page 162 - Long Walk Original Manuscript [LWOM_162.jpg]

campaign we moved straight into another campaign, this time the boycott of Bantu Education.

The basic premise of apartheid is that the blacks differ from the whites in their historical background, tradition and culture, all of which stamp the black man as being inferior to the white man, and that these differnces demand that each group should develop separately from the other. The theory goes further and draws similar differences not only between Africans, Coloureds and Indians, but also seeks to split Africans into 8 ethnic groups each with its own separate territory and institutions. In pursuance of this ideal the Nationalist government attempted at first to reduce all contact between black and white and to provide separate facilities for black.

But a study of the provisions of the principal apartheid legislation shows that the real aim is not only to keep the races apart but to maintain the country's traditional policy af white supremacy. The Bantu Education Act 1953 was originally intended to create an educational system for Africans which would conform with the government policy and permanently restrict the African to an inferior position in all spheres. A story of one's own life cannot go deeply into the history of African education. Suffice to say that it was started and financed by missionaries who provided Africans with a western type of academic education in English. Later, administrative control was shared between the churches and the provinces but gradually the central government assumed financial control with a fixed grant of £340,000 to which was added an amount from the African polltax. But from 1945 and as a result of growing criticism of the government's lack of interest, African education was financed from general revenue. However, the amount the State actually spent on an