There is no place for him [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour.... For that reason it is of no avail for him to receive a training which has as its aim absorption in the European community.... Until now he has been subject to a school system which drew him away from his own community and misled him by showing him the green pastures of European society in which he is not allowed to graze.

What is the use of teaching a Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? . . . That is absurd. Education is not after all something that hangs in the air. Education must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life. ... It is therefore necessary that native education should be controlled in such a way that it should be in accordance with the policy of the State. The whole emphasis of education had to be changed. Instead of providing a comparatively expensive and intensive education for a small number of children, the aim of the government would be to give as many African children as possible such 'fundamental' educational facilities as could be provided with available funds. Effort would be concentrated on 'education in sub-standards A and B, and probably up to standard 2, including reading, writing, and arithmetic through mother-tongue instruction, as well as a knowledge of English and Afrikaans, and the cardinal principles of the Christian religion'. The present 'standard 6 mentality' of the teachers would have to be abandoned.

Verwoerd took the opportunity of issuing a word of warning to the teachers. For those who were not faithful to the government's programme there was no room in Bantu education, he said.

The Bantu teacher must be integrated as an active agent in the process of development of the Bantu community. He must learn not to feel above his community with a consequent desire to become integrated into the life of the European community. He becomes frustrated and rebellious when this does not take place, and he tries to make his community dissatisfied because of such misdirected ambitions which are alien to his people.

One of the means by which Verwoerd proposed to bring about the desired frame of mind in the African teacher was the lowering of his salary scale. 'The Bantu teacher serves the Bantu community, and his salary must be fixed accordingly.' Not only were present salaries sufficient and any demands for increases quite unrealistic, but in the new conditions of service for teachers which will be published soon, there will appear new salary scales for newly-appointed teachers, and these scales will be possibly less favourable than the existing scales. In future those who wish to choose the teaching profession are, therefore, warned in time, so that they should take this into consideration. The salaries which European teachers enjoy are in no way a fit or permissible criterion for the salaries of Bantu teachers.

The existing scales were low enough. Unqualified teachers (there were about 3,000 of them) earned £6 10s. a month including cost of living allowance. Trained teachers earned from £6 10s. to £12 10s. (with cost of living allowance) or from £9 to £19 10s. according to qualifications. University graduates could earn from £16 10s. a month to £29 (excluding cost of living allowance) after thirteen years. Women earned less; and there were no pensions for African teachers.

Improved salary scales were not introduced until 1963, when the key scale became £48 x 9 - £156 x 12 - £192 x 18 - £300 x 24 - £540 x 30 - £900 x 36. ... The new scales provide for consolidation of the existing cost of living allowances up to the maximum rate of £320 a year for married male teachers. Needless to say these scales were far below those of European teachers, substantial increases for whom were also announced in 1963. The lowest starting salary for a European male teacher was £603 a year, and for a European female teacher £510.

11.4 Indoctrinating the Young

New salary scales were introduced in the same period for White, Coloured and Indian teachers as well, but it was calculated at the time that the ratios in the top notches of the new scales, for male teachers in secondary schools who had a degree and a professional certificate, were:

White100

Coloured (Cape) 65.5

Married African 53.2

Single African 34

(Muriel Horrell, Survey of Race Relations, 1963)

The Minister of Bantu Education told the House of Assembly on 19 June 1965 that less than half his total force of African teachers - 12,127 - were getting salaries in excess of £1 per working day.

Addressing a special conference of the Transvaal United African Teachers' Association at the Atteridgeville Community Centre in March 1966, Professor W. M. Kgware, Professor of Education at the University College of the North, and Chairman of the first Advisory Board for Bantu Education appointed by the Bantu Education Department, blamed low salaries for the shortage of competent and fully qualified teachers. The salary scales introduced in 1963 were 'woefully inadequate', he said. African teachers were not satisfied with the salaries they received (Rand Daily Mail, 29 March 1966).

The total cost of the 1963 increases to the State was £875,000 a year. Proposals advanced by the Secretary for Bantu Education in February 1966 for further increments totalling £1,250,000 were described as 'peanuts' by Mr Chris Mchunu, General Secretary of the Natal African Teachers' Union. 'We certainly cannot call them impressive.... Professionally they are a disappointment. Their White counterparts earn thrice as much' (The Sun, Durban, 12 February 1966).

The new scales for African teachers in the Republic and the Transkei, as well as for Coloured and Asian teachers, were finally introduced on 1 April 1967, and details were published in the June 1967 issue of the Bantu Education Journal. Answering a question in the Assembly on 13 February 1968, the Minister of the Interior said that the overall percentage increase for all non-White teachers was 25.6, with the percentage increase for each group as follows:

Coloured and Indian men 8.5

Coloured and Indian women 7

Bantu men 56.7

Bantu women 30.5

In a subsequent statement to the House on 27 February 1968, the Minister of Bantu Education was able to claim that 21,108 of the 21,728 teachers subsidized or employed by his Department were earning salaries in excess of 2 Rand per working day. Of the 4,512 unqualified teachers employed by the Department, however, only fifteen were getting more than 2 Rand a working day. A further 7,000-odd teachers (over twenty percent of the total) are privately paid, and it is likely that a number of these also get less than 2 Rand a working day.

African teachers themselves, however, expressed shock at the new scales, which they described as 'disgraceful' and 'scandalous' (Rand Daily Mail, 28 April 1967). Considering how low their pay scales are in relation to their white counterparts, and how inadequate in relation to the cost of living, their indignation is perfectly understandable. The numbers of both training colleges and African teachers have fluctuated from year to year, with an overall tendency to decline. In 1948- the year of the Nationalist accession to power there were thirty-nine training colleges, with an enrolment of 6,499 students. In 1954 - the year before the introduction of Bantu Education - the number of teacher-trainees was at its peak, with a total of 6,863 in forty-two colleges. In 1963 - the last year before the separation of Transkei education and therefore the last year in which consolidated figures are available there were forty-three colleges, but the number of students had diminished to 4,186 (Minister of Bantu Education, Assembly, 8 June 1965). Whereas in 1953 the total number of African teachers in government and state-aided schools was 21,477, by 1963 the total number of African teachers in schools for African children had risen to only 29,496, with an additional 529 Whites and 94 Coloured, making a total of 30,119 (Minister, Assembly, 23 February 1954, and Report of Bantu Education Department for 1963). Thus, to make a quick comparison, while the number of African children had approximately doubled during this period, the number of teachers had increased by only about one third.

In 1967 there were 28,642 African teachers employed in government and State-aided schools, and 3,219 in private schools in the Republic excluding the Transkei (Minister, Assembly, 5 May 1967). The Report of the Transkeian Education Department for 1965 stated that 5,286 African teachers were then employed in the Transkei. The total number of teacher trainees in the Republic and the Transkei in 1966 was 4,986 (Survey of Race Relations, 1966).

The qualifications of African teachers also leave a lot to be desired, and there has been a clear decline in standards since Bantu Education was introduced. According to information given by the Minister to the Assembly on 12 March 1963, of 26,465 teachers employed by his department in 1961, 57.2 per cent had only a standard 6 pass, 36 per cent a standard 8 pass, 3.4 per cent a standard 10 pass, and 3.4 per cent a university degree. By 1965, the percentage of teachers, at African schools in the Republic, with a degree had declined to 1.39 percent of the total: 2.35 per cent had diplomas from the Department, or other professional qualifications; 31.45 per cent had a higher primary teachers' certificate; 45.47 per cent a lower primary teachers' certificate; 0.21 per cent technical qualifications; and 19.13, lesser qualifications.

In the same year the Transkei was more fortunate. Teachers with a degree totalled 2.14 of the total; and those with matriculation, 7.60 percent. But 90.26 of Transkei teachers in African schools still had qualifications lower than matriculation.

The South African Government and its information services claim that Bantu Education has made possible a vast increase in the number of children at school, and a great improvement in the scope and quality of their education. The booklet Education for Success, published by the Department of Information at the South African Embassy in London in April 1965, claimed in its introduction:

In standard and scope the education programme for South Africa's non-White peoples has no equal on the African continent. ... Even now four out of every five Bantu children are at school. The total Bantu enrolment is nearly two million. This is twice what it was only ten years ago. ... Opportunities for vocational and technical education for the non-White peoples ... are incomparably better than those for the rest of Africa.

In fact, it is very difficult to compare achievement in African schools before and after the introduction of Bantu Education, because the whole basis of education has been made different. In the year 1953-4, of 5,819 African schools, 4,827 were aided private schools (mostly mission schools), and only 992 Government ones. The total number of children attending these schools was 883,896, of which 209,916 were at Government schools and 673,980 at State-aided ones (Minister of Native Affairs, House of Assembly, 23 February 1954).

In 1963, there were 8,463 schools for Africans in South Africa (including the Transkei): of this number, 6 provided technical secondary education; 19, vocational training; and 40, teacher training (Report of the Department of Bantu Education for 1963). The report gave a total enrolment of 1,770,371, of which 1,680,503 attended some form of State or State-aided school, while only 89,868 attended Church or other private schools. In June 1960, of 7,721 schools for Africans in South Africa, only 714 were unaided mission schools.

Thus, whereas African education was largely conducted in private schools before 1954, today the overwhelming bulk is under the direct control of the Department of Bantu Education. The change came in 1954, when all Church bodies controlling subsidized schools were given a choice between relinquishing control over their schools or accepting a gradual reduction in their State subsidy. Of forty denominations, only the Roman Catholic Church chose to retain its schools, and since 1958 it has ceased to receive any subsidy from the government. In Johannesburg the Anglican Bishop, Ambrose Reeves, chose to close down all Church schools rather than hand them over to the Bantu Education Department.

African school enrolment in the Republic and the Transkei at the end of the first term in 1966 was:

Enrolment Percentage

Lower primary schools 1,464,660 71.82

Higher primary schools 493,858 24.22

Total primary 1,958,518 96.04

Form I 32,530 1.59

Form II 22,575 1.11

Form III 13,977 0.68

Form IV 3,404 0.17

Form V 1,606 0.08

Total secondary 74,092 3.63

Vocational, technical and teacher-training 6,816 0.33

Combined Totals 2,039,426 100.0

Of this total number, 334,310 were in the Transkei. The only later figure available at the time of writing was supplied by the Minister of Bantu Education, who stated in the Assembly on 16 February 1968 that the 'total number of Bantu children enrolled in schools as on the first day of June 1967 was 1,889,046. This figure presumably applies to the Republic excluding the Transkei. The Minister gave the following percentage breakdown:

Sub-standard A 25.43

Sub-standard B 18.77 Lower Primary

Standard I 15.58 71.23

Standard II 11.45

Standard III 8.77

Standard IV 6.45 Higher Primary

Standard V 4.42 24.60

Standard VI 1.62

Form I 1.62

Form II 1.18 Secondary

Form III 0.76 3.83

Form IV 0.17

Form V 0.10

The Minister added that 6,431 pupils (0.34 percent) were enrolled in technical secondary, teachers' training and trade schools.

There has certainly been an increase in African school enrolments since the introduction of Bantu Education, but it is impossible to claim, as the government constantly does, that this is entirely due to the introduction of Bantu Education. The Minister of Bantu Education, Mr Maree, asserted in the House of Assembly on 20 May 1963 that the proportionate increase in enrolments under Bantu Education was 'unequalled in the world'; and speaking at Nongoma, the Minister said that enrolments had increased by 130 percent from 1948 to 1962 (quoted in the South African Digest of 3 November 1963).

Commenting on these claims, Dr W.G. McConkey, former Director of Education in Natal, declared in an article in the Johannesburg Star on 2 December 1963:

Without the church schools, which Bantu Education has deprived of grants and cannot claim any credit for, the percentage increase would be about 110. ... But even 130 percent increase in fourteen years is by no means 'unequalled in the world'. It is the kind of increase which any tolerably competent education department, given reasonable financial backing, could take in its stride.

Dr McConkey pointed out that in Natal, during the same period, White school enrolment had risen by over 95 percent, and Indian school enrolment by about 186 percent, while 'in the previous fourteen-year period (1934-48) our African school enrolments had risen by 124 percent (including very steeply rising secondary enrolments) without any fuss or ballyhoo, and in spite of real shortages of men and materials caused throughout six years by the Second World War'.

The achievement of Bantu Education begins to take on its proper significance when one considers the spread of children over the various classes. Figures given by the Minister of Bantu Education in the Assembly on 29 May 1964 show that in 1954, of the total enrolment in 'Bantu Schools', 70.94 percent were in the lower primary classes. By 1966, as we have seen above, the percentage was 7I.82. The percentage in higher primary classes in 1954 was 24.65; in 1966, 24.22. The percentage in secondary schools in 1954 was 3.47; in 1966, barely higher at 3.63. The percentage in teacher training alone in 1954 was 0.73; that for teacher training, vocation and technical training together in 1966 was 0.33.

11.5 Indoctrinating the Young

STATE EXPENDITURE

It is in the financing of African education that the Nationalist government most fully reveals its true intentions, and incidentally confirms how faithfully it has carried out the instruction of the Christian National Education pamphlet that 'Native education should not be financed at the expense of White'.

Before the introduction of Bantu Education, it had been accepted that African education, like any other, was a general charge on the community as a whole, and between 1945 and 1953-4 the per capita cost to the State had increased from £3.83 to £9, with a total expenditure on African education in the year 1953-4 of £7,856,194 (A Decade of Bantu Education by Muriel Horrell, p. 155). After Bantu Education started in 1954, the formula was changed. The State contribution was limited to an annual £6,5 million, to which were added four fifths of African general tax revenue and miscellaneous receipts (boarding fees, etc.). The rate of African taxation was increased from 1959, and from 1 April 1963 the full amount collected in African taxation, instead of four-fifths as formerly, accrued to the Bantu Education account. The estimates of revenue for the Bantu Education Account in 1963-4 (the last year for which a comparison can be made because of the subsequent separation in financing African education in the Transkei) were:

Fixed statutory appropriation from general revenue, £6,500,000

Proceeds of African general tax £3,900,000

Miscellaneous receipts £365,000

Total £10,765,0 00

Thus, while the intake of the African schools had practically doubled in the decade after the introduction of Bantu Education, the available finance had increased by only about forty percent -and even this increase had only been possible because of the increased contribution by the African people themselves.

A study of the comparative amounts per capita spent on the school education of the various racial groups shows a worsening in the position of the African. In 1953, the figures were:

Per pupil Per head of population

Whites £63 18 5 £13 9 5

Coloureds and Asian 20 4 3 3 19 7

Africans 8 19 11 17 10

A further set of figures, culled from official sources, is contained in Education and the South African Economy, prepared by a panel of experts and published by the Witwatersrand University Press in 1966:

Per capita expenditure on pupils in primary and secondary schools in 1960

Whites 114.1 Rand (£57.05)

Coloureds and Indians 74.5 Rand (£37.25)

Africans 13.5 Rand (£6.75)

(Until the devaluation of the £ sterling in November 1967, £1 was equivalent to 2 Rand.)

The per capita figures for African school pupils since then show no improvement:

1961 £6.90

1962 6.15

1963 6.05

1964 6.71

1965 6.91

The latest figure available at the time of writing is for 1966-67, given by the Minister of Bantu Education - in reply to a question in the Assembly on 19 March 1968 - as 11.50 Rand for pupils in primary classes and 52.58 Rand for pupils in post-primary classes. The Minister said that these figures were approximate, and it was not possible to furnish accurate estimates of per capita expenditure, since records were not kept in this way.

The pattern of expenditure on African education has changed since the separation of the Transkei. For example, the Transkei Appropriation Act No. 1 of 1967 allocated 5,554,000 Rand to education for the period 1967-8. No details of the proposed expenditure were given. Nevertheless, since approximately half of the Transkei's budget for 1967-8 was paid for by central government grants totalling nearly 11 million Rand, it can be assumed that there has been some increase in government spending on African school education, as the statutory £6,5 million grant now goes to schools in the Republic only, excluding the Transkei. Calculations by Muriel Horrell of total expenditure on primary, secondary and higher education for the various racial groups in 1965-6 still, however, reveal gross discrimination against the Africans:

Total expenditure in Rand Per head of population in Rand Percentage of total expenditure

Whites 252,259,000 74.30 77.27

Coloured 30,859,000 17.71 9.45

Asian 14,300,000 26.83 4.38

African 29,057,000 2.39 8.90

The general effect of decreased financial support alongside increased enrolment has been a decline in educational standards and facilities. Schools are overcrowded. A report in the Johannesburg Star of 20 January 1966 stated: 'Soweto primary schools are bursting at the seams with classes in some cases as large as 500 pupils, according to some principals.' Two years later the situation was no better, and the Rand Daily Mail of 30 April 1968 reported: 'More than 400 Soweto pupils attending classes in an outdoor school are freezing because their school has no classrooms to accommodate them.' And these are the lucky ones; hundreds of others are turned away each year, because the overburdened staff cannot cope with them, even in the open air.

Throughout the period of Bantu Education, it has been possible to accommodate the increasing number of children only by resorting to the system of double sessions, which applied according to a statement in the Assembly by the Minister on 29 May 1964 - to a total of 5,107 schools. A year later, the Minister claimed that there had been a gradual decrease in the proportion of schools with double sessions, from 64.2 percent of the total in 1957 to 56.9 percent in 1964 (Minister, Assembly, 19 May 1965). But according to press reports in 1965, overcrowding in some schools was so serious that three sessions had had to be introduced. The official pupil-teacher ratio was given by the Minister in the Assembly on 2 April 1963 as: lower primary classes, 55 pupils per teacher; higher primary classes, 50 pupils per teacher; post-primary classes, 35 pupils per teacher.

The effect of double sessions in teaching is a two-fold lowering in the standard of education. On the one hand, the child obtains only half the schooling he would normally enjoy, and has to spend the other half of the day roaming about the township without supervision and with nothing to do. In his Senate speech in 1954, Dr Verwoerd, dealing with this question, said: 'It is not the function of the school to keep children off the streets or the veld by using well-paid teachers to supervise them.' On the other hand, double sessions mean double work for the teaching staff, although for the government, of course, it has the solid advantage of making possible an increase in enrolment without a proportionate increase in costs.

The government's official policy is still that the government expects any increase in the amounts spent on African education to come from the Africans themselves, and refuses to increase the statutory annual grant of 13 million Rand. State expenditure on all forms of education for all races was 4.6 percent of national income in 1950; 4.5 percent, in 1960; and 4.5 percent, in 1963, according to figures given by the Minister of Education, Arts and Science in the Assembly on 5 May 1965. But of this total, a smaller and smaller portion has accrued to African education. In a memorandum calling for increased State expenditure on Bantu Education, the South African Institute of Race Relations set out the proportion of net national income spent on Bantu Education as follows:

1953-4 0.57 percent

1958-9 0.49 percent

1961-2 0.42 percent

1963-4 0.396 percent

(Quoted in the 1965 Survey of Race Relations)

In her book A Decade of Bantu Education, Muriel Horrell calculated that, in direct taxation and voluntary contributions, African parents contributed proportionately more to the education of their children than did any other section of the population. African parents pay voluntary levies towards the erection of schools and the payment of teachers, while African children pay for items which are supplied free to White children. A survey conducted by the Natal region of the Institute of Race Relations, quoted in the Rand Daily Mail of 6 January 1966, showed that the total cost of sending one African child through to matriculation was £140. And this sum did not include the cost of school uniforms, sports equipment, satchels, suitcases, sports funds, medical funds, bus and train fares, or maintenance during holidays. Proportional to White income, the Rand Daily Mail special correspondent calculated, the £140 was equivalent to £560.

'How many White children could you afford to matriculate at that cost?' he asked, stating that this is one aspect of life in South Africa which should make those claiming to be proud of what their government does for race relations 'grovel with shame and self-hate'.

MOTHER TONGUE EDUCATION

One of the factors which has caused most distress to the Africans themselves has been the enforced introduction of education in the vernacular, with the allocation of equal time to both official languages. Before Bantu Education, education had been conducted in the vernacular only in the lower primary classes. Today all teaching is done in the vernacular up to and including standard 6, and the declared aim is to continue the process all the way to matriculation. The effect of this policy has been two-fold (a) to make it more difficult to study subjects like mathematics, which have either not at all or only inadequately been translated into the vernacular; and (b) to lower standards in both official languages, English and Afrikaans. According to an official commission appointed in the Transkei to consider the problem, which reported in 1963, the overwhelming majority of witnesses stated that 'the standard of English had declined considerably and that it was still deteriorating'. Indeed: 'The commission's own observations in those schools visited seemed to indicate an almost frighteningly low standard of education in all subjects' (R.P. 22/1963).

The intention behind the use of the vernacular is to link the schools with the system of Tribal Authorities in the Bantu communities they are ultimately designed to serve. But so long as this policy is pursued, so long will 'Bantu Education' be separated from the education of all other groups in South Africa. The ethnic university will become, not merely in law but in practice, the only outlet for the African matriculant, who will find himself in possession of qualifications which are not acceptable elsewhere.

Recognizing the danger, the Transkei Legislative Assembly, during its first session, on 10 June 1964 decided that the syllabuses of the Bantu Education Department should be scrapped in all Transkei schools and replaced by syllabuses of the Cape Provincial Education Department. The Assembly also decided that, from standard 3, English or Afrikaans should displace the vernacular as medium of instruction, with the choice left to the parents. In the event, every single school in the Transkei opted for English (Muriel Horrell, Survey of Race Relations, 1964 and 1965).

EXAMINATION RESULTS

The decline in standards was not confined to the Transkei, and can perhaps best be measured by a study of the matriculation results for the years during which Bantu Education has been in operation. The following statistics for matriculation passes were given by the Minister of Bantu Education in the Assembly on 14 February 1961 in respect of all State and State-aided schools in South Africa:

Year Total candidates Total passes Percentage passes

1953 547 259 47.3

1954 523 234 44.7

1955 595 230 38.7

1956 768 354 46.1

1957 745 292 39.2

1958 660 248 37.6

1959 629 118 18.8

1960 716 128 17.9

A further set of figures for State and State-aided schools was given in the annual report of the Bantu Education Department for 1961, when 635 candidates wrote the examination and 146 passed, making a total percentage of 23.

Results in private schools have been better than in State and State-aided schools, and figures supplied by the Minister since 1960 have shown a greatly improved percentage because they covered all African schools and not merely those for which his Department was responsible. In 1959, for example, when State schools registered an 18-8 percentage pass, all schools together showed a 29 percentage pass, with the results for private schools greatly improving the overall picture.

Later figures covering all schools, including private ones, are as follows:

Year Total candidates Total passes Percentage passes

1961 839 212 25.3

1962 910 364 40

1963 882 531 60

1964 1,033 635 61. 5

1965 1,311 827 63.o

1966 1,547 871 56.3

1967 2,034 967 47.5

(Bantu Education Journal, March 1965 and March 1966, and Minister of Bantu Education, Assembly, 9 and 19 February 1965;31 January 1967; and 20 February 1968)

These figures show that the rate of improvement for the years 1961-5 is not being maintained, and in view of the continuing financial restrictions and the deteriorating teacher-trainee position, the future outlook can hardly be described as bright.

Moreover, further analysis of the figures shows that, of the 967 Africans who passed standard 10 in 1967, only 485 obtained matriculation or equivalent certificates, while only 125 passed in mathematics. The corresponding figures for 1966 were 411 matriculants, with 109 passes in mathematics. These figures simply mean that the number of potential university entrants is pegged at a low level, with equally little hope of improvement for the future. The vicious circle is complete.

According to figures supplied in the South African Statistical Year Book for 1964, it would appear that, in terms of the 1960 census enumeration, the following numbers from each racial group had passed the matriculation examination:

Total passes Percentage of racial group

Whites 475,373 15.39

Africans 14,421 0.13

Coloureds 8,429 0.54

Asians 6,517 1.37

Bantu Education is doing nothing to redress this balance. In 1967, when only 967 Africans passed standard 10, approximately 30,000 White children passed as well, 25 percent of them with university entrance qualifications.

Bearing in mind that not one of the top 150 administrative and professional posts in the Bantu Education Department is held by an African (Minister of Bantu Education, 6 April 1965), it would be hard to find a more blatant example of a White supremacy government trying to impose an unwanted system of education on a subject people. Even in the Transkei, though the Minister of Education today is Black, his leading educational officials are White.

To describe Bantu Education as something desired by the Africans themselves is absurd. Africans are deeply disturbed about the course that Bantu Education is taking. They appreciate that education is the key to their future, and they have everywhere shown themselves willing to make enormous sacrifices in order to ensure that their children get the chance of a good education. But they are faced with a terrible dilemma, for they must either accept Bantu Education or get no education for their children at all. Their attitude was expressed by Mrs Lilian Ngoyi, chairman of the South African Federation of Women, who said at the time that Bantu Education was first introduced: 'The Bantu Education Act will make African mothers like fowls who lay eggs for other people to take away and make what they like with them.'

COLOURED AND INDIAN SCHOOLS

Just as Bantu Education has been ostensibly designed to prepare the ' Bantu' students for service to 'their own communities', so education for Coloured and Indian children has been separated from White education for similar reasons. Coloured vocational and technical training was transferred to the Coloured Affairs Department in 1961, and in 1963 the Coloured Persons Education Act transferred Coloured primary and secondary education to it as well. Indian education was transferred to the Indian Affairs Department in 1965.

Introducing the Coloured Persons Education Act at its second reading in the Assembly on 21 February 1963, the Minister of Coloured Affairs, Mr P. W. Botha, said that the Coloured child would be trained to serve his community, his people, and the country to the best of his ability. No doubt bearing in mind the C.N.E. injunction that Coloured education must not be a burden on the Whites, the Minister announced that the Coloured people would increasingly contribute to their education and the costs connected with it.

At the time of the transfer, the state of Coloured education was similar to that of the Africans in 1953. In 1961 there were 1,491 schools for Coloured and Asian children in the Cape, and of these 1,247 were aided mission schools. The government's policy envisages the steady exclusion of the mission influence and the assumption of complete State control. In the words from a speech by the Minister of Coloured Affairs on 31 October 1962: ' We shall give no inferior education, but shall most certainly give Coloured people differentiated education. It would not help to give them only academic education and to throw them on the market as frustrated people.' Botha's promise that 'we shall give no inferior education' was put to the test, during the committee stage on the Bill, with an amendment to insert a clause that would guarantee Coloured children the same standard of education as Whites. Botha refused to accept the clause, explaining that 'many Coloured people could not cope with the education Whites received; many teachers had only reached standard 8 '.

Not surprisingly, all the Coloured teachers' organizations opposed the transfer (the Minister accused them of political agitation and declared that there was a need for a new Coloured teachers' organization which would devote itself solely to education). Even the government-appointed National Council for Coloured Affairs opposed the transfer unless certain conditions were met - that there should be compulsory education; a raising of the school leaving age; equal pay for Coloured and White teachers; and parallel medium education in all Coloured schools. The government was unable to accept these conditions.

The place of the Coloured and Asian citizens of South Africa is approximately half-way between that of the Whites and the Africans. The educational provisions made for these communities by the government are accordingly better than those for Africans, but worse than those for Whites.

Questioned in the Assembly on 27 February 1968, the Minister of Coloured Affairs said that 'the present bookkeeping system followed by the Department does not allow the calculation of per capita expenditure on Coloured pupils'. Different methods of bookkeeping are apparently followed in the Department of Indian Affairs, for on the same day the Minister of Indian Affairs gave the figures for Indian pupils in Natal as 53 Rand per primary school pupil, and 84 Rand per secondary and high-school pupil. These figures are for 'the latest year for which information is available', unfortunately not specified in either question or answer, but presumably 1967. Non-official estimates of per capita expenditure based on the 1960 census as reported on page 270, show that the figure for Whites was 114.1 Rand; for Coloureds and Asians, 74.5 Rand; and for Africans, 13.5 Rand. The 1961 report of the Superintendent General of Education for the Cape stated that in that year net costs per White pupil in the province had been £72.28, and per Coloured pupil £29.56.

Salary scales for Indian and Coloured teachers are roughly the same. The South African Institute of Race Relations estimated in 1965 that the salaries of Coloured male teachers were about 77.4 percent those of White men in the Transvaal with the same qualifications, while Coloured women were paid 80.2 percent the salaries of White women teachers with the same qualifications (1965 Survey of Race Relations). The ratio of discrimination continues almost unchanged. On 26 March 1965, the Minister of Coloured Affairs, Mr Botha, said in the Assembly that Coloured teachers with the same qualifications as White teachers could not yet be paid the same salaries. 'The time is not yet considered ripe for the acceptance of this principle,' he explained.

The spread of pupils over the classes in Coloured and Indian schools is on the whole better, if not much better, than in African schools, and the drop-out rate is lower. Total enrolment of Coloured pupils in the final term of 1966 was 390,600, of whom 66.18 percent were in the lower primary classes and 24.49 percent in the higher primary classes -altogether 90.67 percent in primary school. The total in post-primary classes was 9.23 percent of the total, with 0.35 in standard 10. The remaining 0.10 percent were in adaptation classes (Minister of Coloured Affairs, Assembly, 5 May 1967). Total enrolment in Coloured schools in 1967 was 390,600, of whom go percent were in the primary classes. Only 1,531 of the total (or 0.4 percent) wrote the standard 10 examination, of whom 934 or 61 percent passed (Assembly, 9 May 1967, 23 February 1968, and 26 April 1968).

Enrolment of Indian children at schools in the last quarter of 1967 was: Natal, 137,799; Transvaal, 22,012 - a total of 159,811, excluding Indian children in the Cape Province, for whom no separate figures are available. The percentages in the various classes were:

Natal Transvaal

Lower primary 48.7 40.4

Higher primary 31.6 30.I

Total primary 80.3 70.5

Secondary 19.7 29.5

100.0 100.0

(Minister of Indian Affairs, Assembly, 20 February 1968)

A total of 2,053 Indian pupils wrote the standard 10 examination in 1967, of whom 948 or 46-I percent passed. The percentage of pupils in standard 10 was I-2 in Natal and 2-2 in the Transvaal.

Like the Africans, the Indians have contributed a great deal over the years towards the education of their children. As Mrs Suzman pointed out in the debate on the Indians Education Bill - in the Assembly on 20 April 1965 - of 281 schools for Indians in Natal, only 51 were schools of the Provincial Department of Education, 9 were private institutions, 2 were aided religious schools, and 219 were privately-built schools which had been established on a pound for pound basis, with the Indian community having voluntarily contributed well over £1 million in the previous twelve years.

Replying to the debate on 21 April, 1965, the Minister of Indian Affairs, Mr Maree, while expressing his agreement with the Opposition demand that there should be universality in education, stated that nevertheless education must be 'viewed against the background of the individual character and the requirements of every community. It does not mean that education for every nation or for every community must be precisely the same in every respect . . . although they may all comply with universal requirements, surely they may differ from one another as far as the content of the educational matter or the details of the curricula are concerned.' Opposition members had claimed that Indians in Natal, where the United Party was in control of the Provincial Council, enjoyed the same education as Whites, but it was common knowledge that there were differences in the curricula as well as in such things as the issue of free books.

'Knowing that this is the position in Natal, the Hon. Member for Hillbrow makes the accusation against us that we now work to discriminate . . . that we want to give the Indian child an inferior education. That is not true. They have always received inferior education' (Hansard, 21 April, 1965).

UNIVERSITY APARTHEID

There has always been a considerable degree of apartheid at the South African universities. All the Afrikaans-medium ones Potchefstroom, Pretoria, Orange Free State, and Stellenbosch have, of course, from the outset restricted admission to Whites, while of English-medium universities, Rhodes in the Eastern Cape admitted only White students, though it had an arrangement with Fort Hare whereby the latter's students graduated with Rhodes degrees. Fort Hare was an open university and enrolled White students from time to time, but its 1957 enrolment of 378 was typical, with its break-down into 283 Africans, forty-eight Coloureds, and forty-seven Indians. Natal University admitted non-Whites but ran parallel classes for them so that no mixing with White students might be risked. Its enrolment of non-White students in 1957 broke down into twenty-four Coloureds, 350 Asians, and 181 Africans.

Only the universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand were 'open' universities in the sense that members of all races were freely admitted, but even then it was only an academic integration, and a strict colour bar was applied in social and sporting events.

Student opinion has advanced over the years, and some student organizations have refused to hold social functions altogether rather than hold them on a colour-bar basis. But the university councils, which receive a considerable portion of their funds from the State, have continued clinging to the policy of academic non-segregation and have insisted on maintaining a colour bar in social and sporting events on the grounds that public opinion as a whole is not ripe for a change. Their voluntary compliance with government policy was reinforced by the passage through Parliament in 1968 of the Universities Amendment Bill, giving the Minister of National Education the power to withhold payment of part or all of a government subsidy to a university if the university council failed to comply with any conditions laid down by the Minister.

Enrolment at South African universities in June 1959, just before the introduction of university apartheid, was as follows: Whites, 35,095; Coloureds, 822; Asians, 1,516; Africans, 1,871. The breakdown of non-White enrolment was as follows:

University Coloureds Asians Africans

Cape Town 461 133 39

Natal 50 489 187

Witwatersrand 30 193 74

Fort Hare 70 100 319

Total in resident unversities 611 915 619

University of South Africa

(correspondence only) 211 601 1,252

822 1,516 1,871

(Annual Report of Department of Education for 1960)

Yet to the Nationalist government this tiny number of non-White students represented a deadly danger. As Die Transvaler had said on 27 February 1957, in relation to the controversy over the Church clause:

It is not so much the overwhelming numbers of non-Europeans but the destruction of the feeling of difference and otherness which is the great danger for the preservation of the European and his civilization in this multi-racial land. As long as liberalistic bishops and canons, professors, students, and politicians can freely attend church and hold meetings and socials together, apartheid will be infringed in its marrow.

After much propaganda and several preliminary attempts, the Nationalist government finally passed in 1959 two Acts which sounded the death knell for higher education in South Africa the so-called Extension of University Education Act and the University College of Fort Hare Transfer Act. In terms of the former, it became a criminal offence for any non-White student to register at any of the hitherto open universities without the written consent of the Minister. Instead, the Act provided for the establishment of special university colleges for non-White students, who were to be separated on racial and ethnic lines.

The University College of the Western Cape, to serve the Coloured, Malay, and Griqua groups, was officially established on 1 November 1959, with classes started in an old school until such time as permanent buildings could be constructed. The Rector is Dr J.G. Meiring, former Superintendent-General of Education in the Cape and one of the members of the Institute for Christian-National Education which produced the C.N.O. programme of 1948. The language medium of the college is Afrikaans.

Two new colleges for Africans were officially opened on 1 August 1959. The University College of the North, to serve the Sotho group, is at Turfloop, about eighteen miles east of Pietersburg in the north-eastern Transvaal. The University College of Zululand, to serve the Zulu group, is at Ngoya, in the Mtunzini district of Natal. Dr Verwoerd declared in 1954:

An increase in the number of institutions for higher education located in urban areas is not desired. Steps will be taken deliberately to keep institutions for higher education, to an increasing extent, away from urban areas, and to establish them as far as possible in the Native Reserves. My Department's policy is that education should stand with both feet in the Reserves and have its roots in the spirit and being of Bantu society.

New buildings have been erected for these colleges, and to preserve their tribal flavour they have been equipped, not with common rooms for the students, but with circular lapas - roofless areas with built-in seats and in some cases central fireplaces. Where the students are supposed to congregate when it rains has not yet been stated.

A university college for Indians was opened during 1961 in buildings formerly used by the Navy on Salisbury Island in Durban Bay.

Meanwhile, in terms of the Fort Hare Transfer Act, the government has moved to convert Fort Hare from an open university to a Xhosa tribal college. Fort Hare had been incorporated as an institution for higher learning under the Education Act of 1923 and was affiliated to Rhodes University for examination and degree purposes in 1951. Under the University Act of 1955 it ranked as a university, and would in time have qualified for its own Charter; by the end of 1958 it had awarded 1,132 degrees and 771 diplomas and certificates. The staff was multiracial, consisting in 1959 of twenty-eight Whites, ten Africans, and one Coloured, while of the 430 students, only thirty-eight percent were of Xhosa origin, thirty-four percent came from other African groups, fourteen percent were Coloured, and fourteen percent Indian. At earlier periods in its history there had been White students at the university, and indeed one of the first four students to matriculate there in 1918 had been White.

But in the eyes of the Minister, Fort Hare was nothing but an English university for non-Whites, as he complained in the debate on the Transfer Bill. What the Xhosa needed was an institution of their own, expressing their own culture and rooted in their own community. He would even like to see Fort Hare moved into the heart of the Transkei, he declared, so that it could be in touch with the real feelings of the Xhosa.

Everything has changed since the transfer - but the Xhosa still have not got their own university. The Council of Fort Hare - like the councils of all the tribal colleges - is all White, under the chairmanship of Professor S. Pauw, Principal of the University of South Africa. Professor H. Burrows was not reappointed as Principal and was replaced by Professor J.J. Ross from the University of the Orange Free State. The Vice Principal, Professor Z.K. Matthews, was told that he would be re-appointed as a State employee if he resigned from the African National Congress. He refused to do so.

During September 1959 seven English-speaking White members of staff were informed that their appointments would be terminated at the end of the year. They were the heads of the departments of Law, English, Philosophy and Politics, and Geography, the Registrar, a lecturer, and the Librarian. The Minister of Bantu Education explained: 'I disposed of their services because I will not permit a penny of any funds over which I have control to be paid to any persons who are known to be destroying the government's policy of apartheid.' One of the victims, Sir Fulque Agnew, declared that he regarded his dismissal as ' a certificate of decency '. The sacking of these men was followed by the resignation of several leading staff members, including Dr D. Mtimkulu, Professor C. L. Nyembezi, Dr M. Webb, S. B. Ngcobo, and A. M. Phahle. They were paid gratuities but forfeited their pension rights.

The tribal colleges today are staffed largely by Whites, most of them Afrikaners, who are known to be firm supporters of apartheid. At Fort Hare, Turfloop, and Ngoya there were in 1967 only five African professors and forty-two African lecturers as against fifty-three White professors and 147 White lecturers (Deputy Minister of Bantu Education, Assembly, 8 March 1968). The staff is divided into two clearly marked categories according to race. White members of staff are Council employees, but African members are civil servants and subject to oppressive restrictions. There are substantial differences in pay between White and Black. The maximum salary for an African male professor at Fort Hare is less than the minimum salary for a White female professor. Similar discrimination is applied to the lecturing staff. In all categories the salaries paid to the White personnel are much higher than those received by their non-White colleagues.

STUDENT ENROLMENT

Enrolment at South African universities in 1967 showed that the physical presence of Africans on campuses regarded as White had practically been eliminated. Total enrolment at all universities and university colleges was: Whites 67,294; Coloureds, 931; Asians, 2,294; Africans, 1,880.

The breakdown of non-White enrolment was as follows:

University Coloureds Asians Africans

Cape Town 259 134 2

Natal 32 365 133

Rhodes -- 31 -

Witwatersrand 12 201 2

Total resident inWhite universities 303 731 137

The majority of African students at Natal were students at the segregated medical school.

The number of non-White students at the ethnic colleges in 1967 was as follows

Ethnic College Coloureds Asians Africans

Western Cape 560

Indian College 1,429

Fort Hare 2 434

The North 537

Zululand 341

Total in ethnic colleges 562 1,429 1,312

Total in White and ethnic colleges 865 2,160 1,449

University of South Africa (correspondence) 573 1,031 1,871

Grand Total 1967 1,438 3,191 3,320

Grand Total 1959 822 1,516 1,871

(Sources: Survey of Race Relations, 1967, and replies to questions by respective Ministers during 1968 session of House of Assembly)

The figures show an all-round increase in enrolment, certainly; but without analysis they could be misleading. For example, not all the students enrolled are properly qualified for university study, and not all are able to study for degrees. Of the total enrolment at the ethnic African colleges in 1967, no fewer than 146 at Fort Hare, 157 at Zululand and 128 at the College of the North were non-matriculated students. Furthermore, despite the increased enrolment, the number of Africans obtaining degrees at all universities, ethnic and White, including the University of South Africa, since 1959, the year of the changeover, has declined.

In 1959 197 Africans obtained degrees

1960 186

1961 182

1962 132

1963 171

1964 124

1965 154

1966 159

1967 200

By contrast, the number of Whites who obtained degrees in 1967 was 7,112, Coloureds 80 and Asians 225.

There has also been a decline in the number of Africans qualifying as doctors in the period from 1960 to 1967:

1960 18

1961 15

1962 14

1963 10

1964 17

1965 14

1966 13

1967 11

(Figures of degrees awarded are culled from statements by Ministers and officials of the Departments of Education and Bantu Education between 1964 and 1969)

The failure to increase the number of degrees awarded to Africans, despite the increased enrolment of African university students and despite the doubling of African school enrolment, is perhaps the most telling argument that Bantu Education is producing an inferior product. The total number and standard of matriculants are too low, and observable trends over the past ten years give one no reason to suppose that there will be any marked improvement in the near future.

In an article in the Natal Mercury on 8 March 1966, Dr E. G. Malherbe, former Principal of Natal University, said that there were 189 African students at Natal University alone in 1959, and that the numbers would have grown, especially if the money spent on the new colleges had been spent instead on subsidies to the existing universities. He emphasized that the establishment of these colleges had deprived many non-Whites of the opportunity of university education - for example, people in cities who could previously attend part-time classes; and Coloureds and Indians who lived long distances from their respective university centres in Cape Town and Durban and could not afford to leave home or pay boarding fees.

Nor should it be thought that the inferiority of higher education for Africans is due to lack of funds, as is the case in the Bantu Education schools. To establish university apartheid, the government has been prepared to spend enormous sums of money. In 1964 the cost per student to the state was 2,145 Rand at Fort Hare, 1,221 Rand at the College of the North, and 1,667 Rand at the Zululand college. This must be compared with the figures of 483 Rand per White university student and 1,342 Rand per African school pupil in the same year.

Rather is the answer to be found in the deliberate withholding from the non-Whites, and in particular from the African majority of the scientific and technological training essential for the control and administration of a modern industrial economy. There is a crippling shortage of skilled workers and technologists in South Africa. Outlining the government's development programme for the 1965-70 period in January 1966, the Minister of Planning, Mr Haak, said that White labour would be even scarcer in 1970 than it was in 1964. The target growth of the economy had been reduced from 5.9 per cent per annum to 5.4 per cent, because of the shortage of capital and the skilled labour bottleneck. Yet the government refuses to train non-Whites to fill the vacant jobs, and consciously directs its policy to ensure that the White man retains his monopolistic position. The bias in education is deliberate, and is complemented by job reservation and trade-union practice to ensure that the non-Whites are kept from any access to the sources of power.

When the debate took place in Parliament on the university apartheid Bills, the Minister indicated that non-White students would still be allowed to enter the White universities for courses which were not yet offered at the tribal colleges, or to complete courses which they had already begun. During the 1960 session the Minister of Education announced that 127 Coloureds and 526 Asians had applied for permission to enter one or other of the White universities. He had granted all the applications from Asians because no college had yet been established for them, but had refused permission to forty-eight Coloureds because alternative facilities existed. The Minister of Bantu Education, however, was much less accommodating. He reported that he had received 190 applications from Africans to enrol at the White universities, but had approved only four. The rest had been rejected because alternative facilities existed at the tribal colleges or by correspondence through the University of South Africa. And seven applicants who wished to study engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand had been refused permission because, in the Minister's opinion, there were as yet 'no prospects of employment for qualified Bantu engineers'. For them there were no alternative facilities. They were simply informed that they might not study engineering.

There are no facilities for studying engineering at the ethnic colleges, and the White colleges are closed to non-Whites. A committee drawn from the Departments of Education, Arts and Science, Finance, Native Affairs and Coloured Affairs, which was set up in 1956 to work out the financial implications of providing separate facilities, reported in a White Paper published in 1957:

The committee cannot recommend the establishment of such a faculty [engineering] for the simple reason that the demand for it among-Non-Europeans does not justify it. After the completion of the course there is practically no opportunity for the employment of trained Non-European engineers. Yet only a few years later, in 1966, a government commission, appointed in 1957 and headed by Dr Straszacker to investigate South Africa's engineering shortage, reported that there were an estimated 1,000 jobs waiting to be filled by qualified engineers in South Africa, and that the country's output of engineering graduates would have to be doubled to cope with the requirements of the expanding economy. The committee recommended among other things, that Africans should be given basic technical training at the tribal universities and then be allowed to qualify at the White universities. To date, reported the Commission, no more than ten non-Whites had graduated as engineers in South Africa, and only one of these had been an African (Rand Daily Mail, 21 and 22 June 1966).

Nor was it correct, as the earlier commission had claimed, that there is no demand for engineering training from the non-Whites. In his Budget speech to the Transkei Legislative Assembly on 4 May 1966, the Chief Minister, Kaiser Matanzima, said that industrial development and the government's building programme in the Transkei were being hamstrung by a serious shortage of skilled workers. All but the most minor jobs in the Transkei had to be given out on contract to private White firms because there were no trained Africans available (Rand Daily Mail, 5 May 1966).

As a result of sustained pressure from the Transkei government, the Republican government eventually granted permission for three Transkei students to register at the University of the Witwatersrand to study civil engineering (Rand Daily Mail, 29 February 1968). In the light of the country's needs, and those of the African people, however, this 'concession' can scarcely be regarded as crucial.

In the House of Assembly on 8 February 1966, the Minister of Bantu Education said that there were six technical schools and twenty-two vocational schools in the Republic catering for Africans, with the maximum enrolment 1,010 and 2,459 respectively. Two new technical schools were opened in 1967. There were also eleven trade schools in the Republic and two in the Transkei providing a more elementary form of training, with a total enrolment of just over 1,000. A new post-matriculation course for civil and agricultural engineering technicians was scheduled to begin in 1968 near Pietersburg, with an initial enrolment of fifteen.

The Minister said on 5 May 1967, in answer to a question in the Assembly, that thirty-five Africans had passed the technical Junior Certificate examination at the end of 1966. The previous year, the number of successful candidates had been fifty three.

The Eiselen Commission of 1949-51 which preceded the introduction of Bantu Education had recommended that the number of Africans receiving training in technical and vocational schools should be at least 6,000 by 1959. No estimate was made for later years, but in relation to the rate of development recommended by the Commission, the number of African trainees should have been at least 12,000-15,000 by 1967.

By contrast, the number of Whites who received training in technical and vocational schools during 1965 (the latest year for which figures have been supplied by the National Bureau of Educational and Social Research) was 73,226, of whom more than 10,000 were doing post-standard-10 work.

Nothing so well illustrates the government's determination to keep the key posts in the economy out of Black hands as the case of Mr Reginal Boleu, an African student at the University College of the North, who, after receiving a Johannesburg City Council bursary, had passed his matriculation (achieving distinction in mathematics) within three months of writing his Junior Certificate examination.

He wished to study atomic physics, but found that there were no facilities at the ethnic colleges and that he was unable to gain admission to the White universities where such facilities are available. Through the help of Anglo-American chairman Mr Harry Oppenheimer and his daughter Mary, Mr Boleu was assisted with funds and secured a scholarship at Uppsala University in Sweden. The head of the Department of Physics at the University College of the North, Professor D. Fourie, said in an affidavit: 'This is to certify that there are no facilities in the physics department of the college of the North for an M.Sc. course in nuclear physics. I think he [Mr Boleu] can gain from study at such a world-famous institution as the nuclear research section of Uppsala University.' The rector of the University College of the North, Mr E.F. Potgieter, endorsed the recommendation, saying: 'If Mr Boleu is successful in his course, he may contribute, eventually, towards university training in this country.' Mr Boleu's application for a passport to take up his scholarship, however, was refused by the government, after a delay of a year. He was compelled to apply for an exit permit, which meant that he could not return to the country and would be automatically deprived of his citizenship. This was granted within a few weeks.

Government newspapers, commenting on the case, tried to make out that Mr Boleu's academic record did not justify his claim to further study; but the latest report on his progress is that he passed the first candidate examination at Uppsala University and qualified to study for his Master's degree (Star, 25 March 1966).

Through this case, the government has said to Mr Boleu, and through him to African students in general: 'By all means qualify as an atomic scientist, but don't come back. We have no place for you in our society.' South Africa's first atomic reactor had just reached the critical stage, and South Africa stands in pressing need of trained atomic scientists and technicians. But they must not be Black.

Mr Boleu's case is by no means an isolated one. The South African government discourages attempts by African students to further their studies abroad, and it is the rare student who gets a passport to study at an overseas university. Most Africans studying outside South Africa today have left on exit permits or have crossed the frontier illegally.

It is clear that the tribal colleges, like the Bantu Education schools, are not universities in the true sense of the word and never will be, no matter how much money is spent on their development. They are not intended to be centres of learning, culture, and education, where the student may acquire access to the treasure-house of world knowledge, but forcing houses for apartheid. 'Surely,' stated Professor Matthews in an article for Africa South (July-September 1957), 'if the policy of apartheid or separate development is all that it is claimed to be, it ought to mean that within their separate university institutions the non-Whites will have all the freedoms normally associated with university life in other societies, instead of being expected to work in an atmosphere of compulsion.' But both students and African staff are subject to the most stringent and humiliating restrictions, restrictions which would not be tolerated for one moment at any White university. At the Bantu Education schools and the tribal colleges, discipline indeed is enforced literally at the point of a gun.

Both the Bantu Education schools and the tribal colleges have been racked with disturbances from the outset. The very inauguration of Bantu Education in the schools was met with a massive boycott, called by the African National Congress, which in several centres established cultural clubs as an alternative to the schools. Unfortunately, in terms of the law the cultural clubs could not teach, and the African parent wants his child to be educated. In the end there was no alternative but to send the children back to school.

Other disturbances have been produced by the very stringency of the regulations employed to control the students. A complaint about food here, a show of student initiative there, has been met with reprisals which have provoked the student body as a whole to strikes and demonstrations. The response of the authorities has generally taken the form of mass expulsions or suspensions and careful re-screening of applicants. There already exists a formidable blacklist of students who have been expelled and prohibited from ever again being admitted to any government school.

At the 1964 congress in Maritzburg of the National Union of South African Students, concern was expressed at the unrest and indiscipline in Bantu Education Department schools. One delegate said that since 1953 there had been more than thirty disturbances in the schools, resulting in one pupil being killed, more than 800 being expelled, and more than 10,000 suspended. Five schools had been temporarily closed, and more than 200 students had been charged and convicted in the courts. The congress passed a resolution declaring that the unrest was caused mainly by dissatisfaction with the educational system and with the material conditions in the schools (Cape Argus, 9 July 1964).

Other student protests have been directly political. When Professor Ross and du Preez, the new Registrar, paid their first call on Fort Hare in October 1959, they were greeted by a large number of protesting students who wore black armbands, let down the tyres of their cars, and threw tomatoes at them. On 29 May 1962, students at Fort Hare and a number of Bantu Education schools in the Eastern Cape and Natal stayed away from classes in support of the Pietermaritzburg Conference call for demonstrations in protest against the establishment of a Republic. When the Fort Hare students were sent home, Rhodes University students staged a two-day sympathy strike - the first time that White students have given such mass support to their non-White colleagues.

The authorities do not hesitate to call in the police at the slightest sign of disturbance. The Special Branch are frequently in attendance, while spies and informers operate in the schools and colleges. At St John's College in Umtata during 1961 there were at one time, out of a total 300, as many as 174 pupils in jail awaiting trial on a charge of public violence after the burning of a government lorry in the school grounds. The remaining students continued their classes under police surveillance. Armed police, night searches, Saracen armoured cars, and tracker dogs - the African students have been introduced to the whole paraphernalia of police state repression. The indoctrination continues but so does the resistance.

Nor have the White universities been exempt from the attention of the police. In 1964 the NUSAS executive decided to investigate reports that spying at universities and politically inspired vandalism against anti-apartheid students and lecturers had increased; that the Security Police were active on the campus; that 'certain unidentified persons or organizations' were using students to spy on individuals, committees and organizations; and that bursaries and scholarships were sometimes offered to students agreeing to act as police informers (Sunday Times, 10 October 1964).

NUSAS has itself in recent years come under increasing fire from the Nationalist government because of its multi-racial composition and its opposition to apartheid. Speaking at a Nationalist Party meeting in Potchefstroom in 1963, when he was Minister of Justice, Mr B.J. Vorster called NUSAS 'a cancer in the life of South Africa which must be cut out'. NUSAS, he said, was the mouthpiece of liberals and was tinged with communism. 'I will reckon with NUSAS in my own time,' he threatened (Cape Times, 16 September 1963). Two years later, in June 1965, he called NUSAS 'a detestable and damnable organization'. There was hardly a single leader of NUSAS who had not been involved in 'subversive activities' (Rand Daily Mail, 4 June 1965).

In the last few years a number of NUSAS officials have been banned or restricted, and some forced to leave the country. The organization is banned from the campuses of all non-White university colleges, and prevented from functioning openly even at the Afrikaans universities. NUSAS leaders have openly expressed the fear that their organization will be outlawed by the government in due course.

Nor has the government confined its attacks to the students. On 4 September 1964, the Minister of Justice announced in Parliament that, from the beginning of 1965, persons listed as Communists would be prohibited from lecturing or teaching at any State-aided university, technical college, school, or other educational institution. During December of the same year banning notices were served on two former members of the Communist Party, Professor H. J. Simons of the University of Cape Town, and Professor E. Roux of the University of the Witwatersrand, and both men were forced to relinquish their jobs in 1965. A number of non-listed academics have also been banned from teaching, from attending gatherings, or from preparing any material for publication. The most prominent recent case was that of Dr R. Hoffenberg, senior physician at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, banned in July 1967 and forced to leave the country early the following year.

In October 1959 the Fort Hare students, protesting at the proposed murder of their university, passed the following resolution:

Let it be noted, once and for all, that our stand as students at Fort Hare and as the future leaders of our country, upholding the principles of education as universally accepted, remains unchanged and uncompromising. Our outright condemnation of the university apartheid legislation remains steadfast....

We wish to warn the architects of White domination, the whole country, and the world at large that we will not be held responsible for the disastrous repercussions of this apartheid policy, which in the foreseeable future will destroy the entire social, political, and economic structure of our country.

The students read the future correctly, and have shown in a thousand ways since then that they have remained true to their trust and to their people. C.N.O. will fail in the African schools. The Afrikaner Nationalist may educate his own children to believe that they are superior, but he cannot succeed in educating the children of others into a belief that they are inferior. The tribal schools and colleges nourish, despite every precaution, the struggle of the African people for their right to human dignity and equal treatment in the land of their birth.