The Dumbing of South Africa
The falsification of South African history has always been a major aspect of the
process of getting people in this country to believe in and act upon the ideas that the
ruling class wishes them to have. Such thoughts are manufactured and spread
through the many social agencies that transmit ideas. Equally important has been
the withholding of ideas, information and skills from all sectors of the population -
keeping people ignorant as assiduously as feeding them myths, prejudices and all
manner of false notions about themselves as persons and their roles in society. A
combination of such activities amounts to no less a process than dumbing South
Africa. It sub-serves the interests of those who rule and oppress; those who exploit
and impoverish the country materially and simultaneously create the dreadful state
in which the overwhelming majority of the population languish at this juncture in
our history. The spreading of lies and the maintenance of a high level of ignorance
were crimes that could easily be laid at the door of the previous regimes. What is
becoming more and more obvious by the day is that the dumbing of the masses
continues to be a major strategy of what is now claimed to be "the first democratic
government in a free South Africa".
Words no longer have the meanings they are supposed to have. A new double-speak has emerged to
condition people into believing that the process of negotiations begun around 1985 is �on track� and due
to deliver �a better life for all� in the near future. This, of course, is a fairly recent adaptation of the
meanings of such words to mask the growing difference between promises made in 1994 and the realities
with which people are confronted in 1997. The realities make nonsense of the promises, but the words
with which promises are adorned continue to be hammered into the consciousness of the poor in the hope
that they will really believe them. Such was the fate of the Reconstruction and Development Programme:
�RDP� became a chant, an empty slogan that simultaneously raised the hopes of the poor but denied them
the understanding of what was needed to make the RDP programme a reality. Still less were they allowed
to know why �RDP� could not achieve what it was claimed to be able to do.
Equally criminal in its purpose has been the twin operation of the withholding of information that any
rational 20th century person needs to be able to understand what is going on around him or her, and
substituting false notions that paralyse the ability of the victims to reason for themselves. At all levels of
informing the general public there is, for example, a deliberate scheme to attribute most current problems
to the �system of apartheid� created by previous regimes. Radio, television and the press contribute
substantially to this notion. Government spokespersons use this half-truth as of habit to absolve their
employer (the State) of all responsibility for the non-delivery of those promises. This dumbing operation is
aimed at preventing ordinary men and women from understanding the real major causes of the country�s
ills.
Segregation and apartheid were parts of a co-ordinated framework of devices that imperialism-colonialism
used to dominate the oppressed here and in all other colonies. Apartheid was only one of a whole list of
methods by which the people and the resources of this country were exploited over the centuries. Today
the ruling clique�s spokespersons never raise that issue - imperialism�s real role - to �explain� why South
Africa seems unable to wrench itself out of an endless cycle of economic stagnation, poverty, crime and
frightening backwardness in all areas of life. One reason is that those who are now in office chose to
become active agents of a global politico-economic system (imperialism). Another reason, related to the
first, is simply that the rewards for this collaboration - top jobs in government, high salaries, free cars and
houses - are ones these agents could never think of giving up. Still less do they wish to return to the
struggle against the real causes of oppression and exploitation. Their enemies (the racist capitalist
exploiters of the country) during �the struggle� are now their sponsors and their patrons, their godfathers.
They have, in effect, become principal players in the process of dumbing the masses who have a right to
know the truth of their situation. There are countless ways in which this is done. But we need take only a
few cases to illustrate how this happens each and every day.
The health of any economy can be honestly measured only by the well-being of all the people whom that
economy serves. The South African economy generates widespread poverty, unemployment, violence,
homelessness and hopelessly inadequate education. Theft and corruption tear public life apart. But the
Minister of Finance, a Mr. Trevor Manuel, repeatedly chants that in this very economy �the fundamentals
are all in place�. In our real world the very opposite is only too evident. Such a chant must strike dumb
the victims of our social system. But for those who profit from this exploitative system everything is in
place; they can go on making huge profits out of the human and material resources of the country while
these mysterious �fundamentals� are in place. For them it would be so much better if crime could be got
rid of and the poor and jobless could find their own jobs, homes and other basic needs. The Minister of
Trade and Industry, SA Communist Party member and ex-trade unionist Mr. Alec Erwin, enthusiastically
reports that more than ten billion rands has been invested by foreigners since 1994. For him that is a
measure of the growing �confidence� of wealthy foreign profit-seekers and a promise of a better economic
future. What is the reality? Most of the funds are used to buy shares in companies that already exist and
bonds, which are an investment in the debts of the government (or Eskom, or Transnet or the South
African Breweries). The profit (interest) on such government bonds is paid out of the taxes that the
government collects. Not a single job is of necessity created in this way. Such funds are not used to make
fixed investments in new industries or other economic activity which can provide jobs. Wealthy investors
and the banks salt away the proceeds of the sale of shares, bonds, property and other assets, or they invest
such proceeds overseas in �safe� countries to create jobs there - to produce profit.
As an extension of the process of dumbing the unwary there is a system of creating role-models out of
those who have deserted the struggle and have chosen to enter �business�. The lionising of these ex-
liberation workers is done in the name of �black empowerment�, suggesting that the masses will through
the efforts of the new corps of bosses gain the power to rearrange the economy to their own benefit. This
myth-making is not only an act of gross deception; world-wide it is only too well known as a means of
pulling the wool over the eyes of those who have been rendered ready for the dumbing process. There is
also the use of silence where there is a need to shout from the rooftops to warn the masses against what
threatens them. This is an equally common political crime.
There has been an increasing need to expose the bullying tactics of the global controllers of the world�s
wealth, to help people to understand why they are poor and oppressed. That is why the Educational
Journal has, among other duties, explained how the World Bank(WB) and the International Monetary
Fund(IMF) have worked together to subject the majority of the world�s poorer countries to their policies.
On the other hand, even the universities in this country, by their public silence, have played a major role
in a process of dumbing the public about the role of these two bodies. There was a time, for example,
when Professor Ben Turok of the University of the Western Cape took a lead in informing the freedom
movement about the capitalist Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAPs) of the WB and the
IMF. Prof. Turok is a guru in the ANC parliamentary Economic Commission of the National Assembly.
In June 1996 the whole of the cabinet and its ruling Party, the ANC, adopted a Growth, Employment and
Redistribution (GEAR) programme. This was sold to the poor and oppressed as the lifeline to rescue them
from their dire straits. GEAR was, in fact, the poorly disguised ESAP forced upon the government by the
aggressive, bullying WB and IMF. The �first democratic government� meekly adopted it. And now it is
being hawked to the impoverished masses in the same way as the RDP was sold. None of the Universities
did anything to strip this fraud of its disguise. The stream of opposition and information from Prof. Turok
and his UWC co-workers dried up. The truth about GEAR was withheld from those who most needed to
know. Silence conspired with manifest falsifications of the past to dumb still further the victims of this
development. �Transparency� had once again given way to the conscious dumbing of South Africa. This
same process has been pursued by the ministry of Labour and the Trade Union leadership, including the
leaders of major teacher trade unions, even in the midst of the dispute over the �Basic Conditions of
Employment Bill�. The real, fundamental reasons for the structure of that Bill and the Labour Relations
Acts are concealed from those who need to know, that is, the workers themselves and the prospective
workers moving up through the schools, colleges and universities. Labour and Wage control are central
parts of the GEAR-ESAP programme. That explains the frequency with which the Cabinet ministers and
their directors offer as a �reason� for measures unacceptable to the ordinary man and woman the excuse
that it is �an economic necessity�. In simple English it means that it is dictated by the terms of the GEAR-
ESAP policy of the WB and the IMF. Dumbing is no toy. It is a deadly weapon in the armoury of the
undemocratic State.
Falsification of facts and the withholding of information, the twin aspects of this process of dumbing the
masses, have dominated much of the business of bringing to the �role-players� in the fields of education,
health and social welfare the �facts� of their situations. Under the vague and misty title of �leveling the
playing fields� there is in each of these areas a process similar to that used to account for what is
happening in other areas of the economy. As the meanings of words are twisted and vital information is
suppressed in such social services the picture becomes so much the worse because excuses come on top of
the basic dumbing of the people of South Africa about the reasons for the wretched state of the economy as
a whole. Education, health services and social welfare have collapsed in many ways. That may indeed be
due in part to a lack of resources that are needed. However, one sees in the plans that have been devised to
attack problems and in the reasons for the steps that are being taken clear evidence that here, as
elsewhere, the dumbing process has acquired an energy and a direction that are nothing short of
disgraceful. Every new plan brings with it fresh disasters, fresh rationalisations, fresh abuse of the
meanings of words as understood by ordinary honest persons.
The revolution in education promised by the Minister of Education, the assurances of his provincial
ministers and directors of education that everything was �in place� to launch a �Curriculum 2005� have
vanished like the morning mists in the heat of chaos and confusion. The jargon that accompanied the
launch reached a high point in the obfuscation (hiding simple truth from everyone with double-speak)
delivered in huge dollops from Pretoria. On Monday 21 July 1997, the Minister himself assured a radio
audience (�Talk At Will�) that the launch of �Curriculum 2005� in Grades 1 and 7 in 1998 was �on
track� and that he knew nothing of plans to drop arrangements for Grade 7. On the Thursday of the same
week the Grade 7 launch was indeed canceled. The enthusiasm which on July 21 Minister Bengu claimed
had been shown by teachers for the launch had withered in a reality that had been there all the time: it had
been obvious before then that the school system was unable to handle the launch. In addition what little
capacity there might have been was scuttled by both the sacking of thousands of teachers and the inability
of the schooling system to shoulder, even financially, any more chaos than had already been created.
In the fields of health and social welfare the twin evils of �feel-good� jargon and the blindness of those
concerned to the realities around us have all taken their toll. Excuses are still being made for the Sarafina
II disaster and financial scandal. Workable primary health care has to be part of an integrated system in
which the economy-as-a-whole and the special fields of secondary and tertiary health services have a role
that cannot simply be neglected. The limited skills of the ministries and the even more limited resources
that are available have left a dismal picture of crumbling major hospitals, inoperative clinics and field
services. The Health ministry and the closely related Welfare ministry, which runs the school-feeding
scheme as well, have resorted to their own species of jargon to justify the trashing of (academic) hospitals
or the paring of allowances for young and elderly people in need of support - in a period where growing
unemployment and the shrinking purchasing power of the rand are making life more painful and insecure
for those who are being dealt short. The Welfare minister makes little reference to the extent to which the
country�s resources are misappropriated (stolen) by capitalist investors and desperate thieves alike. The
crumbs left over in the State Budget to help the needy have to be spread even more thinly among an
increasing number of desperately needy people. In welfare jargon, in the welfare dumbing of us all, that is,
this is described as �prioritising resources to achieve greater equity�.
It was not only Humpty Dumpty who declared that when he used words he gave them the meanings he
wanted them to have. In another incident in Alice�s Wonderland a Dodo suggested, in dumbing language,
some inappropriate plan to help a wet and bedraggled mob. An Eaglet yelled at the Dodo: �Speak
English! I don�t know the meaning of long words, and I don�t believe you do either!� That applies in all
eleven official languages if need be. The dumbing of South Africa is a growing national industry. It is a
menace and the very negation of the building of a democracy. It aims to assist in wrecking the defenses of
the masses against the schemes of the joint venture between a rampant world imperialism and their paid
servants among the many levels of government, in educational structures and among the sundry social
organisations which are being drawn into the deception of the victims of �the new South Africa�. The
emancipation of South Africa is an unfinished task.
[THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL VOL.67 #5, OFFICIAL ORGAN
OF THE TEACHERS' LEAGUE OF SOUTH AFRICA, JULY-AUGUST 1997]
EDITOR: Mrs. HN Kies, 15 Upper Bloem Street, Cape Town, 8001
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