Education in South Africa; It's not only broken, its racist, a pot of gold for looting and an ideological war-zone

Look, if you really want to see a total mess, you must consider the South African learning industry. What I mean “learning industry”, are schools, universities, the South African Qualification Authority, the SETAs and all other mechanisms designed and implemented to monopolize education in the country and monopolize the billions of Rands pumping into it.

Just a small disclaimer: I am not an educational expert, but I have been a part0time university lecturer for 20 years, and I have trained working adults in the SETA and Higher Education accreditation system for even longer. I have lived, and worked, through all the changes since the 1994 transition. It has been a mess.

To start with: I am not offending any of the truly committed, well-qualified and competent teachers or lecturers that do their best to make the system work, on  a daily basis, and under difficult circumstances. In fact, part of the system, such as former “Model C” schools, are working well, and deliver excellent value. Similarly, on an operational level, hundreds of ordinary university – and college lecturers offer good quality teaching to students. That is not where the problem lies.

The problem lies with the system.

For the control-freaks of the ANC and its ideological co-conspirators, that educational system was a tool to brainwash and to pursue their outdated, failed National Democratic Revolution. More than that, it became a vehicle for self-enrichment and looting.

Teachers’ posts are offered for sale by teacher unions. In state schools, teachers often do not have the required qualifications; in fact, research has shown that they are often not even competent in the subject-areas they must teach, to the level (of grade) of the people to whom they must teach. With a required pass rate of 30%, there is no way that South Africa will ever in the foreseeable future produce the knowledge resources and expertise to lift the country out of its current cycle of steadily decline and gradual collapse. There may be a few shining stars, and good to them, but those are not nearly enough to rescue the basic educational system.

Now, more than ever, basic education has been turned into an ideological warzone, Blatantly racist persons in positions of authority, such as the Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, resettles harass and victimize everyone from Afrikaans schools to committed, dedicated heads of schools that are actually doing an excellent job, such as the head mistress of Pretoria Girls High School being relentlessly persecuted because one racist Premier has decided she must be be guilty of some wrongdoing.

The Bela Act has been promulgated for one single, main primary reason, and that is to give government control over the entire basic education sector. Secondary reasons were to get rid, for once and all, of Afrikaans schools, and to enforce the ANC’s distorted, racist views on “equity” in education (that is, to pursue the National Democratic Revolution). Typically ANC, and Lesufi, the Act foes to ridiculous, outrageous extremes, including possibly imprisoning parent for not sending their children to the now newly compulsory Grade R. Ya, right, that will save use from the thieving, looting bunch of “revolutionaries” and turn a failed educational regime into one producing real winners.

What I remembered about my days as a university student, was that I had to took student loans to pay for my studies (including my accommodation and meals). My parents did what they could, and I honor them for that, and am very thankful for their devotion and sacrifices, but, fact of the matter, remains that there simply was not enough money for them paying for my studies. I did not drove a car, then, because, again – no money.

I am referring to this point because, contrary to the believe in the country, not all White people of my generation study and live in luxury and care-free comfort. Later-on, as my studies progressed, and I achieve academic merit, bursaries reduced the financial burden considerably. However, there was no NSFAS to pay for my studies, my accommodations, and even give me an allowance for food and textbooks. Student support programmes were purely merit-based. No free tertiary education.

I cannot put myself in the shoes of a Black child, because I never was in such a position. My point is simply this: These commentators that are o! so eager, willing and almost desperate to tell me about the suffering of others, for which I must now accept discrimination against myself, do not now the conditions in which I had to study and learn either. Point is, as we say in Afrikaans, “’n saak het altyd twee kante.”

This is the issue: Not even the United States of America, or Europe, or the rich Asian countries, can really afford free tertiary education. That is why their most reputable universities are privately funded ones, including Harvard and MIT. South Africa’s efforts to enforce it has gone a long way to chance away some of its best academics, and specifically researchers, and have resulted in the deterioration of tertiary education in the country.

I don’t necessarily think the quality of scholiastic standards, that is, “everyday” teaching and learning at tertiary academic institutions, have deteriorated over the years; I think it has remained more or less the same. This is the “thing” about the academic world (and, as explained earlier, I know): It’s about theory, not practice. As long as you have the required “learned knowledge” (let’s face it, basically the equal of the “philosophical understanding”) of a subject matter, and the ability to teach it to others, university learning will remain more-or-less the same, even over the ages.

It is true that some academic institutions, such as Harvard University and MIT (again - sorry about that) have developed remarkable reputations for producing scholars that actually achieved a much better-than-average success rate in, and with operating in, their chosen professional fields. However, if this must be a point of argument in South African, then, I am afraid, given the general collapse and deterioration in the country, it will be a very negative reflection on the country's tertiary education institutions.

What truly determines the quality of a university, is its ability to run a smooth, high-quality governance structure, which include affording and attracting the best quality and most reputable academics, and let the institution’s reputation precedes it.

In my time universities were well-governed, “disciplined” institutions with pride, order and structure. These days, way too many university administrations have became the battlefields for in-fighting among ambitious political cadres for positions of power, privilege, and money. The academic world has become the red-zone for affirmative action and social engineering. The state of stately buildings and desperately needed equipment (especially research-based tools) have deteriorated beyond comparison. The looting has expanded to include the wallets of academic institutions. This, the deterioration in the hidden structure of non-teaching assets at universities, have led to the demise thereof.

Ideologically-driven administrators, including vice-rectors, have revised, or, perhaps I must say, simply continued, the devastating patterns of unequalness in judgement displayed during the apartheid years – only in “reserves application” now (just think about Wim de Villiers at Stellenbosch, as a mere example, as clearly illustrated in various examples where race played a role in decision judgements).

Then there’s SAQA and the SETAs. If there were ever disastrous failures, it is the SETAs.

Back in the mid-1990s, when I started my career in the public sector, academic institutions offer the officially recognized academic qualifications useful for promotion and appointment in the public sector. As a different, distinct function, private companies offered training, but more often experience-based conferences and seminars. Internal curses were offered that were very practical in nature, and task-based (and the completion thereof required for profession-specific career advancement).

This system worked, very well. Actually, if I would express any critique on it, it will be that the allowance made for career advancement based on academic qualifications was the weak link in the system. Internal courses were excellent and very much task-specific. There was logical structure in the design: Internal training taught workplace skills, while private service providers allowed to offer supplementary workshops and conferences with nationally and even internationally renowned experts that shared insights and in-depth knowledge with practitioners on a level of experience and professional development adequately equipped to really benefit the employer.

Then, suddenly, it was all thrown out of the window to make place for this ideologically-driven rubbish of educational events that must be “SETA-accredited”. Apparently, the idea was that all courses about a specific subject matter must be taught across the country and specificalities, to teach learners the same skills and competencies. The central authority in this model was to be the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).

Problem is just that, more often than comfortable for the common good, the “experts” accepted by SAQA were way too academic, and way too often simply not experienced and competent enough to developed material to be taught to all, in a standard format, across sectors, and industries. More than that, so-called “standardization” is all about socialist control, and never a good idea. Training and competency-building must be context – and situation-specific.

In the process of all of this, preciously important schools, such as technical colleges, nursing colleges and teachers' colleges, were shut down. In the process, the technical practical foundation of the South African collective industrial and occupational foundation was destroyed.

Personally, I believe that one of the may, yet hidden, aims of the SETA system was to monopolize the extremely lucrative training and conference system, which generated billions of Rands per year, in the hands of an elite associated with the governing oligarchy. Accreditation requirements allowed the cadres to control participants in the system and restrict competition.

Pools of money-bags were created, including NSFAS and the SETAs. For the SEYAs, one percent of the wage bills of ALL enter-prizes in the country with more than 50 employees or a turnover of R50 million per year must be paid over into the Skills Development Fund.

What happened? Exactly the same as with virtually all other pools of collected cash in the country: The “funds” have become cesspools of corruption and looting.

And education has dropped into the gutters.

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