We knew what to expect on Monday January 12 2026 at 6pm. An extravagant, even boastful account of the superb grade 12 national senior certificate (matric) results. Government glows in the national spotlight and the minister claims, without empirical foundation, that we now have “a far more stable system”.
Why this extraordinary, flashy display of the results of one grade out of 12 with its outrageous claims? No government department function — other than perhaps finance and the budget speech — puts so much hype and extravaganza on display. It felt like a Pentecostal meeting with everyone speaking in tongues because as one who has studied school systems all my life, I certainly did not understand the gibberish.
For 30 years, I have been pondering not the what or how questions, but the why behind the spectacle. There is, I concluded, a political psychology that drives this political theatre, leading every minister of education to do such a meaningless annual dance. Education, it turns out, is the public litmus test of how well the black government is doing, even if everything else falls apart.
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Hear me out. We forget that it was education that almost scuttled the negotiations for a democratic SA, former president FW de Klerk once told me. Underlying the racial angst of conservative white South Africans was a simple question — can we trust a black government with our children’s education?
If you want to see the black government in panic mode, watch the (over)reaction when exam results leak as recently discovered for three major subjects (maths, physical science, English home language). What that meant is that Nelson Mandela’s first government made serious compromises that basically kept white privilege and black disadvantage intact to this day.
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