Twenty six years have passed since South Africa overhauled the racist apartheid regime which was designed and sought to keep the country’s black majority under the rule of the white minority. While democracy has ushered in political freedom and great strides have been made to improve the material conditions of many black people, particularly in townships and rural areas, the conditions which most black people find themselves in this country have not significantly changed.
In many ways, the legacy of apartheid endures. The gap between the rich and the poor is wider in South Africa than in any country where comparable data exists. It is not only income equality that is actually a cause for concern but also unequal access to opportunities and essential services. As the world responds to the global health emergency caused by the novel coronavirus that causes the disease currently known as Covid-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019), educators, lecturers and students around the world are feeling the extraordinary ripple effect of the pandemic as schools have shut down amid the public health emergency.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, school closures in a dozen of countries due to the outbreak have disrupted the education of about 290.5 million students worldwide. It is an indisputable fact that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are the hardest hit by this as countries grapple to continue teaching and learning through other channels, predominantly online learning (or eLearning if you prefer).
As progressive as this sounds, in a developing country like South Africa where the democratic government has inherited inequality in basic living and material conditions propagated by years of land dispossession and subsequently apartheid, it leaves a lot of things unaccounted for and places the poor at an even greater disadvantage. Online learning poses a great number of challenges which hinder effective implementation of this system. In an address made by the minister of higher education, 14 institutions out of 26 in the country have little to no capacity of carrying out online learning.
These 14 institutions are undoubtedly historically black institutions which have not seen a great deal of infrastructure development compared to previously white institutions such as UCT, UP, Wits, UFS, Stellenbosch University etc. which have more capacity to usher in this system and carry it out efficiently.
This class divide was perfectly articulated by Thabo Shingange in a post where he asserts that “the current student concerns around online learning are informed by the socio-economic disparities that characterize South African society at large, and which equally lend themselves to institutions of higher learning on two fronts: first, as a result of apartheid’s valorising of inequality in education through legislation (i.e. extension of Universities Act, 1959), secondly, universities as microcosms of society”. This effectively has led to a higher education system which is not only unequal and uncoordinated but fragmented too.
This is one of the issues that are left unaccounted for in the ushering of online learning and borders on infringement of the basic right to education for those who do not have the resources to carry online learning out at the [dis]comfort of their homes which are another factor that has not been considered when the decision to move our lecturer halls to the virtual environment was taken. It is an open secret that a majority of black students are from environments that are not conducive for learning. Townships as concentration camps and rural areas as the forgotten peripheries in terms of service delivery are a hindrance in the advancement of tertiary education especially in the context of online learning.
Black families are inherently large and seldom provide the room with a conducive learning environment where you can just tap out and focus on your studies and nothing else. Another factor affecting this solution which clearly favours the rich is the fact that a majority of students from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have the necessary devices and resources to carry out online learning and be on the same footing with privileged students who are predominantly made up of a certain race and class. Internet access remains a barrier for many students, especially those from rural areas and the catastrophic effect that online learning will have on them is unfathomable.
The unequal access to opportunities and access propagated by the situations highlighted above leaves some vulnerable and exposed to the harsh realities of academic and financial exclusion, while on the other end of the spectrum others will flourish and see the prospects of progressing academically, others graduating. This unequal footing which is obviously skewed against black students who are predominantly children of the working class must be rejected with the contempt it deserves and the decision to usher in online learning in the midst of these inequalities must be reviewed and even reverse, the academic year suspended until all institutions have the capability and have made the necessary provisions for all students to have an equal opportunity to complete the academic year.
This is in line with the Higher Education Act of 1997 which is aimed at redressing past inequalities and injustice and forge the struggle forward for the establishment of a single coordinated higher education system where no student will be left behind on the basis of the institution they come from, mainly propagated by privilege or lack thereof.
Zandile Tshabalala is an NEC member of SASCO. She writes in her personal capacity.