Abstract
While much of the historiography on racially segregated schooling in South Africa has rightly emphasised the imposition of racist policies from above, this dissertation uses correspondence and commission evidence, to argue there were significant calls for greater racial segregation in schools (of teaching staff and learners) which were issued ‘from below’, by Indian and coloured teacher associations in the Transvaal, from the 1930s into the 1950s. This was absolutely not a demand for or acceptance of, an inferior education – members of the same associations often rejected the idea of racially differentiated pedagogy or curriculum. The context in which these demands for segregated schooling were made is therefore important to understand: decades of frustrated ambition in a racist society which restricted the training, credentialisation and appointment of teachers according to South African racial hierarchies. Ironically enforcing greater racial segregation in schooling, especially with regards to teachers and principals, would create space for a rising new class of professionals, displacing white staff and allowing black, Indian and coloured teachers to achieve greater upward social mobility. An important justification for making this shift happen was the necessity of expelling racist white teachers, and the associated idea – also articulated by a number of Africans who testified before the Eiselen Commission – of the benefits of being taught by ‘one’s own’. From the 1920s until the early apartheid years Indian and coloured teacher associations in the Transvaal repeatedly demanded greater racial segregation of schooling, in line with the policies of the Transvaal Education Department. An ‘oversupply’ of white teachers and ‘undersupply’ of Indian and coloured teachers and unworkable distributions and densities of population were practical obstacles to the fulfilment of greater racial segregation in schooling, until the passing of the Group Areas Act which the Transvaal Education Department believed would finally allow it to properly implement the racial segregation of schooling which the Indian and coloured teacher associations in particular had been demanding for years.