This report confronts the issue of the globalisation of European culture and its significance for the Western canon in South African education. It considers the difficulty of defending the canon as cultural resource for a local minority while avoiding the imposition of the globally dominant Anglophone culture on all South Africans. It is argue-d that whatever in the canon can be freely accepted as advancing the interests of all South Africans should qualify for inclusion in a common curriculum, but that other canonical works should be regarded as minority culture in the same way as aspects of traditional African culture. An attempt is made to establish a perspective from which Africanism and the defence of the canon can be seen as congruent and compatible aims, equally deserving of accommodation within a multicultural curriculum.