Bantu Education Act, 1953

The Bantu Education Act 1953 (Act No. 47 of 1953; later renamed the Black Education Act, 1953) was
a South African segregation law that legislated for several aspects of the apartheid system. Its major
provision enforced racially-separated educational facilities;[1] Even universities were made "tribal", and all
but three missionary schools chose to close down when the government would no longer help to support
their schools. Very few authorities continued using their own finances to support education for native
Africans.[2] In 1959, that type of education was extended to "non-white" universities and colleges with the
Extension of University Education Act, and the University College of Fort Hare was taken over by the
government and degraded to being part of the Bantu education system.[3] It is often argued that the policy
of Bantu (African) education was aimed to direct black or non-white youth to the unskilled labour market[4]
although Hendrik Verwoerd, the Minister of Native Affairs, claimed that the aim was to solve South
Africa's "ethnic problems" by creating complementary economic and political units for different ethnic
groups.

The ruling National Party viewed education as having a rather pivotal position in their goal of eventually
separating South Africa from the Bantustans entirely. Verwoerd, the "Architect of Apartheid", stated:[2]

"There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms
of labour.... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in
practice?"

The Act led to a substantial increase of government funding to the learning institutions of black Africans,
but they did not keep up with the population increase.[5] The law forced institutions to be under the direct
control of the state. The National Party now had the power to employ and train teachers as it saw fit.

Black teachers' salaries in 1953 were extremely low and resulted in a dramatic drop of trainee teachers.
Only one third of the black teachers were qualified.[2]

The schools reserved for the country's white children were of Western standards. The Act did not stipulate
lesser standards of education for non-whites, but it legislated for the establishment of an advisory board and
directed the minister to do so. Of the black schools, 30% of had no electricity, 25% had no running water
and more than half had no plumbing. Education for Blacks, Indians and Coloureds was substantially
cheaper but not free, and the salaries of teachers were set at very low levels.[2]

In the 1970s, the per capita governmental spending on black education was one-tenth of the spending on
white.[4]

In 1976, the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974, which forced all black schools to use both Afrikaans and
English as languages of instruction from the last year of primary school, led to the Soweto Uprising in
which more than 575 people died, at least 134 of them under the age of 18.[4][6]

The Act was repealed in 1979 by the Education and the Training Act of 1979, which continued the system
of racially-segregated education but also eliminating both discrimination in tuition fees and the segregated
Department of Bantu Education and allowed both the use of native tongue education until the fourth grade
and a limited attendance at private schools as well.[7]
Segregation became unconstitutional after the introduction of the Interim Constitution in 1994, and most
sections of the Education and Training Act were repealed by the South African Schools Act, 1996.

References
1. Nadine L. Moore, Faculty of Humanities University of Pretoria (2015). "IN CLASS OF THEIR
OWN: THE BANTU EDUCATION ACT (1953) REVISITED" (http://repository.up.ac.za/bitstre
am/handle/2263/53445/Moore_Class_2016.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y) (PDF).
2. Clark, Domini; Nancy L. Clark; William H. Worger (2004). South Africa - The Rise and Fall of
Apartheid (https://books.google.com/books?id=6JTRPzhoH4cC). Seminar Studies in
History. Pearson Education Limited. pp. 48–52. ISBN 0-582-41437-7.
3. Timeline of the University: 1959 (http://www.ufh.ac.za/timeline.html#) Archived (https://web.ar
chive.org/web/20071230083858/http://www.ufh.ac.za/timeline.html%23) December 30,
2007, at the Wayback Machine. Official website of University of Fort Hare. Accessed 2007-
12-03.
4. Byrnes, Rita M. (1996). South Africa: A Country Study (http://countrystudies.us/south-africa/).
Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress.
5. Giliomee H. (March 2009). "A Note on Bantu Education 1953-1970", South African Journal
of Economics.
6. Boddy-Evans, Alistair (18 January 2021). "The Afrikaans Medium Decree" (https://www.thou
ghtco.com/the-afrikaans-medium-decree-43416). ThoughtCo. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
7. South Africa: Time Running Out : the Report of the Study Commission on U.S. Policy
Toward Southern Africa (https://books.google.com/books?id=sq43lnbklEUC&q=1979+south
+african+education+and+training+act&pg=PA119). University of California Press. 15
September 1981. ISBN 9780520045477. Retrieved 15 September 2017 – via Google
Books.

http://nmmu.ac.za/documents/mward/Bantu%20Education%20Act%201953.pdf

External links
Article on apartheid and education that mentions the Bantu Act (https://web.archive.org/web/
20051201041632/http://www.socsci.kun.nl/ped/whp/histeduc/apartheid.html) (in Dutch)
"Bantu Education Act, Act No 47 of 1953" (https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/bantu-educat
ion-act-act-no-47-1953), South African History Online.

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