Fanon on post colonial Africa

The national bourgeoisie steps into the shoes of the European....It discovers its historic mission as an intermediary....to serve as a conveyor belt for a capitalism forced to camouflage itself....The national bourgeoisie with no misgivings and with great pride revels in the role of business agents in its dealings with the Western bourgeoisie....The dynamic, pioneering aspect, the inventor and discoverer of the worlds is here absent....This bourgeoisie, which has unreservedly and enthusiatically, adopted the intellectual reflexes that characterise the metropole, which has marvelously alienated its own thought and grounded its consciousness on typically foreign bases (Frantz Fanon)

The problem with education in South Africa

THE PROBLEM WITH THE SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION SYSTEM

 

Amongst the vexing challenges facing South Africa today is the high rate of unemployment, that is currently at 25.2%. High levels of unemployment have persisted in South Africa even during the period 1994 to 2007 when GDP growth was relatively boisterous, picking at 5.6% in 2007[1]. What explains the economy’s failure to create jobs even in times of relative prosperity (jobless growth) is that unemployment in South Africa is structural, and is largely caused by low levels of skills in an economy that demands intermediate to high-level skills. The challenge is therefore not that the economy is failing to create jobs, but that the majority of those that are unemployed do not possess the right skills to take advantage of available opportunities.

At the heart of this is an education and training system that fails to adequately prepare young people either for higher education and/or employment. Of the 439 779 matriculants that graduated in 2013, only 30.6% obtained University entrance[2]. A shocking 46% of South African students dropout of University in their first year[3]. Almost half of the pupils who should have written matric in 2013 had dropped out of the system at the end of grade 10. These are just some of the indicators of a poor schooling system that has consistently underperformed its peers on the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Measuring Education Quality (SAQMED).

In SA, 48.6% of youth between 15 and 24 are unemployed, making South Africa to rank 3^rd in the world[4]. This age group makes up 70% of the people that are unemployed. It is this youth that is failed by the education system that swells the ranks of the unemployed.  The further education and training system that is meant to cater for this cohort is beset by challenges of limited accessibility. Those that manage to access the TVET colleges are often failed by the poor quality of provision and end up not adequately equipped with the skills that are required by the labour market.

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[1] SA Real GDP growth picked at 5.6% in 2007 (www.africaneconomicoutlook.org)

[2] www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com

[3] www.universitynews.com

[4] www.indexmundi.com