EDUCATION AND TRAINING NEEDS OF SOUTH AFRICANS
Ection in South Africa is in crisis. Bantu Education, introduced in 1953 for the African population has the specific purpose of preparing students for life in apartheid society. As a result education is discredited and schools and universities have become political battlegrounds. Large numbers of students reject state education. Ten years after Soweto many are threatening to boycott schools. The education of a generation is at stake.
Continuing unrest within South Africa since the introduction of Emergency Powers in July 1985 helps focus attention on the importance of assisting efforts to create new opportunities for education inside South Africa and abroad. Support is needed for programmes designed to rekindle faith in education. The increasing erosion of the state initiated education sector makes it essential to identify alternative means of formal and non-formal educational support.
The British Government funds a programme of support to education in South Africa through the British Council. It is restricted to short term training opportunities for disadvantaged South Africans in the UK and consultancies in South Africa by British educationalists. The experience of aid to other countries in civil strife - Zimbabwe, Chile, Uganda, Ethiopia and Namibia - demonstrates the value of government providing assistance through voluntary agency channels. In a politically volatile situation voluntary agencies are better placed to identify and assist small-scale initiatives with potential for long term development. The value of voluntary agency channels is recognised and widely accepted elsewhere in the British Aid Programme and in the South African context voluntary agencies are the main channel for assistance given by several European Governments.
We believe that the British Government should strengthen its current programme of assistance to disadvantaged South Africans in 1986 through the addition of two elements:
i.
ii.
Funding a scholarship programme for South African refugees for study in the UK or Africa.
South Africans are the major refugee group for whom there is no specific ODA funded scheme. (Recently the ODA announced some support, from money saved from UNESCO membership, for a multilateral programme for postgraduate study for South Africans through the Commonwealth.) Raids on frontline states increases the pressure for alternative study opportunities for refugee students.
Funding a programme of support, via a voluntary agency, to alternative education projects in South Africa.
World University Service through its experience of an existing programme of support within South Africa administered by International WUS is aware of two areas where demand is in excess of resources currently made available by European Governments:
provision of scholarships to poor students in South Africa to enable them to continue their studies;
support for alternative education programmes set up to fill gaps created by the inadequacies of Bantu Education and threatened boycotts.