Teaching South African History in the Digital Age: Collaboration, Pedagogy, and Popularizing History

Abstract

The digitization of African materials has made it easier than ever for students to engage with primary source documentation and undertake original research. Digitizing sources and using digital sources to teach African history has great pedagogical value, but must be done ethically. This article suggests a model for collaborative and publicly-engaged scholarship, demonstrating the potential of transnational projects and shared knowledge production while maintaining sensitivity towards questions of the hegemony of the North. The study draws on experience of a virtual internship project between North American-based university students and the South African non-profit South African History Online (SAHO).

Public Histories in South Africa: Between Contest and Reconciliation

“…44 South African History Online (SAHO) began in 2000 and now claims the title 'the largest public history project in South Africa, if not the continent'. 45 One of the country's most accomplished social documentary photographers and a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, Omar Badsha, initiated SAHO with few resources and little interest from professional historians. He always envisaged this online resource as building bridges between exhibition and classroom, history and heritage, archive and library, experiential and instructional.…”

“…It has partnered university history departments in South Africa and abroad in creating both born-digital and digital surrogate resources and training public historians, and has won awards for its role in a 'global movement for the production of free scholarly and educational content about Africa and by Africans'. 47 The Five Hundred Year Archive (FHYA), a project of the Archive and Public Culture Programme at the University of Cape Town, responds to a renewed interest in the history of South Africa before the arrival of the first European settlers in the seventeenth century. 48 It grapples with the fundamental memory/history challenge that all knowledge of this long 'pre' history has been refracted through the oral traditions, writings, art forms and so on, produced over the past five hundred years of colonial/postcolonial history.…”

Perspectives: Introduction

“…Historians are finding that the digitisation of African materials makes it easier for students to engage with primary source documentation and do original research. 52 This push towards digitisation is exciting news. As the Covid-19 lockdown showed us, digitisation is not a luxury but a necessity, for both teaching and research.…”