9. History and Civic Education in the Rainbow Nation

CAROL ANNE SPREEN AND CHRISSIE MONAGHAN

9. HISTORY AND CIVIC EDUCATION IN THE RAINBOW NATION

Citizenship, Identity, and Xenophobia in the New South Africa

INTRODUCTION

In 1966, the United Nations proclaimed March 21 the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to commemorate the events of March 21, 1960, when South African police opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration against the apartheid “pass laws” in Sharpeville (an apartheid era “African” designated township community). Four decades later, in 2001, South Africa hosted the United Nations World Conference on Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. High on the agenda was the growing concern over the level of xenophobia and increased violence toward those perceived as “foreigners.” Unfortunately, in the years following the conference, the participants’ warnings of xenophobia became a reality. Violence against other African nationals grew more frequent and finally spiraled out of control in 2008, when violent attacks throughout the country killed over 67 people and injured several hundred. The xenophobic violence over the last two decades has led to the voluntary deportation of many immigrants as well as considerable destruction to township communities and immigrant owned businesses. A massacre of 34 mineworkers in August 2012 by police at the Lonmin Marikana mine was eerily reminiscent of the Sharpeville massacre. This event, together with the continuing high levels of violence, highlights deep, persistent pathologies in post-apartheid South Africa and underlines the failure of redress policies to address continuing inequality and protracted poverty. Today, South Africa evinces the highest level of inequality in the world, with a Gini coefficient (a common measure of income disparity) of 0.63 (UNDP, 2013). The end of apartheid, though a stunning victory for human rights and democracy, has not translated into the expected end to various forms of discrimination, social exclusion, and violence for the majority of the country. Why has South Africa’s transition from apartheid to a multicultural democracy created fertile ground for xenophobia and violent attacks on other African nationals, rather than promoting greater equality and social justice? The answer, we suggest, can be found in the particular reconstruction of South African national identity as well as the country’s approach to civic education.

This essay explores the role of education in South Africa’s recent project of nation-building. A core element of the problem, we argue, is that far from “building a rainbow,” the imagined community of South Africa has been constructed against a distant African “other.” Incendiary interpretations of South Africa’s past, represented in history and civics classrooms throughout the country, feed ethnocentrism and xenophobia in the present. We focus particularly on why and how national narratives continue to be constructed around migration, citizenship, and belonging. We then explore the ways in which these phenomena are represented in history and civics textbooks and classrooms throughout South Africa and the suggested consequences of these representations. We conclude by considering the ways that critical citizenship education might provide a different foundation upon which to build a truly rainbow nation for South Africa.

CONSTRUCTING THE NATIONAL NARRATIVE FOR A RAINBOW NATION

Over the last two decades, through various symbols and icons, the newly democratic South African state has inspired the multicultural image of the “Rainbow Nation.” By evoking the iconography of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki’s promotion of the African Renaissance, singing the multilingual national anthem, waving images of the new flag at various celebrations, and glorifying its racially integrated sports teams at events like the 2010 World Cup, “South Africa has powerfully created the semiotic elements to unify rather than separate divided communities through patriotic tropes” (Keet & Carrim, 2006). In policy statements and public debates, it is easy to recognize the ways in which South Africans have begun their project of nation-building through rewriting their history and renaming their symbols and legends. Education has been one of the primary vehicles for doing this. Yet, official as well as symbolic notions of citizenship and democracy ring hollow because they rely too heavily on the myth of the “homogeneous nation” in a society where all are still not treated equally and where social unrest continues to characterize ethnic and social relations. Although much of the recent violence— whether social unrest among Africans and so-called “coloreds” in the Eastern and Western Capes or attacks against other African nationals in many migrant and township communities—centers on the distribution of power and limited resources, in essence it is a struggle over citizenship and identity, or who “belongs” and who should have rights and access to housing, public services, and other resources.

“Race,” Inequality, and Rights in the South African Constitution Why is it that in spite of a constitution that was arrived at in a 20th century model of democratic bargaining and consensus-building and in which are enshrined some of the noblest sentiments and insights concerning human

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