Abstract:
As a legacy of our troubled past, South Africa continues to grapple with inequality and
marginalisation. Regarded as a profoundly unequal society, access to education remains a
contentious issue. South African independent boys’ schools are embedded within the intricacies
of the South African education system. Almost three decades after democracy, these schools still
embody their colonial mandate to produce citizens of the Empire in culture and ethos. This
evocative autoethnography explores the complexity of a White, male educator's attempt to teach
controversial issues in the formal, informal, and nonformal curricula of the South African
independent boys’ school. Complexity theory was utilised to explain the intricate influence of the
constituent elements of my teaching practice. Purposeful sampling was used to identify
participants for an emic process of critical conversations with co-witnesses and co-constructors
of my experience. This was combined with memory work to construct an autoethnographic
narrative in the form of short stories. This research reveals the complex relationship between
understandings of gender, whiteness, a colonial legacy, and an emergent multiracial elite class of
South Africans. In turn, this exposes the nuanced way in which problematic constituent elements
of independent boys’ schools influence the teaching and learning of controversial issues. Thus,
this study serves as an attempt to place the independent boys’ school into the context of the
broader South African education system and offers a nuanced understanding of how learners at
these affluent and privileged institutions are taught and learn controversial issues.
