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Native Education at the Cross-Roads in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

R. F. Alfred Hoernlé
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Extract

Native Education in the Union is in an unhealthy state. Three years ago, the doctors were called in to diagnose and prescribe a cure. The result was the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Native Education, 1935-1936. Some of its recommendations displeased another set of doctors, viz. the Native Affairs Commission, who, on their own initiative, offered their view of the case, agreeing on the symptoms of sickness, but prescribing, in the Report of the Native Affairs Commission for the Year 1936, quite a different mode of treatment.

Résumé

L'ENSEIGNEMENT INDIGÈNE A LA CROISÉE DES CHEMINS EN AFRIQUE DU SUD

L'éducation des indigènes de l'Union a fait l'objet de rapports émanant d'une part d'un comité interdépartemental d'experts en matière d'enseignement et de l'autre d'une Commission des Affaires indigènes. Dans sa première partie, l'étude du Professeur Hoernlé expose l'éducation indigène telle qu'elle est, il résume les recommandations administratives et financières formulées par le Comité, il souligne les différences entre les recommandations de cet organisme et celles de la Commission. Le premier suggère que le contrôle de l'instruction des indigènes devrait être enlevé aux diverses provinces pour être confié à la Direction de l'enseignement de l'Union. Le Comité admet en effet que les indigènes seront inévitablement européanisés par ‘l'acculturation’, il propose en conséquence d'améliorer le système en usage en considérant cette particularité. La Commission, au contraire, réclame une politique de ségrégation fondée sur la tutelle, de manière à permettre aux indigènes de se développer suivant leur propre civilisation, en vivant en paysans sur la terre de leurs propres réserves. Elle désire donc pour eux une éducation correspondant à cette situation, la préférant au statut d'un prolétariat urbain, vivant au milieu de l'industrie et de la civilisation blanche.

Dans sa seconde partie, l'article discute et critique les propositions détaillées du Comité en vue d'utiliser les écoles pour une acculturation plus effective des indigènes. Il souligne que le Comité ne semble pas avoir accordé une attention suffisante aux différents stages de détribalisation qui se rencontrent parmi les indigènes. Éduquer un enfant dans un kraal est une entreprise différente de celle qui consiste à instruire un enfant dans un quartier de grande ville.

Enfin l'article dans sa troisième l'artie discute le rapport existant entre l'éducation des indigènes et la position économique de ces derniers, surtout en ce qui concerne leurs possibilités réduites de gagner de l'argent au service des Européens. A ce propos il critique la politique de ségrégation préconisée par la Commission, la jugeant impraticable en raison de la demande de main-d'œuvre à bon marché que réclament les employeurs blancs.

Le problème posé est donc double. II se traduit par un conflit entre les méthodes préconisées pour l'assimilation économique et culturelle, et la ségrégation recommandée, elle aussi, au point de vue économique et culturel. Ce débat à provoqué une division de l'opinion à propos des programmes et des méthodes à appliquer à l'éducation indigène. Mais, dans les deux hypothèses, demeure le fait que l'indigène pauvre et ignorant est aussi un Sud-Africain pauvre et ignorant. L'Afrique du Sud n'a pas le droit de se déclarer prospère et civilisée tant que ses habitants seront l'un et l'autre.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , October 1938 , pp. 389 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1938

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References

page 389 note 1 In what follows, ‘the Committee’ will mean the Interdepartmental Committee, which was composed of the four Chief Inspectors of Native Education in the four Provinces of the Union (Mr. G. H. Welsh for the Cape, Mr. G. H. Franz for the Transvaal, Mr. H. F. Kuschke for the O.F.S., Mr. D. McK. Malcolm for Natal), together with Mr. W. T. Welsh, of the Cape Provincial Council, as Chairman, and Dr. E. G. Malherbe, Director of the National Bureau of Education and Social Research, as additional member. The words ‘the Commission’ will mean the Native Affairs Commission, which from 1936 until recently consisted of Mr. G. Heaton Nicholls, M.P., Mr. J. M. Young (former Chief Magistrate of the Transkeian Territories), Colonel-Commandant W. R. Collins, M.P., and General E. A. Conroy, M.P. It will be seen that the conflict of opinion between these two bodies is a conflict between educational experts, on the one side, and three politicians plus one ex-administrative official, on the other. It should be added that Mr. G. H. Nicholls has done the thinking and writing for the Commission in its Report for 1936, whereas in the writing of the Committee's Report all the members have had a hand. It should also be understood that one of the many duties of the N.A. Commission is to consider, annually, the estimates for Native Education. From this fact it derives its technical right to express an opinion on educational policy in relation to the Native population. The numbers in brackets in this article refer to the numbers of the paragraphs in the two Reports, viz. the Committee's Report, U.G. 29/1936, and the Commission's Report, U.G. 48/1937.

page 390 note 1 Easter, 1938.

page 391 note 1 Of Natives who achieve a University degree in the Union, most are trained at Fort Hare College, near Alice, C.P. An occasional Native student reaches the same goal through attending evening classes at the University of the Witwatersrand. Of those who try to pass the examinations of the University of South Africa as ‘external’ students, i.e., by private study (generally under the guidance of one or other of the numerous coaching, or cramming, establishments in South Africa), very few succeed.

page 393 note 2 That this is ‘typical’ for South Africa may be seen from the analogous situation among the teachers. E.g. the primary school teachers in the Transvaal are organized into four separate Associations, viz. one for English-speaking teachers; one for Afrikaans-speaking teachers (both these accept only White members); one for ‘Coloured’ teachers; and one for ‘African’ (i.e. Native) teachers. The two White Associations have little contact with each other, and neither of them has any contact with, or knows anything about the pay or conditions of service of the members of, the two non-European Associations.

page 395 note 1 Precise and agreed figures are strangely hard to obtain. The Committee (235) gives the Government's contribution for 1934-5 as £586,412 (viz. £340,000 plus £246,412), and estimates £735,000 for 1935-6. The Commission (67) gives £605,509 as the figure for 1934-5 and £742,000 for 1936-7. To illustrate the effect of the depression on Native teachers, the following details may be given from the Transvaal. In 1928 a Union scale of salaries for Native teachers was approved by the Minister for Native Affairs, plus cost-of-living allowances for teachers out-side the Native Reserves. The Transvaal from the very start found itself unable to pay the full salaries according to this scale to all teachers, and in 1931 remodelled the Minister's scale by appointing all new certificated teachers at uncertificated rates of pay, viz. £3 per month instead of £5 1 10s. 0d. for men, and £2 10s. 0d. instead of £4 10s 0d. for women. Further, the Province withdrew the living-allowances of £1 1 0s. 0d. per month for married teachers and 15s. per month for unmarried teachers in September 1931. Then, when in 1932 the depression came, all salaries over 50s. per month were cut from 7 to 8 per cent., according to locality. As a concrete example, the Principal of a large Johannesburg school had his salary reduced from about £10 per month to just over £6 per month, through the above-mentioned reductions plus the loss of special head teachers' allowances. The 7 and 8 per cent, cuts have recently been refunded, but none of the other cuts or under-payments; nor have living-allowances been restored. However, certificated teachers since 1936 have been put up to their proper rates of pay, and new appointments are now also made at these rates.

page 399 note 1 Mr. G. H. Nicholls has recently resigned from the Native Affairs Commission.

page 400 note 1 Cf., in a profession like teaching, how the salary scales of Native teachers are appreciably lower than those of ‘Coloured’ teachers, and a very great deal lower than those of White teachers, even though all three kinds of teachers have the same qualifications.

page 401 note 1 Crèches for this purpose have been established, by private effort, in connexion with a few schools, e.g. in the Transvaal at Johannesburg and Pietersburg.

page 404 note 1 The Commission adds the relevant comment that, whereas the teacher in a White community is one of the group among which he teaches, has the same standards of life as most of the parents of the children he teaches, and has his social contacts in the group on a footing of equality, the missionary tends to be and to remain an alien, with a different and much superior standard of life, and, if there is a White group accessible in the neighbourhood, seeking his social contacts and those of his family by natural preference among that group, whilst towards the Natives he maintains an attitude of social and official superiority, even if tempered by fatherly goodwill (47).

page 408 note 1 As a sidelight, it is worth noting, in this context, that these processes go a very long way back, at least if language is any test. There are Natives whose mother tongue is English or Afrikaans, and who have become so completely assimilated into the orbit of European civilization that they are, for practical purposes black-skinned Europeans. Hence, the amusing paradox that the Committee, in a table of ‘Bantu Languages’, spoken in the Union, has to list both English and Afrikaans, for 3.9 per cent, of all Native school children in the Transvaal acknow-ledge the latter language as their mother tongue, whilst 0.6 per cent, acknowledge English. This detribalization began already with the Voortrekkers. Our Afrikaans-speaking Natives of the present day are the descendants, either of Native servants accompanying the Voortrekkers up from the Cape, a hundred years ago, or else of Natives who were, as children, ‘apprenticed’ to Voortrekker families, after Native wars and forays. Such apprenticed children grew up as servants in White households, assimilating their masters’ language and way of life, just as White children of servant status would have done in similar circumstances.

page 408 note 2 This attitude hardly requires to be documented, but I may refer to a recent example, viz. a resolution of the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in Natal, just taken, which, in anticipation of the International Sunday School Conference, to be held in South Africa in 1940, requests the municipality of Durban to remember the ‘unique position’ in South Africa, and to provide separate transport, accommodation, and meals for non-European and European members of the Conference.