MEDIA STATEMENT
SADTU Responds to the Appointment of Penelope Vinjevold as Chairperson of the National Education and Training Council.
The South African Democratic Teachers ’Union (observes with grave concern the
announcement by Minister Siviwe Gwarube of the appointment of Penelope Vinjevold as
Chairperson of the National Education and Training Council ( a body set to advise on
national education policy at a time of unprecedented contestation over the trajectory and
meaning of transformation within South AfricaAfrica’s education system.
While the revitalisation of the NETC, dormant since its establishment under the National
Education Policy Act ( was presented as a milestone in strengthening policy architecture,
SADTU contends that this appointment signals an alarming reaffirmation of the supremacist
parad igms and interests that have historically privileged colonial and Western centric
educational models at the expense of authentic transformation and decolonisation.
Education Reform Under Siege
This appointment comes against the backdrop of overwhelming evidence of ongoing resistance and in some quarters, deliberate sabotage, of transformative and decolonial objectives in both school and higher education. Despite constitutional and policy commitments to equity, social justice, and the dismantling of apartheid legacies, the South African education system is still marked by acute race, class, spatial, and epistemic divides. The very foundations of our democratic society were built on the understanding that education must serve as the primary driver of social transformation, a principle entrenched in the Constitution and the legislative framework underpinning education policy from NEPA to the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act.
However, with every step forward, from campaigns for a decolonised curriculum to the hard
won gains of the #FeesMustFall and broader transformation movements, SADTU has
encountered entrenched pushback from the beneficiaries of colonialism and neoliberalism,
who have repeatedly mobilised institutional, political, and legal mechanisms to defend their
privileges. The appointment of individuals with deep roots and investment in these very
paradigms to advisory and leadership positions represents a calculated attempt to arrest and reverse the democratic gains for which generations have fought and, in too many cases, died.
The NETC Mandate and Its Potential for (Mis)Direction
The National Education and Training Council, established under NEPA and formally activated in terms of the 2009 regulations, exists to serve as a high-level, independent advisory structure to the Minister of Basic Education, guiding the development of policy on resourcing, curriculum, teacher professionalism, assessment, and inclusive education. Minister Gwarube has described the new NETC as a “deliberate effort to bring together a wide spectrum of expertise in education policy, curriculum development and delivery, pedagogy and education management and governance,” with members serving not as representatives of constituent bodies, but as supposed “experts” in their personal capacity.
SADTU has consistently argued that such bodies, if not rooted in democratic representation, social justice, and a clear decolonial mandate, risk becoming echo chambers for elite interests and professional gatekeepers, rather than engines for systemic transformation. Recent history in South Africa demonstrates that even “diverse” boards and councils can be captured or dominated by perspectives that rationalise, normalise, and ultimately perpetuate the status quo of “white tone,” prestige, and exclusion.
Policy advisory positions must not serve as revolving doors for those who have presided over or defended inequity but must foreground the voices, experiences, and wisdom of the
marginalised majority, the working class, rural poor, and those whose communities still bear
the scars of apartheid and colonialism.
Penelope Vinjevold- A Profile Marked by the Entrenchment of Colonial Interests
It is in this context that SADTU must unequivocally challenge the decision to place Penelope Vinjevold at the helm of the NETC. Penelope Vinjevold’s record, whilst presented by her supporters as one steeped in “expertise” in curriculum development and administration, is, in fact, marked by steadfast support for policy directions and institutional cultures that have repeatedly privileged whiteness, exclusion, and the aesthetic and operational maintenance of “Model C” and former white school norms.
As a senior bureaucrat, Vinjevold presided over both the national and provincial systems at
moments when the logic of neoliberalism and marketisation was being cemented in the
education sector, the very period in which former white schools, under the guise of
“multiculturalism,” expanded the practice of gatekeeping through fees, language policies, and covert selection mechanisms. Rather than challenging these injustices, Vinjevold’s leadership, by both action and omission, reinforced the position of elite schools at the apex of the education pyramid, while the overwhelming majority of black and working-class students were resigned to underfunded, overcrowded, and often unsafe learning environments.
Her much-lauded involvement in curriculum revision processes and “systemic reform” has
conspicuously failed to confront the deep epistemological privileging of Western knowledge
systems and the marginalisation of African languages, histories, and epistemologies.
Indeed, the curricula championed during her tenure did little to disrupt the status of English
and Afrikaans as dominant mediums and instead deepened the barriers for children in rural and township communities.
Further, her public statements and approach to policy development have reflected a
technocratic, managerial ethos, prioritising standardisation and compliance over
transformation, inclusion, or epistemic justice. The record is clear, at every critical juncture,
where choice had to be made between advancing the transformative agenda or holding the line for established (white, Western, and elite) interests, Vinjevold has chosen the latter. This is not a record of transformation; it is a record of anti-transformation.
White Supremacy, “White Tone,” and the Ongoing Battle for Epistemic Justice
To the South African people, it is essential that we call things by their names. The continued
dominance of “white tone” in education, where educational prestige, standards of excellence, and cultural capital are coded in whiteness and Western modernity, must be recognised as a direct extension of both colonialism and apartheid’s social engineering. Despite the end of legal apartheid, the machinery of exclusion continues through language policies, school fees, hidden curriculum, and cultural requirements that systematically disadvantage the black majority,immigrants, and the poor.
Mark Hunter’s analysis of race, gender, and “white tone” in education demonstrates that South African schooling has reorganised itself after 1994 to maintain the symbolic and material dominance of former white spaces, the “multicultural” turn serves to mask rather than resolve exclusion, by rendering whiteness as both aspiration and symbol of merit. Much of this is enforced not only through explicit regulations but through a culture of quiet gatekeeping: feeder zones, early registration, legacy admissions, and language tests, all serving to insulate the privileged, preserve status, and reproduce epistemic injustice.
SADTU holds that the roots of this injustice are not only racial or economic but are also
profoundly epistemic. The imposed dominance of Eurocentric knowledge systems, the
valorisation of English and Afrikaans, the ongoing marginalisation of African languages, and the erasure of indigenous and black experience from the classroom constitute a systematic
“epistemicide.” This, following the arguments of de Sousa Santos, Ndlovu, Gatsheni, and South African decolonial thinkers demands a relentless disruption, not superficial reform.
Unwavering in the Pursuit of Social and Epistemic Justice
Since its inception in 1990, SADTU has been a bulwark against conservative, colonial, and
exclusionary forces within education. We have repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of racially segregated teacher organisations and school departments, uniting teachers, and education workers around a vision of non-racialism, working-class mobilisation, and transformative social justice. Our Constitution and 2030 Vision are explicit; SADTU exists to eradicate all forms of discrimination in education, defend human dignity, and ensure that education is meaningfully accessible, inclusive, and decolonial.
SADTU’s founding aims and objectives include
• Uniting teachers and educationalists for a non-racial, non-sexist, just, and democratic
education system.
• Eradicating racism, sexism, class-based discrimination, and all forms of exclusion.
• Challenging the apartheid and colonial legacy in education and fighting for a decolonial
curriculum and institutional culture.
• Mobilising teachers as agents of transformation, with a commitment to epistemic, racial, and class-based justice.
Our 2030 Vision and successive National Congress resolutions reaffirm these principles, calling for transformative action at all levels, through policy advocacy, collective bargaining,
organising, community mobilisation, and the pursuit of curriculum decolonisation and
epistemic justice.
We have led and supported the adoption of anti-discrimination policies, the championing of
African languages, gender equality, research on educational change, and consistent opposition to any administrative or political regression.
A Warning Against Derailment and Co-Option
SADTU is not duped by the rhetoric of “diversity,” “expertise,” or technocratic innovation so
often used to sanitise the real content of power relations within our education system. We
have studied how successive versions of “consultative bodies,” statutory committees, and
advisory councils have been used by colonial and neocolonial power to capture transformation, water down its content, stifle grassroots participation, and present cosmetic adjustments as meaningful change.
We thus issue a clear, unequivocal warning that any attempt to use the NETC, or any similar body, to advance the narrow, self-reproducing interests of the privileged minority will be fiercely opposed by SADTU’s more than 270,000 strong membership, by the communities we serve, and by every ally within civil society, labour, and progressive politics.
The struggle for transformation will not be pathologised, reduced to managerial questions of
efficiency, or hived off into “task teams” divorced from their social and historical context.
We have seen the tactics of derailment before, co-option of black faces into white-centred
spaces, token representation, and individual advancement at the cost of collective liberation.
We refuse any “compromises” that leave the structures, content, and culture of education
unchanged. Superficial reforms cannot substitute for the radical reconstitution of curriculum,
pedagogy, and resource distribution in the interests of the oppressed majority.
Towards an Inclusive, Decolonial, and Equitable Education System
SADTU draws on its historic mission and the principles of transformative constitutionalism to
set out the following minimum programme for truly inclusive, decolonised, and equitable
education-
1. The dismantling of all mechanisms of “white tone,” racial and class-based gatekeeping, and the various direct and indirect exclusions from admission to resourcing, to assessment.
2. The elevation and full integration of African indigenous knowledge systems, languages,
histories, and pedagogies in curricula at all levels, and rejected is any curriculum which,
whilst revised in form, simply repackages South Africa’s multicultural diversity within a
Eurocentric framework of “acceptable difference”.
3. The prioritisation of epistemic justice as the core of educational transformation and not
only the demographic change in staffing and student populations, but the radical
transformation of institutional cultures, governance models, and pedagogical practices to
foreground the lived realities and aspirations of the black and working-class majority.
4. Vigorous implementation of the BELA Act and related transformative legislation, against the regressive opposition of reactionary and racist minorities, especially measures on language policy, school admissions, and accountability for all forms of exclusion.
5. Full and meaningful participation of teachers, communities, and students in governance,
policy advisory, and curriculum reform bodies with no tolerance for technocratic
substitution or the rationalisation of anti-democratic expertise.
6. Defence of equitable funding, teacher professionalism, and workers ’rights and opposing all forms of austerity, outsourcing, and privatisation that deepen inequalities and undermine
transformation.
Our commitments are not mere slogans but foundational imperatives for the soul of our nation and the future of all its children. These are not only the position of SADTU but reflect a broad coalition of trade unions, civil society movements, and international partners, including COSATU, Equal Education, and others.
A Call to Action and Solidarity
SADTU rejects and denounces the appointment of Penelope Vinjevold as NETC chair as a
betrayal of South Africa’s constitutional commitment to redress, equity, and decolonisation. We urge all our members, allies, and the wider public to remain vigilant, to engage actively in pressing for curriculum and policy transformation, and to resist all forms of white supremacist, colonial, and neoliberal retrenchment.
We call on the Minister of Basic Education, the Department, and Parliament to realign the NETC with a truly transformative mandate rooted in representation, democracy, and justice and not in the tired logic of technocracy or elite consensus.
SADTU will continue to advocate, organise, and, if necessary, mobilise in defence of inclusive, decolonial, and equitable public education.
The struggle is not over, and the forces arrayed against transformation remain powerful,
resourceful, and determined. But in the words of our founding declaration, “Unity,
organisation, and struggle should be the watchwords of this organisation.”
The South African Democratic Teachers ’Union renews, today and always, its sacred
commitment to the liberation of the African child, to the advancement of all who have been
marginalised, and to the radical demolition of all structures, policies, and mindsets that uphold colonial domination in any form.
We shall not be moved.
ISSUED BY: SADTU Secretariat