from HIV/AIDS grow. The educational sector has a special obligation and responsibility to attend to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its various ramifications in South African society, including the schools. Designing and implementing a well-structured campaign to combat this ravaging disease is essential, and educators must take their part in the campaign, as the Department of Education has noted in its May 2001 report on the status of education in the new South Africa.

The funding available for education, even with donations from the United Nations, the European Union, Japan, Canada, Britain, U.S., and other international sources, currently is inadequate to address the scale of South Africa's education problems created by Apartheid in the near future. In August 1997, for example, the Schools Register of Needs was launched to determine the exact location of each school, the state of physical facilities, condition of buildings, services provided, and available resources. The survey of more than 32,000 schools found that no water was available within walking distance of 24 percent of the schools and that only 43 percent of the schools had electricity. In the northern province, where conditions are most severe, a staggering 79 percent of the schools had no electricity and 41 percent of the buildings were in a serious state of disrepair. More than half of the schools used pit latrines with 13 percent of them having no toilet facilities of any description. The survey also found the most appalling conditions imaginable in the estimated 5,400 schools countrywide located on land owned mostly by white farmers. The task alone of developing these schools—public schools on private property—to the required level would require the country's entire education budget.

In its May 2001 review of educational accomplishments in the post-Apartheid era, South Africa's Department of Education underscored the importance of education for equalizing the opportunities and improving the future prospects of all South Africans. The report's authors emphasized that "education is pivotal to economic prosperity, assisting South Africans—personally and collectively—to escape the 'poverty trap' characterizing many of our communities. It has also to reach beyond economic goals, enabling South Africans to improve the quality of their lives and contribute to a peaceful, concerned, and democratic nation." The burden of attending to the requisite demands of the transformative process is Herculean indeed, and improving South Africa's education system will require the dedicated perseverance of South Africans from all backgrounds for many years to come. As the authors of the May 2001 Department of Education report observed,

The national project of education transformation is multi-faceted and complex—requiring systemic transformation at all levels and in all sectors. It takes account of widely disparate conditions, characterized by differing degrees of capacity, poverty, inequality, and privilege. It must go beyond mechanisms of delivery seeking to mobilize educators, young people, and communities to celebrate learning: as a celebration of human nature and as a means to personal and social development, employment, and opportunities for a better quality life.

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—Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane and
S. D. Berkowitz