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Welfare and education in British

colonial Africa and South Africa during

the 1930s and 1940sPeter KallawayPublished online: 06 Aug 2006.

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Paedagogica Historica,

Vol. 41, No. 3, June 2005, pp. 337356

ISSN 0030-9230 (print)/ISSN 1477-674X (online)/05/03029518

2005 Stichting Paedagogica Historica

DOI: 10.1080/00309230500069803

Welfare and Education in British

Colonial Africa and South Africa during

the 1930s and 1940s

Peter KallawayTaylorandFrancisLtdCPDH106963.sgm10.1080/00309230500069803PaedagogicaH istorica0030-9230(p rint)/1477-674X (online)OriginalArtic le2005StichtingPae dagogicaHist orica413000000June2 005PeterKallawayFacultyof EducationUniversityoftheWesternCapePrivateBagX17Bellville7535SouthAfricapkallaway@uwc.ac.za

Contemporary educational policy discourse in South Africa that seeks to serve the poor and address equity

issues needs to engage with the roots of twentieth-century social reform debates if it is meet its goals. One of

the weaknesses of the templates for reform at the present time is that they often fail to engage with progressive

traditions which have a long history. Present-day reforms look to agency recommendations or comparative

examples of successful emergent economies, but often fail to recognize the value and significance of previ-

ous initiatives which sought to address these issues. The long debate over the need for social welfare and

educational reform in British colonial Africa has some significance in this regard. The period between 1930

and 1950 marked a key turning point in such policy in colonial Africa, and significant reform initiatives in

South Africa from the early years of the Second World War provide the benchmarks for such investigations.

The social welfare policies and the educational policy initiatives of the United Party government during the

1940s provide important signposts for such policies. This article attempts to investigate that legacy.

Educational Policy and History of Education

The study of the history of education in relation to policy agendas of the new South

African government has thus far attracted little attention from scholars in the post-

1994 era. The fascination of young scholars in the field of education with history and

its political ramifications that was characteristic of the radical scholarship of the 1970s

and 1980s has been displaced by an avalanche of work on the problems of policydevelopment, management and implementation. Whether by design or default there

is a lack of analysis of the present policy development process in historical context. 1

The initiatives of the post-1994 era educational policy development in South

Africa have highlighted a complex nexus of problems around globalization and

education that are familiar to scholars all over the world. Yet such policy initiatives

1 Our recent collection represents an attempt to address this issue. See Kallaway, P., ed. The

History of Education under Apartheid: 19481994: The Doors of Culture and Learning Shall Be Opened.

New York: Peter Lang/Cape Town: MML/Pearson Education, 2002.

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338 P. Kallaway

often emphasize a wide variety of issues or approaches that are relatively new to

South African educational policy discourse. These include (a) the question of school

governance and the allocation of certain powers to democratically elected school

governing bodies (SGBs) (The South African Schools Act of 1995), (b) the promo-

tion of skills for economic globalization and international competitiveness (the high/skill; low/skill debate);2 (c) qualifications frameworks (National Qualifications

Framework (NQF), (d) the issue of quality and standards (South African Qualifica-

tions Authority SAQA), (e) issues of pedagogy and assessment3 (outcomes based

education or OBE), (f) adult basic education and training (ABET), (g) literacy and

lifelong learning (LLL),4 (h) Curriculum 2005 and its various revisions, which are

now embodied in the General Education and Training Curriculum (GET) and

Further Education and Training (FET) (Schools) curricula,5 (i) the Values in

Education initiative,6 and various higher education and FET (colleges) policy docu-

ments recently unveiled. These are but the most notable amongst a host of policy

documents published in the last ten years.

One feature common to all of the documentation cited above that distinguishes it

from education commission reports and analysis in the pre-1970s era is that there is

very little reference to the historical context which they seek to address. It was a

universal feature of policy development documents in the pre-1980s era to have an

extensive historical introduction that attempted to understand the context and back-

ground that was being addressed. There was a clear engagement with the need to

understand what was wrong with the previous system and how it should be reformed

to meet certain goals. Whether those goals referred to the need for equity in education

between white Afrikaans and English speakers, the need for racial segregation ineducation7 or the need for skill development to meet the needs of the modern econ-

omy,8 the format of research in policy development was standard. After 1994 (indeed

2 McGrath, S., A. Kraak and A. Badroodien. Education and Work in South Africa. Cape Town:

Juta/HSRC, forthcoming.3 Department of Education, Qualifications and Assessment Policy Framework: Grades 1012

(Schools). Pretoria: Department of Education [DoE], 2002.4 Department of Education, Lifelong Learning for the Twenty First Century. Pretoria, 1997.5 Department of Education, White Paper on Education and Training. Pretoria, 1995; Curriculum

2005 Policy Document. Pretoria, 1997;National Curriculum Statement: Grades 1012 (Schools): Over-

view (Draft) 28 October 2002. Pretoria: DoE, 2002.6 Department of Education,Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy. Pretoria: DoE, 2001.7 Union of South Africa, Report of the Native Economic Commission (Holloway Commission) (UG

22-1932). Pretoria: Government Printer, 1932; Union of South Africa, Report of the Commission on

Native Education in South Africa. (Eiselen Commission Report) (UG53-1951). Pretoria: Govern-

ment Printer, 1951.8 Union of South Africa, Report of the Commission on Technical and Vocational Education (De Vil-

liers Commission) (UG 65-1948). Pretoria: Government Printer, 1948; Union of South Africa, Re-

port of the Commission of Enquiry into Adult Education (UG 35-1945). Pretoria: Government Printer,

1945.

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Paedagogica Historica 339

after the 1981 HSRC (de Lange) report on Provision of Education in the RSA)9 that

historical aspect of policy development disappeared.10

That shift in policy thinking and research which de-emphasizes historical contex-

tualization is not unique to South Africa. It reflects a worldwide trend that has been

noted by many commentators. This reflects what might be described as end of ideol-ogy thinking which rather assumes that international policy discourse is simply an

example of best-practices management implementation, and that the statement of

such policy objectives in the form of official documents and directives will actually

achieve the stated ends of equity in education, effective learning, human

resource development, skill development, and so on. As Stephen Ball has

cautioned, the ability to articulate a well-constructed policy plan is no guarantee of

successful implementation unless the sociological and historical context of implemen-

tation is taken seriously.11 This requires, amongst other things, a consideration of the

necessary political and economic trade-offs for the success of a particular strategy in

a specific context, or a consideration of the implications of shortages of resources for

the potential for successful implementation.

Many examples of such policy documents in the international domain that address

issues of equity and international responsibility for education can be cited. The vari-

ous seminal World Bank policy documents on education which have been fundamen-

tal to policy discourse in the last thirty years,12 UNESCOs otherwise excellent report

of 1996 on Learning: The Treasure Within: Report on Education in the 21st Century,13

and the documents related to the global initiative on Education for All,14 all rely on a

technical statement of the ethical and social or economic problems to be faced and

the solutions to be found without any substantial or substantive attention to thehistorical context or the differences between the context that are being addressed.

The recent PROBE report represents an example of a more grounded critical assess-

ment of educational policy and practice in rural India15 but even here there is little

sense of where these faulty (or successful) policies come from, what circumstances

gave rise to them and what social forces sustained them over time. Or, even more

significant, what political moves would be needed if adequate change was to be

9 Human Sciences Research Council. Pretoria: HSRC, 1981.10 It is not possible to enter into an explanation for this here but the shift to a neo-liberal dis-

course in the field of educational policy development long predated the transfer to power in 1994.

See Kallaway, P. Apartheid and Education. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984: Part 3; Kraak, A.

Discursive Shifts and Structural Continuities in South African Vocational Education and Train-

ing: 19811999. In Kallaway, The History of Education underApartheid, 7493.11 Ball, S. Politics and Policy Making: Explorations in Policy Sociology. London: Methuen, 1990.12 World Bank, Education Sector Policy Paper (1980); Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (1988);

Primary Education Policy Paper(1990); Priorities and Strategies in Education (1995) (all Washington

DC).13 UNESCO, Paris.14 This is associated with the mass conferences held at Jomtien (1990) and the Dakar conference

(2000).15 The PROBE team, Public Report on Basic Education in India. New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1998.

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340 P. Kallaway

promoted? Whatever the other merits of these reports, the historical specificity of

policy development is ignored in every case. This would seem to explain, in part, the

weakness of such documents and policies regarding questions of implementation. It

highlights the disjuncture between rhetoric and reality in policy discourse. It also

offers a serious challenge to historians to read the implications of particular policiesin context. Historians need to take up the challenge more directly of presenting the

past as a laboratory of educational experience for policy-makers. It is to the credit of

many of the best practitioners in the field that they have seen history of education in

precisely those terms but they are the exceptions rather than the rule and few of

them have written about the international comparative context.16

This apparent pessimism regarding the potential for history of education to illumi-

nate issues in comparative education and comparative policy development seems to

be rather ill-placed at a time when history of education provides one of the few vehi-

cles for providing a wide-angle view of the context in which policy fashions are

shaped. In a world of globalized everything, the policy formulae and mantras of the

World Bank and the IMF and the policy influence of those countries and agencies

that are seen to be successful in the race for high-skill competitiveness have an influ-

ence that seems to erase the value of specific historical experience. There is a need to

re-evaluate how such perspectives can be used in new ways to promote the critical

analysis of policy. In post-apartheid South Africa, despite the rhetorical emphasis on

citizenship, welfare and human rights issues, there has in reality been a great emphasis

on policies that promote the development of skills for competitive entry to the global

marketplace. What has not been sufficiently recognized or acknowledged is that there

is a long history to policy initiatives aimed at the goals of welfare provision and therole of education in addressing social inequalities and economic competitiveness

which might be of some significance to understanding the successes or failures of

current policies. It is hoped that a reflection on the welfare and education policy in

the context of British colonial Africa and South Africa might throw some light on that

issue.

Possible Lessons from British Colonial Africa

The twentieth-century origins of welfare and educational reform in British colonial

Africa are complex. After the First World War the major issue of empire was not

whether to have it or how to secure it, but how best to govern it and in whose

interest.17

16 Among these are: Simon, B. Education and the Labour Movement, 18701920. London:

Lawrence & Wishart, 1965; Tyack, D., and L. Cuban, Tinkering Towards Utopia: A Century of Public

School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995; Silver, H. Education as History.

London: Methuen, 1983; Carnoy, M., and J. Samoff. Education and Social Transition in the Third

World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.17 Whitehead, C. Education in British Colonial Dependencies, 19191939: a re-appraisal.

Comparative Education 17, no. 1 (1981): 71.

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The ambiguities, dilemmas and tensions faced by the missionaries and colonial

officials responsible for these issues are seldom sufficiently recognized. The patterns

of demand and provision regarding mass education spread from the imperial heart-

lands to the colonies with great speed, particularly after the First World War. The

international18 missionary conferences that were a feature of the early twentiethcentury especially those held at Edinburgh (1910), Le Zoute, Switzerland (1926),

Jerusalem (1928) to mention but the most significant, were in many ways the

precursors to the large educational conferences hosted by UNICEF, UNESCO and

the World Bank in the closing decades of the century.19 At these conferences hosted

by the International Missionary Council, welfare and education became a central

aspect of colonial engagement and a discourse of policy development in education

was shaped in association with the British Colonial Office (and to some extent the

French, Belgian and Portuguese authorities) and a number of American philan-

thropic foundations, such as Carnegie, Rockerfeller and Phelps-Stokes, which were

active in the field. By the 1930s the new scientists of colonialism the anthropolo-

gists, along with other commentators also had a hand in shaping the discourse

around African welfare and education.20

There is an extensive literature relating to this phase of African educational devel-

opment which cannot be engaged with here due to lack of space, but the key issue I

wish to raise relates to the manner and terms in which the politics of welfare and

education policy came to be contested during this period.21 Questions of access to

schooling and the nature of the curriculum offered were to become increasingly

significant issues for colonial politics. Administrators, missionaries, humanitarian

groups, commentators and spokespersons for native politics often highlighted theirsignificance. Yet until the 1930s these developments did not take place within a

framework of formal social development policy thinking. There was no central policy

driven from Whitehall. It was only with the advent of the Colonial Development and

Welfare Acts (1940 and 1945) that greater opportunities (were created) to influence

the nature of educational progress in the colonies.22

18 International in this colonial context meaning British, European and American.19 The great conferences/jamborees on Education for All held in Jomtien (1990) and Dakar

(2000) are particular highpoints of that tradition.20 There is a lack of systematic examination of this issue of the influence of anthropologists on

educational policy, though there are many pointers. See Kuper, A.Anthropology and Anthropologists.

London: Routledge, 1983; Moore, S. F. Anthropology and Africa. Charlottesville: University of

Virginia Press, 1994. The work of Lucy Mair,Native Policies in Africa. London: George Routledge,

1936, and Malinowski, B. Native Education and Culture Contact. International Review of Missions

25 (1936): 480515, at the London School of Economics is particularly important in this regard.21 Clatworthy, F. S. The Formulation of British Colonial Education Policy 19231948. Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan, School of Education, 1971; King, K. Pan Africanism and Education. Oxford:

Clarendon, 1974; Whitehead, C. The impact of the Second World War on British colonial educa-

tion policy. History of Education 18, no. 3 (1989): 267293; Id. Colonial Educators: The British

Indian and Colonial Education Service: 18581983. LondonNew York: I. B. Tauris, 2002.22 Whitehead. The Impact of the Second World War, 269.

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342 P. Kallaway

By the 1920s there was general recognition of the broad brief for education in the

colonial context. How would decisions be made about who went to school and what

kind of education would be offered? Was the shift in control from the Church to the

state, such a feature of nineteenth century nationalist Europe, to be transferred to the

colonies? What were the potential implications of such a change? How was educationto be funded? Would the provision of education be targeted at the new urban popu-

lations in the cities (skilling for work in the modern sector of the economy) or would

it focus on training for rural life and subsistence agriculture? What role would rural

communities or African voices have in the shaping the nature of that policy? To put

it in the language of another age, was this to be education for citizenship or work in a

modern society and economy or was it to support traditional rural African life in a

colonial context?

Then there was the question of what would be taught in schools. What kind of

curriculum was relevant23 for the majority of Africans? Was the traditional literary,

Western education to continue or be reformed, or was the idea of a modern education

to be linked to notions of vocationalism or indigenous knowledge? What kinds of

education should the missionaries and the colonial office promote? What would be

the relationship between these erstwhile partners?

In much of the writing of the time there was a tendency to homogenize the African

population and see it in terms of descriptors like rural/tribal/community/peasant/

subsistence farmers. Debates over educational needs are then often predicated upon

those rather static social assumptions in an era when colonial history is marked by

fundamental disruptions to the traditional rural society with the ever increasing

engagement of Africans directly or indirectly with the market economy either inthe form of wage labour or as commodity producers. The great debate of the time

was between two policy tendencies outlined below, themselves informed by the

contemporary international debate around the merits of academic education versus

Progressive Education or the child-centred curriculum24 in the colonial context.

The Curriculum

On the one hand there were those who saw the promotion of conventional Western

or formal education in its various forms as the goal of missionary enterprise. This view

upheld the indivisibility of the curriculum and the right of all students to have access

23 A popular term among educational progressives that often led to confusions of meaning.24 The philosophy of progressive education or child-centred education sought to emphasize the

role of psychology and motivation in the process of learning and to define the curriculum in relation

to the social and natural environment in which the child lives. See Dewey, J. Experience and

Education. New York: Macmillan, 1952; Entwistle, H. Child-Centred Education. London: Methuen,

1970. The question of which aspects of progressive education get taken up in the colonial situation

is of considerable significance. Key aspects of progressive education emphasized in Africa in the

1920s1930s included vocational or community education, the question of girls education, the

claims of indigenous languages and cultures on the curriculum, and the need for an appropriate

science education especially biology. It might be important to query what aspects were neglected.

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to the same educational experience regardless of the background from which they

came. It saw knowledge in rather static terms and assumed the great Western tradi-

tion of education to be the only one relevant to the context of the modern world and

to civilization as they called it! Its protagonists, despite the criticism of the Euro-

pean content of the education, argued that such an approach was the only one possi-ble for a religion that sought to promote the equality of individual believers before

God and the right of individual participation in the labour market. It also referred to

notions of social equity in an increasingly modernized world where all citizens needed

to have access to literacy and numeracy, as well as the possibility of further study if

they showed the talent. This education stressed an academic curriculum and English

(or European) language and cultural acquisition. This was also the policy that had

dominated in British colonial India and came to be vilified by many colonial officials

as a major cause of many of the political problems in that context.25

This early missionary model of education, revised in various ways to meet the

changing circumstances of the 1930s, persisted, as it found support from the new

African elite that was gaining increasing influence over the nature of the social and

political change. Although there was little development with regard to mass educa-

tion until after the Second World War, the social and economic value of such an

education in the colonial situation helps to explain the tenacity of this model in

Africa.

On the other hand, during the early years of the twentieth century there was an

attempt to promote curriculum policies that emphasized particular kinds of rural

development and sought to sustain particular notions of rural life and indigenous

culture. Drawing substantially on the experience of rural education in North America with both white communities in the Midwest26 and black communities in the post-

bellum South,27 and on the progressive educational ideas of writers like John Dewey,

such policies were seen to be a useful form of gradual socialization to modern

values and techniques while putting a brake on too-rapid Westernization or

urbanization in an era of increasing political challenge from various kinds of African

nationalism. They emphasized the relevance of education to local development.

While such policies were by no means universal in British colonial Africa,28 they had

a powerful influence on educational thinking from the 1920s.

Adapted education was promoted by many missionaries, colonial officials,

philanthropists and settlers as the solution to African poverty and social fragmenta-

tion.29 It is often forgotten that similar ideas underpinned philanthropic discourses of

25 Carnoy, M. and M. Weiss. Education in Colonial India. In Education as Cultural Imperialism,

edited by M. Carnoy. New York: David McKay, 1974: 78112.26 For rural education in the USA in the 1930s see the work of Mabel Carney at Teachers College.27 Anderson, J. D. The Education of Blacks in the South: 18601935. Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1988.28 The Cape Colony, and subsequently the Cape Province, held out against these policies well

into the 1920s.29 Derived from Southern debates over the nature of Negro education with specific reference to

the policies promoted by B. T. Washington and at Tuskegee Institute.

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344 P. Kallaway

the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (from the 1890s onwards) and the

Carnegie Commission (1932) in relation to the saving of rural poor whites from a

life of poverty.30 On the basis of the American experience supporters of adapted

education argued that traditional Western education provided a poor background for

the average African child in dealing with everyday life in the rural areas. In keepingwith contemporary ideas regarding progressive education, there was a call by the

adaptationists to make education relevant to the life and future world of work of

the colonial subject/citizen. This provided a key issue for contest regarding African

education. African rural societies, in the eyes of many potential colonial reformers,

were beginning to fragment under the influence of colonization and modernization,

and many philanthropic whites (and a small group of men drawn from the African

elite such as James Aggrey and D. D. T. Jabavu) felt that the best interests of

Africans lay in the preservation of the rural communities and traditional customs

in the face of these threats. Adequate training in agriculture and animal husbandry,

in Christian morality, in health and hygiene, and the promotion of a healthy family

and community life, were the targets of such endeavours. The first large-scale inves-

tigations of African education under the umbrella of the Phelps Stokes Fund were

driven by this agenda of educational reform.31 Such views were taken up formally in

the British Colonial Offices newly appointed Advisory Committee on Native Educa-

tion in Tropical Africa, in its first policy document, Educational Policy in British

Tropical Africa (1924).32

There has been a great deal of debate and controversy over the motives and

successes of the philosophy of adaptation. In retrospect many writers have seen it as

part of a racist colonial conspiracy to de-politicize Africans by cutting them off froma formal education (modern education) that was associated with the rise of nation-

alism and political opposition. The lessons associated with the pejorative implica-

tions of European education in India were to be learned. Yet the other side of the

argument has been largely discarded in the postcolonial context namely that there

is a need to take seriously the need for an education that addresses the real-life pros-

pects and context of the majority of people who lived in the rural areas.33 In the end

the influence of these ideas proved to be minimal as, despite the rhetoric, little policy

development of this kind took place outside of isolated experimental situations in

30 Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Report of the Carnegie Commission.

Stellenbosch: Pro-EcclesiaDrukkery, 1932. See in particular Vol. III, Malherbe, E. G. Education

and the Poor White.31Jones, T. J. Phelps Stokes Commission reports on Education in Africa. New York: 1922 and

1924; Jones, T. J. Four Essentials of Education. New York: Scribners, 1926; Loram C. T. The

Education of the South African Native. London: Longmans Green, 1917.32 ACNETA. Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa. Cmd. 2374. London: Colonial Office,

1925.33 There is something of a parallel here between contemporary calls for an education for global

competitiveness in countries where there is dire poverty and little opportunity for the vast majority

to participate in such a labour market.

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Kenya, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.34 Charles Loram was able to sponsor

such experiments from his position of Inspector of Native Education in Natal35 and

H. S. Keigwin and Harold Jowitt were advocates of Jeanes education in Southern

Rhodesia.36 The most significant experiments along these lines took place in

Tanganyika prior to the Depression.37 In West Africa, and subsequently in Kenya,such policies encountered greater resistance from the new elite and from nationalist

movements as the quickening pace of economic and social change in the 1930s

resulted in mounting criticism of the policy from native and European spokesmen

alike.38 In the end the general neglect of educational policy throughout colonial

Africa in the years of the Depression meant that whatever reforms were mooted very

little was followed through. In other words, in the crucial years of political ferment

and challenge little was actually done to change the patterns of education set up by

the missionaries.

This is not the place to explore the debate over adapted education in the 1920s. A

good deal of attention has been paid to this over the years. For the purpose of the

present paper it is sufficient to acknowledge that there was such a debate over African

education and that there is some dispute over whether it was exclusively a cynical

attempt to dominate and marginalize Africans in the politically volatile times. It seems

much more likely that campaigners such as T. J. Jones and C. T. Loram (and even

J. H. Oldham) had an ambiguous understanding of the merits of these ideas. They

saw them as practical and relevant to the needs of rural Africans and at the same time

they could not have missed their utility in relation to social and political control, espe-

cially in the light of the colonial experience with education in India. Framed through

a complex alliance of missionary networks and influence, American philanthropicfoundations such as Carnegie, Rockerfeller and Phelps Stokes, Colonial Office policy

and officials, and the emergent science of social anthropology, such policies

34 See Mair, Lucy.Native Policies in Africa, for a positive perspective on those experiments. Or

Murray, A. V. School in the Bush. London: Longmans Green, 1929 and 1938 for a critical view.35 C. T. Loram was Chief Inspector of Native Education in Natal from 1906 to 1920 and subse-

quently the head of the standing Native Affairs Commission appointed by the SAP government

(19201929); see Loram, C. T. The Education of the South-African Native; Fleisch, B. The

Teachers College Club. Ph.D. diss., New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1995;

Krige, S. Church, Liberals and the State: Secularization and Segregation in African Education,

19301936. MA diss., University of the Witwatersrand, 1994.36 Harold Jowitt was the Director of Native Development in Southern Rhodesia and became

Director of Education in Uganda in 1935 (Mair, L.Native Policies in Africa, 7374, 180). Keigwin

was Director of Education in South Rhodesia from 19191924 and subsequently served as Director

of Education in Sierra Leone. See also Carnegie Corporation of New York, Village Education in

Africa: Report of the Inter-Territorial Jeanes Conference held in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, May 27th

to June 6th, 1935. Lovedale: Lovedale Press, 1935.37 See Mumford, W. Bryant. Superintendent of Education in Tanganyika Territory. Education

and Social Adjustment of the Primitive Peoples of Africa to European Culture. Africa 2, no. 2

(1929): 138159; Buchert, L. Education in the Development of Tanzania, 19191990. Athens: Ohio

University Press, 1996.38 Whitehead. Education in British Colonial Dependencies, 73.

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seen against the background of the uneven progress of welfare perspectives in

home politics at a time when the notion of the Welfare State was gradually

emerging from the political contests of the Depression and post-Depression era. In

assessing the significance of these moves, it is important see them in the interna-

tional perspective of welfare policy at that time. What were the particular character-istics of British welfare of the 1930s? To what extent can it be said that the

emergence of a politics of welfare in Europe at this time had any influence on

British colonies in general and those in Africa in particular? What influence did

they have on South African politics and how did they influence educational policy,

if at all?

This new approach was influenced by the tenor of British politics and Keynesian

economics in the wake of the Depression. In the 1920s there had been a strong

emphasis on forcing Africans into the marketplace as producers of primary products

as part of the overall thrust to maximize the economic potential of the Empire in solv-

ing the recurring crises in the home economy. In the 1930s the collapse of the

commodity markets for African exports left large sections of the working population

unemployed and there was an urgent need for government action with regard to the

unemployed and poverty relief. For much of the 1930s social and economic condi-

tions in the colonies were arguably worst than they had been in the previous decade,

not better.43 These conditions fuelled social unrest in the colonies and demanded

state attention.44 The laissez faire economic policies of the 1920s gave way gradually

to a climate of international demand for more active government intervention in the

social arena. The emergence of a discourse of welfare in the colonial context should

not be exaggerated but it is also necessary to acknowledge that there is now significantevidence of new pressures on colonial officials to engage with this area of activity

previously left to the missionaries.45 Those views were promoted by the immensely

influential J. H. Oldham,46 the secretary of the International Missionary Council from

the early 1920 to the mid-1930s. Perhaps even more important was the wider debate

over the nature and meaning of colonial rule and the responsibilities of the colonial

powers towards their wards in Africa, which drew in people of striking ability such

as Norman Leys (Kenya),47 W. H. Macmillan (South Africa),48 Margaret Perham,49

43 Ibid., 229.44 Pointed out clearly by the South African historian, W. H. Macmillan, in his study of the polit-

ical situation in the West Indies: Warning from the West Indies. London: Faber & Faber Ltd. 1936.45 Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy; Havinden, M., and

D. Meredith. Colonialism and Development: Britain and its Tropical Colonies 18501948. London:

Routledge, 1983.46 King, K. Africa and the Southern States of the USA: Notes on J H Oldham and American

Negro Education for Africans.Journal of African History 10, no. 4 (1969): 659677; Clements K.,

Faith on the Frontier.47 Cell, J. W. By Kenya Possessed: The Correspondence of Norman Leys and J. H. Oldham, 19181926.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.48 Macmillan, W. H. Complex South Africa (1930);Africa Emergent(1938).49 Perham, M.Africans and British Rule. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941.

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348 P. Kallaway

Lord Hailey,50 Bronislaw Malinowski51 and Lucy Mair.52 In the context of education

that debate reflected many of the criticisms of the earlier adaptationist approach

which had been articulated so well by A. V. Murray in his monumental study on

African education, School in the Bush (1929).

Increasingly under pressure from the international community the British impe-rial government found itself on the defensive during the 1930s. The earlier philoso-

phy of adaptation so confidently articulated in the Colonial Offices report on

Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa (1924)53 was superseded by a number of

other reports. The most significant of these included Education in African Communi-

ties (1935) and Mass Education for African Society (1943).54 In particular the USA

and the League of Nations Mandates Commission pressed for the liberalization of

the colonial order and the promotion of the rights of the indigenous peoples. In

that context the British attempted to engage with development issues, or at least to

articulate a tentative rhetoric of development with regard to the indigenous peoples

of the colonies. The Labour Party government under Ramsay MacDonald, which

came to power in 1929, with Sydney Webb the notable Fabian leader as

Colonial Secretary, offered the brief prospect of a new approach to the issue of

colonial development, but the Depression and the transition to a National Govern-

ment put paid to any possibility of dramatic changes in policy. The socialist labour

movement of the imperial heartland proved to be as ineffective as the Conservatives

when it came to strategies for the development of welfare policies in the colonial

context.

Yet it was during the 1930s that the foundations were laid for a new approach to

thinking about welfare and education in colonial Africa that was to bear fruit in thepost-Second World War era. Whatever the limitations of that policy it did move away

from many of the conservative formulae of earlier times. One effect of the disillusion-

ment with the fruits of British colonial rule was disenchantment with the doctrine of

protective trusteeship. The notion that British colonial administration ought prima-

rily to preserve colonial peoples from too harsh a collision with Western values and

economic changes (as expressed in the doctrine of adaptation) seemed to be an

excuse for tolerating stagnation, even regression. Demands therefore grew for a more

constructive form of trusteeship, which would repair the neglect of the colonial era,

stimulate economic recovery and improve social conditions. This was the message of

W. H. Macmillan, Lord Hailey and others and increasingly the Colonial office

50 Lord Hailey.An African Survey. London: Oxford University Press, 1938.51 For an excellent survey of Malinowskis work see James, Wendy. The Anthropologist as

Reluctant Imperialist. In Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, edited by T Asad. London:

Ithaca Press, 1973: 5069.52 Mair.Native Policies in Africa.53 Colonial Office, Advisory Committee on Native Education in Tropical Africa (ACNETA),

Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa. London: Colonial Office, 1924. Cmd. 2374.54 Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies (ACEC).Memorandum on The Education of

African Communities, Colonial No. 103. London: HMSO, 1935; ACEC.Mass Education in African

Society, Colonial No. 186. London: HMSO, 1944.

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itself.55 Arthur Creech Jones, a Labour MP who had kept the Colonial Office under

constant pressure for a more systematic approach to colonial development in the

1930s, was able to take these policies forward after 1946 when he became Secretary

of State for the Colonies.

However cautious the moves and however slow the pace, the emergent discourseof welfarism in the Labour Party could not be entirely denied in the colonial sphere,

any more than it could at Home. Such policies had increasingly to be reckoned with

in a context of unprecedented sensitivity to international, including American, crit-

icism of British colonial rule which could be detected by the end of the decade.56 It

was clear, as Havinden and Meredith point out, that the social conditions in the colo-

nies provided ammunition for Britains enemies, and the consequence was that

during the 1940s the Colonial Office achieved in wartime what was probably beyond

its reach in peacetime, that is a greatly enlarged measure of colonial development and

social service.57 And this led to a commitment to extend activities in the field of

education that had not been allowed in the 1929 Act. The detailed study of the strug-

gle for secondary education in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) by Trevor Coomb

provides an excellent insight into the emerging pressure from the Colonial Office on

a reluctant colonial government at this time regarding the provision of state-spon-

sored secondary education.58 This work reveals the tensions over educational policy

and welfare development between the colonies that were under the direct control of

the colonial office (the West African colonies, Tanganyika, Nyasaland etc.), those

that had settler legislatures but were subject to the constraints of a governor and the

colonial office (Kenya, Northern Rhodesia), and the relatively independent settler

governments of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. As part of the new deal forthe African colonies wrought as part of the political, economic and social transition

that came with the Second World War, and the renewed emphasis on the significance

of developing secondary industry and a new class of modern sector workers, there was

an implication that the social welfare and education needs of the population would

have to be recognized.59

Implications for Welfare and Educational Policy in South Africa

From the 1930s onwards, social welfare activities in the Union of South Africa were

influenced greatly by developments in Europe and America as the state assumed

more and more responsibility for initiating and conducting social welfare services or

supporting voluntary welfare agencies of one kind or another in the context of the

worldwide Depression and the emergence of Keynesian economics. Although those

55 Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Developmental Policy, 232.56 Ibid., 232.57 Havinden and Meredith. Colonialism and Development, 204.58 Coombe, T. The Origins of Secondary Education in Zambia. Parts 13. African Social

Research, 4 and 5. Lusaka: University of Zambia, Institute for Social Research, 19671968.59 Freund, B. The Making of Contemporary Africa. London: Macmillan, 1984: 194199.

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350 P. Kallaway

services were predominantly in line with the policy of racial segregation and aimed at

the upliftment of poor whites, they gradually came also to have a wider impact on

social policy.

The National Conference on Social Work held in Johannesburg in 1936 was

attended by over a thousand delegates and set the tone for these initiatives. Theestablishment of a social welfare section in the Department of Labour in 1935 was

indicative of the emergence of state involvement. This was followed by the estab-

lishment of a separate Department of Social Welfare in 1937. The Joint Councils

and the South African Institute of Race Relations were instrumental in ensuring

that such welfare provision was in part extended to Africans, Coloureds and

Indians. The Secretary of Social Welfare announced in 1943 that a product of this

evolution in public thought has been the further recognition that social welfare is a

definite and important function of national government.60 This marked a signifi-

cant shift in policy, reflecting the trend already noted in Great Britain from the

1930s.

The South African Institute of Race Relations, established with the assistance

of the Carnegie Foundation in 1929, played a key role in these events. Its Handbook

of Race Relations in South Africa (1949)61 is an excellent, if much neglected, source of

data on welfare, health and education policy developments. It reports on a range of

welfare initiatives being promoted by the United Party government in the 1940s,

which promised a whole new welfare dispensation. When the subject of social security

came before parliament in 1944 the Social and Economic Planning Council asked the

government to consider the advisability of introducing a comprehensive programme

of legislative and administrative measures concerning the subjects of the provision ofemployment, social security, housing public health, nutrition and education, such a

programme to constitute the peoples charter as the outcome of the war.62 It recog-

nized that such extensive reforms could only be part of a comprehensive economic

plan that would ensure economic prosperity for the nation in general. Emerging at the

time that it did, such moves must be seen in the light of the Beveridge Report (1942)

which set out the blueprint for the welfare state in the UK after the Second World

War, and the rise of a tentative political lobby within the ruling party headed by

Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Jan Hofmeyr, in support of welfare

reform.63

The tone of the Rheinallt Jones chapter on social welfare mirrors many of the global

debates of the twenty-first century.64 In recording and recommending initiatives

60Jones, J. D. Rheinallt. Social Welfare. In Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa, edited

by E Hellman. London: Oxford University Press, 1949: 413441.61 SAIRR (Oxford, 1949).62 Report of the Select Committee on Social Security, S.S. 10, 1944 cited by Jones. Social

Welfare, 421.63 Paton, A. Hofmeyr. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1964.64 Legum, Margaret. It Doesnt Have to Be Like This: A New Economy for South Africa and the

World. Cape Town: Ampersand, 2002.

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relating to welfare it supports the view that a range of services is needed with regard

to social security, the establishment of a national health scheme, food subsidization

and the provision of housing. It is recognized that these moves would not in themselves

be able to eliminate poverty. It argues that that the only real solution to these problems

would be found if, parallel to welfare provision, a simultaneous increase be effectedin the output and earnings of the low income groups.65

In that context the question of educational provision is directly linked to the overall

plan to address poverty for all sectors of the population a significant break from the

dominant discourse of the 1920s and 1930s, which had often seen the problem from

the perspective of saving the poor whites through educational upliftment66 or

seeking to impose the harshest form of segregation in the field of education, which

would ensure the exclusion of blacks from direct competition with whites in the

labour market.67

In that context the issue of education and training policy was seen to be of the

utmost significance. Edgar Brookes had made a dramatic statement in this regard

as early as 1930 when he published his short monograph on Native Education in

South Africa.68 In this he challenged much of the conventional wisdom regarding

the topic contradicting his earlier position set out in Chapter XX of his classic

work on the History of Native Policy in South Africa, where he favoured the adap-

tationist policies of the Phelps Stokes reports and C. T. Loram in Natal.69 In the

later book he was concerned to emphasize that any attempt to frame a policy in

this field that treated blacks as having distinct needs fell short on political and

economic grounds. Whites would only punish themselves in the long run if they

deprived their fellow citizens of education or tried to promote a separate form ofeducation for them, as this would not only be blatantly unjust in the emerging

context of international politics but would prove to be politically and economically

irrational in the context of the emerging economy.

Although Brookes was in part concerned with justice, the debates of the 1930s

and 40s were framed more in classic liberal economic terms. In a manner quite

familiar to the policy discourses of the 1990s, educational provision was not solely

defended in terms of human rights but there was a distinct emphasis on the need for

a workforce that was globally competitive. Breaking with the established assump-

tions concerning the inevitability of colour-bar restrictions on the training of blacks

in technical and vocational skills, the Social and Economic Planning Council argued

that: the Union cannot allow itself to be exposed to a losing competitive struggle

65Jones. Social Welfare, 420.66 As seen in the Carnegie Commission Report of 1932. See Malherbe, E. G. Education and the

Poor White in South Africa: Report of the Carnegie Commission. Stellenbosch: Pro-Ecclesia, 1932.67 This was set out systematically for the first time in a government document in the Native

Economic Report of 1932 though it was not immediately implemented. UG 22-1932. Also see

Doxey, G. V. The Industrial Colour Bar in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1961.68 (Pretoria: van Schaik, 1930). See in particular Ch. VIII on Administrative and financial

difficulties.69 (Cape Town: Nasionale Pers, 1924).

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352 P. Kallaway

against the mentally-developed labour of Western nations, against the awakening

Eastern races, and even against other parts of Africa, by withholding adequate

educational facilities from the Non-European population. In that context it asked for

the provision of ten years of free education for most coloured, Indian and African

children by 1960.70This was an extremely radical position, especially coming as it did from govern-

ment quarters. It revealed the deep differences of approach that characterized the

United Party government, with its parallel commitment to racial segregation and

the reservation of many modern sector jobs for whites. It put forward a proposal to

extend the scope of African mass education and state support for such education,

while promoting a common curriculum for all. This was in some ways ahead of

the thinking in many British African colonies. It meant that for the first time

adequate funding for African education was being put on the table, at least in rela-

tion to urban areas. These views gained considerable credibility during the 1940s.

There is also evidence that government was contemplating a drive towards

vocational, technical and adult education to assist with the overall desire to

produce a more skilled and motivated workforce. Of particular significance in this

regard were the blueprints for education mapped out in the Commission of Enquiry

into Adult Education (the Eybers Commission) in 194571 and the Report of the

Commission of Enquiry into Technical and Vocational Education (the De Villiers

Commission) in 1948.72 In the event all of these initiatives were stillborn as the

1948 election swept the United Party from power and opened the way for the

apartheid era.

School Feeding as an Index of Welfare Policy

From the 1930s there was a clear change of tone with regard to welfare policy in the

West in an attempt to meet some of the social challenges highlighted by communism.

This was part of a shift to Keynesian economic policy in the context of the Great

Depression and its aftermath. In the UK this was demonstrated by a dramatic shift

towards the welfare state as part of post-Second World War reconstruction. In South

Africa, despite the continuation of segregationist politics, the collapse of the Fusion

government over the question of entry into the Second World War had the effect ofstrengthening reformist forces under the leadership of Jan Hofmeyr. There is clear

evidence that this led to an effort to extend welfare policies. These policies, which had

initially been launched in the context of poverty relief for poor whites, were now

tentatively extended to the whole population. The proposals for the expansion of

70 Second Report of the Social and Economic Planning Council, para. 8. Cited by Jones. Social

Welfare, 420.71 UG 35-1945 .72 UG 65-1945.

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welfare in South Africa during this period were to be found in the fields of state medi-

cal care,73 child welfare74 and educational reform.

A particular index of the attention given to these issues during the 1930s is to be

found in the area of school feeding, in which notions of welfare and school attendance

are joined. The Nutrition Committee of the British Empire was established by theColonial Office in 193675 and it paid considerable attention to issues of child nutrition

and the need for school feeding. I have not been able to trace critical studies of the

follow-up to this report. What is clear is the fact that the renewed initiatives regarding

the provision of school meals in wartime Britain provided a significant template for

welfare and education reform at the time. These reforms in welfare policy would seem

to have been a key influence on the development of Hofmeyrs policy in South Africa

from 1941. Though the initiative in South Africa was initially directed at poor whites,

the real significance of Hofmeyrs wartime move was that it did not hold to the traditional

racial barrier on welfare policy but made provision for school feeding for all pupils in

government schools. When it was launched it provided a landmark in welfare legislation

as it provided for European, Coloured and Native primary school children.76 These

meals were not intended to replace the childrens home meals but were to be regarded

as supplementary meals made from foodstuffs chosen for their value in terms of first

class proteins, vitamins and mineral salts, as these were judged to be the substances

most often missing from the meals the child gets at home. By 1945 the state expenditure

on school feeding was estimated at 600,000.77 This rose to 2,063,111 in 19471948

with nearly half of that amount being allocated for Natives. This amounted to some-

thing like twelve million meals a year or the feeding of something like 700,000 African

children the extension of one form of welfare provision to about 20% of the totalpopulation of African between the ages of five and fourteen.78

73 Marks, S., and N. Andersson. Industrialization, Rural Health and the 1944 National Health

Services Commission in South Africa. In The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa, edited by

S. Freidman & J. M. Janzen. Berkeley: UCLA Press, 1992, 131161; Gale, G. W. Health Services.

In Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa, edited by E. Hellman, 387412.74 An index of that reform can be calculated in the field of extended welfare services for children

at risk. See: Chisholm, L. Reformatories and Industrial Schools in South Africa: A Study of Colour,

Class and Gender, 18821939. Ph.D. diss., University of the Witwatersrand, 1989; Badroodien,

A. A History of Ottery School of Industries: Issues of Race, Welfare and Social Order in the period

19371968. Ph.D. diss., University of the Western Cape, 2001; Jones, Rheinallt, Social Welfare,

430, 434.75 See Report of the Economic Advisory Council (193839), Committee on Nutrition in the Colonial

Empire, BPP, Part I, Cmd. 6050, Part II, Cmd. 6051. CO 852/58/15282; CAB 58/199.76 The grants payable by government were as follows: 2d. per meal per pupil (one meal per

school day); an initial grant of 5s. for essential equipment and accommodation; 1s. per pupil per

annum for the replacement of equipment.77 Gordon-Brown, A. The South and East African Year Book and Guide. London: Sampson Low,

Marston & Co, 1948: 5354; Jones. Social Welfare, 433; also see Kallaway, P. Policy Challenges

for Education in the New South Africa: The Case for School Feeding in the Context of Social and

Economic Reconstruction. Transformation 31 (1996): 124.78 Hellman, E., Handbook on Race Relations, 16.

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354 P. Kallaway

This was an extremely important indication of welfare policy development which

followed the trend that had been established in the context of the development of the

Welfare State in the UK where school meals had become part of the provision of mass

schooling by the 1940s. Such provision was not widespread in the African colonies

but in South Africa these moves were hailed by many as the beginning of a new initia-tive in social policy. They seemed to promise a new era in welfare and new directions

for education and training.

Some Conclusions

This work indicates ways in which elements of welfare policy manifested themselves

in British Colonial Africa and South Africa in the years prior to 1948 and indicates

aspects of policy that would seem to have great relevance to the present time. The

tensions around welfare policy and education which emerged internationally as a

result of the Great Depression and the advent of Keynesian economics were also

reflected in the African context. Taken together these shifts in welfare and education

policy at a key moment of change in the politics of the twentieth century would seem

to indicate that some of our general conceptions regarding the role of education in

African colonial history need to be re-examined. The stereotyped vision of education

as a complement to imperial economic policy simply does not hold water for the

simple reason that there was no single model of economic growth or educational

policy for the British colonies in the twentieth century. Such policy as there was orig-

inated less in clear strategic directives from Whitehall than from empirical decisions

made locally.79 The point needs to be stressed that it was only from the late 1930sthat the idea of the state replacing mission control of education was seriously mooted.

Even then the weak colonial state was usually in no position to provide a definitive

policy framework, comprehensive access or a standardized curriculum.

Research cited earlier conducted by Stephen Constantine (1984) and Havinden and

Meredith (1993) demonstrates that there was a complex play of politics in relation to

the formulation of imperial social and development policy. From the early 1930s this

policy was contested both in the forum of home politics and in the increasingly

confrontational colonial contest between business interests, nationalist movement,

settler elites and the imperial government. Out of that situation came an embryonic

vision of a new colonial order that embraced aspects of the welfare state. In the post-

Second World War era there were a host of policy initiatives in the welfare, health and

education fields to hastily provide the fundamentals of such services before the moment

of independence arrived. Welfare policies thought suitable for postwar Europe and the

Marshall Plan were to provide the backdrop to policy discussion of the decolonization

era. Nationalist programmes everywhere embraced aspects of welfare policies and

these had to be accommodated in the plans for policy development.80

79 Whitehead. Education in British Colonial Dependencies, 72.80 Pearce, R. D. The Turning Point in African British Colonial Policy 19381948. London: Frank

Cass, 1982.

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Within the context of such policies the question of educational reform assumed a

significant role, both with regard to access to schooling and curriculum reform to

equip the citizens for democratic society and skill the workers needed for the massive

growth in industrialization anticipated. These initiatives were embodied in the 1944

Education (Butler) Act in Britain. To what extent such welfare and educationalreform impacted on British Colonial Africa is still not sufficiently researched but there

are clear indications of a shifting focus of declared policy. The Colonial Welfare and

Development Acts (1940 and 1945) finally consolidated the policy initiatives that

been germinating in the previous decade but the question of implementation

remained vague. In education the publication of the Colonial Office papers onMass

Education for African Society (1944) and the Report of the Commission on Higher

Education in the Colonies (1945) complemented the Butler Act.

The history of South African education has usually been viewed in total isolation

from the history of African colonial education. There is no single volume since the

Phelps Stokes Commissions reports (1922,1924), and A. V. Murrays (1929) The

School in the Bush that has considered the issue of South African educational develop-

ment in the context of the growth of colonial education in Africa. This makes little

sense as missionaries, philanthropists and government officials participated in

missionary conferences and educational debates where their shared understandings

of these issues were communicated and used to frame policy. Until the era of apart-

heid the clear separation of the history of education in African and South African

contexts would not have been conceivable. The policies followed for African educa-

tion in both areas were essentially shaped at the same forge.

What is interesting about the 1940s in South Africa is that the war and the adventof the United Party government did give some opportunity for alternative forces to

emerge that aligned the government in part with broader notions of welfare and

development internationally, even if these policies were simply added onto the segre-

gationist policy of an earlier era, which was to prevail in the long term. This article

has attempted to demonstrate how these links were made and how such policies

attempted to grapple with the complex issues of social policy in an emergent indus-

trial economy. Prior to the election of 1948 and the advent of the apartheid era there

were a variety of initiatives aimed at the promotion of policy reform in the above

areas. These proposals seem to provide an extremely significant, if neglected, foun-

dation for contemporary policy investigations, which seek to reverse the pernicious

effects of40 Lost Years81 of apartheid dogma. The neglect of that significant heritage

of policy development at the present time can only weaken our understanding of

policy needs in the post-apartheid era.

81 OMeara, D. Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party,

19481994. London: James Currey, 1996.

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356 P. Kallaway

Appendix 1: Welfare and Education Initiatives in Colonial Africa and

South Africa: 18901948

Dates Britain British Africa South Africa

From late 19thC DRC welfareschemes/state support (e.g.

Kakamas)

191418 First World War

1917 C.T. Loram, Native Education in

South Africa

1920s Phelps Stokes Commissions on

Education in Africa

1925 DEPRESSION ACNETA Educational Policy in

British Tropical Africa

Jeanes Schools in East & Central

Africa

1929 Colonial Development Act1929 A.V. Murray, School in the

Bush

1932 Carnegie Commission on Poor

Whites (SA)

Native Economic Commission

1935 Memo on Education in African

Communities. No 103

Inter-territorial Jeanes

Conference (Salisbury,

S. Rhodesia)

19356 Inter-Dept Commission

on Native Education

1936 Nutritions Committee of

the British Empire1937 Report on Higher Education

in E Africa

1939 Second World War

1940 UK Colonial Development &

Welfare Act

1941 School Feeding policy in

South Africa

1941 Ottery School of Industries

established.

1942 Beveridge Report

1943 Report onMass Education in

African SocietyNutrition Committee the Br

Empire

1943 Report of the Commission

on Adult Education

1944 Select Committee Report

on Social Security

1944 Inter Dept Report on

Common Social Security

1944 National Health Services

Commission

1945 Report of the Commission on

Higher Educ ation in the Colonies

1948 Report on Education for

Citizenship in Africa

1948 De Villiers Commission

on Technical and VocationalEducation in South Africa

12 kallaway

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