While the proposed history curriculum has come in for major criticism on various grounds – including a parochial focus on Africa, marginalising the histories of minorities, and an overly sympathetic treatment of the Africa National Congress – it may be more insidious than many might understand.

The curriculum seeks to inculcate an “historical consciousness” in students, through which they are encouraged to see the ongoing impact and relevance of past events and processes to current circumstances. Among the final themes to be studied is the end of apartheid and transition to democracy in the 1990s. It aims for students to “recognise that South Africa has attained political freedom, but economic inequalities have remained unchanged and the struggle continues for economic freedom, bearing in mind that the liberation struggle was always about both economic and political freedom”.

In both substance and terminology, this directs students to a negative evaluation of the transition, denies the considerable progress and societal change made in the interim period (often despite government action), and serves to discredit the post-1994 constitutional order.

Terence Corrigan of the Institute of Race Relations told The Common Sense that the ideological framework seemed “more Fallist than Marxist”.

“Over the past decade, there has been a growing chorus of voices pouring scorn on South Africa’s constitutional democracy,” he comments, “Much of this has come from the country’s intellectuals. Think the Fallist protests of a decade ago. This sort of thinking comes through strongly in parts of the curriculum.”

Corrigan notes that the curriculum does not explore developments in South Africa after the transition in any detail. Students are implicitly expected to judge the present without reference to the policy choices or conduct of successive governments. “This would feed the narrative of a ‘failed transition’ – not counterproductive policy, cadre deployment, or corruption – and that if only the revolution had been pursued without compromise, we’d be in a far better position. This is an odd case of a country’s educational system trying to indoctrinate its young people against its own institutions.”

“This is less about developing historical consciousness among young people than about leading them to a very specific form of historical consciousness,” Corrigan adds.

A public outcry has forced the department to extend the deadline for comment to 19 May.