A new racial state? Exclusion and inclusion in education policy and practice in South Africa

Abstract

This article seeks to argue that the nature of the new South African state is bound up with the processes of the political negotiations and the compromises that led to the coming into being of the new democracy in 1994. Incontrovertible as it is that a new state was born, always evident, it is argued, was the parentage of this state, that of a racist National Party/state and a nonracial (not necessarily anti-racist) African National Congress. From this union emerged a hybrid state with public policies that carried the ambiguous marks of its origins. These ambiguities are manifest in the policies that have developed around education. Education has become a prime site through which the re-articulated racial state can be observed. To state this argument, the article takes its empirical base from the work of the Inclusion/Exclusion In India and South Africa (Inexsa) project which looked at how race is dealt with in policy formulation and practice in South Africa to analyse the relationships between inclusion education policies and decentralisation. The study examine inclusionary and exclusionary practices in 12 schools in three different provinces.