Protecting jobs and lives: Teachers’ passive resistance and subtle protest to curriculum policy in Lesotho,South Africa and Zimbabwe

Abstract

Most studies on teacher resistance to curriculum policy and reform implementation focus on teacher activism and visible acts of resistance. But there is growing interest in teachers’ passive resistance and covert protest in the face of intimidating state power. This paper theorises subtleties of teacher protest in three Southern African states – Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe. In these countries, teacher strikes, class boycotts and sit-ins have received heavy handed reaction from the government, resulting in psychological intimidation, physical assaults and incarceration. The key question driving this paper, therefore, is: Faced with shrinking democratic space, how are teachers in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe recalibrating protest strategies? This paper argues that state repression pushes teachers to retreat from active protest and resort to subtle protest, to protect their jobs and lives. The unique contributions of this paper are that it borrows James Scott’s typology of ‘everyday invisible acts of resistance’, developed from an anthropological study of peasants struggle in a Malay village, to theorise teacher resistance in pseudo-democratic spaces. It also generates novel insights on how teachers continue to resist curriculum policy while sending false signals of compliance to repressive state power.

Keywords

Curriculum policy invisible acts of resistance passive resistance state power weapons of the weak

Introduction

Curriculum policy is described as the ‘ghost of control’ (Doll and Gough, 2002: 34), and teachers as ‘soldiers of reform’ (Cuban, 2003: 4). This is mainly because, in most countries, teachers implement policy they never crafted – like soldiers who fight wars they never started. The metaphoric depiction of teachers as passive implementers of policy, under the watchful gaze of an invisible but omnipotent authority, is widespread in curriculum policy implementation literature. Ball (2003: 215) unpacks ‘the terrors of performativity’ that perpetually haunt the teacher’s soul. Craig (2020) views policy as a demi-god which can penalise teachers for non-compliance. Priestley and Philippou (2018) portray policy as complex spider webs that entangle reformers and teachers in a maze of policy crafting and implementation. All these allegoric images paint pictures of captured, miserable, timid and subservient teachers. But there is also evidence to the contrary.

Unjust political and economic situations, like racial discrimination, unfair labour practices and inequitable education systems, have pushed teachers to emerge as activists for social justice (Hung, 2019). Cases in point are teachers’ active participation in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, the anti-imperialist struggles in the Global South and the anti-apartheid protests in South Africa (Baker, 2011; Glaser, 2016; Will, 2023). More recently, in 2023 in the Oakland Unified School District in the United States and in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, teachers went on strike demanding higher pay, more teaching-learning resources and improved safety in schools (Sefokolo, 2023; Will, 2023). Teachers continue to advocate for justice inside and outside the school system. However, due to licensure requirements and fear of retribution from government authorities, teachers often engage in latent protest and passive resistance (Al-Takhayneh et al., 2022; Kazakbaeva, 2021; Priestley et al., 2015), This invisible resistance has far-reaching negative consequences on the education system. Naguib (2006) argues that authoritarian states replicate dictatorial school systems that create an environment of obedience and surrender, so teachers are not free to protest openly – forcing them to engage in invisible acts of resistance.

However, there are complexities and contestations in studying teacher resistance, be it active or subtle, making this a controversial but exciting task. For instance, Benson (2022) notes that it is not easy to differentiate worker insubordination from worker resistance. The former can be misconstrued for the latter, and vice versa: resistance can be perceived and penalised as insubordination. Furthermore, scholars find it difficult to pin-point actions which can be tagged as resistance and/or insubordination. Consequently, a clear-cut definition of resistance does not exist because resistance involves insubordination; and the opposite is also true: insubordination is a form of resistance. It can also be questioned whether a pigeonhole definition of an all-encompassing concept, like resistance, is feasible or even desirable. Hollander and Einwohner (2004: 533) remark that, ‘Scholars have used the term resistance to describe a wide variety of actions and behaviours at all levels of human social life and in a number of settings. Indeed, everything from revolutions to hairstyles has been described as resistance’. Without getting bogged down by definitions, in this paper, resistance will be used to mean a plethora of behaviours and actions (visible and not-so-easily visible) which teachers engage in to register dissatisfaction with policy and school reforms initiated at macro and micro levels by those with decision-making powers.

When researching invisible resistance as a social construct, scholars need to consider several factors that can influence, motivate or militate against acts of subtle protest (Willis, 2017). Among some of the influential variables are the environment or context of resistance, the culture of the resistors, as well as institutional factors. It is critical to recognise who the resistance is targeting. Teacher resistance may target reform policies (which indirectly targets policy makers), school authorities, the government or political leadership. In some cultures, acts of resistance (no matter how justified they may be) are scorned and loathed as unethical and unprofessional behaviour (Hung, 2019; Naguib, 2006). Such cultural practices which discourage open protest, unwittingly, encourage teachers to resort to ‘everyday invisible acts of resistance’ (Scott, 1985). Invisible resistance may be the only alternative available to teachers to avoid stigmatisation as enemies of established norms and values, law and order – and (by direct and indirect implication) enemies of the state. Given shrinking democratic space the world over, and in Southern Africa in particular, subtle resistance appears to be the safest strategy for teachers to protest while protecting their jobs and lives.

The current theoretical paper, anchored in James Scott’s (1985) ‘everyday invisible acts of resistance’, theorises subtleties of teacher protest in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe, where teachers cannot openly challenge policy (Kali, 2020; Ngoshi, 2021; Wills, 2020). Like most oppressed social groups, when teachers are not being observed by authorities and state power, they engage in protest and resistance through the language they use and disguised activity to avoid detection (Scott, 1990). The question driving this paper, therefore, is: Faced with shrinking democratic space, how are teachers in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe recalibrating protest strategies? This paper argues that, to protect their jobs and lives, teachers resort to subtle resistance and disguised protest activities so that they are not targeted as regime change agents by paranoid politicians. The unique contributions of this research are that, firstly, it borrows Scott’s (1985) typology of ‘everyday invisible acts of resistance’, developed from an anthropological study of peasants’ struggle in a Malay village, to theorise teacher resistance in pseudo-democratic spaces. Secondly, the paper extends debate and adds new insights on how teachers can still resist policy through disguised activity while feigning conformity and compliance.

Theoretical framework: James Scott’s everyday invisible resistance

Most studies on teacher resistance focus on visible protest (Altinyelken, 2013; Amour, 2019; Fullan and Hargreaves, 1996; Fullan; 2007; Goodson et al., 2006; Hung, 2019; Kazakbaeva, 2021; Samuel, 2014; Wills, 2020). However, there is growing interest in exploring teachers’ passive resistance (Al-Takhayneh, 2022; Zembylas, 2021). Scott (1985, 1986, and 1990) argues that subtle protest and passive resistance are ‘weapons of the weak’, which may be the only means of resistance where open protest is not tolerated and endangers lives. Passive resistance includes false compliance, feigned ignorance, falsified sick leave, lack of initiative, critical language, speech acts and gossip. Scott argues that unarticulated everyday forms of resistance can disrupt the hegemony of the powerful and register the grievances of the oppressed.

Alkateb-Chami (2023: 393) also points out that ‘Recognising resistance can be difficult’. This is mainly because acts of resistance in schools and classrooms often take overt and covert forms. It is the covert forms of resistance that are most common but more difficult to decipher due to teachers’ fears of being associated with resistance against curriculum reform and government policy and being recognised as instigators of and participants in protest. So, teachers most of the time just play along and give false signals of compliance with policy, when in effect they are passively resisting it.

James Scott’s everyday invisible resistance theory was selected as the illuminating lens for this study for three reasons. Firstly, for ethical and professional reasons, most teachers throughout the world do not want to be associated with visible acts of protest as this may jeopardise their chances of getting registered with teachers’ councils and securing employment in their respective countries. Licensure requirements are that prospective and practicing teachers must have a clean record with the police and security agents in their country (Hung, 2019). Getting involved in active protest, like demonstrations, may make teachers clash with the police and state security agents. This may tarnish the teachers’ personal record if they get booked or incarcerated, even for very short periods. Teachers can conform and obey ‘not because they have internalised the norms and values of the dominant group or are resigned to their status, but because the structure of surveillance, punishment and reward makes it prudent for them to comply’ (Scott, 1990: 193).

Secondly, like in many other parts of the world, teacher protests in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe are often met with heavy handed state reaction, even when such protests are legally sanctioned and organised by registered teachers’ unions which are recognised by the government (Kali, 2022; Moyo, 2021). Consequently, teachers who participate in active demonstrations can be arrested or physically assaulted placing their jobs and lives at risk. To avoid these undesirable consequences, teachers often resort to invisible everyday resistance, so that they are not targeted by police and security agents as trouble causers and regime change agents.

Thirdly, Scott’s invisible resistance theory offers affordances to gain deeper insights into how teachers have recalibrated their resistance strategies so that they appear complying and conforming. Subtle protest, according to Scott (1985), is one of the few weapons the weak can use to protest unjust policy imposed by powerful and domineering political elites in pseudo-democratic post-colonial nations.

Methodology

This comparative qualitative study on teachers’ subtle protests in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe depended on documentary evidence from primary and secondary sources. The initial search focused on research articles published in peer-reviewed journals on teacher protests in developed and developing countries. These secondary sources were obtained from Goggle Scholar using the following topic descriptors: teacher protests/resistance; teacher passive resistance; subtle resistance in education and teacher resistance/demonstrations in Lesotho/South Africa/Zimbabwe. These searches with a 1990–2023 time limitation yielded 221 articles. These articles were screened for relevance and a total of 18 articles were eventually selected for review because they focused on teachers’ active and passive resistance to curriculum policy and educational reform. The steps followed in the data collection and analysis process are illustrated in the flowchart below.

Data collection flowchart

The second level of data collection and analysis involved searching for primary documents published online on teacher resistance in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The focus was on newspaper articles and teacher trade union communiques available in the public domain. Different governments’ grievance handling mechanisms to teacher protests were examined in the light of teacher responses to state security threats and physical violence when teachers openly resisted policy disseminated in a top-down coercive hierarchy.

The third level of analysis triangulated primary and secondary documents on teachers’ subtle protest against curriculum policy. Triangulation involved inductive and deductive reasoning (Creswell 2013; Klenke, 2016) in search for convergence, divergence and internal contradictions on how teachers employed passive resistance techniques (like gossiping, rebellious speech acts, false compliance and feigning ignorance) to protect their jobs in the three Southern African countries. Using deductive reasoning the researcher made inferences on how subtle resistance buffered teachers from being targeted by state security agents as trouble causers for the political elite and regime change advocates.

At the fourth level, content analysis and thematic analysis were employed to generate themes that anchor the presentation of findings and discussion in subsequent sections. The themes are as follows: (i) Recalibrating teacher resistance in pseudo-democratic spaces; (ii) Lesotho: protest and state retaliation; (iii) South Africa: teachers and the tradition of resistance and (iv) Zimbabwe: protest and violent state repression.

Findings

The four themes generated from primary and secondary sources anchor the presentation of findings in this qualitative comparative study on teachers’ subtle resistance. Passive resistance is a construct which is not easy to recognise and characterise due to its subtlety (Alkateb-Chami, 2023; Scott, 1985, 1990). By its nature, teachers’ passive protest is not meant to be easily recognised by external observers because teachers feign compliance with education policy to protect their jobs and lives. So, data presentation in this section has nuanced multilayered narratives that incorporate some discussion.

Recalibrating teacher resistance in pseudo-democratic spaces

Globally, teachers face shrinking democratic space to air their grievances (Benson, 2022; The Roanoke Times, 2022). In the United States, widely considered the epitome of democracy, strike action by teachers is illegal in 37 of the 50 states (Will, 2023). Joshua Goodman, an Associate Professor at The Wheelock College of Education and Human Development argues that ‘For the same reason we don’t allow police and firefighters to strike, I don’t think teacher strikes should be legal’ (quoted by Barlow, January 29, 2024). Penalties for violating this prohibition include fines, termination of service, licensure withdrawal and even jail sentence.

In the aftermath of the May 2020 racially motivated murder of George Floyd, 16 states (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia) banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and sanctioned the banning of books considered divisive in public schools. The Roanoke Times (2022) reported that teachers in the United States can be ‘prosecuted as criminals’ for teaching accurate history on the racial struggle for equality between blacks and whites. Some oppressive state governments have created toxic environments in which teachers risk losing their careers for teaching the truth about race, injustice and inequality. This pushes teachers to resort to subtle forms of protest and resistance, to protect their jobs and lives.

Teachers may engage in passive and active resistance for a plethora of reasons. These include threats to their professional autonomy and existing knowledge, their values, beliefs and political ideology and nature of school administration as well as factors related to the socio-economic and school environments (Konaklı and Akdeniz, 2022). When dissatisfied with curriculum policy, poor salaries and working conditions (for instance), teachers may engage in both public and hidden transcripts of resistance (Mekonnen, 2019; Scott, 1990). Public transcripts of resistance are open acts of protest that are easily visible to the political elites, school governing authorities and security agents that are targeted to receive them. Such open resistance may take the form of civil disobedience, marches, demonstrations, revolts, strikes, protest gatherings and class boycotts. Konaklı and Akdeniz (2022: 1) observe that teachers often engage in ‘active forms of resistance by giving voice directly and protesting and in passive forms of resistance by being silent, shying away from happenings both on an individual and group basis’.

In countries where democratic space allows, the most common forms of active resistance teachers engage in include verbal resistance where they voice their objections, question policy and openly refuse to implement curriculum changes that they either do not fully understand or undermine their existing knowledge, professional autonomy and integrity. Teachers can interrogate reforms and stand up against them when they feel the changes are not justified, they were not adequately consulted or they conflict with their interests. In a study conducted by Konaklı and Akdeniz (2022: 6), one participant remarked that: ‘Our school is where everyone gives a voice. Everyone says whatever they think or want’. Anything is said like ‘let’s don’t do this’, ‘I don’t want this’. Overt resistance manifests in political environments and school contexts where leadership styles allow teachers to voice their concerns. Teachers’ levels of confidence and unionisation also create conducive conditions for individual or group active resistance.

Where physical and psychological spaces are restrictive teachers resort to covert resistance which manifests in, but is not limited to, lack of initiative and silent curricular subversion (Alkateb-Chami, 2023). The hidden transcripts of protest are an attempt by teachers to register their displeasure in ways that cannot be easily seen by authorities and all those who place the protesters’ actions under surveillance. Prasad and Prasad (2000: 388) point out that, ‘Routine resistance is actually far more pervasive in organisations even though it is less obvious to the casual observer’. Indirect resistance may take the form of non-participation, indifference, feigning sickness, working slowly to assigned work location, doing assigned work slowly (Benson, 2022) and ‘intentionally shabby work’ (Scott, 1990: 14).

As an act of individual passive protest, some teachers prefer to remain silent. The personal preference to engage in silence as an act of protest may stem from teachers’ consideration that if they openly resist (like going on strike or class sit-ins, for instance) school administrators may engage in acts of retribution resulting in loss of income and jeopardising their career advancement (Wills, 2023). Some administrators reported that passivating resistance can be as effective as verbal protest (Konaklı and Akdeniz, 2022) because work will remain undone and organisational objectives unachieved. A school administrator remarked that ‘Being silent is worse. Let’s say that change is a particular concern to that maths teacher. I try to convince him/her but s/he just would remain silent. Then I lose my bearings’ (Konaklı and Akdeniz, 2022: 9). Passive resistance is the weapon for teachers who try to avoid direct confrontation with superiors who are in positions of power and can retaliate. This is how one teacher put it ‘I also show my resistance by being silent and turning it into attitudinizing’ (Konaklı and Akdeniz, 2022: 9). Teachers may prefer passive resistance or what Savina (2019: 592) characterises as ‘innovative passivity’ when they think that active resistance may not bring any desired changes, or they may be punished for it.

However, there is a close relationship between the public and hidden transcripts of protest in that ‘the public defiance is usually a realisation of what has been rehearsed in the hidden transcript’ (Mekonnen, 2019: 13). This implies that teachers engage in hidden protest first before they can engage in public defiance. But in situations where conditions do not allow for open protest, teachers will continue to engage in hidden protest so they may not be identified as protesters and/or mischief makers. Despite public government denials, teachers in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe cannot freely mobilise protest and engage in active resistance without risking penalisation (Glaser, 2016; Kali, 2022; Moyo, 2021; Ngoshi, 2021; Wills, 2020). This forces teachers to recalibrate their strategies for protest.

Lesotho: Protest and state retaliation

The Progressive Association of Lesotho Teachers, and associated trade unions, organised protests in 2011, 2017 and 2018. Grievances revolved around salary increments, recruitment of more teachers, provision of learning resources, payment of salary arrears and the restructuring of the teaching service (Afrobarometer, 2020; Lesotho Times, 2019). But the aftermath of the 2018 protests witnessed government retaliation. Teachers identified as ring leaders were dismissed. Other protesters lost income when government declared ‘no-work no-pay’ (Kali, 2022: 573). ‘The security forces in the country often unleash disproportionate force and kill some protesters. Hence, efforts to consolidate democracy are largely undermined by police and army brutality’, complains Kali (2022: 565). Despite state violence, teachers in Lesotho refuse to be silenced.

In February 2019, teachers in the Kingdom, again, embarked on a nationwide strike. Key drivers to this public transcript of resistance were unresolved issues on salary increments, payment of salary arrears and better working conditions (Afrobarometer, 2020). The strike was also fuelled by accusations of misuse of public funds. Government critics claimed that money meant to address the teachers’ grievances was diverted to provide loans to members of parliament (Latela, 2019). Ramolibeli (2020) observes that, for the greater part 2019, teachers only worked one week per month. In October 2019, the government slashed the salaries of 4000 teachers who had engaged in the strike (Segoete and Phakisi, 2019). The state argued that this salary deduction was part of the enforcement of the no work no pay policy. Each of the targeted teachers had 2500 Maluti (Lesotho currency) docked from their October 2019 salaries (Motsoeli, 2019). The teacher trade unions vehemently protested the docking of the teachers’ salaries. They complained that the decision was not only unfair but intimidatory as the intention was to silence teachers’ voices so that, in future, they would not engage in strike action. The central argument in this paper is that, given the slashing of the teachers’ salaries as government retaliation for participation in public transcripts of resistance, teachers in Lesotho would engage in invisible resistance to save their salaries and jobs.

As of February 2024, another teachers’ strike was looming in Lesotho (Lesotho News Agency, 2 February 2024). The main issue at stake, as articulated by the Lesotho Teachers Trade Union (LTTU), Lesotho Association of Teachers (LAT) and Lesotho Schools Principal Association (LESPA), was the breach of a 2018 agreement signed between the government and the teachers’ unions. The unions are angry that the government is not taking teachers’ grievances seriously as it is reneging on the agreement reached to increase teachers’ salaries. Consequently, government owes teachers significant salary arrears.

The President of LTTU, Ramakhula Mafokane, explained that: ‘The agreement says when there is a breach of agreement by the ministry, we have only two options: to drag the government to court or resume with the strike’ (Newsday, 20 February 2024). He went on to explain that they were consulting their members so that a decision to either take the government to court or to drop chalks down in strike action can be concluded. As established by Scott (1985), it is during these periods of disgruntlement that the powerless in a master-servant relationship (like the teachers in the Lesotho case) resort to ‘everyday invisible acts of resistance’ like doing shoddy work, lacking initiative, feigning ignorance, falsifying sick leave, using critical language, gossiping or even remaining silent. These hidden transcripts of resistance register disgruntlement (which is only visible to those familiar with the school system) while feigning compliance to avoid penalisation by those who wield power, that is, the school administrators, curriculum supervisory authorities and state security agents.

South Africa: Teachers and the tradition of resistance

In South Africa, teacher protest has a long history dating back to the anti-apartheid struggle (Glaser, 2016; Wills, 2020). Under apartheid, salaries were skewed in favour of white male teachers, while Indian, Coloured, black and female teachers were paid lower salaries. In the post-apartheid era, the most conspicuous protests were led by the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) in 2007 and 2010 demanding equitable salary structures. After these two major strikes, proposals were made by the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, to declare teaching an ‘essential service’ (Phakathi, 2017) – implying that teachers cannot strike. However, unions strongly resisted as the right to strike is enshrined in the Constitution. The proposal to declare teaching an essential service was made because ‘strike activity is damaging to teacher professionalism (where strikes disrupt the system and are occasionally characterised by riots, outbreaks of violent protest and intimidation) and are harmful for students’ (Wills, 2020: 329). The threats to categorise teaching as an essential service partly stifle teachers’ voices making them resort to invisible resistance. But state apparatus in South Africa have not succeeded in suppressing teachers’ active protest completely, as is the case in Zimbabwe, for instance.

On 13 October 2023, more than 600 teachers in KwaZulu-Natal, under the banner of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), publicly protested for improved safety and security at schools. They also demanded payment of pay progression and timely appointment to senior management posts, as well as the disbursement of financial allocations to schools. SADTU provincial secretary complained that ‘We have noted the horrible conditions that teachers are working under. We have been told the [education] department has run out of budget…Some of our colleagues have been brutally murdered while at the workplace’ (Sefoloko, 2023). The petition was handed over to Mbali Frazer, a Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for education in KZN, who promised to give feedback within 40 days. This prolonged response period did not go down well with the teacher’s unions which saw this as evidence that the Education Department did not take the teachers’ grievances seriously.

Consequently, on 2^nd November 2023, SADTU announced that they were organising their members to picket across KZN because they were not pleased with the response given by the MEC. The teachers union urged its members to engage in what they called ‘work to rule’ protest (Mkhize, 2023). Instead of engaging in public protest, teachers were to protest in a subtle manner by working only for 7 hours at school, as stipulated in their conditions of service. Using the ‘work to rule’ passive protest, teachers were not to do any work-related duties (like marking, studying and preparing for lessons) outside the 7 hours they are expected to work. Given that teachers usually work beyond official working hours, this hidden transcript of resistance was bound to have far-reaching negative consequences on the quality of teaching and, ultimately, student performance.

Zimbabwe: Protest and violent state repression

In Zimbabwe, teacher protests are always violently crushed by the state. In 2019, four teachers affiliated to the Amalgamated Rural Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe were abducted by state agents for merely discussing Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Ndlovu, 2019; Ngoshi, 2021). They were physically assaulted and remanded in custody awaiting trial. Although the court acquitted them, a ‘message’ was sent to all teachers. Consequently, ‘many teachers are afraid to speak out because they do not want to lose their jobs’ (Moyo, 2021: 126). State sponsored violence against teachers is rife in Zimbabwe. Teachers are labelled regime change agents and often ‘tortured and whipped in the sight of their pupils and work mates…and frog-marched to political rallies’ (Mutanda and Hendricks, 2022: 495). This repression makes teachers live in constant fear for their lives, making them refrain from active protest.

In September 2017, Zimbabwean teachers engaged in what was termed the ‘pockets-out’ campaign by the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) (Wilmot, 2019). In this soft protest initiative, the teachers pulled out their trousers pockets to show that they were poorly paid and did not have any money. Wilmot (2019: 2) notes that ‘turning their pockets inside out was a safer way to express their destitution than participating in a heavily policed protest’. Instead of directly engaging in active protest, because of fear of assaults and arrest from the police deployed by the state, teachers resorted to turning their pockets inside out to show their dissatisfaction with low salaries. But in a country where public order laws are crafted to suppress even nonviolent protest, some teachers were afraid to take part in the pockets-out campaign. One of the organisers of this campaign, Chere, explained that: ‘To encourage participation among participants who feared the likelihood of repression, we would read stories of nonviolent struggles and discuss them as a group. This helped us encourage one another’ (Wilmot, 2019: 2).

Discussion

This study has shown that, throughout the world, teachers are facing shrinking democratic space to openly protest curriculum reform policy disseminated by national governments using the centre-periphery model. State repression makes it difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to openly protest unfair labour practices and air their grievances on curriculum policy they consider unfair or restrictive to their professional autonomy. Even in countries generally regarded as democratic, like the United States, strike action by teachers is illegal in some states (The Roanoke Times, 2022; Will, 2023). Teachers risk losing their licences to practice if they teach critical race theory and other contentious issues related to injustice and inequality between the races and ethnic groups. To protect their jobs and continue practicing, teachers end up resorting to passive resistance which may not be visible to the uninitiated eye and those external to the schooling system.

In Southern Africa, the use of physical force and psychological intimidation by pseudo-autocratic governments restrict active public transcripts of resistance by teachers. Repressive state apparatus, like the police and secret intelligence operatives, have in the past physically assaulted and imprisoned teachers and teacher trade union leaders for demonstrating against poor salaries, unfair labour practices and inadequate consultation before dissemination of new curriculum policy (Kali, 2022; Moyo, 2021; Mutanda and Hendricks, 2022; Phakathi, 2017). In Lesotho and Zimbabwe, for instance, some teacher activists have risked their lives in the struggle for improved working conditions for the teaching fraternity. Although conditions for teacher resistance in the three countries studied in this research are generally restrictive, these conditions vary from one country to another.

Zimbabwe appears to have the worst toxic environment as teachers are often public harassed by state agents in front of learners if they engage in any public transcript of resistance (Moyo, 2021). Teachers’ unions are very weak and captured by the state. Consequently, although teachers in Zimbabwe are the least paid (compared to their counterparts in Lesotho and South Africa) teachers’ voices in this country are almost totally silenced. On the surface, it appears teachers in Zimbabwe have no grievances. But, in reality, they engage in hidden transcripts of resistance as their only alternative, to save their jobs and lives, in the face of a tyrannical state system. In Lesotho, after the brutal confrontations between state power (police, secret agents and army) and teachers in 2017 and 2018, it appears teachers have been cowed into submission and no longer engage in active resistance (Kali, 2020). Whatever grievances against the state and curriculum reform authority teachers may have, it seems, subtle resistance is the only reasonable alternative to secure their jobs and lives.

Conclusion

Although this is an on-going exploratory analysis, indications are that there is more democratic space to protest in South Africa and (relatively) in Lesotho. In Zimbabwe, teachers are silenced by an autocratic state so they cannot openly air their grievance or engage in public protest. However, in all the three countries, fears of dismissals, imprisonment and salary docking (as retribution by the state for engaging in public transcripts of resistance) are real. So, with inter-state variations, subtle resistance remains prevalent across all the three post-colonial states.

South Africa appears to have the most democratic environment for teachers to air their grievances as evidenced by teachers’ open protests in KwaZulu-Natal in November 2023 (Sefoloko, 2023). This is mainly because South Africa has very strong and well-funded teachers’ unions (Glaser, 2016); and the government is committed to nurturing the country’s fragile democracy which is still in its infancy. But still, teacher engagement in subtle resistance in South Africa remains pervasive as the largest teacher trade union, SADTU, encouraged teachers to engage in ‘work to rule’ passive protest (Mkhize, 2023). The ‘work to rule’ approach requires teachers not to do any work-related duties outside the officially prescribed seven-hour working day. This hidden resistance transcript has far-reaching consequences on teacher (and ultimately learner) performance – given that teachers cannot complete and prepare their work in the eight-hour labour laws regulated day.

The limitations of the current comparative qualitative study on teachers’ passive resistance in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe are that it depended on published primary and secondary documents available in the public domain. The methodological shortcomings of a desktop study are that the researchers rely on evidence that has been sifted by other scholars with their inherent subjectivities. This means that the desktop researchers’ selectivity of evidence is restricted and their ability to reach independent judgements curtailed. Despite these limitations, the current study’s unique contribution is that it is a three-country comparative study on the contentious (but hidden) issue of teacher subtle resistance. The study employs Scott’s (1985) theory of ‘everyday invisible acts of resistance’, developed from an anthropological study of peasants struggle in a Malay village, to theorise teacher resistance in pseudo-democratic spaces in Southern Africa. The study juxtaposes on a single-slate evidence from three post-colonial states (Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe) to make sense of how teachers engage in protest while feigning compliance.

Besides being difficult to decipher, literature shows that passive resistance, though prevalent, is understudied (Alkateb-Chami, 2023; Scott, 1985, 1990; Zembylas, 2021). Most existing studies focus on active resistance which is easily observable. To widen and deepen the scope of our understanding of passive protest, it would be prudent to conduct empirical research involving prolonged engagement with teachers and making observations on how they can still register their dissatisfaction with education policy even when they pretend to be complying with given directives. By studying the hidden transcripts of resistance deeper insights can be generated on how teachers communicate their grievance in restrictive pseudo-democratic environments. Only after unveiling the hidden transcripts of resistance can teacher grievances be genuinely interrogated to improve teacher wellbeing, ultimately benefitting learners and the entire education system.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Godsend T Chimbi

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