Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis examines the way in which the recognition of diversity can be applied as a strategy in South African education to erode the bitter legacy of colonial education. The establishment of formal education, built on a western foundation, was set up against a background of colonisation as a process aimed at political subjugation and economic exploitation. It is especially how education was utilised as a tool of colonisation in order to facilitate the above-mentioned subjugation and exploitation through a process of cultural subjugation that will be placed under the spotlight. In chapter three, the process of cultural subjugation outlined in chapter two, is related to the establishment and development of colonial education in South Africa and also how Apartheid was a form of internal colonialism with apartheid education continuing the process of cultural subjugation for political control and economic exploitation. Colonial subjugation was, however, not passively accepted by the subjugated. From the outset, subjugation spawned resistance and would eventually grow into large-scale opposition aimed at the overall casting off of the colonial yoke. This opposition eventually led to the political freedom of 1994. The political freedom of 1994 and the judicial framework for the dismantling of the legacy of colonial education would not, on its own or overnight, be able to dismantle the effects of centuries of subjugation. The dismantling of the inheritance of colonialism, together with colonial education, requires deliberate and constructive action. Such a process will have to include putting an end to the subjugation of the numerous voices characteristic of South Africa. Ending this subjugation does not mean the continuation of a position alongside and beneath a socially constructed dominant, but rather a process (a struggle?) where it can take its place impartially, alongside and equal to other voices in the greater diverse whole. It is against the above background that teaching strategies for the handling of diversity will be critically examined and for which recommendations are made for strategies, within the South African context, through which the dismantling of the colonial legacy of cultural subjugation for political control and economic exploitation can take place.