AN ANALYSIS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF AFRICAN CONSCIOUSNESS IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY TEXTBOOKS BY MARSHALL TAMUKA MAPOSA Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History Education) At the University of KwaZulu-Natal 2014 SUPERVISOR: PROF. J. M. WASSERMANN i DECLARATION I ................................................................................ declare that (i) The research reported in this dissertation, except where otherwise indicated, is my original work. (ii) This dissertation has not been submitted for any degree or examination at any other university. (iii) This dissertation does not contain other persons’ data, pictures, graphs or other information, unless specifically acknowledged as being sourced from other persons. (iv) This dissertation does not contain other persons’ writing, unless specifically acknowledged as being sourced from other researchers. Where other written sources have been quoted, then: a) their words have been re-written but the general information attributed to them has been referenced; b) where their exact words have been used, their writing has been placed inside quotation marks, and referenced. (v) Where I have reproduced a publication of which I am an author, co-author or editor, I have indicated in detail which part of the publication was actually written by myself alone and have fully referenced such publications. (vi) This dissertation does not contain text, graphics or tables copied and pasted from the Internet, unless specifically acknowledged, and the source being detailed in the dissertation and in the References sections. Student: Supervisor: ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I firstly give thanks to God for the strength to initiate and pull through this project. I sincerely thank my supervisor and mentor, Professor Johan Wassermann, for all the support that he has offered me from the time we first met, and for standing by me throughout my studies. Thank you to my wife, Emby, for supporting me as I focused on my studies. I also thank my mother for her prayers and blessings for me to follow this path in my life. I will not forget my brother and my sisters and their families. I also thank the Foroma family for all the prayers. A special thank you to Miss Gummy Johnson for the unending support and to Mrs Angela Bryan for the editing services. iii DEDICATION To Nokutenda Matinatsa Maposa iv ABSTRACT 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 therefore set out to analyse contemporary South African History textbooks in order to understand the type of African consciousness that they construct for their audience. I conceptually framed this study within a conceptual architecture of African consciousness, adapted from Rüsen’s (1993) typology of historical consciousness. Theoretically, the study is framed within discursive postcolonialism and oriented in a social constructionist paradigm. The sample consisted of four Grade 12 History textbooks with a focus on the themes on post- colonial Africa, on which I conducted Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis. At a descriptive level of analysis, the findings are that Africa is constructed in the analysed textbooks as four-dimensional: the spatial, the temporal, the humanised and the experiential notions. Correspondingly, the African being is constructed as five-dimensional: the spatial, the physical, the philosophical, the cultural and the experiential notions. The interpretation is that Africa and the African being are constructed as multidimensional and largely ambiguous. I argue that the revelation that the analysed textbooks contain a bricolage of three forms of African consciousness (traditional, exemplary and critical) implies a consciousness conundrum that is a manifestation of the hybridity characteristic of postcolonial representations. In fact, the research shows 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 African consciousness. v On one hand, South Africa is constructed as part and parcel of postcolonial Africa. But more dominantly, there is on the other hand, the exceptionalism of South Africa and the South African from the construction of Africa and the African being. I argue that the kind of African consciousness that is promoted in the textbooks to a greater extent leads to the polar affect, which is a preference of the group one identifies with over others. Keywords: Africa, African being, African consciousness, History textbooks vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: An adapted framework for African consciousness ................................................................... 53 Figure 3.1: The three levels of genre, subgenre and micro-genre…………………………………………………………..68 Figure 5.1: Research design classification……………………………………………………………………………………………125 Figure 5.2: The research sample ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….133 Figure 5.3: Criteria for analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….137 Figure 5.4: Fairclough’s CDA dimensions of analysis…………………………………………………………………………….138 Figure 5.5: Instrument for textual analysis ………………………………………………………………………………………….139 Figure 5.6: Instrument for transitivity analysis …………………………………………………………………………………….142 Figure 6.1: Countries mentioned in the verbal text ……………………………………………………………………………..155 Figure 6.2: Africa in the world (Textbook 3, p. 101) …………………………………………………………………………….173 Figure 6.3: Africa as part of the communist world (Textbook 4, p. 108; p. 86) …………………………………….174 Figure 6.4: Map of Africa (Textbook 3, p. 58) ………………………………………………………………………………………175 Figure 6.5: Map of Africa showing all islands (Textbook 3, p. 99) ………………………………………………………..176 Figure 6.6: Map making an exception of South Africa, Egypt and Libya (Textbook 1, p. 92)………………….177 Figure 6.7: Map showing the exception of South Africa (Textbook 1, p.60) …………………………………………178 Figure 6.8: A graph revealing a time frame for post-colonial Africa (Textbook 1, p. 91)………………..……..183 Figure 6.9: Regional maps (Textbook 2 p. 87; Textbook 3, p. 82). ………………………………………………………..179 Figure 6.10: The Congo contextualised within Africa (Textbook 1, p. 100)…………………………………………..180 Figure 6.11: A Malawian postage stamp (Textbook 4, p. 78)………………………………………………………………..181 Figure 6.12: A cartoon depicting the unfeasibility of a united Africa (Textbook 2, p. 61)………………………182 Figure 6.13: Timeframes for postcolonial Africa from the four textbooks…………………………………………….184 Figure 6.14: Africa as a human being in Textbook 4 (p. 109)………………………………………………………………..185 Figure 6.15: A humanised developing world (Textbook 2, p. 84)………………………………………………………….186 Figure 6.16: Africa represented by Black people (Textbook 3, p. 105)………………………………………………….186 vii Figure 6.17: Africa as a mother’s womb in Textbook 1 (p. 53)………………………………………………………………188 Figure 6.18: The Congo represented by a black man (Textbook 1, p. 99)……………………………………………..189 Figure 6.19: A poster with an Africanist interpretation of Africa’s experiences (Textbook 4, p. 78)………190 Figure 6.20: Two cartoons on Africa as a poor beggar (Textbook 1, p. 75)……………………………………………191 Figure 6.21: Experiences mainly limited to sub-Saharan Africa (Textbook 1, p. 88)………………………………192 Figure 6.22: Political tragedy in Ghana (Textbook 2, p. 80; Textbook 4, p. 81)……………………………………..193 Figure 6.23: Examples of post-colonial tragedies in Africa (Textbook 4)……………………………………………….194 Figure 6.24: Negative representations of Africa on one page in Textbook 1 (p. 82)………………………………196 Figure 6.25: Positive experiences in Africa (Textbook 4, p. 89; p. 94p. 101)………………………………………….197 Figure 6.26: Infrastructural development in Nairobi (Textbook 1, p. 96)………………………………………………198 Figure 6.27: An example of unplanned infrastructural development (Textbook 3, p. 91)……………………..198 Figure 6.28: A depiction of Africa’s wastefulness (Textbook 1, p. 108; Textbook 2, p. 72)…………………….199 Figure 6.29: Symbolic infrastructure in post-colonial Africa (Textbook 1, p. 95; p. 96)………………………….200 Figure 6.30: Africa’s experiences as influenced by mainly Western experiences (Textbook 1, p. 76)……201 Figure 6.31: Africa’s experiences separated from the rest of the world (Textbook 1, p. 87)…………………202 Figure 6.32: An example of Africa’s dependence on the Western world (Textbook 4, p. 87)………………..203 Figure 6.33: Validation of the Ngogongoro Crater (Textbook 1, p. 94)………………………………………………….204 Figure 7.1: Identity of Tanzanians and Kenyans (Textbook 2, p. 51; 73)……………………………………………….229 Figure 7.2: Examples of Black people in Textbook 4 (p. 82; p. 110)………………………………………………………230 Figure 7.3: Examples of Black people in Textbook 2 (p. 49; p. 50)………………………………………………………..231 Figure 7.4: Examples of Black people in Textbook 3 (p. 81, p. 95, p. 96)……………………………………………….232 Figure 7.5: An example of Black people in Textbook 1 (p. 73)………………………………………………………………233 Figure 7.6: Cases of visuals featuring people of different racial groups in Textbook 1 (p. 64; p. 102; p.