Around 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and his crew decided not to just stop over at the Cape—as many ships had done before—but to settle. That moment is still described in most South African schools as the “beginning” of our history. As if nothing of value happened before white arrival. As if the land was empty. As if African time only started ticking when the European clock arrived.
In 1986, sitting in my township school, what I now refer to as a local concentration camp of the mind, I was in History class. “Mistress Mnisi” stood in front of the class and confidently told us that “when the white people arrived in South Africa, they found the San and Khoi people roaming aimlessly across the land.” I was a child—but even then, I knew that was a lie. If you come to my home, how can you tell me what to do? That moment planted a seed in me: doubt of the system. I never forgot her words, or the feeling of internal resistance they provoked.
From that fateful point in history until today, indigenous people of South Africa have never known true peace. Yes, we have rights. Yes, we have elections. But the land remains in the hands of those who took it. Those who gave us religion and education—tools of control—continue to live in abundance, while black South Africans are told to be grateful for basic services on stolen soil.
The Illusion of “Free” Education
Since 1996, the Constitution of South Africa guarantees that all children must receive an education. That sounds good—until you ask which education they must receive. Are we to continue feeding our children into a schooling system that hasn’t recovered from its apartheid design?
In 2025, Bantu Education has been rebranded and restructured—but not dismantled. The pass rate is 30%. That means you can fail 70% of the work and still be told you’re progressing. That’s not empowerment—it’s managed failure. The ruling ANC, though a “majority” in parliament, has failed to reverse the structural inequalities of apartheid because they, too, were trained under the same system. You cannot be taught to be a labourer and expect to manage a revolution.
New Era, Old Curriculum
The world is changing rapidly. In 2025, we are witnessing the rise of Artificial Intelligence and a shift in global power dynamics from the West to the East. China, for example, has already started integrating AI and coding education from the age of six. They lifted over 800 million people out of poverty with a clear national goal and ruthless focus. Their leaders are not caught with foreign cash in couches.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, our children are still being trained for an economy that no longer exists. Critical thinking, self-directed learning, entrepreneurship, and technological literacy are not part of the mainstream curriculum. Yet we want to “compete” globally?
My Curro Experience: R25,000 a Month for Conditioning
In 2024, I enrolled my children in a Curro school so they could access the IEB system—widely considered more progressive than the state CAPS curriculum. I was paying nearly R20,000 per month for three kids, not counting transport and other costs. But what I witnessed broke my heart.
Despite the school’s clean branding and modern facilities, the education was mechanical and empty. Teachers were focused on KPIs—Key Performance Indicators—like pass rates and homework completion. But where was the spark? Where was the curiosity? Where was the love?
I observed that the majority of teachers were young white women, unknowingly repeating the missionary model of teaching—grooming our children into assimilation, into whiteness. My children, in Africa, were being trained to behave like Europeans. Yes, the school offered two African languages, but the soul of the institution remained European. Primary school kids weren’t even known by name. They moved from bell to bell like factory workers in training.
I Had to Break the Cycle
As a father who loves his children, I made the decision to remove them from that system. I realized that the education they were receiving was inferior to the one I had in the 1990s. I schooled at Mmabatho High School from 1989 to 1994. We had a functioning library, laboratories for science, biology, and computing, and regular assemblies that honoured different faiths. We had democratic SRCs, not authoritarian prefects. In 1994, boarding school cost me around R4,000 for the entire year—and I was truly educated.
In 2025, to access a similar quality of education, I would have to pay at least R300,000 a year per child at an elite private institution. And even then, critical thinking, self-sustainability, and awareness are not guaranteed.
So I did the most responsible thing a parent can do—I brought their education home.
Social Workers and Anomalies
Yesterday, social workers visited my home. Concerned, they asked why my children were not in school. I explained to them that my children are in fact receiving an excellent education—from their father. I introduced them to the concept of de-schooling, a term coined by Ivan Illich, which refers to the process of unlearning the conditioning that traditional schools impose. I told them that what they were witnessing in my home was an anomaly—something outside their familiar system of observations.
My seven-year-old had just learned the word anomaly from a YouTube lesson. When I asked him to pause the video and explain it, he did—with clarity and curiosity. That is learning. That is education. But the social workers, bound by their KPIs and institutional scripts, could not grasp what they were seeing. My home, my children, and my choices were beyond their training.
A Vision for the Future
I am not raising workers. I am raising thinkers. I am not preparing my children for employment—I am preparing them for sovereignty. In a country where the employer still remains largely white, and the employee largely black, I refuse to perpetuate that cycle.
Instead, I am teaching my children about awareness, AI, self-sustainability, African consciousness, philosophy, and financial literacy. I am doing the heavy lifting now so that they can shine brighter later.
This is not neglect. This is love in motion.
To Parents Who Feel the Same:
You are not crazy. You are not alone. You are not a bad parent for questioning the system. If you feel in your bones that something is wrong with the way our children are being educated—trust that feeling. There is another way.
Let’s build it. Read more about our philosophy at BraPeter.co.za.