Chapter 2 - From Crisis to Stability to Crisis

This chapter grounds the analysis of the emergence, ideology and politics, organisation and collective actions of SASO which are examined in the next three chapters. The focus here is on the social and higher education structure and conjuncture of the period from the crushing of mass political dissent in the early 1960s to the re-emergence of mass popular action during the early 1970s which culminated in the Soweto uprising of 1976-77.

Three issues in relation to black higher education are specifically covered. The first is the description and analysis of the goals and policies that came to be formulated by the apartheid state during the late 1950s and the economic, political and social determinants of these policies. The basis for this is, in turn, laid by a brief consideration of provision of higher education for blacks prior to 1948. The second is the analysis of the organisational features that came to characterise black higher education during the 1960 to 1976-77 period and, though increasingly contested, the instruments and processes by which these were reproduced. Finally, particular conditions - authoritarian control, the racial composition of administrative and academic staff - internal to black institutions which impinged on students are discussed, so as to better frame the analysis of student action that follows.

The Political Economy of Black Higher Education before 1960: The Pre-Apartheid Period

During the early twentieth century, the twin concerns of the South African state were guaranteeing capital accumulation on the basis of cheap unskilled black labour and consolidating the structures of white political domination and privilege. As a result, the education and training of blacks was not a priority for the state. Segregation, institutionalised in the political and social spheres, also constituted a central plank of education policy. In practice this meant limited funding, and inadequate provision of facilities, for black, and especially African education, as well as an organisational structuring of schooling which took a racial form. The effect of state policies was to ensure that higher education would be essentially restricted to certain sections of the white dominant classes.

Prior to 1948, black higher education was largely confined to the universities. There was no provision of advanced technical education, this being a result of the racial division of labour and institutionalised job reservation which restricted blacks primarily to unskilled occupations. The training of African teachers was mainly conducted by church missions with some financial aid from provincial authorities. While the South African Native College (later Fort Hare) offered a higher teaching diploma, teacher-training was essentially a continuation of secondary education. Teacher-training of Indians and Coloureds was carried out by the provincial authorities, and was also largely an extension of secondary education. During 1948 some 6,499 students were enrolled at 39 teacher-training institutions designated for Africans and 1,133 Coloured and Indian students attended 16 teacher-training colleges (Union of South Africa, 1961:E7).

By 1948 black university students numbered only 950, a mere 4.6% of total enrolments (Malherbe, 1977:731), reflecting the underdeveloped state of black pre-higher education as a whole. The only institution at which black students were numerically predominant was the South African Native College, established by a church mission society in 1916 and offering post-matric courses from 1919 onwards. Small numbers of black students also attended the white English-language universities of Cape Town (UCT), Witwatersrand (Wits) and Natal (UN). Finally, some students were enrolled at the part-time correspondence University of South Africa (UNISA). Although the white universities exercised autonomy over whom they taught, "admissions of black students were not, however, encouraged" (WUS/AUT, 1986:5).

At Rhodes University, students were often refused registration on the grounds that similar facilities were available at Fort Hare (UFH). At Natal University, students were enrolled on the basis of segregated academic classes, while at Witwatersrand the official policy was one of "academic non-segregation". This meant that outside the academic sphere restrictions were placed on non-racial social activities and, in effect, black students were discriminated against (Murray, 1986:99). The white Afrikaans-language universities "rigidly refused to admit black students although none of their charters, except that of Potchefstroom (UPS), prevented them from doing so" (WUS/AUT, 1986:5).

The Elaboration of Apartheid Educational Policies, 1948 to 1960

The 1948 elections saw the National Party (NP) emerging triumphant. The NPs' immediate policies were continued capital accumulation on the basis of greater expansion of manufacturing industry, and the mechanisation of agriculture; Afrikaner economic advancement; and apartheid/separate development as the mode of continued white political domination and black subordination. These policies were, in turn, to profoundly shape state policies relating to black higher education; and the organisational structure and mechanisms of administrative control of higher education that were elaborated during this period and served as a broad framework until the late 1970s.

The initial position of the apartheid government with regard to the question of black university education was contradictory. In 1949 the creation of a medical school at Natal University to train primarily black doctors, previously approved by the United Party administration, was endorsed. However, a year later, as if to signal a determination to impose apartheid in higher education, it was stipulated that state funding would be made available to the medical school only on the condition that admissions were restricted to black students. Although this contravened the University's admissions policy and provoked some opposition, it was on this basis that the school opened in 1951.

The report of the Eiselen Commission (Commission on Native Education, 1949-1951) which powerfully influenced the contents of the Bantu Education Act of 1953, drew the key connection between state education policy and political and economic control of the African population. African education was to reflect the dominance of the ideology of white rule and superiority. Moreover, in accordance with the requirements of the 'separate development', higher education for blacks was to be planned in conjunction with ‘development' programmes for the bantustans and to be placed under the direct control of the Department of Native Affairs. The Commission further recommended that the registration of African students at white institutions be restricted to courses that were unavailable at Fort Hare. This was in line with the thrust of state policy on African education:

Native education should be based on the principles of trusteeship, non-equality and segregation; its aims should be to inculcate the white man's view of life, especially that of the Boer, which is the senior trustee (quoted in Brooks and Brickhill, 1980:13).

In 1953, the Holloway Commission (Commission of Enquiry on Separate Training Facilities for Non-Europeans at Universities, 1953-55) was appointed to investigate the practicability and financial implications of providing separate universities for blacks. Holloway rejected the idea on financial grounds, and suggested that segregation of the ‘races' could be accomplished by locating African and Indian undergraduates at Fort Hare and Natal (where academic classes were segregated) and Coloured students and African and Indian post-graduates at those universities prepared to accept them.

Notwithstanding Holloway's recommendation, an Inter-Departmental Committee was set up to investigate the matter further. The Committee began, against Holloway's advice, by trying to remove the medical school from the control of Natal University and to place it under the academic control of UNISA, and the administrative control of the Department of Native Affairs. Widespread political opposition by black organisations and white liberal groups, and practical issues associated with the operation of a medical school, forced the government to back down.

Despite this setback, the Inter-Departmental Committee's efforts culminated in the passage of the Extension of University Education Act of 1959. This enabled the creation of new racial and ethnic universities, and stipulated that in future black students would be required to obtain ministerial permission to register at institutions reserved for whites. In terms of the Fort Hare Transfer Act of 1959, Fort Hare was to be restricted to Xhosa-speaking Africans and, as with the new universities for Africans, was to be brought under the direct control of the newly created Department of Bantu Education.

In 1959, on the eve of university education segregated along racial and ethnic lines and under tight state control, student enrolments were as follows (Table 1).

Three points need to be made with regard to Table 1. First, despite Eiselen's recommendations, and in the absence of legislation preventing blacks from enrolling at white universities, throughout the 1950s there was a steady increase in black students at the white English language universities. Indeed by 1959 the vast majority of full-time students (77.2%) were enrolled at these institutions. At UCT, black students constituted 12.4% of the total student body; at Natal 21.3%, and at Witwatersrand 5.8% (SAIRR, 1962:252). The figure for Natal is inflated by the attendance of black students at the racially segregated medical school. It was this process that the legislation of 1959 sought to arrest and reverse.

Second, by 1959 the 4,207 black students constituted a mere 10.7% of total university enrolments (39,390 students) - of whom 4.7% were Africans, 3.9% were Indians and 2.1% were Coloureds. University education, then, continued to be concentrated among the white bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. Third, relative to white students, black students were registered predominantly in the humanities and education and were severely under-represented in the scientific and technical fields.

Turning to black teacher-training and technical education, the Bantu Education Act of 1953 stipulated that African teacher-training was to be brought under direct state control. All future training of teachers for state or state aided schools was to be conducted in departmental institutions. The church missions were given the option of either closing or selling/renting the training schools. Those schools deciding to continue operating on a self-financing basis were still obliged to register with the Department of Bantu Education. Crucially, their students were not guaranteed employment in state schools. By 1959 there were 50 small training colleges with 5,656 students (RSA, 1969:E12). As in the past, teacher-training continued to be largely an extension of secondary education rather than post-matric training. Coloured and Indian teacher-training was controlled by the provincial administrations. There were 12 colleges for Coloureds (1,659 students), and 2 for Indians (536 students).

The provision of higher level technical education and training oriented towards skilled and artisan employment in mining and industry continued to be restricted to whites. Due to the small number of secondary school graduates, and as with teacher-training, other vocational courses (social work, nursing, para-medical) also required only a Standard 6 or Junior Certificate.

The Structural Character of Black Higher Education

Black students at universities are likely to have come mainly from the black petty bourgeoisie and commercial bourgeoisie. The small enrolment (0.32 per 1000 population compared to 12.1 for whites) largely related to the lack of provision of, and the abysmal conditions in pre-higher education. This is borne out by Senior Certificate (Standard 10) passes: in 1959 only 578 students obtained a pass with matriculation exemption, the entrance requirement for degree courses at universities, while 873 students received school-leaving certificates necessary for diploma courses (Malherbe, 1977:724-26).

While this accounts for the limited representation of black students at universities and the low entrance requirements for vocational courses, the structural character of black higher education needs to be explained. First, the racial division of labour as institutionalised by job reservation legislation and enforced by white trade unions was taken as given. The effect of this was that blacks were excluded from middle and high-level training in scientific and technical fields and higher education was restricted to fields of study, mainly liberal arts, that would not undermine the existing racial division of labour.

Second, the provision of higher education was related to the grand programme of apartheid. A corollary of the 1959 Extension of University Education Act enabling the establishment of new racial/ethnic universities was the 1959 Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act, while the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 also conditioned higher education. The Bantu Authorities Act sought to replace direct colonial rule in the African reserves with a system of indirect rule through reactionary traditional leaders and collaborationist elements who were to be granted executive and administrative powers. The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act took this process further by unfolding the project of geographical segregation and consolidation of ethnically structured territorial units, the bantustans (the previous 'reserves'). Beale writes:

[T]he political crisis of the 1950s necessitated a revision of the perception of what was needed to enhance the conditions of capital accumulation and secure the prospects of white power and privilege.... By the late 1950s, the Bantustan project was seen as essential for the long-term security of white political and economic control (1991:42-3)

The linkage between the establishment of the African universities and the launching of the bantustan system was unambiguous. The intention was to restrict the economic advancement, social mobility and political rights of Africans to the bantustans, and it was there that the products of the African universities were expected to exercise their talents.

For Verwoerd the rationale for the ethnic structuring of universities was "the conviction that the future leader during his... university training must remain in close touch with the habits, ways of life and views of members of his population group" (Malherbe, 1979:150). The universities were meant to produce the administrative corps for the black separate development bureaucracies and to assist in the class formation of a black petty bourgeoisie that would, it was hoped, collaborate in the project of separate development.

The training of blacks for professional occupations (teaching, social work, nursing, medicine etc.) was to be directed towards meeting the needs of the black population, particularly those in the bantustans - a fact exemplified by the statement of a government Minister that the University of Natal's Medical School was to be solely "for the training of Non-Europeans... to meet the health needs of their own people" (quoted in Gordon, 1957:8). However, relating academic opportunities to job reservation and channelling students to the bantustans would also contribute to another objective:

That of ensuring that the developing Afrikaner petty bourgeoisie, a crucial support base of the government, did not experience competition in the labour market.

Third, to secure its ideological and political objectives, the National Party brought black education under tight, authoritarian and centralised state control. The criticism of missionary education was that it was:

Isolated from the life of Bantu society. It prepares them not for life within a Bantu community... but for a life outside the community and for posts which do not in fact exist (Verwoerd, Minister of Native Education, quoted in Rose and Tunmer (ed.), 1975:264).

Consequently, the control of teacher-training by liberal churches and provincial authorities was eliminated. Concomitantly, the "intolerable state of affairs" (Malan, South African Prime Minister, quoted in UNESCO, 1967:84) of black students attending white universities and being exposed to liberal ideas and values was ended. Now, ministerial permission was to be sought by blacks wanting to attend white universities and the autonomy of these institutions with regard to admissions was circumscribed.

Finally, in 1957 a warning had been sounded by Verwoerd that the control of (black universities) by the government is needed as it is necessary to prevent undesirable ideological elements - such as has disturbed the non-white institutions not directly under the control of the government (quoted in Beale, 1991:42).

To give effect to this, strict academic and administrative control over staff and students was to be enforced at Fort Hare and at the still to be established ethnic universities.

Political and Social Conditions, 1960 to 1976-77

To this point my concern has been to explicate the roots and structural features of black higher education. This is because it is important to understand the shaping of black higher education by dynamics within the wider political economy. Moreover, it was during the 1950s that the essential features of black higher education were elaborated, to remain more or less intact for the following two decades. Now, I turn to a description of the social structure and political economy of the 1960 to 1976-77 period and the conditions that constituted the wider context of student political activity during this period.

Social Structure

Throughout this period social relations in South Africa continued to be fundamentally structured along lines of race, class and gender and shaped by the articulation of racism and racialism, capitalism and patriarchy. Frequently, apartheid and the national oppression of blacks is explained solely in terms of the ideology of racism or racial prejudice. Yet it is the case, as Davies et al. put it:

That the various changing historical forms of national oppression and racism in South Africa are organically linked with, and have provided the fundamental basis for, the development of a capitalist economy.... The national oppression of black people in South Africa is a product of, and was indeed the necessary historical condition for, the development of capitalism... (1988:Vol.1, 2).

Given this, within the radical opposition to apartheid, concepts such as "racial capitalism" and "colonialism of a special type" arose as an attempt to capture, in shorthand, the interrelationship and linkage between racial and class oppression in South Africa.

This is not, however, to suggest that the relationship between racial domination and capitalism has been a necessary one, or that there has been a complete convergence of race and class in South Africa. It is accepted that the relationship between racial domination and capitalism has been historically contingent, and that whether they have been functional to, or in contradiction with, one another can only be answered by concrete analysis. Moreover, there exists also a:

Racial division of classes and class division of races... This means that, on the one hand, cross-class alignments, in which there are differing attachments to the racial order, may co-exist and articulate with cross-race alignments in which attachments to the racial order are subject to dissolution... [It] is not possible to read off group interests from either 'pure' race or class categorisations (Wolpe, 1988:75-76).

Wolpe's signalling of the availability and possibility of cross-race and cross-class alignments is important and how these alignments were approached by SASO during this period and SANSCO during the post-1976-77 period will require analysis.

Patriarchy ensured that women, irrespective of race and class, occupied a subordinate position within South African society, and particularly with respect to equality of access and opportunity in the economic, political and educational spheres. However, the degree of oppression and subordination and access and opportunity was conditioned by race and class. Thus, whereas white women were denied full equality solely through the operation of patriarchal relations, black women experienced a double oppression on grounds of patriarchy and race, sharing in common with black men political rightlessness, restrictions on economic and educational opportunities, inferior social services and myriad other disabilities. Black working-class women were subject to the most intense oppression - a triple oppression as a consequence of the articulation of patriarchy, race and class.

Subject to low wages, often poor working conditions, long hours of transport to and from work, sexual harassment in the workplace, the effects of the migrant labour system, and primary responsibility for child-care and household duties, the burdens of black working-class women were particularly severe. Finally, African women were also subject to customary law in terms of which they were treated as perpetual minors.

In practice, the apartheid system during this period "secured the interests of the entire capitalist class, enabling all capitalists to intensify the exploitation of African workers and to raise the general rate of profit" (O' Meara, 1983:247). Concomitantly, through institutionalised racialism, it also ensured the maintenance and reproduction of the privileges of whites as a whole.

Political Subordination and Economic Control

White domination and black subordination, established originally by conquest and dispossession, was secured by the exclusion of blacks from the political system and the concomitant denial of full citizenship rights. However, the bantustans (previous 'reserves' established in terms of the various Native Land Acts that legalised dispossession) which constituted 13% of the, largely barren, surface area of South Africa were also pivotal to white domination. Long unable to meet the subsistence needs of their inhabitants, during this period the bantustans became less important in relation to their traditional role of subsidising the cost of reproduction of labour-power.

Instead, they became a crucial pillar of the separate development project in that it was to these areas that African aspirations and demands for political rights were to be deflected. Moreover, in the context of a well-established system of migrant labour it was in the bantustans that African workers were to be not only located, but also relocated when superfluous to the needs of the capitalist economy. Indeed, the 1960s and early 1970s was a period of huge population relocation. As a consequence of mechanisation in agriculture, capital-intensive technology in manufacturing, the elimination of African 'black spots' within rural 'white South Africa', the deproclamation of urban African township and the consolidation of bantustan territories, almost 3 million people were forcibly uprooted from 'white' South Africa and relocated in the bantustans.

Social control over Africans was also maintained through extensive controls over movement, residence and employment. The cynically named Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act made it compulsory for all Africans from the age of sixteen to carry a reference book ('pass') which had to be produced on demand to an authorised officer. The reference book included a photograph, thumbprint, name and identity number and contained information relating to residential and work rights in an area; employment, payment of taxes, exemptions and so on. Throughout this period, hundreds of thousands were arrested annually and convicted under 'offences' relating to the pass laws.

Race and class domination was further underpinned by a virtual white monopoly of land ownership and control of all sectors of the capitalist economy. A period of sustained economic boom between the early 1960s and early 1970s significantly altered the pattern of capital accumulation in South Africa. One result was the emergence of large business corporations and the consolidation of monopoly capitalism in most sectors of the economy. The centralisation of capital and the expansion of monopoly relations meant that a few powerful state corporations, some foreign multinationals, and a handful of private corporations controlled virtually all capitalist production (Davies et al, 1988; Innes, 1983).

Monopoly capital accumulation, predicated as it was on large investments in new technology and machinery and a rising organic composition of capital, together with the capitalisation of agriculture, had a significant impact on the technical division of labour. The previous unskilled - skilled labour dichotomy now gave way to one that required larger numbers of technicians, supervisory personnel, administrative workers, and semi-skilled labourers. In a context of job reservation policies which restricted high-level and many middle-level and technical occupations for whites, the beneficiaries of these jobs were mainly whites, with blacks being employed largely as semi-skilled labourers. However, mechanisation in agriculture and capital intensive technology in manufacturing also had the effect of extruding hundreds of thousands of mainly black workers from the production process, and contributing to the origin and development of the phenomenon of structural unemployment.

Finally, during this period the battery of laws and practices that institutionalised segregated and racially discriminatory and unequal provision of educational facilities and opportunities, housing, health care, transport, sports, recreation and leisure amenities, and welfare payments, and prohibited inter-racial sport, worship, marriages and sexual relations were stringently applied and enforced. Indian and Coloured South Africans were also subject to the above, and while exempt from the pass laws they shared in common with Africans the experiences of job reservation policies, forced removals, and absence of citizenship and political rights. Legislation and state initiatives were not purely the product of racist attitudes and irrational political practice, as asserted by some liberal writers, but were intrinsic to oppressive and exploitative social relations and the reproduction of class and race domination.

From Crisis to Stability to Crisis

The 1960 to 1976-77 period both began and ended with the apartheid state in crisis. The crisis of the early 1960s was occasioned by, in response to anti-pass protests called by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the shooting of demonstrators at Sharpeville, the declaration of a State of Emergency, the banning in April 1960 of the ANC and PAC, and the turn of the latter to armed struggle and related events. The crisis which led to short-term investor panic and capital flight was largely dealt with by about 1963 when much of the underground leadership of the ANC was arrested and subsequently imprisoned and hundreds were obliged to flee into exile.

The method of dealing with the political crisis was to set the trend for this period as a whole. Over and above recourse to a State of Emergency during which over 11,000 political activists were detained, raids, arrests, banishment and torture became the norm in dealing with political opposition. Moreover, new instruments were fashioned to suppress political activity - the Unlawful Organisations Act was passed in 1960 and immediately used to ban the ANC and PAC; and the General Laws Amendment Act provided for political detention. The banning of the ANC and PAC continued, on an expanded scale, the process of destruction of the extra-parliamentary terrain, which began with the banning of the Communist Party in 1951 and was pursued in relation to various organisations throughout the 1950s (Wolpe, 1988: 68).

In 1967 the armour of repressive legislation was supplemented by the Terrorism Act, while during this period the Suppression of Communism Act was amended on various occasions (eventually becoming the Internal Security Act in 1976) and the military and police and security apparatuses were restructured and strengthened to attend to internal dissent as well as the armed struggle launched by the exiled ANC and PAC during the late 1960s.

The smashing of political opposition and repression created stability and new and extremely favourable conditions for capital accumulation. This, in turn, provided the basis for the sustained economic boom of the 1963-73 period, high rates of return on investment, extensive economic and political restructuring, and the decline in internal based mass political resistance.

However, this period also ended with the apartheid state in crisis. At the economic level a combination of factors led to recessionary conditions and an end to the previous decade of economic boom. Alongside this was the emergence of widespread strikes in 1973 because of low wages and rising prices which, owing to the number of workers involved, their skill levels and other factors, could not be as easily suppressed as previous ones. These strikes, together with the demonstrations and activities of black higher education students under the influence of Black Consciousness organisations which began to be formed from 1968 onwards signalled a revival, after a decade of silence, of mass and extra-parliamentary action. Organisation was also growing within secondary schools, spearheaded by the South African Students Movement.

Developments in Southern Africa, the defeat of Portuguese colonialism and success of liberation struggles in Angola and Mozambique and the defeat of invading South African forces in Angola, contributed to the militancy and assertiveness of black students. Thus, when the decree that Afrikaans should be the language of instruction for some school subjects was added to the under-funding, overcrowding and generally impoverished conditions of African schooling, students, at least in Soweto, were ready to take action.

The subsequent events - the protest marches of the students, the police shootings, country-wide student boycotts, parent demonstrations, and stayaways - referred to as the Soweto uprising of 1976-77 are well-known. The state responded, as in the early 1960s, with police and military shootings, mass arrests, detentions, banning of individuals and the banning, in October 1977, of numerous Black Consciousness and anti-apartheid organisations, including SASO. The uprising was of tremendous political significance. It contributed to the reconstitution of the terrain of mass extra-parliamentary politics in South Africa, and helped revitalise the exiled liberation movements.

Moreover, it stimulated a re-thinking on the part of capital about how best the process of capital accumulation was to be safeguarded in South Africa and impelled the state to engage in extensive restructuring of institutions, past policies and practices. In short, the uprising of 1976-77 produced, as a product of social struggle, new and changed conditions of struggle.

Separate Development and Black Higher Education, 1960 to 1976-77

If the policy framework for black higher education was elaborated during the 1950s, it was the repressive conditions of the 1960s that made it possible to translate policy into institutional form without significant challenge. Following the 1959 Extension of University Education Act, four new racial and ethnic universities were established in 1960/1961. The University Colleges of the North (UNIN), Zululand (UNIZUL), Western Cape (UWC) and Durban, later Durban-Westville (UDW), were to cater for Sotho/Venda/Tsonga speaking Africans, Zulu/Swazi speaking Africans, Coloureds and Indians respectively. The University college of Fort Hare was to be restricted to Xhosa speaking Africans.

The geographic location of these institutions was conditioned by the separate development and bantustan programme of the apartheid state. Verwoerd in a speech delivered in the Senate in 1954 asserted:

More institutions for advanced education in urban areas are not desired. Deliberate attempts will be made to keep institutions for advanced education away from the urban environment and to establish them as far as possible in the Native areas. It is the policy of my department that education would have its roots entirely in the Native areas... (quoted in Rose and Tunmer, 1975: 265).

The universities designated for Africans were deliberately located not only in impoverished rural areas with limited social infrastructure and amenities but also in areas far removed from the political militancy and influences of large cities.Thus, the university colleges of the North and Zululand were built in predominantly African rural areas - the North at Turfloop, near Pietersburg in the Northern Transvaal, Zululand at Ngoye in North Eastern Natal. Fort Hare was already located in an area bordering Ciskei. The University colleges of Western Cape (in Bellville, Cape Peninsula) and Durban (in Durban, Natal) were established in areas of greatest concentration of Coloureds and Indians respectively.

Student Enrolments at Universities

Between 1960 and 1976 there was a considerable increase in black student enrolments (see Table 2). Also significant, however, was the change that occurred in the distribution of students between the different types of universities. Thus, while there was little change between 1960 and 1976 in the proportion of correspondence students at UNISA, a tremendous change occurred with respect to enrolments at the white and black universities so that by 1976 the vast majority of black students were enrolled at the racial and ethnic universities designated for them.

Enrolments at black universities rose almost 400% between 1960-65, doubled over the next five years and increased more than 100% between 1970-76. Access was facilitated by low fees, state bursaries and loans, and the provision of numerous diploma courses requiring only a senior certificate. This expansion must be related to the massive growth in primary and secondary student enrolments:

Whereas in 1960 there were 1,452,300 primary and 65,600 secondary students, by 1975 the figures were 3,378,900 and 318,500 respectively (Wolpe, 1988: 5). During the same period black students with matriculation exemption passes rose from 637 to 6,212, while those with school-leaving certificates went from 1,025 to 7,457 (RSA, 1983: 5.5; Malherbe, 1977: 724-26).

The pre-higher education enrolments must themselves be seen in the context of the changes that were occurring in the structure of the economy. The expansion of manufacturing industry and the service sector and the introduction of capital intensive technology required larger numbers of black workers who were semi-skilled and possessed more than just minimal elementary education. On the one hand, the racial division of labour was modified to accommodate this new reality . On the other hand, the provision of education was expanded and adjustments were made to the system of financing of black education. However, although flexibility and adjustments were dictated by economic imperatives, education policy continued to be predicated on the goal of separate development. Thus, the provision of pre-higher education was increasingly and more tightly tied to the bantustan programme and the need for skilled personnel to staff the bantustan civil service as these territories were given self-governing status, including control over education.

An important component of the relocation strategy was also to pressurise African professionals to reside in the bantustans. State bursaries often required students to take up self-employment in the bantustans or to work for state departments. Although after the early 1970s job reservation was eroded in some sectors, it continued to exist. A powerful block was agreements that were negotiated by white trade unions and employers. Consequently, black professionals were restricted to operating in black townships and/or in the service of the growing bureaucracies of the Departments of Bantu Administration and Development, and Coloured and Indian Affairs.

Turning to black enrolments at the white universities, after 1959-60 there was a decline in both actual numbers at each university, and in overall enrolments. State policy, applied especially strictly in the case of African students, was to direct black students to the ethnic universities or UNISA. However, the situation began to slowly change from the late 1960s. Throughout the 1960s small numbers of Coloured and Indian students were allowed to continue registering for degrees in technical fields such as engineering, architecture and surveying, possibly because of a market in private building and construction among these groups.

By contrast, in 1960 the government refused African student applications for engineering degrees on the grounds that there was "no prospect for employment for qualified Bantu engineers" (SAIRR, 1961: 230), and it was only after the late 1960s that African students were allowed to register in this field. During 1976, 15 African of the 263 black students (compared to 6,348 white) were registered for an engineering degree; the figures for the architecture/quantity surveying fields were 7 African, 79 black, (compared to 2,621 whites). In percentage terms, white students in scientific, engineering and technical fields stood at over 19% while black students ranged from 11% (African) to 14.7% (Indian), mainly in the natural sciences (RSA, 1983: 5.40).

The gradual re-entry of black students into the white universities may be related to three processes. First, some relaxation of the previous strict controls may have been seen as warranted, given the narrow range of courses and fields of study on offer at black universities, the difficulties associated with correspondence study via UNISA, and the consolidation of the ethnic universities. Significant here was that from the early 1970s black students began for the first time to be enrolled at an Afrikaans-medium university.

However, that no blanket entry of black students was to be permitted is evidenced by a legislative amendment in 1971 which tightened enrolment regulations by restricting registration to the particular course/s and field of study, and to the specific university for which Ministerial permission had been provided. Prior to this "it had been the practice of students to register for a course unavailable at their 'tribal college' and once enrolled to switch to another" (WUS/AUT, 1986: 7). Second, the unfolding bantustan programme required, apart from administrative personnel, also skilled technical person-power. Facilities for the training of engineers, architects, quantity surveyors and the like were non-existent at the black universities, and the white colleges of advanced technical education remained closed to blacks.

Finally, the decimation of the national liberation movement in the early 1960s by brutal state repression created favourable conditions for renewed foreign investment and capital accumulation. Rapid economic growth (the average annual growth rate of Gross Domestic Product was 5.8% in the 1960's and 4.7% between 1970-75 ) on the basis of capital intensive technology was placing a strain on the available supply of skilled technical labour. From the mid-1960s liberal organisations and corporate capital began to argue, on the basis of government and Stellenbosch University Bureau of Economic Research reports, that the unavailability of skilled labour was creating a bottleneck holding back higher rates of economic growth.

By 1974, even the President of the state Atomic Energy Board, Dr A.J.A. Roux, was complaining of a shortfall of 17,000 engineering technicians, the annual output of 3,000 being far short of demand. Noting that "widespread attempts to attract suitable technicians from overseas have borne little fruit", Roux argued "it is evident that South Africa will increasingly have to rely on its own resources.... Two solutions... were to train Blacks and... women" (quoted in Malherbe, 1977: 197).

In the previous year the Financial Mail, a mouthpiece of corporate capital, after listing categories of professional occupations in which there were shortages, had argued that:

Economic imperatives as well as social justice demand that Africans be trained for and allowed into jobs such as these.... It is high time it was more widely understood by whites that their own hopes of civilised survival will be enhanced, not diminished, the higher the levels of African education (19 April 1973, p10; quoted in Makalima, 1986: 40).

The appeal to whites was directed to the white trade unions that were opposing any relaxation of job reservation, and the white petty bourgeoisie, fearful of competition from black professionals. It is important to note the Financial Mail's use of the notion of "social justice":

In the aftermath of the large black worker strikes of 1973, sections of corporate capital were already beginning to float the idea of accelerating the development of a black petty bourgeoisie as a "guarantee" against revolution (see Makalima, 1986:34).

However, at this juncture this was not a widespread concern. Only in the post-Soweto uprising period would this become a major theme and obsession of corporate capital and the liberal establishment.

Skilled Labour Shortages and Black Technical Training

The shortages in skilled technical labour alluded to above resulted in the black education departments attempting to expand the provision of technical education. In 1966 Verwoerd stated that they were:

Shifting the emphasis to technical education in order to relieve the pressure on skilled manpower so that non-whites will be able to make a larger contribution to skilled work (quoted in Horrel, 1968: 98).

However, given the government's political support base among white trade unions and the white petty bourgeoisie, the state sought to make this shift within the framework of separate development. In terms of the industrial decentralisation strategy, industry, particularly that characterised by a labour-intensive production process, was to be persuaded by attractive financial incentives to locate or re-locate in or near the borders of the bantustans. This strategy was a corollary of stemming the tide of African urbanisation and the forced removal of Africans and their relocation in the bantustans. Trained black technicians were to be employed in establishments in the industrial decentralisation areas or in the bantustans. Furthermore, the emphasis was to be on training lower-level technicians and on diploma courses rather than advanced technical education of engineers and technologists via degree courses.

On the one hand, the apartheid state comprehended the new economic realities and was willing to make certain adjustments to the policy of job reservation. On the other hand, there was antipathy to any erosion of the bantustan strategy since this was a principal tenet of the ideological and political project of Afrikaner nationalism and change would threaten the vested interests of important sections of the white support base. The response of the state to the demands of corporate capital for skilled technical labour was therefore still constrained by the parameters of the apartheid programme.

However, it is also doubtful, given the poor qualifications of black (especially African) teachers in mathematics and science subjects, whether any quick response to the skilled labour needs of the manufacturing and service sectors could have been forthcoming. Moreover, the restriction of black skilled labour and technicians to the bantustans, or to employment in black urban townships in the service of state departments, coupled with low income meant that technical education was not particularly attractive.

During this period, then, the provision of and enrolments in higher technical education and training was extremely limited. Advanced technical education for blacks only began in the late 1960s, and by 1976 there were just four institutions offering post-matric training:

The Shikoane Matlala (N. Transvaal) and Edendale Technical (Natal midlands) Colleges for African students, and the M.L.Sultan (Durban) and Peninsula (Bellville) Colleges of Advanced Technical Education (CATE) for Indian and Coloured students respectively.

As is clear from Table 3, only small number of black students at CATEs were enrolled in the field of technical training. Moreover, among those enrolled in technical fields, the numbers of students following post-matric technical qualifications was minimal, the figures for African post-matric enrolments being indicative of a general situation. Compared to whites (6,437 out of 36,826 students in technical training at CATEs and technikons during 1975), blacks were severely under-represented both at CATE and technikon level and within technical education.

Black Teacher-training, 1960 to 1976

As in the case of African teacher-training, during the early 1960s control of Coloured and Indian colleges was removed from the provincial administrations. The colleges were now placed, via the departments of Coloured and Indian Affairs respectively, under central government academic and administrative control. Throughout this period, as a greater degree of "self-government" was conferred upon the bantustans, teacher-training colleges located in these areas were transferred to the control of bantustan departments of education. As a result, access to these colleges increasingly began to be restricted to particular ethnic groups. Table 4 provides statistics relating to teacher-training during this period.

The fluctuations in the number of colleges for African students, as well as their geographic location, needs some comment. Between 1960 and 1976, numerous institutions situated in "white" areas were closed. Concomitantly, with the redrawing of the boundaries of bantustans as part of territorial consolidation, some colleges now fell within the bantustans and thus came under the control of the bantustan authorities.

Finally, new colleges were largely established only in the bantustans. By 1975, only 7 colleges with 1,925 students were located in the "white" areas and administered directly by the Department of Bantu Education. The two colleges for Indians were in Durban and Johannesburg. Coloured students also had a college in each of the latter areas, as well as a further twelve in various parts of the Cape province.

African teacher-trainees grew in tandem with pre-higher student enrolments. Between 1960 and 1970 their numbers increased steadily and in the following five years more than doubled. Apart from being enrolled at colleges, a further 716 teacher-trainees were registered at universities. A similar trend was evident among Coloured students, 268 more being enrolled at universities. Although enrolments at Indian training colleges barely increased after 1965 and in fact declined after 1970, many more students began to attend university for teacher-training, and by 1975 there were 711 such students (RSA, 1983: 5.40).

Two points can be made in relation to the above. First, most African and Coloured teacher-trainees would not have possessed senior certificate passes. This combined with schooling in a pseudo-scientific curriculum (Fundamental Pedagogics) with a conservative orientation and poorly equipped colleges with increasing enrolments resulted in poorly qualified teachers entering the schools. Second, student-teachers registered for certificates qualifying them to teach in lower primary schools were predominantly female, while those on route to higher primary and secondary schools, a smaller number, were largely male. This was a matter of deliberate state policy. Verwoerd had stated in a Senate speech in 1954 that:

[S]ince a woman is by nature so much better fitted for handling young children and as the great majority of Bantu pupils are to be found in the lower classes of the primary school, it follows there should be far more female than male teachers in the service. The Department will... declare the posts of assistants in lower and, perhaps to a certain extent in higher primary schools, to be female teachers posts... This measure in the course of time will bring about a considerable saving of funds which can be devoted to another purpose, namely, to admit more children to school (quoted in Rose and Tunmer, 1975:265).

Thus, a mixture of gender stereotyping and financial expediency was to give the black teaching force a particular gender character and create within it a distinct gender hierarchy.

Female Representation in Higher Education

While the above illustrates the nature of the incorporation of black females into teacher-training, their overall representation within higher education remains to be addressed.

Throughout the 1960 to 75 period, black women were under-represented at universities. In 1960 they constituted 11.3% (502) of total black enrolments; in 1970 18.9% (1,580) and in 1975 21.6% (3,928). However, the proportions of women enrolled at the institutions specifically designated for Africans, Coloureds and Indians were higher than for the university sector as a whole. Thus, at African universities, for example, female enrolments in 1960 were marginally greater (13.1%) than when considered across the university sector in its entirety (9.2%), and in 1975 considerably larger (31.0%) than the 22.1% for the whole sector (Department of Bantu Education, 1976: 118).

Nonetheless, from their inception to 1975 the new ethnic universities remained, both in relation to students and academic staff, overwhelmingly male institutions. In post-matric technical training, if the 22% representation of African females in 1975 and their concentration in nursing and para-medical courses are used as indicators, it is likely that in general black males predominated and that women were confined to courses leading to the "caring" professions. Only in teacher-training was the position very different, with women constituting 58.6% of enrolments in 1970 and 65.9% in 1975.

The Administrative Control of Higher Education

The strong state control that was exercised from the mid-1950s over the teacher-training colleges for blacks was in many ways extended to the black universities. Whereas the white universities, governed by the Universities Act of 1955, enjoyed, despite some limitations, a considerable degree of academic freedom and administrative autonomy and were regulated by the Department of Education, Arts and Science, the black colleges were under the direct control of either the Departments of Bantu Education, Coloured Affairs or Indian Affairs. Thus, they were subject to extensive and authoritarian state control with responsible Ministers enjoying de facto control over both academic and administrative appointments.

Between 1959 and 1969 the following academic and administrative structure of state control was developed. Rectors and vice-chancellors were appointed by the Ministers. University councils consisted of the rector, two elected senate members and not less than eight appointees of the State President. Senates were chaired by the rectors, had two elected council members and senior teaching staff. The first rectors appointed were all committed Afrikaner nationalists, while the chairpersons of councils were senior academics of Afrikaans language universities or UNISA.

Alongside these structures, Black Advisory Councils and Advisory Senates were set up, the members of the former appointed by the State President, and of the latter by the university council in collaboration with the Ministers. The curricula, examinations and degrees awarded were those of UNISA, a generally conservative institution. The only significant change made to the above structure was in 1969 when the status of the colleges was upgraded to that of fully-fledged universities which allowed them to set their own curricula and examinations and confer their own degrees.

Academic and senior administrative staff appointments and dismissals initially lay with the Minister responsible for the various university colleges. Staff could be dismissed upon infringement of any one of seventeen counts, including criticism of the education department or of separate development. According to Beale,

immediately after the passage of the Fort Hare Transfer Act the Department of Bantu Education began to employ a range of tactics to purge the staff, including direct dismissal, and the introduction of conditions which made remaining on the staff untenable (1991: 43).

Liberal senior administrators and academics were fired and repressive measures like a ban on staff engaging in any political activity resulted in resignations. At all the black universities state strategy was "to appoint their own men, some of them recent graduates, invariably from the Afrikaans-medium universities, and promote them rapidly" (Balintulo, 1981: 150). Although the logic of the apartheid programme and bantustan project dictated that black educational institutions should be essentially staffed by blacks, the requirements of ideological and political control necessitated the employment of predominantly Afrikaner nationalists and white conservatives. Concomitantly, liberal opposition to the ethnic universities and the limited availability of black academics also contributed to the patterning of the racial and ideological composition of academic staff.

After 1969, university councils were given control of staff appointments and dismissals. However, the establishment of new posts and confirmation of appointments still required Ministerial approval. In 1970, black academics represented only 19.1% (87) of total academic staff at black universities, and in 1974, 28.8% (161). Top posts were dominated by white conservatives. At the African universities, in 1976 only 9 out of 105 professors, and 14 out of 146 senior lecturers were black. Only at junior lecturer level was there greater parity - 89 white and 73 African lecturers. A similar situation obtained with administrative posts, these also being dominated by white government supporters. Thus, Hill has commented: "the impression of being in a Government department becomes strong when one meets the non-academic staff" (1964: 48).

During the 1960 to 1976-77 period, then, there were severe restrictions on the administrative autonomy of, and academic freedom at, the black universities. This impacted on the black universities in two different, albeit related, ways. It conditioned the racial composition and ideological character of staff at the black universities, and concomitantly profoundly shaped the curriculum content of academic programmes. The racial composition of the staff and the political affiliations of white academics and administrators was to play an important role in structuring the form and content of student struggles during this period.

Conditions at Black Higher Education Institutions

Numerous conditions ranging from the governance of institutions to restrictive rules to segregated facilities and amenities aroused student ire. As noted, the councils of universities were dominated by, initially, white supporters of the apartheid government and, later, by those and blacks participating in separate development structures. Both the composition of the council and policies and rules of council were objects of resentment. Students resented the control on movement into and out of campus residences, bring denied visitors in residences, the general prohibition on alcohol and the lack of social amenities. There were also restrictions on issuing press statements, student organisations and student meetings. It is highly likely that the majority of black students would have been in the early to mid-twenties age range and would have also found some of the controls humiliating.

The location of the black universities in mainly rural areas combined with the quality of education and the lack of academic freedom led to the black institutions being referred to as 'bush colleges'. Since the universities were designed to serve specific ethnic groups, the architectural design of some institutions incorporated supposedly 'traditional' features. Far from comforting students, Hill writes that "it is often said that these features are resented by students" (1964:45). A student at UWC during this period recalled this as a time:

... When blacks... had to suffer gross insults and bitter attacks on their human dignity. When academic discourse and intellectual development were constricted by the most trivial codes of conduct. When the wearing of a tie by male students and a dress by female was exalted as an important precondition for continued academic pursuit. Rules and regulations designed for a place which was fittingly described as 'glorified high school'. Where arbitrary suspensions and expulsions were used to lambaste recalcitrant students into line (quoted by Morgan and Hendricks, 1987: 11).

To conclude, between 1960 and 1976-77 an organisational structure was established for black higher education predicated on strong state control of both the academic and administrative spheres. Considerable expansion of enrolments occurred at both the ethnically structured black universities and UNISA; at the white universities, black enrolments declined, only picking up after the late 1960s, though by 1976 total enrolments had still not reached that of 1960. Student numbers at teacher-training colleges also increased, particularly after 1970, and only there were females well represented, although being directed towards lower-paying employment in primary schools. African teacher-training was brought under the control of bantustan education departments and began to be ethnically structured, while that for Coloureds and Indians came under central government control. Finally, while a beginning was made with higher technical training for blacks, this was extremely limited and framed by the policies of job reservation and separate development.

Despite some calls by corporate capital for greater provision of advanced scientific and technical education for blacks, there was little response from the state; here, however, the existing structure of especially African and Coloured primary and secondary education made it impossible for any speedy response to the skilled labour shortages being experienced. Corporate capital itself did not intervene in either the provision of higher educational facilities, nor become involved in any large-scale financing of black student bursaries/scholarships. Instead, both the provision of facilities and the financing of students was undertaken by the state, the latter often on the condition that graduates serve periods in the bantustans and/or in the employ of state departments.

Some of the adjustments made in the sphere of higher education during this period clearly relate to changing economic conditions. However, developments in this sphere cannot be explained entirely in terms of economic imperatives. The organisational structure that became established and the form that the expansion of black higher education took was also related to struggles both outside and within the state a