SPEECH BY MINISTER OF EDUCATION AT THE LAUNCH OF THE CELEBRATING DIVERSITY PROJECT

Museum Afrika, Johannesburg 25 October 2000

THE FICTION OF RACE – OR WHAT ELSE IS HUMANITY BUT DIVERSE?

Honoured Guests
Friends and Colleagues
Ladies and Gentlemen

The Freedom Charter has the declaratory, ringing, phrase “that South Africa belongs to all who live in it”. It is a remarkable statement of ownership and belonging. It says all and not some; it is an unqualified welcome, generous in its humanity, inviting in its embrace; everybody who happens to be here, men and women, black and white, rich and poor, young and old, belong to this our country.

Our predecessors did not see it this way. They coloured belonging with the fiction of race and the superstitions of ethnicity. Only whites belonged, among whom Anglo Saxon Protestants of European descent were especially welcome. Jews were tolerated. Indians were despised. Coloureds were an embarrassing reminder – to them – of colonial European infidelity and promiscuity. Muslims were exotic, mysterious, decorations left to their own devices. Black Africans were feared, some more than others.

We said and we say no to this anthropologically decrepit nonsense. Humanity is one race. We look differently because we evolved similarly. Our biological apparatus made us adjust to our environment, so that we can survive, reproduce and grow. We have the remarkable capacity for language, the articulation of symbolic meaning, but we do so differently. We are culturally heterogeneous, as they say, different in habit, custom and aesthetic expression.

Humanity is therefore a species of physical and cultural variety, derived from the same biological properties in constant adjustment with our ecological environment. This diversity is good for us; it is an asset in our evolution as a species. This diversity is fluid not fixed, a mobile set of human properties, as people inter-marry, as globalisation breaks down cultural boundaries, and as human beings move across the globe as never before.

Today’s racists and ethnic entrepreneurs live in a fantasy world. There are no inferior or superior races. Human pride and dignity need not some narrowly framed cultural homogeneity to express itself. The idea that one can live in splendid cultural isolation and reproduce in biological purity is a wistful wet-dream only racist and cultural chauvinists can have.

We wish to say, therefore, that we celebrate that which is good for us. Human diversity is good for us. It is an asset, not a liability. It provides richness, a source of inspiration, a motif for creativity, a vehicle for sharing in the joy of our mutual and delightful humanity. The hegemony of the Anglo Saxon ascetic barrier to public enjoyment of that which is different, is over.

This, then, is the context, the cultural milieu in which education ought to take place, and this is the message that must ring through our education system. Racism has no place in our education system. If South Africa belongs to those who live in it, our schools must serve all that live in it, and we – adults and children alike – must learn to value and appreciate all that live in it.

It is a message that has not penetrated where it ought to penetrate. Racism, intolerance and the refusal to share access to schooling and resources continue to plague education post 1994, despite our Constitution and progressive policies. There are those who refuse to share, and there are those who, tragically, do not know how to share.

How many letters has my office received, complaining about the unwillingness of schools to transform and integrate according to the dictates of our Constitution, how many schools have I visited with my provincial counterparts, where children lack the social ability to learn together in harmony. The inability to share is a social disability resulting from the mis-education of many who otherwise received sound disciplinary education.

Officials in my Department have conducted research on language practices in schools. They note how certain principals abuse the Constitution by refusing access to schools on the basis of language proficiency. At some schools black children are taught in one class, white children in another. In assemblies they sit in separate sections of the hall, as if this is quite normal.

There are people at educational institutions struggling to cope with transformation who seem to believe that re-segregation is the answer. It is not. Re-segregation is a backward means of coping with a difficult problem. It is an admission of defeat. It is to surrender to the chauvinists who believe that a segregated life is a normal life.

Departmental research also recorded the views of teachers, even district or provincial officials who did not know how to support teachers to teach differently, and to teach inclusively. This is why a project such as ‘Celebrating Diversity’ is so powerful, as it should provide the tools to teachers to teach with a wide embrace.

In this and other research, my officials recorded many examples of good practice, where for example teachers moved very effectively between SeSotho and Afrikaans. Of course there are many examples of teachers doing wonderful things in their classrooms. It astonishes what gems of good practice one stumbles across, when least expecting it.

I welcome your project ‘Celebrating Diversity’, for the support it brings to our efforts, the partnership it forges between the South African Human Rights Commission, the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, Kagiso Educational Television, The Teacher newspaper and our schools. I commend the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation for funding the project.

Of course the issue is not just about race. Diversity in our schools is about language, religious, gender and even political differences. Children in schools must discover a language where they can respectfully discuss issues of concern to humanity despite differences of background, disposition, household orientation and the politics of parents.

The Department of Education takes the issue of human rights and equity very seriously. This is reflected in our policies and strategies. Concern with human rights and diversity is interwoven into the new curriculum and management guidelines. Concern with equity dictates the funding formulae for provinces and for project management.

My department’s special project in the area of diversity and discrimination is the Values in Education Initiative. This initiative promotes a dialogue on the values that should inform our education system in order to have the cohesive, democratic and peace-loving society our Constitution calls for.

The values highlighted in the report are equity, tolerance, multilingualism, openness, accountability and social honour. If you have not seen the Report, it is on our website. If you do not have access to the web, phone the Department of Education for copies.

Submissions in response to the report were called for by the end of September, but the deadline has been extended to the end of December. These responses will form part of the material to be presented and discussed at a national conference on values, education and democracy to be held in February 2001. I urge you to interact with this initiative.

I urge you, in particular, to take seriously the claim made in the Report of the Working Group on Values in Education, that a discussion of diversity should not remain at the level of intellectual superficiality. The celebration of diversity is not about the mutual appreciation of exotic cuisine, delightful as that might be, or about tolerating, as in ‘putting up with’, difference.

The Report reads:

For these reasons have I appointed a panel of historians and archaeologists to report to me on the status and quality of history teaching at schools and teacher training at tertiary institutions. We cannot perforce talk about difference and diversity if we do not grasp the origin, development and history of these things, and if we do not teach our learners about the various historical strands in the making of the South African people.

I am also concerned that a superficial treatment of diversity will camouflage and paper over the hardest reality of South Africa, which is poverty for the larger majority of our population and extraordinary inequality in material circumstance. I take you, for example, to a parent in one of our rural areas who at the poverty hearings conducted in 1998, worried about the effect of distance on his children’s learning capacity: ‘They travel something like 7 kilometres – about 4 hours a day – and they walk on their feet to and fro ... she is always tired. Because we are not equal, some parents are able to give their children money for buses, but others cannot.’

We should add that when these children arrive at school, it is likely that they will enter a building that is in poor repair. They will probably not have access to clean water to quench their thirst. They will probably find it hard to concentrate on account of their poor nutrition. They will have little protection from the weather. They will not be tired from carrying books because they do not have any. The teacher will be struggling to teach children of different grades in one class without proper learning materials.

I am pleased that your project is sensitive to the question of poverty and inequality. You employ what some may describe as a mixed mode of delivery, including the print medium, video and with the training workshops, word of mouth, to deal with this. You must not neglect schools where there is no electricity, and ensure that print materials will be provided to these schools, as well as word of mouth support. We cannot assume that schools in deep rural areas, where there is no electricity or photocopying machine, do not need to celebrate and grasp diversity.

Evidence from the Language in the Classroom Project and other visits to schools indicates that linguistic and cultural homogeneity in deep rural areas is not always the case. An additional cautionary note is that one day training workshops for teachers is really very short when you are attempting to support behavioural changes. I trust that you are involving support officials in the provinces, who can share this work with other teachers on an ongoing basis.

I also hope you will share the findings and lessons from this project with officials in my Department, with officials producing the new learning area statements, with colleagues doing research on values, and with the curriculum projects database that has been set up. We cannot work in mutual isolation in the face of such daunting challenges. ‘It is solitude that mutilates’ wrote Arthur Nortje, whose own solitude led this remarkable South African writer to commit suicide.

But I want to end on a less depressing note, by sharing with you a passage from Zoe Wicomb’s ‘Bowl like Hole’: