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Abstract
A reanalysis of colonial education is necessary in order to highlight its multifaceted and hybrid nature in specific colonial contexts. Although in general, colonial education served the socio-political needs of the colonial machinery, the colonial government's hegemonic authority over the school curriculum did not operate as a totalising project. It was fettered by issues of political and social expediency that required both assimilation and accommodation in dealing with the sensitivities that were part and parcel of colonial rule. Influenced by theories of colonialism, this study used primary and secondary sources, in order to provide a nuanced understanding of the colonial history curriculum in Botswana. The paper argues that colonial rule was not merely a result of a foreign administration, but operated subject to local (counter-veiling) conditions, which reflected the complexities of the colonial context, and inadvertently influenced colonial education policy and practice, as well. Moreover, in the quest to create room for the incorporation of indigenous histories, the colonial authorities unwittingly came to reinforce the cultural hegemony of the principal Tswana groups. This provided the basis for the framing of history curricula in ways that inadvertently rendered the histories of the ethnic minorities invisible.
Notes on contributor
Lily Mafela is an Associate Professor of History and History Education at the University of Botswana in Gaborone, Botswana. She did her undergraduate degree (History and Education) in Botswana, MEd (History Education) at the University of Bristol in the UK, and her MA (history) and Ph.D. (History) at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, USA.
Notes
1. For a discussion of this issue see Taylor and Guyver (Citation2012).
2. The conflictual aspect of this relationship is best illustrated by the Native Proclamations Acts No. 74 and No. 75 of 1934, which significantly reduced the powers of the indigenous leadership.
3. When the traditional leaders (Dikgosi) were allowed wide latitude in their reign over their people, prior to the introduction of juridico-legal measures designed to curtail their powers.
4. The Tswana traditional leaders.
5. The division of the land of Botswana into Tribal Reserves and their naming after the principal ethnic groups was in Bechuanaland Protectorate a manifestation of a continental colonial trend.
6. For example, the colonial government apportioned land according to a system of reserves, which were assigned to particular Dikgosi of the recognised (usually numerically) superior ethnic Batswana groups. This system had no inbuilt provision for recognition of groups that did not have a similar system of leadership (Basarwa), or which were otherwise regarded as ‘subject’ groups even if they had distinct areas of land, distinct cultures, traditions and historical experiences. They were simply all lumped together for administrative convenience, and all deliberations were conducted with ‘principal’ Dikgosi.
7. Proclamations number 74 and 75 were particularly far-reaching in terms of changes that they brought to the hitherto unfettered powers of Dikgosi.
8. A marginalised ethnic group found in parts of Southern Africa, which is also referred to as the San or Basarwa in social science scholarship.
9. The Tswana traditional meeting place for discussion of political issues in particular.
10. Included in the texts was one titled, An account of the rise and fall of the empires of the world from the Egyptian to the British Empire.
11. Bechuanaland Protectorate 1931 Cape Code Syllabus, Botswana National Archives (BNA) 148.
12. BNA 148, 1931.
13. Minutes of the sixteenth session of the Bechuanaland Protectorate Native Advisory Council, held at Mafeking, 11–13 February 1935, BNARS, BNB 247, p. 50.
14. This was because colonial Botswana was part of the broader colonial South African political hegemony.
15. Other examples of colonial texts that were used in the post-colonial period in the 1960s and the 1970s are De Villiers’ (Citation1931) Junior certificate history, published by Gronum Miller, for the 1960s, and Blake and Haliburton's From stone axe to space age (Citation1971). Anthony Dachs’ (Citation1971) Khama of Botswana (part of the African Historical Biographers’ Series), published by Heinemann Educational Books, and Khama the good were used as readers and supplementary texts. For the primary school level Roy Gardner's Primary school history (Citation1972), which included the myth about Lentswe La Baratani: the hill of lovers that mixed myth and legend with history, as it is more of a fairy tale than a historical narrative. For the post-1977 period, T. Tlou and A. Campbell's (Citation1984) A history of Botswana, published by Macmillan Botswana, is still the main text that is used at the secondary school level.
16. See Ruther (Citation2012) for the deliberations of the Hermannsburg Mission amongst Batswana in the Transvaal.
17. To this end, the colonial educationist Victor Murray observed that outside Egypt there was no indigenous history taught, albeit it was not a precise assessment of the entire colonial context, since there had begun a gradual accommodation of these accounts into taught school history. Quoted in More letters to African teachers: the teaching of history, by Professor E.A. Walker, BNA, BNB 339.
18. Minutes of the sixteenth session of the Bechuanaland Protectorate Native Advisory Council, held in Mafeking, 11–13 February 1935, p. 51, BNARS.
19. Minutes of the sixteenth session of the Bechuanaland Protectorate Native Advisory Council, held in Mafeking, 11–13 February 1935, p. 50, BNARS.
20. He was writing in his capacity as the Director, National Bureau of Educational and Social Research in the Union of South Africa's Department of Education.
21. Professor E.B. Malherbe, Education for control, Letters to African teachers, BNA, BNB 339.
22. Professor E.A. Walker, The teaching of history, in More letters to African teachers, BNA, BNB 339.
23. It had been recently formed under the directorship of Charles F. Rey.
24. Resident Commissioner's address, in minutes of the third meeting of the Board of Advice on Native Education, held in Mafeking, on 9 August 1934, BNARS, BNA S98/12.
25. This was based on the principle of association rather than assimilation, as elaborated in Hopkins (Citation1999, p. 205).
26. The expression is borrowed from Hopkins (Citation1999).
27. The Bechuanaland administrative capital, which was located outside the territory until the eve of independence in 1965 when the capital was moved inside the territory of colonial Botswana.
28. Historical versions of Batswana origins in the education system up to the current period still perpetuate this commonly held singular perspective of Batswana origins.
29. A case in point is that of the Sebina brothers and Chiepes (for example, MonametsiChiepe) who were closely linked to and ably served the Ngwato oligarchy in various capacities.