by H.S. Brink<\/p>\n
Firstly, blaming HF Verwoerd for the textbook mess is nonsensical at best and for your newspaper to portray Verwoerd as the \u201carchitect of apartheid\u201d is a false representation.<\/p>\n
Those who perpetuate this lie may well be referred to a book by David Walsh called The Roots of Segregation \u2013 Native Policy in Natal (1845-1910), published in 1971.<\/p>\n
The foreword says: \u201c(Lord) Shepstone\u2019s policy was the precursor of the later policy of segregation, which in turn has been called apartheid, separate development and separate freedoms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walsh in his conclusion writes: \u201cIt is a myth that apartheid is the exclusive product of Afrikaner nationalism: it\u2019s antecedents are to be found in Natal.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the National Party came to power in 1948 it inherited a disorderly schooling system for blacks that was run mainly by Anglican and Catholic churches.<\/p>\n
The 1951 Eiselen report on black education revealed shocking facts. Admission to school was subject to baptism. Parental participation was non-existent. Most black children had never been to school. Illiteracy was rife.<\/p>\n
No indigenous language was tolerated and\u00a0 English was the sole medium of instruction for education.<\/p>\n
Part of subsidised teachers\u2019 salaries landed in church coffers. Some priests and nuns got a pittance.<\/p>\n
In Taung, as was the practice elsewhere, the community built the church which doubled up as one massive classroom for 500 scholars.<\/p>\n
In and around Mafeking 25 000 scholars had 56 classrooms between them.<\/p>\n
Verwoerd changed all this with an orderly system, pumping millions of pounds into black education, plus the \u00a32\u00a0million representing the total tax contribution by blacks.<\/p>\n
Additionally, a special levy was placed on urban property taxes to build schools and alleviate the backlog in black education, and so on and so forth.<\/p>\n
Yet President Jacob Zuma, who believed in liberation before education, accuses Verwoerd of putting black people \u201cback for centuries\u201d.<\/p>\n
One cannot but wonder who put the rest of Africa back for centuries?<\/p>\n
As for the pretext of Afrikaans being the cause of the 1976 school uprising, think again.<\/p>\n
The two schools that were in the forefront of the Soweto riots did not receive tutoring in Afrikaans in any subject.<\/p>\n
Also, an\u00a0 advisory board\u2019s polling of all black schools\u2019 governing bodies revealed that 64% approved of Afrikaans and English as mediums of education.<\/p>\n
Zuma\u2019s promotion of the \u201csecond revolution\u201d, where scholars such as Hector Pieterson will undoubtedly be used again as pawns in a communist game, will indeed put South Africa back for centuries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by H.S. Brink Firstly, blaming HF Verwoerd for the textbook mess is nonsensical at best and for your newspaper to portray Verwoerd as the \u201carchitect of apartheid\u201d is a false representation. Those who perpetuate this lie may well be referred to a book by David Walsh called The Roots of Segregation \u2013 Native Policy in … Continue reading “Verwoerd pumped millions into black education”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[492],"tags":[236,164,656,657,655,65,658,12250],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-afrikaner","tag-apartheid","tag-black-education","tag-david-walsh","tag-hf-verwoerd","tag-race","tag-segregation","tag-south-africa"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":911,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions\/911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}