The Department of Basic Education will hold the 9th Annual iNkosi Albert Luthuli Oral History finals. National adjudication of the 2015 competition will take place over two days from 03-04 October 2015, with an awards ceremony and a gala dinner to conclude proceedings in the evening of 04 October 2015.
The Deputy Minister of Basic Education Enver Surty and the Director General of the Department Matanzima Mweli will deliver keynote address and welcoming address respectively. The Deputy Minister and DG will also present the awards to the top winners at the gala dinner to be held on Sunday, 04 October 2015 in Pretoria.
This oral history programme is named after one of the fearless luminaries of our liberation struggle, iNkosi Albert John Luthuli. Chief Albert Luthuli has resonance with us as the Department of Basic Education as we recognise his credentials as an educator - completing his Higher Teachers’ Training Course on a scholarship at Adams College, before taking up his first teaching assignment in the same college as one of two only Africans to join staff.
Provincial elimination rounds of the Oral History competition took place between August 2015 and September 2015. All provinces, in exception of Limpopo, took part in the 2015 edition of the competition which saw high school learners from Grade 8 to Grade 11 invited to participate through conducting an oral history research project that investigates unique aspects of their local history and heritage.
Topics that learners were required to choose from in preparing for the oral history project were:
a) Freedom, democracy and the history of my school: how my school experienced apartheid and the changes since the advent of democracy in 1994
b) Socio-political biography of a local hero or heroine in my community: what motivation did they find in the Freedom Charter?
c) Life story of a former student leader in the 1980’s: how the idealism of the Freedom Charter guided them
d) Gender activist in my community who participated in the women’s unity movement: How ideals of the Freedom Charter sustained their struggle.
e) A local hero or heroine who participated in the worker struggles of the 1980s: what did the maxim “there shall be work and security” meant for the labour movement then.
This competition forms part of the Department’s contribution to the strengthening of the teaching and learning of History in schools as well as strengthening the literacy imperative. To ensure mass participation provincial workshops were conducted in selected districts for learners, educators and officials particularly those districts that have never taken part in the oral history programme before. The workshops were facilitated by an official in the DBE and supported by the provincial coordinators.
The competition does not only concentrate on learners but also aims at improving teaching practice with particular reference to History. Hence, educators are also part of the competition. The educator section of the program required educators to prepare portfolios on how they went about assisting learners in preparing for their oral history projects, and how this experience has improved their teaching practice in the classroom.
The media is invited to attend the 9th Nkosi Albert Luthuli Oral History Competition Finals, 03-04 October 2015 at the Department of Basic Education Conference Centre, 222 Struben Street, Pretoria, South Africa.
Enquiries:
Elijah Mhlanga
Cell: 083 5808275
Troy Martens:
Cell: 079 899 3070
