Eiselen: Basic Info and Arguments

This essay sample on Eiselen provides all necessary basic info on this matter, including the most common “for and against” arguments. Below are the introduction, body and conclusion parts of this essay.

Afrikaner nationalism gained momentum after the war and the National party saw its popularity increase16. On May 26, 1948, a crucial year in South African history, Nazi sympathizer Daniel Malan and Nationalist Party won a surprise victory17. Malan’s government, more explicitly white supremacist than its predecessors, focused more on order, economic development, and racial superiority18.

From an instrumentalist’s viewpoint, the new Afrikaner government, the product of the 17th century Dutch pioneers, viewed themselves isolationists and racially pure, and segregation was the only way in which to maintain this ethnic “purity”19.

With the notion that a pluralistic society would lead to their ultimate destruction, the Afrikaner Nationalists quickly legislated a web of racial laws aimed at strengthening this system of “self preservation” by weakening African unity and destroying any sense of nationalism.

The new regime took immediately steps to fashion a new white South Africa by means of the apartheid system. Because most of the essential elements of this system were already in place, the apartheid regime needed only to “fuse” these elements together to institutionalize racial discrimination, and most importantly, it served to reestablish the Afrikaner’s ethnic identity.

The 1950 Population Registration Act worked to classify people into four racial groups: White, Black, Coloureds, and Asians. In the same year, the Group Areas Act enforced residential segregation through home expropriations and massive forced removals into selected areas20.

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These two acts formed the cornerstone of the apartheid system thereby affecting every aspect of South African social, economic, and political life. Most importantly, these laws were to intentionally break the political will of the African majority while guaranteeing accessibility and exploitation of their labour21.

Group Areas Act Essay

The apartheid regime’s political “ideologies” also brought to government a new racial emphasis on African schooling by restructuring the educational system. Initially, little was done to intervene in the operation of schools. However, due to impending changes in South Africa’s political and racial climate, educational institutions began to experience significant upheavals, marked by student rebellions, violence, boycotts and intertribal tensions22.

When analyzing South Africa’s democratic transition four decades later, it is important to understand how these various forms of rebellion also contained the seeds of future social protests by generations of angry and frustrated school children, born under this repressive political regime. The state’s solution was to forcibly take control of the missions and curb the growth of the disgruntled African elite and their potential militant nationalism. Minister of Native Affairs Dr. H. Verwoerd, a “Calvinistic” white supremacist and active member of the Dutch Reformed Church, audaciously inferred that the missions had brought about the state’s intervention on themselves23. In one of Dr. Verwoerd’s senate speeches on black education he proclaimed, “blacks should be educated for their opportunities in life”24.

Verwoerd, one of the pre-eminent architects of apartheid, in keeping with the new Afrikaner government’s “God ordained” political concept of racial inequality, introduced a new ideology into South African schooling by taking steps to restructure the educational system. In 1949, the government set up a Commission on Native Education under the chairmanship of Dr. W. Eiselen. The commission was asked by Verwoerd to make recommendations towards “education for Natives as an independent race”, taking into account “their inherent racial qualities, their distinctive characteristics and aptitude, and their needs under ever changing social conditions”25.

By 1951, the Eiselen Commission recommended that black education should be an integral part of a “carefully” planned policy of segregated socioeconomic development, and beneficial for the transmission and development of black cultural heritage26. The Eiselen report maintained that racial separation within the educational system be kept, and “Bantu education should have a separate existence”. Like the Welsh report over a decade earlier, the Eiselen commission also recommended that funding for African schooling, including higher-level education be increased. This recommendation, however, was flatly rejected. If the state was to remain an engine of patronage for Afrikaner economic gain, additional funding for African education certainly did not fit within their political agenda27.

By following only a few recommendations of the Eiselen report, Verwoerd introduced the 1953 Bantu Education Act, an ill-conceived blueprint for the black schooling system. This bill was to completely change the course of education for blacks in South Africa during the following four decades. Furthermore, the Bantu Education Act, strictly controlled by Verwoerdian ideologies, laid the ground for further rebellions. Most importantly, apartheid education created the angriest and most violent generation of youths in South Africa’s history28.

With the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953, the state sought to destroy the potentially growing nationalism of the African elite and their educational institutions, by implementing draconian measures and more stringent controls29. Verwoerd’s ultimatum to the mission schools was to either hand over control to the state, or face cuts in government subsidies30. With little choice and inadequate funding from Europe, the missions capitulated and their buildings were handed over. Government schools were also affected. Verwoerd abolished the Smut’s school feeding scheme, and measures such as stricter student quota systems were introduced whereby pupils who were forced to walk great distances to school were excluded31. Language instruction from primary to level eight was provided in the vernacular, followed by Afrikaans, which became mandatory in secondary school32.

This dual medium of instruction was introduced so that eventually, students could serve the needs of white society, by enabling them to follow oral and or written instructions. When analyzing the politics of Bantu education, language represented a key ideological element of the apartheid regime. The system of Bantu education was specifically created to educate Blacks to fit into the apartheid system and these children were not to be educated beyond their “assigned station in life”. It could also be argued that the Afrikaner state, and in particular Verwoerd, used the act to prevent the widespread use of English in African schools, which could later lead to a more culturally English environment. Understandably, such as scenario would have severely handicapped the Afrikaner’s struggle against “Anglicization” among Africans. When the act came into effect in April 1955, the first of many rebellions followed and thousands of students and hundreds of teachers were dismissed. Later similar laws were passed to control Coloured and Indian schooling33.

University level education was also affected by the apartheid regime. The 1959 Extension of University Education Act ended the admissions criteria originally exercised by traditionally white universities where “academic non-segregation” was practiced34. Although several new colleges and universities came into existence in terms of the apartheid framework such as the University of the North, the University of Zululand, and the University of the Western Cape. The irony was that due to a lack of properly educated matriculants at the secondary school level, many aspiring students lacked the scholastic requirements for university level studies. Unlike other African states, such as Uganda and Kenya, little attention was paid to the expansion and quality of South Africa’s secondary education.

During the two decades South Africa underwent considerable economic expansion. Political economists and businessmen argued that the country’s economic potential was being hampered by a shortage of trained and skilled manpower. Previous laws limiting African labour and the Bantu Education systems restrictions on black training were frequently blamed, and these arguments continued well into the seventien.

Further rebellions and student protests continued throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s by students and teachers from all educational levels. The impact of Bantu Education can be seen as being felt most deeply almost a decade after its implementation, when students began to rise in revolt and these rebellions led to the formation of political organizations such as Black Consciousness. On March 21, 1960, a protest movement in the town of Sharpville was organized and proved the first turning point in a new phase of resistance when a 67 people were killed and 186 injured37. Anger and frustration continued among students and youths resulting in further political protests and demands for social, economic, and political change. By 1976, Africans faced a serious shortage of educational facilities, with the township of Soweto requiring 70 schools alone38. Due to the deficiencies of the educational system a lack of employment opportunities was created and this situation was further exacerbated by a worsening economic situation.

Against this backdrop, another watershed event in South African history took place. On June 16, 1976, thousands Soweto schoolchildren, under the non-violent philosophy of Black Consciousness, began a protest triggered by tensions over the government’s decision to enforce the decree that Afrikaans must be the medium of instruction in secondary schools39. Owing to a particularly brutal police response, children were indiscriminately killed, and during the ensuing “ghost town” operation protests, which continued until the mid 1970’s, over 600 people were killed, of which almost 200 were children.

Soweto was a political catalyst that captured the attention of the worldwide media and became one of South Africa’s most important historical events that irreversibly transformed the political landscape. Two years later, the Inkatha Freedom Party, funded by the apartheid regime and headed by Nelson Mandela’s chief antagonist, Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, introduced Ubuntu Botho or good citizenship into the mandatory curriculum of all KwaZulu schools40. Understandably, these politically motivated texts, written in Zulu and mainly for Inkatha’ s gain, were severely criticized.