The “dance” of reconciliation Articles The “dance” of reconciliation: Understanding the complex steps in a reconciliatory pedagogy using an oral history assignment Reville Nussey Bloemfontein campus University of the Free State [email protected] Abstract This article is about understanding the challenges and successes of a reconciliatory pedagogy with second-year student history teachers, eleven years after South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established. While the TRC report stated that it started South Africa on the journey towards reconciliation, it never claimed that it was able to achieve this goal, although its legacy continues to affect the way reconciliation unfolds in this country. Education plays an important role in addressing the effects of conflict on the second generation, but the contribution history education could make has largely been ignored (Cole & Barsalou, 2006). Using eight interviews with student history teachers, which reflected on an oral history assignment at the University of the Witwatersrand, this article focuses on understanding the complex steps involved in a reconciliatory pedagogy. Applying the image of the “dance” of reconciliation (Lederach 1999) and selected examples from the TRC to the data from the interviews, helped to contextualise the students’ responses in relation to the main ideas that inform reconciliation. This provided insights into the twists and turns involved in this difficult process, and how it affected relationships between the first and second generations. It also allowed me the opportunity to reflect on my own practice as a history teacher educator. Keywords: “Dance” of reconciliation; Reconciliatory pedagogy; Student history education; Narrative inquiry; Oral history; South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 1 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 R Nussey Introduction The process of reconciliation is a complex journey, especially in a post- conflict society. One of the difficulties lies in negotiating a space and place where victims, perpetrators, beneficiaries and bystanders can live together in relative harmony after a successful transition in the political sphere. Another difficulty is how to address the ongoing effects of this past conflict on the children of the antagonists, irrespective of the position adopted by their parents during the conflict. Education plays a vital role in this process, and this article focuses on a quest to understand the steps in a reconciliatory pedagogy using an oral history assignment by a teacher educator in South Africa. Firstly, I explain the background to the apparent lack of reconciliation, despite the country having experienced a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), among second-year students studying to become history teachers at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Education in 2006. Secondly, I provide a brief survey of the literature relating to reconciliation and pedagogy. Thirdly, I turn to Lederach’s (1999:79) images of reconciliation, such as the “dance” of reconciliation to provide a theoretical framework, and use a narrative inquiry methodology to show how the data from the interviews relates to this image, as well as selected examples from the TRC. Finally, I discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of using the image of the “dance” of reconciliation in relation to my own practice.1 Background Efforts to promote reconciliation in South Africa, as in many post-conflict countries, show that structural changes in the political sphere do not necessarily lead to individual and social attitudes changing in the short term. The establishment of the TRC in 1995, which aimed to account for the “overall human rights violations” (Boraine, 1999:470) in South Africa’s past, played an important role in revealing the multiple abuses that occurred during the apartheid era. While the TRC is credited with starting South Africa on “the long road” to reconciliation, it never claimed that it was able “to reconcile the nation” (TRC Report, Vol. 5, 1998:350), although its legacy continues to shape the way reconciliation unfolds in this country. Yet there are ongoing examples of a lack of reconciliation, which is shown in different ways in many university 1 This article is based on ideas and data from my PhD (Nussey, 2012). 2 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 The “dance” of reconciliation contexts in South Africa: a ministerial report concerning transformation2 in higher education stated: “that discrimination, in particular with regard to racism and sexism, is pervasive in our institutions” (Soudien, 2008:13). My experiences in the lecture room supported this view of the problem of racism. When I started to lecture in history education methodology at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Education in 2002, I expected that relations between students of different races3 would be better than those prior to the end of apartheid. Most of these students had started and completed their schooling together, as part of the post-1994 generation (when the first fully democratic elections were held in South Africa). However, the divisions of the past were apparent in lectures, in terms of where students sat and how they engaged, or did not engage, with one another. I felt strongly that these divisions, in and outside the lecture room, perpetuated the inequalities and injustices of the past in the present. If these divisions were not addressed in some way while these students were at university, then this situation would remain unchanged in the present and affect relationships negatively in the future too. Furthermore, if the students were not given an opportunity to reflect and shift in their thinking towards the “other”, defined mainly by race in this case, then they would take these unreflective attitudes into their classrooms once they became qualified history teachers. In turn, this attitude of “us and them” could affect future generations, because their pupils would be unwittingly exposed to their views whether intentionally or unconsciously. Events came to a head in 2006, with an oral history assignment about life before and after 1994, which a class of second-year students, who were mostly 19 or 20 years old, were required to do as part of their compulsory Social Sciences methodology course. The oral history assignment consisted of three parts. The students had to interview someone who had lived during apartheid, then rewrite the interview as an oral history for Grade 6 pupils; next, the students shared their oral histories in a cooperative group, which had the joint task of dramatising aspects of the group’s oral histories; finally, the students were required to write a reflective essay about the interview and cooperative task. 2 I am not suggesting a conflation between transformation and reconciliation, but a link between the two concepts was made by a university colleague who said that there can be no transformation without reconciliation first. 3 I accept that race is a social construct, but the use of apartheid racial terms does not indicate support for a ‘race as essence’ understanding in this article. However, the effect of apartheid racial classification continues to affect identity and relationships in post 1994 South Africa, as shown by research conducted in schools (Carrim & Soudien, 1999). 3 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 R Nussey Many students of all races reacted strongly and negatively when the assignment was handed out, and they expressed their frustration in a way that is best summarised as “not apartheid again!” The class’ resistance to engaging with a difficult past is not something peculiar to South Africa. The German author, Bernard Schlink (2010:27), identified the problem associated with “[t] he legacy [of continual discussion of the Holocaust] for the next generation. … The ennui sometimes exhibited by schoolchildren concerning the Third Reich and the Holocaust has its roots in the deadening frequency with which they are confronted with the past by their teachers and the media”. His explanation resonated with me as a possible reason for the students’ initial negative reaction, which appeared to be a mixture of arrogance and ennui that they knew all about apartheid, because of the numerous repetitions of the topic at school and university. I felt that there was a need for the students to investigate the past in a way that they made a personal connection. Interviewing someone they knew who lived during apartheid might move them beyond the grand narrative of those times, and reveal that they did not know everything about apartheid. A further challenge was how to address this situation as someone whom the students viewed (correctly) as a beneficiary of apartheid policies: I am a white, English-speaking woman who grew up in a conservative city, Bloemfontein, during the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, during the process of the assignment something shifted in a positive way in relationships between the students in the lecture room and between the class and me. This led to my questioning how to understand these shifts, and to theorise the implications of this “critical incident” (Tripp, 1993:24) by exploring conceptions of reconciliation and pedagogy in the literature. Literature survey There is a small amount of literature in the field of education that deals with the link between reconciliation and pedagogy. In South Africa, there were examples such as a post-conflict pedagogy (Jansen & Weldon, 2009), and research related to reconciliation combining visual arts and English in secondary schools (Ferreira & Janks, 2007, 2009). Other developments were international, with South African scholars making the links between reconciliation and pedagogy explicit (Akhluwalia, Atkinson, Bishop, Christie, Hattam & Matthews, 2012). There was also an attempt to develop different kinds of reconciliatory pedagogies in Israel and Cyprus (Bekerman & Zembylas, 4 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 The “dance” of reconciliation 2012), and a related field which linked education and reconciliation (Crowley & Matthews, 2006; Paulson, 2011) in different countries. Most of this research was based on countries that continue to deal with ongoing conflict in the international arena, as well as those that experience the aftermath of bitter conflict and its effects on the educational context. Yet there is little research that has linked history education to reconciliation. According to Cole and Barsalou (2006:14), “few scholars have definitely assessed the impact of history teaching initiatives on social reconstruction in post-conflict societies”. In South Africa, there are some materials based on oral history that were developed for use in schools, such as, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation’s Pass Laws in the Western Cape (2004), which could be used to facilitate reconciliation in the school history classroom. But there is only a small amount of research regarding the effects of history teaching and social reconstruction in South Africa, for example, Kros and Ulrich (2008) have published research on oral testimony and the teaching of history based on teacher workshops in Mpumalanga, and Weldon (2010:353) has focused on the importance of addressing “painful personal legacies of the past” during in-service teacher development workshops in the Western Cape. However, I am not aware of any research about the lack of reconciliation among student teachers that has been carried out in a South African history methodology context. This article seeks to contribute to this conversation by focusing on reflective interviews with some student history teachers about their experience of an oral history assignment. Doing this assignment appeared to shift relationships positively outside and inside the lecture room, and contributed to my understanding of a reconciliatory pedagogy. By pedagogy, I follow a conceptualisation proposed by Lusted, which “draws attention to the process through which knowledge is produced. … How one teaches is therefore of central interest but, through the prism of pedagogy, it becomes inseparable from what is being taught and, crucially, how one learns” (1986:2-3). The strength of this view of pedagogy is the way it integrates the key actors involved in teaching and learning with the creation of knowledge. But the conception of reconciliation that informs a reconciliatory pedagogy is something that requires further theorisation, and a discussion of this follows in the next section. Theoretical framework: Lederach’s images of reconciliation “Reconciliation” is an extremely slippery term: Cole (2007:3) suggests that 5 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 R Nussey “[reconciliation] is an imprecise term … [and] is also highly contested”, because it has a variety of connotations and a multi-faceted relationship to other concepts. Themes from the broader literature about reconciliation support this view, because reconciliation is linked to concepts, such as, forgiveness (Tutu, 1999; Griswold, 2007), truth (Cherry, 2000; Posel & Simpson, 2002), apology (Brooks, 1999; Govier & Verwoerd, 2004) and justice (Sachs 2009; Metz, 2010). There is limited agreement as to what reconciliation means, how these concepts are conceived and how they relate to reconciliation. In contrast, a model of reconciliation that helps to show the inter- relatedness of key ideas associated with reconciliation was developed by John Paul Lederach, an international peace-maker, based in the United States of America, in association with other peace builders at a workshop. This model of reconciliation, and how it changed over time, played an important role in helping me to understand the shift in relationships that occurred during the oral history assignment. Applying this model of reconciliation to my interviews with the students helped to generate further insights into the steps within a reconciliatory pedagogy. The name given to this model was “The place called reconciliation” (1997:30). Reconciliation is placed in an oval in the centre, with the key ideas of Justice, Truth, Mercy and Peace arranged clockwise around the oval, and opposite one another in a symmetrical pattern. The purpose of this model is to show that people and their relations with one another are part of a dynamic social context. The key ideas of truth, justice, mercy and peace are understood as paradoxes, because this model “links seemingly contradictory [ideas], but in fact [they are] interdependent ideas and forces … the opposing energies … [which] form the poles of the paradox … [and all the ideas are] necessary for the health of the group” (Lederach, 1997:30). This model offers a way of integrating many of the “big ideas” frequently associated with reconciliation, instead of an approach where reconciliation is seen as related mainly to one of the key ideas, as shown in the broader literature on reconciliation. Further, Lederach developed this conception of reconciliation, by describing the “big ideas” of truth, justice, mercy and peace as “social energies” [italics in the original] (Lederach, 1999:79). This means that these ideas, which are all abstract nouns, become transformed into verbs, so that reconciliation in the centre becomes an anchor for the opposing energies of the four. The inter-relationship among the social energies is “dynamic, interdependent, and evolving” (Lederach, 1999:79), as a change in one of the energies 6 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 The “dance” of reconciliation involves a change in another. Together, the interaction among the social energies helps to achieve “[t]he primary goal [which] is reconciliation, understood as relationship and restoration, the healing of personal and social fabrics” (Lederach, 1999:138). This reveals the strength of his conception of reconciliation, because it emphasises the dynamic interaction between individual and social reconciliation via the social energies. However, as Zembylas (2007:215) noted there is also a tension in this conception, because “there is almost always an unbridgeable gap between collective and individual efforts for reconciliation”. Image of the dance Another important aspect of Lederach’s (1999:78) ideas is that he used a “polychronic” and “systemic” [italics in the original] approach to reconciliation, where “[l]ike a dance, we simultaneously have activities taking place related to the past (Truth), the present (Justice and Mercy), and the future (Hope and Peace)” (1999:79). When a fifth social energy, “Hope”, was added, it disrupted the symmetry of the original model of reconciliation, and created the need for another image for reconciliation. Thus Lederach transformed the social energies into dancers on a stage, where all of them are present at the same time, and engaged in a “dance” of reconciliation. It is this image that was key in shaping my understanding of what conception of reconciliation could inform a reconciliatory pedagogy. The reasons are as follows: the “dance” of reconciliation provided a lens for understanding the students’ interviews about the oral history assignment, where the possibilities and challenges of a reconciliatory process in practice are shown; the image of the “dance” of reconciliation also keeps the strengths of the original model of reconciliation, such as the relational ideas between truth, justice, mercy and peace, instead of viewing them in isolation. Moving away from a fixed place for these social energies as shown in the original model allows them to interact in different ways during the “dance” of reconciliation, such as forming partnerships or groups, wherever appropriate. The notion of paradox is still implicit in the “dance” of reconciliation, although in a different form. It is impossible to talk about the social energies without considering their opposites; for example, to refer to Truth indirectly raises its opposite, namely, Lies. The same applies to the other dancers: Justice and Injustice are two sides of the same coin; as are Mercy and Revenge, and Hope and Fear. Incorporating Hope as a dancer in the “dance” of reconciliation is vital, 7 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 R Nussey because this is the dancer most likely to be engaged in a close dance with the other social energies. For example, there is the hope that the truth will be discovered about the past, and at the same time, the fear that lies about the past might triumph and disrupt peace in the future. However, without Hope, there is little chance of any reconciliatory process succeeding. By applying the “big ideas” that inform reconciliation, as represented by Lederach’s five dancers, to the interviews I conducted with former students about the oral history assignment, I use his conception as a means of showing some of the tensions and ambiguities, the successes and challenges, of a reconciliatory process in a different and much smaller context. Methodology A qualitative approach known as “narrative inquiry” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) helped me to unpack the steps within the “dance” of reconciliation as shown in my interviews with the students. These researchers suggested that John Dewey transformed the concept of “experience” into an inquiry term, so that research is the study of experience, as “education, experience and life are inextricably intertwined” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000:xxii). Following Dewey, they claim that experience is both “personal and social (interaction)” [italics in the original] (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000:50). This idea links with this article because my experience in the lecture room was a starting point for this research: the next step was to interview the students to understand their respective perceptions of the oral history assignment after it was completed, and how this led to a shift in attitudes towards their interviewees, peers and me. Clandinin and Connelly suggest that their framework of narrative inquiry allows for inquiries to travel in different “directions”, such as “inward, outward, backward, forward and situated within place” [italics in the original] (2000:49). By “inward”, they suggest that questions can be directed to the researcher’s own experience, while “outward” refers to questions that can be asked about the environment in which the inquiry takes place. My narrative inquiry travels in different directions, as I inquire into the students’ experiences of the assignment during my interviews with them, relate their individual experiences to Lederach’s “dance” of reconciliation and situate this inquiry within the broader context of relevant examples from the TRC. Finally, this process of inquiry encourages a reflection on my own practice. 8 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 The “dance” of reconciliation This methodology provides the means for an open-ended inquiry, which mimics that of a dance. Data During the first part of the data collection, I collected 15 oral history stories and reflective essays on the process of the assignment from the class of 2006 (out of a class of 66 students). These assignments were collected after they were assessed, and returned to the students. I requested that the students volunteer to resubmit their assignments for the purpose of research, and 15 students gave me their permission via written consent. This formed the basis of my first article, which examined their oral histories and reflective essays (Nussey, 2009). The second part of my research was based on follow-up interviews with these former students from the end of 2008 to 2011. This was after I had lectured some of them in their fourth year, once they had almost completed their undergraduate studies and embarked on their teaching career or post- graduate studies. This delay in interviewing the students was due to ethical considerations, as the university’s Ethics Committee expressed reservations about the power relations of someone lecturing students and conducting further research with them. The result is that my sample is small, as only eight students from the original sample agreed to be interviewed. Thus, I cannot make broad generalisations based on my data. However, by focusing in depth on a few former students’ experiences of the oral history assignment as shown by their interviews, I believe that there are valuable insights gained into understanding the steps in a reconciliatory pedagogy, which a broader study might lack. The demographics of this research was formed by the students who agreed to be interviewed, and the result was an even split between black and white students. Two of the students were not born in South Africa, although they attended primary and high schools in the country, and they were the only males in the sample. This gender imbalance was representative of the general situation in the school of education. However, there were more black students than white students in this class, so the sample I interviewed was not representative of this particular demographic. During the interviews, I asked questions to uncover the background to their oral histories, and what changed in their understanding and relationships 9 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014 R Nussey with their interviewees. The students (individually) interviewed two black parents, two white parents, one coloured4 parent, one coloured member of the community and two black members of the broader community. Five of the students chose to interview their own parents, while three interviewed members of the broader community. The reasons for the latter choice varied. Neither David5 nor Kagiso had family who lived in South Africa during the period of apartheid, so David interviewed a fellow member of a political party, and Kagiso interviewed a worker at the flats where he lived. Greta decided not to conduct an oral history interview with her white parents, as she considered them to be bystanders with not much of a story to tell about apartheid. Instead, she chose to interview one of the victims of apartheid, because “I wanted to hear it from a person of a different race … that’s the real people who we need to ask.” Greta interviewed her coloured “nail lady”, with whom she had a personal relationship, which was a rare example of an oral history interview that crossed racial lines. During my interviews with the students, I also asked questions related to how they felt and responded to their peers during the cooperative task of dramatising their oral histories. Quoting from the data in my interviews with the students allows for their views to be expressed in their own words, which is a perspective that is sometimes side-lined in reporting about an educational process (Paulson, 2011). I have used the “dance” of reconciliation as a lens to help understand and explain what happened during the process of the assignment in greater depth. There is a dance among the various parts of the assignment, from the students’ interviews with an older member of the family or community which formed the basis of the oral history stories, to the cooperative task of the dramatisation of these stories with their peers, to the students’ individual written reflections as shown in my interviews with them. However, this “dance” of reconciliation does not occur in isolation, instead, it occurs within the broader historical context of the TRC and its legacy. The “dance” of reconciliation and a reconciliatory pedagogy The social energies that inform Lederach’s “dance” of reconciliation, such as truth, justice, mercy, peace and hope, are contested ideas as shown in the 4 This was a term used to describe people of mixed race during apartheid, but it is still used, despite being controversial. 5 All the names of the students are pseudonyms, and I have used first names throughout this article to indicate where I have drawn on their ideas or quoted from their respective interviews. 10 Yesterday&Today, No. 12, December 2014