RHODESIA

Education for what?

by a correspondent now in Pretoria

If the ordinary white Rhodesian could get just one reasonable request met by British politicians, he would probably ask that Bri- tishers stop talking about Rhodesia in gen- eralities. The white ,Rhodesian administrator has to cope, day to day, with a multitude of difficult details which appear to get ig- nored in London, amidst all the high-flying talk of principles.

Number one detail is the matter of the African birth rate. As (I think) Elspeth Huxley relates, when she tried to talk con- traception to African wives, they thought that stopping babies was the silliest thing they had ever heard. Although the whole continent suffers, Rhodesia, with white-dir- ected medical services, has a worse popula- tion increase rate than most — 3+ per cent per annum — which means doubling every 20'years. Five million Africans now, 10 mil- lion by 1990.

Yet these Africans contribute less than 1 per cent of the country's income tax, prob- ably less than a quartei of all annual revenue, and only about a third of the GNP. The 240,000 whites provide nearly all the rest— which to a large degree means providing, inter alia, for the health, housing and edu- cation of the increasing African majority.

Education in Rhodesia is racially divided— apart from private schools and the national university. Were it not so, white parents, who want their children to have just as good an education as do parents in Dorking, Kidderminster or King's Lynn, would leave Rhodesia because they would not tolerate the lowering of their own stan- dards which would' be inevitable in a switch to multi-racial schooling.

Although segregated. 700,000 Africans are, in 1971, in some sort of recognised, state-approved classroom. Of these, 134,000 are registered in the youngest form, less than 50,000 in the highest form of primary school, and only 369 in the highest form of secon- dary school. This pyramid is not unknown in other African countries, the drop-out pro- cess being caused partly by inability to at- tend, partly by shortage of facilities at various levels.

'Shortage of facilities'. This means class- rooms, materials, and especially 'tea- chers. Is then the answer that more should be allocated from the national budget? What is a reasonable proportion to allocate? This is not a rhetorical question and it is sug- gested that British readers might reply, be- fore they read on. In the budget for 1970- 1971, over 18 million dollars were allocated for African education—one of the biggest allocations of all out of the national spend- ing total of 215 million dollars.

Historically, spending on African educa- tion has grown to its present figure from 11 million dollars in 1963, apd 14 million in 1966. It was because the white govern- ment felt that they could not indefinitely Pay out more and more to cope with the results of the birth rate, that in 1967 a new approach to African education was for- mulated. Basically, this provides that the annual allocation shall be 2 per cent of the (3Np—anything over that must come, in one way or another, from the Africans themselves. Under the 1967 plan academic

secondary schools take 12+ per cent of primary school leavers: another 37+ per cent is taken by 'practical' secondary schools: and correspondence classes are available to those of the 50 per cent who remain determined to improve themselves.

An important move to create machinery whereby any expenditure in excess of 2 per cent of the GNP will indeed be met by the Africans has been evolved in the past twelve months and has, inevitably, been the cause of much criticism by those who think that the whole burden should stay with the Euro- peans. The government has encouraged a partial shift of responsibility for rural pri- mary education, away from religious mis- sions (which, traditionally, have borne part of the burden), over to the emerging African (local) Councils.

The missions were to some extent forced to acquiesce in this move, because the gov- ernment with immediate effect began cutting the grants made to the mission schools. Mission leaders, with some reason, protested that many of the African Councils have neither the resources nor the experience to operate schools. (Many, on the other hand, have.) The religious leaders protested that fledgling African rural administrators— and the children themselves—were, under the new plan, being 'thrown in at the deep end'. But, though rough and unready, this method of 'learning to swim' should surely appear to be a step in the right direction to those who think that the African should be given practical experience in learning to run his own affairs. And the government seem to think that, at least, this approach may induce in the Africans a sense of correlation be- tween the birth rate and the cost of providing facilities for the children procreated. How- ever, perhaps the missions are right.

In recent years, white Rhodesians have grown more and more sceptical of the idea of 'education' being a panacea for political and social ailments. More and more, they see education as providing only bitter dis- illusionment for the majority of the blacks, and well-nigh insoluble economic problems for the whites. In this connection let us look at some figures, for employment.

Of Rhodesia's paid labour force, 700,000 are Africans, although this figure needs some qualification; for one thing, no less than 267,000 are low-paid agricultural workers. The rest are divided among many sectors, but it is noteworthy that the rapid expansion of Rhodesian industry since 1965 has only meant an increase in the total of Africans engaged in manufacturing of about 29,000 from 71,000 to 100,000. (And it is already being said that, to make exports more competitive, to beat sanctions, more automation must be introduced.) Over 40,000 Africans, at various levels of education, now come on to the market each year, seeking work. The majority will not find it, unless they go back to the subsistence agriculture of their tribal areas. There are few more pathetic sights than to see crowds of Africans outside an employment agency, clutching in their hands their primary school-leaving certificates; such documents, representing so great an achievement to the child from the mud-hut, unfortunately mean, so often, no suitable asset to the prospective employer. Yet the hopefuls hang on in the urban areas, and absurdities result; for ex- ample, much of the Rhodesian cotton crop often goes unpicked because, at the low wages paid, there are not nearly enough pickers offering themselves. The half-edu- cated would rather live on a few scraps pro- vided by their 'brothers' in the African suburbs, hoping month after month for some vacancy, than return to the agriculture from which they have 'escaped'.

Thus one is driven to the inescapable conclusion that, unless the birth rate can be slashed, the future for the majority of Afri- cans can only lie in subsistence farming in tribal areas. If so, then a harsh but realistic cutting down of educational expansion seems to follow as a logical consequence.

In the 'Fearless' talks Mr Wilson offered a significant amount of British taxpayer money for African education in Rhodesia, with Rhodesia to allocate at least as much as it does at present. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Smith specifically rejected this particular proposal. But would it have been a good move?

To question the value of education prr se is to most people, in the Inc rather like say- ing 'Down with God' or at least 'To Hell with Mother'. The sober fact remains that people in Rhodesia—and perhaps elsewhere in Africa—are coming to believe that the only 'good' education is that aimed at a specific job, a likely employment opportunity.

It is being seriously suggested that, even for those who get it, primary education should be mainly practical, secondary edu- cation largely technical. And at the univer- sity, courses in the arts and social sciences should be drastically reduced. Clearly such conclusions are debatable—but debate cov- ering such fields would seem infinitely pre- ferable to the dreary dialogues now going on about Rhodesia.