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HEIDI BROOKS: My name is Heidi Brooks. And I teach at the School of Governance at Wits University. My background is in political studies. And much of my research has covered

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South Africa's political history, particularly its liberation movements, the struggle against apartheid, and the transition to democracy. Today, I teach students in the School of Governance

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who are exploring issues of South Africa's contemporary post '94 political terrain and issues of governance policy and development. TSHEPO MOLOI: Hi, my name is Tshepo Moloi.

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I teach history at the University of Johannesburg. Before that, then I was a researcher at the University of Witwatersrand, Wits University in the history workshop,

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where most of my research was on liberation history of South Africa, with a particular lens on local histories. HEIDI BROOKS: So my teaching of students in South Africa often focuses much on the post-1994 terrain,

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on issues of policy development and on the quality of democracy. But because my own research has drawn a lot on political history and on archival research, and also on interviews and oral histories,

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I try and bring into my teaching how the history of South Africa, the history of the struggle, the ideas that shaped the liberation struggle, and that informed the ideas of the African National Congress

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as a liberation movement and a governing party today play a huge role in the transition period, but also our contemporary democracy. We can learn a lot about where we are today

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by looking at where we've come from. TSHEPO MOLOI: So let me just say something about how I was introduced to history at school, at lower level before I went to university.

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The way we were taught history, it was through rote learning. You needed to remember the dates, people's names, facts, and then that's it. I mean, this is the kind of history that you don't engage.

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And at university, you get there, and then it's a total shock because that's a transition from the rote learning. Now, you have to start to engage the sources

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and start to come up with their own ways of thinking, opinions formulation of your opinions, and analysis, interpretation. So I think that helped me to try to understand now.

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When you say in 1960, this Sharpeville Massacre, it shouldn't just end there. I mean, why? What caused it?

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And how, as you indicated earlier, how that also explains or teaches us about today, what's happening today. So that I use now, when I started teaching, to say,

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I mean to my student that yes, you read secondary sources, you read primary sources. But you also have to interrogate. You can't just accept what you are seeing or reading

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at face value and write it down as it is, because it's more sort of like cut and paste. But let's talk to-- engage the sources. And some of the sources you realise as you're using primary

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sources, for example, alongside, say, secondary sources or even interviews, you see that there are discrepancies. I mean, then this is where, as a student,

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you have to come up with your own interpretation. So I try to emphasise to the student that it doesn't matter which source you're using, you have to interrogate the source.

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You have to talk to the source. One of the things I know that students, my students would always laugh when I say, but the first thing that you ask the question, but who wrote the source?

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Who put it together and why? Because that's where you start to engage the sources, to interrogate them. And I think it makes--

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because one of the things that we're trying to do in history is to help students to develop critical thinking. And this is one way of skilling students to say, you just need to go through the sources,

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understand them, talk to them, interrogate them. Because if you don't do that, then you're just going to regurgitate what has already been out there that's in the public domain.

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So this is the way that I try to teach history using sources, especially primary sources. To say, yes, they're important. But let's just try to understand the sources

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and the people who wrote those sources, or compiled the sources, why? That's for me, that's the most important question, why and when.

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For me, that's key. HEIDI BROOKS: Thinking about what you're saying so far, and when I'm teaching students today about democratic governance in the present in post '94 South

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Africa, and one of my interests and that-- my research interests, but that also comes into my teaching, is about models of democracy. And often, I think when we study post-apartheid South Africa

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or post '94 South Africa, we just think about its contemporary policy terrain. We think about the democracy that was constructed post-1994. But actually when we look at democratic ideas,

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they have parentage. They have a history. Those ideas originated from somewhere. So I try and get my students to think

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about how examples of popular participation today, participatory forms of democracy have their origins in a longer history, whether it's African traditional councils or the way people

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organise themselves during the 1980s in the struggle against apartheid. Those forms of mass and popular organisation shaped the way people practise democracy today and also shape

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their expectations of democracy. So I think looking at that longer history and drawing on primary sources and ideas that we knew were in circulation, we know were in circulation and informed

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practise in the past can also help us to understand practise in the present. TSHEPO MOLOI: 30 years on, history, particularly teaching of liberation history

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in South Africa has changed dramatically. And in a remarkable way, one should add. Is that we gradually moved away or shifting from the big men history, teaching about the leaders,

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popular leaders, which I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but more emphasis is now on those who were not in the leadership position at national level, mainly people who were at the local level leadership,

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for example. People who led civic organisations, people who led student movements, youth movements, women's movements at local level.

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I think that has also and helped us to understand broadly the liberation history of South Africa and the people who were involved in the liberation history of South Africa.

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And how you were talking earlier about ideas, how ideas at the local level, because local levels are different as well, histories of local levels are different, how the ideas and contestations at local level

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also shapes or influence national politics. One of the stories or research findings that I came about when I was doing my research in small townships in the northern free state

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called Maokeng and Kroonstad was how activists at local level and would defy instructions, as it were, from national leadership. So the story goes that during 1995, the local counsel

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elections or community elections is that the ANC at provincial level, together with the ANC at national level, decided on the list of people who were supposed

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to be part of ANC members, who will be elected into different positions at local level. One of the names in that list was that of Caswell Koekoe. And Caswell Koekoe was the former mayor of a Kroonstad,

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or Maokeng during the apartheid era. So what happened is that in 1982, the National Party government introduced what they called the Black Local Authorities Act.

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The Black Local Authorities Act was saying that Black people should govern themselves in their own areas because the idea was that the following year, they were

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going to launch the tricameral parliamentary system, which did not include Black people. Now, elections were held in different places. And Caswell Koekoe was elected the mayor of Maokeng

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at the time. Now, activists, particularly those who were part of the United Democratic Front, were totally in opposition, I mean,

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opposed to the Black Local Authorities. And then what happened is that he became the mayor throughout, unlike others who were forced out in the mid '80s. But when it came to 1995, people still

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remembered that he was what they used to call a government puppet or government stooge. So this imposition from provincial and national leadership of the ANC to say they

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want him because he was popular, they want him in the list because their thinking was that he was going to attract more votes for the ANC. But what the provincial and national leadership did not

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understand or did not appreciate is that local politics have their own way of coming up-- local activists have their own way of seeing things and coming up with their own ideas.

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So they decided that, no, they're not going to support the inclusion of Caswell Koekoe in the list. And the provincial together with the national decided that they are going to have that man in their list.

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They even sent former President Nelson Mandela down to Kroonstad to talk to people, to convince people to say, no, he has to be part of the list. But at the local level, the local leaders,

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local activists stood fast. I mean, they said no, we're not going to allow this imposition. And I think for me what was interesting is how local activists and local politics

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also shape national politics or national ideas. So this idea that politics are directed and shaped by national leadership, it's not true, at least in other places. And so I think for me that that's

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one of the interesting things about teaching history of liberation struggle, 30 years, or post-apartheid, is that now you get to understand how both national, provincial, and local level interact

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in terms of political ideas. And it doesn't necessarily mean that one is superior than the other. So I think for me, I mean, once student can understand that.

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It makes it easier for them to appreciate history. That we, yes, we have national leadership. We have provincial leadership. But you also have people at the local level

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who can also influence how the politics are being conducted at different political ideas, of course, conducted from national, provincial, and local level. So that's, for me, it's very important

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to understand the localities and local politics relating to both the anti-apartheid struggle, but also struggle during the post-apartheid because the struggle still continues.

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HEIDI BROOKS: I think you're right, Tshepo, that the study of the apartheid period and the transition has changed a lot. When I think about my own education

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as an undergraduate student in the UK, I learned about apartheid as a period in history that had happened in another part of the world quite far removed from where I lived and from my upbringing.

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And the history that I learned was very much about the leadership of the liberation movement. It was about the character of apartheid South Africa. It was about issues of race and class,

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which are incredibly important to the study of that history. But I think you're right, we've now moved to look at ground level stories of ordinary people affected by apartheid.

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We have a much better understanding of what it was like to live in communities under apartheid, particularly in Black communities. We have a much better sense of a documented history of activism

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that took place at a local level in townships amongst civic activists. There's been some wonderful research and publications on organisations like the United Democratic Front,

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which was a civic organisation in South Africa, a civic umbrella movement, if you like, but very much aligned to the ANC. Although, it couldn't publicly say that

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during the time of apartheid. And I think we have a much better sense of the important role of domestic struggle in the end of apartheid, and not just

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the space of international sanctions and the kind of high level negotiations that took place between the liberation movement leadership and the National Party at the time.

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Something that I've also found valuable when doing my own research, and looking at archives, and doing interviews with people is getting the stories of conversations that took place

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behind the scenes of events that we wouldn't know about had they not been documented in some form and stored in archives, or were we not able to tap into people's memories and get their oral histories about what happened.

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Also I think importantly, as we live in a more globalised world, we can start discussing the context of that bigger geopolitical and global and post-colonial-- colonial and post-colonial picture, and the influence that

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had on South Africa's history and also the influence, the continued influence of a colonial apartheid legacy on South Africa today. And I think all those components come

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in far more prominently now into the way we teach apartheid history and the way we teach South Africa's present. In going through archival collections

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and finding primary sources, you also find things you don't expect to find. You find annotations and handwritten letters. You find the informal exchange of ideas.

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Seeing a policy document or a discussion a set of ideas in their draft form and how those draughts change over time to finally constitute a formal document that we

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know about today. It's really interesting to see how that exchange of ideas takes place. So you find things you don't expect to find.

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But also in going through those kind of documents, you find out what roles people played. You find out who were important individuals, who were important thinkers or leaders at the time,

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both in exile but also underground in South Africa. So identifying those kinds of documents was really important for me in then identifying people to interview.

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So that we can capture oral histories. And those kinds of oral accounts are so important to research. They deepen and enrich our understanding of the past. And as you were saying before, they give us much more insight

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into local people's histories at a ground level, not only those of national political leadership. TSHEPO MOLOI: Studying underground operatives first has its own challenges because the nature of underground

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is clandestine, secretive. So there's very little that's written about that and the people who were involved. But through interviews, we're able to get,

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to understand some of the people and the different activities that they were involved in terms of the underground work. But I think what also helped just to understand the ANC's thinking around underground and its--

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how it monitored underground activities inside South Africa is that there's a collection based at Fort Hare University, the liberation archives. So those are kind of sources that

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assist us to formulate a comprehensive picture of underground work. Because as I said, that we don't have anything written about underground work.

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But to use that kind of source or those kind of sources alongside, say, for example, interviews, so that then from the interviews, we get a richer and personal information about what

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one was involved in and why did they get involved in it. And just to say, I mean, do you understand what it means to have been-- and were you an underground-- did you consider yourself

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as an underground operative? What did it mean? So I think the oral history interviews, because they are rich in nature, they also complement the written

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sources which are very limited, but also distorted sometimes, but also exaggerated because this was during the liberation struggle. And I mean, liberation movements would

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exaggerate their importance, their significance. So that, those sources, I think they help us to just to get a clearer and more comprehensive picture of liberation struggle in South Africa, looking

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at different aspects of the liberation struggle, HEIDI BROOKS: I think this particular collection is really useful in looking at the lead-up to the end of apartheid in an international context.

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That apartheid South Africa, and particularly the struggle against apartheid wasn't taking place in a vacuum. There were international relations and conversations between the British government and the National Party

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in South Africa, the South African government at the time, between international actors and the liberation movements and leaders of the African National Congress. And I think this kind of collection

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gives us tremendous insight into that, into what role a former colonial power such as Britain played in the conversations that led up to the end of apartheid. And I think it can provide tremendous insight into that.

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The fact that we are able to digitise collections like that also just makes them so much more accessible to scholars. When I think about my own archival research, it involved getting funding to travel to an archive

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to spend time there, which is a wonderful experience to see and feel hard copies of documents from an archive. But digitising these kind of collections makes them accessible to South Africans,

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but also to scholars and students in the UK who want to understand more about that period. TSHEPO MOLOI: Digitising sources, I think, is very important.

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You mentioned this just now. One, sources become more accessible to almost everyone. One of the challenges of doing research, particularly history and liberation history to be

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specific in the case of South Africa is that the concentration of sources in Fort Hare, at the University of Fort Hare. Now, someone or a student who's doing history

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want to do a history of liberation struggle, they have to travel to Fort Hare, to the Eastern Cape. And many of our students don't have funding. That's a problem.

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So it limits them if they are not digitised. But if they're digitised, then it's easy to access them. But I think one other thing which now, it's beginning to be considered very important

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is that many of the archives or spaces which are used as archives have limited space. So archives tend not to allow people to donate archives anymore or collections anymore because they don't have space.

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But if they're digitised, then it's easier for archives to allow people to donate their archives. But there's also the problem of storage-- not only storage, but preserving these archives.

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I mean, some of the spaces where they are stored are not conducive for such documents which are very sensitive. So archiving them, I mean they provide--

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they give them a lifelong existence. So I fully support the project of digitising these primary sources. One, because if we lose them, we'll never get them again.

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We'll never know about the conversations that took place behind the scenes. We'll always have this idea that things were bound to happen, to happen as they did.

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Or people, leadership sold out. But if you get this kind of sources, then you're going to start to understand that conversations started way before 1990.

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And those conversations were also able to shape the outcome of the 1990s negotiations. So this idea that people would just throw around that, no, Mandela and his comrades sold out, I mean,

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it needs to be interrogated, needs to be challenged. And then you need sources, primary sources like this to support your argument. To say, but let's pause a bit and look at this.

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But this is not new. In some ways, you can argue, I mean, it was going to happen as it turned out because different players involved in the run

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up to the end of apartheid. So those conversations, which are captured in these sources are very key. So when you digitise them, I think that's for the best.

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So I fully support digitising sources. It's not the same as holding and smelling a document, but they help.