From pre-colonial wars to the mechanics of state execution, students are demanding a more nuanced history. It is time to stop sanitising the past and walk the 52 steps.
The Department of Basic Education is currently reconsidering how we teach our past, a move that comes not a moment too soon. In a recent series of conversations at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), students expressed a clear hunger for a history that goes beyond the “standard” narrative.
Joy Cain, a first-year Biomedical Sciences student, noted a lack of perspective on the white experience during Apartheid, while Shane Yurar, a first-year Film and Television student, suggested the curriculum should expand to include pre-colonial history, specifically the tribal wars of leaders such as King Shaka. Others, like Aluta Manale, an international relations honours student, pointed toward the migration stories from Congo. Or as Tinashe Morena, a second-year psychology student, said, the need to study the Black authors and struggle writers who defined an era.
The underlying message from these students is clear: they feel their history has been “filtered.”
As I stood in the Kgosi Mampuru II Gallows last week, Wednesday, 15 April, I realised just how thick that filter is. While students are asking for more diverse stories, there is a physical site of memory in Tshwane that remains almost absent from our national consciousness. The Gallows is a “human abattoir”, a place where 3,500 lives were ended with clinical, industrial efficiency.
My mentors cautioned that the Gallows might be too ‘deep’ or too ‘sore’ a topic to bring up in a casual vox pop, and they are right. It is a heavy, sombre reality. But that is exactly why it needs to be taught. By shielding students from the ‘scary parts’ of our history, we are not protecting them; we are leaving them with an incomplete understanding of how we got here.
We learn about the “In Detention” poem in English class, but we do not walk the 52 steps in History. We talk about the triumph of 1994, but we do not look at the white telephone that never rang for those awaiting a pardon.
If the Department of Basic Education wants to truly localise our curriculum, they must include the sites that prove Apartheid was not just a set of laws, but a factory of dehumanisation. To truly appreciate the “Freedom” we celebrate on April 27th, we must stop sugarcoating the past. We must look at the darkness of the Gallows to understand the value of the light we live in today.
FEATURED IMAGE: Drawing of a noose that represents the Gallows, in South Africa. Graphics: Daniella Ripamonti
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- Wits Vuvuzela, Top Ten Freedom Day Movies, April 2015.
