all parties to the talks, including the African National Congress, agreed on the need for a ‘soft’ form of affirmative action that would help provide redress for apartheid wrongs. This was to be done by focusing on inputs (education and opportunities) rather than outputs (targets or quotas). Towards this end, the ‘equality’ clause in the Constitution (Section 9) included a sub-clause authorising legislative and other measures designed to ‘protect or advance people disadvantaged by unfair discrimination … [in order to] promote the achievement of equality’.1
According to FW de Klerk, state president from 1989 to 1994, this sub-clause was intended to reflect the prevailing consensus that ‘the most important and effective form of affirmative action was through the provision of excellent education and training, and the creation of employment’.2 Affirmation action of this kind, so delegates to the talks agreed, would be more successful than any other intervention in opening up opportunities for black South Africans and compensating for the poor quality of black education under the earlier segregated system.
School segregation under the National Party government
Under the National Party government, education for the different races was both separate and unequal. Schooling for Africans was particularly inadequate, making the Bantu Education Act of 1953 one of the most pernicious laws introduced in the apartheid era. The revenue allocated to African education was far too little, while a rapid expansion in pupil numbers – from 800 000 in 1953 to 1 800 000 a decade later – made it still more difficult to meet the scale of need.3
Racial disparities in funding were stark. In 1953/54, for instance, spending on white schooling stood at R128 a head whereas the amount per capita for African schooling was a mere R17 – a ratio of 7.5 to 1. By 1972/3 this ratio had widened even further to 20.6 to 1. Though it then began to narrow quite dramatically, in 1993/94 it still stood at 2.2 to 1 – the state then spending R4 772 for each white pupil and R2 110 for each African one. The main reason for the remaining differential was that white teachers were better qualified and thus better paid, whereas many African teachers had no formal qualifications and their salaries reflected this.4
In a further indictment of Bantu Education, the 1970 census showed that 79% of urban Africans and 93% of rural ones had not been able to progress beyond Standard Six (now Grade 8) – the first year of high school. It also emerged that half of urban Africans and 75% of rural ones had not passed even Standard Three (Grade 5). Yet rapid economic growth in the 1960s had generated a great demand for skills that the small white population was unable to supply. This situation left the National Party government with little choice but to start taking measures to build up the skills of black South Africans.5
In 1967 the government announced that the time had come to concentrate on developing secondary education for Africans, thus prompting a rapid expansion in African high schools from 1970 onwards. Initially, the government intended to locate these secondary schools in the ‘homelands’, as this would promote grand apartheid by encouraging African resettlement in these putative ‘states’. In time, however, its stance here shifted as well – and secondary schools for Africans began to grow apace in urban townships too. By 1985 the overall school attendance rate among African children had risen to 85%. In the early 1990s, access to schooling among black South Africans became almost universal at primary school level, while black participation in secondary schooling went up by 7% a year between 1990 and 1995.6
Better access to schooling among Africans was followed by a rise in the number of African matriculants. In 1955 only 260 Africans had been able to matriculate, but by 1986 the number had risen to 52 000 (which was roughly the same as the number of white matriculants that year). By 1994 the number of Africans matriculating had virtually quadrupled to 201 000, whereas the number of white matriculants had remained much the same. Moreover, whereas in 1955 only 90 Africans had passed matric with results good enough for university entrance, by 1986 this number had risen to 13 000. Between then and 1994, it rose to 45 000, an increase of 250%. However, by comparison with the size of the African population (then 25.9 million),7 this was a tiny number, making up only 0.15% of the total.
Key changes in education since 1994
Officially, South Africa has no affirmative action policies in schooling, all pupils having an equal right (under Section 29 of the Constitution) to ‘a basic education’ from Grades 0 to 9. Hence, it is only at the ‘further education and training’ (FET) level – and especially among the country’s 23 public universities and universities of technology – that affirmative action in admissions is applied, as further outlined below. However, even at the basic education level, various changes have been made since 1994 to help compensate for past wrongs.
Access, fees, and teacher pay
The 1996 Constitution prohibits any school, whether public or private, from discriminating against anyone on the basis of race. In addition, all public schools are barred (under the South African Schools Act of 1996) from turning pupils away for an inability to pay school fees. Instead, those state schools that still charge fees – in practice, many of them former Model C schools, which earlier catered mainly for white pupils – must grant a remission of fees in whole or part to parents unable to afford them. In 2013 the fee remissions provided to poor parents (most of them black) amounted to some R1 billion. The government is supposed to reimburse schools for such remissions but this money often remains unpaid – leaving wealthier parents (mainly whites) to shoulder the burden.8
A new funding formula has also been introduced. Government subsidies to public schools are based on a sliding scale, in which the largest amounts are allocated to the schools in the poorest areas. Almost all public schools have thus been divided into five quintiles, poorer schools having a low quintile ranking and better-resourced schools a higher one. Schools with the lowest quintile rankings receive more funding, while higher-ranked schools receive substantially less.
In addition, the government is incrementally phasing out the payment of school fees in poorer schools. Schools in the poorest quintile (quintile one) were the first to be exempted from the need to charge school fees. By 2012, the ‘no-fee’ system had been extended to schools in all but the wealthiest quintile, with the result that some 80% of public schools charged no fees at all. Instead, all their financial needs, in theory at least, were met via transfers from the government. However, many schools complain that the no-fee system has left them worse off than before, as inept state administration has often left them scrabbling for money to pay for essential supplies.9
Secondly, in what was effectively another aspect of affirmative action, the government took various steps to eliminate the pay differential between white and black teachers. In June 1996 the least qualified teachers (most of them African) received a R2.5-billion pay increase, which helped put their salaries more on a par with those of better-qualified staff. In addition, a new salary structure was put in place, which cut the prior link between salaries and qualifications in favour of ‘performance’ criteria that have since proved meaningless in practice.10
In 1996 and 1997 the government also encouraged more than 15 500 experienced (and mostly white) teachers to take severance packages and leave the schooling system – thus opening up a large number of senior posts to African teachers. However, many of those who left were mathematics and science teachers who could not readily be replaced. The impact was soon evident in educational outcomes, writes political analyst James Myburgh, for ‘the number of pupils passing higher grade maths fell from 22 800 in 1997 to around 19 300 in 2000, while the number of pupils passing higher grade physical science fell from 27 000 to roughly 23 300 in the same period’.11
Infrastructure and resources
The government has further sought to provide redress by improving essential school infrastructure. This has sometimes required the building of new schools, along with the rolling out to many existing ones of electricity, piped water, and modern sanitation. However, progress has been slow and often uneven. Hence, though 79% of schools
