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APARTHEID IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
The Bantu Authorities Act is a remarkable answerable only to the Great White Chief, the Act. Its aim is to re-establish tribalism in the midst of industrialism. The whole African population at present living in what are known as the Native Reserves (comprising 12% of the total land area) is to be uprooted, re-shuffled and resettled according to their ethnic groupings: Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Pondo, "Fingo," etc. Every village will be turned into a Bantu Community, with a government-appointed chief and councillors constituting a Bantu Authority. (Government here means the Native Affairs Department, with the Minister of Native Affairs at its head.) In the towns, where the Africans have to segregated locations, they will also be re-shuffled according to their old clans and tribes, each with a government-appointed chief at its head. Just imagine some racial messiah let loose in London attempting solve the crises the West he should re-shuffle the population according to their original tribal or clan groupings, putting English, Welsh, Irish, Scots, Jews, into separate locations, and further subdividing your men of Sussex, Wessex, and so on, or your Macdonalds, Mactavishes and Mac-whatnots. If such a scheme succeeded, the workers' trade unions might be broken up, but the social life of England with its vast industrial machine would be in an unholy mess.
It does not even occur to the makers of Apartheid in South Africa how ludicrous the idea of chieftainship is, particularly in the old towns, where many Africans do not even know the language of the tribe to which their forebears belonged and still less any of the ancient rites associated with it. But all that the rulers are concerned with is the splitting up of the Africans; for they are mortally afraid of Africain unity, and still more of the coming together of all Nonof is Europeans. It is a theme that is frequently harped upon in Parliament. The chiefs in the rural and urban Bantu Communities are to be little tin gods
Supreme Chief of all "Natives." Dr. Verwoerd, it may be said, once expressed himself a believer in the divine right of chiefs, but, of course, it must be understood that the divine right stops short sharply where the authority of the Minister of Native Affairs begins. These chiefs, then, have the power to regulate and regiment the lives of every African man, woman and child. A Proclamation in the Government Gazette has recently been published, giving them unheard-of powers over the people. These illiterate representatives of a barbarous age can order any person in their area - be it farmer, worker, teacher, minister of religion, lawyer or doctor — to obey perhaps some old tribal law or perform some archaic rites. The same Proclamation enables the chief to compel any person or group of people to carry out any public work without pay. EDUCATION IS THE KEY — STATEMENTS OF POLICY This brings us to the second part of Dr. Verwoerd's far-reaching schemes, namely, Bantu Education, which is to wrench the African from the progress of the civilization of mankind and condition him for life in a backward, tribalized community. In other words, it is education for barbarism. These schemes are so diabolical that it is difficult for the ordinary civilized man to treat them seriously. He tends to dismiss them as the aberrations of a sick mind and fails to realise that while he goes complacently about his daily business, a machinery of state worked out to the minutest detail is already set in motion to create an intellectual gas chamber for the children of a whole people numbering more than nine million. Let it be understood that Dr. Verwoerd, as Minister of Native Affairs, acts for the Government and speaks for the governing party, a party which was put into power by the majority of the
50 White electorate in South Africa, have the vote. We shall quote extensively from the speeches of his fellow party members, cabinet ministers and front benchers in Parliament, in order to show how the Bantu Education Act crystallises a policy which all of them strenuously uphold. In fact, they have more than once expressed fulsome gratitude to Dr. Verwoerd for his services.
In 1945, three years before the Nationalists came into power and prior to the Bantu Education Act (1953), they making emphatic statements of policy. During a debate in Parliament on the subject of education, Mr M D C de Wet Nel, who subsequently became second in command in the Native Affairs Department, said:
"As has been correctly stated here, education is the key to the creation of the proper relationship between European and
Non-European in South Africa... Put native education on a sound basis and half the racial questions are solved... I say that there should be reform of the whole educational system and it must be based on the culture and background and the whole life of the native himself in his tribe... The whole (present) policy is a danger for our own western civilisation."
(Hansard, V 11, 1945.)
Then Mr J N Le Roux, now Minister of Agriculture, in the same debate said:
"We should not give the natives an academic education, as some people are too prone to do. If we do this we shall later be burdened with a number of academically trained Europeans, and who is going to do the manual labor in the country? I am in thorough agreement with the view that we should so conduct our schools that the native who attends those schools will know that to a great extent he must be the labourer in the country." (ibid).
Continuing this theme, Mr S A Cilliers, M P, said:
"I am very anxious about the position unless we lay down a very sound policy regarding native education. The reason is this: if we go a little too far in respect of the suggestion made here that some of the
African) children on the platteland (ie farming areas should attend school, the future of South African agriculture may in my opinion drift into a very precarious position." (ibid).
Then Mr C R Swart, now holding office as Minister of Justice, endorsed the opinions of his colleagues. members have mentioned that the
Department of Native Affairs adopts the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL policy that natives should not be detribalised but should be educated in their own manner and should learn to be good natives, and should not be imitators of the white man. That is the policy which we favour and in my opinion it is the only sound policy." (ibid).
Mr P O Sauer, now Minister of Lands, said:
"We have two directions
Africa. The one direction is that of the
Nationalist Party, namely, that wherever it is possible to do so, the native should be kept in his tribal state, and that he should be educated and developed as far as possible in accordance with his customs and traditions." (ibid).
On the question of the control of education, Mr Sauer said:
"In my opinion there is only one department which ought to have control of native education, and that is the Department of Native Affairs... We want the native problem to be regarded as a unit, and for that reason we want to place all aspects of it under one department which can then carry out a continuing policy in connection with education." (ibid).
When the Bantu Education Bill was finally tabled in 1953, all the same arguments were hammered home. Mr J J Serfontein, now Minister of Health, took up the theme of the separate Bantu
"Native education (he said must be based on the fact that the Bantu forms a separate community." (Hansard, V 11,
1953)
Amplifying Dr Verwoerd's condemnation of encouraging in the African "unhealthy white collar ideals," Dr A Hertzog, a true son of his father, the late Prime Minister, stated:
"As soon as we teach the native children that everything the white man has is the best... we have turned them into a potential danger to European civilisation."
(ibid).
The threat to "European Civilization" is an old and favorite theme in the House. In 1945 Captain G H F Strydom, M P, had warned that if they did not arrest the present development,
"within half-a-century shall be coffee-colored nation. We shall no longer exist as a nation. The white man will no longer exist here... If we allow the native to remain in his raw state, if we allow him to remain within his tribe, he has his own laws and he continues to govern himself, and there is not much difficulty."
What the Hon. member lacked in elegance of style he made up by the eloquence of his threat.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL For there was not a member of the herrenvolk who would not leap to action in answer to the call to save the nation from the doom of becoming coffee-colored. Thus at all costs the African must not be allowed to develop, particularly in education. Captain Strydom went on:
"We say, he (the African) must live in the hut and we must live in the house. He must remain separate in his place. We want to retain the respect of the native but we are not going to sleep with him in the kraal. He is not our equal." And he concludes: "We feel that we should have central control of native education and that the Minister of Native Affairs should be responsible for that." (Hansard, V 11,
Bach of these Ministers and front benchers was expressing in his own fashion what Dr. woerd, seizing the core of the matter, bluntly stated:
"Their education should not clash with
Government policy. ...If the native in
South Africa to-day... is being taught to expect that he will live his adult life under a policy of equal rights, he is making a big mistake." (Hansard, V II, 1953.) APARTHEID IN VOCATIONAL TRAINING
The Apartheid policy, over which they all expressed themselves so eloquently and clearly, covered not only formal education but also all fact every aspect of education concerned with vocational training in skills or professions, in earning a livelihood. Let us hear what Mr. Greyling, M P, had to say on what he called the "wrong attitude of the Bantu himself in regard to his education." He referred to the old system of education where
"time and attention must be given to introducing the Bantu to the civilization of the European. It is this cloak of European civilization that has to be hung round the shoulders of the Bantu that makes him the enemy of and hostile to us Europeans."
And again:
"The Bantu has begun to lay phasis on and strive more and more for one goal in his education, namely, to compete with the Europeans... The Bantu saw only one meaning in his education and that was to help him find work, so as to be a sort of economic asset to him...
(Hansard, V 10, 1953.)
There we have the heart of the matter, the cause of the with the rop than P man phrase
It was reason that the Government's comprehensive
51 schemes cover every aspect of training for the Non-Whites. In 1950 they passed a law to cover the training of Africans as builders, prohibiting them from receiving the same training as all other artisans. The Minister of Labour, Mr B J Schoeman, introducing the Native Building Workers' Bill,
"The standard of training is not the same as the standard of training given to the ordinary artisan who enrolls under the
Apprenticeship Act... Native builders will therefore not be artisans in the tull sense of the word. They will only receive training which will enable them to erect houses and buildings for their own use."
(Hansard, V 5, 1950).
The same law makes it impossible for anyone to train an African to become a fully qualified artisan. Having fixed the future trainees to his satisfaction, the Minister then dealt with those Africans already qualified as builders:
"In order to protect the European artisan, the following provisions will apply. In the first instance, immediately after this Act has been promulgated, no employer in the building industry will be permitted to employ a Native to do skilled building work
And by means of proclamation, all other persons will be prohibited trom having building work done by Natives in specified European areas." (ibid).
The Nursing profession, too, had to come under the axe. Now it is a notorious tact that there is a shocking inadequacy of hospitalization in the country and even in the existing hospitals there is a desperate lack of nurses. This shortage is chronic, since it is a by-product of a color-caste society. White girls in South Africa, brought up in homes where they supervise Non-White servants, who do all the housework, find nursing burdensome and some of the duties objectionable. So they shun the profession. The Non-Whites, on the other hand, are entering the profession as readily as they enter the teaching profession and are filling a crying need. They have to have the same training and qualifications and do the same work as the White nurses. It is this situation that caused alarm and even horror in the hearts of the herrenvolk. A Bill had to be rushed through Parliament to put a stop to it. AN INSTRUMENT FOR SERFDOM
Under the Boerenasie republic the Non-Whites will be reduced to utter helotry. In preparation for this, the schools are no longer centres of education, but of indoctrination for the docile acceptance of this position. Dr Verwoerd himself, in introducing the Bantu Education Bill, has said:
52
"Above all, good relations cannot exist when education is given under the control of people who create wrong expectations on the part of the Native, if such people believe in a policy of equality.
...It is therefore necessary that Native education should be controiled in such a way that it should be in accord with the policy of the State? Hansard, V 10,
Bantu Education, which is already being put into practice, is calculated to serve as strument for creating, and ensuring the continuance of a voteless, rightless and ignorant community whose main purpose in lite, apart from eproducing their kind (tor there is not yet a pecific law against that aspect of their life) is to minister to the Whites. The invoking of a dead tribalism and of Bantu Communities wherein "education will find its fullest expression" is cynical political claptrap. The plain fact is that Bantu Education is intended to rob the African of education, cut him off from the main stream of modern culture and shut him into a spiritual and intellectual ghetto.
Prior to the introduction of Bantu Education it had been the policy of every successive Government — as we have pointed out — to see to it that as few Non-Whites as possible received education. But now it is the boast of Dr. Verwoerd that he is giving education to many more African children than before. According to him, he has already, in a short space of time, doubled the number of pupils attending school. Is there then a contradiction here? The very manner in which he effects his boasted increase reveals the real purpose behind his so-called education. He has made it quite plain, indeed he is emphatic on the point, that the state will not increase the already meagre expenditure on education for Non-Whites. So what does he do? He institutes a system of double shifts in schools, reducing the time to three hours each shift. As he laconically
"In this way both the teacher and the class-room will be able to serve two different groups of pupils every day. The same applies to the furniture, school requisites and class-reading books."
Like the mine worker who has to leave his tools behind at the end of his shift, the African children must leave the school books behind to be used by the next batch. It doesn't require much imagination to picture the plight of the second batch of youngsters who have to start their school day under such adverse conditions when they ought to be going home.
It hardly needs any reterence to the actual content of the instruction, and the general
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL management and the attitude to the teachers, to realise that these are no longer schools for education as is understood in any civilized community, but institutions for indoctrination. The sudden urgency to double, treble and even quadruple the number of pupils is determined by the new objectives of Bantu Education. As many as possible must go through this mill. It is no small task to transform a population of Non-Whites, who comprise about four-fifths of the whole population of the Union, into docile slaves contented with their lot. If, however, we look into the management of school, the curricula and the calculated debasement of the teacher, we find ample confirmation that the scheme before us is a huge conspiracy, first against the Africans and eventually against the whole Non-White population of South Africa.
Their plans for reducing the numerically small section of the Non-Whites (the Coloured and the Indians) to the same position of helotry are still at the earlier stages. But it is already clear that they are working out the same pattern for them as for the Africans. Having first removed the Coloured and the Indian people from the Parliamentary Voters' Roll, the Government proceeded to create a special Department of State known as the Coloured Affairs Department (C A D), which means lifting the Coloured people of the body politic and treating them as à separate entity in accordance with the Nationalist policy of Apartheid. The C A D is the counterpart of the NAD which was instituted for Africans. Following the De Vos Malan Commission on Coloured education, the Government intimated its intention to transfer education for the Coloured and Indians from the Department of Education to the political Department, the CAD. It thus becomes an instrument for fitting the Coloured people into a separate community, as Bantu education prepares the African people for a ribalized community. Bantu education presages what is in store for the Coloured and Indiar people. In the fully-developed plans for the Africans they can see an image of their future state of complete bondage. DEBASEMENT OF EDUCATION
The many speeches of Cabinet Ministers and others quoted earlier in this work make the position quite clear. The point is further driven home by Dr. Verwoerd that Bantu education is designed to fit the African into a special position allocated to him by the politicians. The quotation is worth repeating:
"My Department's policy is that (Bantu)
education should stand with both feet in the Reserves and have its roots in the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL spirit and being of Bantu society... There is no place for him in the European community above the level of certain forms of labor... For this reason it is of no avail for him to receive a training which has as its aim absorption in the European community. Until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his community and misled him by showing him the green pastures of European society in which he was not allowed to
Bramediate Future, p 23) " (Bantu Education: Policy for the
With this purpose in view, the control of education for Africans was transferred to the Native Affairs Department (N A D). This is the Department that is charged with the artificial retribalization of a whole people and the setting up of Bantu Authorities. It deals with the supply of cheap African labor to the mines, the farms and industry; it deals with agriculture, the compulsory culling and dipping of cattle, the collection of poll-tax and the enforcement of pass-laws. Indeed, Bantu Education is not so much placed with both feet in the Reserves as thrust into them on
Dr. Verwoerd makes it plains that education is in the service of these activities.
"The Inspector of Schools, the Native
Commissioner and the Agricultural Extension officer, " he states, 'will remain in close contact with one another." (ibid).
And again, "A community, for example, will not be able to claim advantages of education and at the same time ignore or even oppose guidance in regard to the care of the soil." (ibid.)
In practice, this has meant that when the people in a village refused to reduce the number of their stock under the culling regulations, their school was closed down.
The local management of the schools is handed over to tribal school committees and school boards who work under the tribal Authorities, with a Chief at the head. The inability of the Chief or headman to read or write his name does not disqualify him. When he has to append his signature to an official document he puts down a cross, which must be witnessed by one of the teachers he employs or some other literate person at hand. It is these people who not only direct and supervise the schools but employ and dismiss the teachers.
The curriculum likewise is fundamentally altered. An inordinate amount of time is given to religious instruction and devotional activities.
Trai lo. Ant teach is linty if givetite For tha
Minister has decreed that "the daily cleaning of the school building and grounds will naturally be the work of the pupils under the supervision of the teachers." In this context "manual" be understood to signify "menial." Broom, pick and shovel are the tools they must be familiar with. It sometimes happens that children spend as much as a whole week in the brickyard making bricks for school buildings. Or they have to stop school work to go road-making. Un one occasion when a chief was to be installed, it tell to the children to lay a road so that the magistrate's car could reach the chief's place. No pains are spared to ensure that African children will never suffer from "unhealthy white-collar ideals" — to use Dr. Verwoerd's happy phrase.
The three R's, which are a golden rule in any educational system, are almost crowded out. These basic tools for the acquisition of education cannot possibly be polished, sharpened and given to the child who is being prepared for slavery. More properly speaking they are used as an excuse for gathering the children together to pursue a course in indoctrination. They must, of course, acquire a rudimentary knowledge of the two official languages, Afrikaans and English, suited to the requirements of their inferior position. BANTU EDUCATION IN PRACTICE
The whole scheme is bad enough on paper, but its sinister nature emerges more fully when we view it in practice. What stands out with appalling clarity is that the more progressive section of the Non-Whites, the educated section, is delivered into the hands of the most backward elements of the population. For purposes of local management, power is put into the hands of the chiefs, the illiterate representatives of a barbarous age. The teacher, completely deprived of all those rights vested in his position, including the legal right of tenure of his office, is thereby placed at their mercy. Such a situation opens the door wide to corruption, bribery, nepotism and other malpractices. An example here and there in cold print can hardly convey an adequate conception of the seeping poison permeating the whole fabric of the system. We have to imagine the day-to-day life of the defenceless teacher, prey to the bullying whim or greed of any official. It takes innumerable petty forms. To begin with, iobs are bought and sold, and when a teacher has landed a job there is all the anxiety of holding on to it with "tobacco money" judiciously doled out to this one and that one. Then there is the unofficial taxation system, present for inspectors and sub-inspectors on the occasion of their transfer to another circuit; or the interminable singing and handwork contests that necessitate contributions by the teachers to defray expenses. Picture such an occasion in a rural community; crowds
54 coming from far and wide have to be catered for;
heep and possibly an ox have to be bought and
Of course there is no written law laughtered.
compelling the teacher to pay up out of his very
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL meagre salary. But then there is no law to save him from being dismissed when he offends an irate official. And all that is required is an adverse report.