Educational Policy and Problems in the Former High Commission Territories of Africa

THE SOUTHERN BANTU, from whom the Sesuto (from Basutoland), the Ngwane (from Swaziland) and Tswana (from Bechuanaland) are off-shoots, were essentially nomadic cattle people, who moved to new pastures as the old were depleted. This way of life was expressed economically in a communal property theory in which land pertained to the tribe in general and was assigned in usufructu to individuals by the chief as personifying the tribe. Under tribal custom, Africans do not hold land freehold in the European sense of inheritable tenure. From this concept of land holding sprang a number of social consequences that must be made explicit if the present problems in education in these territories are to be understood. Not only are African land users often reluctant to effect any permanent improvements in the form of tree planting or draining, but fences are seldom erected and houses are of a temporary, rather than of a permanent, nature. Because cattle could wander freely (without enclosures of any sort) the work of herding endowed small boys with an economic importance in the community, and-as will be shown-retarded their education as a result. It was, for instance, this fact which made Bechuanaland authorities fix the maximum age for first entry into the school system at 18 in 1938. (1) Until that age the herd boy was regarded as too valuable to release into education. In 1962 the maximum age of school entry was reduced to 13, and the Bechuanaland Department of Education hopes to effect a progressive reduction which may in time eliminate social pressure towards school exclusion. In 1963 school enrolment figures in Bechuanaland, 23,828 boys and 31,017 girls, clearly reflected the existing social pressures, and the other two territories exhibit much the same situation. In Basutoland, for instance, the writer was informed by the Secretary for Education that 30 per cent of the boys between the ages of 7 and 14 were not in the schools because their parents required them for herding. If entry into the school system is delayed until, say, between the ages of ten and thirteen, this means that a primary school course of eight years (if completed) carries the pupil to the age of 18 or 21, almost automatically excluding the possibility of any secondary school education at all. This is certainly one of the factors operating to reduce the enrolment in the secondary school system, and hence to lower the still smaller numbers available for further training. In fact, so important is this consideration, that upon it hinges one's decision as to whether Britain's political blueprint for the progressive independence of these territories is to become a reality or to remain a sentimental gesture. In an undeveloped pastoral society, skills tend to be generalised, and apart from divisions within the extended family by sex and age (whereby women are the cultivators and boys watch the herds, for instance) there is little of that specialisation which provides the economic stimulus for urbanisation. In European society the exploitation of mineral wealth

Archaeology · Clan · Commission · Economic growth · Economics · Freehold · Geography · Herding · Political science · Sociology · Tribe · Education Systems and Policy · Law

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