SASHT PORT ELIZABETH 2016 Acknowledging and valuing heritage

SASHT PORT ELIZABETH 2016 Acknowledging and valuing heritage and teaching good citizenship at schools in a post-colonial, post-apartheid era

Thabo Mbeki: Denial of the history of the colonised by the colonial overlord who “had a history he obliged us to learn and commit to memory. We, for our part, had to have no history except as secondary, peripheral, inferior and lesser beings dependent for the discovery of our past on what our betters decided was our past”

The debate about what we preserve and what we dispense with

How do other societies deal with a troublesome past? In the UK Oliver Cromwell’s statue stands outside the House of Commons: • Divisive • Guilty of War Crimes, Ethnic cleansing, religious persecution

Copenhagen Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus (Caligula) In 3 ½ years: Sadism, a Pervert, an insane tyrant

Vlad the Impaler Revered in Romania HATED by all others who crossed his path

In Bucharest

Pyotr Stolypin Tsarist Russia Still stands in Moscow

In South Africa 2015/6?

The War Horse

CONTEXT

Charles Villa-Vicencio: “The long history of colonialism and 50 years of statutory apartheid that imposed spatial, social, economic and cultural separation on people of different racial groups created a climate of suspicion, fear and exploitation that continues to undermine the capacity of South Africans to live together”

• • • SCHOOLS: Serve LOCAL communities Engage with those communities Contextualise Debate and rational exchange of views Preserve and interrogate