This curriculum analysis of black South African education considers conflict and change in historical, contemporary, and postapartheid contexts. Part 1, "The Historical Context," interprets curriculum evolution, beginning with the evangelical curriculum for slaves in 1658 and concluding with formalization of racism in the apartheid policy of 1948, which aligned curriculum content with ideological interests. Institutionalization of the black curriculum challenges a postapartheid design. Apartheid ideology is embedded in textbooks' assumptive meanings, educational inequality neutralizes empowerment, and racism blocks the social and economic mobility of educated blacks. "The Contemporary Context," part 2, argues that a curriculum conflict dialectic is operative. The functions of schooling--cultural and economic reproduction, legitimation, and socialization--are not realized in curricula. Resistance and conflict are treated in the curriculum with distortion, deemphasis, and devaluation; conflict is portrayed as being interethnic in nature. Curricular objectives contradict experiential realities of black students. After the Soweto uprising a search for alternative curriculum methods began. Part 3, "The Postapartheid Context," enumerates implications for curricular change, including the following: (1) curriculum change should take cognizance of currently embedded curricular forms, meanings, and assumptions; (2) "shared meaning" between curriculum developers and users should determine change; and (3) change should be ideologically and contextually responsive. A consensus approach in a postcolonial context will affirm the approaching postapartheid dispensation. Three pages of references are appended. (CJH)