13 May 2004
Introduction
Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the Director of CEPD, Mr John Pampallis, the Director of the EPU in KwaZulu-Natal, Dr Jenni Karlsson, and the staff of both institutions on organising this conference. It is an important and very timely initiative while we celebrate a decade of our freedom. It will give us a chance to evaluate how far we have come over the last ten years and the challenges that lie ahead. We are looking forward to some of the observations that will emerge out of this conference, and hope that these will be consolidated into conclusions and proposals for the next decade of democratic rule.
Inevitably, my input will focus more on the first five years - setting the tone for transformation. Obviously, many of the issues that arose then also faced the second democratic parliament and some of the issues still face us today. I will also focus on selected issues that I consider central in laying the foundations for educational transformation.
1.0 The political context of South Africa's transition to democracy
If we are to properly evaluate the first ten years of educational transformation, it is important to locate this in the political context within which South Africa's transition took place. This broader political context not only sets the tone for the transition itself, but also the context for what was possible and what limitations there were.
While South Africa's transition to democracy had many of its own unique features, we should not make the mistake of exceptionalising it, and thereby losing sight of some of the commonalities between this transition and other negotiated transitions, particularly in the developing world in the 1980s. One unique feature of our transition is that it took place at the time of the dissolution of the Soviet bloc of countries. As a result, we were spared some of the complexities of, say, Latin American transitions in the 1980s which were caught in struggles around the Cold War. This should not, however, lead us to the incorrect conclusion that the dissolution of one superpower - the Soviet Union - and the end of the Cold War meant a freer and more conflict free world, as advocates of benign globalisation and "end of history" ideologues would like us to believe. It is in this latter reality, for instance, that some of the similarities between our transition and others come to the fore.
Most negotiated transitions in the developing world in the 1980s were accompanied by low intensity conflicts, warfare and attempts by the old ruling bloc to exploit differences amongst the oppressed (ethnic, religious, language, class and gender contradictions) to fragment and weaken the democratic and oppressed forces. Ours was no different in this regard, in that the apartheid regime intensified its low intensity warfare, promoted violence and attempted to create hatred of the democratic movement amongst the oppressed themselves. Though the liberation movement defeated these attempts, the tone was set for compromises around a government of national unity and the establishment of provinces with original powers. The liberation movement had not planned for this in its theory, strategies and conception of a democratic South Africa. This, as we shall see later, set the context and had an impact on our capacity to drive educational transformation through the central component of the state.
In all negotiated transitions in the context of national oppression, the old ruling bloc pushes for political change without substantive economic changes. Our own negotiated transition incorporated a compromise and a trade off between an inclusive political democracy, leaving the economic structures intact. This is a phenomenon that has essentially characterised the mainstream capitalist economy in our country throughout the first decade of freedom. In fact, our first decade has created a situation where the white capitalist class has continued to be the primary beneficiary in the mainstream economy with the working class taking a heavy toll through retrenchments, outsourcing and other forms of restructuring. This is despite the many progressive gains made by the working class and the poor during the first decade of our freedom (eg. progressive labour market reforms, expanding social wages - electrification, housing, social grants, health facilities, telephony, clean drinking water, etc). By not undertaking a radical restructuring of the capitalist economy, we have set limits on the speed with which we can tackle the backlogs in the education system.
Another key feature of democratic transitions, as they are known, in Africa, Latin America, and Asia was that of the demobilisation of progressive mass organisations immediately after democratic elections. This tendency is largely caused by a failure to rapidly transform from mass struggles to depose authoritarian regimes, to mass struggles to buttress transformation. We should never underestimate the extent to which the offensive of the apartheid regime during the early 1990s was curbed and defeated through intensified working class-led mass struggles. Such struggles are essential during the transition period itself in order to stretch the compromise to its limits and even go further in favour of more radical transformation. Mass struggles against apartheid education had set a radical tone for educational transformation in the transition. However, one of the key problems of the first decade of our freedom has been the decline of the mass democratic movement in education, precipitated by the dissolution of the National Education Co-ordinating Committee (NECC).
One other feature of negotiated transitions are attempts and struggles particularly by the old ruling bloc (sometimes with collaboration from elements from within liberation and democratic movements) to marginalise or even liquidate both the left and extreme right around a (politically) centrist agenda. In our transition, the extreme right has been severely weakened if not defeated. But the left, thanks to the orientation of the liberation movement itself and the presence of a strong, organised working class, has been a critical component in the transition itself. The very struggles in education (around policy, funding, etc) during the first decade of our freedom reflect debates and struggles between neo-liberalism and more radical educational transformation.
Despite all this, our country has made enormous progress on the education front. The fact that we have deracialised access to education through a range of legislation and policy interventions is one of the decisive advances from apartheid towards democratic education. Some of the other key achievements include transformation of higher education to reflect the demography of our country, progressive funding towards poorer schools, transformation of the apartheid curriculum, entrenchment of democratic structures of governance in education, and generally improved performance in our schools. However, a lot still needs to be done.
It is within the context of the above that I would like to briefly reflect on the role of Parliament and the Education Portfolio Committee in particular.
2.0 Role of Parliament in educational transformation
During the first five years of democracy, Parliament debated and passed very important legislation which laid the basis for progress in educational transformation. The most important piece of legislation is the constitution itself which guarantees the right to basic education, including adult education, as well as making further education progressively available. This is a radical departure from education in the apartheid period. Elements from the old ruling bloc coalesced to wage a major battle to try and dilute this by, inter alia, seeking to protect the existence of single-medium schools, particularly Afrikaans schools, as a way of restricting access by black students into these institutions.
Another important advance made through legislation and policy interventions was the National Education Policy Act, 1996, which gave the national minister the power to establish national policy, norms and standards for education. This marked another decisive departure from the fragmented and racially segregated education system under apartheid. This also acted as a balance between the roles of the national education department and provincial departments. Again, elements of the old ruling bloc fought hard to try and devolve key policy and legislative competence, not only to provinces but also down to the school level.
What perhaps shall remain the most decisive departure with the past is the South African Schools Act, 1996, which created a framework for a single public schooling system in our country. This Act laid the basis for a democratic, non-racial and equitable public schooling system. There were major battles around this legislation in Parliament. Elements of the old order attempted to use the process of passing this legislation to regain losses they had suffered at the time of the writing and adoption of the new constitution.
The key political struggles were around the powers of school governing bodies and the funding of schools. Elements of the old order wanted to use the powers of school governing bodies to take privileged public schools out of the hands of the state. They wanted school governing bodies to have control and final say over admissions, language, fees and religious policy. We, too, were faced with a dilemma around the powers of school governing bodies. On the one hand, the democratic movement had over decades struggled for meaningful powers and democratic control over schools by governing bodies. This was a major struggle against the powerless apartheid school committees. On the other hand, we had to ensure that democratic school governing bodies were not abused to protect privilege. It was as a result of these seemingly contradictory imperatives that we compromised around Section 21 schools. Again, the dilemma was how to tap into the resources of the privileged schools without at the same time creating a two-tier education system. We hope this Conference will evaluate and reflect upon whether we have been successful in this attempt.
Time does not allow me to talk about a whole range of other legislative measures and debates. Allow me rather to reflect briefly on the role of the Education Portfolio Committee within the context of the new parliamentary committees.
One of the major achievements of our parliamentary democracy was the revamping of the parliamentary system through the creation of open portfolio committees, providing space for people to engage with policy and legislation through public hearings. The democratic forces managed to win many policy debates through these public hearings, as they would expose the reactionary agenda of conservative forces. Critical to the functioning of these committees was the coherence of the ANC Study Group in its policy perspectives and its close contact with the democratic movement, supported by progressive education policy units.
The biggest weakness in Parliament still remains the gross under-resourcing of the portfolio committees, thus limiting their potential to act as a link between the state and the people, including sectoral organisations. These committees have played a crucial role as oversight to the executive, albeit not without tensions, most of which I would regard as necessary and healthy. It is therefore critical for progressives and progressive education NGOs to think about the role that they can play to strengthen the parliamentary committee system. The state itself needs to put more resources into the committee system as we move into the second decade of our freedom.
3.0 The challenge of rebuilding a progressive mass movement in education
Perhaps one of the most important lessons during the first decade of our freedom is that the weakening of the mass democratic movement has negatively affected our capacity to drive educational transformation. For instance, I think that one of the key questions to be addressed in education as we begin the second decade of our freedom is how we move beyond some of the constraints imposed by a negotiated settlement to accelerate educational transformation. The strengthening of our democracy provides a unique opportunity to do some of the things we could not do during the first decade of our freedom. In particular we need to deepen educational transformation to drive growth and development and skills development, challenge neo-liberal ideology, increase access for children of the workers and the poor in schools and institutions of higher learning, and eliminate all infrastructural backlogs. These are some of the key challenges for education in the second decade of freedom.
It is also within this context that it is disturbing that education policy voices, analysis and engagement with major efforts towards growth and development of our economy are absent. For instance it is imperative that we deepen dialogue and engagement with major growth and development initiatives like the Growth and Development Summit, from the standpoint of educational transformation. There is for instance consensus in country that the major platform to deepen and consolidate our democracy in the second decade of freedom is thoroughgoing economic transformation. There is also an emerging debate about the proper characterisation of our economy, is it "two economies" or single but dualistic economy or a single capitalist economy still deeply mired in the legacy of colonialism of a special type. What are the implications of these debates for our approach to educational transformation and the tasks of wiping educational backlogs? In essence can we separate the economic debate from the educational debate? It looks like our educational discourse during the first decade of freedom has been colonised by a more technical policy paradigm, and developing a framework on the political economy of education in South Africa's transition has taken a back seat. Yet, as many of us know, education policy development outside of the context of the political economy of education is bound to have serious shortcomings.
If we are to achieve these objectives, educational transformation cannot be left to the state alone. Ours is not merely a representative democracy, but also a mass participatory democracy. Many of the struggles waged in the 1980s led to the emergence of the mass democratic movement in education. Through these struggles we managed, through legislation and policy interventions, to build democratic governing bodies in schools and institutional forums in higher education. But the contradiction has been that just as these aspirations become a reality in law, there is no substantive mass movement to make use of these to accelerate educational transformation.
Unless the workers and the poor are mobilised to be at the centre of educational transformation, other class forces will use their power to steal the victories of the millions of our people for their narrow class interests. This is the fundamental challenge for the second decade of freedom, which I hope will also inform deliberations and debates at this conference. The platforms for building this are the current student struggles on higher education finance and government's commitment to extended public works programmes. We must use this to overcome infrastructural backlogs, advance current curriculum transformation and strengthen school governing bodies by building a strong National Association of School Governing Bodies (NASGB). Our policy research, debates and perspectives must assist in this effort, in order to overcome what are now isolated efforts by progressive researchers, parliamentary committees and the mass movement.