Transcript Slide 1

BEYOND BLAME AND VICTIMHOOD :
CONFRONTING THE BINARIES OF
APARTHEID IN THE CLASSROOM
BOITUMELO MOREENG
SASHT 2014
July 21, 2015
INTRODUCTION
• One of the conspicuous changes of the postapartheid 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 multiculturisation of our society and educational
spaces such as university classrooms.
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.
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 discourses about and seeing the
world Wilmont & Naidoo (2011)
SOCIETY ENVISAGED
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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:
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).
TEACHING APARTHEID OR/ABOUT
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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’.
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.
WHY CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES
• Not negative - deepen democracy in post conflict
societies. fairly reason out issues and to be openmindedness. 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.
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
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.
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
VICTIMHOOD
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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).
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).
VICTIMHOOD
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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).
COMPETITIVE VICTIMHOOD
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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 & SuarezOrozco, 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
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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 reducedused when a groups’ moral identity is at stake.
METHODOLOGY
Narratives and small group exercises and reflective writingpower 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
FINDINGS
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Difficult dialogue
Selective bias
Detect inaccuracies in the popular stories
Challenging stereotypes/alternative interpretation