The Mdantsane Tales - So You Will Have A Better Life

The Mdantsane Tales - So You Will Have A Better Life from Chocolat Negro on Vimeo.

"Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another."

Quote from Nelson Mandela from his book " The Long Walk To Freedom".

This movie was made for all the parents and forefathers of the children in Mdantsane and in South Africa. Their children are now at the receiving end of the efforts and the long battle they have fought to get equal education for all South Africans.

In South Africa, education plays a huge role. The government spends 20% of the central budget on education.

Black South Africans were perceived to have the role of labourers and servants. During the 1980s the young population was committed to destroying the education system constructed by the apartheid system. There were strikes and violence that firmly restricted its ability to function in an orderly manner. Despite the huge budget allocated to education since democracy, the effects of apartheid can still be felt 19 years after its demise.

Among the South African population, only 14% of black people have an education of high school or higher, whereas 40% of Indians and 65% of Whites have an education of high school or higher.

Many African societies placed strong emphasis on traditional forms of education well before the arrival of Europeans. Adults in Khoisan- and Bantu-speaking societies, for example, had extensive responsibilities for transmitting cultural values and skills within kinship-based groups and sometimes within larger organizations, villages, or districts. Education involved oral histories of the group, tales of heroism and treachery, and practice in the skills necessary for survival in a changing environment

The Bantu Education Act (No. 47) of 1953 under the Apartheid system widened the gap in educational opportunities for different racial groups. Two of the architects of Bantu education, Dr. W.M. Eiselen and Dr. Hendrik F. Verwoerd, had studied in Germany and had adopted many elements of National Socialist (Nazi) philosophy. The concept of racial "purity," in particular, provided a rationalization for keeping black education inferior. Verwoerd, then minister of native affairs, said black Africans "should be educated for their opportunities in life," and that there was no place for them "above the level of certain forms of labour." The government also tightened its control over religious high schools by eliminating almost all financial aid, forcing many churches to sell their schools to the government or close them entirely

Tensions over language in education erupted into violence on 16 June 1976, when students took to the streets in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Their action was prompted by the decision of Andries Treurnicht, Deputy Minister of Education in the white government, to enforce a regulation requiring that one-half of all high-school classes must be taught in Afrikaans. A harsh police response resulted in the deaths of several children, some as young as eight or nine years old. In the violence that followed, more than 575 people died, at least 134 of them under the age of eighteen

Youthful ANC supporters abandoned school in droves; some vowed to "make South Africa ungovernable" to protest against apartheid education. Others left the country for military training camps run by the ANC or other liberation armies, mostly in Angola, Tanzania, or Eastern Europe. "Liberation before education" became their battle cry

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