From Crisis to Transformation: Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

As South Africa moves towards political change at the start of the 1990s, issues of educational transformation have assumed new prominence for post-apartheid planners. This article outlines the crisis of provision in black education, arguing that the challenge is to develop equity policies to redress historical imbalances between races. Using Gramscian theory, the article also explores the crisis of legitimacy in black education. It suggests that the state has relied on coercive measures to contain resistance in black education and that it has focused on maintaining control rather than meeting demands for change. It is on the basis of this twofold crisis that post-apartheid planners are working towards a new educational dispensation.