WILLIAM GUMEDE

The ineffectiveness of outcomes-based education, part of the most significant package of education reforms introduced by the newly elected ANC government in 1994 to undo the effects of segregated and inferior education for black people under the apartheid government, will forever be associated with Prof Sibusiso Bengu, the first post-apartheid education minister.

Bengu was education minister between May 1994 and June 1999. Outcomes-based education aimed to improve pupils' problem solving, critical thinking and mathematics skills.

In the last international school mathematics ranking, South Africa ranked among the five lowest performing countries, with Morocco, Jordan and most other African countries.

Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan ranked the highest in mathematics proficiency. South Africa’s school science and technology education ranking is also at the bottom of global rankings, behind many African countries. A recent global survey showed eight out of 10 SA pupils struggle to read by age 10.

In another global survey, SA's grade 5 pupils came last among 58 nations in mathematics and science. SA's grade 5 pupils were mostly assessed against grade 4 pupils in other countries.

It was not the policy of outcomes-based education per se that was disastrous, but the out of context, unco-ordinated and ultimately shambolic way in which it was implemented. It was a clash between vision and reality.

The reform was implemented at the same time as the public administration of the education department was speedily made over. Almost immediately after the new government was established, the entire leadership of the education department was replaced, from minister to senior administrative heads. New provincial education departments were introduced.

ANC deployees, many who came from exile and who had little recent experience of the education system, were appointed at the head of the outcomes-based education system at critical levels.

The former homelands, Bantustans and “independent” territories were reincorporated into one administrative system. At the same time all the administrative processes, systems and reporting lines were overhauled. A new budget allocating system was introduced, and budgets were reprioritised and rechannelled.

ANC deployees, many who came from exile and who had little recent experience of the education system, were appointed at the head of the system at critical levels. A new administrative culture had to be inculcated out of the chaos.

The reforms were introduced with ideological zeal rather than pragmatism. Those who urged caution were immediately sidelined, pushed out or accused of being apologists for apartheid or the Bantustan system. It was system overload.

Part of the education reforms were the simultaneous retrenchment and early retirement of high numbers of experienced teachers, who knew the system, to cut costs.

The ANC government also introduced reforms to close teacher training colleges as part of its reform to close technical colleges and artisan programmes and incorporate technikons into universities or turn them into technology universities.

Many technical schools were abolished and turned into mainstream schools. Many of the remaining black mainstream church-based schools were either incorporated into the state school system or closed by churches because of a lack of funds as churchgoers, and funding, to mainstream churches dwindled.

During Bengu’s ministerial term, essentially, two massive education reforms were introduced simultaneously: at the school level outcomes-based education, and at the higher education level there was a structural shift from technical colleges and artisan programmes to universities. Reforms in schools and higher education were poorly thought out and executed, and their ramifications continue to undermine development outcomes, quality of education and economic growth.

Many rural teachers and technical colleges were closed, not only disrupting supply of new teachers for the system but collapsing local economies in one sweep.

Some teacher colleges were incorporated into universities. Black school sports, culture and music were downgraded or terminated. Necessary parts of an education system, such as the system of inspectors to play an oversight role over teachers, were abolished, as it was seen as relic of the apartheid era, when predominantly white inspectors played an oversight over black teachers.

The SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), an affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and member of the ANC-tripartite alliance with the SA Communist Party, started to dominate school education.

In the years after Bengu, the basic education cabinet portfolio would virtually be reserved for a Sadtu leader. Over time, Sadtu’s often partisan patronage and ideological interests came to override the interests of pupils.

Sadtu would often control the appointment of teachers and prevent its members being held accountable for wrongdoing. Many of its members have been implicated in corruption in school infrastructure procurement.

Bengu, on the face of it, was eminently suited to be the first post-apartheid national education minister. He was born in Kranskop, Natal in 1934. His father was a Lutheran minister. His paternal uncle was the Evangelist reverend Nicholas Bengu, known as “uMkhulu” by his congregants. He was the Founder of the Africa Back to God Crusade (Assemblies of God) in the 1950s.

Bengu was educated at the University of South Africa, where he completed an honours degree in history in 1966. In 1974 he completed a PhD at the University of Geneva. Bengu started his career as a teacher.

He established Dlangezwa High School in 1969, near Empangeni, of which he was the principal.

Creating new institutions is critical in the development of countries. One of the key reasons many African countries have failed is because they have created too few new institutions and destroyed too many inherited under the adage of “transformation” or “decolonisation”, or for patronage reasons.

Pupils at Dlangezwa High included Glen Mashinini, former chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission; Musa Zondi, former IFP secretary-general; the children of Ntatho Motlana, former chairperson of the Soweto Committee of 10, and; Percy Qoboza, the former editor of The World newspaper.

In 1977, Bengu left teaching and joined the University of Zululand as director of student affairs.

Bengu met Mangosuthu Buthelezi through the “Ubhoko” group established by bishop Alphaeus Zulu, the Diocesan bishop of Zululand and first black bishop of the Anglican church in South Africa.

Since the ANC and PAC were banned, Zulu proposed a “brains trust” be established in Zululand to keep liberation ideas alive. Bengu was the first secretary-general of the IFP in 1975.

However, he fell out with IFP leader Buthelezi and went into self-imposed exile in Europe. Between 1978 and 1991, he worked for the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva, Switzerland.

On his return to South Africa in 1991, Bengu was appointed principal of the University of Fort Hare until 1994, when he was appointed education minister by former president Nelson Mandela. He joined the ANC and between 1994 and 2002 he was a member of the party’s national executive committee.

Bengu’s initial career as an outstanding teacher and principal, his stint as secretary-general of the IFP, his first-hand knowledge of the homelands’ education system, his conversion to the ANC and his career as a seasoned academic administrator at the universities of Zululand and Fort Hare, made him an obvious choice for Mandela to appoint him as education minister.

Bengu was a person of inscrutable honesty. He was old-school polite. He was a pragmatist.

Coming back from Europe and witnessing in Switzerland the quality of education and how competently schools were run, he was bursting with energy and had big dreams to replicate these successes in South Africa.

As education minister, Bengu had to walk a tightrope: pushed on the one hand by Sadtu teachers determined to protect their members even if they did wrong, and on the other hand by ANC cadres appointed to senior administrative positions in the education department who were often ideologically driven rather than pragmatic.

Black schools were politicised after the turbulent 1980s, with the Congress of South African Students dominating many high schools and demanding to have a say in how schools were run. Few ANC leaders had any experience in complex institutional change management and understood the scale of the institutional complexity of the state and extent of the divergency of the organisational cultures of the different education departments that had to melt into one.

Retrenching experienced teachers and with the best leaving, closing teacher training colleges, technical colleges and artisan schools, turning technical schools into traditional schools, allowing church-based schools to close, allowing black schools to phase out sports, culture and music and jettisoning teacher oversight structures, such as the system of school inspections, plunged the education system into chaos, which continues to this day.

Many iconic educational institutions, such as teacher training colleges started during the colonial and apartheid eras, were destroyed and lost for current and future generations during the zeal of the outcomes-based education reforms.

The system was introduced too rapidly and should have been phased in slowly over a longer time.

• Gumede is an associate professor at the School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand and author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg).

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