The people's past: Towards transforming the present

Abstract

In recent years, the world-wide re-emergence of radical history has made a significant impact on South African intellectual development and historiography. The study of the experiences of 'ordinary people' is now considered academically worthy of pursuit, assisting in the analysis of past events, and enriching the texture of history in general. This growing interest in history 'from below' has resulted in a crop of seminal studies on the processes of the subordination and proletarianisation of people in South Africa.1 These works are in turn stimulating the writing of popular history, not merely 'from below', but also for the purpose of informing and engaging the people about whom they are written. But more important for the direction of popular history, has been the profound impact of the resurgence of the independent, non-racial unions since the early 1970s on working-class and community politics. Concommitantly, there has been a renewed interest in labour history as well as in worker education. Then, too, the dramatic thrust of community resistance has also had a powerful effect on issues such as housing, rents, transport, councils education and forms of control beyond the workplace, leading to a growing interest in past experiences at these 'sites of struggle'. One outcome of this growth of collective and militant activity has been an increased demand for self-awareness, and an eager response to the variety of popular presentations on history. I should like to begin this paper on popular history in South Africa with a brief survey of some of the historical material being produced for a popular readership. In the second part, I try to draw out some general observations, broadly based on the material presented, on the state of popular history at present in South Africa.