Litnet

"A new history curriculum is scheduled for implementation; completion thereof is intended by 2024, and it is almost definitely constructed around ANC nationalistic assumptions of what constitutes valid historical knowledge. This potentially forebodes disturbing implications regarding state attempts to manipulate students’ comprehension of their own identity, particularly minorities and specifically white South Africans."

"This year marks the centenary of the Bondelswarts Uprising in Namibia – then South West Africa – between late May and early June 1922, and its prompt crushing, which resulted in Jan Smuts’s British Empire-supporting South African Party government attracting significant national and international criticism. What drew attention was the manner of this historically Nama group’s suppression ... This tragic episode followed a long history of fierce Bondelswart resistance against intrusion into their independence."

"Within this country’s contemporary political discussion any mention of insurrection would likely refer to last July’s still unsatisfactorily understood KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng events. Besides historical enthusiasts, comparatively few South Africans will be aware that March marks the centenary of another local insurrection: the 1922 Rand Revolt/Revolution/Uprising or Miners’ Strike ..."

"But the English language’s South African origins obviously have emphatic historical roots, with the language arriving via historical processes and people with a culture manifested in innumerable forms, most long shared across communities from origins other than British. Like Hermann Giliomee has explained in his magisterial Die Afrikaners, people are entitled to their historical story, warts and all."

"Or, is it a bitter sop to the reality of the all-powerful English language and the foundations of Grahamstown’s university and elite schools, its historic churches and much more, rooted in the culture of the British Settlers and their descendants – not to mention the roadside name boards identifying ownership of the numerous prosperous farms in the region once known as the Albany – the Zuurveld?"