The ongoing failure of South Africa’s education system

Based on many hundreds (thousands?) of conversations I have had since I first came to South Africa over 30 years ago, in my experience the average white South African would sum up the Boer War something along these lines:

The Boers were peaceful, harmless people, who only ever wanted to be left alone. But the British wanted to steal their gold and diamonds, so invaded the Boer republics. The British army was completely useless, and the Boers won all the battles. This was because the British soldiers wore red, always attacked in Napoleonic-style close order, and couldn’t shoot straight. The war dragged on for ages, almost bankrupting the British Empire. Even though the British army in South Africa was half-a-million strong, they could not defeat a handful of Boers. So Kitchener decided to commit genocide to steal the gold and diamonds, inventing the concentration camp, and using them to murder millions of Boer women and children.

Sure, there might be slight variations on this theme. But I think the fair-minded reader would agree that this (or something similar) is the prevalent view on the Boer War within the white South African community – both English and Afrikaans.

The problem, as I showed in both ‘Kruger, Kommandos & Kak’ and ‘Kruger’s War’, is that this perception is complete and utter rubbish. And though they stamped their feet, and squealed and screamed that they don’t like my books (or, bless, were ‘offended’ by them), my voluble gaggle of panic-stricken critics have never pointed out where I am actually wrong.[1] All I get are hysterical squawks of ‘he doesn’t use sources we like!’ – without pointing out how these preferred sources would magically prove my conclusions all to be incorrect.

So how on earth did we get to this point? How can it be that millions of, otherwise intelligent and well-educated, South Africans so passionately believe a version of events which is demonstrably untrue?

That the myths of the Boer War are still fervently entrenched into the South African psyche is testimony to the lasting impact of Apartheid-era propaganda, of course, and in many cases, this brainwashing fell on fertile ground. The National Party version of the war remains strangely comforting to a certain type of South African; ie. the kind who likes to play the victim, and blame everything on the big, nasty British bully. A friend of mine – sadly no longer with us – was one of the top Battlefield Guides in Natal. He told me that he agreed with 99% of what I had written in ‘Kruger, Kommandos & Kak’, but – as most of his guests believed (and greatly enjoyed) the myths – he had to play the game, and tell them what they wanted to hear.

But National Party rule ended a long time ago, and the South African educational system has had more than a generation to set the record straight. That this hasn’t happened is a damning indictment of South Africa’s schools and universities; it would be like the majority of Brits finishing their education vehemently believing that the British army thrashed the Germans in Norway in 1940, and then hammered the Japanese at Singapore in 1942. Or that the Zulu War of 1879 started because the Zulus invaded British territory to steal gold and diamonds. Or that the British army won every battle of the American War of Independence. Indeed, for the analogy to work, not only would the average Brit have to believe such rubbish, but they would also need to be so zealously invested in these far-fetched myths, that they would scream threats at anyone who dared to point out that these things simply are not true.

The battlefield guide I mentioned was, of course, in business to make money, so one can understand his reluctance to rock the boat. But teachers and professors in modern-day South Africa have no such excuse, and the continuation of this wide-spread misunderstanding of reality highlights the failure of the nation’s educational system since 1994 – and the appalling standards of the History faculties at certain universities. How, one wonders, can History teachers and professors look themselves in the eye when – deep down – they must know that most South Africans leave school / university believing complete and utter rubbish about the history of their nation? Does it not bother these educators that the common perception of the most important war in South Africa’s history is so wrong and so hopelessly biased? Have they absolutely no professionalism or integrity whatsoever?

If, instead, this simply comes down to the ignorance of educationalists, one is left to wonder at the shocking standards across the various levels of the schooling system in the country. Another friend of mine has a son at a top fee-paying school in Cape Town, for example, and was astounded that the History teacher was indoctrinating his class with the Apartheid-version of the war. Encouraged by his father, my friend’s son challenged the teacher on this rubbish, and even brought in a copy of ‘Kruger’s War’ to help educate him. In an entertainingly memorable dismissal of the book, the teacher admitted that he could not dispute anything I had written, but (wait for it), “Ash is wrong!” … and, err, well… that’s that.

Yup: these are the people you are paying to ‘educate’ your children.

But as well as this sort of sheer, pig-headed ignorance and resolutely closed-mindedness, there would seem to be a something rather more insidious at play too. As I have noted in a previous blog article, a mate of mine was working towards a PhD linked to the Boer War. But when he informed his supervisor about his specific field of study, he was told in no uncertain terms that he would be failed if he dared challenge the myths of the war, and absolutely no ‘Ashism’[2] would be tolerated. To his credit, my friend was not going to put up with this pathetic attempt at thought control, and instead elected to switch universities. Bear in mind that this was only a couple of years ago – not at the height of National Party rule.

So why are so many educators in South Africa’s schools and universities still so ardently wedded to the Apartheid-era myths, and why do they continue to poison the minds of learners with this rubbish? What motivates their desperate attempts to keep the pie-in-the-sky, nonsensical version of events stumbling and staggering on? Can it really be as simple as a deep-seated, and really rather unpleasant, Anglophobia?

One would have thought that the whole point of an education system is to, well, educate – and it is blatantly obvious that South Africa’s is still failing badly when it comes to the Boer War. The study of History should challenge pupils and students, stretch their thinking, and encourage them to reassess what they think they know. Most importantly of all, it should leave them with an understanding of what actually happened – not just tell them what they want to hear, or whatever rubbish a hopelessly biased, and deeply embittered, teacher or professor bizarrely wishes had happened.

NOTES:

[1] And I still wait for these fanatics and charlatans to build up the courage to accept my challenges:
https://www.chrisash.co.za/2025/10/02/c-s-lewis-and-the-cowardice-of-the-true-believers/

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2025/10/14/another-challenge-for-the-true-believers/

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2026/07/01/20-questions-for-the-true-believers/

[2] It would seem that, such is my impact on the study of the Boer War, that my name has entered the lexicon of the online fanatics, meaning: ‘daring to challenge National Party myths’