DELIVERED AT THE OCCASION OF INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY MARCH AGAINST THE DISTRIBUTION AND USE OF GRADE 12 HISTORY TEXTBOOK 'IN SEARCH OF HISTORY'

14th May 2008

We in the IFP readily acknowledge the right of the new generation of South African schoolchildren to an education free of residual bias which defined the segregated education system in South Africa prior to 1994 and which stemmed directly from a history of colonialism and apartheid.

We in the IFP believe that the universal civic freedoms embedded in our democratic dispensation should be mirrored in a modern and progressive school curriculum free of ulterior motives and narrow political agendas.

We in the IFP maintain that such contentious school subjects as history must be approached by the compilers of study materials and educators alike with a spirit of impartiality and a commitment to an objective presentation of our troubled history. We uphold the view that school textbooks should disseminate factual information and stimulate independent thinking, not forge strong political opinions based on a lopsided presentation of past events.

Sadly, one particular school textbook titled In Search of History, designed for Grade 12 pupils and published by Oxford University Press Southern Africa is an example of a vintage pre-1994 study material. The textbook features a cartoon in which IFP President Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi is seen 'signing on' to the new South Africa using the spilt blood of victims of political violence as ink.

We in the IFP contend that the textbook uses the cartoon to depict a biased account of the low intensity civil war which claimed the lives of many IFP and ANC supporters in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections. We maintain that a cartoonist's viewpoint is being offered to Grade 12 pupils as a historical fact and the truth about South Africa's history without any attempt at an objective commentary. We in the IFP cannot help but view this textbook as an obstacle on the path towards an education befitting our new dispensation based on the precepts of tolerance and multi-party democracy. Similarly, we cannot help but wonder whether the timing of the textbook's distribution in early 2008 may have been set to affect the IFP's electoral fortunes in the 2009 elections.

We therefore urge the Minister of Education

• to immediately halt the use and further distribution of this contentious school textbook in the interest of an education free of bias and political manipulation to which the Ministry of Education formally subscribes;

• to review, for future reference, the current process governing the compilation of school textbooks which allows narrow political agendas to infiltrate taxpayer-funded study materials; and

• to encourage a school curriculum that genuinely reflects the multiplicity of views that co-exist in the South African society.