The Bantu ( Blacks ) Education Act 1953 (Act No. 47 of 1953; later renamed the Black Education Act, 1953) was a South African segregation law of the apartheid system whose main purpose was to limit the educational opportunities of Black children in the country. Its major provision enforced racially-separated educational facilities. Even universities were made "tribal", and all but three missionary schools chose to close down when the government would no longer help to support their schools. Very few authorities continued using their own finances to support education for native Africans. In 1959, that type of education was extended to "non-white" universities and colleges with the Extension of University Education Act, 1959, and the University College of Fort Hare was taken over by the government and degraded to being part of the Bantu education system.Timeline of the University: 1959 . Official website of University of Fort Hare. Accessed 2007-12-03. It is often argued that the policy of Bantu (African) education was aimed to direct black or non-white youth to the unskilled labour market, and Hendrik Verwoerd, the Minister of Native Affairs, claimed that the aim was to solve South Africa's "ethnic problems" by creating distinct economic and political units for different ethnic groups. A particular fear of the National Party that most likely led to the passing of this legislation was the rising number of children (known as tsotsis) joining urban gangs.
The ruling National Party viewed education as having a rather pivotal position in their goal of eventually separating South Africa from the Bantustans entirely. Verwoerd, the "Architect of Apartheid", stated: "There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour.... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?"
The Act led to a substantial increase of government funding to the learning institutions of Black Africans, but they did not keep up with the population increase.Giliomee H. (March 2009). "A Note on Bantu Education 1953-1970", South African Journal of Economics. The law forced institutions to be under the direct control of the state. The National Party now had the power to employ and train teachers as it saw fit.
Black teachers' salaries in 1953 were extremely low and resulted in a dramatic drop of trainee teachers. Only one third of the black teachers were qualified.
The schools reserved for the country's white children were of Western standards. The Act did not stipulate lesser standards of education for non-whites, but it legislated for the establishment of an advisory board and directed the minister to do so. Of the black schools, 30% of had no electricity, 25% had no running water and more than half had no plumbing. Education for Blacks, Indians and Coloureds was substantially cheaper but not free, and the salaries of teachers were set at very low levels.
In the 1970s, the per capita governmental spending on black education was one-tenth of the spending on white.
In the financial year of 1975–76, the state spent R644 on each White student, R189 for each Indian student, R139 for Coloured students, and only R42 for Black students.
Non-white education prior to 1948 Early years During the 1600s, when the Dutch controlled the Dutch Cape Colony, no education system existed for whites nor the non-white inhabitants. In 1658, Jan van Riebeeck, had introduced religious instruction for slaves in the Cape. By the 1700s, the children of Dutch inhabitants could be given a primary education at a few church run schools or even by travelling teachers while two slave schools existed for non-whites. In 1799, Johannes van der Kemp from the Church Mission Society established a school for Black pupils near King Williamstown in the territory of the Ngqika peoples.
In 1806, the British occupied the Dutch Cape Colony to prevent it falling into the hands of French under Napoleon and named it the Cape Colony. With the arrival of British settlers, the missionary churches soon followed, and along with converting the Black population to their religion, an elementary education of reading and writing was offered. In 1821, the Glasgow Missionary Society set up a school, later to be called Lovedale. It offered evangelical, industrial and academic (entrance exam training for high school and matriculation) training before introducing a full academic curriculum in 1872. In 1841, the Cape Colony set up rules to pay subsidies to mission schools. In 1812, the colonial government offered white children free schooling but only taught in English. Education in Dutch became almost extinct as the Colony attempted to anglicised the Afrikaner with the passing of the Cape Education Act of 1866, with instruction in English, leading to resentment as they saw it as an attack on their culture and values. In 1853, the Cape Colony contributed funds and salaries to around 175 mission schools to educate Black Africans but as there was no segregation, whites and Coloureds could attend in the same classes, so much so that in 1891 a third of white children in the Colony attended these mission schools. By 1892, ideas of white racial superiority and supremacy developed within the community and new public schools for whites only were developed in the Cape Colony.
The English administrators would continue this policy of anglicisation in the four colonies after the Second Boer War (1899–1902) and prior to the Union of South Africa in 1910 re-enforcing the idea in the Afrikaner that their values, language and culture was under attack.
As for the Boer republics in the Free State and Transvaal, there was no state aid for the education of the black population. In the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic, white formal schools did not exist to such extent with most children relying on the family for a basic informal education and with the black population, nothing existed in these states.
Union of South Africa Just prior to the formation of a Union of South Africa in 1909, each province took control of education. By 1910, 90% of the cost of running an African school was paid for by the church-run missions. The government was subsidising white and African pupils on a per capita ratio of R333 to R1. As of 1926, churches became the main source of the provision of African education with 2,702 schools and 215,956 pupils while the government provided 68 state schools with only 7,710 pupils. The government would eventually allocate R680,000 a year towards Black education, but the allocation was fixed at that amount from 1922 until 1945; further money came from one-fifth of a tax imposed on Black South Africans. White education, on the other hand, increased by 263% between 1910 and 1948.
During the 1920s and 1930s, whether the government was the South African Party, later called the United Party or the National Party, the emphasis was on protecting white education so that white employment was maintained by restricting black education and skills. In 1922, the curriculum for Black South Africans changed when language training became compulsory in primary schools and practical skills were introduced such as hygiene, handwork, gardening, agriculture, housecraft, and needlework. Whereas in high school, the curriculum was similar in Black and White schools, though there was emphasis in some provinces to replace the academic subjects with agriculture-based topics. In an investigation carried out by the Interdepartmental Committee on Native Education (Welsh Committee) in 1936, it found that 70% of African children who could have been in education weren't, mainly due to crowded schools, poor staffing and the insufficient number of schools. In 1943, the United Party had introduced funding for school meals at black schools. In 1945, Jan Hofmeyr, United Party Minister for Native Affairs, changed the funding model for black education when money would now be issued from the general reserve and independent of black taxation.
The origins of the Apartheids future education policy for all South Africans races were envisioned in 1939 when the Institute for Christian National Education was formed after a congress sponsored by the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge (FAK) had met that year. The institute would release a manifesto in 1943 and this outlined how Afrikaners should be educated, emphasising that it should be in their own language and included the children's spiritual and cultural needs. This meant English speaking South Africans would be educated separately, and such an arrangement could be implied for Black, Coloured's and Asian education.
Bantu education from 1948 Once the National Party came to power in 1948, the ideas envisioned before they gained office were set in motion. In 1949, the Commission on Bantu Education was created, better known as the Eiselen Commission. The aim was to find a new model of Bantu education that fitted into the goals of Apartheid, ensuring white superiority over other races, thus ensuring an inferior education system for future labour and subservience. It was headed by Dr W. W. M. Eiselen, a professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Pretoria, previously a Chief Inspector of Native Education in the Transvaal and later the Secretary of Native Affairs in the civil service. The other members of the commission were all White South Africans who had some involvement in Bantu education.
The following were its terms of reference, setting out to establish a policy and implementation of Bantu education: The formulation of the principles and aims of education for Natives as an independent race, in which their past and present, their inherent racial qualities, their distinctive characteristics and aptitude, and their needs under the ever-changing social conditions are taken into consideration. The extent to which the existing primary, secondary and vocational education system for Natives and training of Native teachers should be modified in respect of the content and form of syllabuses, in order to prepare Natives more effectively for their further occupations. The organisation and administration of the various branches of Native education. The basis on which such education should be financed. Such other aspects of Native education as may be related to the preceding.
Africans who testified at the Eiselen inquiry stated that they did not want a separate system of education specifically designed for them, as they believed it would lead to an inferior education and inferior facilities. Their views were obviously totally ignored.
The Eiselen Commission presented its report to the government in 1951, and the government accepted its recommendations. Its recommendations included the following: The commission proposed that the education system for African's be of a Christian nature, but with an Afrikaner Calvinist interpretation of the Bible which saw Whites as superior, the elect of God, while Africans were regarded as 'hewers of wood and drawers of water'. To make the system of African education more efficient, planning and budgeting would be coordinated by a central government department and missionary schools and provincial education departments would be stripped of their current responsibilities. Education should be used as a plan to develop African society. A better effort should be made at the mass education of the Africans. The literature required to educate the African should be produced by the government in their individual languages and be related to what was needed for their function in life. The funding for African education was described as not being unlimited and would have to cover a wide area of the education system. That pupils should be instructed in their mother tongue, and the report took into account the future Bantustans and their future education policies.