The construction of the African being in South African history textbooks

This study is rooted in the move by the South African government at the turn of the 21st century to spearhead the conception of what then President Thabo Mbeki referred to as an African Renaissance. This move entailed cultivating an African consciousness; education being one of the key tools. With textbooks still playing a critical role in the education system, I analysed South African National Curriculum Statement-compliant history textbooks in order to understand the construction of the African being. I employed a critical discourse analysis methodology to analyse a sample of four contemporary South African history textbooks with a focus on the chapters that deal with post-colonial Africa. At a descriptive level of analysis, the textbooks construct the African being as five-dimensional: the spatial, the physical, the philosophical, the cultural and the experiential notions. The interpretation is that the African being is constructed as multidimensional. I use postcolonial theory to explain that while the macro-level of power produces the dominant discourses, the micro-level of the citizen also contributes to the discourses that permeate the history textbooks. Indeed, the production of textbooks is influenced by multifarious factors that when the discourses from the top and from below meet at the meso-level of textbook production, there is not just articulation but also resistance, thus producing heteroglossic representation of the African being.