Culture, Education, and Development in South Africa : Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

With the fall of apartheid in South Africa, expectations were high for the enfranchisement of the acutely underdeveloped majority in South Africa. But problems abound, and this educational study looks critically at the educational situation and puts forth a number of proposals that could produce better results in contemporary South Africa. Abdi urges that beyond the celebratory platforms of the political triumph over apartheid, there must be effective and culturally inclusive programs of education for the development of the highly disenfranchsed majority in South Africa. Deliberate programs of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa resulted in inferior education, cultural marginalization, political oppression, economic exploitation and resulting underdevelopment in the lives of the disenfranchised majority. In addition to historical and contemporary analysis, this study looks at the possibilities of formulating and implementing new programs of education and development that could effectively deal with such current problems as chronic unemployment, skyrocketing crime rates, stagnating learning systems, and the continuing formations of a huge underclass that may be losing its stake in the promised post-apartheid project.