The dialectic between the West and Africa: A deconstructive approach to N.M. Khaketla's works

Abstract

This study seeks to establish which outlook (African or Western) the publishers of Sesotho literature wanted to promulgate at a given time in the three eras of its development, i.e. the missionary, apartheid and post-apartheid eras. The article will consider Khaketla's Mosali eo u 'neileng eena (1954), published by the missionaries, Khaketla's 'Mantsopa (1963), published by Oxford University Press during the apartheid era, and Khaketla's Sedibelo sa Nkgono (1996), which was published in the post-apartheid era. Using deconstruction theory, this article argues that while publishers had every intention to disseminate either Western or African views, both outlooks appear concurrently in Sesotho texts.