ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises some key aspects of shifts in policy on education, poverty and gender inequality in South Africa, concentrating primarily on the period after the end of apartheid in 1990, and provide some background on characteristics of the four terrains of a middle space we consider important for understanding some of the exchanges around global gender policy – the institutional relationships around the civil service, the public sphere, professional association and civil society. The national liberation movement, which had begun to form at the beginning of the 20th century, had been a crucible for many ideas and strategies to address gender, poverty and education. In 1991 changes in policy and practice associated with gender, poverty and education were linked by processes of nation building where ideas of democratic institutions, the public sphere and an open civil society intermixed. Under the South African Constitution, provinces oversee the provision of twelve years of basic education, and early childhood care.
