Basic Education Minister, Mrs Angie Motshekga, has paid tribute to late struggle veteran and education specialist, Curtis Nkondo.
Nkondo is close to the hearts of many people who came through the difficult years of struggling to bring apartheid education to an end, and bring a democratic system into being. We remember him for many things: the fact that he personified the goals of non-racialism and democracy, a teacher to the end, a revolutionary, political philosopher, activist, and a great human being. This is the Curtis Nkondo many people knew, said Motshekga.
Few people know that at the end of standard six, in 1945, he gained the highest marks in the Transvaal, and that this won him a scholarship to Pretoria where he proceeded to train as a teacher. He started teaching in Soweto in the 1950s. Bringing up and fending for his family absorbed him for much of the 1960s, but in the 1970s things changed for him. As a teacher, he took a stand in 1976 when the revolt of students unfolded before his eyes.
Among his fellow students was Desmond Tutu of whom he said in his characteristic sense of humour: “He tried to teach me cricket, but I didn’t understand a thing”.
With Fanyana Mazibuko, Curtis Nkondo formed the Soweto Teachers’ Action Committee, which inspired the formation of the National Education Union of South Africa (NEUSA). This is that led to formation of the force we now know as South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU). Nkondo’s organisational legacy is enormous. But so is his non-formal educational legacy as a teacher. As teacher, he could not simply stand by as students took to the streets. He saw it as his duty to organise and educate students who no longer saw any value in the education they were receiving in schools. He was central to the formation of Congress of South African Students (COSAS).
His vision of what a new system of education would look like was repeated in the countless meetings he addressed all over the country. He embodied and preached, wherever he went, a vision of unity informed by reading and discussion. He promoted equality in education based on free and compulsory schooling for all. He believed in and was himself a critical thinker. He despised the values that said white was better than black and mental better than manual labour.
He sought unity and integration at all levels of thinking and education. White education was for superiority, he said, and black education for inferiority and subservience. He saw both as having their roots in an unequal economic system and nothing more or less than reinforcing class distinctions.
Curtis Nkondo inspired and organised many of us who are now trying to put his vision and ideals into practice. He was a man of his time who did not seek or ever really gain honours or riches or fame. His work was done quietly, all over the country, at great personal and physical cost to himself and his family. But his work was great in its impact.
The Department of Basic Education sends its condolences to his wife Rose, and their children. May you find solace in knowing that your father is still alive in our hearts, a river that still flows through many of us. May his spirit live on, as we the government, strive to ensure that his legacy lives on for generations to come.
Contact:
Hope Mokgatlhe
Cell: 071 680 6849
Source: Department of Education
