Seth Mazibuko strides into the intersection of Moema and Vilakazi Street in Soweto, gesturing to the spot that changed South African history. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where the students who were marching peacefully had a first confrontation with the police,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
It was June 16, 1976. Mazibuko had turned 16 the day before. Tens of thousands of students, mostly still just children, streamed through the township to protest the racist education system of apartheid. <\/p>\n
For decades, apartheid forced many indignities on the non-white population of the country. Perhaps most tragically, it relegated Black South Africans to a sub-par education and reinforced their place in a segregated society. <\/p>\n
But few could have <\/strong>predicted the state violence that followed. <\/p>\n The final straw for Mazibuko and other student leaders was the switch to instruction in Afrikaans \u2013 a language few of them understood, and the language of the oppressors. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen we were raising the hands and fingers of peace, we were met with bullets. I still feel guilty today that I led students and children out of the classroom to be killed,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n Hundreds of students were killed, scores of student leaders, like Mazibuko, were sent to prison, and many more went into exile. <\/p>\n The Soweto uprisings, as they have become known, changed the trajectory of the anti-apartheid movement, and set South Africa on the eventual path of liberation. <\/p>\n But as South Africans celebrate 30 years of democracy this week, many educators and activists believe that there is a crisis hollowing out the country\u2019s education system \u2013 a crisis that threatens democracy\u2019s hard-fought gains. <\/p>\n \u201cThey sold out. Many of the leaders that were supposed to be leading have left this community. They left the people they were fighting for,\u201d says Mazibuko. <\/p>\n Just up the road from the iconic intersection, Prince Mulwela teaches a geography lesson to senior students at Morris Isaacson High School. It is a misty fall day; most of the lights in the classroom aren\u2019t working. <\/p>\n The school is famous for its instrumental role in the Soweto uprisings, but Mulwela is focused on today\u2019s problems. During his 18 years at the school, he says it has gotten more and more difficult to educate its students. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is becoming harder now because the learners we are teaching are so very problematic,\u201d he says, adding that over the past decade children arriving at high school have been increasingly unprepared. <\/p>\n The statistics do make sobering reading. <\/p>\n Despite substantial education funding, South African students consistently rank among the lowest in global assessments of literacy and numeracy skills. <\/p>\n Out of the 50 countries of a well-respected assessment of fourth graders, South African students ranked last \u2013 more than 80% of 9- to-10-year-olds in the country cannot read for meaning. <\/p>\n However, in at least one study, South African sixth-graders do far worse in math than students in Kenya, a much poorer country. <\/p>\n Motshekga says more focus needs to be put on early childhood education and instruction in each <\/strong>learner\u2019s mother tongue, part of a controversial education bill that the government hopes to bring into law. South Africa has eleven official languages. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very encouraged. I think from where we started off, I don\u2019t think we could have done better,\u201d says Motshekga, who grew up in Soweto. <\/p>\n To illustrate the country\u2019s challenges, Motshekga refers to her own experience. She says she was the only person from her street to attain a proper education in the 1970s. <\/strong> <\/p>\n Her mother and grandmother were teachers and were able to work around the apartheid system and get her into a Catholic school to finish high school. <\/strong>But the vast majority did not. \u201cThat\u2019s why most of my generation are illiterate, unemployed, and poor,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n When Nelson Mandela became president 30 years ago, his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party faced enormous challenges to fix education. <\/p>\n The apartheid education system was a convoluted and racist bureaucracy that had to be undone. There were not enough trained teachers and certainly not enough classrooms. <\/p>\n Now, more than 98% of children aged seven to 14 are in school, according to government statistics. <\/strong>The president recently praised students for their high passing rate in their final school leaving exams known as Matric. <\/p>\n But education experts say that ignores falling standards and high dropout rates. <\/p>\n \u201cIn fact, they lie about it when every year we have the festival around the Matric results and they tell us how well they\u2019ve done when it\u2019s not really true,\u201d says Ann Bernstein, the executive director of the Centre of Development and Enterprise, an independent think tank. <\/p>\n Motshekga denied that standards were dropping and said the results show progress. <\/p>\n Bernstein says that South Africa has made meaningful progress in education, but that those gains have slipped in recent years due to corruption, politics, and a lack of political will. <\/p>\n A powerful teachers\u2019 union has also been accused of fostering a \u201cjobs for cash\u201d scheme for teacher placement. Opposition parties and groups like Corruption Watch say that not enough has been done to clean up the education system. <\/p>\n Responding to the most recent accusation relating to jobs, the South African Democratic Teachers Union said last month it \u201cwill never condone or tolerate criminal acts in education. The selling of posts is corruption.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s time for the minister to go,\u201d says Bernstein. <\/p>\n For educators like Mulwela, at Morris Isaacson, the problem is obvious. He says education, like many other facets of the state, has been overtaken by a culture of patronage. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople that are loyal to the ANC, cadres that are loyal to the ANC, are getting jobs in education,\u201d he says. \u201cThe government should be saying, \u2018let us get people who are qualified for these positions.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Earlier this year, the ANC Secretary General admitted that cadre development could be subject to abuse, but said it was key for transformation. <\/p>\n Many of Mulwela\u2019s students are proud of their school and aware of its role in the protests of 1976. <\/p>\n \u201cThey put their lives in danger for a better future, for a better education,\u201d says Mbali Msimanga, a student in her final year. <\/p>\n But she says her generation still faces an uncertain future. <\/p>\n South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world and many university graduates struggle to enter the workforce. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is scary for us to be sitting at home and doing nothing,\u201d says Msimanga. <\/p>\n \u201cEspecially when you went to university for so long and you have a degree, but you are still struggling to get a job,\u201d her classmate, Atlegang Alcock, agrees. <\/p>\n The personal sacrifices of the generations before them were immense. <\/p>\n Mazibuko spent 11 months in solitary confinement at the Fort Prison in Johannesburg, followed by seven years in Robben Island prison off Cape Town \u2013 where Mandela, too, served a lengthy term \u2013 for calling for a fair education system. He believes that the next generation is not yet \u201cenjoying the fruit of the tree.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWhen we were marching and doing those things, we said that the tree of liberation shall be watered by the blood of the martyrs,\u201d he says. \u201cThese kids are not even enjoying the shade of the tree. And for that, I think our country and our leaders are still going to pay dearly.\u201d <\/p>\n In South Africa\u2019s upcoming election, after 30 years of ANC government, that sentiment could be put to the test. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seth Mazibuko strides into the intersection of Moema and Vilakazi Street in Soweto, gesturing to the spot that changed South African history. \u201cThis is where the students who were marching peacefully had a first confrontation with the police,\u201d he says. It was June 16, 1976. Mazibuko had turned 16 the day before. Tens of thousands of students, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Dropping standards<\/h2>\n
A challenging history<\/h2>\n
An uncertain future<\/h2>\n