Is post-apartheid South Africa training more black African clinical psychologists and addressing the historical imbalance?

Abstract

The history of clinical psychology training in South Africa shows it to have the same racist past as all other aspects of life in the country. With the inception of democracy in 1994, it had been expected that more black African clinical psychologists will be trained in an effort to correct the serious imbalance created by apartheid. This study is a follow-up of earlier research into improvements during the first 12 years post-apartheid. In the present investigation, the licencing register of the Health Professions Council of South Africa was examined for the next 12-year period (2007–2018) to ascertain the number of black Africans trained as clinical psychologists, and the universities that had provided the training. The findings showed no real change in the number trained from the previous period. Of the 2883 clinical psychologists licensed in the study period only 426 (14.8%) were black African, despite this group constituting 80.7% of the South African population.