This article was first published by City Press on 17 August 2025
Over the next few months, I plan to write two academic essays (which will likely be submitted to journals) that challenge the blame-shifting embedded in the thinking and reasoning of those on the far-left of the political spectrum.
In South Africa specifically, this blame-shifting – which is often dressed up as ‘structural analysis’ or some other cheap strain of sophistry – shows up in discussions around a range of issues that continue to confront black people.
One of those issues is a lack of parental involvement by many black parents in the educational lives of their children. Parental involvement is a broad concept that covers a range of responsibilities, some of which include ensuring daily school attendance, creating a conducive home environment for learning, and assisting children with their schoolwork. Where the latter isn’t possible for whatever reason, getting into contact with the child’s teacher(s) to explore certain arrangements or request specialised attention is a viable option.
A lack of parental involvement clearly plays a role in the poor educational outcomes of many black students, and yet this is rarely acknowledged in mainstream discourse surrounding the education crisis in our country. Instead, there’s a persistent reflex to rest the blame entirely on state failure and insist that the government can single-handedly address the issue. This overreliance on the state and an aversion to personal responsibility is a broader problem, but it falls outside the scope of this piece.
If you ask the average black Marxist, for instance, why so many black parents are uninvolved in the educational lives of their children, the first answer you can expect is one that implicates some amorphous “racist and exploitative” capitalist system that supposedly overworks black people for hours on a daily basis, thereby making it extremely difficult, or nearly impossible, for them to check in on their children’s education after a long day of work. Another answer – which has some truth to it if you consider the fact that a sizeable number of black children live with their grandparents – is one that points to Bantu Education and how it has rendered a generation of parents incapable of assisting their grandchildren with schoolwork.
The common thread between these two answers is the complete negation of individual agency, and the full shifting of blame to either some vague, non-existent structural force that continues to oppress black people or to Bantu Education, whose legacy is real but has been stretched beyond its relevance to excuse contemporary failures.
What you won’t hear is a discourse grounded in personal responsibility that says parents (serious ones at that) must make a concerted effort, regardless of their challenges, to check in on their children’s education. Nothing will be said about those black parents who do work but still make time for their children. No solution will be proposed to bridge the gap between schools and illiterate grandparents, thus ensuring that learners are still supported. Perhaps most importantly, the very fact that black children are being raised by their grandparents – and not their parents – will be carefully avoided.
If you do raise the latter point, the explanation that follows will be predictable: those absent parents who have left the work of child-rearing to grandparents are still somehow “victims” of a system of migrant labour that keeps them away from home for extended periods.
Nothing will be said about negligent parents who fail to ensure that their children attend school every day. Nothing will be said about those who abuse substances and create homes that are anything but conducive to learning. And if you push further, the explanation will simply stretch again: the violence and dysfunction in black communities stems directly from historical oppression.
In all of this, no personal responsibility is taken, and no real solutions are offered for the problems that persist. What you’re left with is blame-shifting that excuses the inexcusable, shields people from accountability, and protects them from being questioned about their failings.
This kind of thinking is both flawed and fatalistic. It tells black people that they are trapped in history, that their problems are permanent, and that nothing they do will make any real difference. It kills any belief in individual or communal agency, and in doing so, it reinforces a sense of paralysis and hopelessness.
The message is simple but destructive: blacks are defeated, and nothing can ever change. And if nothing can change, then there’s no point in even trying. This, more than anything, is the real tragedy of this worldview.
