Prof Linda Chisholm is with the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg.

She recently published an opinion article that first appeared in the Daily Maverick on 01 July 2024.

Either the union will discipline the minister or the minister will establish a new relationship with the unions, privileging those to date kept on the sidelines, and sidelining Sadtu.

With the schools’ education portfolio in DA hands, can we expect a major change from the past? Most new ministers, especially younger ones, come to their portfolios as new brooms, determined to wipe the slate clean and start anew.

We have experience of that in South Africa, even with older ministers. In 1994 the ANC wiped the slate clean of apartheid policies with minister Sibusiso Bhengu. Then Kader Asmal came and tried to wipe the slate clean of the OBE (Outcomes Based Education) introduced under Bhengu’s watch.

After him, there was Naledi Pandor, who brought a higher education focus to the combined schools and higher education portfolio. Both Pandor and Angie Motshekga worked to stabilise what had until then been a tumultuous and conflictual process of educational change. Motshekga brought with her the benefit of having been MEC for Education in Gauteng.

Motshekga’s mission was also to use assessments to troubleshoot and improve the quality of school education. All of the last four were ANC ministers, but each tried to distinguish themselves from their predecessors. Access, equity, quality and relevance were interpreted and given different emphases by each.

Private sector

What can we expect of the new minister, the DA’s Siviwe Gwarube?

First, DA policy is different from that of the ANC in two key respects. First is the role of the private sector in education. Although the ANC’s policy allowed private schools a space, and enabled partnerships, the sector and relationships are relatively regulated. Education as a public good is central to its discourses, although not always observed in practice.

The relationship between the public and private sectors in education can be described as entangled. There are private aspects to the public sector and public aspects to the private sector. Teachers move freely between them in search of different conditions and salaries. But the private sector remains small.

Unions

Second is the relationship with the unions. In the post-apartheid period, a close relationship has developed between state and unions. There have been pros and cons. On the positive side, there has been labour peace as the state has accommodated the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, Sadtu, in terms of wages and positions. Sadtu has played the dominant role vis a vis the two other unions, Naptosa and the SAOU.

On the negative side, this cosy relationship has also meant an inability on the part of the state to act decisively to curb practices harmful to quality education.

For the rest, the policy is similar: both emphasise accountability and quality. Both think it is important for the country to get “bang for the buck” that is spent on education. Both think testing is key to providing indicators of educational quality. Both have been engaged in planning and implementing similar educational policies across provinces through the Council for Education Ministers (CEM) and Heads of Education Departments (Hedcom). They have developed relationships with one another in government and without.

So what will be different?

The new minister

The first thing is the new minister. She is young and does not come with the history of Struggle that placed all the others in their positions and inspired them. She was born in 1990, and is thus a “born-free”. She would have gone to school just as OBE was being introduced.

In her X/Twitter tag she describes herself as “Chief Whip of the Official Opposition in Parliament. Unrepentant feminist. Eternal optimist. Wushekazi. The Resident Nolali (person of the village).”

Her Instagram profile shows a youthful, energetic and fun-loving person. That she is black is important in this portfolio. She attended Kingsridge High School for Girls, a now largely African suburban school in Qonce, formerly Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. Gwarube holds a BA degree in law, politics and philosophy from Rhodes University in Grahamstown.

How Gwarube handles the post will be key. Will she be open and participatory in her approach, or high-handed and authoritarian? Will she consult with her staff and the public or will she try to assert her authority? As a young woman, she will face the latent hostility of a still deeply patriarchal society as well as the condescension of the older generation. But she will have a younger generation to draw on, with new ideas.

Tricky union terrain

The decisive issue will not be policy, although she may choose a particular issue with which to make her mark. It will be the relationship with the unions.

A recent book on Sadtu by Michael Cross, Logan Govender and Ahmed Essop has argued that the tripartite alliance stood at the centre of dysfunctionality in education. For this to change this relationship needed to be broken.

This will be a matter of survival for Sadtu in a literal sense. The sale of jobs and positions is a problem. The ladder to power through the union is important to its members. This might now be disrupted.

Either the union will discipline the minister or the minister will establish a new relationship with the unions, privileging those to date kept on the sidelines and sidelining SADTU.

She will need to navigate her way through very tricky terrain. This will be the real challenge of her job.

*The views expressed in this article are that of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect that of the University of Johannesburg.