Why does Oom Dawie address the learners

Thami describes how the Inspector of Bantu Schools, Oom Dawie, in the Cape Midlands Region made a visit to their school and told them how they were special and were going to be the "shareholders in the future of [South Africa]" (p.54). The whole time, Thami describes questioning what wonderful future the man could be talking about, since all he saw were poor, tired blacks struggling to survive in the land their ancestors had possessed for generations.