Bantu Education, noun phrase
- Forms:
- Also with small initials.
- Origin:
- English, AfrikaansShow more Bantu adjective sense 2 b + English education; or translation of Afrikaans Bantoe-onderwys.
historical, now derogatory
Under apartheid, the official system of education for black South Africans, initiated by the first Bantu Education Act (1953). Also attributive.
- Note:
- In official circles, education for blacks was usually termed ‘native education’ up to the early 1950s, ‘Bantu education’ from then until the late 1970s, and ‘black education’ thereafter; among left-wing groupings, however, ‘Bantu Education’ remained a common name for the black education system. The former Department of Bantu Education was renamed the Department of Education and Training (see DET) in 1978.
1951 Report of Commission on Native Education (UG53–1951) 131We now turn to the question why it should be Bantu Education...Educational practice must recognise that it has to deal with a Bantu child, i.e. a child trained and conditioned in Bantu culture, endowed with a knowledge of a Bantu language and imbued with values, interests and behaviour patterns learned at the knee of a Bantu mother. These facts must dictate to a very large extent the content and methods of his early education.
1957 N. Mandela No Easy Walk (1965) 49An inferior type of education, known as Bantu education, and designed to relegate the Africans to a position of perpetual servitude in a baasskap society, is now in force in all African primary schools..and will be introduced to all secondary and high schools as from next year.
1960 Z.K. Matthews in H. Spottiswoode S. Afr.: Rd Ahead 191He will cling to the idea of education without the adjective ‘Bantu’ until the day which he knows must surely come when he rejoins the mainstream of free education.
1962 A.J. Luthuli Let my People Go 47Bantu education came into effect in 1954. It is a specialised type of education designed exclusively by Europeans exclusively for Africans.
1968 J. Lelyveld in Cole & Flaherty House of Bondage 14When the late Hendrik Verwoerd introduced the system of Bantu Education — which seeks to decree what a black child can learn, from whom, and where — he made clear that there would be no place for the African in the white community, except in specified forms of labour...If the black man refuses to consider a multiracial solution when he finally reaches the point of decision in South Africa, that will be proof that Bantu Education accomplished its aim.
1971 Behr & Macmillan Education in S. Afr. 406State expenditure for 1960–61 was R12,46 per Bantu pupil. In the Cape Province it was for the same period R144,57 per white pupil...This method of financing Bantu Education has proved inadequate.
1977 Drum Sept. 2To hell with Bantu education, the students say. But, unlike their parents who said the same thing, the students mean it.
1977 J. Sikakane Window on Soweto 39The twenty years of ‘Bantu Education’ have attempted to produce mentally retarded African graduates who cannot think beyond their repressed Blackness.
1978 S. Afr. Panorama Feb. 16The..President-designate, Chief Minister Lucas Mangope..also attacked ‘Bantu Education’, and announced that his first major programme of reform was ‘to prepare a blueprint for educating people who are just human beings and nothing fancy like Bantus.’
1981 Pace Sept. 33I am a graduate of the 1976 uprisings in Soweto, the result of enforced Bantu Education and the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.
1987 E. Molobi in Frontline Mar. 27Where Bantu Education attempted to instil an acceptance of oppression, People’s Education attempts to develop a critical awareness of the world.
1990 T. Mathews et al. in Newsweek 19 Feb. 24Mandela grew up at a time when well-born South African blacks were given rigorous, moralistic, missionary educations. This puts him light-years ahead of dimmer, township revolutionaries who have apartheid’s deliberately inferior, raise-no-expectations, Bantu education forced upon them.
1991 R.W. Johnson in Sunday Times 10 Feb. 21The curse of Verwoerd lies heavy upon the country: decades of Bantu education have done their dreadful work.
Under apartheid, the official system of education for black South Africans, initiated by the first Bantu Education Act (1953). Also attributive.
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