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.

scholarly journals Legitimation of Poverty in School Economics Textbooks in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jugathambal Ramdhani ◽  
Suriamurthee Maistry
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Further Education ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Critical Knowledge ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Selection Of

In South Africa, the school textbook remains a powerful source of content knowledge to both teachers and learners. Such knowledge is often engaged uncritically by textbook users. As such, the worldviews and value systems in the knowledge selected for consumption remain embedded and are likely to do powerful ideological work. In this article, we present an account of the ideological orientations of knowledge in a corpus of school economics textbooks. We engage the tenets of critical discourse analysis to examine the representations of the construct “poverty” as a taught topic in the Further Education and Training Economics curriculum. Using Thompson’s legitimation as a strategy and form-function analysis as specific analytical tools, we unearth the subtext of curriculum content in a selection of Grade 12 Economics textbooks. The study reveals how power and domination are normalised through a strategy of economic legitimation, thereby offering a “legitimate” rationale for the existence of poverty in the world. The article concludes with implications for curriculum and a humanising pedagogy, and a call for embracing critical knowledge on poverty in the South African curriculum.

scholarly journals Axing the Rainbow

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Irina Turner
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
African Nation ◽  
Current State ◽  
Systemic Discrimination ◽  
Social Disparity

Today, the Rainbow Nation as the central metaphor for postapartheid South Africa falls short of serving as a unifying identification marker due to its tendency to gloss over contrasting living realities of diversified identities and ongoing systemic discrimination. The South African Fallism movements – the student-driven protests against neocolonial structures in academic institutions – spearheaded public criticism with the current state of ongoing social disparity in South Africa and revived the critique of so-called rainbowism, i.e., the belief that a colour-blind society can be created. In an application of Critical Discourse Analysis focusing on mythical metaphors, this article asks to what extent the new president Cyril Ramaphosa in his maiden State of the Nation Address projected a post-Zuma South African nation and answered to the challenges posed by Fallists.

scholarly journals A critical discourse analysis of selected news reports of South Africa xenophobic attacks of Nigerians

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 62-69
Author(s):  
Gideon Abioye Oyedeji ◽  
◽  
Nabila Idoko Idris ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
News Media ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Colonial Experience

The incessant xenophobic attacks of Nigerians and other foreign nationals in South Africa have generated a unique discourse in the Nigerian media and in fact, other mainstream media on the African continent and international scene. These attacks are viewed by the international community as incompatible with 21st century civility. This paper therefore, engages the reports of selected news media in Nigeria, South African and other media houses with a view to explicating the ideologies that underpin each report seeing through the insight of Van Dijk, Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak’s models of Critical Discourse Analysis. A total of 10 report on the 2015-2019 xenophobia were purposively selected from the online outlets of these media houses. The study therefore found that the use of language by the Nigerian media shows that the polarisation tilted towards emphasising the positive ‘in-group’ description of the heinous acts visited on innocent Nigerians in South Africa whereas the South African and other news media brought to perspective the negative ‘out-group’ description of “some” Nigerians who are engaged in illegal businesses in their South Africa. The lexical choices contribute in significant ways to show the ideologies each reporters represent. The study submits that, these attacks by South Africans on fellow African Nationals are nefarious, iniquitous, atrocious and roguish perhaps because of their colonial experience.

A local discursive dimension in a specific historical context: Students’ narratives of police experiences during South Africa’s #FeesMustFall protests

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-450
Author(s):  
Lynn Mafofo ◽  
Sinfree Makoni
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Private Policing ◽  
African Higher Education ◽  
South African Higher Education

AbstractMost studies on campus and private policing take on political, anthropological, sociological, and criminological perspectives. Although there were investigations on policing in South Africa during apartheid, scant research has focused on how students in South African higher education (SAHE) relate their experiences of campus policing. Due to recent unrest on SAHE campuses and radical changes that include the militarization of police forces, examining how students perceive the legitimacy and integrity of campus policing is vital. As such, this paper presents a discourse analysis focused on descriptions of students’ campus experiences in the aftermath of the #FeesMustFall (#FMF) protests. Combining critical discourse analysis (CDA) with systemic functional linguistics, through transitivity, it offers insight into the ideological power struggles between students and police. It shows the types of voices students reveal as an aggrieved group in the hope of identifying non-aggressive approaches to address emotionally charged events (such as protests). Adding transitivity analysis to CDA provides a solid framework for decoding radical meanings at the peak of chaotic situations in which social change in post-apartheid South Africa can be facilitated by understanding marginalized groups.

WHOSE ECONOMIC FREEDOM ANYWAY? REVELATIONS FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN DISCOURSE

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joleen Steyn Kotze
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
Economic Freedom ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Heritage Foundation ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Freedom Index ◽  
Ideological Construction

The Economic Freedom Index published by the Heritage Foundation ranks South Africa at 72nd out of 178 countries in terms of economic freedom in 2015. This index classifies South Africa as moderately free in terms of its level of economic freedom. While the country may be in the middle of the pack on the Economic Freedom Index, it is also often classified as one of the most unequal societies in the world. South Africa is often seen in the top five unequal countries globally with a high Gini-coefficient, and when using the Palma index (measuring the ratio of income share between the top 10 per cent and bottom 40 per cent), South Africa can also be classified as highly unequal. Therefore a contradiction seems to exist. While South Africa ranks as economicallymoderately free on one hand, the country is also regarded as one of the most unequal societies in the world, on the other hand. It is this contradiction that brings to the fore a contested ideological construction of economic freedom within its political narrative premised on a view that the promise of democracy had not delivered. This article presents a critical discourse analysis of the contested interpretations of economic freedom through the lens of securing liberation and the promise of democracy in South Africa: a promise built on the Freedom Charter's construction of a democratic South Africa.

scholarly journals The construction of the African being in South African history textbooks

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Maposa
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
African Government ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Analysis Methodology ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Thabo Mbeki ◽  
Level Of Analysis

This study is rooted in the move by the South African government at the turn of the 21stcentury to spearhead the conception of what then President Thabo Mbeki referred to as anAfrican Renaissance. This move entailed cultivating an African consciousness; educationbeing one of the key tools. With textbooks still playing a critical role in the educationsystem, I analysed South African National Curriculum Statement-compliant historytextbooks in order to understand the construction of the African being. I employed a criticaldiscourse analysis methodology to analyse a sample of four contemporary South Africanhistory textbooks with a focus on the chapters that deal with post-colonial Africa. At adescriptive level of analysis, the textbooks construct the African being as five-dimensional:the spatial, the physical, the philosophical, the cultural and the experiential notions. Theinterpretation is that the African being is constructed as multidimensional. I usepostcolonial theory to explain that while the macro-level of power produces the dominantdiscourses, the micro-level of the citizen also contributes to the discourses that permeate thehistory textbooks. Indeed, the production of textbooks is influenced by multifarious factorsthat when the discourses from the top and from below meet at the meso-level of textbookproduction, there is not just articulation but also resistance, thus producing heteroglossicrepresentation of the African being.

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