ABSTRACT
Luke (1996) argues that literacy training is affected by the ways in which theory and practices impact on people’s different uses of writing. He goes on to point out that the history of literacy education is about power and knowledge; this is played out in the modern state by particular individuals who are placed in dominant positions and thus influence our understandings of what literacy is. This seems a useful place to begin this discussion on writing. In a stateconstructed curriculum, what counts as early writing in South Africa? In South Africa’s Outcomes Based Education (OBE) system, writing is one of the outcomes set out in the NCS for the Literacy Learning Area:
The learner will be able to write different kinds of factual and imaginative texts for a wide range of purposes.
