<Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Education and Training Act, 1979 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Status: Repealed </Td> </Tr> <P> The Bantu Education Act, 1953 (Act No. 47 of 1953; later renamed the Black Education Act, 1953) was a South African segregation law which legalised several aspects of the apartheid system . Its major provision was enforcing racially separated educational facilities . Even universities were made "tribal", and all but three missionary schools chose to close down when the government no longer would help support their schools . Very few authorities continued using their own finances to support education for native Africans . In 1959, this type of education was extended to "non white" universities and colleges with the Extension of University Education Act, and the internationally prestigious University College of Fort Hare was taken over by the government and degraded to being part of the Bantu education system . It is often argued that the policy of Bantu (African) education was aimed to direct black or non-white youth to the unskilled labour market, although Hendrik Verwoerd, at the time Minister of Native Affairs, claimed that the aim was to solve South Africa's "ethnic problems" by creating complementary economic and political units for different ethnic groups . </P> <P> The national authorities of the time is often said to have viewed education as having a rather pivotal position in their goal of eventually separating South Africa from the Bantustans entirely . The Minister of Native Affairs at the time, the "Architect of Apartheid" Hendrik Verwoerd, stated that: </P>

When was bantu education act passed and why