COSATU Calls for the Urgent Introduction of People's History in
the Schools

COSATU welcomes the launch of the South African Democracy
Education
Trust. We believe that this initiative is an important step toward
recording the history of our people's history struggle for freedom.
It
must form part of an urgent process to ensure that our country's
real
history is taught in the schools.

The way we pass on our history must make a connection
between our
future generations and the heroes who wrote the Freedom
Charter,
endured the Treason and Rivonia trials, led the 1972 Durban
strikes,
who led the 1976 Uprising and suffered the state terror from the
mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Only this continuity can ensure the
maintenance of our ideals as the basis for transforming our
society to
benefit the majority of our people.

Unfortunately, there has not been a decisive change in the
schools
history curriculum. Until 1994, the history taught our children
glorified the invasion and exploitation of our country. It denied and
denigrated the struggle of the liberation movement for freedom for
all
South Africans.

We cannot continue to wait until the full overhaul of the
curriculum
before we transform the way we teach history to our children.
Rather,
we must accelerate the development and introduction of new
textbooks
and teacher training to give a balanced and truthful account of our
history.

The history taught in the past glorified the apartheid values of
division and oppression. The current Zulu programme playing on
SABC 3
typifies this. Our new curriculum must, instead, build solidarity
among our youth. It must free our understanding of the past from
prejudice and distortion. Only by retelling our long and arduous
historic journey to freedom and seeing ourselves in terms of that
inheritance, can we come to understand who we are and what
we should
do for ourselves. This must help us realise our dream of a non
racial,
non sexist democratic and a free South Africa.

Siphiwe Mgcina (Publicity Officer)
Congress of South African Trade Unions

Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24
Fax: +27 11 339-2281/5080/6940
Cell: 082 821 7456
E-mail: [email protected]

[email protected]