by Sue Myburgh

Created on: April 19, 2008

I matriculated in 1969, passing Year 12 and earning a university place and a scholarship. I had been fortunate: although my mother was a single mother, with three of us to support, she was determined that we have the best education. In our case, this excluded private schools, but, as whites, and because of the geographic region in which we lived, we were able to attend very good government schools in Cape Town.

Even though this was a school funded by government, the school was closely modelled on a private school, and high standards were expected of us in all domains - academic, sport, and social. Discipline was strict, with many penalties, ranging from staying in after school to staying in at recess and lunch. Disobedience was unheard of; disobedience involved relatively trivial transgressions such as eating in public while wearing your school uniform, or not doing your homework.

For the most part, I found school boring and tedious. But the education I received was not only superior to most other whites in South Africa, it was certainly superior, in an academic sense, to the education that my children received at a private school in Australia more recently, in terms of depth and range of individual subjects. For example, we read every line of the prescribed Shakespeare text, 'translating' and explaining as we went. My children watched a DVD of a production of their plays.

Most of my peers were totally ignorant about the educational levels of our coloured and black compatriots. As we grew older, we did grow more politically conscious, although I luckily came from a very politically aware family and therefore was often the 'odd one out' in class discussions and debates. We did know that education was compulsory for the so-called coloured until the age of 10 or 12 at that time, but that many coloured chilren did not actually attend school, because either they did not live close to such facilities, or their families needed their contribution to their joint economic efforts. Education was not compulsory at all for blacks (negroid Africans) - partly because, it was argued, there was not enough money available in the public purse to supply sufficient buildings and teachers.

On the other hand, there was enough money for the many signs and regulations that made apartheid the way of life at the time. 'Whites' and 'Non-white' signs had to appear on all public benches, entrances to post offices, train carriages, and so forth. There had to be separate government departments

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