“In my stride”: a life-history of Alie Fataar, teacher. Yunus Omar University of Cape Town A dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education, University of Cape Town, June 2015. The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town 2 ABSTRACT This thesis employs a life-history approach to investigate how a teacher-identity is cohered under conditions of education resistance in South Africa. The life-history is situated within the broad rubric of narrative studies, but extends this to investigating a teacher’s life within its complex locations of class, race, gender and religion. Alie Fataar was a legendary teacher at the Livingstone High School in Claremont, Cape Town, was a founder-member of the Non European Unity Movement (NEUM), General-Secretary of the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA), founder-member of the African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA), and Joint-Secretary of the Unity Movement of South Africa (UMSA) in exile. He was banned in 1961 under the Suppression of Communism Act, and went into exile in 1965. The study tracks his teaching and political journeys in South Africa, and across three fledgling post-colonial African countries, namely Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The primary data employed in the study are the transcribed narratives of more than fifty hours of semi-structured interviews conducted with the teacher, Alie Fataar. The study also employs secondary data in the form of life-history documents sourced from the respondent, and is supplemented by photographs sourced from the respondent, as well as archival materials which supplement the narrative data. This vast body of data is analysed using a constructivist grounded theory approach. Data analysis was facilitated by the employment of QSR-NVivo 10, a qualitative data-analysis computer software package well suited to a grounded theory analysis. The study is the first known doctoral work in South Africa to utilise a life-history framework to explore the contextualised life of a teacher associated with the TLSA as this life engages with legislative frameworks, official policies, professional teacher associations, local communities, colleagues, personal networks, political movements and other social actors in the context of resistance in South African education. The study helps us understand the fluid discursive dimensions of a teaching life as it navigates complex personal, political and professional fields in the broader context of education resistance in fiercely contested social and political arenas. The study’s main finding is that Alie Fataar resists several essentialising social forces, including class, racial and religious identities, and, in doing so, the study finds that Alie Fataar holds consistently to a central, life-organising identity of the teacher as the supreme public intellectual under conditions of resistance in education and the broader socio-political-economic framework in South Africa. The study contributes to the still-sparse academic literature on the teachers of the TLSA, and simultaneously contributes to Cape social history and the politics of intellectual marginalisation in the Muslim community in the Cape from the first quarter of the twentieth century. The study makes theoretical contributions to the academic fields of life-history and the literature on exile, and contends that the researcher-researched continuum must be made explicit throughout a life-history study if the authorial voice of the subject of such a study is not to be subjugated. In terms of teacher-policy formulation, the study finds that the complex and nuanced identity-formation of teachers makes it imperative that the teacher-policy arena incorporates the voices of teachers in policy formulation. This avoids policy mismatches with regard to the very group, teachers, who are expected to adopt and implement these policies in schools. 3 DECLARATION I declare that ‘In my stride’: a life-history of Alie Fataar, teacher, is my own work, that it has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other university, and that all the sources I have used and quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by complete references. Yunus Omar June 2015 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First I wish to acknowledge the warmth and generosity of Mrs. Ursula Fataar, who, with her husband Alie, opened their doors and lives to me unconditionally from the moment I began this study. Since that first meeting in Wynberg, my life has been enriched through the research and personal engagements with both Alie and Ursula Fataar. This study was made possible through the comradely willingness of two unassuming people who gave me a gift few receive: the gift is one of trust. I extend my deepest thanks and respect to Mrs. Fataar, who continues her activism in the progressive arenas of our country. Hers, too, is a story that deserves to be told, alongside that of Alie Fataar and the many comrades who fought anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-segregationist and anti-imperialist struggles throughout their adult lives. “But let’s talk.” From the moment that Professor Crain Soudien penned these words at the end of an assessment-comment on an HDE assignment of mine many years ago, he has been an enduring source of intellectual direction and guidance. I was not fortunate enough to have encountered Professor Soudien at the Harold Cressy High School where he taught and I was a student. Happily, my postgraduate journey was dotted with learning encounters with Professor Soudien. His diary groans under his punishing daily schedule, yet he remains the model of soft-spoken mentorship that has allowed me to bring this study to completion. His belief in youth agency and their capacity for positive, radical social change is a project I have embraced all my working life, and I suspect that much of my optimism in this regard stems from readings of his works, and the discussions with him that I have been privileged to be a part of. I convey my deep sense of indebtedness to Professor Soudien via these few words. Inevitably during the writing of this study, memories of my teachers have been foregrounded. From Mrs. Smith’s pre-school in Little Lesar Street, District Six, then a few metres further west to the now-destroyed Sydney Street Primary School; through Harold Cressy High School on the upper reaches of the District, and to UCT, teachers have been pivotal and decidedly influential in the formation of my identities. At every stage, teachers at these institutions taught me explicitly to understand that I was part of one human race, and taught me to disavow the many markers of negative discrimination which were appended to us all. I take this opportunity to relate one incident to exemplify what my teachers stood for. After my application for a teaching post at my high school alma mater had been processed, my principal informed me that my application had been rejected on the basis of my ‘race’. He had me sit in his office while he walked down Roeland Street to the Liberty Life Towers which housed the education department offices. He returned a while later, reached out his hand, and welcomed me to the staff of Harold Cressy High School. He had already announced his retirement as principal, yet continued to go the extra mile in pursuit of what he had always taught. He accepted no thanks. It was something that needed to be done, and he went about showing me what leadership is able to effect when courage and a commitment to education is required. I stand in awe of Victor Ritchie and all my teachers. Harold Cressy High School in District Six was one of the few remnants of my childhood after most of District Six had been bulldozed. My teachers kept the flame of resistance and hope alive, even as I floundered 5 in a glorified, overtly racially-inscribed township on the Cape Flats. I could return ‘home’ each morning as we travelled to school. I would not have completed this study without the constant thought that its completion was one of the ways in which I could demonstrate that I value what all my teachers have contributed to my life. I trust this study does not undermine the depth of their contributions to the lives of so many people. My wife first lit the flame of my thinking about a teaching-life. It is from her that I first heard about the ‘social constructions of reality’. It is from her that I first learnt of ‘Mr. Smith’ and the subtleties and complexities of mathematics pedagogy in the classroom. Those were the sparks which led me to first encounter education as something of mystery and unique wonder. The values we seek to bring to our family of four have informed my approach to this study: there can be no growth without honesty, and there is space for an interrogation of what we hold as taken-for-granted truths. I thank her, and I thank our two sons. They have endured the peaks and troughs of my life, and I am mindful that I appreciate very little of the scars I have left behind in this regard. I gratefully dedicate this study to my wife and our two sons. Our elder son displays a commitment to intellectual rigour, decency and social justice that makes me proud. I hope he will continue to grow into his academic persona, and make the contributions he is capable of.