08 September 2000
ADULT EDUCATION, LITERACY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE ERADICATION OF POVERTY IN SOUTH AFRICA: DEEPENING THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE DEMOCRATIC STATE AND THE PEOPLE
The challenge of adult education in South Africa is a challenge of democratic transformation; a challenge of economic empowerment; a challenge of transforming gender relations; a challenge of combating and eradicating the legacy of racism; and, most fundam entally, a challenge of the eradication of poverty.
I am saying the above not as an exaggeration, nor to please this audience of dedicated adult educators, but a challenge that lies at the heart of ensuring the very success of South Africa's transition to democracy. According to statistics we have, at least , 9 million people who can be categorised as functionally illiterate. On the other hand we have about 13 million learners in the schooling system. This means clearly that the challenge of adult education is as big as that of provision of quality education for school-going learners. If one considers the low levels of skills and quality of education even amongst the better educated, it means that perhaps the challenge of adult education, in the current period, is bigger than that of formal schooling.
POVERTY AND ADULT EDUCATION
Were it not for the necessity to remind ourselves of the actual nature of the challenge at every point, I would not be bothering you with further statistics. But, according to Census 96, there are more than 4 million South Africans over the age of 20 who h ave no schooling whatsoever. Add to this about 3,5 million with some primary education and 1,5 with only primary education, the challenge is indeed enormous. To understand this challenge and implications we have to ask - What are the implications of these statistics and the challenges they present for our society as a whole, and in particular the fundamental transformation of our country into a better country for all?
The question of adult education is a very central question in economic development and transformation in our country. According to the government's Poverty and Inequality Report of May 1998 the poorest 40% of households is equal to about 19 million people - about half of South Africa's population. Poor is defined as monthly household expenditure per month, per equivalent adult of about R353-00. In racial terms, 61% of Africans are poor and only 1% of white South Africans are regarded as poor. In gender term s, the poverty rate among female-headed households is 60%, compared with the 31% for male-headed households. In spatial terms, the rural areas contain 72% of those members of the population who are poor.
It is estimated that more than one-third of the economically active population in our country is unemployed. Of the employed, 5,5 million are men, which is 48% of all men of working age. But of the 3,5 million women, who had jobs in 1996, this was an equiv alent of only 29% of all women of working age.
Of much more significance to us is that the Poverty and Inequality Report states that there is a very strong correlation between employment, poverty and levels of education. For instance, poverty rate among people with no education is 69%, compared with 54 % among people with primary education; 24% among those with secondary education, and 3% among those with tertiary education. According to Census 96 about a quarter of Africans above the age of 20 have received no education at all!
Indeed it sounds obvious when we say that this is as a result of apartheid. In fact one of the devastating effects of apartheid was the intellectual underdevelopment of the South African people, in particular the African people. But what we have not adequa tely teased out is that the foundations of the apartheid regime were the production and reproduction of cheap unskilled labour, which was the basis for the economic development of this system. This is instructive, particularly in the present period, where we are now told that a free market economy and that the private sector is the best engine for the socio-economic development of our country. Yet, it was as a direct result of the logic of a society dominated by the private sector, that such a large army of illiterate people was created through the migrant labour system and the political institutions of apartheid.
ADULT EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
I am raising the above point, precisely because I would like to locate a good part of my speech within the context of adult education and economic development in our country. Let me divert a little by citing an article in the Business Day on Wednesday 6 Se ptember 2000 by Anne Bernstein. Bernstein argues that the government's biggest ally in encouraging growth is big business and not the mass of our people and their political and social formations. Bernstein conveniently forgets the fact that it is the very same business that not only collaborated with, but also provided the very foundations, of the apartheid system. Why would business today act in a manner that would place it at the head of tackling the socio-economic legacy of apartheid, and in particular p rovision of adult education?
Let us look at the behaviour and record of the private sector towards the transformation of the labour market and skills development since 1994. The focus of business in the current period is that of downward variation of labour standards which, in essence , is an attempt to maintain as much of the elements of a cheap labour system as possible. Yet the challenge in transforming South Africa's labour market, within which we should also locate adult education and training, is that of upward variation of the la bour market. This means investing more in adult education and skills training in order to improve productivity of the working people. This has also been underlined by many reports of the ILO on South Africa's labour market.
In addition, South African business is hardly investing in skills development and adult education and training. Most of business has even gone to the extent of resisting measures by government to put such a programme in place, as shown by resistance to the Skills Development Act and the Employment Equity measures. For example the levels of registration by employers in terms of the former Act is dismal. Yet one of the biggest obstacles to economic growth and development in our country is low level of skills.
What is even more depressing is that even concepts and programmes like black economic empowerment are more or less premised on the downward variation of labour standards, including silence on investment in training and education. Let alone that it is these 13 million South Africans who should be the primary target of black economic empowerment, as opposed to the enrichment of a few from within the ranks of the previously oppressed.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ADULT EDUCATION IS ALSO A STRUGGLE AGAINST NEO-LIBERALISM
The dominant thinking within business circles is also that that tends to counter-pose social spending to economic spending and austerity measures. This approach should be emphatically rejected as social spending in developing countries - not least for adul t education - is simultaneously economic spending as this provides a better basis for economic growth and development.
In addition dominant economic thinking aims to minimise the role of the state in social and economic activities, so that these can be handed over to the private sector. It is within this thinking for instance that the language of 'core' and 'non-core' busi ness of the state has emerged. Let me quote from what one businessman by the name of Deon Basson recently wrote in F&T Finance Week of 18 August 2000, in an article titled in a very telling way "Asmal sitting on biggest State Asset". Allow me to quote libe rally in order to illustrate the points I am making and properly locate the challenge of adult education and training:
With all the boasting about privatisation, it might be worth viewing education as a privatisation opportunity. It must rank as our biggest State asset, just waiting for value to be unlocked. It's potentially much bigger than Transnet, Telkom, Denel, Eskom and others. The current structuring of state finances means this R50bn (education budget) is an expense that does not contribute towards building a valuable State asset. I refuse to accept that a central education department in Pretoria and nine provincial departments can produce better results than the private sector… Selling off or even unbundling educational assets are options that need to be examined… Parents should then be allowed to use (these) vouchers at approved educational institutions, as they de em fit. For a better service than the minimum standard, parents will have to pay for themselves… Talk of equal opportunities is not realistic for this can never be realised in practice, even if the State plays an excessively paternalistic role. As a first step, all schools in SA should be converted to public companies, with the State the sole shareholder… This would enable the state to put the educational institutions under the hammer… We may see some large companies with a stake in the industry snatch up s ome of the top State schools. (p.41).
One would be tempted to dismiss these views as the ranting of a crazy white South African businessman, were it not for the fact that the IMF and World Bank have already placed this issue on the table as the next step in the privatisation of state assets on the African continent. This thinking is also captured by a little publicised but very instructive speech by the Vice President of the World Bank for Africa, Jean-Louis Sarbib in Abidjan on 21 May 1997:
We can expect attention to turn to other areas where privatisation can help improve efficiency. This will open up opportunities for contracting out many of the services currently operated within many central and local government departments. These include such services as catering, cleaning, building and vehicle maintenance, printing, registries, research and security… As yet it is difficult to forecast how far this will extend to the privatisation of social services. Certainly, there is wide scope for the more efficient delivery of government financed social services, but through the private sector. This opens up a whole new range of options including, for example, voucher schemes which would provide public funding for privately owned and managed schools an d clinics" (p.12).
We would also dismiss Basson's views easily, were it also not for the reality that the survival of our own public higher education institutions is being threatened by the growing entry of private universities in South Africa. Also, who would have thought, say 20 years ago, that water, electricity and other basic services could be provided in the market place as commodities through the private sector?
In short the dominant paradigm of economic development in our country and globally - neo liberalism - which gets articulated through calls for labour market flexibility, privatisation, liberalisation and enrichment of a black few, does not provide the clim ate, the environment and prioritisation needed to effectively tackle the challenge of adult education and training.
I am raising these points because I am strongly of the view that high levels of literacy are an essential component of growing our economy and tackling the most fundamental challenges of development in our country. The majority of our people are disempower ed even to realise their own creative means to try and make ends meet not least because they are not literate. High levels of literacy would also provide a stronger basis for skills development. And it is our belief therefore that the state and communities should have a strong and leading role to play in tackling adult education and literacy. In addition intensified adult education and literacy campaigns have a critical role to play in combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic which strives in conditions of poverty a nd ignorance.
THE CHALLENGES FOR ADULT EDUCATION AND TRAINING IN SOUTH AFRICA TODAY: THE CASE FOR PRIORITISATION OF LITERACY
Given the issues outlined above, let me outlined what I see as key concrete challenges and possible measures that needs to be taken to take forward adult education and training in our country.
Our government has taken far-reaching policy and legislative measures in laying a foundation for tackling adult education, illiteracy and training. The very concept and vision of life-long learning, which is the cornerstone of our education policy, is a ma jor advance and departure from apartheid education. It provides the kind of framework needed to accelerate the provision of adult education and training.
In addition the establishment of the NQF and SAQA are important measures. The passage of the Skills Development and Employment Equity Acts are important milestones. The challenge here is of course implementation, as well as developing an integrated framewo rk to relate these policy measures and laws. The absence of a co-ordinated strategy, as these laws are still implemented by different departments, still remains a weakness that needs to be addressed. Your organisation has an important role to play in this regard, acting together with government and our communities.
It is also important that in tackling the challenge of literacy and adult education, that we simultaneously challenge neo-liberal ideology. This means actively seeking to strengthen the role of the public sector and our communities in driving an adult educ ation and training programme. It means we must seek to strengthen the developmental orientation and character of the state and deliberately seek to crowd out a market-dominated approach to education.
Flowing from the above this means seeking to create a viable and durable partnership between the democratic state, the NGO sector and communities. Of course I am not saying that the private sector does not have a role to play in adult education and trainin g. In fact some companies, even in the mining sector, are running excellent adult education and training programmes, and these need to be supported and strengthened. But the role of the private sector should be located within and guided by a strategy that is driven by the state in partnership with workers and communities. It cannot be a market-driven strategy, as this would exacerbate rather than tackle the problem.
I would like to end by perhaps proposing a possible strategy and route to accelerate the provision of adult education and training, in particular tackling illiteracy. For me literacy should be one of the key priorities within adult education and training. Examples from a number of developing countries that have gone a long way in tackling illiteracy show that unless we have a focused programme with a definite time frame, this struggle ends up being a difficult and endless task. For instance it is estimated that we have about 45 000 qualified but unemployed teachers. Is it not possible to make use of this human resource by pulling together funds from the state, the private sector, donors and NGOs to launch a 3-5 year focused programme, employing these teacher s and aim to reach more than 80% of the illiterate in our country? This would also have the advantage of producing a different kind of a teacher within that period, whose paradigm would be radically different from the fundamental pedagogics of apartheid. T his could be a partnership between the state, the private sector, the NGOs and communities that can take us a long way in tackling this problem. Of course such and approach would require definite prioritisation of literacy over other pressing needs, but wi thin a definite time frame. This is what I would like to place before you for debate and consideration.
In closing, we repeat our message above by emphasising how adult education must continue to contribute to substantial changes and improvements in ordinary people's lives. But this will not happen until we connect adult education to mobilised mass power.
The big challenge therefore is to mobilise our people behind socio-economic transformation that will benefit the poor, who form the overwhelming majority of those who are illiterate in our country.
This means that in our work, we must develop organic and sustainable links with our people - organised workers, hawkers, the unemployed, farm and domestic workers. As adult educators, we must be part of our people's struggles for a better life for all. In this way we will make adult education work relevant and to meet the needs of a changing and democratic South Africa.
As an example of what I am talking about, I refer to the current public discussion about how poor ordinary South Africans are at the receiving end of a still largely un-transformed financial sector. For example: - § Many of our people do not get appropriate banking services partly because most banking information is in English and Afrikaans and most bank employees cannot speak other South African languages. § Many of our people are listed by this faceless Credit Bureau. Again, this is partly due to information being available only in English and Afrikaans. But even more crucially is the lack of attention to economic literacy for our people by the Credit Burea u, creditors and the financial sector as whole.
Anyway, many people's initiatives around adult education itself are not given a chance to develop either because the banks have stringent loan requirements or charge unaffordable interests rates.
For these and other reasons, it is important to include economic literacy in struggles around the transformation of the financial sector. In this regard, the challenge for adult educators is to integrate economic literacy as part of adult education.
Broadly this financial sector campaign also means the mobilisation of adult educators, stokvels, and savings clubs towards people-controlled and people-driven co-operatives organised around the needs of our people, one of which is better adult education it self. What could be the role of adult educators in this campaign and particularly the planned action towards the banks and the building of co-operatives on 21 October 2000? This public action is part of the main challenge we are putting forward to adult e ducators - unleashing an integrated mass movement for fundamental transformation. In other words, the struggles for better adult education and fundamental transformation will ultimately not be resolved in the boardrooms but through the strategic and integr ated deployment of the mass power of our people.
With these words, I wish you a successful conference.
BLADE NZIMANDE
GENERAL SECRETARY