This chapter explores how left-wing liberation movements in southern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s engaged with alternative concepts of education, which included elements of Socialist and indigenous knowledge, in liberation schools. It traces how these same liberation movements, with a particular focus on the African National Congress in South Africa, shed the cloak of transformation contained within these alternative education and schooling models and perpetuated the salient features of the colonial education systems once in power. The chapter concludes that there are two main explanations for the failure to implement Socialist or alternative education systems on gaining power: the prevailing neo-liberal hegemony which made any alternative difficult if not impossible to pursue and fund; or because the national petit bourgeoisie on gaining power no longer needed education as a hook on which to gain popular support for the liberation struggle, so reverted to class interest which dictated that they perpetuate the existing class based education system.
