This article explores the representation of identity in selected Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonian history textbooks via their coverage of the reunification of Cameroon. A far-reaching effect of the 1916 Anglo-French partition of German Cameroon and of the reunification of the territory in 1961 is that, in spite of the plurality of precolonial identities, it is the legacies of Anglo-French colonial heritage that seem to be the overwhelming identity indicators in contemporary Cameroon. This content analysis found that the Anglophone history textbook presented a clear Anglophone identity which stood in conflict with the identity promoted by the Francophone textbook, which was characterized by national and colonial Francophone assimilationism. Such representations suggest that the Cameroonian nation state as a colonial geopolitical construct is more imagined than real.

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<p><em>It is no secret that history education in many parts of the world is</em><em> </em><em>facing immense challenges. This academic discipline has never been under more pressure to justify its place in the curriculum of many educational systems. While some systems such as South Africa have overtly downplayed the importance of the discipline through unfavorable curriculum implementations over the years since the dawn of democracy, other systems like Lesotho have adopted more covert strategies to systematically out-phasing history education in the secondary and high schools. The result in the case of Lesotho is that the subject is very unpopular in secondary and high schools as the number of schools teaching the subject has dwindled drastically over the years. The situation is exacerbated by poor Junior Certificate (JC) examination results for the few schools that teach the subject. </em></p><p><em>Against this backdrop, this article engages the discourses around the status of history education in the context of Lesotho from a student teacher’s perspective. While many studies have focused on the role of students, government departments and school administrations in explaining the negative position of history education, the stance in this article is that the role of the history teacher is as vital and cannot be undermined. Teachers’ understanding of the objectives of history teaching and their attitudes towards the discipline has important implications for the way the discipline is perceived by students and the public. As a result, this article presents findings ofa study conducted with some novice history teachers in Lesotho on their understandings of the objectives of history teaching especially in a Lesotho context. Such understandings are then used as a basis to theorise the status of the discipline, but also to reflect on the future of history education in Lesotho.</em></p>

Since the 1961 reunification of French and British Southern Cameroons, discourses of marginalisation, assimilation, "francophonisation", "frenchification" and internal

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