Abstract:
In 1994, school choice was a fairly new phenomenon among the Black communities in post-apartheid South Africa. “Choice” was historically state-determined, i.e. Parents were instructed where to send their children to school based on race, in the first place, and on urban/rural homeland division of Black South Africans. Even after 1994, the new and democratically elected government gave very little direction to schools or school districts as to school choice for purposes of desegregating public schools; there was no bussing, for example, as in the United States after the Topeka v. Board of Education ruling of 1954. Nor was there a strong rezoning policy that would enforce White public schools to give Black students access to White schools. In theory and according to the law, parents could choose to send their children to any public school regardless of race. In practice, White schools determined who gained access to their schools through self-created policies based on high tuition fees, exclusive language policies, and self-defined “catchment areas” from which students would be chosen. Drawing from my research, I argue that the long-term consequences of markets in education are devastating in a nation like South Africa which is still wrestling with neo-colonial and post-apartheid racial inequities.