Disjuncture between inclusive education policies and reality in the rural communities of South Africa

Despite South Africa’s transformative Constitution, progressive legislative and policy frameworks, Education White Paper 6 (2001), and the National Strategy on Screening, Identification, Assessment and Support (2014), Black learners with disabilities in rural provinces remain systematically marginalised from meaningful educational opportunities. This paper interrogates the entrenched disjuncture between the promises of inclusive education policies and their practical implementation in rural contexts, with a specific focus on the Eastern Cape. The study used a qualitative methodology to investigate how inclusive education in rural South Africa is often reduced to rhetorical commitments rather than substantive structural transformation. The study findings present structural failures towards ‘what ought to be’ over colonial-apartheid residues, spatial injustice, infrastructural deficit, inequality, pedagogical neglect, and professional invisibility. The paper concludes that access to inclusive education by Black rural children in South Africa remains out of reach.