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.

HOW CAPITALISM AND RACISM CONTINUE TO SHAPE THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF SOUTH AFRICA

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sehlare Makgetlaneng
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
South African ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
African History ◽  
The South ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Past ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Racial Factor

This work provides a critical analysis of the dialectical and organic relationship between the benefits and misfortunes of capitalism and racism as an integral socio-economic part of the South African history since the inception of capitalism and racism in the country in the 15th century. This task is executed by highlighting the importance of the dialectical and organic relationship between race and class. It maintains that the primacy of class over race in terms of importance has existed since the inception of capitalism and racism. The theoretical and practical recognition of the primacy of class over race in terms of importance in the South African political economy is of strategic importance in the struggle for structural socio-economic change and transformation in the country. This struggle constitutes the efforts to solve the structural problem of the benefits of capitalism and racism enjoyed by the decisive minority of its population and their misfortunes confronted or encountered by the decisive majority in the past and present tenses of its history. It maintains that to best and effectively serve the needs and demands of the struggle for structural social change and transformation, whose aim is to end the benefits and misfortunes of capitalism and racism, it is of strategic and tactical importance to dialectically and organically weave the relationship between race and class without departing from the importance of the racial factor in the South African political economy.

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.

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