Focus on (South) African history

• Published date: 11 May 2022
• Publication title: Daily News

In 2014, the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), an ally of the ruling ANC, tabled a proposal that the school History curriculum also be a compulsory subject in the FET phase

It was prompted by the storm wave of xenophobic attacks in 2008 throughout South Africa. Sadtu also also argued the History curriculum should not glorify the people who colonised South Africa.

Instead, it lobbied for a compulsory History curriculum focusing on telling “real South African History”. Making the school History compulsory was later buttressed by the ANC and the Department of Basic Education (DBE).

The call to make History compulsory sparked a heated debate in South Africa – one view supporting the call and the other opposing this call.

Those lobbying for History as a compulsory subject argue it will function as a tool to advance social cohesion, nationhood, nation-building, and tackle social ills such as racism, xenophobia, and homophobia.

Those opposing the call express concerns that the History curriculum might be captured for political utilisation by those who hold political power.

During the apartheid epoch, the school History curriculum was used as a political tool to perpetuate the National Party’s (NP) propaganda and Afrikaner nationalism. The then (NP) government used the subject to justify its discriminative and chauvinistic policies and political actions.

After 1994, the expectation was that the History subject, would be rescued from being politicised. But that did not happen. Instead, the curriculum continued to be used as a political tool to perpetuate certain narratives by those who held political power at the time, as was the case before 1994.

As such, Professor Jonathan Jansen accused the first post-apartheid curriculum, known as Curriculum 2005 (C2005), for being rooted in political symbolism – viable tool during the apartheid epoch. Even the most recent History curriculum, known as Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS), – though observable alterations were made in terms of its content – remains Euro-centralised, patriarchal, sexist, and exclusive.

The History curriculum is sometimes referred to as “his”-”story”. What happened to “her”-“story”. In other words, the curriculum is still suffering from epistemic exclusion. History is mainly told in a foreign, paternalistic way that does not draw from local settings.

That is evident in the FET History curriculum, where content for all grades does not begin with the teaching of (South) African...