In pursuance of apartheid, the South African education system was characterized by fifteen different ethnically divided administrative Departments of Education, which included Education departments for the homelands: Ciskei, QwaQwa, Lebowa, Venda, KwaZulu, KwaNdebele, Gazankulu, Transkei and Bophuthatswana. Funding, resources, and opportunities in education were segregated with "white education being the most privileged. The Indians, Coloureds and then the Africans on a sliding scale were allocated money and resources for education". Higher education was the privilege of the whites with separate universities for Indians and Coloureds and three institutions being designated for Africans, which were: University of Fort Hare, University of the North and University of Zululand. Post 1994, saw institutions of higher learning rapidly becoming melting pots of diverse cultures and languages as universities continue to attract a rich mix of racially and culturally diverse students. This means that classrooms are now multicultural and multilingual as they are made up of learners and their educators with their different languages and dialects each with their own educational, social, historical and economic backgrounds adding to the diversity in the classroom. Learners and educators therefore find themselves in classrooms that are very diverse in terms of culture, language, race and background. This diversity brings with it many challenges. As Pettigrew and Tropp (2000) cautioned, simply bringing different racial and cultural groups into contact may generate more heat than light. A survey conducted among undergraduate learners at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), a tertiary institution in South Africa found that learners were unhappy with "the manner in which the institution deals with the whole issue of diversity". They
expressed concern that there are "no programs in place to help us to get along with each other". This survey was prompted by the authors’ experience with their learners who were very reluctant to work with each other and in many instances even refused to associate with or talk to each other. Learners felt that they did not "know enough about each other" or that there "was no need to talk" to people from different cultural or racial groups as "we have our own friends".
The purpose of this paper then is to offer a critique of problems experienced in a multicultural learning environment and explores the factors that inhibit intercultural communication. This paper hopes to build on literature in its exploration of the ways in which learners, educators and institutions of learning conceptualize and construct their experiences in relation to diversity issues. As Holloway et al said, it is essential to encourage tolerance and dialogue in a multi-cultural context like South Africa where there is often tension between preserving the cultural identities of different groups (whether they are based on religion, race or language) and promoting national unity.
