In broken societies, as South Africa is, teachers are even more critical in shaping well-rounded young citizens equipped to navigate complex individual, relationship, workplace and societal challenges.
South Africa has often been talked about as a country on the verge of becoming a failed state, when a state is captured by corrupt individuals, where the state cannot, or its leaders lack the will to enforce the rule of law, cannot protect its citizens and struggles to provide the most basic public services, unable fill a pothole or replace a pit latrine at a school.
A broken society is where social order has broken down, moral values have collapsed and traditional family structures that centre individuals and provide a personal accountability framework have largely fractured. In broken societies, such as South Africa, other societal institutions, such as traditional, cultural and religious, that alongside the family institution is supposed to provide moral values, a well-rounded sense of self and an individual accountability compass, have to a large extent been corrupted, degenerated or become so outdated to be irrelevant for present-day human challenges.
In any modern society, quality education is one of the single-most-important stepladders out of poverty, to break generational cycles of deprivation and ultimately to achieve individual economic freedom in societies like South Africa with deep legacies of systemic race or ethnic-based poverty, but also when critical society child-moulding institutions such as the family, communal traditions and moral frameworks are in many instances broken, outdated or harmful.
In near-failed states and broken societies, such as South Africa, individual teachers have a greater obligation to mould citizens for the fast-changing world of work, economy and for healthy roles in society.
Technology is changing faster than business or society can adapt. We are seeing the merging of human and artificial intelligence and of physical and digital worlds – which makes many old business operational models outdated. This makes the traditional role of the teacher, even in relatively “normal”, “healthy” and stable societies much more onerous.
Nevertheless, teachers play a critical role, not only in delivering quality education, even when resources are scarce, but they are mentors, guiding pupils in choosing the right economy-relevant subjects, for example, parental figures and examples of good, values-based adult behaviour and leadership.
The trauma of apartheid has left a crisis of broken black family structures. The apartheid migrant labour system removed males from families to distant workplaces. It emasculated black males by treating them as children. Forced removals broke families.
Sadly, although formal apartheid has ended, new families that have been started in the post-apartheid era have repeated the cycle of apartheid-era broken family structures. Many of South Africa’s family structures are fatherless, and if they are present, they are a negative presence. Many family structures are not headed by adults. Others are headed by grandparents, often one grandparent.
The reality is that family structures, particularly families of formerly disadvantaged communities, are more diverse, more complex and less traditionally nuclear, and will continue to be so. However, the family structures, whatever form, that hold individuals, children and young people accountable have largely collapsed in many previously disadvantaged communities.
The fracturing of family structures means that structures, rules and values – which foster healthy habits, relationships and decisions for children – are not conveyed in family structures, neither in other societal institutions, such as traditional, communal or religious ones, which in many instances have largely been corrupted, are outdated or are toxic.
The sad reality is that the majority of South Africa’s children therefore, who have been in family structures, in whatever form, may not have been as lucky to operate in a structured way, with rules, boundaries and accountability.
Sadly, the ANC, like many African liberation movements, has not given much priority to building value-based, rule-based and psychologically safe familyhood, in whatever form, with many ANC politicians, and many politicians of breakaways from the ANC, such as the EFF and MK party, lacking the leadership maturity, well-roundedness and emotional intelligence do so.
Schools are crucial in social norm-setting. This means that teachers will have to play the foster role of nurturing healthy habits, relations and decisions for children under their care.
Quality education is the kind of schooling that gives a pupil the right hard and soft skills to compete globally – meaning to be able to leave South Africa and compete in other markets. This critical aspect of modern education, to school an individual to compete in other markets, which has been at the heart of Asian miracle economies such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea, and behind the spectacular rise of China, is often poorly understood in South Africa.
Teachers will have to guide pupils – those from poor communities are unlikely to get such guidance from mostly broken families, let alone South Africa’s underwhelming politicians – most of whom have never worked outside politics or the state so have little grasp of the real economy – to choose subjects that are needed to thrive in the artificial intelligence world. Such subjects would include STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). For another, it is the obligation of teachers to guide pupils to, as much as possible, do pure mathematics rather than mathematics literature, and to aim for a pass mark above 50%, not 30% which the ANC government introduced.
Quality education is also about developing the self-agency of the pupil – the ability to influence one’s own actions and life circumstances. Quality education also fosters pupils’ personal, or inner or self-development: growing their mental, social, spiritual, physical and emotional depth.
For South African teachers to play this expanded fostering role, the curriculum of teaching will have to be enriched. The quality of intakes for teacher training will have to be improved. Lifelong learning has to be fundamental to teacher development.
South Africa’s teachers’ unions, many still entrenched in the anti-apartheid struggle ethos of opposition, must become builders of school institutions that function, teachers who put professionalism first, and nurturers of well-rounded pupils.
Strengthening teaching in South Africa’s broken society will require an all-of-society collaboration. The corporate sector must get involved in strengthening teaching and schools and enriching curriculums. The current misfiring black economic empowerment model, which only enriches a small political elite, could for example be transformed to reward companies that strengthen schooling, teaching and curriculums. Rich schools could partner with poorer peers, exchanging resources, teachers and training.
Successful pupils from previously disadvantaged communities must become actively involved in their former township schools, whether through mentoring, sitting on governing boards or providing funding. Adults, even if they do not have children, must volunteer to help struggling schools, whether in management, sports, culture or music. Civil society, community organisations and activists should volunteer to help keep schools safe, clean and resourced.
We have many examples, even during the apartheid era, of teachers playing broader development roles.
I was lucky enough to benefit from conscious teachers. In the 1980s, I attended Ravensmead Senior Secondary School, an Afrikaans-medium school on the Cape Flats. During the apartheid era the school was located in a triangle of townships among the most violent and most drug- and gang-infested areas on the Cape Flats, if not in South Africa. It was in the incubating area for local competing youth gangs, including the Ugly Americans, Sexy Boys and smaller gangs. Many of the now adult gang leaders were my competing youth peers.
The teachers, in spite of apartheid resource restrictions on non-white schools, did their best to enrich the curriculum. They went out of their way to teach music, culture and sport. The school produced sports people such as Kamaal Sait, the former Orlando Pirates footballer, and former national cricketer Vernon Philander.
The teachers at that school believed in developing all-round pupils. After-hours at school was a buzz of sport, cultural and music activities. In 1988, during my matric year, mining company Gencor selected my school, with others in townships across the country, for pupils to attend a mathematics and science enrichment programme on Saturdays. South African corporates introduced such STEM enrichment programmes widely in township schools.
The principal during my time (1984-1988) was Argie Vergotine, who was also a leading teacher trade unionist at the time. He was president of the Cape Teachers Professional Association.
It only dawned on me long after I matriculated, when travelling, studying, living or working in the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, UK and the US, that, for example, many of the songs I learnt or stories read to me at school were from across the globe, including our own wonderfully diverse South African ones.
For most of my high school, as the eldest of my siblings, I worked part time and on weekends, after my mom, a single parent, was the only survivor of a horrific minibus taxi accident in 1983 on Connaught Road, Parow. She was in hospital for a long time, and never worked since.
The school was a happy place for me, and a big reason for this was the caring and involved teachers.
One of my favourite teachers was Mrs Evelyn Hendricks. She is in her mid-eighties now. She sweetly reached out to me recently. Remarkably, she had kept her class marksheet book, with the list of her 1985 class pupils and their subject marks, including mine, which she wanted to show me.
This is in deep gratitude to Mrs Hendricks and all the other teachers, for their dedication in nurturing children to become well-rounded citizens equipped to navigate complex individual, relationship, workplace and diverse South African and global societal challenges. DM
Professor William Gumede is the founder of the Democracy Works Foundation and author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg). He has been involved for more than two decades in school governing bodies in South Africa and the UK and is a former trustee of Ridge Preparatory School in Westcliff, Johannesburg.
This article is based on the prepared comments he made on the “Changing Role of Teachers” to celebrate Teachers’ Day, for the Federation of School Governing Bodies.