Lessons from IJR’s Schools’ Oral History Project, 2004 – 2010

Abstract

The institute for Justice and Reconciliation works in post-conflict societies guided by its vision to establish fair, democratic and inclusive societies on the African continent. It seeks to do so through four programmes one of which is the Building an Inclusive Society where the Schools’ Oral History (SOHP) is located.

In pursuit of the above a variety of processes are explored within formal educational curricula as well as community-wide appreciation of multiple-perspectives as well as multiple-voices that will contribute democratization of local historical consciousness and documentation.

Educators and learners are assisted to explore the notions about the construction and production of history; the methodological approaches to the oral history process, and the various ways in which the oral history research could be presented.

The IJR’s oral history project has conducted projects in five provinces.

A number of provisional lessons are: (1) Older and younger project members from diverse communities are eager to acquire new skills and knowledge in understanding and making contributions to their communities; (2)  Project participants enjoyed to engage the ‘other’ in safe spaces; (3) Local government structures seemed interested to participate but in many instances were overwhelmed by their core business of service delivery; (4) One of the ways to stimulate the interest in and development of local history could be to start platforms where aspects of local history could be explored across historical divides.