The Nkosi Albert Luthuli Oral History Competition is a national competition that has taken place annually since 2006. Each year it is open to secondary school teachers and learners in Grades 8 to 11.
The aim of the competition is to increase the interest in history and to encourage scholars throughout South Africa to engage with their shared history in addition to exploring their personal and community histories. This project aims to acknowledge - in a significant way - the efforts of promising students and the dedication of their teachers.
This is a joint project between the Department of Education, South African History Online and the South African History Archive (SAHA). SAHA is assisting with the digitization of the projects submitted by learners and teachers.
We hope that this oral history archive continues to develop so that local community heroes and largely forgotten freedom struggle activists stories are acknowledged and recorded.
“There remains before us the building of a new land, a home for men who are black, white, and brown, from the ruins of the old narrow groups, a synthesis of the rich cultural strains, which we have inherited. There remains to be achieved our integration with the rest of our continent. Somewhere ahead there beckons a civilisation, a culture, which will take its place in the parade of God's history beside other great human syntheses, Chinese, Egyptian, Jewish, European. It will not necessarily be all black, but it will be African.”
Chief Albert Luthuli: Let My People Go, 1962
Nkosi Albert Luthuli Oral History Project Submissions:
- Nkosi Albert Luthuli Oral History Competition 2011
- Nkosi Albert Luthuli Oral History Competition 2012
- Nkosi Albert Luthuli Oral History Competition 2013
- Nkosi Albert Luthuli Oral History Competition 2019
For info on how to conduct oral history research, click here