Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has approved the reappointment of a history ministerial task team to overhaul the history curriculum. The department says the move is to ensure that the curriculum becomes more Afrocentric and relevant to South African pupils.
Socio-cultural analyst Professor Pitika Ntuli says that it’s about time that South Africans correct the mistakes that they have made since achieving independence.
“Leaving our education still being a colonial education, this move by the basic education minister should encourage other departments within government, even within basic education itself. That’s when we talk Life Orientation; that Life Orientation has got to Afrocentric.”
When the History Ministerial Task Team was first established, the department was criticised and even threatened with legal action.
Professor Ntuli says that this is because colonialism is a very thorough exercise.
“It’s political, it’s economic, it’s cultural, it’s scientific, it’s everything. We only decolonised politics and left everything under the colonial umbrella. So the people who were opposed to what the basic education minister was actually doing are those people who are still captured by the colonial mentality.”
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