‘Why, why are we not allowed even…?’: a de/colonizing narrative of complicity and resistance in post/apartheid South Africa

Abstract

South Africa is poised at a critical moment in its de/colonizing efforts. Engulfed in laudable anti‐apartheid policies and legislation, South Africa has created a strong base for addressing colonial and apartheid legacies of racial, economic and political oppression. Despite these efforts, education continues to be a complex and contested terrain as the new ideology of human rights and social justice for all is negotiated, challenged and imagined. What is imperative at this historical juncture is an analysis of how de/colonizing efforts are translated in key educational environments. I present this analysis through the interplay of the de/colonizing narrative of complicity and resistance of Gugu, a Black South African teacher. Contextualized within both historic‐political and contemporary educational discourse, rhetoric and legislation, Gugu’s narrative offers a space to examine the complex and contradictory roles apartheid and post/apartheid education play in engendering and resisting de/colonization and recolonization.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the Lakeside Collective for their comments and feedback on early drafts of this paper. Much appreciation is offered to the reviewers for their critical reading and suggestions. Jeong‐eun Rhee is especially thanked for her invaluable insights, critique, suggestions and our dialogues—all of which aided in the crafting of this paper.

Notes

1. See for example the Education White Paper; SA School Education Act of 1996, Curriculum 2005.

2. For example the Group Areas Act and Racial Classification Act of 1950.

3. For example, the Soweto student insurrection of 1976 was a tragic national moment in South Africa. More than one thousand Black students were killed in demonstrations (Kunnie, 2000). Students were protesting against the Bantu education system and the government’s policy of mandating Afrikaans as a second medium of instruction in Black schools (this in addition to Black students already having English as a medium of instruction).

4. See Subreenduth 2003a for details of this study.

5. I use the apartheid racial categorization White, African, Coloured and Indian here not as an essentialized concept or category but as a means to illustrate apartheid ideology/practices based on race.

6. The word ‘Bantu’ in the Nguni group of languages mean ‘people’; however, the South African apartheid government usurped this word and officially used it as a racial reference to the indigenous South African (Nkabinde, 1997; see also Kallaway, 1986; Prah, 1999; Hlatshwayo, 2000 and others for a closer reading of Bantu Education apartheid ideology and labor (re)production).

7. Diseko (1990) and Vally and Dalamba (1999) provide statistics on financial investments in education according to race by the apartheid state, as well examples of curricula, teacher qualifications and resource disparity based on race.

8. See Gultig et al. (1998) for further information on the Outcomes Based Education model implemented in South Africa.

9. Thiven Reddy (2000) offers a concise theoretical, historical and discursive reading/understanding/analysis of how European conceptualizations of the ‘savage’, ‘ethnic’ and ‘class other’ was constructed in South Africa from early 1652 to the present.

10. See Vally and Dalamba (1999); the SAHRC research report on similar experiences of black students in a previously white school specifically highlights this issue via student narratives.

11. See Breidlid (2002), Alexander (2003) and Ndimande (2004) with regard to an analysis of language issues, dominant culture and inclusion/exclusion of indigenous knowledge in curriculum and classrooms.