introduction

1. Beyond blame and victimhood : confronting the binaries of apartheid in the classroom boitumeloMoreengsasht 2014

2. introduction • One of the conspicuous changes of the post-apartheid South Africa was the call for a multiracial society where racial discrimination would be punishable offence (Chikoko, Gimour, Harber and Serf, 2011). • The results of this approach are the multi-culturisationof our society and educational spaces such as university classrooms.

3. introduction What is taught in these spaces was also changed in an attempt to respond to the currently upheld values of a democratic, non-sexist and non-racial society. Hence the teaching of Apartheid was seen as a necessary topic to ensure that future generations are informed about the terrible past and to ensure that they try their best to avoid the repetition of such atrocities.

4. INTRODUCTION • The form that the History curriculum should take is particularly challenging in post-conflict societies as traumatic memories, experiences and interests are carried by teachers and learners. • How these experiences are conveyed differs in terms of who is describing the event – whatever description is legitimated socialises learners into particular ontologies and/or discoursesabout and seeing the world Wilmont & Naidoo (2011)

5. Society envisaged • The Preamble to the Constitution: • heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights. • NCS purposes of: • •equipping all learners, irrespective of their socio-economic background, race, gender, physical ability or intellectual ability, with the knowledge, skills and values necessary for self-fulfilment, and meaningful participation in society as citizens of a free country; • NCS principles: • •Social transformation:

6. Teaching apartheid or/about apartheid • Challenge as there is no general consensus about whether apartheid is dead and buried. • In some cases the debate is overshadowed by the focus on the long term effects of apartheid such the inequalities and developmental backlogs attributed to apartheid such as economic inequalities, income distribution, poverty levels, land ownership, educational access (Durrheim, 2011; Gradin, 2013; Spaull, 2013).

7. Teaching apartheid or/about • Easy to fall into the binaries of victims and perpetrators as there is still people who participated on both side during apartheid and those that are born from these role players. • Teaching about apartheid therefore requires approaching it as a “living concept” that allows for deconstruction, reconstruction and construction of its meaning and the meanings attached to it. • Therefore recognising the legitimacy of diversity, differences and disagreement. The purpose in this paper is explore the creation of such meanings as multicultural student teachers are pushed to look beyond their own limited understanding of apartheid to start embracing the views of the ‘other’.

8. Controversial issues • people argue about without reaching a conclusion and of which the society might be divided • conflict in opinion • views underpinned by the differences in beliefs, cultural differences, moral issues or understanding held by the protagonist. • usually heavily politicised and that the argument is often driven by fixed positions rather than remaining open to intellectual exploration of the topic.

9. Why controversial issues • Not negative - deepen democracy in post conflict societies. fairly reason out issues and to be open-mindedness. opportunity to explore issues such as cooperation, bargaining, compromising and accommodating, democratic values and skills through the use of analysis and discussion based on mutual trust.

10. Controversial issues • Post-conflicts societies such as South Africa are prone to having controversial issues, therefore exposing student to controversial issues will be preparing students for effective citizenship, learning the content and thinking skills necessary for students to make public policy decision, to operate successfully in a society in order to build consensus to learn to negotiate and manage differences, divided societies, deal with 21st century local and global crises they will face

11. VICTIMHOOD • During conflict situations societies usually go through periods of severe physical and psychological sufferings. These wounds takes time to heal and plays themselves out in the form of issues that will be driving the debates and positions taken by the different groups in the post-conflict era hence maintain that the rights and needs of victims becomes a controversial issue in post-conflict society. • There is also a strong sense of identity in such societies as being based on a binary opposition between victims and perpetrators.

12. victimhood • In divided societies where the former enemies have to live together after the war and a territorial segregation or partition was not part of the solution, requires that a recognition approach becomes an essential requirement in order to be able to deal with the past– project others as underserving victims, maybe others could have been victims

13. Victimhood • The positions taken about the issues and the manner in with they are interpreted is usually subjective in nature as it relies on the memories of the past injustices including emotional experience. • Memory constitute an important aspect of identity politics because victimhood is a historical and legal construction yet it is often experienced as an identity by those who define themselves as victims. • Victimhood is not acquired on the basis of authentic memory- instead it is constructed through references to human rights categories and criteria (Loytomaki, 2012, 19).

14. victimhood • In most cases usually the views events of the past from a group viewing themselves as legitimate victims and others as rivals and illegitimate perpetrators of unjust and immoral misdeeds Andrighetto, Mari & Volpato (2012, 513). • The views are further condoned by historiography has witnessed a tendency to read history from the viewpoints of victims and those marginalised or excluded by previous historiography (Loytomaki, 2012:2).

15. victimhood • This division into victims and perpetrators is often grounded on blame, where one group is blamed by the other. This taking of sides is an easy way out because it gives a falls sense of security but still leaves one disempowered. • The prevailing discourses of blame are shaped by binary structures which are not only oppositional but also hierarchical and polemic which situates the victors as powerful, predatory and lecherous; whilst the victims are innocent, genuine, naïve responsible and suffering (Tagwirei ,2014, 219) and further denies any form of emphathy for the other but rather encourages continued stigmatisation and worsened relationship between the different groups (Baumann 177). This scape-goating process can be dangerous as they pin the blame on a small section of the population, leaving the rest with the mistaken belief that they are safe – Skinner & Mfecane, 2004: 161).

16. Competitive victimhood • Competitive victimhood –claiming that one’s group has suffered more than the outgroup. It is considered an important inhibitor of the reconciliation process. claiming victimhood represent a way to escape guilt, draw international attention towards its diminished condition, rationalise revenge against rivals – instigating acts of violence that can persist for generations without taking responsibility. • Shared victimhood. [Self-perceived sense of collective victimhood constitute the integral part of their social identity – Robben & Suarez-Orozco, 2000) long after the conflict is resolved e.g Israeli-Jews + Palestinians as victims of Israeli-Arab conflict; Catholics + Protestant in Northern Ireland; Greek + Turkish in Cyprus; Serbs + Croats in former Yugoslavia

17. Hilton 2010, 479 – deliberate forgetting of the past to forge a new identity by consciously and selectively remembering it. People create memories through social networks to provide a sense of self in response to contemporary circumstances. Victim mentality. • Competitive victimhood – competition by social groups for acknowledgementof greater relative victim status. Occurs as a response to the moral social identity threat implied by accusations that one’s group has committed illegitimate harm against an outside group. Such acusations create moral gap between the ingroup and the outgroup, whereby the accused ingroup appears morally inferior in comparison with victimised outgroup. By claiming that the ingroup also suffers victimisation relative to the outgroup this gap can be psychologically reduced- used when a groups’ moral identity is at stake.

18. Methodology Narratives and small group exercises and reflective writing- power of narratives to enhance perspective-taking and empathy, help learners to critically assess their own assumptions and biases in their encounter with the otherness (Ross et.al. 2011, 189, Loytomaki, 2012). The work of historians consist of creating distance, putting things into perspective, even deconstruction. History is a space for contesting perspectives, a field for political struggle- battles of interpretation over what constitutes victimhood, who are the victims and how far victimhood carries overtime exist in the realm of law

19. Findings • Difficult dialogue • Selective bias • Detect inaccuracies in the popular stories • Challenging stereotypes/alternative interpretation