Paper short abstract:

This paper confronts the arrogance of Eurocentrism and asserts the importance of Afrocentrism because to be an african means a source of pride. Many Africans were not schooled using textbooks reflecting their particular and cultural situations; had Western instructors who ignored their cultures

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores Mafata's self-conscious in his attempt to promote the reclaiming of African culture as part of the African Renaissance and a move for Africans to redefine and reaffirm their identities. To achieve this objective, Afrocentrism is important in honing our analysis as it provides a theory-based structure for the textual analysis of the novel. Afrocentricity is an instrument for confronting Eurocentrism with Africanness, and it is predicated on the uniqueness of Africans. It will be argued that in his effort to articulate the reclaiming of African culture as a weapon to restore nationhood, the author has employed young characters as a tool for portraying his artistic message. The paper demonstrates the author's characterization technique that entails creating two different sets of characters - characters endowed with attributes of indigenous African culture and characters dominated by European culture.Theko is a symbol of the Basotho and Mohlakeng community and their resistance to Western life. When Theko goes to the Basotho initiation school, he is reclaiming Basotho identity for the Mohlakeng community; he symbolises the youth of Mohlakeng. His cousin Kgama on the other hand, symbolises Western sympathies because he goes to missionary school. Since Kgama and Sentebaleng who attend the Western-oriented school, are young people, their lives are easily disrupted and overtaken by new self-identities. They are easy to deceive and once their fragile identities are erased, they have nothing to fall back on.