JONATHAN JANSEN | Education is an asset the ANC will not surrender so easily – here’s why

Whatever your fever dreams might be about the allocation of ministerial portfolios, education will remain firmly in the grip of ANC ministers.

The reason is simple: education for the ruling party is an ideological asset it would be hard pressed to relinquish.

Unlike forestry & fisheries or correctional services, education is the ideal playground for partisan politics. You can control admission policies. You can fight for history as a compulsory school subject. And you can radically redistribute resources in favour of poorer schools.

Except the present government has done none of that. The top public and private schools are allowed to control admissions by race and class. History has not been made compulsory in the senior phase. And the chasm between rich and poor schools gradually got wider in the past 30 years.

South Africa has become a world leader in the art of make-believe when it comes to education policy pretensions.

Why? Because the ANC elite has its children in those schools. It is happy to be accommodated as a black minority in white-dominant schools as a transactional matter — allow the few of us in, and we will not rock the boat. Put colloquially, you rub my back, I rub yours.

And what about all the sound and fury about “transforming” education by making sure each child in the senior phase (grades 10-12) does history as a compulsory subject? You know, to make sure they remember our racist and colonial past? The antidote to racism that occasionally rears its ugly head on school grounds and university campuses.

Have no fear. The ANC elite knows there will be a white (and black) middle class revolt against history as ‘indoctrination’ when subjects like artificial intelligence and climate change demand the attention of upper crust schools in a modernising society. Compulsory history in senior high school is, well, history.

And those visible inequalities in infrastructure and personnel between white and black schools or urban and deep rural schools? No worries, they will remain settled in place. This week I met principals desperate to hold on to teachers to reduce teacher-learner ratios of 1:50, but they simply do not have the resources of state or the private fee contributions of middle class and wealthy parents to find relief from overcrowding.

So why does the ANC want to cling to the education portfolio? Because it is a powerful instrument to pretend that they are pursuing radical change as part of the bamboozling of the public. Here control over the matric results is a winning strategy. Every year more children pass — even if the number of candidates is small, the pass requirement low and the math marks tank year after year.

Regardless, if you can pull the wool over people’s eyes, the truth does not matter.

Soweto 1976 was about education; not water affairs or housing. It is added reason for the ANC to hold on to this important political asset.

The threat is real. The DA might well push for higher standards. It could actually require markers to be qualified to mark the grade 12 examinations. And it could hold unions accountable for interference in teacher and principal appointments as in the corrupted case of KwaZulu-Natal. Too risky — hold on to education at all costs.

The real power of education lies in its symbolic value. You can threaten to take over the powers of (white) governing bodies, as was the case with the Bela (Basic Education Laws Amendment) bill, even if you did not. You can appear to put the brakes on homeschooling, even if — in a reasonable interpretation of the amendments — you simply threatened intervention when you have no capacity to implement the new thinking across nine provinces. You can make grade R compulsory when you know full well there is not enough money to make this happen.

South Africa has become a world leader in the art of make-believe when it comes to education policy pretensions. But that is not a deficit in the world of politics; it is an asset that can deliver symbolic value when you have run out of hard currency to radically change a broken system.

Too cynical? Just remember that more than 80% of our grade 4s still have no idea what they are reading in a text.

What might well change is that ministers Angie Motshekga (basic education) and Blade Nzimande (higher education) might be replaced by other ANC parliamentarians — but even in their cases, I have not heard any signs or signals that these two long-term ministers might want to do something else. The education portfolios give you enormous status and standing in the broader society, and nobody gives up that kind of recognition and regard without a fight. One former education minister was known to have cried bitterly when he was shifted to a lesser portfolio.

Sorry I could not deliver better news.