Was it really, as the Guardian claims, the ANC who opened the gates of higher education to all?

In a recent article on the tragic death of Gloria Sekwena in a stampede at the University of Johannesburg The Guardian of London claimed that "Under apartheid, all but a trickle of the country's black majority was shut out of higher education. When white minority rule ended, in 1994, the gates to universities were opened to all."

The British readers of that publication would no doubt have accepted this claim as fact. It would have confirmed established views on the horrors of Afrikaner rule in South Africa, and of the boundless virtues of the ANC.

The question is: how true is this claim?

Up until 1959 the Afrikaans-medium universities had traditionally limited admittance to whites. The University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town had however remained open to all races. The University of Natal admitted students of all races but segregated classes. Fort Hare meanwhile was a predominantly black institution.

As can be seen from Table 1 there was indeed only a trickle of black South Africans into higher education in the 1950s. The racial breakdown of the universities in 1958 was as follows:

Table 1: Enrolment in South African Universities 1958 White Coloured Indian Black Total Orange Free State 1,709 1,709 Potchefstroom 1,474 1,474 Pretoria 6,324 6,324 Stellenbosch 3,694 3,694 Cape Town 4,408 388 127 37 4,960 Natal 2,530 31 373 188 3,122 Witwatersrand 4,756 22 158 73 5,009 Rhodes 1,098 1,098 South Africa 6,144 204 601 1,179 8,128 Fort Hare 59 59 320 438 Total 32,137 704 1,318 1,797 35,956 Percentage of total 89.4% 2.0% 3.7% 5.0% 100.0%

In 1959 the National Party passed the Extension of University Education Act No. 45 which extended the apartheid principles being applied to the rest of society to higher education as well. This Act decreed that black, Coloured and Indian students would only be allowed to study at the formerly open universities with a permit from the relevant minister. Separate universities would be established for Coloureds and Indians and the different black ethnic groups.

By 1970 two new universities had been established for black South Africans (Zululand and the North), one for Coloureds (Western Cape) and one for Indians (Durban-Westville.) Another two universities had been established for whites: Port Elizabeth and Rand Afrikaans Universiteit. In Modernising Racial Domination (1971), Heribert Adam commented: "With regard to educational opportunities, the five non-white universities have on the whole been successful in terms of the Apartheid programs, despite the limitations placed on them as separate institutions under paternalistic Afrikaner guidance. Their facilities are frequently better and the student teacher ratios much lower than in the white universities, now as well as previously when they were ‘open'."

As can be seen from Table 2 between 1958 and 1970 the number of black students in the universities had more than doubled (from a very low base) but their proportion of the total had remained more-or-less the same due to the massive expansion of white entry into higher education. All but a handful of black students had been excluded from UCT and Wits by this point.

Table 2: Enrolment in South African Universities 1970 White Coloured Indian Black Total Orange Free State 4,222 4,222 Potchefstroom 4,212 4,212 Pretoria 12,500 12,500 Stellenbosch 7,827 7,827 Port Elizabeth 1,144 1,144 Cape Town 7,528 291 148 2 7,969 Natal 5,706 43 331 163 6,243 Witwatersrand 9,041 29 293 5 9,368 Rhodes 1,803 40 1,843 South Africa 17,899 584 1,006 2,397 21,886 Rand Afrikaans 1,322 1,322 Fort Hare 610 610 The North 810 810 Zululand 591 591 Durban-Westville 1,654 Western Cape 936 Total 73,204 947 1,818 4,578 80,547 Percentage of total 90.9% 1.2% 2.3% 5.7% 100.0%

By the late 1970s the National Party had begun to lose faith in apartheid as a solution to South Africa's racial ills. The 1959 Act did not place a complete bar on black attendance at the designated "white universities" and in 1983 954 black, 1,255 Coloured and 1,323 Indian applicants were granted permission by the minister to study at these institutions (see Table 3).

Table 3: Number of black, Coloured and Indian students granted permission to study at white universities 1980-1983:

Applicants Granted % Refused % Black 1980 1046 410 39.2% 636 60.8% 1981 1391 667 48.0% 724 52.0% 1982 1545 723 46.8% 822 53.2% 1983 2605 954 36.6% 1651 63.4% Coloured 1980 1175 989 84.2% 186 15.8% 1981 1221 1126 92.2% 95 7.8% 1982 1314 1172 89.2% 142 10.8% 1983 1371 1255 91.5% 116 8.5% Indian 1980 1013 919 90.7% 94 9.3% 1981 1049 924 88.1% 125 11.9% 1982 1724 1374 79.7% 350 20.3% 1983 1679 1323 78.8% 356 21.2%

In that year the National Party introduced the Universities Amendment Bill which scrapped the permit system. Clause 9 of the Act allowed for the appropriate minister of state to impose a quota limiting the number of black students admitted to a white university. This clause was met with huge opposition from the English-language universities (see here) and though it made its way into law it was never implemented. The effect of the 1983 Bill then was that the English language universities were able, once again, to directly admit students of all races.

By this point a further five universities had been established for black South Africans: Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Medunsa, Venda and Vista. The number of black South Africans attending university had increased to 33,345. The racial composition of universities in 1983 - the last year in which the 1959 Act still applied - is contained in Table 4 below.

Table 4: Enrolment in South African Universities 1983 White Coloured Indian (&Chinese) Black Total Bophuthatswana 9 9 9 909 936 Orange Free State 8,105 9 0 21 8,135 Potchefstroom 7,437 1 3 20 7,461 Pretoria 16,849 2 2 1 16,854 Stellenbosch 12,059 152 6 3 12,220 Port Elizabeth 2,912 164 49 67 3,192 Cape Town 10,440 1,121 331 257 12,149 Natal 7,929 228 1,103 531 9,791 Witwatersrand 13,877 213 1,117 583 15,790 Rhodes 2,913 80 124 176 3,293 UNISA 37,902 3,150 5,892 12,680 59,624 Rand Afrikaans 5,818 14 1 12 5,845 Fort Hare* 44 24 3 3,113 3,184 Transkei 0 0 0 2,138 2,138 Medunsa 101 0 6 820 927 The North 25 2 3 3,924 3,954 Venda 2 0 0 781 783 Durban-Westville 118 44 5,388 26 5,576 Western Cape 58 4,487 176 31 4,752 QwaQwa 9 0 0 384 393 Vista 0 0 0 3,010 3,010 Zululand 3 1 3 3,858 3,865 Total 126,610 9,701 14,216 33,345 183,872 Percentage of total 68.9% 5.3% 7.7% 18.1% 100.0%

* 1982 figures

Through the 1980s there was a rapid increase in the number of black students attending both black universities as well as the formerly white English-language ones and by 1990 there were over a 100,000 black students enrolled in South African universities. The Afrikaans universities though still seem to have operated more exclusionary policies.

In 1991 the National Party government of FW de Klerk scrapped the last remaining provisions in the law allowing government to restrict university admission on racial grounds. By 1994 there were more than 160,000 black students (or 46,7% of the total) enrolled in South Africa's universities. The remainder was made up of Whites 41,4%, Coloureds 5,1% and Indians 6,9%. A further 65,150 black students were enrolled at technikons.

Table 5: Enrolment in South African Universities 1994

White Coloured Indian (&Asian) Black Total North West (Bophuthatswana)* 0 0 0 3914 3,914 Orange Free State 7,831 444 13 969 9,257 Potchefstroom 8,301 204 30 1,448 9,983 Pretoria 21,500 218 160 2,261 24,139 Stellenbosch 13,016 1,128 64 254 14,462 Port Elizabeth 3,886 702 146 883 5,617 Cape Town 8,857 1,930 725 2,997 14,509 Natal 6,926 385 3,832 3,979 15,122 Witwatersrand 11,662 339 2,133 4,025 18,159 Rhodes 2,730 131 323 857 4,041 UNISA 53,088 4,732 10,735 57,603 126,158 Rand Afrikaans 10,364 481 347 4,301 15,493 Fort Hare* 5,175 5,175 Transkei* 6,628 6,628 Medunsa 114 29 479 2,777 3,399 The North* 13,500 13,500 Venda* 6,400 6,400 Durban-Westville 337 156 4,941 5,071 10,505 Western Cape 184 6,715 689 6,662 14,250 Vista 174 631 66 33,008 33,879 Zululand* 0 0 0 5,660 5,660 Total 148,970 18,225 24,683 168,372 360,250 Percentage of total 41.4% 5.1% 6.9% 46.7% 100.0%

*No racial statistics available, the working assumption being that all enrolled students were black

The main obstacle facing black advancement into higher education in the early 1990s was - as it is now - the poor quality of much secondary school education, particularly in maths and science. Successive National Party governments obviously bore much of the blame for this. But the ANC and its allies, both in opposition and then in government, have also pursued hugely destructive policies in this regard (see here).

Moreover, far from "throwing open" the universities to all the ANC has pushed for the imposition of racial quotas limiting the admittance of racial minorities to their proportion of the total population. It also closed the nursing and teaching colleges on which many poor black South Africans depended for entry into those professions.

It is interesting to compare though the record of the Afrikaner nationalists - utterly ghastly as it was - with that of the British colonial rulers in the rest of Africa.

Tanganyika apparently had 120 black African graduates and no university at independence. Nyasaland (Malawi) had some 35 black graduates. In 1961 Nigeria had one university with 1,000 students.

When the British exited Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1964 only 1,200 black Zambians had completed secondary schooling, and 109 had graduated from University.

And who was the Director of Education in Northern Rhodesia responsible for this sorry state of affairs?

If Wikipedia is to be believed it was one George H. Rusbridger, more famous for being the father of Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian.

Bibliography: Heribert Adam, Modernizing Racial Domination: The Dynamics of South African Politics, (University of California Press: London, 1971) and various Race Relations Surveys from the South African Institute of Race Relations.

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