The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi
YES, Sarafina, Whoopie Goldberg’s thriller set in apartheid South Africa, becoming a visual form of literature for schools! Why not?
All nations of the world are today busy searching for best-practice education systems for their present and the future outcomes.
The search includes Zimbabwe and its own search led by Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Dr Lazurus Dokora could not have been described better when he addressing the 2015 NASH conference at the Troutbeck Hotel-Nyanga recently called the Ministry’s Zero-draft Curriculum a search “that seeks to equip learners with the knowledge, skills values and attitudes that our school graduates should acquire in order to be fit-for-purpose.”
Zimbabwe, like Japan, China, India and indeed the USA and United Kingdom, is not sitting on its laurels.
Its Minister of Primary and Secondary Education is a worried and busy man. “. . . schools (must) play a pivotal role in shaping the destiny of the learners, and it is of utmost importance that schools create conducive environments and engage in transparent effective practices that harness all available resources for the organic development of learners,” said the honourable minister to more than one thousand secondary school heads attending the NASH conference at the Nyanga resort.
It is time for change in the education sector.
There is no doubt about that. Zimbabweans have been clamouring for this change in the direction and purpose of education.
President Robert Mugabe’s commissioning of an enquiry into the relevance and validity of education fifteen years ago which later became famously known as the Nziramasanga Report was recognition of that change.
The relevant minister and his team of secretaries, and policy directors cannot achieve the mammoth task of developing a sound curriculum framework alone. We will not stop suggesting from the terraces as no one idea is too small or too big. We will continue to suggest, hoping the best can and will come from many, not a few. Even education too needs democratisation to realise best-practices.
As we do now, we throw into the suggestion box an idea we hope will breathe a new lease of life into the teaching and learning of literature.
Last week I nominated the film ‘‘Mrs Doubtfire’’ to come on the list of suggested visual literary forms. This week I suggest ‘‘Sarafina.’’
Storyline:
South African school children fed up with a racist system of education which forces them to learn and use Afrikaans as the main language in apartheid schools, take the law into their own hands to help bring about change in the education system and ultimately in national politics.
Themes:
Racism /Nationalism/ Patriotism/ Resistance / Change / Betrayal /
Characterisation:
Sarafina: Symbol of hope, resistance / charming / unifier/ determined / thinking.
Sabela: Daylight sell-out, symbol of betrayal, blind, shallow-minded, corrigible
Mary Masombuka: Brave, charming, hopeful, stubborn/ infectious personality.
Kita: Poor, vulnerable, disillusioned.
Possible questions for study and discussion:
What qualities in each of them bonded Sarafina and her teacher, Mary Masombuka, to each other?
How does Sarafina’s mother contribute to her bitterness and readiness to fight apartheid and what it stood for?
Discuss how teachers played both a positive and negative part in influencing students’ attitudes against the system?
Who are the characters in the film ‘‘Sarafina’ are symbols of courage and fortitude?
Though the students were resolved to fight for their freedom, there was an invisible power and influence in the background which set the tone and the tempo of steadfast resistance. Do you agree? What was that power?
What do you think kept Miss Masombuka’s revolutionary spirit high? What do you think happened to her after her arrest?
Comment on the beginning and the ending of the film? How do these spoil or add dramatic effect to the story of the film?
If this does not bring back life to the dead or dying Literature, nothing will ever resurrect it.
If anyone doubts the resurrecting spirit of this great idea of film as a modern form of visual literature, sponsor a referendum!
