Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Map
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Racial Discrimination at Wits
- Chapter 2 The Threat to the ‘Open’ Universities
- Chapter 3 Activists Under Pressure
- Chapter 4 Student Politics in Black and White
- Chapter 5 The 1980s
- Chapter 6 Wits and the First State of Emergency
- Chapter 7 Resistance Escalates
- Chapter 8 Challenge to the Government
- Chapter 9 The Struggle Reaches a Climax
- Chapter 10 Transition to Democracy
- Chapter 11 Epilogue
- Notes
- Appendices
- Index
Chapter 2 - The Threat to the ‘Open’ Universities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Map
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Racial Discrimination at Wits
- Chapter 2 The Threat to the ‘Open’ Universities
- Chapter 3 Activists Under Pressure
- Chapter 4 Student Politics in Black and White
- Chapter 5 The 1980s
- Chapter 6 Wits and the First State of Emergency
- Chapter 7 Resistance Escalates
- Chapter 8 Challenge to the Government
- Chapter 9 The Struggle Reaches a Climax
- Chapter 10 Transition to Democracy
- Chapter 11 Epilogue
- Notes
- Appendices
- Index
Summary
The Government’s intrusion into the autonomy of the universities during the 1950s was part of its plans for total educational apartheid. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 enabled the Department of Native Affairs to take control of all African schools. The religious missions were coerced by a threat of suspension of all state financial aid into handing their schools over to the control of the Department of Native Affairs. A syllabus specifically for Bantu schools was designed in terms of the notorious statement by the then Minister of Native Affairs, Dr Hendrick Verwoerd (later to become Prime Minister) when he opened the debate on the Act in parliament:
Racial relations cannot improve if the wrong type of education is given to Natives. They cannot improve if the result of Native Education is the creation of frustrated people who as a result of the education they receive have expectations in life which circumstances in South Africa do not allow to be fulfilled immediately, when it creates people who are trained for professions not open to them, when there are people who have received a form of cultural training which strengthens their desire for white-collar occupations to such an extent that there are more such people than openings available. Therefore, good relations are spoiled when the correct education is not given…
What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? What is the use of subjecting a Native child to a curriculum which in the first instance is traditionally European? I just want to remind Honourable Members that if the Native inside South Africa today in any kind of school in existence is being taught to expect that he will live his life under a policy of equal rights, he is making a big mistake.
I have read these words many times and still shudder at their cold callousness. But Verwoerd meant every word he uttered that day, and he and his minions set about implementing them with zealous fervour. When Verwoerd left the Department of Native Affairs to become Prime Minister, and after his assassination, his successors continued in the same brutal direction, possibly with declining conviction, but until almost the end, in the mid-1980s, with unflagging hope.
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- Information
- WITSA University in the Apartheid Era, pp. 20 - 36Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2022