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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. Some elaboration thereon is required; for, although the syllabus’s exact contents are not yet public, their envisaged outline and purpose are indisputable, courtesy of Basic Education minister Angie Motshekga and her “ministerial task team’s” media-reported comments thereon. The “team” were appointed and instructed in 2015 to scrutinise history teaching and make recommendations thereon. Quoting Motshekga:
There has been a huge outcome about the history of South Africa about how we have been teaching our children, which is not helping them understand who they are and … their place in the continent, their place in the world, their relationships and their place in the country.[i]
Motshekga insists the envisaged new syllabus will be “Afro-centric” and “not based on European history”, and that “we teach in a way that it meets our objectives of nationhood, of unity, of cohesion but also of defining ourselves much more clearly as Africans and analysing our history from an African perspective.”[ii]
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Motshekga’s contentions regarding current history teaching are wrong, while her understanding of the subject contains scant relevance to authentic academic historical study – why we embark thereon and why the subject was once considered important enough for teaching in schools, let alone what useful potential school (and tertiary education) history might offer.
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Motshekga’s contentions regarding current history teaching are wrong, while her understanding of the subject contains scant relevance to authentic academic historical study – why we embark thereon and why the subject was once considered important enough for teaching in schools, let alone what useful potential school (and tertiary education) history might offer. One immediately wonders whether fundamental global events like the World Wars, the Cold War or 9/11 will be taught at all, or – far more likely – permitted only in a restricted “from an African perspective” sense. Or just summarily relegated to an “African-understood” historical periphery, dismissed as “European” or “Western” history, purportedly too “racially contaminated” for in-depth study by local school students.
In the 1980s, the Australian historian Richard Wright argued that “new nations” tend to go through a process of inventing national identities for themselves[iii] – something very familiar in South Africa. Certain events and images continue to be repeated in the media by businesspersons and politicians/social commentators. And across social media: Mandela’s emphasis upon magnanimity and reconciliation; his holding aloft the 1995 Rugby World Cup trophy; Tutu’s “Rainbow Nation” metaphor; the TRC’s supposedly Christian paradigm stressing confession, forgiveness, restoration; the once much expressed “New South Africa” term; its flag, incorporating ANC colours nearest the flagpole, with other colours purportedly symbolic of the land’s resources; the Y-shape representing convergence upon a common path. So one can go on.
It hardly needs stating that these deliberately contrived phenomena of hope are now increasingly threadbare and unconvincing, if not mocked and dismissed. And most particularly, if not virtually exclusively, such are the consequences of innumerable statements and actions regarding prominent ANC (and its EFF offshoot) figures, along with the racial antipathy caused by ANC policies and poor governance. Not least, too, because of the racially intolerant ideological positions these two organisations embrace and, grimly even more so, as ANC governance failures manifest so destructively in people’s lives.
Undoubtedly, it is around concealing/diverting attention from the above that one can partly explain Motshekga’s zeal to stamp an intolerant Africanisation upon school history. Such, she hopes, will be perceived by ANC members/supporters as demonstrating the party’s ideological authority and capacity to enforce such, not least against dissidents. The same kind of dynamics are encouraging her cabinet colleague Nathi Mthathwa’s obsession with changing town and city names; Mthathwa’s objective dovetails with ANC determination to deprive white South Africans of any historical identity, other than one demonised or ignored.
As White reminds us, the historian’s work includes inquiring about “new nations” and their “invented new identities”: what their functions are, who created them and whose interests they actually serve. All are important contentions deserving consideration regarding any new schools’ history curriculum, not least one containing clear political objectives.
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As White reminds us, the historian’s work includes inquiring about “new nations” and their “invented new identities”: what their functions are, who created them and whose interests they actually serve. All are important contentions deserving consideration regarding any new schools’ history curriculum, not least one containing clear political objectives.
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Unsurprisingly, Motshekga’s task team members are reported as obediently concurring with her allegation that the current curriculum lacks enough of that equally deceitful ANC platitude – “inclusion”. A quote from their February 2018 report reveals a sample of its reasoning:
The Caps content has been organised in such a way that South Africa has been separated from the African continent and the world. This is unfortunate, given the deep-seated misconception of South African exceptionalism and the growing problem of xenophobia.[iv]
One of the team’s most important recommendations concerns history being made compulsory in grades 10-12,[v] an ambition which has to contend with students already carrying enough examinable subjects, plus an even starker reality: there are simply nowhere near enough qualified history teachers to fulfil such a demand. Perhaps the “team” believe that any subject teachers will do; possibly those instructing the compulsory “Life Orientation” classes can be safely retreaded into teaching the ANC’s planned history syllabus?
In fact, in terms of world history topics, much of the current grade 11 and matric syllabus includes rational, stock components whereby selected significant 20th century events are studied in detail: the USSR’s economic policies under Lenin and Stalin; the Great Depression and New Deal in the USA; the rise of Nazism, along with selected Cold War themes – thus allowing students some insight into historical processes that shaped current familiar global issues.
Apartheid and South African history are right now central history syllabus components, being covered from the beginning of the 20th century, with the dominant emphasis being on post-1948 up to the mid-1990s, including the TRC. It has plenty of space integrating Black Consciousness, including a markedly unnuanced assessment of Steve Biko’s life and political contributions. In terms of (approved) textbook availability and the commonly set national assessment expectations, the current perspective is, if anything, markedly slanted towards an uncritical comprehension regarding black struggles and the liberation organisations’ histories.
Furthermore, African history is covered, although ironically through somewhat restrained studies (for a human rights emphasis is supposedly core to the current history curriculum statement) of Congo’s, Tanzania’s and Ghana’s pre- and post-independence histories. Directly after decolonisation, all three countries, to varying degrees, endured excessively violent and tyrannical political leadership, a pattern consistent with governance across the rest of Africa during the 1960s onwards and, of course, extending into contemporary times.
But currently the syllabus tends to euphemise these grim African historical realities as “challenges”, being very short concerning detail thereon. Such terms – another old, Soviet-style one being “excesses” – constitute regular ANC nomenclature for obscuring immoral inconveniences within the organisation’s own history. Details thereof have long been discussed by historians like Steven Ellis, Paul Trewhela, the late Leopold Scholtz[vi] and others. None of these historians’ work – or that of others providing similar analysis – is located within the current curriculum, and no changes in such obfuscation and omissions can be expected within the new.
Finally, also integral to present school history studies is Pan-Africanism and the American civil rights struggle, with the concomitant Black Power ideology occupying central slots, including hagiographic studies of Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Again, within this content, there is precious little encouragement for students to interrogate or critique these persons or themes thoroughly.
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The more intelligent students generally understand this, and the rare history teacher might make varied efforts to encourage them regarding (real) critical thinking and invoke discussion thereon. But in assessments, students will be instructed not to veer from the textbook’s largely glowing perspectives regarding black American historical figures, and certainly also in government-set external exams.
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The more intelligent students generally understand this, and the rare history teacher might make varied efforts to encourage them regarding (real) critical thinking and invoke discussion thereon. But in assessments, students will be instructed not to veer from the textbook’s largely glowing perspectives regarding black American historical figures, and certainly also in government-set external exams. There would not be any variation regarding private schools writing the Independent Examinations Board exams – these require conformity with government educational criteria – although IEB questions might be better expressed and marginally more demanding.
Matric and grade 11 essays, along with the so-called “source-based questions”, are marked with memos listing “facts” and approved explanations required for inclusion. “Presentation” is also an evaluated assessment criterion. Of course, it goes without saying that there is always essential detail integral within any historical narrative, but for current history students, veering from a set ideological and interpretive course is not recommended. This is an outcome inevitable where textbooks and didactic pedagogy still form the core of most local history teachers’ training, abilities and, not least, level of erudition.
There is more one could discuss regarding the above descriptions, but just this synopsis refutes Motshekga’s claim of the current syllabus being too “Eurocentric”. If anything, it projects an ideology safely ensconced within left-wing, so-called “progressive” parameters. But at least it is not explicitly nationalistic or uselessly parochial, attempting to frame all content within Pan-Africanist or African nationalist paradigms, aspiring towards socialising students into becoming conformist little “Africans”. The general history section ensures that students should attain some comprehension regarding how South African history patterns are relative to the above-listed American, Russian and European events, besides students getting some opportunity to observe universal consistencies in human behaviour, specifically regarding racial and ethnic conflicts within deeply divided societies.
And it must be stressed, any curriculum’s intention to focus more specifically on national and continental history only is another misguided endeavour. It is completely unrealistic for students to comprehend modern South African history meaningfully without also understanding global historical processes which obviously drove many of the region’s most important developments.
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It is completely unrealistic for students to comprehend modern South African history meaningfully without also understanding global historical processes which obviously drove many of the region’s most important developments.
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Motshekga’s perfidy makes it imperative that parents are properly informed regarding what historical study is meant to entail. The philosophy of history constitutes a whole substratum of intellectual inquiry, as do the discipline’s methodologies and purpose. Indisputably, history remains an ongoing dialogue between present, past and future, and it is within this interaction that the subject is often distorted into crude propaganda.
In 1956, one of South Africa’s most renowned historians, Professor CW de Kiewiet, described history’s power and potential. He insisted that a “vigorous and independent historiography”, namely the study regarding the writing of differing histories, “is an indispensable agent to humankind’s problems”, concerning our being guided towards wise and successful actions in overcoming such. Still following De Kiewiet, among academic disciplines, when properly studied and appreciated, history has the capacity to emancipate, potentially “releasing people from any thraldom to the past, liberating their hearts and minds for the tasks facing each new generation.”[vii]
But, of course, central to De Kiewiet’s above truisms is that history, while always comprising an ongoing debate, has to be based on evidence. Also, if the discipline is to be practised and taught with any integrity, it is utterly reliant on the freedom to debate, differ on but also emphatically teach conflicting perspectives. Failing to do so would compromise the historian’s or teacher’s duty to cultivate within his/her students the development towards a personal predisposition, ensuring discernment and the careful weighing up of evidence and differing ideological positions. Now, of course, such a philosophy hardly describes the kind of political culture the ANC and EFF conduct within their own organisations, let alone the governance of this country. Neither will it describe Motshekga’s intentions for future schools’ history.
Of course, it is equally fundamental to stress that regardless of differing interpretations and individual historians’ convictions, not all historical writings or conclusions can ever be equally valid. Any credible historical methodology rests heavily on evidence, which historians attain while undertaking the laborious archival work necessitated, alongside wide secondary or historical theory-related reading, while continually asking numerous open-ended questions of all their sources. Finally, the historian’s writings are heavily dependent on his/her writing skills: using language in a style that effectively conveys the complexities, ambiguities and inevitabilities of human history – filled as it is with human struggles for survival alongside self-interest, creativity and compromise – and explaining the multifarious stories about how human beings through the epochs organised their societies according to different historical contexts, and much more besides.
A historian whose work is littered with explicit moral judgements risks looking ridiculous, particularly when dealing with vast, nuanced and lengthy processes such as European colonisation in Africa. As Richard Evans, the eminent British historian on Nazi Germany, has put it, the historian’s way of morally exposing any writer who glorifies a process which involved mass human rights abuses – say, for example, Stalin’s Five-Year Plans – is to undermine the topic’s historical validity – in this case, Soviet-era historians’ claims, omissions and support – therefore letting the reader draw the moral conclusions.[viii] Of course, also utterly critical is how the historian gives the discussed events careful, intelligent consideration regarding the historical context of time and place. As Evans has convincingly explained, it is not difficult to discover moral judgements by historians being revealed in retrospect as “little more than the articulations of the prejudices of their own day”.[ix]
The above, of course, perfectly describes so many current historians plying their “decolonisation” history genre. Historical study is not intended to instruct students on what morals or values to live by; it teaches the contexts of how different peoples once lived and co-existed (or failed to), and the cultural attributes they attempted to exist in accordance to.
This is not to say that a historian is expected to remain coldly detached from the most hideous of events – say the Holocaust of the mid-1940s – but the danger lies with the accompanying, intense, intrinsic emotions being superimposed in a distorted, inaccurate way on happenings within vastly different times and places. For example, as a cynical strategy to raise the temperature, one could juxtapose the Holocaust with the colonial conquest in South African history, where British or Boer military force was used against that of African societies. Such dangerously trivialises the scale and methods of industrial mass genocide inflicted by the Nazis against European Jewry, and so on.
This is vital to emphasise in our age of “fake history”, which occurs just as does “fake news”. Locally, components of the former have even been accepted by some publishers. An expert on Dutch settlement at the Cape, Dr Dan Sleigh, had much important to say thereon at the recent Stellenbosch Woordfees regarding historical fiction posturing as actual history, along with other long-held myths unwittingly perpetuated down the ages by entirely well-meaning but misinformed popular writers.[x]
Therefore, in line with the South African Constitution, the above tenets describing something of what constitutes authentically studied, written and taught academic history, require conscious insertion into school history and the training of teachers responsible therefor. But, again, such is definitely not Motshekga’s aim; her school history is destined to be ruthlessly dismissive of any other rationale, except an ANC-approved, aggressive Pan-Africanism, toxically mangled together with a triumphalist and intolerant ANC-centric South African nationalism. The corollary thereof will be ANC expectations of minority demographic groups, and whites particularly, to be entirely obedient and submissive thereto, acquiescing regarding their identities and histories being reconfigured along ANC-approved descriptions.
Required, then, is an alternative analysis, as introduced above, regarding what South African school history teaching should stress, and also why Motshekga’s plans to socially engineer a party-centric, politically approved “African” national identity for schoolgoers is propagandistic, distorted, misguided and likely to incur ignominious failure, at least among the majority of the white community.
It might be useful to start with one strong assertion: that history has long lost much of its hold on public policy. Such is probably truer today than when I first heard it at UCT from Professor Basil le Cordeur during his 1986 inaugural lecture.[xi] My old history prof was harking back to the 19th century when, in the all-triumphant Western world, history as a discipline was held in the highest esteem. Eminent British medieval historian Richard Southern explained this period as “the great age of history”, with the subject having long established “the same kind of mysterious power over men’s minds that science has gained in our own”.[xii]
Southern was referring to a time when the intellectual instinct of those in academia and elsewhere was to pursue any inquiry or research “historically”, when educated men, whatever their academic or vocational specialisation, were literate in the classics and history. Such knowledge was considered indispensable, for it was assumed to permeate and assist inevitably with informing, regarding whatever responsibilities men carried, whether in business, politics, the law, administration.
And such explains why history was introduced into (Western) schools a century and a half ago; it was considered a “useful subject” – although, in fact, school history had another clear purpose: with the rise of mass education post the Industrial Revolution, governments deliberately imbibed their young citizens with a usable historical perspective intended to instil unity and patriotism. But within those historical contexts, such was reasonably plausible, besides also central to help stifle conflict across economic and social classes. Thereby, school history was introduced into the racially homogeneous 19th century European countries, to their colonial offshoots among white settlers and in the USA.
Although such curricula were obviously nationalistic, there existed fundamental differences compared with South Africa now: these were confident Western societies that over centuries had risen through the successful application of capital accumulation, global trade and industrialisation, all assisted by the scientific method, along with urbanisation with the acculturalisation of political parties, liberal democracy and the cultural installation of civic pride among citizens.
Within 20th century post-independence African countries and among typical African leaders’ philosophies and governance, such historical processes are either absent or have manifested entirely differently. Or they were essentially indifferent imitations of the Western examples, usually consequential from hurried attempted transmissions via colonial powers departing rapidly during the 1960s in the face of intransigent, uncompromising African nationalism.
African countries’ demographics during the early 1960s lingered largely between tribally fissured herder and hunter-gather societies, alongside small elite groupings which colonial imperatives had encouraged and rewarded, along with facilitating the creation of a mostly poverty-stricken urban proletariat. African cultural norms in governance entirely dominated post-Uhuru decades, characterised by the explicit self-interest and patronage reflecting traditional chiefdom leadership.
Resultant were one-party states, military dictatorships and, with these, benevolent to grotesque tyrannies, which rapidly overwhelmed the aspirations of a miniscule group of African liberals. South African citizens, black and white, are almost entirely innocent regarding even the most cursory studies thereof: Bokassa’s Central African Republic; Amin’s Uganda; Mobutu’s and Kabila’s Congo; Nguma’s and Mbasogo’s Equatorial Guinea; Doe’s and Taylor’s Liberia; and, closer to home, Nyerere’s Tanzania, Neto’s and Dos Santos’s Angola; and Machel’s Mozambique. Historical study has long demonstrated that democracies based on liberal principles emerge historically only; they cannot just be parachuted in, as we know all too well from failed 21st century American attempts to implant such in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Of course, there is so much in South African history since 1994 that explicitly mirrors some of the above patterns, and not least within the multitudes of political conflicts and confusions we now know only too well. This country originally evolved via a combination of colonial historical developments, followed by the creation of a white-controlled sovereign nation from the Union onwards, occurring alongside the historical land dispossession of black tribesmen and their subordination within the political economy. Much – but hardly all – of the once pre-industrial, hunter/herder, explicitly black majority were thereby relegated to all-critical cheap labour roles, being unskilled for participation within an industrial capitalist economy except as the lowest echelon workers. They were inexorably drawn in their hundreds of thousands to participate thus, lured by the promise of cash and Western consumer goods.
Such was achieved not only by superior military force, but via the application of Western scientific, commercial and infrastructural enterprise, operating alongside labour-repressive and racially exclusive mechanisms. These all coalesced to shape a modern state which also exploited the larger part of the population, leaving the latter’s descendants with multifarious historical grievances and, for some, utopian assumptions of viable “historic compensation”.
Broadly speaking, such processes in different forms, ethnic or otherwise, are both universal and historically consistent across the centuries and continents. Resultant therefrom are often the harsh realities regarding countless past human beings’ fates, but such understandings apparently pass Motshekga and her like-minded thinkers by.
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Inserting these complexities effectively into school history teaching in an ethnically volatile country containing scores of malicious race-baiters, requires expertise with a goal-orientated approach which emphatically acknowledges history’s realities and a pluralist society, with an emphasis on students empathetically understanding their own group’s story and that of others. Curriculum priorities would also include discerning what format and methodologies are best comprehensible for students’ cognitive developments and different grades. There is no realistic alternative other than teaching towards an acceptance of South Africa’s racial diversity, while grappling with its conflicting group histories.
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Inserting these complexities effectively into school history teaching in an ethnically volatile country containing scores of malicious race-baiters, requires expertise with a goal-orientated approach which emphatically acknowledges history’s realities and a pluralist society, with an emphasis on students empathetically understanding their own group’s story and that of others. Curriculum priorities would also include discerning what format and methodologies are best comprehensible for students’ cognitive developments and different grades. There is no realistic alternative other than teaching towards an acceptance of South Africa’s racial diversity, while grappling with its conflicting group histories. One could extend this discussion further into what and how history is currently being taught in local universities, where post-modernist-inspired identity politics predominates – but that is content for a separate article.
The American intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr held that any individual or community is shaped by the distinct meaning they attach to their history. White South Africans remain, to some extent, fissured regarding their own cultural groupings, although between Afrikaners and the more amorphous English-speaking group there historically have always been different kinds of overlaps, collaborations and often commonalities where all distinctions fall away. Not all whites, not least within the “English” group, place particular value upon their “group’s” history, but some do, particularly if provoked. And not least since 1994, where a growing self-awareness exists of simply being “white” – not because of any return to “apartheid-think” and assumptions, but as a consequence of white communities living more insecurely and even resentfully regarding their maligned prospects and fearing for personal safety under ANC rule, regarding specifically BEE, affirmative action and the soaring violent crime rate.
Expressing the obvious bluntly, it is offensive and nonsensical to reduce the core contributors to South Africa’s historical development – scientific, educational, cultural, commercial and much more, namely the white community’s colonial, Union or republican ancestors – to being no more than oppressors and knaves. Such is not only incompatible with any sustainable concept of nation-building, but will ultimately draw contempt on educational authorities and, in this sense, invoke further conflict, potentially between children of differing races.
But we have been here before, albeit not quite with the same ANC government ideological extremism. As much as I was generally an interested but hardly always hard-working pupil during school history classes, post-school conversations with contemporaries, with their recollections of the subject, inevitably end up including sardonic comments along the lines of: “Do they still do the Great Trek?” Similarly, often at the receiving end of sarcastic opprobrium is the “Bore War”. Such endorses American historian John Gillis’s observation that any group identity’s core meaning – their sense of sameness over space and time – is sustained by remembering.[xiii]
This can be applied to white, English-speaking South Africans schooled particularly during the 1960s-1980s. Among my most significant history lessons were those at Bergvliet Primary, Cape Town, during grades five to seven (1970-72), namely our working diligently through each of the nine late 18th and 19th century Eastern Frontier conflicts. Their importance regarding comprehending South African historical processes is indisputable. But, of course, the interpretive emphasis back then followed National Party educational priorities: the struggles of Boers and British Settlers against the treacherous Xhosa, with white colonists’ difficulties being further confounded by misguided, negrophilic, (mostly) British missionaries and unsympathetic British authorities distant in Cape Town and London.
Then followed lessons placing the Great Trek as comprising the central heroic event in our (white) nation’s history. Again, this migration’s importance cannot be contested. But its insertion was calculatingly structured to ensure that English-speakers were accepting of the government curriculum designers’ endorsement of Hendrik Verwoerd’s white republican priorities, and also admiring of Afrikaners historically in successfully striving for freedom against all adversities – black and white. This was following Verwoerd’s 1960 republican campaign, built on the two white communities cooperating, indeed uniting, for the sake of their mutual survival within a country reflecting the African continent’s demographic realities.
But British contributions and roles in our history within the school curriculum were simultaneously, subtly omitted, under-emphasised or intimated as secondary, or accusingly framed as constituting foreign self-interested opposition to nascent white South African nationhood strivings. It was impossible for this line of teaching not to have influenced our perceptions as English-speaking white South African children, who we collectively were.
Of course, all the republic’s white citizens enjoyed explicitly equal rights under the law; however, Afrikaner nationalist dominance in governance required careful management to affirm us English-speakers guarded inclusion on NP terms. Therefore, an unspoken educational objective was white English-speaking children being socialised towards viewing South African history largely from an Afrikaner nationalist-centric perspective.
The ultimate NP objective – achieved to some extent – was the creation of a white South African nationalism, with English-speakers a subordinate component thereof, managed across government-controlled institutions. Sometimes, such occurred with subtlety, often tactlessly. There were many English-speakers who bought into it; most did only partially, being mindful of demographic and other realities. A minority completely rejected it; a tinier grouping disassociated themselves more radically therefrom – both these subgroupings being located mostly in academia, churches and to some extent the English-language media.
By the time I was in senior primary school classes, Verwoerd was already five or more years dead, and the NP were now under the kragdadig but also cautious John Vorster, who, in Hermann Giliomee’s description, was content just to “hold the fort”, while warding off challenges from verkrampte dissidents within and outside his government.[xiv] Some of these were even loudly suggesting that Afrikaans be made the only official language and the Union Jack be removed from the Oranje, Blanje, Blou national flag, annoying English-speakers and, for Vorster, undermining his determination to draw their voting support.
But, as is predictable with youth, with progression into teens and high school, dissent and disagreement began to manifest – not least in the 1970s, with white English-speaking teenagers becoming conscious of the counter-culture wave sweeping through and beyond the global Anglo-sphere. The familiar South African school historical paradigm, still repeated via the same dry, deductive pedagogy prioritising dates and “facts”, inevitably encountered increased scepticism. It is partly this component of local school history teaching half a century ago which prompts cynical recollections from those who once sat in the school desks, who still raise their eyes at “Bore War” lesson recollections.
And such demonstrates how unimaginative, authoritarian history teaching – or that designed with a partisan political purpose – can damagingly divide. The described rejection by English-speaking pupils regarding the “Bore War” contrasted with the “Long War” impact of the 1899-1902 conflict transmitted across to white Afrikaner children and teens of the same generation. The Afrikaans community, then materially more secure and confident within their monopoly of political power and state control, remained very wary about their own constantly threatening political divisions widening further.
In their conscious determination to endorse a common purpose and identity, Afrikaans history teachers and university lecturers taught and cited the Anglo-Boer War’s causes, course and consequences emotionally and one-sidedly, both within their own circles and for others’ consumption. It was an example of completely non-intended, different educational outcomes through partisan history teaching. The two communities’ suspicions, in some cases even dislike, of each other were heightened, as opposed to their historical differences being carefully scrutinised and accepted.
Progressing through the school grades, many English-speaking history pupils became irritated, suspicious and unconvinced by their teachers’ one-dimensional historical stories, perceiving scant relevance to themselves amidst so many “Afrikaner heroes”. This estrangement was further endorsed by exposure to their United or Progressive Party-supporting parents’ opinions, which were often candidly blunt in expressing their contempt for Afrikaner nationalists and Vorster’s government, thus further inclining their children’s dismissal of “boring South African history”.
Studies by sociologist Lawrence Schlemmer on white English-speaking South Africans, completed in 1974, showed that the NP educational and other indoctrination efforts had serious consequences. Schlemmer established that among those in their late teens and early twenties, English-speaking youth had an unfortunate repellence regarding Afrikaners in general and a disdain for Afrikaner influence in public life, along with NP government/Dutch Reformed Church interference with entertainment, not least through censorship. Schlemmer further deduced a rejection by young English-speakers of any broader white South Africanism and their generally weakening emotional ties with the country.[xv] This is the kind of pattern Motshekga’s history syllabus is at high risk of replicating, but far more violently so, manifested between black and white youth within schools now racially integrated.
Motshekga appears oblivious to the reality that South Africa’s white minority, despite emigration, still numbers around four million. And that its components – Afrikaners, those of British descent, Jewish, Portuguese and others – are generally well-educated groupings, possessing a fairly strong sense of their own identity and origins. Such is recorded, discussed and endorsed within a vast literature; attempting to expunge all of that out of group consciousness is hardly realistic.
The minister’s historical view is also illusionary; it rests on premises that there exist some objective and ennobled “African” attributes common to all “Africans”. But, of course, this usage of “African” is not only entirely political, it is also racial. “White Africans” can be incorporated, but only as submissive to this Pan-Africanist description. Being entirely contrived and ideological, the term “African” is inextricably connected to black historical grievances as articulated by authors of the relevant literature. It is best described by those who, out of calculated self-interest, invoked such during their political careers: Ghanaian visionary and dictator Kwameh Nkruma, the appalling Gaddafi and, more locally, Thabo Mbeki.
State education endeavouring to churn out pliant African nationalist lackeys, ignores South Africa’s cultural pluralism – that the white minority are too many to be driven into the sea, physically or in terms of autonomy regarding their sense of historical identity. Neither will whites all emigrate; no Orwellian-type control over historical or political perspectives is possible in the age of the internet. Indeed, the once arguably considerable authority of history teachers has been markedly diminished. Any number of well-funded conservative or classically liberal think tanks exist online, letting the contest of ideas flow across the internet generally, backed by gargantuan written work resources concerning humanities disciplines – all available for those who want to read it. And not least, children and teenagers with their ubiquitous electronic devices are also reading about the ANC’s misgovernance generally, along with accompanying political discussion.
Despite Motshekga’s assumptions about how a local “African identity” can be remoulded, assigned and accepted by students through school history classes, compulsory or otherwise, South Africa would be a tough nut to crack in terms of any totalitarian-style school indoctrination. At best may occur just a return of the yawns which accompanied the Great Trek and the Bore War, with remaining white history students deserting the subject for another.
At worst, there will be a nastier rejection, with consequences of much heightened racial antipathy. With Mandela, Biko, the ANC and black nationalist history reduced to despised, sneered-at cartoon versions vainly trying to explain all in simplistic terms of right and wrong, black and white, claiming colonisation brought nothing but degradations, exploitation and human rights abuses, such will just alert students to focus more strongly on ANC criminality, corruption and deceit. Who would want to believe their view of history?
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Unlike De Kiewiet’s insistence that history is central to liberating people from thraldom, ANC school history will be perpetually determined to chain black and white regarding Africanist grievances against colonisation and apartheid. And it will deny our reality that race, like culture and class, constitutes immutably divisive historical/social fault lines, requiring within any curriculum design, the most dexterous and scholarly management.
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Unlike De Kiewiet’s insistence that history is central to liberating people from thraldom, ANC school history will be perpetually determined to chain black and white regarding Africanist grievances against colonisation and apartheid. And it will deny our reality that race, like culture and class, constitutes immutably divisive historical/social fault lines, requiring within any curriculum design, the most dexterous and scholarly management.
Dr Rodney Warwick PhD MA (Historical Studies) (UCT)
[i] Angie Motshekga: Process to overhaul history curriculum to be finalised this year | Citypress (news24.com) Accessed 16 November 2022.
[ii] New history curriculum in SA schools to be more Afrocentric (702.co.za) Accessed 16 November 2022.
[iii] White, R, Inventing Australia: Images and identity, 1688-1980, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1981.
[iv] Angie Motshekga: Process to overhaul history curriculum to be finalised this year | Citypress (news24.com) Accessed 16 November 2022.
[v] New history curriculum on the cards for SA schools from 2024 (timeslive.co.za) Accessed 16 November 2022.
[vi] Ellis, S, External mission: The ANC in exile, Jonathan Ball, Cape Town, 2012; Trewhela, P, Inside Quatro: Uncovering the exile history of the ANC and SWAPO, Jacana Media, Auckland Park, 2010; Scholtz, L, Terreur en bevryding: Die ANC/SAKP, die kommunisma en geweld (1961-1990), Jonathan Ball, Cape Town, 2022.
[vii] De Kiewiet, CW, The anatomy of South African misery, London, 1956.
[viii] Evans, RJ, In defence of history, Granta Publications, London, 1997, pp 49-52.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Toyota US Woordfees 2022: Dan Sleigh roskam uitgewers oor verspreiding van pseudogeskiedenis - LitNet Accessed 16 November 2022.
[xi] The power of history, Basil A le Cordeur, King George v Professor of history inaugural lecture, 6 August 1986, New Series No 117, University of Cape Town.
[xii] Southern, RW, The shape and substance of academic history, Oxford, 1961, p 8.
[xiii] Gillis, JR, “Memory and identity: The history of a relationship” in Gillis (ed), Commemorations: The politics of national identity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994, p 3.
[xiv] Giliomee, H, The Afrikaners: Biography of a people, Tafelberg, Cape Town, 2003, chapter 15.
[xv] Schlemmer, L, “English-speaking South Africans today: Identity and integration into the broader national community” in Andre de Villiers (ed), English-speaking South Africa today: Proceedings of the national conference, July 1974, OUP, Cape Town, 1976, particularly pp 129-134.
Also read:
Toyota US Woordfees 2022: Dan Sleigh roskam uitgewers oor verspreiding van pseudogeskiedenis
Afrikaanse geskiedskrywing: ’n Nuwe geslag, ’n nuwe ruimte, ’n nuwe uitdaging
The lie of 1652 deur Patric Mellet: om die verlede te herverbeel
Geskiedskrywing in die "Nuwe Suid-Afrika" – om te vergewe sónder om te vergeet
Sol Plaatje: A life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, 1876‒1932 deur Brian Willan: ’n resensie
Om jou ’n Zoeloemonarg raak te verbeel: Johann Lodewyk Marais oor die uitbeelding van Shaka
Sol T Plaatje: A life in letters – edited by Brian Willan and Sabata-mpho Mokae
Milner – last of the empire-builders by Richard Steyn: a book review
Die Afrikaners: ’n onderhoud met Hermann Giliomee oor die boek en die kykNET-reeks
History of South Africa from 1902 to the present, ’n lesersindruk
Paul Murray takes a look at the Nuwe Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika
Kommentaar
A very accurate summation of the situation. The victors always seem to re-write history, is what it comes down to. A kind of desecration of the graves, metaphorically. But in a sense it also resonates with the general trend world-wide to avoid all history that might cause offence, while emphasising the lived experience.