Yesterday & Today Journal for History Education in South Africa and abroad
Yesterday & Today is a national accredited and open–access journal for research in especially the fields of History Education, History in Education, and the History of Education and where research related findings are applied to improve the scholarly knowledge in these fields. With the University of Pretoria as custodian, this Journal is edited and published under the auspices of the Department of Humanities Education, the Faculty of Education, the University of Pretoria in South Africa in conjunction with The South African Society for History Teaching (SASHT). The objective of the journal is to publish research in the fields of History Education, History in Education, and the History of Education and where research related findings are applied to improve the scholarly knowledge in these fields. The primary area of interest is History Education, History in Education, and the History of Education in a South African and African context. However, research regarding international trends from outside Africa are also accommodated. The journal was started to encourage the development of history as a school subject and aims to involve historians, methodologists, educationists, history teachers and learners. The title was originally Historia Junior (South Africa) (1956–1980). As from 1981, the journal was known as Gister en Vandag: Tydskrif vir Geskiedenisonderrig. In 2006 the journal changed its name to Yesterday&Today. Articles are published in English. The journal is published biannually in July and December. The abbreviated key title is Yesterday Today. The websites of the Journal are: (http://www.sashtw.org.za follow the “publications link”), http://www.scielo.org.za/yesterday&today and http://dspace.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/5126) and the https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/yesterday_and_today website.
Copyright (c) 2025 Yesterday & Today Journal for History Education in South Africa and abroad
The Lingering Coloniality of Knowledge: Challenges to Decolonising South African Universities
Despite South Africa’s democratic transformation, colonial epistemic frameworks continue to dominate university curricula, impeding decolonisation and Africanisation efforts. This paper examines the persistence of these colonial knowledge systems within higher education, drawing on the #FeesMustFall movement as a critical juncture that exposed fundamental inequities in knowledge production. Situated within the history of education, this work interrogates the historical, sociological, and philosophical dimensions of teaching and learning through a decolonial theoretical lens. Using qualitative methodology, the research investigates institutional cultures and pedagogical practices across South African universities. The cases of Lwazi Lushaba and Pedro Mzileni contextualise the movement’s origins and significance for international audiences. Findings reveal enduring colonial legacies manifested through Western ideological dominance across disciplines, including history, sociology, development, and literature, perpetuating systemic and epistemic injustices. The research identifies specific forms of institutional resistance to decolonisation: the maintenance of Eurocentric curricula, pedagogical approaches disconnected from Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and historical disparities in educational access. The study demonstrates that Africanisation can foster intellectual sovereignty, cultural pride, critical consciousness, and ontological density among academics and students. However, entrenched institutional practices and Western epistemologies continue to hinder meaningful curricular reform. This work underscores the need for a (re)evaluation of higher education curricula to achieve epistemic justice and authentic decolonisation. The findings contribute to broader discussions on post-colonial education reform and knowledge production in the Global South.
Kgomotso Jackson Phillip Sebola-Samanyanga
By the Way, Who is Cranford Pratt? Questioning Active and Symbolic Monumentalisation of the University of Dar es Salaam
Considering the ongoing debates regarding the relevance of white supremacy in African public spaces and institutions, the presence of the name ‘Cranford Pratt’ on the monumental Utawala building at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), inaugurated in 2011, is striking. Few are familiar with Pratt’s legacy. This monument, however, holds significance in addressing contemporary critiques of the commemoration of whiteness in African academic institutions, a debate intensified by the University of Cape Town’s ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement. The perpetuation of whiteness within academic spaces often carries an implicit assertion of supremacy when left unchallenged. In institutions that have made strides toward decolonising curricula, history education, and promoting gender inclusivity, the continued veneration of colonial figures represents a form of epistemicide. This paper employs observation and a review of existing literature to advocate for an ‘idiosyncratic demonumentalisation’ process that critically engages both the intrinsic and extrinsic values of monumental heritage, challenging the unquestioned preservation of colonial legacies in history education. On one hand, the paper emphasises the role of monuments in shaping historical narratives and the importance of critically examining their messages in the context of ongoing debates about decolonisation and the role of history education. On the other hand, the paper focuses on the broader impact of colonial legacies on history education and the need to decolonise curricula, teaching practices, and the university space at large.
Decolonising and Africanising Curriculum Knowledge: The Utility of the Music of Bob Marley, Fela Kuti and Tupac Shakur in Teaching Decoloniality in African Universities
The focus of this paper is to examine the practical use of music in university teaching. Music has been seen as a useful tool in communicating certain messages in society. The main aim of this research is to examine and assess the utility of the music of Bob Marley, Fela Kuti and Tupac Shakur in teaching decoloniality in African universities. Using the ideas on decoloniality by Chinua Achebe (1983), we explore how the messages encapsulated in the song called ‘Redemption Song’ by Bob Marley, ‘Teacher don’t teach me nonsense’ by Fela Kuti and ‘Changes’ by Tupac Shakur may help in teaching decoloniality in African universities. Drawing on qualitative research, content analysis was used to get a systematic and objective approach to analysing texts, images and videos of the songs of the selected artists. An analysis of the selected songs reveals that the revolutionary and liberatory undertones in the selected songs can inform teaching decoloniality in African universities and beyond.
Decolonising Pedagogies for Values Inculcation in Secondary School History Teaching in Zimbabwe
Values inculcation is one of the principal goals of the secondary school history curriculum in Africa generally and Zimbabwe in particular. The development of values in secondary school history education is essential to promote cultural awareness, influence the development of sound character dispositions and to shape the identity of learners. Thus, teaching history should develop values which are a cornerstone of the way of life of concerned societies. However, some African values have been rendered insignificant by Eurocentric historiography. This necessitates pedagogical approaches that expose learners to enriching learning experiences where they can openly and critically engage with historical concepts and challenge the skewed Western discourses and perspectives on African experiences and civilisations. This will empower history learners to reach a consciousness of societal values through making informed inferences on the experiences of both past and present societies. Using a critical pedagogy as a lens, this paper explores pedagogies that can be instrumental to promote values inculcation grounded on the decolonial perspective. A qualitative approach was employed to review secondary research on service learning, structured academic controversy, Indigenous games and folktales which are some of the teaching methods that are recommended by scholarship as having potential to foster values inculcation. Scholarship on debates on history education are reviewed to enable this paper to provide insights on how the mentioned teaching methods can promote a culturally responsive approach to values inculcation. Overall, the authors endeavour to advance an argument that pedagogy for values inculcation in the teaching and learning of history should speak to the lived experiences of learners to realise values internalisation.
Conceptualisation of Decolonisation by Secondary School Teachers of History in Lusaka District of Zambia
Decolonisation of the curriculum has been an important topic in Africa since the 1960s, however, most literature focuses on the content of the curriculum, rather than the role-players who enact it. Teachers play a significant role in the development and implementation of the curriculum, therefore, their conceptualisations of decolonisation will have an important impact on how the decolonisation process eventually unfolds. This study sets out to explore the conception of decolonisation of selected history teachers in relation to the teaching and learning of history in Zambia. The study is anchored in a decolonial perspective by Wa Thiongo (1986) Ndlovu Gatsheni (2019), Mignolo (2007), and Maldonado-Torres (2017) which proceeds from the position of regarding continued decolonisation in the curriculum, and thinking about potential ideas of decolonisation linked to it. The study used a qualitative approach and a case study design. Ten teachers from the Lusaka district were purposively selected and interviewed to determine how they conceptualised decolonisation in the Zambian history curriculum. The data collected from the interviews was analysed thematically. The study found that teacher’s conceptualisation of decolonisation regarding teaching and learning of history included inclusions of neglected histories and knowledge, emphasis on local heroes, aligning to the curriculum to local needs and realities and promoting national identity and values. Thus, the current study concluded that the teachers of history had different understandings of decolonisation and ideas of its application to the history curriculum. This study could inform the teacher education programmes in higher education and decolonising of the school history.
Centring African Vocabularies & Terminologies in Representing the Past: Insights from South African School History Textbooks
Historical representation, especially in school history textbooks within the African diaspora and other settler-colonial societies, has been shaped by settler grammar. In detail, settler grammar in history refers to how historical narratives are constructed, often relying heavily on colonial languages. These languages influence narratives that uphold colonial perspectives of history. As a result, African ways of knowing and representing their past become marginalised or erased. Along with these colonial languages come colonial vocabularies and terminologies, which play a central role in defining and categorising the world through Eurocentric viewpoints. In the South African context, the writing of history textbooks has been influenced by English vocabularies and terminologies. Through a critical discourse analysis of three selected history textbooks, this paper explores how the development of post-apartheid history textbooks continues to be shaped by settler grammar. Using decolonial theory, the paper argues that it is essential to prioritise African vocabularies and terminologies when constructing African historical narratives. It further contends that historical narratives engaging with colonial discourses should avoid the use of passive language, as it tends to obscure, sanitise, and romanticise the violence inherent in colonialism. The findings show that, because the English language has been universalised and depends on Eurocentric worldviews, it cannot fully capture the nuances, core meanings and deep cultural aspects embedded in African vocabularies and terms when representing their history.
The Significance of Environmental History in South Africa’s School History Curriculum within a VUCA Context
Environmental history investigates the interactions between humans and the natural environment over a specific period, exploring how these relationships have shaped ecological systems and human societies. The relationship between nature and humanity is analogous to a tapestry woven thread by thread, emphasising the importance of the depth of the connection between the two. The scholarly neglect of environmental history in the history Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) is increasingly difficult to justify and understand in the face of global land, ecological and climate crises. The history curriculum commits itself to ensuring environmental justice. At the same time, it excludes history which is necessary for achieving this environmental justice, and there are also pressing environmental issues that require immediate attention. This conceptual paper employs a critical inquiry approach to examine the absence of environmental history in the history CAPS and argues for its inclusion in this curriculum. The paper aims to critically interrogate the epistemic exclusions within the CAPS history curriculum and proposes integrating environmental history as a pathway to curricular justice. Using the decolonial and rhizomatic approaches as theoretical frameworks, the argument is developed through conceptual analysis of curriculum policy documents and the broader historical context of epistemic exclusion in the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous (VUCA) world. Environmental history offers learners critical tools to understand the intersection of humans and nature, from colonial land dispossession to contemporary environmental issues. Therefore, this paper argues for including environmental history to promote epistemic, social and environmental justice. Its inclusion will equip learners to critically reflect on the evolving relationship between human societies and the natural environment, fostering environmental consciousness and contextual historical understanding. This would help learners critically engage with Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and draw insights to address environmental issues.
Weaving Together a Tapestry of Historical Knowledge in the Post-apartheid School History Curriculum: The Case of Palesa Beverley Ditsie
In this article, we investigate the exclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex and Asexual (LGBTQIA+) experiences, contributions and narratives in the post-apartheid South African school history curriculum. We position the historical contributions of Palesa Beverley Ditsie, a pivotal human rights activist, freedom fighter and filmmaker who fought against apartheid and during the HIV/Aids crisis, as a critical case study of this erasure. The article is situated against the backdrop of the 2015-2016 student protests, notably the #MustFall movements, which catalysed a national reckoning with the pervasive coloniality of South African higher (and basic) education and demanded, amongst others, the radical decolonisation of curricula and the explicit inclusion of LGBTQIA+ experiences, contributions and narratives. However, despite students’ calls for epistemic and ontological justice, the contributions of Ditsie and her contemporaries, such as Tseko Simon Nkoli, remain peripherised. Employing decolonial queer theory and the metaphor of knowledge as a tapestry of the theoretical orientations, and using critical discourse analysis as the methodology, we make a direct appeal to the History Ministerial Task Team (HMTT) (Department of Basic Education [DBE], 2015, 2018), by arguing that the project of Africanising (and by extension: decolonising) the school history curriculum must be expanded to urgently include, rehistoricise and recentre Ditsie’s experiences, as well as her contributions to the fight against apartheid and her contributions to the country’s constitutional democracy. Such an inclusion, we argue, is fundamental to weaving a more complete tapestry of historical knowledge, enabling history educators and their learners to challenge the heteronormativity of traditional history writing and fostering a truly intersectional understanding of the struggle for liberation and human rights in South Africa.
Black Historians, Historiography, and History Education in the Era of #RhodesMustFall
Black historians have played a role in South African historiography and their role has been woefully neglected. This paper attempts to reappraise the work and effort of black scholars whose works have contributed to South African historiography in the context of history education in the high school curriculum. Much of their work has not filtered into the CAPS curriculum and the history education curriculum. Through the works of Black historians, we can gain a decolonial reading and understanding from the local context and understand that there is a historical scholarly tradition which goes back to the 1920s. This paper links Black historians’ work to historiography, history education and the #RhodesMustFall movement. The #FeesMustFall movement and the generation involved called for a decolonised curriculum, and this paper, attempts to contribute to that discourse. Through looking at the works of scholars such as Molema, Fuze, Jabavu, Magubane, Mohlamme and Keto, the paper seeks to link these authors’ work to the high school history curriculum. These Black writers and historians were chosen because many of them were pioneers in writing about South African history and society, and their work is important as part of South African history and historiography. The literature review focuses on works surrounding curriculum transformation, and a decolonised curriculum centred on the #RhodesMustFall movement. This paper uses a narrative review framework as part of its methodology and data analysis. The works of these scholars were chosen because they are book-based, and because they were mostly printed for publication, which makes them accessible to some extent. This paper engages with the work and contributions of Black historians and makes several findings: (1) Representation matters in scholarship; (2) Part of decolonising history is changing the racialised discourse of historiography; (3) Black historians have made contributions to studies on colonialism, ethnicity, education, world wars and African-centred paradigms of history, and (4) The work of Black historians must be recentred in the high school history curriculum for the benefit of future generations.
Reimaging, from a decolonised perspective, the Grade 10 intended curriculum and the start of the era of modernity - Portugal covets the gold of West Africa, sugar, and the start of enslaving black bodies
Teachers and the Epistemology of History
Critical Thinking Skills for Students: Curriculum and Practice in Higher Education
Physical Education and Physical Culture in South Africa, 1837–1966
The Bams of Grasslands Farm, A Family History
This position paper argues for including socio-environmental history in the South African Further Education and Training (FET) history curriculum. It is premised on the fact that planet Earth is in the age of the Anthropocene, within which humans have had a dominant effect on the planet and have contributed fundamentally to climate change, which is noticeable through extreme weather events, such as erratic rainfall, floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires. These have led to extreme hazards, including destruction of infrastructures, large-scale migrations and loss of lives. Climate change aside, humanity is also facing problems of air and water pollution, deforestation, desertification, famine and diseases; in fact, we still have traumatic memories of the COVID-19 pandemic, which destroyed livelihoods and to date, has left more than seven million people dead worldwide. This paper is based on a desktop qualitative research method and draws from secondary and primary literature on socio-environmental history. Furthermore, it analyses the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), focussing on the FET history curriculum. The study builds on the intersectionality and all-inclusive ecologies of knowledge approach to demonstrate that socio-environmental history intersects with other history topics already part of South Africa’s CAPS FET history curriculum. The paper argues that, through the infusion of socio-environmental history content into this curriculum, history teaching will contribute more meaningfully toward learners’ understanding of the socio-environmental challenges confronting humanity in South Africa and beyond. This will provoke learners to raise questions regarding the nexus between people and nature, and interrogate how this shapes the local, regional and global environments and the results thereof, in the process, inculcating positive attitudes and values about stewardship of planet Earth.
Peripheralisation of some histories in the school history curriculum in the post-apartheid South Africa:
Despite significant educational reforms by post-apartheid South Africa aimed at democratising and decolonising its education system, a concerning exclusion persists: Black intellectuals, particularly the 1950s Drum generation and their contributions to the liberation struggle, remain marginalised within the knowledge base of the post-apartheid school history curriculum. Using epistemic coloniality and epistemic disobedience as the first aspects of our theoretical framing, we investigated this peripheralisation. Additionally, we also used historical significance and epistemic pluriversality to frame our argument for the inclusion of the 1950s Drum generation’s contributions to the South African liberation struggle in the knowledge base of the school history curriculum, given the significant role they played. Methodologically, we employed a qualitative case study design underpinned by a critical paradigm, with critical discourse analysis as our tools of analysis. We conclude that since the 1950s were formative years for enacting and resisting colonial-apartheid policies, teaching about the 1950s Drum generation would enable both history educators and their learners to appreciate artistic, cultural, and literary contributions to the liberation struggle. This would also reveal to them that liberation was shaped not solely by political actors, but equally by cultural and literary figures who spoke truth to power.
Reconceptualising Africanising, and its positioning in history teaching and learning through regional and microspatial-planned programmes
In the past 60 or more years, African scholarly debates on education touched on Africanising and decolonising teaching and learning. Africanised pedagogies should be cognisant of the necessity to sensitise twenty-first century students to diverse scholarly and community voices as they become more accessible as learning possibilities. Equally so, present-day complex contexts in which people live because of the past, requires a more intense regional conversation. With these realities in mind, the authors, both familiar with the field of regional history and seasoned in the teaching of history, engaged in a research project to concisely, yet deeply, reflect on the historiography of Africanising. Secondly, to determine whether regional, and microspatial history variations can be deployed as facilitating agencies of Africanised educational, the authors felt that it is de-ontologised from its former politically attachment. While the historiography emanated mostly from qualitative desktop research, the study that covered the Vredefort Dome region’s value for understanding some curricula topics by considering the histories ‘around us’ had been recently intensively researched for the completion of a PhD. The outcome of this research has been mostly applied as experiential examples in this revisited debate on Africanising in teaching history and the features related to it, form part of this discussion. In engaging with the literature and research conducted in an applied analytical way allows the authors to affirm the possibilities of ‘Africanising’ the teaching of history with the involvement of local communities in the recovery of their memories and for researchers to consider its possibilities in microspatial contexts as a steppingstone towards African-inspired educational thought and scholarship.
Higher Education and Training (HET) history
Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for history
Reflections on coloured identity in the Teacher’s League of South Africa during the early 1940s:
During the early years of World War Two (WWII), the Union of South Africa went through several political, economic and social changes that had profound effects on the creation of what a few years later would be the apartheid system. Racial tensions became stronger as the local political context was in crisis. At the same time, the impact of racial discrimination in WWII introduced further reflections on racial theories, concepts and definitions among South Africans. This paper focuses specifically on debates and disputes about racial definitions among coloured teachers in the Cape. Taking into consideration the historical specificities of that racial definition and racial group in the Union of South Africa, the impact of the international context and the local context, racial adscriptions among coloured teachers changed from exclusivism to non-racialism. Younger teachers went from being proudly coloured to looking for new concepts to redefine a common identity and explicitly choosing the notion of non-Europeans for that. To understand how and why this took place, interviews with former members of the Teacher’s League of South Africa (TLSA), the leading organisation among the coloured educational community, were conducted by the author and placed in dialogue with qualitative research in the Educational Journal and other publications from that teacher’s organisation.
Archival Practice and the Historiography of Education in South Africa: An Overview of Government Collections on Education
Archives provide a large part of the raw materials with which historians construct histories. How these repositories arrange this material, and what they consider as priorities for accessioning it, have a profound influence on what material is more within reach for historians. An investigation into the records available at the National Archives and Records Services of South Africa (NARSSA), for a collaborative project focused on researching and writing the histories of universities in South Africa, shed significant light on both the extremely fragmented nature of the record of education in South Africa, as well as on substantial challenges related to its accessibility. Before the historian of education can engage with the government’s record on education in South Africa, the splintered timeline of education administration must be reconstructed. Furthermore, once the historians of education then enters the NARSSA space, they are confronted with the fact that only a small fragment of this record has been described in archival finding aids. After pondering this state of affairs, this article considers the historiography of education in South Africa, examining the sources that have been used to construct narratives of the history of education, as well as how trends in this historiography could be viewed as reflecting the state of the archives. The article also offers some thoughts on the potential pitfalls and insights which await the industrious historian of education in these unaccessioned collections of the NARSSA.
National Archives and Records Services of South Africa
Forgotten Footsteps: Reclaiming the Legacy of South Africa’s Unsung Heroines in History Education
The representation of historical figures in school curricula significantly shapes national identity and societal values. In South Africa, despite its rich and diverse history, the official history curriculum remains largely male-centric, often underrepresenting the contributions of women. Previous research has highlighted the exclusion of women from mainstream historical narratives, reinforcing gender inequalities in both education and broader society. Feminist scholars argue that such marginalisation not only distorts historical truth, it also perpetuates systemic gender biases. The primary aim of this study is to examine the systematic exclusion of women and girls from the South African history Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) in the Department of Basic Education. Moreover, assess its implications for gender equality in education. By identifying gaps and biases in historical representation, the study seeks to advocate for a more inclusive and equitable curriculum that accurately reflects the diverse contributions of all individuals to South Africa’s past. This research focuses on the South African educational landscape, particularly history curricula implemented in the Department of Basic Education. The study draws on a wide range of academic sources and curriculum documents to provide an analysis of gender representation in historical education. The research spans materials published between 2000 and 2024, offering a contemporary perspective on curriculum developments and persistent biases. The study employs a systematic literature review (SLR) adhering to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) protocols. The sources analysed include peer-reviewed academic articles, historical documents, curriculum guidelines and case studies. The research process involves identifying relevant literature, screening sources for eligibility, extracting key themes and synthesising findings to assess the representation of women in the history curriculum. Feminist theoretical frameworks are applied to critically examine how gender biases are embedded in historical narratives and educational materials. The findings reveal that the South African history curriculum overwhelmingly prioritises male figures, marginalising the contributions of women. Gender exclusion in historical narratives reinforces stereotypes and limits students’ understanding of women’s roles in shaping the country’s history. The recommendations call for inclusive teaching practices and a more equitable educational framework that fosters gender equality and a comprehensive understanding of the nation’s past.
Reading the African School Curriculum as an Historical Text:
The current research is a critical rendition of the history of the African school curriculum in Zimbabwe. The paper explores how this curriculum manifested itself from colonial times to the present post-colonial dispensation. Methodologically, we adopt a Kliebardian historical approach to an understanding of the purpose and changing nature of education through a study of the history of education. The study posits that a curriculum may be read through a vertical analysis of changes over time as shaped by varying contexts, policies and practices associated with its development. Thus, the curriculum under review is an historical text. The main conclusions drawn from the study are that in Rhodesia, curriculum goals, content, methods and assessment strategies were crafted to serve the needs of the dominant European group, while African education was perennially under-funded. The post-colonial curriculum was, and is still expected to exorcise the erstwhile colonial elitist educational jinx to serve the needs of the African majority. Regrettably, however, it has been saddled with challenges such as policy and ideological inconsistencies, as well as inadequate financial resources to support change and innovation. We (the authors), therefore, see the study as providing a basis for a critical scrutiny and understanding of the history and purpose of education in Zimbabwe and ipso facto, its possible improvement.
Copyright (c) 2024 Yesterday & Today Journal for History Education in South Africa and abroad
Strengthening the history curriculum by reimagining what we teach in the classroom: scaffolding through the FET phase, using the work of historians from a decolonised perspective
In Whose Place? Confronting Vestiges of Colonialism and Apartheid