It’s about the inexplicably intransigent position of so many school syllabi in this country and around the continent where European history and European-ness in general is seen as the only history to teach. He talks about private English medium schools in Botswana where students in French class are taught about white French celebrities from the past while black French celebrities are forgotten. He is talking, in essence, about the decolonising of the curriculum. It’s not new and it’s not normally that controversial for right-minded people, if anything it’s seen as long overdue. But for one teacher at Maru-a-Pula (MAP) (where Donald Molosi apparently attended) it made her head explode, and it exploded all over social media causing much outrage.
Julia Saplontai attacked Molosi on Facebook. She said “his brain was very small”, that he was a “mean, low class, ungrateful piece of crap”, described his essay as a “trash article” and that she would not accept his “denigrating remarks about the school”. Apparently the administration at MAP told her she must keep quiet now and she decided to listen because she “grew up to be a person who respects hierarchy and who would never disrespect her superiors”. Saplontai has apparently been the head of modern languages at MAP for a long time and says that she built the French Department over 31 years.
