Segregation, science and commissions of enquiry: the contestation over native education policy in South Africa, 1930–36

This is a study of relations between English Protestant missions and secular forces in and outside the state in the arena of African education between 1930 and 1936. During these years both the state and secular organisations devoted a great deal of time and money, in the form of commissions and conferences, to debating and investigating solutions to the ‘Native Problem’. Education was seen as key in this debate. The article argues that, through these public debates, newly emerging secular experts attempted to silence the missions and educated African elite as illegitimate amateurs, no longer able to speak with authority on African education. It shows the way in which new sciences like anthropology and psychology were used to bolster and hone earlier notions of ‘adapted education’. It challenges the idea that the missions accepted these ideas, showing that a robust critique was emerging which drew both on missionary opposition to ‘adapted education’ in British colonies and critiques of segregationist policy in South Africa.