The Silent Death of the Radical Voice: Knowledge and the South African State
Research, Teaching and Learning: making connections in the education of adultsPapers from the 28th Annual SCUTREAConference
The silent death of the radical voice: knowledge and the South African state
John Wallis, University of Natal, South Africa
This paper addresses the question of the degree to which agencies that were actively involved in the struggle for liberation in South Africa have adjusted to changes since the inauguration of the democratic state in 1994. Particular attention is paid to those non-governmental and community based organisations that had a specific educational and cultural role during the period. The data used derives from interviews with thirty workers attached to twenty three agencies in the Durban area of Kwa Zulu Natal.
For many years under the apartheid regime many oppositional voices were forced into civil society as access to a genuinely democratic political arena was denied the majority of South Africans. As a result the non-governmental sector mushroomed to meet the legitimate needs of the people. Direct overseas funding enabled many NGOs to operate independently and provide spaces for educational and cultural action aimed at supporting the liberation struggle. However, it should be noted that NGOs/CBOs are best seen on a spectrum. At one end were those organisations - often working on a charitable basis - who perceived their contribution to education as providing service to the underprivileged. Such organisations observed their tasks as largely technical and politically neutral and, for example, were happy to co-operate with the apartheid government to provide literacy provision for the rural populations. At the other end some organisations were little more than fronts for the ANC to engage in direct propaganda and organising, and in extreme cases to organise aspects of the armed struggle.
The importance of education during the period was marked in that not only were many people denied access to any meaningful schooling, the alternative of Bantu education was a parody of education and led ultimately to the school boycotts of 1986. These latter events intensified the pressure to find alternative educational ways forward as another generation looked set to lose any access to formal development, and generated the Peoples Education for People’s Power movement which is commented on below.
The nature of the educational work was widely varied but provided the opportunity for many oppositional groups to enable a multitude of voices to be heard. Not only direct political debate articulated around the struggle itself, but education articulated around the needs of women and rural communities (see Walters and Mannicom,1996) developed along with struggles concerning own language teaching and tribal and regional identity. It might be worth noting in passing that the regime actually exploited some of these aspirations for specific identity in an attempt to divide and rule( Freire,1994 ) as in the obvious case of the creation of the homelands, the violent results of which still scar South African society. Freire’s own theoretical work provided guidelines for a major literacy drive called Learn and Teach, vestiges of which still remain, and evidence exists of innumerable self help groups ranging from study circles to factory-based political education activities carried out overnight after the working day had ended. It is the decline in the level of the critical activity associated with these organisations that is the concern of this paper and reflects a growing unease in South Africa, reflected in the recent comments of the Premier of Kwa Zulu Natal:
For all our talk in South Africa about the importance of “civil society” as the underpinning of democracy, we cannot claim to be overly well-endowed in respect of independent voices of conscience and protest. There are literally hundreds of non-governmental organisations, and even more so-called community-based organisations. Yet they seldom produce anything for public consumption that is really independent. One sometimes wonders whether they exist at all, but you certainly find them waiting for the government gravy trains to pull into the station. (Ngubane,1998).
The fact that there is much to challenge in the current South African context is well reflected in the major social tensions that have arisen over the first five years of transition. Despite the fact that the current government is one of national unity, it is dominated by the presence of the African National Congress and the shifts in their policy reflect basic contradictions that have had direct effects on the poor communities and yet have not been the subject of substantial attack or protest from the organised groups in civil society. These contradictions are best summarised by comparing the original ‘blueprint’ for the new South Africa, The Reconciliation and Development Programme (ANC,1994) and the overall economic policy adopted and outlined in the government publication Growth, Employment and Re-distribution: A Macroeconomic Strategy (Department of Finance, 1996).
The development plan lays great stress on the immediate priorities of meeting basic needs and the creation of opportunities for all in co-operation with the people. Its consensual nature is stressed and it promises a continuing dialogue with the people as the core of government:
This document is the result of many months of consultation with the ANC, its Alliance partners and other mass organisations in the wider civil society....
It represents a framework that is coherent , viable and has widespread support. The RDP was not drawn up by experts - although many experts have participated in the process - but by the very people that will be part of its implementation. (Mandela,1994)
The second document outlines a macro-economic policy hingeing on neo-liberal principles and stressing the control of public sector spending in favour of priorities supported by the international financial institutions and the promotion of free-market ideology. The nature of this policy is neatly captured by one minister who recently referred to the GEAR proposals as “South Africa’s voluntary structural re-adjustment programme”. The espousal of the orthodoxy of global capitalism (Brown and Lauder,1996) the chase for inward investment, the pressure to hold inflation at a low level by tightly controlling public spending, and active intervention to keep down wage levels all feature largely in recent policy. At the level of educational reform the universal feature of vocationalism has emerged with the establishment of a National Qualifications Framework (see Human Sciences Research Council, 1995), with the related paraphernalia of competence-based outcomes, and the promise of occupational mobility and a skill revolution. The human capital rhetoric is not often linked to the reality of the need to create occupational opportunities in a country in which an estimated 35% of the potentially economically active are unemployed. This vocational discourse is also challenged by the fact that occupational development is hampered by the presence millions who are not technically literate and on whose education the state is actually spending less than when it came to power.
While there is some recognition of the need to address the emerging tensions by considering a broader participation in macro-economic policy (Gelb and Bethlehem,1998), the educational sector typifies the way in which the current policies impact on the lives of normal people and, apart from the much publicised “failure” of the state to provide acceptable levels of security, education has become the most high profile domestic issue. Parents are asked to pay more towards their children’s schooling, part-time teachers are dismissed for lack of resources to pay them, and established staff are given early retirement in order to lower permanent staff levels, thus depriving the schools of their most experienced staff. This continues against a background of the introduction of a highly complex outcomes-based national education system based on student -centred approaches, demanding well-resourced classrooms and skilled teachers. Government policy speaks of class sizes of 35 while, at the time of writing increasing numbers of schools are actually closing through lack of staff( Daily News 22 April,1998). The reality in Kwa-Zulu Natal is well summarised in a recent review of provision:
... there is an appalling shortage of physical facilities and infrastructure in public schools. A significant number if the 5,340 public schools in Kwa-Zulu Natal lack essential services. The survey reveals that 531 schools have no sanitation facilities, 1913 have no water on site, 3559 have no telephones and 3,314 have no electricity. Further, 14,500 extra classrooms are urgently needed to accommodate those who want to attend school. (Zafar, 1998 1).
The gaping rift between rhetoric and reality is impossible to conceal and yet a concerted critical response, even at the level of sustained intellectual critique is largely absent. What follows are the reasons for this “silence” given by thirty members of non-governmental organisations ranging from trade unions to literacy initiatives. All of the participants were active in the field during the apartheid years and during the recent period of transition. Their “explanations” tend to cluster around three particular areas and, where possible, they are allowed to speak for themselves.
The first and most readily offered explanation was that there remains an established loyalty to the ANC -- the organisation around which opposition to the apartheid regime clustered :
For years the struggle was about black and white in more ways than one. The government was on one side and we were on the other. You don’t really lose that because of the changes. Lots of people are waiting for us to fail, so no matter how bad things are you have to stick together.
However, evidence of the potentially problematic nature of this unity was revealed by the way in which some groups were virtually obliged to subsume their specific concerns those of racial oppression:
You should look at the women’s groups to see what happened. We would discuss away for days and sing songs and talk about domestic oppression and the need for liberation, but when things became serious and we all met together we had to put these things aside and get on with the struggle.
This characteristic of the tendency to not recognise substantial differences within the oppositional movement is commented on below.
At the very practical level, as the ANC was unbanned and the new government came into being many of the leaders of the NGOs were co-opted into official positions in central and local government. Some argue that this shift deprived civil society of some of its best and most articulate critics. Others suggest that by joining the ranks of the state those who should be leading the mass of people are under a self-imposed silence, variously interpreted at best as misplaced loyalty or at worst unjustifiable compromise. Yet others point to the fact that the current government is one of national unity, representing all shades of political opinion, and that their radical voice is being heard, but has to concede to the will of the elected majority. In the case of this last reading it is the NGOs’ responsibility not to rock the boat -- hence the apparent compliance.
Secondly, the issue of financial support is considered of prime importance. Over recent years the amounts of aid into South Africa has begun to decline and is channelled increasingly through central government agencies. Also, many NGOs have disappeared as their function is now redundant -- such as those serving as front organisations for the political groups. The remaining agencies have tended to become locked in a system of competition for a share of the centrally held resources. The results have been two-fold. Firstly, there appears to have been a marked decline in inter-organisational co-operation between previously allied groups:
In the old days we all had different funders for the work (literacy provision) now we usually have to vie with each other for what’s on offer. You’re not going to help the opposition, are you. There are occasional turf wars. I always think it’s like a schoolkid keeps his arm around his book to stop anyone from copying.
The rise of the “bid culture” was regretted by all of the interviewees, but there were no suggestions as to how matters could be improved.
Secondly, and of more importance in the context of this paper, is the changed relationship between the agencies and the state. As the key fundholder the state has begun to have unprecedented power over the future of the NGOs. Some have benefited by becoming “conduit” agencies: organisations contracted to deliver services in areas where the state does not have the appropriate infrastructure. For example, Educare, a large NGO devoted to pre-school care of children is contracted to make provision for its client groups across several parts of South Africa including a large food distribution programme in the Western Cape. As contracted service providers to the state their situation has become more dependent on governmental favour.
A large majority of those interviewed felt that there was a danger that their independence has or would be compromised by the new situation and their freedom to operate as a critical agency diminished:
It’s simple. You can’t bite the hand that feeds you. Most of us (NGOs) now depend more on the government. Even “independent” funders usually check they have the state’s approval before they allocate resources. My staff have families and bonds(mortgages) to pay, and I can’t see them in the street because I think that we’ve been betrayed and the government hasn’t got a clue what it’s doing. You shut up and get on with it.
Apart from the obvious reference to the tendency to silence, the last comment also touches on the frequently mentioned feature of organisations experiencing varying degrees of goal displacement. There has been a perceived tendency for some NGOs to move away from their original goals of supporting social change to the maintenance of the agencies as an end in itself to provide continuing work for the current incumbents. Although this last comment may have a cynical ring, it was frequently expressed with considerable sympathy for those concerned.
Perhaps the most interesting observations arose around the third issue: the doubts about the radical nature of the work in civil society in the past. There was certainly evidence of some NGOs engaging in extremely rigorous work with a clear -- in this case communist -- social purpose:
We organised sustained and demanding programmes We tried to look above the current struggle to the bigger picture. We definitely wanted to use the shop stewards as become the leaders of the working people and by-pass the more conservative union leadership. We wanted to create organic intellectuals who had an understanding broader than the immediately local, and who treated the people as more than a mass that should follow the leaders mindlessly.
The Gramscian inflection of this comment suggests both theory and educational strategy, but in many cases it was felt that the educational/cultural work of the NGOs was largely atheoretical and in some cases based on fundamental mis-readings of stated principles. This point was best exemplified by reference to a movement explicitly committed to literacy provision based on Freirean values:
I don’t think it (Freirean theory) was fully understood at the conceptual level. They took the surface things -- themes and codifications and the like -- but I don’t think they understood what it was intended to do. It became a method. It became a kind of “relevant’ education, where you used local issues and language to help people to read -- a kind of cultural social sight vocabulary and nothing else.
More charitable was the worker who suggested that the field workers were not sufficiently skilled to deal with circumstances after the changes:
During the apartheid years the nature of oppression was on the surface of life. Everyone could see it and thematic analysis was relatively easy -- the oppressive nature of social contradictions was apparent to everybody. Now it’s not so easy. Things are under the surface and analysis -- even if they are up to it -- might produce some uncomfortable findings. You might find your former allies oppressing you now -- and no one fancies that!
Finally, broader issues emerged around the tensions between homogeneity and independence of groups during the struggle. Repeatedly workers referred to the fact that the apparent unity during the struggle was sustained by what one called a “negative” force, in that it was a unity in the face of a common enemy. There was no systematic cultural struggle to “bind” the groupings to a particularly radical position:
We knew what we were against. I’m not sure we knew what we were for particularly. We thought this would be a lot clearer once we’d won the battle. We stood shoulder to shoulder with lots of people. We kept our eyes to the front and didn’t look to the side that often.