Dr Marshall Maposa, a lecturer in History Education, was recently honoured by the English Academy of Southern Africa with the prestigious Thomas Pringle award for Best Education article published in the 2017 academic year. The Award, named after poet and writer Thomas Pringle, is an annual award for work published in newspapers, periodicals and journals. Maposa’s award-winning article is on the representation of the African being in South African history textbooks. Stemming from his doctoral research, the article shows how the representation of the African being is full of contradictions mainly as a result of the processes and context of textbook production. In his paper, he argues that this representation has a bearing on the African consciousness that the textbooks construct for their users and this consciousness is then manifested through actions.