Extract from High Commissioner’s Reports on education in South Africa

Transcript

[First extract]

BANTU EDUCATION BILL

5. This Bill, which will remove control of Native education from the Provincial Administration and place it completely in the hands of the Ministry of Native Affairs is being roundly condemned in Natal. It is conceded that there is a lot to be said for the Government’s arguments in favour of creating a unified system of local Bantu Government, charged with the administration of all local services, in place of the present multiplicity of uncoordinated development services. But it is widely felt that it would be a great mistake to strengthen the hands of the central Government still further, at the expense of the already weakened Provincial councils and all the missionary bodies, which have done such excellent pioneering work in the field of Native education. This Bill proposes to give arbitrary powers to the Minister, who will be able to ban any Bantu school other than a government school, and who will have power to “make regulations for religious instruction in Bantu schools”; it is felt that this may pave the way for the eventual introduction of the discredited “Christian National” education in Native schools, which would be most undesirable.

[Second extract]

BANTU EDUCATION ACT

6. The decision of the Bishops of Johannesburg and Pretoria to close all 100 Anglican Mission Schools in the Transvaal because of their reluctance to co-operate with the Government in the administration of the Bantu Education Act, has aroused considerable interest and sympathy in Natal. The excellent training college for African teachers at Adam’s College, Natal, is also to be closed at the end of 1955, because the Minister for Native Affairs has decided to take the training of African teachers out of the hands of the college authorities. The 40 Anglican Mission schools in Natal will however not be closed down although the Episcopal Synod [bishops’ council] has made it very clear that it deplores the Bantu Education Act. The highly respected Roman Catholic Bishop of Durban, Denis Hurley, has also weighed in against the Government over this issue most outspokenly, to the intense annoyance of the Minister of Native Affairs.