Listening to the silent majority

[123]

My friend at the teachers' college in KaNgwane did not breathe a word to me about prevailing racism or nepotism in his school. However, from a report by Mathatha Tsedu in The Sowetan, I was shocked to learn that teacher training colleges in the Northern Transvaal still have plenty of problems of this nature. At the end of May 1989 at least five teachers' colleges in the region were involved in boycotts accusing white lecturers of racism and accusing black lecturers of nepotism. In the homeland of Venda, three out of four teachers' colleges had also come to a standstill. All the colleges in Venda are still headed by white rectors. In the homeland of Leboa two colleges, Modjadji and Mokopane, were being boycotted. They both are led by black rectors. Mr sr Makhuvha, Director-general for Education in Lebowa told Tsedu, ‘You are dealing with a situation where whites have been brought up in a particular way and they expect blacks to react to them in a particular way. When this does not happen there is conflict.’ Mr Makhuva stressed that black youths were no longer able to accept white superiority.^112.

Minister Piet Clase and his associates seem to react to these unavoidable realities by trying to circumvent problems, controversies and perhaps even racial strife, and advocating by unabated segregation in all schools and keeping, wherever possible, white and black pupils apart, most certainly up to university levels. This is a counter-productive and unrealistic strategy. The white leadership in education should display the courage to fill forthwith those 278 526 empty seats in white schools throughout South Africa with blacks and see what happens. After initial problems, including perhaps even violence, the dust would settle and in five years from now, no-one in South Africa would even remember how integrated schools were a serious problem in the minds of people. I have seen it happen during the past 35 years I lived in the United States where life moves even faster. Memory is not a weapon but a deadly trap.

112. The Sowetan, May 30, 1989

[p. 178]

Memory is perforated with as many holes as an ordinary kitchen sieve. South Africa should dare to take a quantum jump into the future and show some of the courage and daring of their forebears. The kind of thinking displayed by minister Clase suffered from a Verwoerdian touch. In other words: the man in charge of education as late as 1989 was clearly out of tune with the times, both in Africa and the world, and therefore no asset to South Africa's interests.