Natheem Hendricks interview February 2024, at UWC, Bellville Campus. 

I must say, I’ve never had a conversation like this with anyone. (page 18) 

If learning is about adapting to changes then what I’ve experienced in SACHED was this constant change, this continuous and continual learning, which is defined in the latest period as lifelong learning. However, I think that is a misnomer because learning is so natural. If you don’t, if you’re not learning, you must be dying. It’s as natural as that. It’s like breathing. (Page 19) 

What’s the social purpose of documenting a history? Now, as we know, recording and history is not a neutral activity. You have a social purpose. Why this should be is because there’s another story that is available and SACHED is a branch of that other story. (Page 21) 

Now, and in the late eighties, early nineties. A movement that SACHED was probably part of is a movement that is known as critical pedagogy or people’s education, which developed a possible blueprint for a future. And SACHED too, on a periphery, was part of this conversation. (page 22) 

What you see, SACHED is a national treasure. If I can put it like that, it is a national treasure. It is part of the heritage of South Africa and South African education. (Page 22) 

So, I’m trying to answer your question about if we are, if we ask, is there a purpose, a social purpose for writing outside of just documenting and describing, mm-hmm, the heritage of SACHED. As Marx would have us believe that if you just describing the purpose of this type of work, it is not just to describe, it is to see how can the documenting and analysis of this heritage contribute to change. So, so in that sense, the history must be written for that social purpose and the heritage is, it’s just footnotes to that question. (page 22) 

Natheem Hendricks: No problem.  

Tammy-Lee: So, I have your permission to record?  

Natheem Hendricks: Sorry?  

Tammy-Lee: I have your permission to record?  

Natheem Hendricks: Yeah, no, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.  

Tammy-Lee: Awesome. So, as you know, I’m Tammy-Lee Lakay and I am the Cape Town Assistant for the SACHED Archiving Project and I’ll be talking to you about SACHED today. Natheem Hendricks. Dr. Natheem Hendricks.  

Natheem Hendricks: Natheem Hendricks. I was always that. Just by accident, I got the PhD – 

Tammy-Lee: By accident.  

Natheem Hendricks: Yes, in fact, I always say, if it wasn’t for SACHED, I would not have been in education at all. So, and then, yeah, but I’ll tell my story. Okay.  

Tammy-Lee: Yeah, so my first question is basically, who is Natheem? Where are you from? 

Natheem Hendricks: Okay. How do I put myself? I used to be a student activist in the Congress tradition. I think that’s important for the, for the full story or for my story, at least. So, I participated at different levels in different institutions. And eventually I worked in an organisation that was affiliated to the United Democratic Front. 

I was a coordinator working both provincially and nationally. That also gave me access to the international work. So, during that period, I also coordinated the SWAPO election publishing part, the posters from Cape Town and coordinating about 200 taxis for that election campaign. 

We organised it from Cape Town side. And so, during that period, just before the elections, there was a public, almost like shaming of, of SWAPO. And this was about the atrocities in the camps. And the funding community, they threatened SWAPO to withdraw the funds. This was just about before the elections. 

A number of Southern African NGOs that received funds from NOVIB, which is one of the Dutch funders, all came together and started an organization. I forgot what was the name, but it was the Southern African Organisations funded by Norweb. It was basically almost like a trade union of NGOs that tells the funder, this particular funder, but also other funders, if you do that, then we will also withdraw. So it was South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique. They were all part of this so I had the privilege of acting on this coordinating structure, the Southern African structure, and I met very interesting people that eventually became leaders in their countries, both in Zimbabwe and in Zambia. Interestingly Chisano’s brother, when he was the president at the time, was also on this committee. 

Okay, so I then had an extremely rich interaction with the processes of the different liberation movements both South African and, and some of the others. But then it became about 1990, and I thought, no man, and you know what happened in 1990? It was the, the moment of unbanning and the release of Mandela. 

And I thought, look, I didn’t enter politics to become a politician. So, I’m going to reduce my participation in this. So that was 1990. And that is when I was still working for this NGO affiliated to the United Democratic front. And I thought I need a bit of more stability. 

Interestingly, I wanted to draw UIF. At that time if you were unemployed, you drew on UIF. And if you can imagine working for an NGO at that time, you were never sure whether you’re going to get a salary even though you were paid very little. The maximum amount of money I earned during that period was about 500 rand a month at the time when people were already earning, say, 6000 a month in terms of what I was doing. 

So, a job became available at SACHED.  It was the distribution provincial coordinator. I knew the person that was the national coordinator was Ashley Du Plooy. So, I was being interviewed. It was a Friday. How would I know it’s a Friday? It was a Friday. 

 You will now immediately see why I know it was a Friday. And I was interviewed and in the interview I could see I’m not going to get the job. But the interview continued, and the interview continued because Ashley became interested in my politics. Because his politics and my politics were different. 

I think he came from the WOSA, that type of background. Almost like the Unity Movement type of side of the politics. And, and, and we had a number of debates during this interview. So it was not about the interview anymore.  

Tammy-Lee: Just bonding you say?  

Natheem Hendricks: Not even bonding. I didn’t know Ashley. I didn’t know him. It was the first time I met him. But our politics were not the same we had we different perspectives on the matter. So I could see okay, man, I’ll just continue entertaining him. Oh, so it became almost past 12. Now on a Friday I go to mosque and I told him look I understood this is not a job for me in terms of my application. 

So, I need to go home. Can we conclude? He told me, look, man I’m too young for this post. But would I take a part time job and if something else comes up? I’m almost like I’m in SACHED and I said, that’s fine. Now you can imagine they offered me for half a day’s work more than my general salary. 

Tammy-Lee: Wow.  

Natheem Hendricks: So, I said, no, that’s fine. Because I wanted to go get into the formal space. So I got a part time job within distribution, you know, distribution was distributing Upbeat, the Right to Learn, a number of publications. Okay. And I did very well for one or other reason. People didn’t see that as a job and so I did very well, but I only had a half a day job.  

Tammy-Lee: So, what were you doing?  

Natheem Hendricks: Oh, you know, I would go to schools.  

Tammy-Lee: Okay.  

Natheem Hendricks: Try to convince teachers to use a bit in their teaching. So,  my figures went well. But I was working for half a day and so it, it, it, in any case, that’s a half day job. But then I would be by 12 or 1, I’m done. So, what will I do? So, I would sit in the library because, you know, I’m like a full time worker, but it is by accident I’m working half time of half a day. 

So I would sit in the in the library, the Sached library, and I would read, and I read very interesting things. I read Marcuse, I read those guys from the critical theory characters, and I’ve read a number of the texts and I enjoyed it. I had other colleagues there in Lacom and they would run workshops and they would ask me. Like there was this guy, Moeka. I’m not sure if you’ve maybe interviewed Moeka Ismail. I think he’s now the communications person for the parliament, for the ANC. Or that was the last time, I think he’s still probably still doing that, but there was Marcus there was another guy, Marx Prusent, that was his nickname, as he was a very good soccer player. He’s, he’s working now for the independent police directorate. So I would go and also do some workshops for, for LACOM at the time. And you would participate in meetings, you would also participate in other stuff, other than just your work. 

So, by that period, that was ‘91. And so, we were three people that shared one office. And. Then we also have, the distribution stuff, all the texts, the, the publications. So, you can imagine it’s a crowded space. And then an office became available. But at that time, the coordinator of SACHED didn’t have an office in Cape Town. And she wanted the office and we wanted the office. Now, but I just came to this institution, like, and in the meeting, we made a bid for the office. 

And then the let’s call it the director, the local director also wanted the office. And so there’s like now a disagreement and then the meeting decided, the SACHED meeting decided, why don’t you negotiate? We’ll all have the office. And as they then put forth the idea, my, my grouping, I must negotiate on their behalf. 

I just, at that time, maybe in SACHED for four months, yeah, I have to negotiate with the director to say, you can’t have this space. I want this space. It was Louise Vale.  

Tammy-Lee: I work with Louise.  

Natheem Hendricks: I’m not sure if Louise still remembers this, but I think she might have, she may have remembered this, but because of a few other things. 

So, I then sit down to meet with her, and I started the conversation with her. I said, look we’re going to negotiate now. Now you can imagine doing that, I was still young. You can imagine. And so, you still have that arrogance of youth. I told her, look, we going to negotiate, but can we agree that we’re going to negotiate as equal partners? If you think that you have the right, just because you are the director, then we might, might as well stop this conversation because if there must be a dispute, if there’s a dispute between yourself and myself, the senior people is going to support you. You here for many years. I just, I was probably I think I was maybe in the mid-twenties. 

So, she became furious with that because it… you can imagine to start a conversation at that space. And so I had to report to the SACHED committee, you know, we had every week or every second week, it was a very democratic space at least in terms of how it was structured. So, I knew it will come back to that forum and whatever happens, the staff will support me more than, you know. It’s almost like a natural position of we’re not part of management in that sense. So, but we parted on that, in that conversation.  

But during that period, SACHED went through a major process of transformation because funders started to withdraw money. 

And there were also a few characters that were seen as problematic. Names will not be used. They might have been problematic or, or not, but be that as it may, but SACHED wanted to get rid of them. But what they then did, I’m talking about management, they then introduced consultants into the organization to evaluate a program. 

And what we then, at least what I started to understand was this or these evaluations was not a way of really trying to transform. It was actually to close certain projects, I’m not sure if anyone raised this with you or not, but it was not about that, but it was about getting rid of people and then through that we also transform projects and so, so that became a major thing. 

And so I wrote a poem. I don’t know where the poem is, but this poem was so interesting. I wrote the poem and I told the librarian, the librarian at the time was Ghairo Daniels. Have you spoken to Ghairo Daniels?  Ghairo Daniels was the librarian.  

Tammy-Lee: Okay.  

Natheem Hendricks: And she said, no, we’re going to publish this poem in the library. I have a newsletter, a monthly newsletter. So, this was about to be published. And then one of the characters that they wanted to get rid of faxed that around the country. And it caused such a stink in the organisation. Then the organisation closed for two days to discuss at the national meeting this, not only the poem, but the substance of the poem. It was about consultants and the power of consultants over processes and almost like a struggle against consultants. Interestingly, Marcus was busy with his Masters, and that would have been a piece in his Masters, in the almost like the introductory section.  

Tammy-Lee: But I have a question, sorry. They were doing evaluations in the 80s as well. What made it such a big deal?  

Natheem Hendricks: No, you see, people always think evaluation, but we need to understand what was the purpose of evaluation. 

It’s not, in my assessment and a number of other people’s assessment, these evaluations were not neutral evaluations. They were evaluations for specific ends. Yes, funders started to sift but essentially there were a few people identified as problematic. And one of the ways to get rid of them was to say we need to close the Programme. Not the organisation, the project, because it’s not delivering on what we are looking for. 

But you will see later on, the substance of what they were doing didn’t change. It just became a new name and you know, old wines in new bottles type of story. So, that is that story. I’ll take that story just now further. But I must firstly also say there were a number of meetings, and for all of these meetings, people had to be well prepared, that they need to think about things. 

I don’t think in other organisations you would have had that in depth interaction. So those were spaces, learning spaces. These were for example, in my regular readings. if I participated in something. Now, and also you interacted, you’re frequently asked to assist organisations in the organising, etc. So the programme, was I didn’t go to the national meeting. I’m talking about the two day closure of the organisation. I didn’t go to that meeting, but a number of people that were at the meeting that had come into the organisation for the first time. 

One person was Khetsi Lihoko. I’m not sure if you’ve heard about him. Khetsi Lihoko, before he came into SACHED, he was the COSATU education officer. The other person was Kumi Naidoo. He became a director. But that was the first interaction c 

Tammy-Lee: with the  

Natheem Hendricks: organisation. But, I didn’t know both of them. But when I met them, they already knew me.  

Tammy-Lee: Your reputation preceded you, you say.  

Natheem Hendricks: Because of this poem. Eventually, that’s the one where LACOM was closed.  

Tammy-Lee: Okay.  

Natheem Hendricks: LACOM was closed. That was ‘91, so LACOM was closed in ‘91.  

And so, then there was a proposal to introduce a new community building project. A new project, but more structured and more organised, and it became known as a Basic Course for Adult Educators and Trainers. Something like that, the follow on to LACOM. 

And so, a number of new staff had to be appointed. I was in distribution but a post became available now for this new organisation. And I’ve applied, I think at that time I applied for the post of materials developer within this new project. And this was a national project. 

Now, I worked initially as it had provincial activities, but it was I was then appointed and Khetsi, the one from Cosatu was the head. Because Khetsi then already knew me.  

Tammy-Lee: you were hired on the spot.  

Natheem Hendricks: Sorry?  

Tammy-Lee: You were hired on the spot. No,  

Natheem Hendricks: I was hired and I think my it had to do with,  

Tammy-Lee: The havoc you caused. 

Natheem Hendricks: So, I was appointed to be aa materials developer. I knew a little bit of and or about publishing stuff. I told you I worked for in, for not only for the also for SWAPO Media and et cetera. So I had a bit of interaction with the field. But I you don’t learn only to get a qualification. It’s you, you’ve learned because you had to do your social purpose was, was different. 

So for me was not about becoming a, a materials developer, say in that other spaces. It was about, it was part of my activism role, et cetera. So. I became a  materials developer and we then, myself, Tony Sardin and Tammy Sheffer, she’s now a professor here as well, we wrote this, and another person, I can’t remember what’s her name. 

We wrote this text a basic course for adult educators and trainers, I’m not sure of the exact title. It also meant that I now participated in the courses that we offered, national and provincial. It gave me access to a number of fora because that was the period where education was discussed nationally, what’s the flavour of the education? So there were a number of workshops that SACHED participated in the community structures that I was involved in. 

And so, it took me to provincial, national and international fora where issues were discussed related to this. I’m not sure how, maybe a year or two, I worked in this structure, or three, I can’t recall. But then, a new organisation was started. A new outfit was started at SACHED.  

Maybe I’ll tell you now, but now I was full time. I was almost like a millionaire now because you can imagine starting with 500. You have three times your salary and now you go to full time. You can imagine. I always when I was earning around 4, 000, at that time, you still got the cheque. When I went to go and fetch this money at the bank, I felt I need security because I’ve never walked in Observatory with such a lot of money.  

So, yes, and then ASECA, that is a secondary curriculum for adults came about and Louise approached me, don’t I want to come and work in that unit. Now essentially my, my formative studies was in science and not in social studies. So I would work with mathematics and chemistry. I said, Louise, okay, that’s fine. So I was what was the assistant curriculum developer for ASECA in maths and science. Later on, I focused in on mathematics and my colleague, Jim Needham, focus on the science part of it. 

But that gave me access to consult for the curriculum, what should be in the curriculum, you know, that was national structures.  I’ve worked with people from the International Extension College. People evaluated the work that we were doing, there was one person Richard Chiawena, he’s from Zambia. He stayed here for maybe two, a year or so. He worked as a consultant with us. So I got insight , and parallel with that, we were trained in different aspects of the delivery of distance education, whether this was the writing of materials, the use of audio and these we had to integrate into what we were doing.  

More to the end of this period, there was a course offered at the National Extension College on distance education. And it was proposed that I attend that in, it was in London. So I spent about six months there and simultaneously, I had to try and find an assessor that can guide us in competence education. I eventually, with the assistance of people from the National Extension College, we’ve identified a person. Now, the interesting part is we were funded by the British Council. And one of the conditions was if you get a consultant, it must be a British person.And so we got a person by the name of McIntosh. He was a renowned assessor, expert. Okay. And so he came, and we’ve agreed on terms, etc. So he came too.  

I participated in a number of courses in the University of London. I was surprised I came in the library. They have, you know, our library, our education section, the University of London’s library would have a section just on South African education stuff. So you can imagine. So, it’s like up to date stuff, a pamphlet, whatever. They have it there. 

I’m not sure how, but I also came across a text, Linguistic Imperialism by Philipson. Have you, you familiar with that text? Okay, but the interesting part of this was this Philipson, he worked in the British Council, he’s a Danish guy, and when he resigned, he wrote about this and he showed that English, as a language, is actively promoted to pursue the political and other interests of Britain and America in particular. 

And the two key actors that almost like do the groundwork for that is the British Council and the Ford Foundation. During this there was a seminar. Now you can imagine a seminar, a guy from Nigeria offered the seminar. But this seminar was a counter to Philipson’s work. 

Tammy-Lee: Okay.  

Natheem Hendricks: I’ve attended the seminar. And I saw, but you must have been paid to come and do this type of work. Even if you oppose it, that’s not how you, how you do it. And so I wanted to ask something. But, maybe my facial expression showed that I’m not happy. But the organisers didn’t want to give me a chance. 

In fact, to the point where some of the audience people were saying but they didn’t give me a chance. And I eventually left the seminar, but the point is, and I also linked this to I had something to ask and something to say, but it’s also this, you know, this youth arrogance, and  

Tammy-Lee: you,  

Natheem Hendricks: we now know what the truth is and don’t tell us it is not. But why I’m telling you all these stories, the forum that gave me the space was SACHED. Whatever their story. 

Okay. Now, I also then had interactions with the World Bank staff because of this course. And you ask them the question, what happens if a country doesn’t pay? And the World Bank representative said that will never happen. Okay. Be that as it may. But I’m on this programme.  

They took us to Plymouth University at that time, that was about ‘95. Plymouth University, they had a satellite program, a satellite computer system that would allow, in 95 this was fairly revolutionary, that would allow distance learning through computer. Online learning facilitated through this university. And I came to understand what they were trying to do was, we can sell you the system. It was, it was a more subtle way of saying make use of our technology.  

But it’s not only about cutting out the middleman. It’s more than that. It was another form of imperialist intervention type of thing. You will see later on, I think now about early 2000s, there were a number of distance education programmes that was offered at university level by foreign universities. So this was one of the earlier ones. So I also interacted with ideas and stuff from the Open University.  

And then, the cohort went to Dartington. Now Dartington is, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of a guy called Lord Michael Young. It’s his estate. Now, it’s basically a palace. Now here, the guy from the Cape Flats, you get a five course meal every day. Why I’m telling you this, even though we came through SACHED, there was, there was assumptions that these people attending these programmes, so it’s not only from South Africa, it’s from Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, Malaysia, that these individuals may become critical people in future in the educational setup and, and they can be, they can, they will be almost like positive. Yes, it was that type of, but everything was almost like glitz and glamour type of story. So, I was the beneficiary of this. 

So when I came back, I continued with my work and, and, and, and this guy H Macintosh, we took him around the country because he was now the expert. 

Now, at that time, this was before outcomes based education.  

Tammy-Lee: Yeah.  

Natheem Hendricks: So we were cutting edge type in terms of educational technology. So he was running workshops across the country, but almost like we hosted him. But I started to learn more and more about this as well. And I started to realize this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. No,  

Tammy-Lee: no,  

Natheem Hendricks: He knew about assessment, but this competence education was a new field. He didn’t know about competence education. But we didn’t know that. Because we don’t know what it is. Only when we started to understand what it is, then we could see no one actually knew this. So, but, but it’s also how people are. You, you’re not, you’re not an expert. You are being made an expert. Yeah. Interestingly, I wrote a book in which I looked at questions of expertise and experts. Many moons later, but ironically, actually.  

But also, my interest in funders and those type of things, it’s all, it’s all there, yeah.  

And I continued and our science books started to be printed. It was mathematics, as I told you. In ASECA I coordinated mathematics, so we had to write mathematics materials, and I had to appoint maths writers. 

It was extremely difficult at that time to find black mathematics writers. And I discovered in order for me to appoint a black person, that person must either be busy with their PhD, or they must already have a PhD, then they will be looked at to write. But we appointed a white person who worked at Jutas. But this person had first-year mathematics. Now, that may sound strange, but that was something inherent in our system, where you must be three, four times better to be equal.  

So, there was a policy at that time in SACHED that to be an editor, you must be a first language English speaker. And I suspected that that is not a true policy. It was, it was camouflaging, basically saying the editor must be white. This was what I’ve That was what, it might not be correct, but I’ve, I’ve made that assumption. So we had a case where a person had to be an editor for the science books. And then we got a person, eventually I motivated that we appoint this person and she was appointed. 

She was a white person, but that was actually a deliberate appointment on my part. Okay. Because that person was, she came from, what’s the word now? She’s, she’s a Slovakian.  

Tammy-Lee: Okay.  

Natheem Hendricks: And English was a third language. She knew her Sciences, but you see, I wanted to,  

Tammy-Lee: to  

Natheem Hendricks: show that it’s not what you, what you are telling us. It’s not that. You can’t say, because you see, SACHED is a progressive organisation. We can’t say these things, but the structure of how you get funds, who’s been getting things. Funders want certain things. And whatever they said, they still want white people to be in charge of that. 

So, you do get you smattering of other coloured or whatever, but that is just a window dressing type of thing. So, yes, the person was appointed. I never told her that. But you must watch your policies.  

Tammy-Lee: Sorry, since you’re talking about sort of the guise of things, what would your opinion then be of sort of the gender question within SACHED?  

Natheem Hendricks:  Education is predominantly, people would say, one of the caring professions. Which are generally associated with women. So, in terms of appointments, we’ll see that there’s a greater percentage of people appointed, women. So if we look to SACHED, you had the head of the distribution, in the writing section, most of the people were women that wrote and yes, also the editors. I actually can’t think of an editor that was not a woman. But the director Jenny Glennie and then there was also Helene Perold.  

Tammy-Lee: So.  

Natheem Hendricks: Louise was also a key actor. At the one level you can see all the names that I gave you, where they’re coming from?  I don’t have any, in fact, I would classify, in particular, Louise as a friend. It’s not that I’m raising this because I have a personal issue with the individuals. For me, it’s about the politics of the matter. If we come to the organisation like at a different level LACOM was primarily men. 

Tammy-Lee: Mm-Hmm. 

Natheem Hendricks: LACOM and, and not necessarily the follow on to Lancom. But the women that were there were also primarily white women. Okay. One of the key recipients of the programme was the labour movement, COSATU particular, and there were two groups of people that dominated that space. 

It would have been men and white women in the involved in intellectual labour. The people that are almost like providing the organic leadership Okay. That was the two dominant groups.  

But during the period that I was at SACHED the organisation also started to shrink. And eventually I was the only person on in a full type post in SACHED in the Cape. 90s 

Tammy-Lee: Yes,  

Natheem Hendricks: so I now was the only person, a number of people left. And in fact, they started, they joined up with the organization that became eventually part of SACWA. It was, I’m not sure what they called the organistion. But it was at Leaf College. Man, I remember it was at Leaf College. But eventually I was responsible for mathematics. And now also science. The other people, some had left for UWC, Lucy Alexander, Nandipha Matshanda. I think a person from UWC approached me, Joe Samuels, don’t I want to come and work at the university?  

Oh, during the period I was at SACHED.  

Tammy Lee: How long was that? 

Seven years. During the period I was in ASECA I was encouraged to participate in a programme. It was an advanced diploma for educators of adults. And I registered at UCT to be part of this programme. So now that was actually the first time I entered the formal space of humanities and those type of things.  

So, to understand this field much better, to do my work much better, I also offered to teach maths and science and mathematics at a night school in Langa. St. Francis at the time, and so this was also to allow me to understand the teaching practice and processes much better. So through SACHED, I then became to deal more, by 96, the house that was in the new era. And I was chairing the adult education the Association for Adult Educators of South Africa. 

It was, I chaired the provincial structure and I also chaired out of that, I chaired the provincial advisory committee.  I’m not sure what’s the name now, but it was the advisory structure to the new formation of the adult education department in the province. And on this forum, I met another person and he was also on the committees was Joe Samuels. And through our interaction, he offered me opportunity at UWC in their Continuing Education outfit. And I saw SACHED is going down. Maybe I should just, and they offered me a contract, a three-year contract. And I had a permanent post at SACHED. And I said, yes, I’m taking it. 

I met with Ashley and at that time Roy Williams was the director, we met. They wanted to persuade me to stay. I said, look, man, I’ve already gave them my undertaking that I’m coming. So maybe I should go. So that was my break with SACHED in ’97.  

But if I had to, to look back at the space I think I’ve learned and SACHED provided me a useful space to learn about a number of things. And it was only the library, the spaces that became open through workshops and activities that I was involved in in the organisation, I also gained access to fora where national and provincial policy issues were discussed related to education. But it also almost like introduced me formally to the social studies and humanities.  

So, if I think back, I would have been almost like a lab assistant in a science lab that was in chemistry. That was my trajectory. Later on, I became so involved in education that I’ve did like postgraduate work in education. In fact, my field of study became the recognition of prior learning which allowed me to be part of the founding of the UWC RPL project which became renowned in South Africa. In fact, we were the first institution where the CHE gave accreditation to the institution to offer RPL. And I ran a number of workshops for other universities on how this process should unfold. 

I think that study was fairly significant because in the earlier years it was one of the first studies in RPL. So when, when people had to write about RPL, my work had to be cited because there was very little other work, not that it would say anything much, but what was interesting about that was that I was asked to pursue my PhD immediately and I was almost like conflicted because should I doit? The PhD is about me and my importance, do I really want to pursue something? 

And I thought, no man, if I do a PhD now, it’s about me. There’s nothing that  I see as important to do. So it took me 10 years to, to really go on and do a PhD that I’ve found significant. And what was significant about that for me was to understand how social thought is being manufactured in society through what is known in the literature as epistemic communities. Now these epistemic communities and the key driver for these epistemic communities are funding agencies. The funding agencies and the media. They have particular projects to pursue and they create through funding, they create certain possibilities and then exclude other possibilities. So that was, therefore, my interest in funders and these things. I’m always suspicious of the allocation, who’s funding why are they funding?  

So when I’ve when eventually got this qualification, I thought a key person that I would say, you might not know it, contributed significantly to the outcome of it was a person by Ashley  

Tammy-Lee: Ashley du Plooy.  

Natheem Hendricks: If I was not appointed into that space maybe I would have been in politics, maybe I would have been in …….. but it would have been in a different space. 

If learning is about adapting to changes then what I’ve experienced in SACHED was this constant change, this continuous and continual learning, which is defined in the latest period as lifelong learning. However, I think that is a misnomer because learning is so natural. If you don’t, if you’re not learning, you must be dying. It’s as natural as that. It’s like breathing.  

And the question is, why this notion of promoting lifelong learning. It’s a neoliberal myth that is part of this idea of what I was talking of funders doing this and that.  

UNESCO had a project called Education for All. Now education is planned learning interventions. Normally we need to offer it formally. States must take responsibility for it, meaning they must resource it. Lifelong learning, if you fail, it’s not the state that failed, it’s you that failed. So you, you and the community must take responsibility for resourcing it. 

So, it was part of this notion of minimalizing or reducing the state’s responsibility for the provision of education. So, that is my story. You can ask me other questions, but that’s my story.  

Tammy-Lee: Fantastic. Very interesting story. Yeah. I love how many SACHED people end up at UWC, but also in education. It’s so beautiful. 

Natheem Hendricks: However, I’m in education, but my study is not in education.  

Tammy-Lee: Hmm.  

Natheem Hendricks: It’s actually in international relations. And it’s about security and it’s about, you know, the other type of work I did. So,  

Tammy-Lee: fascinating though.  

Natheem Hendricks: Sorry?  

Tammy-Lee: Fascinating. Yes,  

Natheem Hendricks: yes. No, I must say the study is interesting and also people that know something about international relations will tell you that international relations, as a cottage industry, was always in South Africa dominated by whites. There are very little other people that write about international relations. And this particular contribution, it was almost like, it was an intervention in that. 

And, and what I did was to deliberately show up some of the key actors in international relations. What are their roots? Where are they coming from? Almost like naming them and so what is the political affiliation? So, it leaves a bit of a sour taste. You. I then eventually wrote a book about this, and I, there was one, I named people because they published. 

So, I named them, and there was one person in particular that didn’t like what I said, and they complained to the publishers. And initially I thought, no man, I’m not going to withdraw. But I thought it was more important to get the rest of the story out. And so, I redacted that portion, which is something that I feel a bit sad about because factually it’s not incorrect what I wrote, but I had to, do I want to go through a legal process and  

Tammy-Lee: Pick your battles. 

Natheem Hendricks: And so I thought let’s just let it go. Yeah, so that’s, that’s the story.  

Tammy-Lee: I have two questions. Yes. Okay, so you worked in distribution, right? So what was sort of the, the politics? It was in the 90s, so it wasn’t as intense, I suppose, as it would have been in the 80s. So, yeah.  

Natheem Hendricks: Yeah, you know, distribution was very small as a unit. So the politics in distribution was not necessarily, for me, that was not a key space. I would think it’s maybe LACOM and I would not necessarily see that also as, as the key space. But. Why that was significant because that provided an opportunity for people to do the formal studies. Yeah. And Dusspro would be the same. So, they were counter hegemonic initiatives. 

But if we look at SACHED as an institution. and the direction that SACHED was taking. I think there was an assumption, a key assumption that SACHED will play a far greater role in the new dispensation and provision of education. But that was an unrealistic possibility. You see, SACHED was primarily outside of the Congress movement, the leadership was almost like antagonistic to the Congress tradition and spaces. 

Now, you can’t expect that the movement that is now leading the future to say you take this piece forward. And I think that is the key reason in my assessment. And there were a number of Congress people, but they were not opinion makers. They were the, the they were almost like at the third, fourth level of interaction. 

So if it was purely on the basis of it’s a historic contribution, SACHED should have played a bigger role, but it was not realistic. But then we must also appreciate and understand that SACHED was an NGO. It was not a social movement. It was, it provided services to a social movement but SACHED was also highly invested within the funding world. And those individuals, those structures had agendas for, for South African education as well. So yes, John Samuel should have played a greater role. He was probably well placed to perform that role, but his politics was not, was not aligned. And so, you still remember the debate now? Cadre deployment. He was not one of those.  

Tammy-Lee: Now I’ve heard my supervisor did an interview with Ashley. And so I’m very familiar with this conversation.  

Natheem Hendricks: I must say, I’ve never had a conversation like the role of this (SACHED’s Role in a Democratic South Africa) with anyone. But that’s my assessment. In fact, I would have liked to speak to Ashley again (about his assessment).  

No, no, no, not, not for, for, for anything, just as   

Tammy-Lee: a comrade  

Natheem Hendricks: Though Ashley is an interesting character for me, outside of, it’s because he was very much integrated in the funding community. He understood and played the role and game that is expected of him as a person generating funds. So as now that I’m working almost like on the other side, I just, I got a there was a possibility of me performing a leadership role in this institute (where I am currently working). And one of the issues that I was extremely uncomfortable with was the idea of working with funders. 

Because I came from an organisation which I believe was killed because of funders. I could see how the funding agendas eventually led to the demise of the organisation.  

Tammy-Lee: Can I ask you, so many funders pull out of, like SPEAK and SACHED in the 90s, which is like the way of democracy. Why do you think that is?  

Natheem Hendricks: You see, what they are saying, this is what they’ve said. 

That now that there’s a new government, they will work through government. They will provide funds for governmental projects. But let’s take an organisation like USAid. Now for a number of people USAid is a funding, a donor organization. But USAid is an integral part of U. S. foreign affairs. So, in fact I wrote about this somewhere. This is made explicit by the US State Department themselves. So, they must follow and whatever they do is the pursuance of the American interests, even though they will give you a number of stories, but this is their own. 

 

So, and this applies to all funders so in fact funders has an association, say all the South African funders, they, they come together and they agree what and how they will fund, not necessarily organisations per se, but what areas that they will be funding. Now, it doesn’t make sense. They, they may say, yeah, so that it’s not almost like duplication, et cetera, but there’s a definite coordination amongst funders. 

And, what then eventually happens, they shift, because they set the agenda of what should be the issues people should focus on. So they may not tell you how to do things, but they would tell you what issues should be important. And then they would deemphasize other parts. They will utilize the funds to push people into certain directions. This is now important. And so all the organisations will, for example, a funder will tell you, we don’t have funds for this anymore but we have funds for this. So, you see  

Tammy Lee: Dictating the terms.  

Natheem Hendricks: So, what happened, here you have 10 people working for this NGO. So, you as the director or the organisation have to decide. Are we going to lose our 10 people and keep to our, the agenda that we followed? Or are we going to say, okay. Yeah. No, I, I’m telling you. I know of how we’ve changed a number of times. And if it would be interesting for someone just to make an assessment or an evaluation of what became the flavour of the month. 

And how that was, was almost like a massage through funding. I’m confident  what the outcome will be?  

Tammy-Lee: Sheesh.  

Natheem Hendricks: Okay.  

Tammy-Lee: Last question. Well, you used the word democratic structure. Yes. And Ashley used the same word, and I, I adore that word because it refers to sort of the processes and the meetings. That’s how he described the culture of the organization. Yes, yes. How would you describe the culture of the organization?  

Natheem Hendricks: I think at the, at the level of, let’s call it at the level of the rank and file. Yes, that is so. There was a high level of participation in steering the direction of what is important. What should be done. If the agenda is set, our issues should be done, the communities we need to work with. That was, it was done through consultation with community and other stakeholders, consultation internally, trying to equip people to become knowledgeable about areas and fields of work. 

So at that level, it was highly democratic. Yeah. There were multiple meetings on different things, local, national.So people will come from Cape Town, imagine, like 200 people in the organization. They will all be at the national meeting discussing things. So at that level, it was highly democratic. But there was also, at another level, I think it was fairly autocratic. 

No. For example, if the directors believe that this is the direction that ought to be followed, there’s actually no, no democratic processes. And one of the examples is the issue of when an organisation should be, a project must be closed, that decision effectively has been made, but we will give it the decorum of legitimate processes have been followed. 

Tammy-Lee: I see.  

Natheem Hendricks: Yes. And the other thing that also determined these things are funders. They’ve already decided that this is the thing that we will fund next year for SACHED. It will be not LACOM, it will be that. Now we can stand on our head and the leadership knows this and so they will massage everyone into that. They may have different reasons for that, but eventually that decision will be taken. But some people may feel that they were actively involved in the decision making. I just tried to show you in the earlier conversation about the policy, the language policy of who must be editors. 

And it’s actually not it was not the principle position. It was it was clouding something else. Now some people may disagree with me, but that is how I experienced this particular matter. I’m not sure how Marcus would have articulated these matters, but he was a very interesting character. 

Tammy-Lee: Oh, yes. Definitely. You’ve answered all of my questions in a roundabout way, but I have a little question for myself if that’s okay. Okay, go ahead. Do you think this history is important, the relevance of doing this history now, do you think there’s importance to it?  

Natheem Hendricks: I think it’s around a social purpose. What you see, SACHED is a national treasure. If I can put it like that, it is a national treasure. It is part of the heritage of South Africa and South African education. 

So at the one level, irrespective of what the story is. It may embark on a number of processes and people in South Africa and so it has a history it’s worth recording that as such instead of just disappearing. It also gave an indication there were counter hegemonic activities if we look at SACHED. Earlier than the 90s where funding, foreign funding was not that dominant. This is a far more counter hegemonic type of activity and, and it was, it was more a flavour of social movement that you could find within SACHED. 

For example, SACHED was  in Cape Town, was a hub for students, for UCT students, student activists, people from NGOs. It was a resource for them to come and draw on for their activism, trade unions, and, and also spaces for them to organise counter hegemonically. So just in terms of a facility. But then SACHED was also a space that people organised and, and, and, and do things outside of the funding spaces. It didn’t follow the logic of, we must report on this, et cetera. So, and that is also a story. That is part of  SACHED now I can’t say how this is replicated in a place like Johannesburg or Durban or so on. 

 But in terms of the house, you know, it was in Mowbray in Church Street. So it was a very nice place for socialization, et cetera. And so it was one of those resources that was not necessarily accountable to the agendas of others outside of the people that made use of it. So, it was also that. Before I gave you more of a structured approach. So, from that side, I think it’s important but then there’s also a social, a social purpose. 

What’s the social purpose of documenting a history? Now, as we know, recording and history is not a neutral activity. You have a social purpose ,why this should be. Because there’s another story that is available and SACHED is a branch of that other story.  

Now and in the late eighties, early nineties. A movement that SACHED was probably part of is a movement that is known as critical pedagogy or people’s education, which developed a possible blueprint for a future. Yeah. And SACHED too, on a periphery was, was part of this conversation. Why didn’t that conversation mature? What happened to that conversation?  

I don’t know, it’s not only funding. It’s not only funding. It is, I think, if we look at the right to learn. It’s the Right to Learn is putting forth a particular view of the sociology of education. That, and this is part of the critique of traditional education, and the Right to Learn actually expresses that if education is about reproducing society, society and reproducing the inequality that we have that’s, that picture hasn’t changed. Why, what, why is that not part of the conversation anymore? SACHED participated in that by publishing the Right to Learn. I’m not sure, have you read the Right to Learn?  

Tammy-Lee: I have, I cited it as well.  

Natheem Hendricks: So, and that is about, and I think the key idea is reproduction. And are, are we, are we perpetuating the reproduction of society? And why haven’t we, why are we not thinking about what does an education system mean that will benefit the poor? What must, and this is some of the things that I’m interested in, what must a faculty of education, teaching educators, what should they propose for a curriculum for teachers that will counter the reproduction? And why is it not possible to reach that? I think it’s almost impossible to do that.  

Tammy-Lee: It’s all set now, so it’s difficult to undo it. 

Natheem Hendricks: Yeah, but I also think it is, and it’s, it’s Yeah, that is, that is for me the… So, I’m trying to answer your question about if we are, if we ask, is there a purpose, a social purpose for writing outside of just documenting and describing Mm-Hmm. the heritage of SACHED. As Marx would have us believe that if you just describing the purpose of this type of work is not just to describe, is to see how can the documenting and analysis of this heritage can contribute to change. So, so in that sense, the history must be written for that social purpose and the heritage is, it’s just footnotes to that question.  

Tammy-Lee: Thank you so much.