Exploring Anti-Bantu Education Protests in Grahamstown/Makhanda Through Drama-in-Education Techniques with Grade 9 Learners

Abstract

The paper explores how Drama-in-Education (D-i-E) served as a decolonial and creative pedagogical tool to recontextualise local anti–Bantu Education histories within the Grade 9 South African History curriculum. The study foregrounds the largely understudied Grahamstown (now Makhanda) youth protests between 1975 and 1985, thus offering them as critical narratives that complement the 1976 Soweto Uprising. Through a Dramain-Education production titled A Childhood in Chalk (2025), learners from a local high school in Makhanda engaged with these forgotten histories by assuming the fictional role of journalists reporting on the events depicted in the production. Following a participatory case study design, the D-i-E intervention combined a theatre production and audience participation techniques to foster historical inquiry, empathy, and critical reflection. Learners’ written scene reflections and forum discussions served as data, which were analysed thematically using a decolonial framework alongside Bertram’s (2020) concepts of recontextualisation and relocation. The findings reveal that embodied, participatory, and creative pedagogical approaches, such as D-i-E, enhance learners’ historical understanding, contextual awareness, and emotional engagement with the past. By repositioning local stories within national narratives, the paper argues for the inclusion of community-based histories and creative pedagogies in the school curriculum to decolonise history education and humanise the forgotten voices of youth.