Making history the South African way: allowing the pieces to fall together

By June Bam

 

 

This paper focuses on the achievements and challenges of the South African History Project, rather than its processes and tensions. In a way, this paper provides therefore also an opportunity for reflection on the project by its Chief Executive, writing in this instance in her personal capacity as history practitioner and academic rather than as government official.

 

The South African History Project was establihed in August 2001. The project is now firmly rooted within the National Department of Education and recognised as a strategic model for curriculum implementation of all the learning areas in the Curriculum. Provincial networks are being consolidated; hundreds of thousands of South Africans have been reached through its advocacy campaigns through the various forms of media including radio broadcasts in indigenous languages, programmes on national education television, the print media, distributions to schools, through teacher union networks and training programmes with all nine provinces. These are remarkable achievements still to be matched by international counterparts, if any.

 

The South African History Project’s conference of 2002 on History, Memory and Human Progress – Know the past, anticipate the future, was about revitalising history as practice and bringing forth the wealth of history available in our society, making that available to teachers of history at all levels. That conference brought together no less than 300 ambassadors of history from the nine provinces in school, university, community organisations and the heritage sector. The conference was historic as it brought together for the first time in South Africa school history educators, policy makers, historians, archaeologists, tourist specialists, museum educators, musicians, genetics specialists and a range of other stakeholders in history. The conference was in a sense a celebration of our memory of the end of an ironic common past (i.e. colonialism and apartheid) and the commencement of an exciting journey towards self-discovery through the implementation of history education rooted in values as core to national education policy.

 

In short, history in the epistemological sense, is on the map in South Africa and integral to the national agenda. And it is assumed that memory is (though not synonymous to, but) integral to history in this sense. This conference acknowledged the complexities involved in social construction and allowed for meaningful debate, focusing both the epistemological aspects of policy and the concomitant healing process from a recent painful past.

This necessary tension between history and memory is captured in the Ministerial History and Archaeology Report from 2000 which led to the establishment of the South African History Project,[1] by the Minister of Education. In its updated version, the report articulates history in the spirit of critical debate as encouraged by those who study history as through such study students are less likely than many to be misled by propaganda or simplistic messages about why the world has developed in the way that it was. For history is not just the record of the past, it is also an ongoing argument about the meaning of that past.[2] Our past experiences as a society and a nation, whether real or imagined, cannot but be influential in shaping the people we have become. Memory of the tangible features of our own past help to provide a sense of rootedness, and therefore a sense of identity.[3] The report cites the fact that bereaved parents turned to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to in some way, fill a gap or absence in their past, of the painful reality of a partial past which makes them feel incomplete or insufficiently connected.[4] And of course we can add that the same can be said for those descendant of slaves, indigenous communities who lost their family names and languages, or those who have lost their homes or land.

 

The healing power of history

It can be said also that there is a common missing factor in many different experiences that people may have in South Africa. Feeling insufficiently connected marks the major paradigm for counter narratives, for the post-colonial struggle. The Report refers to the healing power of historical memory for human survival – the language of possibility for the future through a dialogue with the present of what could not be in the past.[5]

But the Report also takes cognisance of the complexities of reality, the fluidness of identity and therefore (amongst others) a need for a challenging history for learners on how our historical past has shaped our present.[6] President Mbeki in 1998 emphasised the importance of historical understanding for breaking the shackles of enslavement through the recovery of cultures, languages and histories. This view of the importance of history informed the establishment of the South African Democracy Education Trust’s Oral History Project which captures the experiences and memories of the struggle against apartheid as well as other national projects such as Freedom Park. These attempts to deal with memory and history on a national level reflect the attempt to gain knowledge on what we have lost by generating counter-hegemonic discourses.[7] Or as Giroux would assert that they explain counter memory as a pedagogical and political practice, which attempts to alter oppressive relations of power and guide to transform such relations.[8]

 

Teacher training

The South African History Project has as its goal to strengthen history through the training of teachers, the distribution of good history texts to schools and the revitalising of history amongst youth. The establishment of provincial and national networks in history is therefore crucial as it provides the cultural capital to draw on for this momentous task. These networks comprise the stakeholders in history education and oral history and indigenous knowledge systems as an important cultural capital resource in this. The South African History Project works closely with the South African Democracy Education Trust to achieve its goals.

Our core business is not just teacher training but to also intervene in an informed way through conducting national audits of resources available. These audits identify the intellectual, skills and material resources available. We can only intervene successfully if we know the landscape.

 

It is so that the experience of Apartheid, ironically, gives us purpose and meaning in our anticipation for the future, manifested in the public acts of memory, heritage sites and museums and it is therefore also the major reference point for history teachers.[9] The rationale being that in order to learn you have to remember as not to repeat. We all have something to learn and unlearn.

 

Teachers of history in South Africa (white and black) come from different backgrounds, had different experiences of history. The majoritarian memory of oppression does not count for everybody, as we all know. Hence teaching about the past is essentially controversial, because it is constructed for a purpose and within the context of perceptions of the present and the relation of these perceptions as pertaining to experience, memory, agency, identity, conflicting group interests, ethics, values, prejudgement and pre-understanding.

We are also aware of the complexity of the notion of historical consciousness; that there are many agencies and hidden variables (family, peers, mass media, cultures and subcultures, generational influences, religion, teachers etc.) that can be said to contribute to historical consciousness – memory being a crucial one.

 

It is with these intellectual and pedagogical understandings that the National Curriculum Statements for History for both the General and Education and Training and Further Education and Training Bands within the wider national consultative process were written and the South African History Project played a leading role in this.

 

GET and FET

The General Education and Training Curriculum is focused on the outcomes of historical knowledge, historical understanding and historical interpretation. Studies include African civilisations, Apartheid, the struggle for freedom, religion, the Holocaust, Genocide, the World Wars, colonialism, local history and slavery. Oral history, archaeology and public history (including museums and heritage sites) are generic components of this Statement. Learners are encouraged to not only acquire the skill of historical craft, but also to be able to interrogate memory. The assessment standards promote therefore the skills to be able to make informed judgement on what is right and what is wrong, to interrogate memory and to interrogate certainty. Notions of “truth” are explored and the exploration of historical complexity is foregrounded.

The Further Education Training Curriculum (schools) aims to provide a solid foundation for lifelong learning and different career pathways to ensure that learners acquire and apply knowledge and skills in ways that are meaningful to their own lives. The curriculum therefore grounds knowledge in local contexts, whilst being sensitive to global imperatives. It emphasises high quality of knowledge and skills, laying the foundation for higher education and lifelong learning in order to equip learners for the world of work. The purpose of the Further Education and Training Certificate will be to equip learners, irrespective of their socio-economic background, race, gender, and physical and mental ability, with the knowledge, skills and values necessary for self-fulfilment and meaningful participation in society.

Principles of the new FET curriculum are social transformation, outcomes-based education, high knowledge and high skills, integration and applied competence, progression, human rights, inclusivity, environmental and social justice, valuing indigenous knowledge systems etc. The critical outcomes are problem solving through critical and creative thinking, teamwork, responsible actions, responsible and effective management, critical analysis, evaluation and organisation of knowledge, effective communication, responsible use of science and technology, understanding of the interrelatedness of the world systems. History skills, interpretation and understanding could be said to be generic to all of these.

 

The kind of FET learner envisaged is reflected in the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy:

“An education system does not exist to simply serve a market, important as that may be for economic growth and material prosperity. Its primary purpose must be to enrich the individual, and by extension the broader society.”[10]

This kind of learner will therefore be the one imbued with the values and act in the interests of a society based on respect for democracy, equality, human dignity, and social justice. A particular emphasis in the FET band is the understanding of human agency: the knowledge that learners have choices to make the world a better place. This understanding is further consolidated through the promotion of debate, rigorous investigation of historical enquiry, critical understanding of socio-economic systems, the recognition that historical truth consists of a multiplicity of voices expressing varying and often contradictory versions of the same history, engendering an appreciation and understanding of the democratic values of the constitution, fostering an understanding of identity as social construct: preparing future citizens for local, regional, national, continental and global citizenship.

But as we know, curriculum is only policy and the real work happens with implementation in the field.

 

Problems of implementation

South Africa needs a stronger and larger cohort of history education professionals. The need to consider simultaneously the need to update and supplement historical knowledge together with the requirement to enable teachers to understand the principles and concepts of the Learning Outcomes and Assessment Standards cannot be overemphasised. The knowledge that teachers have has to be updated, has to be enriched and must be supplemented in order to meet the demands of the National Curriculum Statements, in pedagogy, concepts, processes and values in history and knowledge focus areas. Teachers lack the required theoretical, practical, academic and professional knowledge such as the conceptualisation of history as a discipline and school subject/learning area; the historical knowledge of new content focus topics in the National Curriculum Statements; the use of history to facilitate an understanding of the human condition; process-oriented approaches; the integration into history of values, human rights and indigenous knowledge systems; pedagogy; and classroom management for good history teaching and assessment. Content areas that require education and training include (but are not limited to) Africa and Southern Africa circa 1100 – 1450; the triangular slave trade; Africa circa 1850; European imperialism in Africa; Pan-Africanism to 1945; Uhuru in the 1960s and 1970s and Africa and globalisation, from the 1990s.

 

Women and black historians remain in the minority. History writing in South Africa is still a white male dominated field, although there are very encouraging developments in the numbers of black and women students taking PhDs in history. Knowledge on African history (as beyond the borders of South Africa) remains wanting. Only a little more than 10% of the some 500 historians that registered with the South African History Project specialise in African history, as other than South African history. On the education front, teachers require intensive training in how to deal with their own memories in the teaching of controversial topics – and the enforced apartheid practice of history teaching! Teachers require training in how to use good texts. More classroom – based research is required on implementation of policy. Here, the cooperation with Higher Education and Research Institutions would be crucial. We need vitality, we need commitment, we need energy, we need vision.

 

The ambassadorial programme

The special feature of this intervention under the leadership of Kader Asmal, at that point Minister of Education, is its ambassadorial programme. The SAHP works currently with approximately 1000 ambassadors of its programme, closely monitored and tracked by the national coordinator of teacher development. These ambassadors have been recruited through the SAHP’s various workshops with provinces, and through provincial processes. These are the educators who work closely with provincial officials, curriculum advisors, the nine provincial officials and educators at their schools and in their districts. Their focus is on mentoring colleagues, and in future they are expected to play an even more strategic role in working closely with the learning area committees to be set up in provinces to ensure the successful role out plan of the national curriculum statements.

Why an ambassadorial project? South African policy makers are finding themselves in an interesting moment in transformation, ten years into the democracy. I would call this the second phase of transformation in education; where much of the initial debates around policy have been settled; we have sound and very progressive education policy for schools in place and it is strategy for implementation that now draws attention. Curriculum and the teaching of history in schools is but one aspect of this. The more philosophical and challenging question to ask is where are we right now in the country in terms of policy and in terms of a conscious historical consciousness within the making of a new South Africa?

And perhaps on the assumption that this exists, it is the rationale for a Ministerial-led ambassadorial programme. It has been found that teachers have varied views on the purpose of history in post-1994 South Africa, much influenced by their past experiences, their identity, their values.[11] It has also been found that history teachers are more keen to speak about their lives, frustrations, depressions and experiences than the actual process of curriculum implementation. They want to talk; want to be debriefed; want to share their individual biographies, talking about their sense of fact and truth. This seems an indispensable prerequisite for curriculum implementation, since teachers are key agents for curriculum transformation.

 

The psychological legacy of apartheid

Teachers are still trying to avoid teaching about apartheid. This has also emerged from the roundtables held in all nine provinces in 2002. Gauteng province has taken the lead, through focusing on the Apartheid Museum and providing teachers with guidelines on methodology. One teacher asserted that she would rather avoid teaching South African history and will do America and so forth, as doing Apartheid is “killing the horse!”. She insists that we must remove the emotion from history, as we may lose the learners. However, for learners, history is perceived to give confidence, to add the factor of possibility to impoverished lives, restoring human dignity.

 

While South African teachers grapple with coming to terms with South Africa’s recent painful past in their teaching, the learners seem to be affirmed through learning about this past. One learner asserts:

 “I can understand what went on so many years ago and to see that that is wrong. I mean that is prevention of history repeating itself”.

And another:

 “You actually become a person and not someone who knows stuff.”

But this tension between memory and history is also articulated in the sphere of higher education, with practising historians. Bundy refers to the contribution by Mahmood Mamdani on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as historical understanding, in the way that it has the potential to shape this understanding of South Africa’s history and also its limitations as such a history.[12] Villa-Vicencio critiques the limitations of academic history, where academics and politicians should meet, not getting their roles confused but academics should also be prepared “to soil their shirts”.[13]

 

In effect, all of these debates point to the humanising potential of history in the South African case at present. For Albie Sachs, the TRC helped to humanise South Africa’s painful past as experiential truth is absolutely powerful and massive and vivid for a great many people; the TRC enabled this truth. Politicians keenly interested in education, such as Naledi Pandor, highlight the need for teachers to not avoid the TRC, and to acquire the skills to teach about South Africa’s recent past as this knowledge is crucial in shaping an informed future South Africa.

In this context, we must be reminded that the Review Committee on Values in Education in May 2000 specifically addressed the teaching of history for the strengthening of the South African democracy. For this reason, the Ministry’s national conference on Values, Education and Democracy in the 21st century held in February 2001 in Cape Town, sought to link school history, democracy and values. It is with this contextual mandate that the South African History Project seeks to do its work.

 

As opposed to other international case studies, historical consciousness is not being suppressed in present post 1994 South Africa, but rather allowed to take on its many different forms within the national framework of the policies informed by the Values Manifesto. As Griroux points out that in many of such countries where history is argued as irrelevant, and not core to educational policy, it is rather historical consciousness than history that is being suppressed.[14] Tosh argues that the raw material for historical consciousness is almost unlimited; the work of historians is therefore important as it allows people to engage intellectually with society.[15]

 

Meeting the challenge with the use of memory

Whilst highlighting the achievements of the South African History Project, it is also apparent that there are formidable challenges ahead for the project. The SAHP requires to play a dual role in South African society; it has a school based function through curricula, teacher training and so on, but the country also requires the perennial existence of such a project which galvanises the conscious historical consciousness of the public at large. Schools remain limited sites of intervention. The pieces need to fall together, through a non-conventional South African way of promoting a consciousness informed by values, indigenous knowledge and the broader sense of the key themes in the making of what constitutes South Africa today. Perhaps there is much sense in combining the craft of the historian with the actual engagement with various forms of South African historical text and narrative whether in heritage, in academic history, in the oral tradition, in national history making projects. The work with schools and teachers and the broader public with sites such as Freedom Park, the Apartheid Museum, the Cape of Good Hope Castle, the Parliamentary Millennium Project and Robben Island Museum makes sense because a new South African history for schools needs a lot of movement and the dynamic interaction with space and place.

 

In its attempt to support the shift to a dynamic and relevant South African history, the SAHP has embarked on four key textbook resource projects for schools which would go a long way in preparing not only teachers and learners but also the public at large in fostering this new conscious historical consciousness. The Minister has secured copyright to the Unesco volumes on a General History of Africa, to be distributed to FET schools along with supplementary and updated materials, including South Africa’s recent history. The SAHP will in partnership with the publisher and higher education embark on a training process to support this intervention. An electronic history classroom is being established, focusing on key themes in South Africa’s history. A project on the turning points in South Africa’s History has commenced, looking at identity and perspectives. A textbook for all schools on ten years of freedom is also being completed for 2004.  

 

In conclusion, I would like to quote the former Minister of Education in his narration in 2002 of a Mamelodi teacher who said the following:

“Apartheid had one good thing. It kept us together. We had a common enemy to fight. We helped each other. When the common enemy went we were suddenly left alone and can’t find the same powerful thing to hold us together. Each one for himself. And this has ruined a sense of community.”

The Minister responded, that his wish is that South Africans will find something even more powerful to hold her (the Mamelodi teacher’s) community together, that will not only rebuild the sense of community that she feels has disappeared, but will bind her community of Mamelodi to the larger community of South Africa. The Minister added that what we will find will not be the result of a battle against a common enemy, but the result of the desire for a common destiny.