South African Workers Always Have Recognized the Value of Education

In the 1970s, when South African workers first organized to demand better wages and working conditions, they also demanded training in language and mathematics skills that would secure their places in the workforce. Through the eighties and early nineties, as South Africa evolved, adult education evolved with it. Workers, businessmen, politicians, and change agents agreed on the value of education. Education, especially adult education, was then and remains now essential to the success of South Africa’s unique experiment in multi-cultural democracy.
The National Qualifying Framework proves the nation’s esteem for the value of education. The NQF establishes clear learning pathways; and the pathways lead not only to skills and knowledge, but also to advancement up the career ladder and upward social mobility. Skilled workers and dedicated craftsmen, the solid core of every successful democracy, always have understood the value of education in a young nation’s development.