Introduction
I imagine another universe, not beyond our reach, in which [we] can jointly affirm our common identities (even as the warring singularists howl at the gate). We have to make sure, above all, that our mind is not halved by a horizon. Amartya Sen ( 2006) Identity and Violence
Literacy learning in South Africa has never been value‐free. Since print‐based literacy was introduced in mission schools in the nineteenth century, through the apartheid era of Bantu Education (1948–1994), the idea of literacy has been constructed by social groups and governments as a marker of power and control, of exclusion and inclusion: between ‘literates’ and ‘illiterates’, ‘Christians’ and ‘heathens’, between the ‘civilised’ and the ‘barbaric’, between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘modernists’, between ‘English’ and ‘indigenous languages’. The advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994 brought with it a new dispensation based on human rights, social justice, equality and multilingualism. Since then,...
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Stein, P. (2008). Literacies In and Out of School in South Africa. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_53
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