Migration, Citizenship and South African History Textbooks

2008 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Chisholm
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
African History

Decoding the Visual Grammar of Selected South African History Textbooks

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katalin Eszter Morgan
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Design Principles ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
African History ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
Sociocultural Perspective ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Instructional Texts ◽  
The Relationship

Since the 1990s researchers have explored the design features of instructional texts from a Vygotskian sociocultural perspective. This article draws on their work in order to formulate analytical questions. Selected examples from four South African eleventh grade history textbooks are analyzed in an attempt to understand how the application of design principles, or the lack thereof, affects the potential mediating function of the text for historical learning as a whole. The relationship between visual processing and analytical and affective thinking is introduced to the discussion. The article concludes by commenting on the sociocultural context of textbook production.

scholarly journals The representation of the temporal notion of post-colonial Africa in South African history textbooks

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall T. Maposa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
African History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Temporal Representation

This article is premised on the current (2015–2016) developments in South Africa whereby the country’s youth are increasingly engaging in discourses of South Africa’s post-colonial condition and the need for decolonisation. But how do the history textbooks that they use in schools construct this contentious post-colonial period? On this basis, the main objective is to examine the temporal representation of post-colonial Africa in South African history textbooks. Critical discourse analysis was applied on a sample of four National Curriculum Statement-aligned textbooks with a focus on sections that covered content on post-colonial Africa. The findings from the textual analysis show that the temporal notion of post-colonial Africa is not clearly framed within a particular period. The ambiguity of the temporal notion, a fundamental concept in history, stems from the fact that the lexicalisations used as time markers in the textbooks cannot be linked to one particular date, resulting in a post-colonial Africa whose beginning and – more specifically – end cannot be unambiguously determined. The textbooks also sometimes refer to the post-colonial period as singular, whereas in other cases they describe the period as consisting of different phases. I conclude that such ambiguity reveals a loophole in educating the learners about a period whose circumstances they are trying to not only engage but also transform.

Learning Zulu

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
South African ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
African History ◽  
African Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Correct Form ◽  
Linguistic Purism

When this book's author began studying Zulu, he was often questioned why he was learning it. This book places the author's endeavors within a wider context to uncover how, in the past 150 years of South African history, Zulu became a battleground for issues of property, possession, and deprivation. The book combines elements of analysis and memoir to explore a complex cultural history. Perceiving that colonial learners of Zulu saw themselves as repairing harm done to Africans by Europeans, the book reveals deeper motives at work in the development of Zulu-language learning—from the emergence of the pidgin Fanagalo among missionaries and traders in the nineteenth century to widespread efforts, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to teach a correct form of Zulu. The book looks at the white appropriation of Zulu language, music, and dance in South African culture, and at the association of Zulu with a martial masculinity. In exploring how Zulu has come to represent what is most properly and powerfully African, the book examines differences in English- and Zulu-language press coverage of an important trial, as well as the role of linguistic purism in xenophobic violence in South Africa. Through one person's efforts to learn the Zulu language, the book explores how a language's history and politics influence all individuals in a multilingual society.

Khawuleza—An Instantiation of the Black Archive

Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siseko H. Kumalo
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
African History ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Philosophical Consideration ◽  
Theory Generation ◽  
Artistic Works

South African history is such that Blackness/Indigeneity were excluded from institutions of knowledge production. Contemporarily, the traditional University is defined as an institution predicated on the abjection of Blackness. This reality neither predetermined the positions and responses, nor presupposed complete/successful erasure of Blackness/Indigeneity owing to exclusion. I contend and detail how theorising, thinking about and through the Fact of Blackness, continue(d)—using the artistic works of Mhlongo, Makeba, Mbulu, and contemporarily, Leomile as examples. Analysing the music of the abovementioned artists, a move rooted in intersectional feminist approaches, will reveal modes of theorising that characterised the artistic expressions that define(d) the country. Theory generation, so construed, necessitates a judicious philosophical consideration if we are to resurrect the Black Archive. I conclude with an introspective question aimed at inspiring similar projects in other traditions that constitute the Black Archive, i.e. African languages and literature, theatre, art practice and theory.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanie du Toit
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The State ◽  
African History ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Social Goods ◽  
Forward Looking

Reading South African history through the lens of interdependence helps explain the disappointment that many South Africans feel in relation to reconciliation. While they are justified in feeling let down, owing to rising inequality and social exclusion, it is wrong to blame Mandela’s strategy of just interdependence because it was abandoned too early. In seeking to overcome oppression, reconciliation is forward-looking and predicated on rebuilding relationships in divided societies. Dealing with a violent past is valuable when striving for a more just future. Reconciliation fosters just, inclusive, and fair societies and is locally owned and driven. A progressive approach to reconciliation is also needed. Reconciliation recognizes the inherent interdependence between citizens themselves, and between citizens and the state. These relationships are progressively re-established in more just ways. In so doing, it helps to create conditions in which social goods such as forgiveness, the rule of law, or democracy become possible.

The Politics of Chiefs and Commoners before the 1830s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raevin Jimenez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
State Level ◽  
Temporal Context ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
African History ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Level Analysis

The field of pre-1830 South African history has been subject to periodic interrogations into conventional narratives, sources, and methods. The so-called mfecane debates of the 1980s and 1990s marked a radical departure from characterizations of warfare in the interior, generally regarded in earlier decades as stemming solely or mostly from the Zulu king Shaka. Efforts to reframe violence led to more thorough considerations of political elites and statecraft from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century but also contributed to new approaches to ethnicity, dependency, and to some extent gender. A new wave of historiographical critique in the 2010s shows the work of revision to be ongoing. The article considers the debates around the wars of the late precolonial period, including unresolved strands of inquiry, and argues for a move away from state-level analysis toward social histories of women and non-elites. Though it focuses on the 1760s through the 1830s, the article also presents examples highlighting the importance of recovering deeper temporal context for the South African interior.

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