The ATA Magazine - Editor’s Notebook
Volume 70, Mar/Apr 1990
Stories from the Veld
You might remember, back about three years, an appeal that appeared in this publication and on staff walls across the province. The appeal asked for funds to help end apartheid. Canadian teachers and their organizations responded generously. The Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF) coordinated the program in support of our South African colleagues.
This wasn’t the first involvement by CTF in South Africa, nor the last. But partly because South Africa is considered a developed nation and partly because of the reluctance of the South African government to allow international collegial programs that would benefit black teachers, South Africa has not received the kind of support CTF has been able to give to other African countries. Over the past several years, for example, only one Alberta teacher, Margorie Huk, has worked in South Africa on Project Overseas.
The problems in South Africa are familiar to all of us. Not a day goes by that we do not read or hear of Mandela or de Klerk or of the radical changes proposed for the country. Your students know what apartheid means and probably condemn the idea that people should be kept separated on the basis of the color of skin. Despite the claims of the South African government that apartheid really means separate development for whites, Asians, coloreds and black, it’s pretty obvious that the government has used the excuse of apartheid and the power of the national security forces to protect the privileges of four million whites in a country that is also home to nearly twenty million blacks.
There are many indexes in South Africa that illustrate this, but some statistics regarding education really bring it home to teachers. According to the Statesman’s Yearbook, there are 955,000 white children in primary and secondary white schools being taught by 67,848 white teachers. That’s a pupil-teacher ratio of about 14 to 1. There are also 4,319,000 black children in primary and secondary black schools being taught by 104,542 black teachers. The pupil-teacher ratio for blacks is 41 to 1. South African colleges, universities and technical school enrolled 233,600 white students and 79,400 black students in 1986. Draw your own conclusions on the separate development of races.
I have. As a typical fair-minded Canadian, so highly regarded in developing countries, I believed the system of apartheid in South Africa was wrong. In my heart, I supported the struggle of the blacks for equality in their homeland. I wished them well. From afar. While I had considerable empathy for the problems South African blacks faced, they had to live with those problems and I didn’t.
My distant view of life in South Africa changed last December. CTF had set up a communication seminar for black South African teachers on behalf of the Canadian government. The seminar was meant to train about twenty teachers to enable them to write and produce newsletters for their colleagues in regional teachers’ organizations. As well as helping to keep members informed of organization activities, the publications also would serve to attract new voluntary members. Well-informed, growing organizations would have more influence on change for the better. I served as the resource person for the seminar.
CTF encountered a major problem while planning the seminar. South Africa would not provide a visa for the fair-minded Canadian. The problem was solved by moving the location of the seminar next door, to the Kingdom of Swaziland. I flew into Matsapa, Swaziland from Nairobi, and the South African teachers entered the country by car, bus and taxi. That we had to meet in this slightly covert fashion to learn about communications was not lost on the teachers.
The end of December marks the end of the school year in South Africa. The seminar coincided with the beginning of the summer holidays for these teachers; yet there they were, ready for an intensive three-week writing and production workshop. Their dedication to their organizations and their commitment to the seminar were exemplary. They wanted to see change, and they were prepared to work very hard to achieve it.
We concentrated on three things during the workshop. Writing for newsletters was probably the most important, and the teachers churned out an impressive array of stories. Editing and newsletter production were the other themes. We started our writing out easily, the teachers submitting news releases and articles on the seminar and the people attending it. As the days went by, the stories became much more personal. The authors recounted incidents and events in their own lives and the lives of their friends back home. Many of them focused on what it was like teaching in black South African schools or simply on being black and being regarded as a fourth class citizens in the country of their birth.
The teachers wrote about the crumbling black school system, a system that has simply stopped working in some parts of the country. They wrote about the loss of human potential the apartheid system has caused and about the problems all black teachers face trying to control and at the same time educate a generation of black children for whom liberation has become paramount and for whom schools and teachers are often seen as symbols of repression.
They also wrote that despite everything, the first and most important thing black teachers must do is to continue to offer education to their students. They saw education, and hopefully improving standards of education, as the salvation of the country. Not revolution, not fighting between factions, not the ouster of the white ruling class. Education.
Two of their stories illustrate the difficulty of their mission. Noxolo Nkume of the Cape African Teachers’ Union wrote about her experience as a high school principal. A rumor began in her school that she had misappropriated money that had been given to her school by two local companies. Some colleagues fanned the rumors and incited the students to take action. Signs appeared saying “Noxolo must die.” She was warned by her friends and by her superintendent not to return to the school as she would surely be killed. “I had done nothing wrong,” she wrote, “and the companies provided proof of my innocence. I was the principal and I was not going to run away.”
The threats continued, but Noxolo was determined to return to her school even if it meant her death. “I kissed my two children goodbye and sent them to my mother’s home. If I was going to die today, so be it.” On entering the school grounds, she passed by a stack of tires and several cans of gasoline. Signs on the tires read, “Noxolo dies today!” She met most of the teachers in the staff room. They were terribly upset and fearful of what was to come. Noxolo sent them off to their classes and began a tour around the school. The students had congregated on the soccer field, but when they saw her approaching they ran off to their classrooms.
Finally, a student delegation arrived for a meeting. Noxolo explained how the money had been spent, and the school began to calm down. By noon, the tires and gasoline had disappeared, and the threat of death was gone.
Bethwell Gclitshana of the Ciskei Teachers’ Union wrote about falling victim to student unrest in his high school in 1976. School strikes by students were common across South Africa that year, and the girls in Bethwell’s school were the ones who took action. They were sent home for a time, but when they returned, fighting began between the girls and the boys because the boys had not supported the strike. Bethwell finally calmed things down by helping the students produce a play about their concerns. His well-intentioned efforts simply served to unite the students, and they ended up destroying the school by burning it.
There were several other stories in this vein, stories about black teachers being fired because the system had not encouraged them to upgrade their qualifications, about the disruption of meetings by armed intruders, and about teachers who had been murdered in their schools.
To me, the odd thing was that the writing of these accounts did not seem to demoralize my budding journalists. Instead, camaraderie and optimism grew during the seminar. We began and ended each day with a rousing round of songs, holding hands around our meeting room. The spirit was alive, and these teachers were going to see change for the better for black South African children.
I began writing this notebook entry shortly after returning from Swaziland. In late January, events in South Africa, positive events that bode well for my friends, began to overtake me. Change is underway in that country, and it can only benefit black citizens.
The temptation for all fair-minded Canadian teachers might be to assume that our South African colleagues no longer need our moral and material support. Such an assumption would be wrong. Education for black children is far behind that of white South African children. Now that the climate for change in improving, we can count on black teachers working even harder to raise the levels of educational achievement. And, perhaps more Canadian teachers will be able to lend helping hands to assist them.
Volume 70, Mar/Apr 1990
Stories from the Veld
You might remember, back about three years, an appeal that appeared in this publication and on staff walls across the province. The appeal asked for funds to help end apartheid. Canadian teachers and their organizations responded generously. The Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF) coordinated the program in support of our South African colleagues.
This wasn’t the first involvement by CTF in South Africa, nor the last. But partly because South Africa is considered a developed nation and partly because of the reluctance of the South African government to allow international collegial programs that would benefit black teachers, South Africa has not received the kind of support CTF has been able to give to other African countries. Over the past several years, for example, only one Alberta teacher, Margorie Huk, has worked in South Africa on Project Overseas.
The problems in South Africa are familiar to all of us. Not a day goes by that we do not read or hear of Mandela or de Klerk or of the radical changes proposed for the country. Your students know what apartheid means and probably condemn the idea that people should be kept separated on the basis of the color of skin. Despite the claims of the South African government that apartheid really means separate development for whites, Asians, coloreds and black, it’s pretty obvious that the government has used the excuse of apartheid and the power of the national security forces to protect the privileges of four million whites in a country that is also home to nearly twenty million blacks.
There are many indexes in South Africa that illustrate this, but some statistics regarding education really bring it home to teachers. According to the Statesman’s Yearbook, there are 955,000 white children in primary and secondary white schools being taught by 67,848 white teachers. That’s a pupil-teacher ratio of about 14 to 1. There are also 4,319,000 black children in primary and secondary black schools being taught by 104,542 black teachers. The pupil-teacher ratio for blacks is 41 to 1. South African colleges, universities and technical school enrolled 233,600 white students and 79,400 black students in 1986. Draw your own conclusions on the separate development of races.
I have. As a typical fair-minded Canadian, so highly regarded in developing countries, I believed the system of apartheid in South Africa was wrong. In my heart, I supported the struggle of the blacks for equality in their homeland. I wished them well. From afar. While I had considerable empathy for the problems South African blacks faced, they had to live with those problems and I didn’t.
My distant view of life in South Africa changed last December. CTF had set up a communication seminar for black South African teachers on behalf of the Canadian government. The seminar was meant to train about twenty teachers to enable them to write and produce newsletters for their colleagues in regional teachers’ organizations. As well as helping to keep members informed of organization activities, the publications also would serve to attract new voluntary members. Well-informed, growing organizations would have more influence on change for the better. I served as the resource person for the seminar.
CTF encountered a major problem while planning the seminar. South Africa would not provide a visa for the fair-minded Canadian. The problem was solved by moving the location of the seminar next door, to the Kingdom of Swaziland. I flew into Matsapa, Swaziland from Nairobi, and the South African teachers entered the country by car, bus and taxi. That we had to meet in this slightly covert fashion to learn about communications was not lost on the teachers.
The end of December marks the end of the school year in South Africa. The seminar coincided with the beginning of the summer holidays for these teachers; yet there they were, ready for an intensive three-week writing and production workshop. Their dedication to their organizations and their commitment to the seminar were exemplary. They wanted to see change, and they were prepared to work very hard to achieve it.
We concentrated on three things during the workshop. Writing for newsletters was probably the most important, and the teachers churned out an impressive array of stories. Editing and newsletter production were the other themes. We started our writing out easily, the teachers submitting news releases and articles on the seminar and the people attending it. As the days went by, the stories became much more personal. The authors recounted incidents and events in their own lives and the lives of their friends back home. Many of them focused on what it was like teaching in black South African schools or simply on being black and being regarded as a fourth class citizens in the country of their birth.
The teachers wrote about the crumbling black school system, a system that has simply stopped working in some parts of the country. They wrote about the loss of human potential the apartheid system has caused and about the problems all black teachers face trying to control and at the same time educate a generation of black children for whom liberation has become paramount and for whom schools and teachers are often seen as symbols of repression.
They also wrote that despite everything, the first and most important thing black teachers must do is to continue to offer education to their students. They saw education, and hopefully improving standards of education, as the salvation of the country. Not revolution, not fighting between factions, not the ouster of the white ruling class. Education.
Two of their stories illustrate the difficulty of their mission. Noxolo Nkume of the Cape African Teachers’ Union wrote about her experience as a high school principal. A rumor began in her school that she had misappropriated money that had been given to her school by two local companies. Some colleagues fanned the rumors and incited the students to take action. Signs appeared saying “Noxolo must die.” She was warned by her friends and by her superintendent not to return to the school as she would surely be killed. “I had done nothing wrong,” she wrote, “and the companies provided proof of my innocence. I was the principal and I was not going to run away.”
The threats continued, but Noxolo was determined to return to her school even if it meant her death. “I kissed my two children goodbye and sent them to my mother’s home. If I was going to die today, so be it.” On entering the school grounds, she passed by a stack of tires and several cans of gasoline. Signs on the tires read, “Noxolo dies today!” She met most of the teachers in the staff room. They were terribly upset and fearful of what was to come. Noxolo sent them off to their classes and began a tour around the school. The students had congregated on the soccer field, but when they saw her approaching they ran off to their classrooms.
Finally, a student delegation arrived for a meeting. Noxolo explained how the money had been spent, and the school began to calm down. By noon, the tires and gasoline had disappeared, and the threat of death was gone.
Bethwell Gclitshana of the Ciskei Teachers’ Union wrote about falling victim to student unrest in his high school in 1976. School strikes by students were common across South Africa that year, and the girls in Bethwell’s school were the ones who took action. They were sent home for a time, but when they returned, fighting began between the girls and the boys because the boys had not supported the strike. Bethwell finally calmed things down by helping the students produce a play about their concerns. His well-intentioned efforts simply served to unite the students, and they ended up destroying the school by burning it.
There were several other stories in this vein, stories about black teachers being fired because the system had not encouraged them to upgrade their qualifications, about the disruption of meetings by armed intruders, and about teachers who had been murdered in their schools.
To me, the odd thing was that the writing of these accounts did not seem to demoralize my budding journalists. Instead, camaraderie and optimism grew during the seminar. We began and ended each day with a rousing round of songs, holding hands around our meeting room. The spirit was alive, and these teachers were going to see change for the better for black South African children.
I began writing this notebook entry shortly after returning from Swaziland. In late January, events in South Africa, positive events that bode well for my friends, began to overtake me. Change is underway in that country, and it can only benefit black citizens.
The temptation for all fair-minded Canadian teachers might be to assume that our South African colleagues no longer need our moral and material support. Such an assumption would be wrong. Education for black children is far behind that of white South African children. Now that the climate for change in improving, we can count on black teachers working even harder to raise the levels of educational achievement. And, perhaps more Canadian teachers will be able to lend helping hands to assist them.