Disparity

There was a very depressing article in the New York Times yesterday about the implications of apartheid on South African students today (Eager Students Fall Prey to Apartheid’s Legacy). Specifically, the article detailed high-school students in Khayelitsha and the incredible lack of teaching resources available to them. (Khayelitsha is the largest township outside of Cape Town – probably close to two million people live there, mostly in informal settlements.) These students often show up to class only to find their teachers absent or unwilling to teach, which led to violent student protests last year. Some of them have resorted to teaching themselves. Of the ones that make it to 12th grade (about half have dropped out by that point), fewer than half can pass the exam taken at the end of high-school that determines who is eligible for college. Thus the vicious cycle of poverty continues.

Under apartheid, the government created “Bantustans” which were “homelands” set aside for black South Africans, separated based on tribe in order to concentrate ethnicities in certain areas. Bantu education systems meant blacks were separated off and intentionally taught at a lower level, the point being that a less educated black population would provide less trouble for a white government and only give blacks the capacity to undertake menial labor jobs. Of course just because apartheid officially went away does not mean the black population’s problems were immediately solved. After all, today’s teachers were educated under the Bantu system…

The incredible wealth and education discrepancies that exist in South Africa today still make it extraordinarily hard for someone born poor to break through the system and succeed. Of course this is true even in the U.S., but it is so extreme here. Consider the fact that 2 in 1,000 children pass a 6th grade math exam in predominantly black schools, and 2 in 3 pass in predominantly white schools. Statistics show only half of 3rd grade teachers are themselves capable of passing a literacy exam at the 6th grade level. As the article more or less states, if you are black, unless you go to a mostly-white school, you don’t stand a chance. Based on the activities I take part in and the places I go, one might hypothesize that South Africa is 50% white (in terms of on where I go shopping, the neighborhood I live in, my memories of attending classes at the University of Cape Town, the office I work in, etc.), though the reality is that only about 8-9% of the population is white. White people simply have infinitely more access to these things that cost money and require a real education.

The article serves a reminder of how vast the problems really are in this county, and it’s overwhelming to think about whether the wealth/education gap really is “fixable.” Of course when you think about these problems in South Africa being somewhat of a microcosm for how Africa fits in to the rest of the world, it’s even more devastatingly depressing. I know it’s essential not to get caught up in simply thinking that the disparity in the world is beyond repair and writing off Africa, but sometimes it’s just plain hard to stay optimistic. Even if you teach yourself to focus on the positive (which, thankfully, is easy to do when working with such motivated and dynamic people as at m2m), I think it’s important to at least be aware of what most of this country’s population experiences and recognize that apartheid’s “legacy” is unfortunately still very much present. After all, if you ignore these problems, then things will most definitely never change. I don’t really know what to say other than that at the moment – lot’s of thoughts running through my head and very few answers…