E-ISSN 2240-0524
ISSN 2239-978X
Journal of Educational and Social Research
www.richtmann.org
Vol 10 No 6
November 2020
186
.
Research Article
© 2020 Isaiah Mmatipe Sefoka and Kolawole Sola Odeku.
This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
Perspective on Transformative Educational Interventions Developed for
Empowerment and Capacitation of Learners in South Africa
Isaiah Mmatipe Sefoka
Faculty of Management and Law,
University of Limpopo, South Africa
Kolawole Sola Odeku
Faculty of Management and Law,
University of Limpopo, South Africa
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36941/jesr-2020-0119
Abstract
In South Africa, progressive transformative educational interventions have been implemented since the
country became a democratic government in 1994. These interventions were meant to eliminate all past
colonial and apartheid eras educational segregation laws and policies which denied the black majority access
to quality education. This paper explains the intrinsic contents and contexts of these interventions by
demonstration how these interventions are being used to redress the past educational segregation and
injustices. It highlights that the Constitution provides for the right to education and that other legislation,
policies and educational institutions were introduced to enable and ensure the delivery of quality education to
learners in order to make them competent and employable in the workplaces and/or to establish their own
businesses and be self-employed. The paper concludes that in order to develop capable and competent human
capital and resources, access to and delivery of quality education and training are essential potent tools to
accomplish this feat.
Keywords: Pedagogy, competency, educators, learners, employability, workplace
1. Introduction
In 1994, South Africa became a democratic country, and one of the first steps made to redress the past
apartheid injustices was to restructure the legacy of apartheid educational sector in line with the
provisions of the Constitution of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution). (Motala and Pampallis,2019).
As such, to realise the fundamental right to education in the post-apartheid era, South Africa reviewed
its educational status and introduced a number of policies and legislation on transformation of
education to foster flexibility, empowerment, skilled acquisition, capacity development programmes
relevant to the 21
st
century demands (Gamede, 2017). These policies and legislative interventions call
for an urgent need for a major investment in education by providing people with quality education and
opportunities to become productive in their respective post-education activities (Pegg et al., 2012). In
addition, these interventions were aimed at removing the apartheid educational system which
discriminated against black South Africans by giving them poor and sub-standard education (Meek