The bond of education: gender, the value of children, and the making of Umlazi Township in 1960s South Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	The bond of education: gender, the value of children, and the making of Umlazi Township in 1960s South Africa
Author:	Hunter, Mark
Year:	2014
Periodical:	The Journal of African History (ISSN 0021-8537)
Volume:	55
Issue:	3
Pages:	467-490
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	apartheid children education mothers urban households
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853714000383
Abstract:	'High apartheid' in the 1960s was marked by intensified efforts to redraw urban areas along racial lines and quash black South Africans' schooling and employment ambitions. The 1953 Bantu Education Act became infamous for limiting African educational opportunities. Yet this article shows how women in Umlazi Township, outside of Durban, schooled their children - despite and indeed because of apartheid's oppressive educational and urban policies. Drawing on oral histories and archival records, it explores the 'bond of education', the gendered material-emotional family connections that enabled schooling and resulted from schooling. In the face of increasingly insecure intimate relations, a booming economy, and expanded basic education, mothers' attention to their children's and grandchildren's education grew in importance and scale: education required sacrifices but promised children's eventual support. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]