Governance as subversion of democratisation in South African schools

ABSTRACT

In post-apartheid South Africa, a foregrounding of democratic citizenship education through broadened and inclusive participation is especially evident in a decentralised school-based leadership, management, and governance system. Policy-wise, the involvement of parents in School Governing Body (SGB) structures is seen as an enactment of representative and collective consultation, key to the democratisation of schooling and education. In practice, however, the wide-sweeping authority of SGBs, has allowed several schools to continue a historical narrative of exclusion and inequality, effectively widening the gaps between historically advantaged and disadvantaged schools, and putting into effect renewed tensions of inequality and inequity. Key questions arise: has the state erred in its trust of SGBs to enact democratisation? Or are there limits to what democratisation can achieve? In considering these questions, the article explores re-considerations of governance so that interpretations of democratisation of schools are not used in the subversion of education as a public good.

KEYWORDS:

• Democratisation
• decentralisation
• South Africa
• Governance
• School Governing Body

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Ethnically, the racial groups are sub-divided with the African community itself broken up as follows: the Nguni (comprising the Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Swazi people); Sotho-Tswana, who include the Southern, Northern and Western Sotho (Tswana people); Tsonga; Venda. White people are divided into Afrikaners and English (Soudien and McKinney 2016).

2. Dr WWM Eiselen was a prominent Nationalist, former Secretary for Native Affairs and former Chief Inspector of Native Education (1936–1946). He compiled a document known as the Eiselen Commission Report (1951), urged the apartheid regime to take charge of education for ‘black’ South Africans in order to make it part of a general socioeconomic plan for the country.

3. The Bantu Education Act (1953) stipulates that the term ‘bantu’ is synonymous with ‘native.’ But in reality that the apartheid regime did not want to use the term ‘native,’ because of it associations with colonization (Tomlin 2016).

4. South Africa has eleven official languages are: Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, SiSwati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, and English.