The past is far from over as an online database revisits South Africa’s past. Julia Grey reports
History’s a funny business: the politics of capturing the past can lead to so many interpretations of one event that you would be forgiven for wondering if any of it really happened at all.
Omar Badsha, director of the NGO that runs and develops the website South African History Online (Saho), readily agrees that “there’s no such thing as a recorded history that doesn’t have an ideological bias”. But, says Badsha, one important aim of Saho is to “correct a particular bias that dominated South African history by addressing the silences in it.”
As much as the “non-white” people of South Africa were oppressed under apartheid, so have the stories of their lives struggled to be given recognition. Saho is slowly but surely capturing just such information, and the link “people” on their homepage has comprehensive biographies of political figures from HF Verwoerd to Mac Maharaj. Other significant locals in fields like the arts and science are also featured.
The information under “lives of courage” is a potent reminder that the struggle for freedom came at a high price. The details about those who died fighting apartheid, although brief, are most chilling. “Ashley Kriel, age 20, a Bontheuvel student activist. Died in 1987 in Athlone, Cape Town. Police allege that victim was killed during an arrest scuffle, but post-mortem indicated victim was shot in the back at point-blank range.” The names are many, and the number of times the cause of death while in prison is listed as “suicide by hanging” is disturbing food for thought.
But history is made on a daily basis, and Badsha scoffs at the notion that Saho’s database will ever be complete. In fact, part of Saho’s charm is that the public is invited to contribute information on South Africans making a difference.
The initiative fits in neatly with the South African History Project, launched by Minister of Education Kader Asmal in August. Describing history as “a precious instrument”, Asmal comments that “understanding the present and trying to anticipate the future must of necessity be based on proper knowledge of the past”.
Saho can be found at www.sahistory.org.za
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, November 2001.