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Content
A listing of transcripts of the dialogue and narrative of this section.
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Structure
The list provides the transcript, info about the text, and links to references contained in the text.
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Special Report
Transcripts for Section 4 of Episode 46
| Time | Summary | | | 09:00 | Brutal, terrible stories. But there were other apartheid era violations that were equally damaging: forced removals, homelessness, inadequate health care, extreme poverty and racist inferior education for our children. Today, close to 10 million South Africans can hardly read or write; a legacy of the past that many want the Truth Commission to investigate. | Full Transcript | | 09:26 | The 1953 Bantu Education Act, separated schools and curricula for white and black, inferior education for black communities. It began with the National Party’s rise to power and the policies this man, Dr Hendrik F Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid. He was determined to deny black people, particularly the African majority, the right to quality education. In 1954 Verwoerd told the senate that it was a waste of time to teach mathematics to a Bantu child. His Bantu Education Act had decided that black people would be trained to be ‘no more than hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ // The government trained black teachers in line with apartheid ideology; Christian National Education government’s spending unequal and racist. During Verwoerd’s day, R17 for an African child, R40 for a coloured child, R40 for an Indian child, a R128 for a white child. For decades students were forced to learn in Afrikaans and fed inferior education. The turning point came in 1976. Students ...more | Full Transcript and References | | 11:45 | During the late eighties liberation movements encouraged students to become the main players in their people’s war. ‘Liberation before education’ became this generation’s battle cry. Apartheid education and wide scale resistance to it steadily eroded the culture of learning. | Full Transcript | | 12:14 | So by the eighties or post-76 period resistance emerged; that resistance: 1976, 1980, 1982 and 83, 1985 highlighted the plight of education being one of the most critical features of how apartheid dominated the oppressed in the country. // In November last year the National Literacy Cooperation and other education stakeholders asked the TRC to investigate the past education system. They argue that racist education was a violation of a basic human right. // I think the Truth Commission, even though its brief is narrow with respect to the experiences of activists and the maiming and killing that is spoken about in the hearings. We wanted the Truth Commission to broaden its perspective around whether socio-economic rights or education rights that we want to see for the future could be given a kick start… | Full Transcript | | 13:19 | We certainly don’t have a mandate to make any impact on the educational system or the absence of a proper educational system, we simply don’t have the mandate or the finance to do that other than to draw attention to it and to include that sort of material in our report to the government in March next year. | Full Transcript | | 13:45 | Tom Letsoenyo is a respected community leader in Tumahole near Parys in the Free State. He survived Bantu education, student politics during the seventies and eighties as well as torture. This week he told his story to the TRC’s Human Rights Violations Committee, but he’d like to see the Truth Commission do more than simply record the experiences of black youth. | Full Transcript | | 14:12 | I’ll love if the TRC can budget time and money and the resources to empower that generation. That generation must be taught inter alia the managerial skills, the scientific field; they must go there, the technological field. I want to see the TRC focusing on the so-called lost generation. | Full Transcript | | 14:36 | It’s very difficult for us to make any impact on that lost generation as it were other than to include the stories and the contextual material in our report. | Full Transcript | | 14:49 | Even with FW de Klerk’s reforms education was still racially divided. The National Party continued to spend more and more per rand on white education. By 1989, R2900 on every white child and R650 on a black child. Fourie would like to see him explain his government’s education policy to the TRC. // We’re trying to bring Vlok forward or Malan forward about Vlakplaas and about a range of different specific killings. But one of the most dampening/damning effects of education was the apartheid regime, PW Botha, FW de Klerk specifically not allowing people to be educated. And by disabling and robbing people of that, De Klerk must come forward and actually say why did we do this. And we really feel that if it is possible to have a hearing, just one single hearing around violation of education rights it will really highlight the plight of what apartheid did in structural terms to the population. | Full Transcript and References |
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