The Plight of Education in South Africa

[Warning: this is a long one, but something that is important to me]
Last Saturday I reunited with Jean Junior [the other Harvard 2009 grad who studied Sociology and is also working at an NGO in Pietermaritzburg] and joined her with two American UPenn medical school students who are currently doing their residency here. They were the first Americans I have hung out with since I have been here!
Anyway, we drove to Durban to go to the Kwa Muhle Museum... I wasn't too excited to go to a museum, but I was happy to be going somewhere with company so I went in smiling. There was a huge room in the museum that just had walls covered with the American flag... I thought, Really? I come all the way to South Africa to end up in a museum featuring American history??? I soon learned that I could have stayed in that room forever. It just so happens that this room was dedicated to outlining the struggle for equal education in the United States, something that coincides very well with all the school work I did on race and education in college. It was very interesting to see how closely the struggle for equal education in the United States parallels with trying to give equal education to blacks in South Africa. If I had the time I would have stayed there to read every single panel on the wall; after feeling a bit unfulfilled and useless the last couple of weeks, this room was a great refresher that reminded me what I am passionate about and why I came to South Africa.

In 1953 the Bantu Education Act basically ended any opportunity for black children in South Africa to get adequate education. In 1954, Brown vs. The Board of Education created an opportunity for black children in the United States to get an equal education. It is almost as if everything was ending for children in South Africa just as things were just starting in the United States.
The Bantu* Education Act ensured that the syllabus for black students was designed to prepare pupils for an inferior role in society. Basic skills was all that was given to blacks in order to beat down their independence. This quote that I saw on the wall at the museum was incredibly striking:

"The Natives will be taught from childhood to realize that equality with Europeans is not for them... What is the use of teaching the Bantu mathematics when he cannot use it in practice?.. There is no place for the Bantu child above certain forms of labor."    - H.F. Verwoerd, 1953

Another South African politician agreed, quoted:

"We should not give the Natives any academic education. If we do, who is going to do manual labor in the community?"

Hearing these statements makes my blood boil. It infuriates me to know that people are capable of reducing human beings to this not based on their work or effort, nor based on their actions or attitudes, but based on their race, something they have no control of.

It is incredible how closely the American and South African education evolutions parallel... the biggest difference is that the U.S. got a 40-year headstart. There used to only be vocational training for blacks, Mexicans and Asians in the U.S., just as the Bantu Education Act legally forced in South Africa. In some cities of the American southwest, there was three or four-way segregation of white, black, Mexican and Indian children, similar to the segregation of white, African, coloured and Asian children in South Africa.
And just like the black students who needed to be escorted by federal marshals into their schools (such as Ruby Bridges from New Orleans in 1960, above), 16 black South African students were escorted into their primary school by police in order to deter the white public from violently revolting.
It wasn't until 1996 that the South African Schools Act was created to give equal education rights. 1996. That means even people my age were still in segregated schools learning Bantu education until 4th grade... And as someone who is living here, I will be honest and say that the schools are still very segregated. This could also be an effect of residential segregation, considering that for the most part all blacks, whites and Indians live together.
I truly believe that his unequal education era has really set the blacks here behind... it is impossible to even compete for the same jobs because they never had a proper education. I feel like this is partly responsible for the high unemployment here, the low literacy rate amongst blacks, the poverty. Education really is everything, especially when competing against others for the same resources. It will be decades until things can even start to level out. This is so unfair. You cannot deny a child their education.

I really wish I was still in school so I could write my thesis on this, to compare the parallel struggles for equal education between the United States and South Africa, and look at the after-effects of years of enforced segregation and how it has played out in the two countries. It would be something like "The United States and South Africa: The Fight for Equal Education" and I could spend months on researching it because I find the similarities between the two fascinating. I wondered why they had that whole room dedicated to the race struggles in America [they had panels on lynching and the KKK, etc.]... but maybe it was to give hope, to show South Africans that another country struggles with similar issues and turned out okay... maybe we give them something to look forward to.**

*The word "bantu" simply means "people," but it was often used to refer to black people in South Africa.
** I know for a fact that education in the United States is still not equal and that many minority students are still suffering, but I think that from an outsider's point of view and looking at the big picture, it looks like we have reached equality, therefore giving them hope. I know we are not done, but we sure have come a long way.
*** The facts about the Bantu Education Act listed here all come from what I learned in the Kwa Muhle Museum... I really look forward to reading more about this and understanding it more, and I cannot pretend like what I have said here will paint a complete and accurate picture.