Dhaya Sewduth: SACHED Trust :  A personal reflection  

Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1968)(1) epitomized the role that SACHED Trust played in educating thousands of citizens in a country which denied them a decent education or forced them to drop out of the schooling system due to the oppressive apartheid regime of the time.  

Literature from SACHED Trust transformed me as an educator and inspired me to share with my pupils and transform them as well. I was eventually motivated to resign from a fairly comfortable job as a teacher to take up a position in an NGO. That transformative journey grew in my years at SACHED Trust. 

It is very significant indeed that 2021 sees an initiative to compile the historical contribution made by SACHED Trust in the humanitarian, societal and educational landscape that is South Africa. It is significant in the sense that 2021 also marks the worldwide hundred year birth celebration of one of the greatest educationists to have influenced adult education across the globe, Paolo Freire.  

Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1968)(1) epitomized the role that SACHED Trust played in educating thousands of citizens in a country which denied them a decent education or forced them to drop out of the schooling system due to the oppressive apartheid regime of the time.  

Although the genesis(2) of SACHED Trust predates the English translation of Paolo Freire’s seminal work by some ten years, the epistemological similarities are there. These connections will be expanded later as I first indulge in my personal reflections on SACHED Trust. 

I had the privilege and honour of working in the ASECA(3) programme within SACHED, during the early years of its launch. ASECA was developed as an apex programme in a series of adult education programmes designed and developed to meet the needs of adult citizens marginalized from formal education. I worked in the ASECA Programme in the first half of the nineties, a period which saw the country move to its democratic regime change.  

However, my encounter with SACHED Trust predated my formal tenure by several years. As a former teacher in the racially divided education system, I too began to push the “Peoples Education”(4) agenda rather surreptitiously in my classroom. But looking for content was always a challenge until I came across publications like SACHED’s Upbeat magazines (5), educational Newspaper supplements in alternative press publications like New Nation and Umafrica.  

Literature from SACHED Trust transformed me as an educator and inspired me to share with my pupils and transform them as well. I was eventually motivated to resign from a fairly comfortable job as a teacher to take up a position in an NGO. That transformative journey grew in my years at SACHED Trust. 

The literacy programmes offered by SACHED Trust and other NGOs, while filling an immense gap in the lives of adults in need, soon revealed that there was no articulation with further education and training and probably proved that “new literates could easily become illiterate” if they could not progress in their lifelong learning journey.  

SACHED’s innovative approach to develop adult education programmes and educational resources came through once again when it developed the ASECA programme to facilitate articulation from basic literacy through to secondary level education with an exit level equivalent to matriculation. While this reflection will not delve into the registration and accreditation processes of ASECA, it is suffice to say here that at a conceptual level, its articulation within an emerging “national qualifications framework” (6 – reference the formative NQF by A. Baird and co) and exit level exams via the IEB(7) were itself radical and transformative. 

A further aspect of the transformative nature of the ASECA programme was the development of Integrated content areas and engaging learning materials which underpinned the curriculum of ASECA. Content within Integrated Social Studies and Integrated Sciences went beyond just merging distinct subject areas. The Integrated approach was designed to seamlessly teach across subject matter and develop critical cross field outcomes. This was radical, innovative and pioneering in South African education and it took the formal education system years to adopt similar epistemological approaches. Some universities have still not caught up with this Multi- Inter- Trans- disciplinary approach to teaching and learning.  

Years after my SACHED tenure, I still speak proudly of the learnings of that time. Even in my current role at Unisa, I am quick to remind colleagues of the influence that SACHED had in this mega Distance Education institution. The DUSSPRO (8) programme which for decades supported Unisa and other DE students to cope with their studies via community learning centre (9) support network compelled Unisa to implement the Tutorial Support programme at Learning Centre’s. This was prompted by a fundamental shift from being a correspondence instruction to one which implemented support for DE students. 

Years later when Unisa established the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Initiative (TMALI) in partnership with the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, one could speak with pride of the SACHED lineage going back to the time when SACHED facilitated and supported one of Africa’s great leaders and second President of a democratic SA who obtained his first tertiary qualification through the SACHED Trust and International Extension College /University of London partnership.  

Just some examples of the seminal and foundational contribution to SA from an NGO called SACHED Trust.