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Opening up the memory debates: the interregnum years 1990-1994
The political transition challenged the entrenched ideologies and power structures of the apartheid regime, providing ideological space for challenges to the Afrikaner nationalist interpretation of history expressed in official textbooks. The negotiations for a post-apartheid settlement were launched in December 1991 and continued throughout 1992 and 1993, resulting in the first democratic elections in South Africa on 27 April 1994. The progress of the negotiations and the growing realisation that a settlement could be reached that would alter the political status quo, evoked very different responses within the history community. On the one hand, there was an urgent attempt by the apartheid bureaucracy to „reform‟ the official history curriculum in order to maintain its Afrikaner nationalist identity and ongoing influence; and on the other the progressive history community69 embarked on its first sustained and open challenge to the official narrative in history education in recent years, leading to a series of teacher conferences and textbook colloquia in 1992 and 1993. While the progressive history group attempted to make participation in the debates more racially inclusive, the contestations in history education at this time were essentially between white English and Afrikaans interests and identities.
The Afrikaner nationalist response to the shifting political context, came from the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in 1991 and 1992 and from within the (apartheid) Department of National Education (DNE) system in 1994, during the runup to the elections. The Afrikaner nationalist position was strongly reaffirmed in the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) report on The Teaching of history in the RSA published in 1992. The report attempted to signal a reforming state, but the authors were unable to free themselves of Afrikaner nationalist ideology and Afrikaner identity. Noting that the teaching of history had become highly sensitive and politicised by the early 1990s, the authors believed that history would be the subject that, „among all the subjects taught in a future „new dispensation‟, will probably be the one most extensively debated as regards its value, objectives and curriculum…‟.70 They advocated a conservative pluralist approach to school history;
race was thinly disguised as the „cultures‟ of various „groups‟. It noted that „each community has its own distinctive historical roots and identity and can rightly demand that this be recognised and respected in the education of its children‟. It recommended that in South African history, „justice should be done to all the communities‟, that syllabi should be „balanced, true and accountable‟, and that a syllabus should provide for teaching the „cultural history‟ of a group and for „teaching the cultural history of other cultural groups‟ with the proviso that: the richer a community‟s cultural life and the greater its contribution to historical development, the stronger its claim that the teaching of its cultural history be accorded a central place in the syllabus. The central place in the proposed South African history modules continued to be given to whites, particularly Afrikaners, which clearly indicated that the compilers believed that „the greater… contribution to historical development‟ in this country had been that of the Afrikaners. This was a thinly disguised move to privilege the Afrikaner nationalist narrative and to maintain Afrikaner nationalism as a central tenet of history education. The construction of a common collective South African memory and identity was not entertained.
In February 1994, in an apparently urgent last attempt to be seen to be initiating change before the first democratic elections took place in April, the Department of National Education put out a report outlining proposed amendments to the school history curriculum. The Core Syllabus Committee (CSC) for History that drew up the report was composed of eight men, for the most part white and middle-aged. Five of them were either from the still racially separate national or provincial education departments; of the two listed „experts‟, one was the Afrikaner Nationalist Historian from the University of Stellenbosch who had co-authored the „illustrative syllabus‟ included in the 1992 HSRC Report, the other was from Vista University; and the final member was a representative of the Committee of University Principals.72 With minor differences, the approach to the history syllabus was still firmly situated in an Afrikaner Nationalist approach.
Curriculum 2005 and the denial of memory in history education
By 1996 it had become increasingly imperative to the ANC in government to have a new curriculum in place before the next general election in 1999 as the government had to be seen to be delivering on its promises in education.45 A new curriculum was needed that would bring about the realisation of a new society and promote the unity and the common citizenship and destiny of all South Africans irrespective of race, class, gender or ethnic background. Recognising that education policy was a crucial signifier of the re-imagined nation in a post-conflict society, several key new education policies, deriving their values from the South African Constitution had been put in place by mid-1996. One of the first was the White Paper on Education and Training of 1995 which aimed to provide a generic document that framed the core values and vision of the new government and which symbolised the consolidation of political power of the ANC through the education policy process.47 In it the stated goal of post-apartheid education was the promotion of a democratic, free, equal, just and peaceful society with well-informed and critical citizens.48 What was now urgently needed was a new curriculum that would give expression to these policies and that would be able to deliver both democratic and effective economic citizens. Significantly, the education discourses did not at any time engage with locating the new South Africa within an understanding and consciousness of the past, in order to strengthen democracy for the present and future. Neither did the first post-apartheid education framework policy that was introduced in 1996.
In July 1996, a draft Curriculum Framework for General and Further Education and Training49, for the development of a new curriculum, was published. Unlike the Constitution and other new education policy documents, it did not take the past as a point of departure. Its discourse was that of the economic nation with the focus on the present and future. The critical skills were considered to be those most needed for citizens in successful modern economies – for commerce and industry. It also included the need to promote the development of a national identity and an awareness of South Africa‟s role and responsibility with regard to Africa and the rest of the world – but these were economic roles and responsibilities. It was soon very clear that national identity was not to be located in an understanding of our past, but in the recognition of our diverse society, multilingualism, co-operation, civic responsibility and the ability to participate in all aspects of ociety and an understanding of the national, provincial, local and regional development needs in the present.50 This document provided the framework for the development of the first post-apartheid curriculum which became known as Curriculum 2005.
Chapter One: Introducing the study: orientation and background
-Rationale
-Research focus and questions
-Framework, perspectives and concepts
-The two national contexts for the enquiry
-Legacy of trauma
-Organisation of the thesis
Chapter Two: Conceptual framework and research methodology
The policy context for this study
Conceptual framework
Data collection
Significance of the enquiry
Chapter Three: State, curriculum and identity in post-conflict societies
-Introduction
-Limitations of existing knowledge on the construction of memory and identity in post-conflict studies
-What we already know
-Memory and identity in divided societies – Israel
-Memory and identity in divided societies – Northern Ireland
-Post-communist states
-Facing the past in Germany
-Conclusion
Chapter Four: Constructing the conflict narrative in apartheid education: South Africa to 1994
-Introduction
-The construction of the conflict narrative
-Counter memories – resisting the dominant narrative in history education
-Opening up the memory debates: the interregnum years 1990-1994
-Conclusion
Chapter Five: Curriculum, conflict and change: early transition in South Africa
-Introduction
-Amending the conflict narrative: 1994-1995
-Curriculum 2005 and the denial of memory in history education
-Broadening curriculum: TRC and emerging official memory
-Renegotiating public memory
-Conclusion
9 Chapter Six: History education and the recovery of memory: the National Curriculum Statements
-Introduction
-The struggle of memory over forgetting: the politics of the new curriculum
-Strengthening and streamlining the curriculum: the Revised National Curriculum Statement (General Education and Training) and the National Curriculum Statement (Further Education and Training)
-Public history and the construction of official memory
-Conclusion
Chapter Seven: Rwanda: The construction of a conflict narrative and history education before 1994
-Introduction
-Pseudo-scientific notions of race and the Rwandan past: creation of a master narrative
-Constructing the conflict narrative
-The conflict narrative in history education
-History education and mass participation in genocide
-Conclusion
Chapter Eight: Memory, identity and history education in postgenocide Rwanda
-Introduction
-Restructuring education and education policy
-Memory and education policy
-Curriculum revision: History education and re-imagining the nation
-Disseminating the official narrative
-Searching for a true history
-Public history and the claiming of ideological space
-Conclusion
Chapter Nine: Key findings: theory and research on memory, identity and the post-conflict curriculum
-Introduction
-Key findings
-Towards a theory of curriculum change in post-conflict
-societies
-Implications for further research
Bibliography
