Counter-narratives of achievement at South Africa's first apartheid-era black medical school, 1950s to the early 1990s

Abstract

This article examines the construction and dissemination of two particular achievement narratives - one focused on high academic standards, the other on a Black Consciousness-inspired "Black pride" - that were produced by academic staff and students at the University of Natal's Medical School, South Africa's first apartheid-era black medical school in the highly racialised context of the 1950s to early 1990s. While quite different in terms of their producers and periods of origin, the article argues that both these narratives developed with a similar purpose: as counter-narratives, which intended to critique or challenge the pervasive and disparaging apartheid-era discourse that portrayed black South Africans as inferior. Indeed, both these narratives sought, in their own respective ways, to enable those producing them to reframe the dominant apartheid discourse, to offer alternatives, including more positive views about black South Africans, and to take an oppositional stance. Yet, while both developed as counter-narratives, they did so with different emphases and stances taken to challenge apartheid, highlighting the complexity of these narratives. In addition, this article examines how both these narratives could sometimes, in particular historical moments, overlap in time and even amalgamate, leading to the construction of hybridised narratives.