Reigniting the popular education tradition in South Africa : research and launch of a website (www.populareducation.co.za)

Abstract

Popular Education initiatives in working class communities have been an integral part of people’s efforts to respond to the lack of education and cultural facilities under apartheid. In South Africa, in the eighties, ‘People’s Education’ was one response to deep economic, political and social crises reflected in and impacting on the education crisis. People’s Education was both an educational and a political programme. Remarkably, a wide range of concerned parties from within civil society, the private sector, academia, and trade unions got together and debated vigorously about both how to address the crisis, and how to imagine and forge an alternative education, for the future, together.