Political Transformation and Education Sector Performance in South Africa

This chapter explores how political and institutional constraints influenced education policymaking and implementation in South Africa at national, provincial, and school levels. Stark differences between the Eastern and Western Cape provinces offer a natural experiment for exploring how context matters. The Eastern Cape’s socio-economic, political, and institutional legacy resulted in a low-level equilibrium trap—one where multiple political patronage networks were mirrored by a factionalized, fragmented bureaucracy. The Western Cape, by contrast, enjoyed a more supportive environment for the operation of public bureaucracy. However, bureaucracy need not be destiny. The research also found that strong hierarchy can result in formal compliance and a low-level equilibrium of mediocrity. Participatory school-level governance potentially can improve outcomes. Whether this potential is realized depends on the relative strength of developmentally oriented and predatory actors, with the outcomes not foreordained by local context, but contingent and cumulative.