South Africa: Oprah to the rescue? A hugely significant event happened in South Africa at the beginning of the New Year that should point the way forward. It began with a dream. The African-American billionaire and talk-show host, Oprah Winfrey, dreamt of top quality education for intelligent African girls whose dream would otherwise die because of poverty. Oprah's own difficult childhood embroiled in poverty was a point of reference. She dreamt the detail right up to how her pupils would look, and brought into reality the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which opened on 2 January 2007. But what does that say about the state of education, and by extension the economic and social wellbeing, in South Africa 13 years into black majority rule? Pusch Commey reports from Johannesburg. **********
"I wanted to give this opportunity to girls who had a light so bright that not even poverty could dim that light," Oprah Winfrey said on 2 January 2007 when she opened the school that cost $40m (her personal money) to build at Henley-on-Klip, south of Johannesburg. "I was a poor girl who grew up with my grandmother, like so many of these girls, with no water and electricity. But I am grateful that at least I had a good education, the most vital aspect of my life ... When I first started making a lot of money, I really became frustrated with the fact that all I did was write cheque after cheque to this or that charity without really feeling like it was a part of me. At a certain
point, you want to feel that connection ... I believe that one of the world's most important resources is its young people, and I believe education gives young people a greater voice in their own lives, and helps them to create a brighter future for themselves and their communities."
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The school has 28 buildings across a 20-hectare (50-acre) site, with high-tech classrooms, computers and science laboratories. Oprah has promised to make the academy the "best school in the world". Over 3,500 girls (aged between 11 and 13 from families whose income is less than $700 a month) applied for the 152 places in the school. Overwhelmingly black, the school population includes other racial groups as well.
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Oprah was personally involved in the selection process when the applicants were shortlisted to 500. She has committed funds to the school for at least 100 years. To illustrate what Oprah's dream means for Africa, the ceremony was attended by celebrated Africans from all over the world, including Andrew Young, Tina Turner, Nelson Mandela, Waangari Maathai, Maria Carey, Baby Face and Quincy Jones.
The school was built at the request of Nelson Mandela who has spared no effort to use his influence to convince corporations to build schools. Many have complied. He said at the opening ceremony: "I know that this academy will change the trajectory of these girls' lives. The key to any country's future is in educating its youth." He turned to Oprah and, with a huge smile on his face, said: "This is a lady who has, despite her own disadvantaged background, become one of the benefactors of the disadvantaged throughout the world."
Oprah's school identifies a crucial need for leadership in the battle against African poverty. It hopes to develop leaders who think critically for the future. She said: "I wasn't trying to make a school that would develop political leaders. I am looking for the opportunity to change the paradigm, to change the way not only how these girls think but to also change the way a culture feels about what African women can do." Plans are almost complete for a similar school for boys and girls in the Kwazulu-Natal province of South Africa.
Oprah appeared to sum up South Africa (and by extension the whole continent of Africa) in that one sentence: "I am looking for the opportunity to change the paradigm, to change the way not only how these girls think, but to also change the way a culture feels about what African women [and men] can do." But would this be the start of a revolution to reclaim the African consciousness?
"As a man thinketh, so he is", said King Solomon of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It holds true for the past, present and future of South Africa (and Africa) where education has always been a crucial factor in its political, economic and social life. It was precisely to degrade the thinking of blacks that "Bantu education" was inflicted upon them in South Africa by the apartheid regime in the 1950s headed by Hendrik Verwoerd, widely touted as the father of apartheid. The objective was to mould black thinking to accept the white man as a superior being and thus pave the way for the exploitation of his resources, natural and human. Critical thinking was absent and considered subversive. Television, seen as a bad influence, was banned until 1977. This thought engineering has gone a long way in the shaping of the nation.
Large sections of the thinking black population, however, rejected Bantu education, as evidenced in the watershed event of the Soweto uprising of 16 June 1976. Yet others have imbibed the poison and passed it down the generation, where the confidence of their children is shaken in the face of the colour white.
Bantu education was not far removed from colonial education in Africa where blacks were trained to accept and fit into the lower rungs of society, in the broad predatory vision of European domination. All that was supposed to change with black majority rule in South Africa since 1994. But there have been many challenges. Chief among these is black poverty.
In the bad old days of racial education in South Africa, there were different educational departments for each race, with the white child receiving 13 times the resources allocated to the black child. Under apartheid, white South African children received quality schooling virtually for free, while black children, even for the invidious Bantu education, had to navigate several obstacles, including fees they could hardly afford. This was despite blacks being the unemployed or low income earners.
This has changed somewhat since 1994, but the effect lingers as good education proves to be the key out of poverty. Bad education means a bad income, as well as compromised decision-making with respect to all aspects of life. Worse is the intergenerational effect. Grouped together, black children inherited a bad environment of poverty and its accompanying social ills, and are thus more likely to gravitate in a bad direction.
According to figures released by the Education Department, South Africa currently has 12.3 million learners, 386,600 teachers and 26,292 schools, including 1,098 registered independent or private schools. Of all schools, roughly 6,000 are high schools (grade seven to grade 12) and the rest primary (grade 0 to grade six).
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Thirty-six universities and technical colleges (known as
"technikons") have been merged into 22 larger state-funded tertiary institutions (made up of 11 universities, five universities of technology, and six comprehensive institutions). About a million students are currently enrolled in these institutions, providing education that attracts students from all over Africa and the world.
Higher education is also offered at private institutions, which are registered with the Department of Education to confer specific degrees and diplomas. In government-funded public schools, the average ratio of scholars (known as "learners" in terms of the country's outcomes-based education system) to teachers ("educators") is 32.6 to one, while private schools generally have one teacher for every 17.5 scholars.
The National Department of Education is responsible for education across the country as a whole, while each of the country's nine provinces has its own education department. The central government provides a national framework for school policy, but administrative responsibility lies with the provinces.
Power is further devolved to grassroots level via elected school governing bodies, which have a significant say in the running of their schools. In line with the country's constitution, no child may be excluded from school on grounds of race or religion.
Illiteracy rates are high at around 24% of adults over 15 years old
(6 to 8 million adults are not functionally literate). Teachers in township schools are poorly trained, and the matriculation pass rate remains low among blacks (12 years of schooling). While 65% of whites over 20 years old and 40% of Indians have a high school or higher qualification, this figure is only 14% among blacks and 17% among coloureds (mixed race). It has massive implications.
With the removal of racism, the best educational opportunities have gone to the affluent (overwhelmingly white, because of the past) and thus the best chances of economic success. Generally, their children go to the best private schools that are well resourced and with a lower pupil/teacher ratio.
After 1994, a growing black middle class, some helped by affirmative action, have joined the bandwagon, moving to traditionally white suburbs and leaving behind their brethren in the townships and rural areas. Race-based inequalities are gradually converting to a class-based one, otherwise economic apartheid.
The government has targeted education for the poorest of the poor, with two notable programmes: One is fee-free schools that receive all their required funding from the state and so do not have to charge school fees. These have been carefully identified in the country's most poverty-stricken areas, and will make up 40% of all schools in 2007. The quality and environment, however, leave much to be desired, but it is a tremendous step.
A National Schools Nutrition Programme feeds 1.6 million schoolchildren every day, including all those attending primary schools in 13 rural and eight urban poverty nodes. In 1994, the education budget was R31.8bn. In 2006, government spending on education rocketed to R92.1bn or 17.8% of the national budget and 5% of GDP It is the highest rate of investment in education worldwide.
As a result, there has been a marked improvement in literacy, with 95% of children of school-going age having enrolled in 2001 as compared to 90% in 1996. According to a Department of Education report, although 90% of learners had paid less than R500 in annual school fees in 2001, lack of books, followed by lack of money, were cited as the leading barriers to education among seven to 18-year-olds. In poor areas, children remained home because parents were unable to raise an annual fee of R60 (less than [pounds sterling]5).
Another serious problem faced by black education is discipline. A good number of them do not have a culture of learning. Violence, gangsterism, drugs and alcohol are rife. There is a pervasive problem of male teachers sleeping with female learners. There is generally a failure of leadership in schools and sometimes at home.
Blacks who have risen to the top have a story to tell. Most people they grew up with are either in jail, succumbed to HIV-Aids or violently dead. Others have thrown in the towel to drugs and alcoholism. Susan Keebine, a customer relations manager at General Motors South Africa,
recalls growing up in the Johannesburg township of Tembisa as an uphill battle.
"My father had the wisdom to deliberately remove me from the township to stay with an uncle in the former homelands to get an education and some discipline. The problem was a poor, undisciplined environment. My peers in those days of apartheid ended up pregnant, alcoholics or dead. The story has not changed much today. Why do you think more affluent parents avoid township schools like a plague?," asked Susan Keebine. She lives in white suburbia and sends her children to private schools run by whites.
There have been success stories of township schools that have beaten the odds. But they are few and far between. In research done by the Centre for Educational Research, Evaluation and Policy based at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, some township schools that stood out did so because of strong leadership, dedication, discipline, a commitment to excellence and a strong work ethic of the principal and teachers.
It seeped down to the learners. Vukuzakhe High School of the Umlazi township near Durban, established in 1971, moved from a matriculation pass rate of 20% at its inception to a consistent 90 to 100% pass rate in the 1990s and the new millennium as a result of the singular effort of a strong principal, Mr Khubeka. He has since retired and passed on the mantle to a groomed successor. When things improved and the environment smelt success, affluent parents from all over the region
decided to send their children to the school.
The 2006 matriculation class is often referred to as "Mandela's children" because they started school and matriculated 12 years after the onset of democracy in 1994. They achieved a 66.5% pass rate. There was a drop in the pass rate of maths and science, more telling among blacks. Commercial subjects also saw limited success among blacks. It has great implications for black economic development. The necessary foundation for the development of relevant skills for a modern economy is sorely lacking. At tertiary institutions, blacks form a very low percentage of enrollment in areas of study that are highly marketable.
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Some blame subtle exclusionary policies of races who dominate those educational sectors, as well as associations that run such professions, and who see themselves in terms of racial competition and domination. For example, black engineers and chartered accountants are few and far between.
Government initiatives have included the promotion of indigenous languages, a recognition that mother-tongue education is extremely important in a child's development. This was recognised even by the apartheid regime when it established several Afrikaans institutions to provide mother-tongue education for the erstwhile Afrikaner rulers and
their progeny, and tried to force Afrikaans down the throat of blacks and other racial groups, leading to the Soweto Uprising.
The Chinese, Japanese, Germans and others would have lagged behind if they chose another language as their medium of instruction in schools. "The time has come to make the learning of an African indigenous language compulsory in all our schools," says the minister of education, Naledi Pandor. "We need to develop a language policy that vigorously promotes South African indigenous languages in all our schools."
The policy is designed to move indigenous languages from the fringes into the mainstream, giving them equal status with English and Afrikaans. South Africa has 11 official languages: English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa, isiNdebele, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.
Pandor has rejected suggestions that the dominant English and the apartheid-imposed Afrikaans are under threat. "This must not be read as an intention to neglect the relevance of acquiring competence in English," he says. "That would be a foolhardy objective."
While competence in English is important, language cannot be used as a "tool of exclusion", the minister insists. "Language in education cannot be seen solely as being about English or Afrikaans. The government is not against any language in our country. All languages
must be promoted
and allowed to thrive."
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IsiZulu is the home language of 23.8% of South Africans, followed by isiXhosa (17.6%), Afrikaans (13.3%) and Sepedi (9.4%). While English is the lingua franca of South Africa and much of the world, it is the mother tongue of only 8.2% of South Africa's population. The country is undoubtedly an African country run by European languages and systems.
Prior to 1994, Black South Africans had scant knowledge about the rest of Africa. The information fed to them was about an Africa ravaged by the proverbial war, famine and disease, and thus best avoided. The psychological trick was to convince them that they were the better blacks under white rule, creating divisions among all Africans.
The unstated objective was to make them accept their inferior status among whites as superior to the rest of Africa. The white-dominated media constantly fed bad news about the other Africa and good news about Europe. It persists even to this day. With the immigration of other Africans into the country, negative perceptions abound leading to widespread xenophobia among black South Africans. In fact a black person from another African country is more likely to get a
better reception from white South Africans than from black South Africans who will happily welcome a European immigrant.
Under apartheid, South Africa was promoted as distinct from the rest of Africa. One is, therefore, not surprised to hear a black South African travelling to Kenya to say "I am travelling to Africa or up there". Most, even educated ones, do not have a clue about the geographical location of many African countries. It is a sad state of affairs.
It is to cure such delusions that the enlightened minister of education, Naledi Pandor, who spent her exile years in Botswana, has proposed an education with an African focus. Henceforth, the curriculum in South Africa would reflect more content on Africa, its history, geography, music and dance. It will also emphasise life skills and mathematical literacy as well as training for skills needed in a modern global economy.
This calls for an urgent need for African agency as propounded by the learned African-American academic, Molefe Asante, professor of African-American studies at Temple University, USA--where the education of the African child is not premised on King Arthur, Harry Potter, Napoleon and Sir Francis Bacon, but rather Kweku Ananse, Kwame Nkrumah, King Shaka and Mansa Musa.
Molefe Asante charges that white educational systems focus on the
achievements of white men, and ignore the great contributions made by Africans, therefore emasculating the self esteem and confidence of Africans. He calls for an African perspective, an Accounting firms in Johannesburg Afrocentric education that draws on the history and philosophy of African cultures.
But what can Africa do for Africa in this direction? Oprah Winfrey has shown the way. It is clear that African governments alone cannot solve the problem of education, especially with the huge backlogs created by the past. A public/private partnership is crucial in this enterprise.
Oprah has shown the way to what all Africans wherever they may be in the world have to do to save their motherland--invest in the African child. The best investment would be in education. Rather than indulge in the escapism of sending their children to European and American schools to imbibe European values, they should channel resources into institutions of African excellence with African agency. This would have huge developmental implications for the continent and steer it away from reliance on foreign aid. Not to mention the pride and self-esteem that will pass to their children's children.
Ignorance is extremely expensive, and such education would go a long way towards the resolution of the many ills that plague the continent. Africa will then be in a position to meaningfully assert its status as the mother continent, a foundation of all civilisation.