A critical analysis on Bantu school boards, 1954--1978: Local administration of Black education in South Africa

The literature on Black education in South Africa is replete with structuralist studies that ascribe all the ills of Black education to policy-makers, especially on the Minister of Bantu Affairs, Verwoerd. This literature deletes Blacks from making their own history. Critical analysis of Bantu School Boards focuses on a multiplicity of interactions that produced a configural constellation that shaped Bantu School Board.; The period from 1954 to 1987 marks the apogee of apartheid with its quasi-liberationist statutory bodies governing the Black lives. The Bantu Education Act No, 47 of 1953 created governing councils, school committees and school boards for the local administration of Black schools. These bodies have a long history in South Africa. They were not introduced by Bantu Education. They existed in White schools in the Cape, the Orange Free State and in the Transvaal. Blacks expressed a desire for school boards in Black education to the Native Education Commission of 1883. The African National Congress in 1941, and some Liberal Whites from 1925 expressed the same desire. Boards introduced in 1954 were tainted by the apartheid politics that excluded Africans from power, properties and progress. Though opposed by most Blacks, Bantu Education and school broads came into being within the White partenalistic framework.; On paper the functions of the boards were educationally sound, but the implementation was marred by contradictory bureaucratic practices and by board-members incompetence. Board members were not trained for their new positions. They were expected to build school but they had no guidelines for that function. For instance, White local authorities were custodians of the funds for building schools in urban areas, while White magistrates known as Bantu Commissioners were custodians of the funds for building school in rural areas. Most of those White bureaucrats decide to let sleeping dogs lie. This study found that the managerial skills of board-members were inadequate for most of the tasks they were expected to execute. If they had been adequately prepared, they would have performed their tasks better. The researcher tested the legislation for funding of buildings for schools in urban areas and in rural areas. In both areas, he built schools though the White officials had not been prepared for releasing funds for building of Black schools. Noting the weakness of top-down and rational comprehensive model as implemented in founding school boards, this study argues for the founding of effective, efficient and proactive local administrative bodies which will empower as much as possible street level policy-implementers. The designation “school boards”, however, should avoided in the new South Africa.