From the time of the first white settlements in South Africa, the Protestant emphasis on home Bible reading ensured that basic literacy would be achieved in the family. Throughout the development from itinerant teachers to schools and school systems, the family foundation of Christian education remained, though it was gradually extended to embrace an ethnic-linguistic “family.”

Despite some major 19th-century legislation on the administration of education (1874 in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, 1865 in Cape of Good Hope, 1873–77 in Natal) and some early efforts to establish free schools, political and linguistic problems impeded the development of public education before 1900. Natal had gone furthest in affirming government responsibility for education and setting up the necessary administrative machinery, but, by and large, provision for schooling remained voluntary and piecemeal until the beginning of the 20th century.

The South African War (1899–1902; also called the Boer War) suspended educational development entirely and confirmed the resolve of each white South African group to protect its own cultural prerogatives. When the Union of South Africa was created in 1910, it was a bilingual state, and thus both English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking schools were established for white Europeans. Furthermore, a political tightness and separateness increased among the Afrikaners after the war and strengthened their tendency to exclude nonwhites from the cultural and political life of the dominant society. The trend toward separate schools for linguistic and racial groups became a rigid practice in most of South Africa after union.

Church mission schools attempted to replace the preliterate tribal education of native Africans in the South African colonies. Established from 1789, they were dedicated to converting the indigenous peoples to Christianity and generally inculcating an attitude of service and subservience to whites. These schools spread from 1823 to 1842, and colonial governments made occasional grants to them from 1854. Some mission schools included a mixture of races but, by and large, segregation was established by custom. Although some exemplary schools followed rather liberal social and curricular policies, most schools held to narrowly religious content in their curricula. The mission schools were virtually brought into the state system through government subsidies and through provincial supervision, inspection, and control of teaching, curriculum, and examination standards.

By the time the union was formed, the new provinces had each established school systems, structured mainly for European children but including provisions for other groups. Specific arrangements varied, but basically the systems were headed by a department of education under a director and controlled through an inspectorate. Three of the provinces had school boards that localized the department administration. Compulsory-attendance regulations were being effected for European children, while separate school developments were under way for other groups. The language of instruction had been established provincially, with both Afrikaans and English in use.

The South Africa Act of 1909 left the control of primary and secondary education with the provinces, while reserving higher education to the union government. The Union Department of Education, Arts, and Science became the central educational authority and expanded its responsibilities by accepting control of special sectors such as vocational, technical, and artistic education.

In 1922, when the Phelps-Stokes Commission on education in Africa offered its report, South Africa’s example in the development of liberal and adaptable educational provisions for Africans, particularly in Natal and Cape Province, was held up for emulation. The passing of the tribal system was noted and efforts toward interracial cooperation complimented. It was obvious, however, that little of value to Africans was being done in the European-model schools and that noteworthy educational efforts were associated with special institutions, such as Lovedale School and University College of Fort Hare in the Cape.

Concern over African education in the 1940s led to the creation of the Eiselen Commission, whose report in 1951 accorded with the separatist racial views of the government that came to power in 1948 and laid the groundwork for subsequent apartheid (“apartness”) legislation in education. That legislation included the Bantu Education Act of 1953. The National Education Policy Act of 1967 and a subsequent Amendment Act in 1982, along with the Constitution Act of 1983, also reflected apartheid policy. The provinces incorporated national policy into their own legislation and administration.

Fundamentally, the system of apartheid rested on three assumptions: (1) that each cultural group should be encouraged to retain its identity and develop according to its “unique” characteristics, (2) that, with a population of diverse racial-social groups, the way to ensure peaceful coexistence and general progress was through legal and institutional separation, and (3) that the only agency capable of exercising overall responsibility for this development was the central government. Implementation of apartheid policy led to a near-total separation of educational facilities for white, Black, Coloured (mixed-race), and Indian (Asian) populations, with resulting divergence of opportunity between the extremes of Black and white education.

Administration of education was divided between national departments and provincial authorities. Because education was differentiated by race, four separate systems were established. Education for whites was controlled by the Minister of National Education, and provincial–federal coordination was accomplished through a National Education Council and a Committee of Heads of Education. Education for Coloured and Indian population groups was administered through the legislative bodies representing these groups, the House of Representatives and the House of Delegates, respectively. Education for Blacks was largely the responsibility of the Black “homeland” governments. All four systems were supposed to follow the same basic organizational and curricular patterns. For Blacks outside the homelands, the Department of Education and Training administered education.

Formal characteristics distinguishing the system of education for Blacks included a slightly different school organization, designation of state-aided community schools with school committees, provision for limited African-language instruction, and separate administration. More important, however, were the effects of inequality on the system’s operation. Although the government introduced a limited experiment in compulsory education, the dropout rate among Blacks was high. Many pupils were educated in factory, mine, or farm schools that were less adequate than general schools. Teacher qualifications were lower for Blacks than for the other groups. Illiteracy was high. Rural schools were crowded and short of materials. Few Black pupils attended secondary schools.

There were some attempts to close the gap between Black and white education at both lower and higher levels. The government proclaimed the principle of equal educational opportunity and, from the 1970s, sharply increased budget allotments for Black education. Private and community efforts augmented schooling and introduced experimental integrated schools, and some private schools and white universities were opened to Black students. Black schools remained severely inadequate, however, and the government’s position that the immensity of the problem defied immediate solution conflicted with the demands of Black activist student organizations, which multiplied after 1976 (partly through division) and intensified their resistance through strikes and boycotts. Violence and fear intruded on township schools and on Black universities during the apartheid period.

By the Extension of University Education Act in 1959, nonwhites were barred from entrance to white universities, and separate university colleges were set up on an ethnic-linguistic basis. This well-organized system of differentiating groups began to break down, however, as first English and then Afrikaans universities stated their policies of admission by merit, as university decisions and legislation opened nonwhite universities to other groups, and as protests against government quotas on university admissions became increasingly effective. The universities became centres of agitation against apartheid.

A major government commission, conducted through the Human Sciences Research Council, in 1981 recommended that a single system of education under a single ministry be established. Although principles of the report were accepted, the government held to the cultural policy from which institutional separation was derived. The change from an ideological basis to a pragmatic basis for this separation, combined with the elimination of formal barriers to racial crossovers and Black mobility in education, produced a policy that competed with revolutionary strategies for social change.

Before the apartheid era came to an end during the early 1990s, South Africa began to address the crisis in African education. An Education Renewal Strategy was released in 1993. Discussions involving government officials, educators, parents, and students were initiated in the mid-1980s and were formalized in the 1990s. A single Ministry of Education was established in 1993.

Educational reform faced severe challenges, however. The primary obstacle was the limited amount of resources available for expenditure on education. School facilities in predominantly white schools were far superior to schools in Black areas. Many African schools, especially in rural areas, lacked primary necessities such as heat, plumbing, and electricity as well as advanced facilities such as science laboratories. Shortages of basic classroom supplies were common.

Teachers were often poorly trained, particularly in the rural schools. Many teachers in suburban school systems, who generally were the best qualified, were reluctant to move to rural schools. Efforts were accelerated to improve the teacher-training system: the previously discriminatory qualifications required for primary and secondary teachers as well as for teachers from the different racial groups were standardized. All teachers must complete a full secondary course plus a three-year training course.

Thus in the early postapartheid period, class differences and geographic considerations began to become more characteristic of social division than race in South African schools. Improvement in the system depended largely on increased availability of resources for education, which in turn depended on a strong South African economy.

A shift to a more Afrocentric curriculum was an important element of South African educational reform during the 1990s. The government and private publishers created new curricula in which racial stereotypes were eliminated and the African perspective of South African history was emphasized. New approaches, including the use of oral histories, were introduced during the 1990s.

Some of the basic features of South African education continued into the postapartheid period. The system was organized into four three-year cycles: junior primary, senior primary, junior secondary, and senior secondary. Because the first year of the junior secondary cycle was taken in the primary school, the primary and secondary units were seven and five years, respectively (replacing an earlier eight-four organization). Schooling was compulsory for students of all races from age seven to 16.

The general high schools were predominantly academic but offered a range of streams. Specialized high schools, at the senior secondary level, offered technical, agricultural, commercial, art, and domestic science courses. Apprenticeship could begin after the first year of the senior secondary phase (grade 10). Attempts were made to form regional comprehensive schools. Private schools were found mainly in the northeast and in the Cape region.

The tertiary sector of South African education included universities, technikons (successors to the colleges of advanced technical education, offering programs ranging from one to six years in engineering and other technologies, management, and art), technical colleges and institutes, and colleges of education. Technical centres, industrial training centres, and adult education centres extended training to early school-leavers. During the 1990s many Black university students demanded reduced admission standards and increases in scholarships and faculty appointments for Blacks.

Language is intimately related to politics and to African aspirations. It was the imposition of Afrikaans as the compulsory language of instruction that triggered the Soweto riots in 1976 and the subsequent wave of unrest. Black parents and students demanded recognition of their own language and culture (Africanization) as well as the access to the metropolitan culture of their own and other countries that English could provide. During the early postapartheid period, Afrikaans was dropped as a language of instruction for Black students in favour of English and African languages.

General influences and policies of the colonial powers

During the colonial period, the first direct “educational” influences from outside came from religious missionaries—first Portuguese (from the 15th century) and then French, Dutch, English, and German (from the 15th to the 19th century). Starting from coastal bases, they undertook to penetrate the interior and begin campaigns to convert the Black populations. The missions were the first to open schools and to develop the disciplined study of African languages, in order to translate sacred texts or to conduct religious instruction in the native tongues.

The partition of Africa by the colonial powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries led first to the establishment of mission schools and then to the establishment of “lay” or “public” or “official” schools. The importance of either the lay or the religious system depended on the political doctrines of the mother country, its institutions (a firmly secular state or one with a state religion), and the status of the colony and its history. But, whatever the system, the fundamental purpose of colonial instruction was the training of indigenous subaltern cadres—clerks, interpreters, teachers, nurses, medical assistants, workers, and so forth—all indispensable to colonial administration, businesses, and other undertakings. Though inspired by the system in the mother country, no colonial system was equivalent to its prototype. The intention was not to “educate” the subject peoples but to extend the language and policies of the colonizer.

Such a generalization, though, is subject to a slight qualification with reference to the religious missions. Both the missions and the political administrations wished to model the African man in accordance with their own needs and objectives. The religious missions, however, became involved in the cultures of the Africans through continual contact with them in the daily ministrations; they used African languages in instruction wherever the colonial administration permitted it. Moreover, for a long while, religious establishments were alone in offering vocational education, some secondary education, and even some higher education to Africans—frequently in the face of the fears or opposition of the colonial authorities.

Education in Portuguese colonies and former colonies

Angola and Mozambique shared a common historical legacy of hundreds of years of Portuguese colonization, and the general overall educational philosophy for both countries was the same until independence. For Portugal, education was an important part of its civilizing mission. In 1921, Decree 77 forbade the use of African languages in the schools. The government believed that since the purpose of education was integration of Africans into Portuguese culture the use of African languages was unnecessary. In 1940 the Missionary Accord signed with the Vatican made Roman Catholic missions the official representatives of the state in educating Africans. By the 1960s an educational pattern similar to that in Portugal had emerged. It began with a preprimary year in which the Portuguese language was stressed, followed by four years of primary school. Secondary education consisted of a two-year cycle followed by a three-year cycle. After 1963 two universities were opened, one in Angola and the other in Mozambique. In addition, postprimary education was offered in agricultural schools, in nursing schools, and in technical service courses provided by government agencies. Despite remarkable progress in the 1960s, primary education was available to few Africans outside urban areas, and even there the proportion of African children in secondary schools was low.

Marxist governments triumphed in both Angola and Mozambique when independence came in 1975. Dissident groups, however, maintained bloody civil wars in both countries that had disastrous effects on the educational systems. Nevertheless, even during the fight for independence, educational reform was a main objective of the Popular Liberation Movement of Angola (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola; MPLA), which gained control of Angola when Portugal withdrew. A report of the first congress of the MPLA published in 1977 provided a blueprint that was followed with few deviations. Marxism-Leninism was stressed as the base for the educational system. The training of all people to contribute to economic development was a major objective. Eight years of primary education was to be universal. Secondary education, offered on a limited basis, included vocational as well as college preparatory courses. At the University of Angola, special emphasis was placed on scientific and engineering courses.

The Mozambique Liberation Front (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique; Frelimo) introduced its educational system in the areas it controlled even before independence. After independence, at the Third Congress of Frelimo in February 1977, policies for the transition to socialism were formalized. While Marxism would provide a foundation, the particular needs of Mozambique would be addressed. All schools were nationalized. However, the government faced a tremendous teacher shortage, as most of the teachers, who were Portuguese, had left the country. Crash programs in teacher training were introduced. Textbooks, although very limited, were produced that reflected the culture of Mozambique. Most were in Portuguese, which remained the official language of the country, in part because none of the multitude of different cultural groups dominated.

German educational policy in Africa

Well before Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had granted a charter to the German Colonial Society in 1885, German missionaries, both Protestant and Catholic, were operating in various regions of western, central, and eastern Africa—from 1840 in Mombasa (now in Kenya), from 1845 in Cameroon, from 1847 in Togo, and from 1876 in Buganda (now Uganda) and in Mpwapwa and Tanga (now in Tanzania). Instruction was everywhere conducted in the local languages, which were objects of study by numerous missionaries and by eminent scholars.

On the eve of World War I, more than 95 percent of the schools in German Africa were operated by religious groups. In the southwestern part of the continent the government did not establish any schools at all, relying completely on missionary activity. (In eastern Africa, however, where the large Muslim population was unwilling to send its children to schools managed by Christian religious groups, the government did assume a more active educational role.) To assist the missions, the government granted aid to those schools that met requirements based on specific government needs that changed with time. An example of this sort of aid was the fund founded in 1908 for the dissemination of the German language. The missions had not previously been required to include German in the curriculum but were now forced to do so in order to receive money from the new fund. The language problem was a persistent one and was handled differently in different colonies. In eastern Africa, Swahili was recognized as a language and emphasized in the lower schools, thus providing a lingua franca for the entire area. The government attempted a similar policy with Ewe in Togo and Douala in the Cameroons, but German was the language of instruction in southwestern Africa.

Throughout the literature on German educational policy in the African colonies, there is a continued emphasis on the necessity for vocational education and practical work. The missions, however, were more interested in establishing schools providing general education, and lay German educators took a dualistic approach to African education, emphasizing both practical and academic studies.

The absorption of German colonies by England and France after World War II eradicated most of the German influence in education. However, the German insistence on Swahili in German East Africa left that area far more unified linguistically than any other colonial area.