Richard Wilkinson: The dangerous decolonisation of SA's school history curriculum

Key topics:Reweighting school history toward African civilisations, away from EuropeCurriculum framed by decolonisation theory and Marxist-style perspectivesShift to source diversity and contested history with limited teaching time.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Richard Wilkinson.Shortly after South Africa’s 2024 national election and the formation of the Government of National Unity, an article appeared in the Daily Maverick entitled “Don’t stop the process of Africanisation and decolonisation of South African school history.” Written by Paul Maluleka, Sarah Godsell and Paul Hendricks, the piece called on the new Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, to “not to let the moment of political change undo the important work of 10 years and counting by the History Ministerial Task Team.”All three authors are lecturers at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Education and have published extensively on what they refer to as the “decolonisation of education”. Their article made clear their concern that the incoming Minister, a member of the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA), might disrupt this project:“With the DA-allied minister at the helm of the Ministry of Basic Education, we are particularly worried about the prospect of the History Ministerial Task Team work being derailed or frustrated, especially as the new minister identified the revision of the curriculum as an immediate issue.Our concerns centre on the DA’s ideological and/or philosophical orientations and policies on basic education in general (with its promotion of pro-private American Charter Schools and the voucher system), and school history in particular, rather than on the new minister as an individual.”At least on the basis of available evidence to date, these fears seem to have been misplaced, for the project to “decolonise” the school history curriculum remains firmly on track..Read more:.John Endres: The problem with rewriting the history curriculum.On 20 March 2026, Minister Gwarube published in the Government Gazette a proposed National Curriculum Statement for History covering Grades 4 to 12. The draft bears all the hallmarks of the intellectual project the authors of the Daily Maverick article sought to protect: it contains an explicit commitment to decolonisation, coupled with a marked shift in both content and method.There are three core problems with the proposed school history curriculum. This article sets out each of these concerns, explains the broader context from which the curriculum emerges, and considers what steps may be taken in response.Problem 1: An unwise and disproportionate reweighting of contentAcross all phases, there is a clear prioritisation of African civilisations, precolonial societies and African achievements, alongside a conscious effort to reposition Europe within the narrative. This is not incidental. The curriculum explicitly states that it seeks to “position the learner in Africa” and to “de-centre” or “provincialise” the “histories of Europe and the global North”. In Grades 10 and 11, long-standing topics such as the French Revolution, the South African War, Communism in Russia 1900-1940 and Capitalism and the USA 1900-1940 have been displaced by topics such as Ancient Ethiopia, Ancient Mali, Great Zimbabwe and the Achievements of African People Since Ancient Times. The Haitian Revolution (an insurrection by enslaved Africans against French colonial rule in the Caribbean) is presented as the defining climax of the Age of Revolution, apparently more significant than the American, Russian and French Revolutions for understanding modern political history. Under the new curriculum, the French Revolution is only mentioned in passing as a side topic of the Haitian Revolution.The substantial demotion and reinterpretation of large and important parts of the existing syllabus is a major concern. There is no avoiding the fact that the French and Russian Revolutions, the South African War, Communism in Russia and Capitalism in the USA are essential to understanding how the world (and South Africa) developed during the 20th Century. Instead, substantial time is devoted to teaching Grade 7 children about cities and towns that once thrived in South Africa prior to the arrival of colonial settlers, including Kweneng, Marothodi, Molokwane, Thabeng and Dzata. The objective of this topic is, of course, deeply ideological, being to “demonstrate that there was no basis for the myth of the empty land that loomed large in the colonial and apartheid histories of South Africa.”To be clear, South African learners should engage deeply with African history. The concern lies in the explicit intention to reorder historical importance according to a declared intellectual project. A well-designed curriculum broadens horizons. It does not begin by announcing which civilisations must be pushed to the margins. When content is selected and weighted according to an ideological objective, rather than historical significance, the result is not balance but distortion.A further concern relates to the sheer volume of content relative to the time available. In Grade 8, teachers are expected to cover the South African War, the First World War and the Spanish Influenza within a single term, with only 10 hours allocated to all three topics combined. In Grade 9, World War Two – arguably the most consequential event in modern history – is similarly compressed into a single term with just 10 hours of teaching time. In attempting to teach everything, the curriculum risks ensuring that nothing is taught particularly well, with depth sacrificed for superficial coverage. Problem 2: Ideological framing rooted in decolonisation theoryThis brings us to the second problem, which is not so much what is taught but rather how it is taught i.e. the ideological framing of the revised content. Indeed, the most important line in the entire proposed curriculum is the following in which it openly declares its ideological foundations: “This is a new African-centred curriculum… influenced by the UNESCO General History of Africa… which is part of the broader process of decolonisation of knowledge across the continent.”In contemporary academic discourse, decolonisation is not simply about recovering neglected histories. It is a framework that interprets knowledge through the lenses of power, oppression and resistance, often drawing on post-colonial and Marxist traditions. This orientation is reflected throughout the curriculum. Learners are encouraged to analyse history through categories such as race, class and gender, to recover “marginalised historiographies”, and to interrogate “hidden histories”. By the senior grades, this framing becomes more explicit. Learners are introduced to competing “theoretical perspectives”, including Marxist interpretations, and are asked to engage with concepts such as racial capitalism and the “National Question”. Take, for example, this proposed Grade 12 question that is explicitly designed to “develop historical consciousness”: “Do you agree that South Africa has attained political freedom but that economic inequalities have remained unchanged and the struggle continues for economic freedom?”This reads like something out of the EFF’s election manifesto. This is not simply the presentation of competing viewpoints. No mention is made of whether contemporary policies might be the cause of the poverty and inequality which afflicts South Africa. Instead, what we see is the embedding of a particular intellectual and political framework within the syllabus itself. Or consider the guidance provided to teachers on how to approach the topic of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC): “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a moment of reckoning; while it enabled some apartheid atrocities to be revealed, there were major problems with the process, e.g. why the apartheid officials never gave evidence; why white finance capital was never brought before the TRC considering the role it played in the apartheid state by excluding black South Africans from the economy; why the legal fraternity was never summoned for supporting and upholding racist laws; and why South Africa did not use the Nuremberg-style hearings. (3 hours)”This framing is problematic in several ways. Firstly, it presents a highly selective and contestable interpretation of the TRC as a set of guiding assumptions, rather than as a subject for balanced historical inquiry. Secondly, the claim that “apartheid officials never gave evidence” before the TRC is plainly factually untrue. A central feature of the TRC process was precisely the public testimony of perpetrators, including from high-profile figures such as Eugene de Kock, Adriaan Vlok and Clive Derby-Lewis as well as many other many lower-ranking police officers, intelligence operatives and security branch members who gave extensive evidence over prolonged hearings. Arguably, if the TRC left certain areas insufficiently explored, this often related to the horrific and less fully disclosed actions of liberation movements in exile, as well as their involvement in the killing of over 20,000 mainly black South African in what the ANC and its allies termed “The People’s War”.More broadly, the curriculum does not simply invite learners to interrogate the limitations of the TRC – which would be entirely appropriate – but directs them toward a particular critical narrative. Complex historical debates about the scope, achievements and shortcomings of the TRC are reduced to a series of leading questions that foreground one side of that debate.Ultimately, the influence of radical, “decolonial” academics is clearly evident here, for it has long been the objective of the Left to cast the entire 1994 settlement in a predominantly critical light – portraying the Constitution as a lamentable and overly compromised outcome (particularly with respect to land ownership) and claiming that the TRC insufficiently held key actors to account. The objective is to foster resentment among the population and to denigrate the entire constitutional dispensation. A further important point has been made by the South African Institute of Race Relations. On the issue of slavery – which receives sustained emphasis in the new curriculum – important aspects of the historical record appear to be omitted. There is little or no reference to the immense role of the British Empire (led by figures such as William Wilberforce) in abolishing the slave trade and enforcing its suppression across the Atlantic and within the Cape. Nor is there meaningful engagement with the role played by some African polities and leaders in the capture and sale of enslaved people.Problem 3: A worrying shift in historical methodAside from issues of content and ideology, the most consequential change may lie in the draft curriculum’s treatment of historical method. The draft curriculum elevates a wide range of sources beyond the traditional written archive, including “praise poetry, clan praises, idioms, proverbs, folktales and other folklore” which are used to help “develop a sense of historical consciousness.”Although these sources may provide useful anecdotes, they do pose methodological challenges. They are more difficult to verify, more susceptible to distortion and harder to test against independent evidence. This matters because history, as a discipline, depends on standards of evidence and verification. Historians may disagree profoundly, but they share a commitment to testing claims against sources. When history is taught primarily as a contest of perspectives, rather than as a disciplined inquiry grounded in verification, the distinction between stronger and weaker explanations becomes less clear.The draft moves away from this foundation. It emphasises that history is “constructed and contested”, shaped by “multiple perspectives” with “interpretations shifting over time”. The result is a subtle but important transformation: history becomes less about discovering what is most likely to be true, and more about understanding how narratives are constructed and deployed.And when the foundations of evidence and dispassionate reasoning are weakened, errors are likely to follow. In a detailed 25-page submission, the South African Institute of Race Relations identifies numerous factual inaccuracies and omissions in the proposed curriculum. These include the treatment of the wars in Angola and Namibia, the portrayal of the violent struggle between 1984 and 1994 – where highly dubious ANC narratives are at times presented as settled fact – and aspects of the curriculum’s handling of the TRC. This is the key point: when a deeply ideological approach is adopted, history ceases to be a neutral field of inquiry. It becomes a vehicle for advancing a particular interpretation of the past, oriented toward present political objectives. The shift is subtle but decisive: from teaching students how to think about history, to guiding them toward what to think.From inquiry to ideologyTaken together, these three problems point to a broader transformation in the purpose of school history – one that aligns closely with what I have previously described as “School Capture”.In short, the danger is not that students will learn more about Africa. On the contrary, a serious engagement with African history is both necessary and overdue. The danger is that they will learn history through a single, state-endorsed framework – one that defines in advance how the past is to be interpreted.A healthy history curriculum expands perspectives without prescribing them. It introduces learners to competing interpretations and equips them with the tools to weigh evidence, test claims and arrive at their own conclusions. It invites them into the discipline of history – a discipline grounded in inquiry, evidence, scepticism and debate. Crucially, it distinguishes between presenting viewpoints and endorsing them.The proposed curriculum blurs that distinction. It does not merely broaden the scope of historical study; it orients that study toward a declared intellectual project: decolonisation. It asks learners not only to examine the past, but to do so through a particular lens – one that foregrounds specific categories, privileges certain narratives and directs attention toward predetermined conclusions. In that shift, the centre of gravity moves from inquiry to interpretation, and then from interpretation to prescription.This is how history becomes instrumentalised. The past is no longer simply investigated; it is mobilised. It becomes a means of shaping how learners understand identity, society and politics in the present. Once that happens, the space for genuine intellectual independence begins to narrow. Competing interpretations are not simply evaluated on their evidentiary strength; they are judged against an implicit framework that has already been set.The question that emerges is a simple but fundamental one: is history in South African schools still being taught as a search for truth, or has it become something else entirely?The unforeseen costs of changeIn addition to the three conceptual problems outlined above, there is a fourth, more practical concern: the cost of yet another major reform.South Africa’s education system is still grappling with the cumulative effects of repeated policy shifts over the past three decades. Outcomes Based Education was introduced with great ambition, only to be rolled back after its damaging impact on literacy and numeracy became clear. In its wake came successive waves of curriculum reform, each requiring adjustment, retraining and reorientation across the system.The proposed history curriculum represents another significant disruption. Teachers will need to be retrained to teach unfamiliar content such as Ancient Mali, Ancient Ethiopia and the Haitian Revolution. New textbooks will have to be developed, approved, printed and distributed. Assessment frameworks will need to be redesigned, and examinations recalibrated. This is not a marginal adjustment but a system-wide overhaul that could take years, if not a decade, to fully implement..Read more:.Donald MacKay: Reject political economic empowerment, prioritise real education.In a country constrained by limited resources and uneven state capacity, the question cannot be avoided: is this the best use of scarce educational attention and funding at this moment?A disingenuous straw manDefenders of the proposed curriculum argue that such changes are necessary to correct a supposedly “colonial” or “white-centred” syllabus. Predictably, South Africa’s mainstream media has enthusiastically promoted this line of argument, as shown in its choice of headlines:.The idea that Jan van Riebeek – the Dutch merchant who led the expeditionary party that landed at the Cape in 1652 – is anything more than a footnote in the current school history curriculum is laughable. Whatever the case, he certainly does not “dominate school history books.” The reality is that the post-1994 curriculum has already undergone substantial revision, with significant changes introduced in 1997, 2002, 2005 and 2011. These were not minor or trivial reforms. As a result, African history, anti-colonial and anti-Apartheid struggles have long formed a central part of what is taught in schools. Therefore, the assertion that the existing curriculum remains overwhelmingly colonial in orientation is, at best, a wild exaggeration. It is a justification built not on the reality of the current curriculum, but on a mischaracterisation of it. By overstating the deficiencies of the current curriculum, the impression is created that only a fundamental reorientation can address them. This replaces careful evaluation with caricature, and reform with rupture.None of this is to suggest that further reform is unnecessary. Curricula should evolve. They should be reviewed, updated and improved. But reform must be grounded in intellectual honesty and proportionality. It should correct imbalances without introducing new ones. It should expand the field of inquiry without constraining it.How to push back – and the need for leadership by the MinisterThe proposed curriculum did not originate with the current Minister. It is the product of a Department of Basic Education task team established in 2019, with years of consultation and costly development behind it. According to sources who I have contacted, that context is partly the explanation for why the draft has been published rather than abandoned: termination would have been regarded by the Auditor General as wasteful expenditure. But publication is not endorsement. It marks the start of a crucial window for intervention. Importantly, the Minister has extended public comment to 19 May 2026, and that process now becomes the primary means of shaping the final outcome. Submissions should be made to the following address:For the attention of: Ms Florence ModipaChief Education Specialist: Curriculum PolicyDepartment of Basic Educationmodipa.f@dbe.gov.zaDeadline: 19 May 2026I cannot overstate the importance of concerned people actually making submissions. No matter how big or small your contribution may be, volume matters. Therefore, it is critically important that parents, teachers and civil society get organised and make submissions – even if it is just a paragraph sent in an email. Importantly, the Minister has also issued a statement containing the following comment: “Our History curriculum should not exclude key events or perspectives on political grounds, nor should it impose any particular ideology on learners. I am committed to ensuring that the curriculum equips learners to think critically about our past, so that they may form their own opinions.”It is important that this sentiment be translated into meaningful action. If, as argued in this essay, the proposed changes risk turning history into a vehicle for the indoctrination and radicalisation of children, then the draft curriculum should be firmly rejected by the Minister – whatever the sunk cost may be, and no matter how much it may disappoint professors of decolonisation.

Richard Wilkinson: The dangerous decolonisation of SA's school history curriculum

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