Hegemony and accommodation in the history curriculum in colonial Botswana

A reanalysis of colonial education is necessary in order to highlight its multifaceted and hybrid nature in specific colonial contexts. Although in general, colonial education served the socio-political needs of the colonial machinery, the colonial government's hegemonic authority over the school curriculum did not operate as a totalising project. It was fettered by issues of political and social expediency that required both assimilation and accommodation in dealing with the sensitivities that were part and parcel of colonial rule. Influenced by theories of colonialism, this study used primary and secondary sources, in order to provide a nuanced understanding of the colonial history curriculum in Botswana. The paper argues that colonial rule was not merely a result of a foreign administration, but operated subject to local (counter-veiling) conditions, which reflected the complexities of the colonial context, and inadvertently influenced colonial education policy and practice, as well. Moreover, in the quest to create room for the incorporation of indigenous histories, the colonial authorities unwittingly came to reinforce the cultural hegemony of the principal Tswana groups. This provided the basis for the framing of history curricula in ways that inadvertently rendered the histories of the ethnic minorities invisible.