RESEARCH ARTICLES

 

The othering of teacher training in Lebowa bantustan: A historical perspective

 

 

Johannes Seroto

Department of Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa serotj@unisa.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1737-719X

 

 

---

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I focus on the history of teacher training for Africans in the former Lebowa bantustan. My discussion of this is informed by the theoretical concepts of othering and structural racialisation, which capture various prejudices such as segregation, marginalisation, hierarchisation, subjugation, and racism. I examined textual data for the period 1970-1994 which included unpublished material, Lebowa Department of Education reports, memoranda, administrative documents, and newspaper articles and journals housed in Limpopo Provincial Archives, Polokwane, to elicit meaning and gain insight into the othering of teacher training in Lebowa. I established that African teachers were othered from economic, educational, political, and technological power through the bantustan policy and that this othering was interconnected. For African teachers to be inferior, subjugated, and marginalised, they needed to be spatially isolated; they had to receive a segregated, racialised, gendered, and inferior curriculum. This meant that resources were inequitably allocated and distributed across racial groups. Further, I argue that to understand the underlying problem of teacher education and other related challenges, we need to interrogate processes, structures, relationships, and the interconnectedness of the various factors and systems that produced a particular outcome.

Keywords: bantustans, Lebowa, teacher education, othering, structural racialisation

---

 

 

Introduction

South Africa continues to be characterised by inequalities in health, education, land distribution, and economic status. The histories of the bantustans, where most of these contemporary challenges are located, are critical to understanding and addressing these problems (Ally & Lissoni, 2017). For this reason, the conversation about the history of the bantustans has re-emerged as evidenced in a special issue of the South African History Journal entitled "Let's Talk about the Bantustans", a journal that featured Chisholm's (2013) examination of bantustan education history four years earlier. The polemic about the bantustans can be traced back to Stephen Bantu Biko, the South African anti-apartheid activist. In his newsletter article, Let's talk about bantustans, Biko (1972, p. 23) first argued that "[p]olitically, the bantustans are the greatest single fraud ever invented by white politicians."

When the National Party came to power, it introduced a plethora of laws that created new and exacerbated existing political and social ills. In 1951, the Bantu Authorities Act No 68 was introduced and, subsequent to it, the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act No 46 of 1959. These laws sent African people to bantustans (decorously) referred to as "homelands" based on the 1913 Land Act. The Bantu Authorities Act No 68 of 1951 stated that the entire African population should be divided into ten ethnic homelands or bantustans. Lebowa, Gazankulu, Qwaqwa, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu were classified as independent states and Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (TBVC) were given so-called independence status. The two bantustans of Ciskei and Transkei were created for the Xhosa people, Lebowa for the Pedi (North Sotho), Venda for the Venda, Bophuthatswana for the Tswana, Gazankulu for the Tsonga, KwaZulu for the Zulu, and Qwa Qwa for the Basotho respectively.

Lebowa was granted internal self-government on October 2, 1972 through Proclamation R224 of 1972. The bantustan was responsible for the provision of education to Africans in its territory (Lebowa Government Services, 1962, 1976b; Republic of South Africa, 1972). In 1994 it was reincorporated into South Africa and is today part of Limpopo province, the fifth largest of South Africa's nine provinces. This province is located in the northern part of South Africa and shares borders with Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. It had the geographical area of 125 754 km² in 2011 and a population of 5,8 million in 2016 (Statistics South Africa, 2018). The bantustan is of interest to this study because it was the "problematic child of apartheid-dependent and weak but yet irresponsible and unruly" (Jacklin, 1994, p. 1). The bantustan was riddled with mismanagement and corruption issues. The 1990 Interim Report-the De Meyer Report- indicated that the bantustan misused funds allocated for the purchase of school textbooks between 1982 and 1990 (De Meyer, 1990). In her report to National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI), commissioned by the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) in 1989, Jacklin (1994) noted numerous upheavals in the territory that led to mass political protest and escalating violence in the education sector of Lebowa bantustan. These included a nine-week chalk-down by teachers; teacher defiance supported by the civil servants; a call for better educational facilities and more teachers; protest against the non-provision of school books; and protest against educational grievances unresolved by the government. On June 24, 1990 students at 11 Lebowa Colleges decided not to pay school fees (Jarvis, 1990). The pass percentage of matriculants in the Lebowa bantustan was also worrying. In 1986, for example, of 20,284 candidates, only 8,453 (41,1%) passed the matriculation examination, which was the lowest rate in the Republic of South Africa (Hartshorne, 1988). Bot (1987, p. 60) argued that "the quality of any educational system is to a large extent determined by the quality of the teacher corps." Very little has been written about teacher education in the Lebowa bantustan, of whose people 90% were Africans in 1986.

Most studies conducted on bantustans have focused fundamentally on the inequalities that were created as a result of the National Party government policy. Some scholars of African studies have concentrated on the impact of apartheid legislation on education for Africans in general, bantustan education included (Christie, 1991; Dubow, 1989; Hartshorne, 1992; Hyslop, 1990; Kallaway, 2002; Mawasha, 1969). However, there is limited dedicated research that focuses on inequalities created by various bantustan government policies (Ally & Lissoni, 2017; Chisholm, 2013; Chisholm, 2018; Jacklin & Graaff, 1992; Lissoni & Ally, 2018). In this article, I advance a new interpretation of bantustan historiography by examining how inequalities in teacher education in Lebowa bantustan were promoted through the concept of othering. I use the structural racialisation approach that has not been used in bantustan historiography, to understand how these inequalities in teacher education were constructed.

The main research question was: How did the apartheid state use othering practices to marginalise teacher training in the Lebowa bantustan? I address this question first by investigating how spatial segregation was used to promote marginalisation and othering of teacher education in Lebowa. Second, I examine how curriculum segregation was used as a strategy for othering and for producing persistent hierarchisation and subjugation in teacher training in Lebowa. Last, I reflect on the outcome and how various structures impacted on the understanding of how othering created inequalities in teacher education in Lebowa bantustan.

In order to address the research question, I carried out a textual analysis of selected documents that were relevant to the research aim. My focus was on archival documents (unpublished material, Lebowa Department of Education reports, memoranda, administrative documents, newspaper articles, and journals housed in Limpopo Provincial Archives in Polokwane, capital of Limpopo Province). The period covered in this study is from 1970 to 1994. Following Corbin and Strauss (2008), I examined and interpreted textual data to elicit meaning and to give me greater understanding about the othering of teacher training in Lebowa. As already mentioned, to inform my analysis, I used the theoretical perspectives of othering and structural racialisation. I organised the findings into themes related to the central research question articulated above. The four themes that emerged from my data analysis process were (a) how physical spacing promoted the othering of teacher education; (b) how hierarchisation of curriculum and feminisation of teacher education played a role in the othering of teacher education, (c) how racial policies accelerated the othering of teacher education, and (d) how different structures (as defined through structural racialisation) contributed to the outcome of inequality in teacher education in Lebowa.

 

Theoretical framework

The concepts of othering and structural racialisation as discussed in the context of this study, are interconnected. The term othering was introduced by the French feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, in 1949. According to Brons (2015) and Jensen (2009), the notion was not entirely new; Hegel had developed it in Phänomenologie des Geistes in 1807. Postcolonial writer, Spivak, in her 1985 essay entitled "The Rani of Sirmur" was "the first to use the notion of 'othering' in a systematic way" (Jensen, 2009, p. 7). In this essay she explains othering in terms of power relations. Jensen (p. 10) has argued that the term refers to a multidimensional process that touches upon "several different power asymmetries." Drawing on the work mentioned above, Spivak identified three forms of othering. She identified the first form as providing an awareness of who holds the power and who produces the other subordinates. The second form is about constructing the other as pathological and morally inferior. Further, Jensen (2009, p. 10) explained that the other is not only viewed as "pathological and morally inferior" but "uncivilised, uneducated and barbaric." Schwalbe (2000, p. 777) agreed that othering is "the process whereby a dominant group defines into existence an inferior group." The third form of othering for Spivak (1985, p.256) is "manipulative pedagogy" that denies the other access to knowledge and technology. The master (usually the European) is the subject of science or knowledge. In summary, Jensen (2011) defined othering as a discursive process during which the subordinate groups are defined in a reductionist way.

It is evident that othering fits into a broadly inclusive conceptual framework that captures various prejudices and behaviours such as tribalism, segregation, marginalisation, racism, and differences based on ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language, name, dress, religion or any other differential characteristics (Udah, 2019). The concept of othering not only encompasses expressions of prejudice on the basis of group or ethnic identities, it also provides a framework for understanding inequality and marginality. Although particular expressions of othering, such as racism and ethnicity, are often well- researched and documented, the broader phenomenon of inequality caused by expressions of othering is inadequately recognised. Powell and Menendian (2016) defined othering as a "set of dynamics, processes, and structures that engender marginality and persistent inequality across any of the full range of human differences based on group identities" (p. 17, emphasis added). It is imperative to understand that we are all situated within structures. People are situated, for example, within different infrastructures, institutions, political economic and social settings and these structures and processes interact and produce different outcomes (see Figure 1).

Our society, as complex as it may be, is comprised of a system of organisations, institutions, individuals, processes, and policies, and these factors may interact and perpetuate social, economic, and political inequity. While we understand that these relationships (structures) exist within a system, it is essential to look for "nodes of influence and power" (Powell, 2010, p. 22). The theory of structural racialisation is useful because it addresses inter-institutional arrangements and interactions and it also shows how the joint operations of a system or institution can produce a particular outcome. Structural racialisation leads to understanding how different structures are involved in producing, for example, marginalisation (race, gender, etc.) and how these structures produce a particular outcome. Powell (2009) defined structural racialisation as a "set of practices, cultural norms, and institutional arrangements that are both reflective of and simultaneously help to create and maintain racialised outcomes in society" (p. 785) This approach helps us to understand inequity, which is the result or outcome when various structures enforcing forms of othering interconnect or relate to each other. The study of the othering of teacher education in the former bantustans is relevant because there are still institutional practices and systems in South Africa that help maintain unequal educational outcomes (Knauss & Brown II, 2016).

 

Physical space

Physical space is broadly defined as the built environment (e.g., structures like schools, houses, roads, and similar infrastructure). Physical space has been used in South Africa as a tool to define racial group boundaries and as a way of creating racial hierarchies. Certain historical policies were enacted with the sole intention of perpetuating structural racism. The politico-spatial organisation of education in South Africa is ascribed to a long political history that began with the arrival of the white colonists in the mid-seventeenth century and lasted until 1994. This political history, characterised by spatialised relations of power, was extended and formalised by National Party apartheid ideology in 1948 as Christie (2013) has reminded us. Lebowa was one of the most rural bantustans. It was comprised of a predominantly large number of settlements that did not have any of the infrastructural advantages of proclaimed towns. As a starting point, there was an unfair and inequitable distribution in that socially valued resources and opportunities were directed to urban areas. There was locational discrimination which was created through marginalisation imposed on Africans in the bantustan.

This inequitable distribution of space had a bearing on the economic life of those residing in the bantustan. The inhabitants of Lebowa bantustan depended on subsistence agricultural activities as Jacklin (1994) has pointed out. Both crop and animal production were practised as a way of life. Most of the population (about 80%) of Lebowa had to provide their own houses. Kwenda et al. (2020) argued that historical institutions (structures) played a role in bringing about the contemporary socioeconomic outcomes in South Africa. In 2018, for example, South Africa's official unemployment rate was 27% and the economy which was othered by the National Party government played a role. The non-existence of formal economic opportunities and the disallowance of industrial development in bantustans by government othered the economy in these areas. This situation was exacerbated by a number of racially based structural factors. Kingdon and Knight (2007) noted that Africans suffered from the highest share of unemployment followed by coloureds, Indians, and whites respectively. Inspired by apartheid policies in relation to spatial structures, most citizens residing in rural areas were severely affected.

The political organisation of space in Lebowa was a particularly powerful source of marginalisation and discrimination in the Lebowa education infrastructure. The general school infrastructure was in dire need of basic necessities. In 1993, 58% (1,056, 820) of learners were enrolled at schools in the bantustan and 4,021 teachers were needed compared to the 733 needed in white schools, and 343,105 classrooms were needed compared to the surplus of 20,898 classrooms in white schools (Development Bank of Southern Africa, 1994). It was not uncommon to find learners in this bantustan using the platoon system of attending school because of the lack of classrooms. In 1994, this bantustan, with over a million learners, had the highest "classroom backlog" in South Africa (Sowetan, July 21, 1995, p. 4) and the educational infrastructure in Lebowa, inherited by the Northern Transvaal Province (later Limpopo Province), was weak compared with that of other provinces (Jacklin, 1994). Teacher education in the bantustan was also affected by these backlogs. When the Lebowa bantustan was declared self-governing in 1974, there were five teacher training colleges and by 1990 the number had risen to twelve (Lebowa Government Services, 1976b, 1990). These colleges were all established in the rural areas of Lebowa, except Mokopane College which was located in a peri-urban area. Parents, mostly unemployed, were expected to contribute to what was called the building fund. Colleges in Lebowa were characterised by overcrowding in dormitories and classrooms and lack of adequate infrastructure like laboratories and libraries. Uneven geographical development, marginalisation, and underdevelopment in Lebowa bantustan provided a new framework for othering to work through politically inscribed trajectories and it seriously affected provisioning of school infrastructure.

 

Curriculum as a socio-political structure

Educational ideals have been for many years connected to education politics. Soudien (2010, p. 2) advised that "the making and remaking of the South African and southern African curriculum begins, and indeed continues to the present, as an important arena in which [this] multilayered politics" should be understood. The structuring of the curriculum in teacher training colleges in the bantustans demonstrated how power was used to other teacher education. The African teacher was to be segregated and unequal.

In 1956, a uniform national curriculum for teachers was introduced: the Lower Primary Teachers' Certificate (LPTC) and the Higher Primary Teachers' Certificate (HPTC). On the recommendation of a small committee comprised of Ken Hartshorne (Department Chief Education Planner) and G. Engelbrecht (an Inspector of Education), a new Primary Teachers' Certificate (PTC) was introduced in 1972 as Hartshorne (1992) has noted. These courses were offered in the teacher training colleges in Lebowa. However, there were exceptions: a special one-year Teachers' Certificate was offered at Mamokgalake Chuene Teachers Training College in 1973 (Lebowa Government Services, 1976) and in 1984, 275 students registered at Mamokgalake Chuene for a special one-year Teachers' Certificate (Lebowa Department of Education, 1984b). The vast majority of white students in education courses were prepared at predominantly white institutions of higher learning-8 residential universities, 1 distance institution, 16 teacher training colleges, 8 institutions under the control of the Department of Higher Education, 4 technical colleges and 4 others as Chisholm (2019) has documented. Until 1978, Standard 8 (Grade 10) was the minimum requirement for access to a teacher training institution in Lebowa. After 1982, a three-year Diploma with a minimum requirement of Standard 10 (Matriculation Certificate) was introduced. In contrast, white student teachers obtained teacher qualifications at well-resourced universities. Teacher qualifications such as the PTC were not offered in white teacher training institutions. Africans were perceived as different and therefore treated as the other. Influential leadership positions at these universities were held by loyal advocates of Afrikaner nationalism. The other was perceived as being different according to the perspective of the dominant group, the so-called educated, civilised, and superior ones who establish the norm. This arrangement also represented, of course, the current relationship of power. Control over the production of black secondary school teachers was monitored through the establishment of segregated universities with education faculties located in the bantustans. In the case of Lebowa bantustan, the University of the North (now University of Limpopo) served this purpose.

The curriculum of the PTC is worth interrogating for various reasons. Most students in Lebowa registered for this course (see Table 1). As can be seen, the primary teacher enrolment in Lebowa bantustan was high and the probable reason was that teaching was one of the very few avenues open to African students after they had passed the school leaving examination. The PTC curriculum was divided into four groupings: (1) professional subjects including fundamental pedagogics and Didactics; (2) basic teaching subjects; (3) practical subjects and (4) other teaching subjects: health education; social studies; and general science (Lebowa Department of Education, 1981). While the standard of primary school teacher education in the bantustans remained low, government introduced the idea that all colleges should be linked to universities. This benefitted most teachers who enrolled for secondary teacher education courses.

Curricula taught in various courses and at various institutions were basically different as one would expect. However, an overarching similarity was the ideology and ethos that grounded each curriculum. The aim of education in Lebowa bantustan, as stipulated in the Lebowa Education Act No 6 of 1974, was that "Education in Government schools shall have a Christian and non-denominational character" (Lebowa Government Services, 1984, n.p.) and white teacher institutions also advocated Christian National Education (CNE). What was known as fundamental pedagogics became a powerful ideology at African teacher colleges (and in education faculties of historically black universities and historically Afrikaans medium universities) from the 1960s to 1980s (Le Grange, 2008). Enslin (1990, p. 86) discussed fundamental pedagogics as

practices of subjection, as means of controlling individuals by creating them as subjects of specific kinds, for in fundamental pedagogics we have not merely a false view of education and how to theorize it, but a process which determines how teachers come to see themselves and their actions as teachers. By means of fundamental pedagogics teachers are to become both subjected to a theoretical discourse from which the political had become exorcised, as agents of subjection, perceiving and treating children as helpless, incompetent in need of authority to save them from their own evil inclinations.

Fundamental pedagogics was synonymous with Christian Nationalism and it legitimised CNE policy (Viljoen & Pienaar, 1971). Penny (1988) indicated that fundamental pedagogics was characterised by preconceived ideas characteristic of Calvinistic and nationalistic principles. The concept of CNE included Christian science and phenomenology as forms of indoctrination (Morrow, 1989). Enslin (1990, p. 78) maintained that fundamental pedagogics "instilled a passive acceptance of authority rather than providing students with conceptual tools necessary for creative and independent thought." Taylor (1993) concurred. Linked to the basic tenets of the masculinist and paternalistic philosophy of CNE described by Ensor (1999) as the dominant approach to education predicated on authoritarian gender and race relations, it shaped teacher preparation in both black and white universities until 1990.

The intention of government was to subject African teachers to a racially segregated ideology which would, in turn, prepare their students for their place in an apartheid society (Sebakwane, 1997). The child was regarded as ignorant and undisciplined and as needing guidance from the teacher whose authority was derived from God as conceived and propagated by the Dutch Reformed Church, the dominant Protestant denomination in the country at the time. This analogy was also indicative of the ignorance of Africans and their need for guidance by white people. Didactics, another core discipline in the teacher education curriculum, was also "inextricably bound up in fundamental pedagogics, and [it] played a key role not only in reinforcing CNE but also in reproducing it" (Le Grange, 2008, p. 404). The ideology embedded core disciplines in the teacher education curriculum that promoted ideological legitimation for unequal and segregated education in South Africa.

Another feature of the curriculum of teacher education in the bantustans was the feminisation of the teaching profession. Lebowa was one of the largest and most impoverished bantustans and teaching was the only career opportunity available for women. Table 2 shows enrolment figures of student teachers by gender for Lebowa teacher training colleges in 1979.

Certain courses were specifically set aside for women. The special Senior Primary Teachers' Certificate (SPTC) was designed for female students who were in possession of Standard 8 (Grade 10). These teachers were trained to teach in nursery schools and in junior classes of the primary school. The course was offered at Mamokgalake Chuene (Lebowa Government Services, 1979). The other female teachers' course was the One-Year Housecraft Teachers' Certificate which was offered at Mokopane Training College. This course, which was comprised of cookery, needlework, mothercraft, and housewifery was designed for female teachers who had at least two years' teaching experience. After completion, female teachers were expected to teach housecraft from primary school level to Standard 8. In contrast, the Junior Secondary Teachers Course (JSTC) and the Senior Secondary Teachers' Course (SSTC) attracted more male students when compared to the PTC. SSTC students could specialise in one of the following: social studies; commerce; mathematics; and science. Thus, the state stratified teacher qualifications by gender. This stratification exacerbated gender inequalities, which continue to the present day. Chisholm (2019) posited that this curricular arrangement grounded in racism, segregation, and ethnicity increasingly divided South African society and reinforced the gradations of inequality that had emerged in earlier periods.

The skewed representation of women in the teaching profession in the Lebowa bantustan was compounded by a range of socio-economic, cultural, and political factors. Female participation in the primary school phase was high and this was linked to the cultural association of women with primary schoolchildren. The Lebowa Department of Education, through the PTC curriculum, encouraged gender inequality and feminisation of the profession by prescribing what girls should do (e.g., needlework) and what was appropriate for boys (e.g., gardening). This was in line with the broader ideology of the National Party government hierarchisation agenda. This hierarchisation was not only to be seen between black and white but was extended to gender. Although the feminisation of the teaching profession reflected the spirit of the times, the rationale behind this differentiation was to subjugate women to primary school teaching. Women were not only subjected to othering or subjugation by those in power as being incapable of teaching at post-primary schools, but they were also gendered by men who regarded and identified themselves as the subject while they (women) were portrayed as the other (de Beauvoir, 2011; Jensen, 2011). Sebakwane-Mahlase (1994) recorded that women teachers in Lebowa were controlled by often hostile committees and committee members who were frequently illiterate.

 

Racial policies and structures

Segregation and marginalisation played a critical role in the institutionalisation of othering by channelling resource distribution inequitably across social groups. The Bantu Education Department established in 1954 held that Africans should be responsible for a considerable portion of the funding of their education system as Horrel (1968) has made clear. The Department of Education in Lebowa created by the Lebowa Education Act no. 6 of 1974 was responsible for financing teacher education. By virtue of the Lebowa Education Act, the Minister of Education in the bantustan was charged with the responsibility of determining, analysing, and approving education policy within the framework of the act.

Throughout the bantustan period, teacher training in Lebowa was persistently underfunded. All bantustans were situated far from transport, markets, and sources of electricity and water and lacked any infrastructure for development (United Nations, 1970). For many years, the economy of Lebowa remained underdeveloped by any standard of measurement. In terms of education, the central government allocated little money to the overall budget of the bantustans. In the 1988/89 financial year, R4,4 billion was budgeted for white education with a total enrolment of 935,903 learners, whereas only R4,5 million was budgeted for education in the Lebowa Bantustan with nearly the same enrolment of 869,016 learners. This uneven allocation affected primary and secondary school budgets and teacher training. The per capita expenditure on colleges of education in South Africa between 1987 and 1992 was chronically unequal. In the financial year 1987/8 the per capita expenditure for teacher training for a prospective white teacher was R9,715 and R2,578 for his/her African counterpart in Lebowa teacher training colleges. In 1991/2 the per capita expenditure (R23,718) for teacher training for whites was nearly four times the amount of R6,740 that was allocated for African students according to Buckland and Fielden (1994).

Allocation of staff cost units in teacher training colleges was also skewed. In 1990, R95,000 was allocated for a lecturer in teacher training for the (white) House of Assembly, whereas R62,000 was allocated for an African counterpart in the Lebowa Education Department as Bunting (1994) has recorded.

The National Party government used various ways of ensuring that their othering teacher education remained intact by reinforcing the ideology of hierarchisation in teacher education institutions. Since the formal establishment of the bantustan in 1972, the Minister of Education was assisted by a white Secretary of Education, who was the permanent Chief Executive Officer responsible to the Minister for Education and Culture in the Legislative Assembly at the national level. The first African Secretary of Education, Mr Kobe, was appointed in 1981 (Lebowa Government Services, 1981). A similar pattern was followed in Lebowa teacher training colleges. For example, in Setotolwane Teachers' Training College in 1981, 23 of the 33 teachers were white as was the principal, Mr Fitzgerald (Lebowa Government Services, 1981). Reserving certain positions for whites in the bantustans was a way of maintaining white supremacy. In this context the National Party regarded Africans as exotic, underdeveloped, backward, and uncivilised and this confirmed the belief that they needed Western powers to deal with what Said (2016) described as their perceived otherness.

Teacher education in Lebowa was characterised by marginality and persistent inequality. Africans were rendered other-marginal, deviant, strange, dangerous, uncivilized, and unlawful. To promote this categorisation, racial structures that awarded systemic privileges to what were then called Europeans (whites) over so-called non-Europeans (non-whites) were maintained (Bonilla-Silva, 2014). In many ways, these inequitable practices legitimised exclusion, marginalisation, subordination, and exploitation as Spivak (1985) noted in a different context, and perpetuated multiple inequalities. Powell and Menendian (2016) argued that segregation is not simply physical separation, but is also a policy attempt to deny and prevent association with another group by denying the latter's basic humanity. The segregationist government in South Africa defended the notion that Africans were different from whites, thereby maintaining two opposing categories of othering in terms of the training of teachers (Udah, 2019).

 

Outcomes of the process of teacher education in Lebowa

I use the structural racialisation perspective in this section to examine how different related and interconnected structures worked to other teacher education and produce the inequitable outcome in Lebowa bantustan. Structural racialisation accounts for the cumulative effects of the interaction of various structures. Of course, an outcome must be understood in the context of an interaction between the political, social, cultural, or physical systems that I have discussed above (see Figure 1).

Spatial segregation and political dimensions such as marginalisation, hierarchisation, racism, and gender differentiation are forms of othering. These dimensions were used in many ways to divide society into spatial blocs (bantustan colleges and universities and white Afrikaans and English medium universities). Many teachers in the Lebowa bantustan were left under-qualified or unqualified. In 1980, for example, of a total of 9,328 teachers employed by the Lebowa Department of Education, 65% had obtained PTC (without a Matriculation Certificate), 22% had obtained PTC or SSTC (plus a Matriculation Certificate) and only 3,5% had a professional certificate plus a degree (Lebowa Government Services, 1980). Jacklin (1994) pointed out that in 1994, 62% of teachers in primary schools and 16% of teachers in secondary schools were either unqualified or under-qualified.² Arguably, the possession of a degree does not guarantee that one is an effective teacher. However, numerous international studies indicate that teacher qualifications have a significant impact on students' learning outcomes (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Wendt et al., 2017). Many poorly qualified African teachers in Lebowa caused the teaching standards to drop in the area and inevitably failure rates (especially in secondary schools) increased. In some community schools the matriculation failure rates have continued to be as high as 80% since 1994 as Mathabatha (2005) has documented.

Given the qualifications available to student teachers in the Lebowa bantustan, the quality of education they provided to learners was far below par. Emphasis was placed on manual subjects, such as arts and culture, needlework, gardening, and sports (Lebowa Department of Education, 1984a). The PTC prepared teachers for all primary school work in general and it did not give adequate attention to the specialised knowledge required to teach in different school phases. The subject matter knowledge obtained in a main subject area provides the knowledge base that underpins pedagogical content knowledge and is more important than general knowledge as Depaepe et al., (2013) have documented. Student teachers were prepared to meet the economic needs of the apartheid regime. The emphasis that the Lebowa bantustan put on manual labour benefitted the apartheid government in the pursuit of its agenda of dominating the knowledge that was the basis of school curricula. Insufficient training of teachers in scarce subjects such as mathematics, science, and commercial subjects can still be felt today. Teacher education for Africans was tailored in such a way that it prepared them to do manual labour while mental activities predominated in teacher training for white students at the prestigious universities. This was a deliberate process of othering: the dominant group used the differentiation of subjects to define into existence an inferior group as Schwalbe ( 2000) has made clear.

 

Conclusion

In this paper, I have used othering, a multidimensional process (Spivak 1985), and structural racialisation to describe how teacher training was marginalised in the Lebowa bantustan. The institution of the bantustan policy used several forms to other Africans: the process of differentiation and demarcation, by which a line is drawn between the powerful and the subjugated; segregation and marginalisation; and the manipulative pedagogy described by Spivak (1985). Spatial inequality that resulted in othering of teacher education in the bantustan was influenced by a number of factors (structures) all of which form a system. I have highlighted three main systems-those that originate in the political, the social, and the physical. The National Party government played a central role in the allocating of geographical areas to blacks and whites based on National Party apartheid ideology. Teachers in the Lebowa bantustan received their training in a rural and poverty-stricken setting whereas their white counterparts were far more advantaged in terms of resources and opportunities. This arrangement was not neutral; it was politically motivated. Social and racial inequities were geographically inscribed by the laws that government put into place. In general, African teachers were spatially isolated or othered from economic, educational, political, and technological power through the bantustan policy. This othering was interconnected since, for them to be inferior, subjugated and marginalised, they needed to be spatially isolated, to receive an inferior education, and be dependent on the white economy.

I have demonstrated that the curriculum for teacher training colleges in Lebowa bantustan was inferior, segregated, racialised, and othered. The subject, fundamental pedagogics amplified the difference in level of competence between African and white teachers. The others were under-qualified and unqualified compared to their white counterparts. The feminisation of the teaching profession at bantustan teacher training colleges expanded the male/female binary. An othered curriculum will necessarily have an impact on schooling segregation practices, educational achievements, the psychological dimension of teachers and learners, job segregation, the economy, graduation rates, and many other factors. It will also have an impact on other structures such as health and economic wellbeing. I have also established that to understand the underlying problem of teacher education, and other education issues, we need to focus on processes, structures, relationships, and the interconnectedness of the systems that create that particular problem of inequitable othering. Powell and Menendian (2016) have argued that the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of othering and the only viable solution is inclusion and the fostering of a sense of belongingness. Inclusion and belongingness embrace the idea of the "circle of human concern" (Rudd, 2013, n.p.). Widening the circle of human concern involves "humanizing the other," where negative representations and stereotypes are challenged and rejected (Powell & Menendian, 2016, p. 32).

 

References

Ally, S., & Lissoni, A. (2017). "Let's talk about bantustans." In S. Ally, S., & A. Lissoni (Eds.), New histories of South Africa's apartheid-era bantustans (pp. xi-xiv). Routledge.

Arnott, A., & Chabane, S. (1995). Teacher demand, supply, utilisation and costs: Report for the national teacher education audit. Edusource.

Biko, S. B. (1972). "Let's talk about bantustans." South African Student Organisation (SASO) Newsletter, pp. 22-24.

Bonilla-Silva, E. (2014). Racism without racist: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. Rowman and Little Publishers.

Bot, M. (1987). The qualifications of the inequality: An "INSET" solution. Indicator SA, 4(3), 60-64.         [ Links ]

Brons, L. (2015). Othering, an analysis. Transcience, 6(1), 69-90.         [ Links ]

Buckland, P., & Fielden, J. (1994). Public expenditure on education in South Africa, 1987/8 to 1991/2: An analysis of data. World Bank.

Bunting, I. (1994). A legacy of inequality: Higher education in South Africa. University of Cape Town Press.

Chisholm, L. (2013). Bantustan education history: The 'progressivism' of Bophutatswana's Primary Education Upgrade Programme (PEUP), 1979-1988. South African Historical Journal, 65(3), 403-420.         [ Links ]

Chisholm, L. (2018). Late-apartheid education reforms and bantustan entanglements. African Historical Review, 50(1/2), 27-45.         [ Links ]

Chisholm, L. (2019). Teacher preparation in South Africa: History, policy and future directions. Emerald Publishing Limited.

Christie, P. (1991). The right to learn: The struggle for education in South Africa. Ravan Press.

Christie, P. (2013). Space, place, and social justice: Developing a rhythmanalysis of education in South Africa. Qualitative Inquiry, 19(10), 775-785.         [ Links ]

Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. SAGE.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2000). Teacher quality and student achievement: A review of state policy evidence. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(8), 1-44.         [ Links ]

de Beauvoir, S. (2011). The second sex. Vintage Books.

De Meyer, O. A. (1990). Tussentydse verslag oor die gratis verskaffing van handboeke en skryfbehoeftes aan skoliere in Lebowa. Government Printer.

Depaepe, F., Verschaffel, L., & Kelchtermans, G. (2013). Pedagogical content knowledge: A systematic review of the way in which the concept has pervaded mathematics educational research. Teaching and Teacher Education, 34, 12-25.         [ Links ]

Development Bank of Southern Africa. (1994). Education in the Northern Transvaal: Data, indicators and scenarios. Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Dubow, S. (1989). Racial segregation and the origins of Apartheid in South Africa 1919-1936. Macmillan.

Enslin, P. (1990). Science and doctrine: Theoretical discourse in African teacher education. In M. Nkomo (Ed.), Pedagogy of domination (pp. 77-92). Africa World Press, Inc.

Ensor, P. (1999). A study of the recontextualising of pedagogic practices from a South African university preservice mathematics teacher education course by seven beginning secondary mathematics teachers. University of London, Senate House.

Hartshorne, K. (1988). Three years of turmoil: African matric results 1985-1987. Indicator SA, 5(2), 53-56.         [ Links ]

Hartshorne, K. (1992). Crisis and challenge: Black education 1910-1990. Oxford University Press.

Horrel, M. (1968). Bantu education to 1968. South African Institute of Race Relations.

Hyslop, J. (1990). Social conflicts over African education in South Africa from the 1940s to 1976 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of the Witwatersrand, RSA.         [ Links ]

Jacklin, H. (1994). Inherit the wind: A report on education in Lebowa. (Unpublished report).

Jacklin, H., & Graaff, J. (1992). Rural Education in South Africa. A Report on Schooling Systems in the Bantustans (Unpublished report prepared for the National Education Coordinating Committee's National Education Policy Investigation).

Jarvis, D. (1990). Conflict trends: Turmoil in the homelands. Indicator SA, 7(3), 18-20.         [ Links ]

Jensen, S. Q. (2009). Preliminary notes on othering and agency: Marginalized young ethnic men negotiating identity in the terrain of otherness. Løgstør, 27(1), 5-35.         [ Links ]

Jensen, S. Q. (2011). Othering, identity formation and agency. Qualitative Studies, 2(2), 6378.         [ Links ]

Kallaway, P. (2002). The history of education under apartheid, 1948-1994. Maskew Miller.

Kingdon, G., & Knight, J. (2007). Unemployment in South Africa: Causes, problems and policies. Journal of African Economies, 16(5), 813-848.         [ Links ]

Knauss, C. B., & Brown II, M. C. (2016). Whiteness is the new South Africa. Peter Lang.

Kwenda, P., Ntuli, M., & Mudiriza, G. (2020). Former homeland areas and unemployment i South Africa: A decomposition approach. IZA Discussion Papers, Deutsche Post Foundation.

Le Grange, L. (2008). The didactics tradition in South Africa: A reply to Richard Krüger. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(3), 399-407.         [ Links ]

Lebowa Government Services. (1962). Notule van amptelike instelling en eerste sitting, Desember, 1962. Government Printers.

Lebowa Government Services. (1976). Department of Education, 1976 Annual Report. Northern Press.

Lebowa Government Services. (1980). Department of Education, 1980 Annual Report. Northern Press.

Lebowa Government Services. (1981). Department of Education, 1981 Annual Report. Northern Press.

Lebowa Government Services. (1984). Lebowa Government Yearbook, 1984. Northern Press.

Lebowa Government Services. (1990). Department of Education, 1990 Annual Report. Northern Press.

Lebowa Department of Education. (1980). Annual Return of Teacher Training Colleges, Sekhukhune College, 1980. Limpopo Provincial Archives.

Lebowa Department of Education. (1981). Junior Primary and Senior Primary Teachers' Courses. File No 15/26/1 & 15/27/1. Limpopo Provincial Archives.

Lebowa Department of Education. (1983). Summary of Teachers Courses. File No 7/17/4. Limpopo Provincial Archives.

Lebowa Department of Education. (1984a). Annual return of Teacher Training Colleges, Sekhukhune College, 1984. Limpopo Provincial Archives.

Lebowa Department of Education. (1984b). Summary of Final Teachers Course Results Nov/Dec 1984. File No 4/6/2. Limpopo Provincial Archives.

Lissoni, A., & Ally, S. (2018). "Bantustan states." African Historical Review, 50(1-2), 1-3.         [ Links ]

Mathabatha, S. (2005). Missionary schools, student uprisings in Lebowa and the Sekhukhuneland students' revolts, 1983-1986. African Studies, 64(2), 263-284.         [ Links ]

Mawasha, A. L. (1969). From missionary and provincial control to state and community control of Bantu education: An appraisal. University of the North.

Morrow, W. (1989). Chains of thought. Philosophical essays in South African education. Southern Press.

Penny, A. (1988). Afrikaner identity and educational policy in South Africa. In W. Tulasciewics & C. Brook (Eds.), Christianity and educational provision in international perspective (pp 354-374. Routledge.

Powell, J. A. (2009). Post racialism or targeted universalism. Denver University Law Review, 86, 785-806.         [ Links ]

Powell, J. A. (2010). Race, place, and opportunity: The structure in (re)producing inequality. A paper presented at the Thomas Jefferson District of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, Richmond. VA.

Powell, J. A., & Menendian, S. (2016). The problem of othering: Towards inclusiveness and belonging. Othering & Belonging: Expanding the Circle of Human Concern, 7(16), 14-40.         [ Links ]

Republic of South Africa. (1972). Lebowa Legislative Assembly Proclamation, 1972 (Proclamation R224 of 1972). Government Printers.

Rudd, T. (2013). Marc Anthony and the circles of cognitive caring. Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/marc-anthony-and-the-circles-of-cognitive-caring

Said, E. (2016). Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient. Penguin Books Limited.

Schwalbe, M. (2000). The elements of inequality. Contemporary Sociology, 29(6), 775-781.         [ Links ]

Sebakwane-Mahlase, S. M. (1994). Women teachers and community control in Lebowa secondary schools. Multicultural Teaching, 12(3), 31-34.         [ Links ]

Sebakwane, S. M. (1997). Controlling teachers' work: The South African state and curriculum control. Qualitative Studies in Education, 10(2), 191-206.         [ Links ]

Soudien, C. (2010). What to teach the natives": A historiography of the curriculum dilemma in South Africa. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum studies in South Africa: Intellectual histories & present circumstances (pp. 19-49). Palgrave Macmillan.

Sowetan. (1995, July 21). Six new classrooms officially opened.

Spivak, G. C. (1985). The Rani of Sirmur: An essay in reading the archives. History and Theory, 24(3), 247-272.         [ Links ]

Statistics South Africa. (2018). Provincial profile: Limpopo Community Survey 2016 Report number 03-01-15. Pretoria.

Taylor, N. (1993). Future directions for faculties of education in South Africa. University of South Africa.

Udah, H. (2019). Searching for a place to belong in a time of othering. Social Sciences, 8(297), 1-16.         [ Links ]

United Nations. (1970). Bantustans in South Africa. Unit on Apartheid, Department of Political and Security Council Affairs.

Viljoen, T. A., & Pienaar, J. J. (1971). Fundamental pedagogics. Butterworths.

Wendt, H., Kasper, D., & Trendtel, M. (2017). Assuming measurement invariance of background indicators in international comparative educational achievement studies: A challenge for the interpretation of achievement differences. Large-Scale Assessments in Education, 5(1-34).         [ Links ]

 

 

Received: 10 March 2020
Accepted: 22 August 2020

 

 

1 Figures stated in Table 1 include both first- and second-year enrolments.
2 Unqualified teachers are described as those who do not have a professional teaching qualification and who have fewer years of training than the official norm of Standard 10 (Grade 12) certificate and a three-year professional qualification (Arnott & Chabane, 1995).