Democracy and Inclusive Education Policy in Post-1994 South African Schools: Goal, Tension, and Struggle1

Abstract

Globally, the idea of inclusive democracy is synonymous with the participation, deliberation, and representation of citizens in the management of the affairs of nation-states. In the light of this global picture, South Africa’s constitutional democracy and its inclusive education policy ensure the right to education for school-going children (from foundation, to the intermediate and senior phases). Unfortunately, the zones of exclusion (i.e. difficulties to exercise the right to education) have shown that in post-apartheid South African schools, inclusive education gains have not been enjoyed by the intended recipients—the learners. This means that despite the formalisation of inclusive education policies by the state, substantive inclusion (i.e. active participation, deliberative engagement, and participatory representation) remains a distant dream for many school-going children in South Africa. Against this backdrop, the authors show that formal inclusive policy in schools in South Africa is split between social changes on one hand, and political democracy on the other. Consequently, the authors support the call for a continual struggle by (or for) educable learners who fall within the zones of exclusion in post-1994 South Africa. Ultimately, the authors argue that the realisation of substantive inclusive education depends on the protests of the excluded, who struggle in the interstices of zones of exclusion that have created and deepened the gulf between the ideal and the achievement because democratic inclusive education is at a crossroad; it is extended and dragged in opposite directions in post-1994 South Africa schools.