Governmentalities and the politics of transformation: a critique of the post-1994 South African teacher education policy implementation process, a case of KwaZulu-Natal Province.

Abstract

The influences of the ruling party in South Africa have had immense impact on the national policies formulated and implemented during the apartheid regime as the policies complimented the ruling National Party’s principles. Under the apartheid regime, education was used as a tool to contain and maintain segregation. The transformation into a new elected democratic party in 1994 meant change in many aspects in South Africa including the political, social, economic spheres and education was one field that experienced a huge amount of change, as it was a driver of the apartheid ideology. Thus, the study determined the ideology and principles that drove the newly elected democratic government (ANC) post-1994 as it supported change, equality, and equal distribution of wealth and drew many of its ideas from the Freedom Charter of 1953. The study also determined the extent those democratic principles and ideology influence education policies post-1994, particularly, the teacher education policies, and whether the teacher-education policy implementation process reveals coherence with the ruling party’s principles/ideology. Using a qualitative approach, this research study adopts a different perspective to analysing educational policies in context of the apparent political milieu of the apartheid regime and the independent democratic regime in South Africa, including the impact of the ideologies upheld in each regime. The findings reveal the use of technologies of power in a top-down approach but within a democratic context. Furthermore, the findings highlight the implications of the ruling party’s governmentality and their perpetuation of ideological principles through national policy development and implementation with negative consequences, especially in teacher education.