Staging the future - post-apartheid use of history education for nation building purposes

By Giulia Ray

 

 

South Africa is a country that is currently creating itself a new set of symbols while at the same time re-evaluating the old ones.[1]

Nationalism created in the old South African Republic was non-inclusive, but in post-apartheid South Africa the political set-up underlined the importance of a shared national identity defined as a shared conception of the past.[2]

 

A nation’s educational system is an important and long-term instrument in the process of creating a shared conception of any kind. History teachers in South African education are among those who at the very end of the row have influence over if and how the past is related to the younger generation of post-apartheid South Africans. A teacher’s individual view of the past and perception of the task of being an educator, will not only determine their teaching, but will also influence the pupil’s view of the past.

 

This chapter describes a few examples taken from a qualitative field study conducted in 2001-2002[3] where the field of investigation was to study post-apartheid history education in terms of design and policy making, as well as how it is taught by history teachers in grades four to ten. The overall research questions were: is the idea of a single national identity achievable, or even something to aspire for; is there a common ground and, if so, what constitutes that common ground? Furthermore - since a general educational aim is to provide equal education for all - how is post-apartheid history education designed and implemented in order to help build that equal foundation?

 

Post-apartheid education and dealing with the past

The following quote was found in the 2001 revised version of national policy for education and it underlines the need for renewal and change in the post-apartheid educational field:

"South Africa’s democratic government inherited a divided and unequal system of education. Under apartheid, South Africa had nineteen different educational departments separated by race, geography and ideology. This educational system prepared children in different ways for the positions they were expected to occupy in social, economic and political life under apartheid. In each, the curriculum played a powerful role in reinforcing inequality. What, how and whether children were taught differed according to the expectations of their roles in the wider society.”[4]

 

The tone of voice in the above quotation clearly show that the apartheid past and its policy were being addressed and post-apartheid education has seen major changes with the introduction of the new national curriculum, Curriculum 2005 (C2005). Among other things, the history subject has been integrated with other subjects into a Learning Area called Human and Social Sciences (HSS). Moreover, Outcome Based Education (OBE), an educational approach that is the basis for the new curriculum[5], is criticised for being so sophisticated, that the implementation of it alone has demanded a lot of effort.[6] As a framework for the new South Africa it:

“…deliberately intended to simultaneously overturn the legacy of apartheid education and catapult South Africa into the 21^st century”.[7]

With the new curriculum and educational approach being so difficult to interpret, it seems to have left very little energy among the teachers to make use of the history subject as a nation building tool for the purposes of ensuring a shared view of the past.

 

Post-apartheid treatment of history, however, caused a somewhat delayed uproar among historians and history teachers. Some of the comments are found in the History and Archaeology Panel Report, published in 2001.[8] As a result of this report, together with another national initiative and later publication, Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy[9], a range of processes were put in motion. As example, in October 2001, the then Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, launched the national initiative the South African History Project.[10] One of the problems in South Africa, as stated by June Bam, Chief Executive Officer of the South African History Project, is the lack of research conducted and published on African, and South African history. She claims that most of the historiographies published in the field were produced during the apartheid years and therefore offers little use as present-day historiography.[11]

 

On the one hand, official South African rhetoric was in 2002 still promoting that dealing with the past was of outmost importance in order to cope with the present and for building “national character”. On the other hand, an interpretation of the new curriculum design, where the history subject has been integrated and greatly minimised, seems to suggest that official South Africa was showing rather little concrete interest in the past. Interestingly, alongside the ambiguous attitude toward national identification through a shared knowledge of the past and by means of history education, national identification based on the values defined in the South African Constitution can be seen as a different kind of nation building exercise all together, with a basis in the present as opposed to the past.

 

Nation and memory of the past

Eric Hobsbawm, one of the most prominent theorists in the field of nationalism and nationbuilding, argues “that the mere setting up of a state is not sufficient in itself to create a nation.”[12] According to general theory on nations and nationalism, nations are rather new concepts.[13] Hobsbawm claims that the concept of “nation” “belongs to a particular and historically recent period and as a social entity it relates to a certain kind of modern territorial state, the ’nation-state’.”[14] Moreover, a nation cannot exhaustively be defined in terms of race, language, religion, geography, or any other assigned characteristics. However, in the words of Simon Stacey, one condition seems necessary - that “a range of representatives hold it to exist.”[15] Ernest Gellner, another theorist in the field, has written that sense of belonging to a nation is not an inherent quality in the nature of all human beings – it is only “represented” to be so.[16] However, the modern concept of nationalism can only work in certain social conditions, conditions that in reality can be found only in the modern world.[17] Hobsbawm similarly argues that it was the decline of older socio-political bonds that made it imperative to formulate and inculcate new forms of “civic loyalty”. Other potential loyalties, apart from the state were now capable of political expression. Thereby, states required a “civic religion” “patriotism” all the more because they increasingly required active citizens.[18] Hylland-Eriksen adds that a nation is also a community that is defined by those who do not belong to it.[19]

 

Traditions, which might appear old, and often claim to be so, are often rather late in origin and are sometimes even invented.[20] George L. Mosse has similarly argued that nationalism claims to represent a whole, a life-style that supplies a past for those who fear the present.[21] Hobsbawm stressed the element of invention and social engineering for the making of nations and mass schooling is the space where elements of national identification can easily be introduced with the purpose of instilling feelings of attachment to the nation, the country and flag.[22]

For this discussion, it should be added that interestingly, amnesia is a part of memory. The element of forgetting is important when societies attempt to begin anew.[23] Stacey writes that:

“..forgetting, even the historical errors, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation.”[24]

 

Gellner argues that nationalism and the emergence of nations can be described in a number of stages along a line of historical development.[25] He also seems to speak about the decline of the need for nation states and nationalism due to globalisation by arguing that most countries in Europe have already left the stage of nationalism.[26] Stretching this reasoning of Gellner, gives a new dimension to the discussion of globalisation. One could argue that if nationalism is a stage that nations go through and not a permanent condition, why then South Africa should strive to cultivate a sense of shared national identity?

 

Apartheid use of the past

In general terms - as described by history teachers and concluded by browsing a wide selection of older history schoolbooks - apartheid history education not only suppressed certain narratives of the past, it also sought to prevent the formation of other identities than the ones that the apartheid state wanted to form. The historiography in South African history education can be said to have been constructed for one purpose, at the same time having two outcomes. On the one hand, the national historiography served as means to uphold white supremacy and the racially segregated balance. On the other hand, the same historiography served as fuel for resistance against apartheid. It provoked a whole range of counter-historiography.

 

History teaching was designed and taught mainly along two principles. Firstly, there was a set curriculum, with a very specified content. Secondly, the fact that the prescribed content had been learned was regularly checked through held exams and school inspection. This system basically called for rote learning. Data from the larger study show that regardless of racial categorisation during the apartheid years, informants tellingly give testimony of this spoon-fed kind of history teaching.

“I can still recite what was taught to us then by our teachers – because I had to do that, memorise it and give it back to them, so that I could pass my studies.”[27]

 

In the data collected, teachers who were privileged under apartheid, put more emphasis on history as being taught to build character and knowing where you come from.[28] The student was taught to believe in the general idea of apartheid. And in that process, history was equal to what it meant being a South African. This becomes especially interesting when compared to a statement by a teacher who was not privileged under apartheid. “History was indoctrination, teaching things that ‘the Nat’s’ [The National Party] sort of forced down on us”.[29] Apartheid historiography also had a particular tone of voice, representing people involved in the resistance as villains - as opposed to the heroes of the Afrikaners.[30] History education was means to reinforce status quo and for the unprivileged to accept the prevailing conditions. The set curriculum was “the stipulated way to do it” and meant the historiography of Jan van Riebeeck, whether you liked it or not.[31] However, as one informant remembers:

“[W]e were very aware that it was not a true reflection of the past, so it was a case of giving them what they wanted, but not necessarily [incorporating it in] our belief system, our value system, our understanding of the true history.”[32] .

 

Reconciliation through truth

After the 1994 elections the official debate formed a discourse that South Africa needed to “blot out the sad picture of apartheid” so that a new nation could grow out of it.[33] The tone of the day and of the book Reconciliation through Truth by Asmal et ali. was emphasising a re-interpretation of the South African past.[34]

“[T]he fact that privileged South Africans could dream, well into the 1970s and in the teeth of vast contrary evidence, of an all-white South Africa; […] the fact that many privileged South Africans could view themselves as part of “western democracy” while surrounded, in Africa, by millions of voteless Africans; […] In plain language, this nationalism prevents those in its ideological grip from understanding where they are and when they are living.”[35]

 

It is interesting to note that in these early popular documents there is an outspoken focus aimed towards “them”, as if one of the main reasons for rewriting history is “to show them their actions”[36] since “they must face new facts about an uncomfortable past.”[37] This allocation of guilt is not surprising considering the past as depicted in the quote above. However, worth noting is that it is not as outspoken in documents produced in the debate of a later date, like the Manifesto On Values, Education and Democracy and History and Archaeology Panel Report which will be dealt with later. In those documents, both produced in 2001, the call for “them” to assume responsibility seems to have been exchanged with a fear that any grouping might choose their history above an all-encompassing South African one. The authors of Reconciliation through Truth formulate the task of post-apartheid South Africa, through the then newly instated TRC, being to “record the pains of the past so that a unified nation can call upon that past as a galvanising force in the large tasks of reconstruction.”[38] Through this process, “[w]e will have shown that new truths can build new nations.”[39]

 

Through the eyes of the beholder - teacher statements

Most teachers state that history can and should have an important role to play in the process of de-segregating and creating a united society. However, at the same time most teachers claim that the history subject has been marginalised in favour of other subjects.

“History is not seen as a subject where you teach practical skills, whereas maths and science can be turned into practical skills.”[40]

It becomes clear that subjects like science and technology are being emphasised as more important than history. Many teachers explain this springs from the need to make South Africa more competitive on the international market. However, most teachers also argue that history can be used for nation building purposes as well.

 

Apart from an emphasis on other subjects, even the notion of what “history” is, has changed. Teachers show a tendency to put an emphasis on current history and present-day politics and not so much the more distant past. “I personally think that the children must also know relevant history, history that is happening now.” [41] But, what is relevant history? How come international events and present day South African politics are considered more relevant than the recently overthrown apartheid past?

 

In present-day history education, the teacher is given a lot of freedom over the actual content. Most informants state, in various ways, that a teacher can choose practically anything he or she wants to teach. Some teachers even prefer not teaching about the past at all. What effect does this have on general and supposedly equal education and on the wish for a shared conception of the past? According to the Chief Executive Officer of the South African History Project, June Bam - improving history is not about specifying content. “We’ve got to go beyond that.” Content is important, but the work of the South African History Project is going to be developing methodology and an understanding of how methodology links with values of the Constitution. With those tools, a history teacher can pick up any content and be able to teach that.[42]

 

Meanwhile, dealing with the past is basically left to the teachers themselves and the outcome depends much on the individual and how capable or prepared for the task he or she is. One teacher stresses how important it is that the children know about the apartheid past, although they will never be exposed to it themselves.[43] She usually brings the Group Areas Act into her teaching, mainly as it is part of her own experience. But the curriculum does not give much guidance. It does not list any minimum knowledge required in teaching.

“Now the boundaries are more flexible- you can do anything you want- and it’s up to the teacher what you want the children to be exposed to”[44]

This means that the choice of content is rather coincidental:

“We just go as far as Mandela. [B]efore Mandela we sometimes did - what’s the guys name - de Klerk. But, since he was on the Nats, some teachers feel, they don’t want to be associated with the past- so you’re not forced to.”[45]

 

This can mean that parts of the past a teacher does not want to cover, get left out:

“I can choose to teach a particular topic and leave other topics out. For example, the discovery of minerals as opposed to the Great Trek. I’ve got a problem with the Great Trek, therefore I can leave it out.”[46]

Another teacher has noted this type of bias, but seems to think it cannot be addressed only though a more defined curriculum:

“You can have teachers teaching the content of the new syllabus, but what is the content of the heart? You can have a hidden curriculum inside yourself. So what does come across to the pupils is a different thing.”[47]

 

Post-apartheid history education has created an interesting situation. What happens to the apartheid history, if a teacher is reluctant to talking about the past, or lacks the personal experience to do so? And how will this be dealt with in the future, when teachers who lived through apartheid will have left the profession? Already a number of “stories” flourish:

“I’ve heard stories that in some schools in the white areas, they don’t even want to teach history anymore, because they don’t want to and don’t want the learners to be exposed to the sensitive issues in history … You can imagine what kind of ignorant adults they will grow up to be.”[48]

 

Tellingly, some teachers give testimony that South African youth seems to care less and less about the past. A teacher in a town-ship school states:

“They don’t appreciate, for instance, were we come from and they can’t relate to what is happening now. There is a sense of apathy and that will prove very difficult in terms of this nation building exercise, because you cannot build on a foundation that you know very little of. There has got to be that foundation – history is that foundation.”[49]

Although the apparent symptoms may differ, this is not a phenomenon that is exclusive for a township school. Another teacher, from a more privileged school, voices a similar observation, something he seems to think only occurring in his school. He claims that the children do not understand the greater term apartheid and continues:

“What happens is that these children tend to be a little blasé - ‘it’s not my problem, we’ve heard all about that’. It’s that sort of attitude that I noticed coming in”.[50]

 

The situation appears even worse – some people claim they feel left out of history. A young teacher argues that the past does not really concern the youth in her community as they have been left out of history:

“People who died in the coloured communities are not celebrated and it’s sad, because they died - as well. They were shot, as well, they were whipped and tortured. And their houses were broken into and police had no respect for them - as well. They were also treated like animals, but that’s not seen.”[51]

 

If history is either seen with disinterest or as something you are not a part of, then it appears rather difficult to make that past the foundation for a shared national identity in an all-inclusive South Africa.

 

Curriculum 2005 and Outcome Based Education

One of the corner stones of outcome based education (OBE) is the learner-centred teaching. In post-apartheid South Africa, this new approach has caused a number of problems implementation-wise. In some schools, the lessons are still teacher-centred. Teachers find that the learners in overcrowded classrooms do not necessarily cope with the kind of activities given. This does not mean that the teachers are ignoring the new educational approach. They know that OBE:

“..wants the learners to discover on their own, it wants the learners to apply the skills that you give them, to grapple with the information that they are exposed to. We would very much like to be the mediators as proposed by OBE, but it is not practical. [I]f you give an activity, it means you must monitor a class of 57, so individual attention is out of question.”[52]

 

In a school with more resources, the teachers do not find the OBE approach as problematic although one talks of the necessity of libraries and schoolbooks -  without them, or if you do not have access to schoolbooks or lack a good library or maybe even not a photocopying machine, she states, then you are not equipped to handle OBE.[53] Unfortunately, this is the reality for a lot of schools.[54] The new C2005 aimed to step away from apartheid education and offer equal schooling for all. Good intentions are formulated on a policy level, but in reality there are no real tools given to the teachers to cope with the situation.

 

The History and Archaeology Panel Report and the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy

Moving forward to two examples of documents produced on a political and visionary level, which have influenced policy documents for education, we find - the History and Archaeology Panel Report and the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy, both written in 2001. The History and Archaeology Panel Report (from now on referred to as the History Panel) claimed that history had become increasingly marginalised in the educational core curriculum. Stating that the existing situation is a major concern, they demanded history to be put back into the curriculum as it contributes to the “formation of democratic values and a common citizenship”. The History Panel claims that these issues need to be addressed and without history the country risks facing national amnesia and crisis.[55] The Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy[56] (from now on referred to as the Manifesto) stated that education in general is important when equipping citizens with abilities and skills.[57] This emphasis on skills, is in line with the overall idea behind C2005 and OBE. However, both documents agree that history is the “bedrock of education”[58] and that the past is an important concept when South Africa is making a new life for themselves. The image of a South African education in crisis is depicted in both documents, however handled differently in the two. One of the more fundamental conclusions of the History Panel is that the new curriculum seems to have abdicated its responsibility for what is to be taught:

“Ideally, all students need to acquire historical understanding of all people in South Africa, as the basis on which to forge a sense of a shared human past.”[59]

The report uses the rather vague word “ideally” and in general, the document does not give any real recommendation how to achieve this shared historical understanding.

 

On the contrary, the Manifesto contains rather concrete and very interesting recommendations for how to create a sense of South African unity. Already on the first page it is stated:

“Here was born an idea, a South African idea, of moulding a people from diverse origins, cultural practices, languages, into one, within a framework democratic in character, that can absorb, accommodate and mediate conflicts and adversarial interests without oppression and injustice.”[60]

 

As can be read in the quote above, the visions of the Manifesto still give voice to an almost utopian idea of a united South Africa. It is interesting to note how well this imagery corresponds with theories on nation building. Wanting to become a “people”, the citizens of a country can find themselves seeking for, and consequently finding, things in common - places, practices, personages, memories, signs and symbols. [61] A new type of glue needs to be found, and the Manifesto argues that the educational system’s: :

“…primary purpose must be to enrich the individual, and by extension then, the broader society”.[62]

 

In accordance with the History Panel, the Manifesto emphasises the past, but other values are also promoted. Although the Manifesto points out the risk of emphasising subjects like Science and Technology too much, the less outspoken policy of the Manifesto itself seems to do precisely that. Listed as one of the 16 educational strategies, alongside “Putting history back into the curriculum”, we find “Nurturing the New Patriotism or affirming our common citizenship”. Through this strategy, it is argued, a shared sense of pride and commonly held values a common identity can be forged. The manifesto continues by describing South Africa’s official motto: !ke e: /zarra//ke – which means “Unity in Diversity” – to accept each other “through learning about each other – and through the study of how we have interacted in the past.” It adds that reconciliation:

“...is impossible without the acknowledgement and understanding of this complex, difficult but rich history. [But this requires] adhering to a common identity, a common notion of South-Africanness [which flows] naturally from the value of reconciliation.”[63]

 

Interestingly, the Manifesto argues that the base of New Patriotism should be the constitutional values and common symbols, such as singing the national anthem, displaying the national flag, saying out loud an oath of allegiance and knowing about other national symbols.[64] Under the heading: “The Values in Education: Celebration of our National Symbols” it is written:

“[t]he program identifies the flag, national anthem, the coat of arms, animal (springbok), flower (King Protea), bird (blue crane), tree (Yellowwood) and fish (Galjoen) as our national symbols. These symbols express a spirit and ethos, inasmuch as they are symbolic affirmations of our nationhood.”[65]

 

In South Africa, where even the official national motto acknowledges the diversity of its people, a common ground cannot be found in symbols representing one of the groupings. However, it seems it is easier to construct a common ground in symbols which do not have a direct link to the past, for example by choosing fairly abstract and “neutral” symbols of the new patriotism. And the national identity now invented, does not seem to have its base in a shared perception of the apartheid past, but instead in a shared perception of a South Africa adjusted to “universal” values and the 21^st century marketplace.

 

South African education no longer prescribes a set content that has to be taught, teachers state that the distant history and knowledge about the apartheid past is relevant, yet at the same time they often prefer to teach more current history and of the Constitution and the present appears to be more relevant than the past. According to policy documents for South African education a new and equal education for all is to be implemented. With the current situation, how is this to be executed? Until the educational structure has been fully implemented and all South African teachers and students are able to benefit from it, perhaps a prescribed and specified content in the national curriculum relating a compromised minimum amount of knowledge is not such a bad idea.

 

Conclusion

In the immediate post-apartheid years, the notions of reconciliation and knowledge about the past were used in media nationally as well as internationally when talking about South Africa’s peaceful transition and were seen as the promising glue that would hold people together. If the past was to be used as a nation building tool it had to be used cautiously. It had to be dealt with in a manner acceptable to those who feel they have suffered unjust treatment and to those who are accused of ill-treating. However, national rhetoric in present day South Africa seems to have changed in its nation building tune. In the Manifesto, history might still be highlighted as important, but “New Patriotism” is stressed more concretely as well as a patriotic ”verbal affirmation of citizenship” and a new kind of pride.

 

During apartheid, a minority of people denied the majority a space in South African historiography and partly on basis of this, the minority upheld unequal power relations. When a large part of the past is seen as mainly unjust and negative by a majority of the people, it seems difficult to invent “new” positive national images based on that past. As an alternative, an earlier oppressed majority, now in power, might choose to treat the past as a less significant part of the national identity, than it has been in nation building processes in other countries, and instead seek their positive nation building symbols elsewhere. South Africa is instead portrayed as a future nation, proving its readiness to keep up with global progress. The national curriculum contains an apparent stress on skills and on subjects like science and technology and the Constitution has become an important factor of symbolic value for South Africans to gather around.

 

The Values forming “the South Africa idea” as depicted in the Manifesto, seem to be based on two notions, both very important, but seemingly different – “reconciliation” and “the new patriotism”.[66] Both concepts aim towards creating a base for a united South Africa but from different directions. Dealing with the past can be seen to create different types of nation building. These are: making the past the basis for national unity and identity or making the present and future the basis for the same process. Early post-apartheid efforts seem to have been aimed at using the past as a uniting factor. Concentrating on the future and how to regain pride and sense of equality for all South Africans seems to be the path chosen by the South African government in 2001, thus shadowing the early nation building intentions.

 

History education has been sidestepped because it does not unequivocally serve as a positive mirror for identity- and community formation in South Africa. During apartheid, “history” played a major role and early nation building intentions included using the past intensively, but this focus has been replaced by values preparing the younger generation of South Africans for the global market and shaping them for the 21^st century. The link to the past has lost in value and the official rhetoric of South Africa is promoting “universal” and positive images of the future. However, still lingering are relatively empty phrases like the “rainbow nation” and a South African education that in a sense still reproduces segregation – but without apartheid’s explicit dogmas. South Africa’s choice of dealing with the past has truly become a process of “wiping the slate clean of what has never been written”.[67]