http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4828-0596
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ABSTRACT
Transitional justice (TJ) and education have recently evolved into key areas of concern in processes of recovery undergone by societies emerging from violent conflict. Referencing the particular case of post-apartheid South Africa, this article investigates the distinct role of school textbooks as mediators of TJ in order to shed light on the under-researched interconnections between these fields. Its analysis of how South Africa’s history textbooks engage with the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission explores the discursive and pedagogical strategies they adopt as they deal with this high-profile TJ mechanism. The article’s theorisation will consider textbooks’ possible dual function as both instruments and indicators of broader post-conflict transformation by assessing the possibilities offered by a pedagogical model of TJ education involving history textbooks as ‘heteroglossic spaces’ and as ‘mediators of multivocal discourses’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr Denise Bentrovato holds a Ph.D. in International and Political History from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom. Over the past decade, she has worked in academia and for government institutions, international organisations and NGOs on issues of education and youth in conflict and post-conflict contexts in Africa. She is currently employed as a Research Fellow in the Department of Humanities Education at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she also acts as the co-director of the African Association for History Education (AHE-Afrika). At present, her work focuses on examining educational approaches to historical conflict and gross human rights violations in transitional societies.
Dr Johan Wassermann is a full professor in History Education at the University of Pretoria. He is also the co-director of the African Association for History Education (AHE-Afrika). His research interests include youth and history, life histories, history textbooks, teaching controversial issues in post-conflict Africa and minorities and the minoritised in Colonial Natal. Currently, he co-leads two research projects: ‘Text and Context in Africa’ and ‘Youth and Education in South Africa’.
ORCID
Denise Bentrovato http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4828-0596
Notes
1 Nicola Palmer, Phil Clark, and Danielle Granville, eds., Critical Perspectives in Transitional Justice (Cambridge: Intersentia, 2012); Ruti Teitel, Globalizing Transitional Justice. Contemporary Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
2 Clara Ramírez-Barat and Roger Duthie, eds., Education and Transitional Justice. Opportunities and Challenges for Peacebuilding (New York: International Center for Transitional Justice, 2015); Clara Ramírez-Barat and Roger Duthie, eds., Transitional Justice and Education: Learning Peace (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2016).
3 Julia Paulson and Michelle Bellino, ‘Truth Commissions, Education, and Positive Peace: An Analysis of Truth Commission Final Reports (1980–2015)’, Comparative Education 53, no. 3 (2017): 351–78.
4 Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions. 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2011).
5 Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011).
6 Lynn Davies, ‘Justice-Sensitive Education: The Implications of Transitional Justice Mechanisms for Teaching and Learning’, Comparative Education 53, no. 3 (2017): 333–50.
7 Denise Bentrovato, ‘Beyond Transitional Justice: Evaluating School Outreach Programmes and Educational Materials in Post-War Rwanda and Sierra Leone’, in Transitional Justice and Education: Engaging Children and Youth in Justice and Peacebuilding, eds. Clara Ramírez-Barat and Martina Schulze (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, forthcoming 2018); Julia Paulson, ‘“Whether and How?” History Education About Recent and Ongoing Conflict: A Review of Research’, Journal on Education in Emergencies 1, no. 1 (2015): 7–37. Such attempts have taken place across the globe. A recent initiative in this respect, whose outcomes and impact cannot yet be conclusively evaluated, is a project initiated by Euroclio in the Balkans. The project has entailed consultations and workshops with educational stakeholders from the region on how history teachers can use the records of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and its outreach materials, to help students investigate the sensitive and deeply disputed history of war in the 1990s. ‘“Learning History That Is ‘Not Yet History’” Development Workshop on the ICTY’. March 7, 2017. https://euroclio.eu/2017/03/learning-history-not-yet-history-development-workshop-icty. Last accessed on 28 January 2018.
8 Linda Chisholm, ‘The History Curriculum in the (Revised) National Curriculum Statement: An Introduction’, in Toward New Histories for South Africa: On the Place of the Past in Our Present, ed. Shamil Jeppie (Cape Town: Juta Gariep, 2004), 177. See also Richard Chernis, ‘The Past in the Service of the Present: A Study of South African History Syllabuses and Textbooks 1839–1990’ (PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, 1990).
9 Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson, eds., Commissioning the Past: Understanding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2002); Charles Villa-Vicencio and Wilhelm Verwoerd, eds., Looking Back, Reaching Forward: Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (Cape Town: Cape Town University Press, 2000).
10 Linda Chisholm, ‘The Politics of Curriculum Review and Revision in South Africa in Regional Context’, Compare 35, no. 1 (2005): 79–100; Felisa L. Tibbitts and Gail Weldon, ‘History Curriculum and Teacher Training: Shaping a Democratic Future in Post-Apartheid South Africa?’, Comparative Education 53, no. 3 (2017): 442–61.
11 Republic of South Africa, The South African Schools Act (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1996).
12 Ken Harley and Volker Wedekind, ‘Political Change, Curriculum Change and Social Formation 1990–2002’, in Changing Class: Education and Social Change in Post-Apartheid South Africa, ed. Linda Chisholm (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2004), 198.
13 Gail Weldon, ‘A Comparative Study of the Construction of Memory and Identity in the Curriculum in Societies Emerging from Conflict: Rwanda and South Africa’ (PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, 2009),137.
14 Sasha Polakow-Suransky, ‘Historical Amnesia? The Politics of Textbooks in Post-Apartheid South Africa’. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, LA, April 1–5, 2002), 3.
15 Department of Basic Education [DBE], Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement [CAPS]. History. FET Phase (Pretoria: Government Printing Works, 2011), 8.
16 Department of Education, Report of the History and Archaeology Panel to the Minister of Education (Pretoria: Department of Education, 2000); Department of Education, Report of the Working Group on Values in Education to the Minister of Education (Pretoria: Department of Education, 2000).
17 Weldon, ‘A Comparative Study’, 188.
18 Tibbits and Weldon, ‘History Curriculum’, 454.
19 Dylan Wray, ‘Facing the Past – Transforming Our Future: A Professional Development Program for History Teachers in South Africa’, in Transitional Justice and Education, eds. Ramírez-Barat and Duthie (2016), 340.
20 Chandra Lekha Sriram and Suren Pillay, Peace Versus Justice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa (Suffolk: James Currey, 2010); Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, eds., Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
21 Carol-Anne Stephenson et al., New Generation History, Learner’s Book Grade 12 (Durban: New Generation, 2013); Jean Bottaro, Pippa Visser, and Nigel Worden, Oxford In Search of History, Grade 12 Learner’s Book (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 2013); Kate L. Angier et al., Viva History Learner’s Book, Grade 12 (Johannesburg: Vivlia, 2013); Charles Dugmore et al., Spot on History, Grade 12 Learner’s Book (Cape Town: Pearson, 2013); Mario Fernandez et al., Focus History: Learner’s Book Grade 12 (Cape Town: Maskew Miller and Longman, 2013). Numerous other educational resources, both printed and audio-visual, are in existence and use; their analysis is beyond the scope of this study.
22 New Generation’s authorial team is particularly diverse in this context, while the publisher of Viva History promotes itself as a black-owned company.
23 Carolyn McKinney, Textbooks for Diverse Learners: A Critical Analysis of Learning Materials Used in South African Schools (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2005), 5.
24 Michael W. Apple and Linda K. Christian-Smith, eds., The Politics of the Textbook (New York: Routledge, 1991); Stuart J. Foster and Keith A. Crawford, eds., What Shall We Tell the Children? International Perspectives on School History Textbooks (Charlotte, NC: Information Age, 2006).
25 Alison Kitson and Alan McCully, ‘“You Hear about It For Real in School”. Avoiding, Containing and Risk-Taking in the History Classroom’, Teaching History 120 (2005): 32–7; Ariel Sánchez Meertens, ‘Courses of Conflict: Transmission of Knowledge and War’s History in Eastern Sri Lanka’, History and Anthropology 24, no. 2 (2013): 253–73. In the South African context, Henning Hues’ doctoral research can be mentioned here as an attempt to look at the uses of the textbooks by teachers. Henning Hues, Kluft am Kap. Geschichtsunterricht nach der Apartheid (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2014).
26 Angie Motshekga (2009), quoted in Adriaan L. Van Niekerk, ‘The Representation of Nelson Mandela in Selected Grade 12 History Textbooks’ (MEd thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2013), 6.
27 Department of Basic Education [DBE], Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement [CAPS]. History. Grade 12 (Pretoria: Government Printing Works, 2011).
28 DBE, National Curriculum Statement Grades R-12 (Pretoria: Government Printing Works, 2011).
29 Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 332.
30 That said, some textbooks do use leading questions; an example is the question in Viva History: ‘Why do you think it was important for South Africa’s TRC to hold public hearings?’. Angier et al., Viva History, 319.
31 The textbooks include several quotations from Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness (1999) and Boraine’s A Country Unmasked (2000).
32 Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 315.
33 Angier et al., Viva History, 314.
34 See, for example, Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 219.
35 Fernandez et al., Focus History, 297. The authors conclude that ‘there was a need for a TRC process’. Ibid., 294. The textbook provides another example of the use of leading questions to be answered via sources, asking learners to ‘give the main reasons why the TRC process was necessary for South Africa’. Ibid., 296.
36 Ibid., 297.
37 Ibid., 308.
38 Angier et al., Viva History, 321. The authors of Focus History contrast this perspective with the comment that ‘[n]o doubt defenders of the TRC would argue that this was not strictly part of their mandate, and that they had more than enough to cope with as it was’. Fernandez et al., Focus History, 308.
39 Deborah Posel, ‘The TRC Report: What Kind of History? What Kind of Truth?’, in Commissioning the Past: Understanding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, eds. Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2002), 147–72; Richard Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
40 Stephenson et al., New Generation, 331.
41 Ibid., 331.
42 Ibid., 344.
43 One source acknowledges violence committed by non-government forces as constituting the bulk of killings investigated by the TRC, exceeding the numbers of killings perpetrated by the South African police. Fernandez et al., Focus History, 315.
44 Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 313.
45 Stephenson et al., New Generation, 344; Fernandez et al., Focus History, 316, citing Boraine.
46 Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 325; Fernandez et al., Focus History, 310.
47 Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 323.
48 Stephenson et al., New Generation, 344; Fernandez et al., Focus History, 316, citing Boraine.
49 Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 324, citing a 1998 press release. Two textbooks refer to Mandela’s wife’s denial of personal accountability for the abduction and assault of a slain young activist and her justification of ANC actions at the time as a legitimate response to oppression and repressive violence. Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 312; Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 224.
50 Fernandez et al., Focus History, 305. The textbooks emphasise the strict conditions that applied and the limited number of successful submissions.
51 Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 221.
52 Angier et al., Viva History, 320.
53 Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 221; also in Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 319. A couple of textbooks further mention the acquittals of other leading figures in apartheid who were subject to prosecutions. Stephenson et al., New Generation, 341; Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 221.
54 Stephenson et al., New Generation, 338.
55 Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 218; Dugmore et al., Spot on History, 322.
56 Fernandez et al., Focus History, 304.
57 Angier et al., Viva History, 324.
58 Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 219; Stephenson et al., New Generation, 343.
59 Fernandez et al., Focus History, 302.
60 Ibid., 299–300.
61 Stephenson et al., New Generation, 336–9.
62 Ibid., 350.
63 Fernandez et al., Focus History, 309, citing Tutu.
64 Ibid., 309.
65 Ibid., 309; Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 222–3.
66 Angier et al., Viva History, 322.
67 Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 219.
68 Fernandez et al., Focus History, 303.
69 Ibid., 326–7.
70 Ibid., 326. In Search of History similarly includes a source highlighting the continuation of violence and prejudice in the post-TRC era, warning against the ‘temptation to romanticise the South African transition’ and advocating looking beyond the TRC’s achievements. Bottaro et al., In Search of History, 225.
71 Denise Bentrovato, ‘History Textbook Writing in Post-Conflict Societies: From Battlefield to Site and Means of Conflict Transformation’, in History Teaching and Conflict Transformation: Social Psychological Theories, History Teaching and Reconciliation, eds. Charis Psaltis, Mario Carretero and Sabina Čehajić-Clancy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 37–76; Denise Bentrovato, Learning to Live Together in Africa through History Education: An Analysis of School Curricula and Stakeholders’ Perspectives (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2017).
72 Denise Bentrovato, Narrating and Teaching the Nation: The Politics of Education in Pre- and Post-Genocide Rwanda (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015); Denise Bentrovato, ‘Accounting for Genocide: Transitional Justice, Mass (Re)Education and the Pedagogy of Truth in Present-Day Rwanda’, Comparative Education 53, no. 3 (2017): 396−417.
73 Ibid. See also, Denise Bentrovato, Karina Korostelina and Martina Schulze, eds., History Can Bite: History Education in Divided and Postwar Societies (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2016).
74 Alan McCully, ‘History Teaching, Conflict and the Legacy of the Past’, Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 7, no. 2 (2012): 145–59.
75 Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).
76 Jan Blommaert, Mary Bock and Kay McCormick, ‘Narrative Inequality in the TRC Hearings: On the Hearability of Hidden Transcripts’, in Discourse and Human Rights Violations, eds. Christine Anthonissen and Jan Blommaert (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2007), 33–63; Annelies Verdoolaege, Reconciliation Discourse: The Case of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008).
77 Van Niekerk, ‘The Representation of Nelson Mandela’.
78 DoE, Report of the History and Archaeology Panel, 11.
79 Anthony Balcomb, ‘The Power of Narrative: Constituting Reality through Storytelling’, in Orality, Memory and the Past: Listening to the Voices of Black Clergy under Colonialism and Apartheid, ed. Philippe Denis (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster, 2000), 51–61.
80 Davies, ‘Justice-Sensitive Education’, 347.
81 We thank one of the anonymous reviewers for highlighting the need to stress this point.