From Turning Point to Footnote: The 1976 Soweto Uprising in the CAPS History Curriculum

Abstract

The 1976 Soweto Uprising is a significant turning point in South African history. This student-led revolt not only exposed the brutality of apartheid to the world, it also reshaped the trajectory of the liberation struggle, contributing profoundly to the system’s eventual overthrow. However, 50 years later, its place within the school History curriculum remains surprisingly marginal. Under the current Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), the Soweto Uprising is briefly taught in Grade 9 Social Sciences, within the unit “Turning points in South African history: 1948, 1960, 1976 and 1990”. It reappears in Grade 12 History under the theme “Civil Resistance in South Africa, 1970s–1980s”, but again, receives even less attention. In both instances, the event is not explored in depth, raising important concerns about how such a pivotal moment in anti-apartheid resistance features in contemporary national education. I argue that this situation is untenable. The arguments align with three theories: Critical Curriculum Theory (CCT); Postcolonial Theory (PT); and Critical Pedagogy (CP). These theories help examine whose knowledge becomes included and excluded in the curriculum, how colonisation influences knowledge production even post independence, and discuss how power, oppression, and liberation influence education. The current study proposes, amongst other things, that CAPS allocate more time and in-depth content to the Soweto Uprising; that the Soweto Uprising be taught as a stand-alone topic; that the History curriculum be reviewed for it to foreground Black youth agency, African epistemologies, and ‘history from below’; and the inclusion of oral histories from the surviving participants of the Soweto Uprising. All proposals were made after consulting the CAPS documents and prescribed textbooks to investigate how the Soweto Uprising is featured in the school’s History curriculum.