GILL BROWNE DURBAN TCC 

May 2022 

Written reflection. 

History making, movie making

Being hailed in the street by the driver of an active cement-mixer waving to handover his Biology assignment  

– you at SACHED – when you joined, what you did? 

Joined TCC in 1986 to 1991 to run the TCC Matric Programme from SACHED Durban and tutor Biology. I met Enver as a fellow student on a two year part-time Diploma in Adult Education. (at the time I was teaching Matric Biology to 100 adults at the Cathedral Night School). 

– recall some of the people and projects you worked with and on 

Enver offered me the challenge of running the TCC Matric programme – and I embarked on a 5 year period of great stimulus and privilege of meeting and working with SACHED staff and especially my TCC colleagues. Chrystal (who came to TCC to enrol a potential student and then offered to work with us) and Sheila, who Enver “discovered” and brought in to help transform us. Planning an educational event with these two colleagues became an exciting open-ended journey – one never completed (how true of all educational journeys!).  

Thanks to the current project (SAP) the three of us managed some precious time together – Covid intervened Gladys formally interviewing us. To attempt to answer her questions is my way of making amends – never as rich as interaction. 

– some of your memories (fondest??  rather those that return easily and may seem trivial!) 

Catching a taxi from Ridge Road to work above the Ghandi library in Queen Street – the joy of feeling part of the majority and having such a historic building as a work place 

Being hailed in the street by the driver of an active cement-mixer, waving to handover his Biology assignment  

The heady stimulation of brain-storming a new education initiative (eg TCC rural outreach) with colleagues – the creative juices spilling over! 

The exhausted exhilaration of completing a TCC Learning Event with good karma from the students 

Knowing your colleagues had your back when the going got tough in student (or staff!) interactions 

The unexpected meeting with an ex-student or colleague and the camaraderie exchanged 

The craziness of driving down unexpectedly on my own, to Tsolo near Umtata (6 hour drive) to run a workshop and leave workbooks, then drive back again AND realising that there would be no follow-up, 

Meeting the students from the Music School who had to enrol at TCC as part of their acceptance at UKZN – their talent and honest feedback, 

A student unwrapping a tissue and showing a piece of her ear-lobe bitten off by another in a fit of jealousy  

Helping stack up TCC workbooks for storage and feeling such sadness at the waste: both of developers’ energy and students’ resources. 

National Meetings were pretty fraught and demanding of time and energy – BUT gave rise to some of those memories! 

Getting to and from the airport had its challenges: eg colleagues who found it difficult to leave the comforts of bed in the early hours. I forget the driver’s name who would work miracles in the J-burg traffic for us to board on time. 

Staying with a J’burg colleague at her home in Soweto – and visiting the ‘red door’ of the neighbourhood AND her car breaking down the next morning meant hailing a taxi to make a SACHED meeting in time (thanks Anna!) 

Meeting Charles Ngema unexpectedly on an early morning walk from our venue in a leafy suburb : and commenting on how quiet it was “yes, responded Charles, the quiet of the dead!’ We went on to discover some shared childhood geography near Nseleni in Zululand. A valued exchange 

Accommodation was certainly not all in leafy suburbia! Pulling beds from the wall to avoid the cockroaches  

Having my first puff at the stuff we so often smelt wafting up from the alley below the windows of or Durban offices 

Receiving political insights and education from Enver on a car journey back to Durban – far more productive and educational than flying! 

After 5 years I applied for sabbatical on personal grounds but which included a month’s course on Distance Learning at the Open University. This was generously financed by SACHED, a unique opportunity thoroughly enjoyed. I heard the news that the TCC project was closing during that month. With hindsight, the stats I was given to present for the TCC project at that course, made its closure seem unsurprising. My project focused on a need voiced by Durban TCC students, namely audio- tapes to help learners struggling with so much text to read in the English Course. Inevitably no implementation. 

 what legacy SACHED has left within you 

educational delivery is a mine field! Too often the deliverers are too divorced from the needs and perceptions of the receivers 

the production of written texts was TCC’s focus – but this was changing as technology changed. The value of those texts I believe still stands and could be used in parallel with on-line technology.  

across-discipline and across-cultural dialogue is incredibly enriching but time-consuming and that factor is often not built into programmes, 

the ethos of having different “levels” of educational programmes run by the same organisation added value and useful dialogue (not always seen as helpful at the time) 

– where you are now and what have you been doing 

I was offered a post as materials developer at the Centre for Science and Maths Education. In reality the material I was part of developing was in response to the needs of the participants on workshops ie the teachers themselves, who asked for a resource to help them run their own area workshops. The manual was produced but my post was terminated and the manual never successfully distributed. The development of the manual was part and parcel of a Masters in Educational Resource Development, 

I then had two years working with the editors on the abstracts and papers for the first international Ornithological Conference who were based in Life Sciences  at UKZN. The exposure to an International Conference led me to my next post with the Applied Physics Group at UKZN who were preparing to host such a conference. No physicist – I was employed so the material that came out of the conference was understandable to the employers of the physicists. 

I am now retired but do voluntary work with SARDA ( Riding for the Differently Abled) and joined a local group of the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers (CREW) outings to the grasslands in the area. Acronyms still hold in my life it seems!! 

 

the legacy question about what you think is the value of SACHED’S educational work for today. 

Maybe this has come out already? Durban SACHED under Enver’s leadership certainly carried out SACHEDs founding principals as we struggled to deliver educational programmes of merit  

Perhaps the legacy is an agency that can act as the “leaven in the lump” in the educational field. The leadership galvanised the dedicated and talented to produce remarkable materials. 

Remembering the reasons for SACHED’s formation as a response to the “Extension of the Universities Act “of 1958 is salutary.  

Countering apartheid education through education publications and programmes with alternative content and developed through alternative processes to empower critical thinking – always with the oppressed in mind  

So much, sadly, is till applicable in our post-apartheid society 

   

Gill Browne  

May 2022 

(hastily and unedited by my colleagues)