tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/african-literature-10727/articles
African literature – The Conversation
2024-02-19T13:36:02Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222403
2024-02-19T13:36:02Z
2024-02-19T13:36:02Z
Nervous Conditions: on translating one of Zimbabwe’s most famous novels into Shona
<p>The publishing journey of Zimbabwean writer and film-maker <a href="https://theconversation.com/tsitsi-dangarembga-and-writing-about-pain-and-loss-in-zimbabwe-144313">Tsitsi Dangarembga</a>’s <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Nervous_Conditions/UyZjAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=Nervous%20Conditions">Nervous Conditions</a> wasn’t easy. Yet the novel is today considered by many as one of <a href="https://library.columbia.edu/libraries/global/virtual-libraries/african_studies/books.html">Africa’s 100 best books</a> of the 20th century and is studied at <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2020/08/african-literature-is-a-country">universities</a> around the world. </p>
<p>When she submitted the manuscript to publishing houses in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, they all turned it down. Dangarembga felt <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1345839">at the time</a> that it was “very difficult for men to accept the things that women write and want to write about: and the men (were) the publishers”. It was eventually published to critical acclaim in 1988 by <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803124519397">The Women’s Press</a> in London. This made Dangarembga the first black Zimbabwean woman to publish a novel in English. </p>
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<p>Now a new translation of the book into Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona">Shona</a> language has been released, marking another milestone for Nervous Conditions, because African classics are seldom translated into African languages. Translation of African literature happens often, but mostly in European countries. Nervous Conditions itself has <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/formats-editions/1230558464">already been translated</a> into a dozen or more languages including Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. </p>
<p>The new Shona translation, titled Kusagadzikana and released by Zimbabwean publishers <a href="https://houseofbookszim.com/">House of Books</a>, was done by <a href="https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-7808_Mabasa">Ignatius Mabasa</a>, an acclaimed novelist who also wrote the first <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/facultyofhumanities/latestnews/africanlanguagesstudentwritesfirst-everchishonaphdthesisatrhodesuniver-1.html">PhD thesis in Shona</a>.</p>
<p>Even more remarkably, Dangarembga’s follow-up novel, <a href="https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/book-not">The Book of Not</a>, has also recently been translated into Shona as Hakuna Zvakadaro by writer and academic <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Tanaka+Chidora&btnG=">Tanaka Chidora</a>. This leaves just the last book in the trilogy, <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/authors/tsitsi-dangarembga">the Booker shortlisted</a> <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/this-mournable-body/">This Mournable Body</a>, untranslated. </p>
<p>For a reader and <a href="https://www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk/cpt_people/mushakavanhu-dr-tinashe/">scholar</a> of Zimbabwean literature, encountering Nervous Condition’s story of a rural girl called Tambudzai in Shona is like waking up in a dream. I spoke with Mabasa about his translation journey and why it matters.</p>
<h2>Can you describe the process of translating the book?</h2>
<p>I started translating Nervous Conditions around 1999 when I was a visiting Fulbright scholar in the US, where I was teaching Zimbabwean literature. Nervous Conditions was one of the books I was teaching. Coincidentally, 1999 is the year that my first novel <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Mapenzi/qLMaAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Mapenzi&dq=Mapenzi&printsec=frontcover">Mapenzi</a> was published and I used to talk to my students about the sad situation that there was more Zimbabwean literature in English than in indigenous languages. </p>
<p>I pointed out that the majority of the ordinary women whose story Nervous Conditions was telling would not be able to buy, read and understand Nervous Conditions in English, because of their literacy levels. I thought perhaps I could try to translate the book into Shona as a way of repatriating and decolonising the story. I then dived in and started translating the first chapter, tackling one paragraph at a time. </p>
<p>I was intrigued by how beautiful and sincere the story sounded in Shona. Tambudzai sounded more heartfelt in Shona than in English – I guess because Shona was her real voice. As someone who grew up in a village myself, I strongly identified with Tambudzai and, in translating, I faithfully became her in order to capture the pain and injustice in her family and the national politics in the story. I translated the book up to chapter three and had to stop because Dangarembga was involved in a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/ayebia-clarke-publishing-help-tsitsi-dangarembga-regain-the-rights-to-her-novel-nervous-conditions">legal battle</a> for its rights. I only resumed in 2022, but because I had lost the mood and feeling that I had when I initially started, I had to rework the translation from the beginning.</p>
<h2>Were there difficult parts and how did you deal with them?</h2>
<p>The title was one of the most difficult things to translate. Nervousness is something deeper, it’s beyond nerves. It’s a reflection of the physical, the psychological and the spiritual. The level of disturbance in Nervous Conditions is traumatic, immediate and long-term. I had to think really hard about the words that would capture all that. I’m pleased with Kusagadzikana as the final title because when I read Tanaka Chidora’s Shona translation of The Book of Not, I noticed that he uses the term <em>kusagadzikana</em> the same way I did.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/animal-farm-has-been-translated-into-shona-why-a-group-of-zimbabwean-writers-undertook-the-task-206966">Animal Farm has been translated into Shona – why a group of Zimbabwean writers undertook the task</a>
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<p>Another difficulty I faced was to do with the differences in the storytelling style of the two languages, English and Shona. Dangarembga does go into the human psyche in a complex and deep manner that is not usually found in Shona writing, and that needed to be handled delicately – there were times when it was like deboning a fish. An example is Tambudzai’s trauma caused by Babamukuru’s facilitated wedding of her parents. Also Nyasha’s emotional rollercoasters are key to the story – I had to slow down and make sure that I didn’t miss the metaphorically loaded twists and turns. Then there are some very English descriptions including elaborate colours, ways of dancing, fashion designs, foods that I had to deal with cleverly but without aborting the meaning.</p>
<h2>Why was it important for you to translate this book?</h2>
<p>Nervous Conditions is our story as indigenous people. The story had to be decolonised by making it come back to speak to the people who are victims of colonial injustices in a language that would enable them to tell “when the rain started to beat them” (as the saying goes) in order for them to start drying themselves. </p>
<p>The novel is an important documentation of our history and the translation makes it accessible and able to be discussed under a tree by ordinary folk, and not just by academics in air-conditioned conference venues. It is a form of liberation struggle – the liberation of many things that remain colonised, including our minds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It reads powerfully in the Shona language, and is one of two of her books newly translated into it.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221807
2024-02-08T14:00:35Z
2024-02-08T14:00:35Z
Books: folklore and fantasy combine in Langabi, a supernatural historical epic from Zimbabwe
<p><em>In 2023, award-winning Zimbabwean author <a href="https://www.icorn.org/writer/christopher-mlalazi">Christopher Mlalazi</a> published a new book, <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/langabi-seasons-of-beasts/">Langabi: Season of the Beast</a>. He’s the author of novels like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/zimbabwe-running-with-mother-robert-mugabe">Running with Mother</a> (2012), <a href="https://amabooksbyo.blogspot.com/2009/07/reviews-dancing-with-life-tales-from.html">Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township</a> (2012) and <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201405060380.html">They are Coming</a> (2014). His books grapple with diverse social and political issues in Zimbabwe. As a scholar of African literature, including speculative fiction, I have <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021989415615646">researched</a> Mlalazi’s previous books, especially his depiction of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">Gukurahundi Genocide</a> in Zimbabwe. Langabi is a novel that draws on the storytelling of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ndebele-South-African-people">Ndebele</a> people to recount the tale of a young man who finds himself in a heated political battle playing out in a historical kingdom. I spoke to Mlalazi about it.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> My first question is about categories. Into which <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/genre-literature">literary genre</a> would you place Langabi? I’m asking because it’s the first novel to be published by Mother, a new <a href="https://jacana.co.za/imprint/mother/">imprint</a> of Jacana Media that’s dedicated to fantasy, science-fiction, Afrofuturism and horror.</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> Categorisation can be challenging for a writer. When I first started writing the story, I told myself I wanted to write something that sounded like folklore. I wanted to write the kinds of stories our grandparents used to tell us when we were children in the village, <em>inganekwane</em> as they are called in the Ndebele language. I could say it is <em>inganekwane</em>, it has all the elements of one – supernatural creatures, a young protagonist with a quest, magic, song… From a western perspective, the novel can be categorised as fantasy, or mythology. I would like to place the story at the intersection of folklore, fantasy and mythology.</p>
<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> Langabi is a shift from the kinds of themes you’ve broached in the past. What inspired you to write it?</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> When I began writing this story, I just wanted to experiment outside the contemporary political satire for which I am well known. I initially wished to write a story that would be light, adventurous, and also explore ancient southern African cultural and religious beliefs. But as the storyline progressed, I realised that as I was writing folklore, I was compelled to dig deep into the consciousness – as far as I knew it – of the characters that populate a story of that time. To not write far from the truth of their ways of life. I also had to write about it with pride, as it is part of the genetics of my people. And then somehow I found myself writing about the politics of that ancient time, about ruthless kings, the selfishness of the political elites, and I was back on home ground again.</p>
<p>I started writing the novel in 2012 and even then I wanted to write about a coup in that <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/ndebele-history">ancient time</a>. At first, I wanted to keep that political drama on the sidelines, but eventually it engulfed the whole story. I followed the wind and the characters and let them lead me to the unfolding of this story.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/african-science-fiction-rereading-the-classic-nigerian-novel-the-palm-wine-drinkard-145768">African science fiction: rereading the classic Nigerian novel The Palm-wine Drinkard</a>
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<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> The descriptions of people and places are very detailed. What kind of research did you need to do?</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> I did a lot of research on this story. The main character and his family are blacksmiths and iron workers, so I had to buy and read this big book about ancient <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/african-iron-age-169432">African metallurgy</a>, how iron was processed in ancient times, and the beliefs around being an iron worker. There were many <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58509896-african-myths-legends">superstitions</a> around iron working, with some people believing that the iron workers practised witchcraft, or magic. At the same time, they were held in high respect for this magical skill. Some were the wealthiest in their societies through demand for iron tools. </p>
<p>I also had to research ancient southern African attire, animal skins for making what people wore at that time, hut building and types of soils used, especially colourful soils for decorating houses, or used as makeup. I researched names of flora and fauna, although I did invent a few of my own, especially trees. I also read a few fantasy books just to get a feeling of how other writers handle this kind of writing. I read books like (US author George R.R. Martin’s) <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/A_Game_of_Thrones_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire/JPDOSzE7Bo0C?hl=en&gbpv=0">A Song of Ice and Fire</a> series, on which the TV show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/">Game of Thrones</a> is based, also <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/black-leopard-red-wolf/9780241981856">Black Leopard, Red Wolf</a> by Jamaican writer Marlon James, Nigerian writers Ben Okri’s <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/ben-okri-how-i-wrote-the-famished-road">The Famished Road</a> and Amos Tutuola’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-science-fiction-rereading-the-classic-nigerian-novel-the-palm-wine-drinkard-145768">The Palm Wine Drinkard</a> and a few others. I watched survival documentaries to get a visual of surviving under harsh conditions in the jungle.</p>
<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> As in your other novels, humour underlines a serious story. What place does humour have in your writing and literary vision?</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> Stories are supposed to be read for relaxation no matter how serious the matter that they are treating. I try to infuse humour into the stories, plays and poetry that I write. I love seeing people laughing, even at themselves. I know that if you write political satire people end up thinking you are a serious and angry person who does not see the funny side of life.</p>
<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> Finally, the back cover suggests it’s part of a trilogy. When should readers expect the next instalment and what can they expect in it?</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> Yes, I want to make the story into a trilogy, and I already have a few ideas about what the next instalment will be like. But I’ve started on another completely different fantasy story which is quite advanced as I write this, and I want to finish it first before I go back to the Langabi series. I might start working on the next book in the Langabi series at the end of this year; time will tell.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gibson Ncube does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Christopher Mlalazi, award-winning novelist, was inspired by the stories he was told by his grandparents as a child.
Gibson Ncube, Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219614
2024-01-08T13:56:46Z
2024-01-08T13:56:46Z
Five years on the road in Africa: how Lerato Mogoatlhe became a travel writer
<p><em>South African journalist <a href="https://africanofilter.org/people/lerato-mogoatlhe">Lerato Mogoatlhe</a> set off for three months in west Africa. She ended up drifting across the continent for five years. In 2019 she wrote a <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Vagabond/J93yDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">book</a> about her travels, called Vagabond: Wandering Through Africa on Faith. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Janet+Remmington&btnG=">scholar</a> of, among other areas, African travel writing and mobility, I chatted to Mogoatlhe about travelling solo, queer and black.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Janet Remmington:</strong> In reflecting on the book, you write that your first encounters with countries that would become the story of your life “started with literature and music”.</p>
<p><strong>Lerato Mogoatlhe:</strong> I have to say music videos were the most accessible way to experience the continent from my bedroom or lounge as a child in Pretoria, South Africa. They made me want to feel, hear, see, taste and smell what was out there for myself. How do you hear <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oumou-Sangare">Oumou Sangaré</a> sing about Bamako in Mali and not want to experience the city? Later influences in Johannesburg included university friends – and foods – from across Africa, bringing fresh perspectives and flavours. All of this opened my senses to the continent beyond the breaking news headlines or stereotypical perceptions.</p>
<p><strong>Janet Remmington:</strong> Your book has a bold, enticing title: Vagabond. This word is usually defined in terms of one who wanders without a fixed abode. Throughout history vagabonds or wanderers have proved to be provocative. In colonial contexts like South Africa it was used, among other terms like “vagrant”, to disparage and control indigenous people on the move. <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315584393-18/vagrant-vagabond-curious-career-mobile-subject-tim-cresswell">Studies</a> have shown how “vagabond” is loaded with double meaning: a romantic figure of freedom and also a challenging figure of disruption. Why did you chose it for the book?</p>
<p><strong>Lerato Mogoatlhe:</strong> There’s no shying away from the vagabond. I am no stranger to the term’s double edge. I chose Vagabond precisely because travelling solo across the continent, especially back in 2008, seemed so random and outrageous to some people in my life. Why quit a job to travel? Couldn’t I find a better use for my money? Or: what exactly will you be doing, what’s there, why are you going?</p>
<p>I didn’t know anything about what was ahead, besides being ready to travel and seeing what would happen (in the absence of a travel budget). In this light, being a vagabond might be seen as aimless – almost like a failure to then launch into young adulthood.</p>
<p>However, to me, being a vagabond represents freedom and adventure, and the time of my life. The aimless wandering, the drifting without a place to stay … it remains a moment in time in my life. A glorious one. I knew my book would be called Vagabond even before I wrote a single word of it. I played around with the word, got used to it, and gave it a different meaning.</p>
<p><strong>Janet Remmington:</strong> South Africa’s long history of colonialism and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>, which served the white state and population, suppressed many black freedoms, including mobility and cultural expression. I was struck by how you position your extensive travel across Africa as giving you “the opportunity to experience being black and African without disguising or denying myself to fit in”. Can you expand on this – the role that travel plays for you? </p>
<p><strong>Lerato Mogoatlhe:</strong> This reflection was inspired by an experience I had in Dar es Salaam. I was at an ATM, withdrawing money when a man dressed in full <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maasai">Masaai</a> regalia joined the line. I was surprised by it. I asked if there was a special occasion, but he said it was just an ordinary day. It made me think about <a href="https://www.gov.za/news/events/commemorative-events/heritage-day">Heritage Day</a> in South Africa, where people dress in traditional attire. And how such an important expression of blackness/Africanness is embraced fully for just one day. I always think about the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ndebele-South-African-people">Ndebele</a> cultural activist who was <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/courts/gautrain-faces-r1-5m-lawsuit-over-ndebele-cultural-activists-humiliation/">kicked off</a> the train in Johannesburg because his traditional garb was deemed inappropriate.</p>
<p><strong>Janet Remmington:</strong> You write very honestly in the book about the personal risks, as well as the rewards, of travel. You are lured by a conman in Senegal, for instance, and repel a rapist in Ethiopia. There are very real challenges, but you bring to life the many opportunities. How do you see Vagabond contributing to travel literature from and about Africa in this light, particularly writing as a black, queer woman?</p>
<p><strong>Lerato Mogoatlhe:</strong> As a queer woman, it’s my declaration that there isn’t only violence in being queer in Africa and travelling around the continent. We are here, we live here. I cannot fear it and I refuse to fear it.</p>
<p>The personal risks: the weird and wonderful thing about travelling is that it makes life feel like a fantasy. I used to dream about places I’ve been to, and I still do. I get a thrill from turning the fantasy into reality. However, outside my fantasies, travelling is real life. It has challenges and heartbreaks.</p>
<p>I know one thing about myself: I am going to live big and loud, including travelling. Patriarchy, racism and homophobia are not going to deny me. I see my contribution as daring, fun and funny.</p>
<p>Vagabond is the story of a certain period of my life unfolding around Africa. It is intimate. It also adds to travel literature that doesn’t reduce Africa and Africans to clichés. In my work Africans are not happy-go-lucky souls who, despite being poor, are so warm and generous.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/travelling-while-black-7-south-african-travelogues-you-should-read-197550">Travelling while black: 7 South African travelogues you should read</a>
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<p><strong>Janet Remmington:</strong> Vagabond is packed with adventure, transporting the reader to scenic and human wonders across Africa. However, the book does not avoid the continent’s harrowing zones. You write, for example, about your haunting visits to Rwanda’s <a href="https://genocidearchiverwanda.org.rw/index.php/Category:Memorials">genocide memorials</a> which instilled a calling to “write Africa differently”. Can you speak about this deep sense of purpose and what it means?</p>
<p><strong>Lerato Mogoatlhe:</strong> My story and connection to the continent is not the kind that amounts to “been there, done that, got the T-shirt”. I hope it is deeper: a conversation with others and myself about what this continent is beyond typecasts, and what it should be and what it should never be. It should no longer be wholly defined by war and conflict; we should no longer write our history with blood. I’m writing Africa by celebrating life, creativity and innovation. That’s my purpose, because whatever else this continent is, it is firstly and most importantly home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Remmington has in the past received funding from the National Research Foundation and Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. </span></em></p>
The solo journey of a queer, black woman across the continent makes fascinating reading.
Janet Remmington, Research Associate, Humanities Research Centre (and African Literature Department, University of the Witwatersrand), University of York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219237
2023-12-25T08:58:53Z
2023-12-25T08:58:53Z
4 must-read books from east Africa: from Tanzanian masters to Ugandan queens
<p>East African literature continues to grow and reshape itself in exciting new ways. The world really did take notice of the region when Tanzanian-British author Abdulrazak Gurnah won the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2021/gurnah/facts/">Nobel Prize</a> for Literature in 2021. Interest in Gurnah’s work continued last year when he made a homecoming to east Africa. </p>
<p>But it is in Tanzania that Gurnah made a proper homecoming in 2023 – through the first ever Kiswahili translation of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-of-earthly-delights-paradise-abdulrazak-gurnah-hamish-hamilton-14-99-1428925.html">Paradise</a>, now out as <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/peponi">Peponi</a>.</p>
<p>I am an interdisciplinary scholar with a research focus that cuts across journalism, creative writing, African literature and postcolonial studies. I’m also a big reader of books from the region. My highlights include a range from the masterful Gurnah to stunning newcomers, a bold biography to a pacy memoir.</p>
<h2>1. Abdulrazak Gurnah in Kiswahili</h2>
<p>Now aged 74, Gurnah has recently headlined a <a href="https://www.macondolitfest.org/abdulrazak-gurnah">literary festival</a> in Kenya which seeks to foster conversations between and among Anglophone (English-speaking) and Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) Africa. Just the other day in Uganda, his life and work was celebrated by the creative collective <a href="https://femrite.org/2023/11/18/femrite-pawa-and-kyambogo-university-to-host-an-international-conference-in-honour-of-the-life-works-of-nobel-prize-laureate-abdurazak-gurnah/">Femrite</a>.</p>
<p>But it is in Tanzania that Gurnah made a proper splash through the first ever Swahili translation of his Booker Prize-nominated historical fiction, Paradise, now out as <a href="https://mkukinanyota.com/product/peponi/">Peponi</a>. </p>
<p>Indeed, Gurnah’s literary interests have always hovered around east Africa, from his seminal <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Memory_of_Departure/On1SEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Memory+of+Departure&printsec=frontcover">Memory of Departure</a>, which chronicles the sojourns of a young immigrant in search of education abroad. Haunted by the life left behind, and roiled by the uncertainties of the new lands, he seeks meaning to his life.</p>
<p>This echoes the author’s own pursuit, after his dislocation from Zanzibar. In his many interviews, Gurnah has maintained that immigrants do not arrive on European shores, or any others, <a href="https://newafricanmagazine.com/27089/">empty handed</a>: they have their unique tales and histories and ways of seeing the world that should enrich their adopted lands.</p>
<p>But it is Paradise, first published in 1994, that propelled Gurnah to international fame, following its nomination for the Booker Prize in the same year. A coming-of-age tale of Yusuf, a lad who is pawned to a merchant to offset his father’s debt, it’s a story that’s at once heart-breaking and spellbinding.</p>
<p>Some critics read the novel as a retake of the Biblical saga of Joseph (Yusuf in Swahili) who is sold into captivity by his envious siblings, while others read it as a parody of Polish-British novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Conrad">Joseph Conrad</a>’s Heart of Darkness. Whatever the case, Swahili readers who have not encountered the text in other languages are in for a great treat, and Peponi is a good place to start in their exploration of Gurnah’s work.</p>
<h2>2. Kenya’s rising star</h2>
<p>In Kenya, it was the emergence of a new author, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/327239/nairobi-takes-centre-role-in-linda-musitas-stories/">Linda Musita</a>, that caused excitement.</p>
<p>Her debut book of short stories called <a href="https://downriverroad.org/2023/02/12/mtama-road-stories-linda-musita/">Mtama Road</a> has been <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/327239/nairobi-takes-centre-role-in-linda-musitas-stories/">well received</a> locally. </p>
<p>The seven short stories (although perhaps short-shorts is more appropriate – the book comes in at under 100 pages) are all set on one road in Nairobi’s Parklands.</p>
<p>The protagonists of Musita’s stories all find themselves having to navigate different elements of adulting.</p>
<h2>3. Rebirth of the biography</h2>
<p>After nearly 30 years of obscurity, the Kenyan biography appeared to enjoy a rebirth this year, with the publication of <a href="https://msomi.africa/en/home/4320-for-the-record-the-inside-story-of-power-politics-lawmaking-leadership-in-kenya-aden-duale.html">For The Record</a>: The Inside Story of Power, Politics, Lawmaking & Leadership in Kenya, ghostwritten for Kenya’s defence minister, Aden Duale.</p>
<p>A foreword is authored by the Kenyan president, William Ruto, and it prologues the crux of the story: a peep into the machinations that define Kenyan politics, with a particularly penetrating gaze into the fallout between former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and his successor.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the book found immediate traction with readers soon after its release in the middle of 2023, following its serialisation in the local press, precipitating five reprints in six months.</p>
<p>Still, the Kenyan biography represents a literary oddity: it’s often staid and formulaic, parroting a predictable trajectory to explain successes, never failures, of politicians and technocrats, as they look back on their lives.</p>
<p>In Duale’s For The Record, we come close to approximating the truth of his political motivations and his quest for power, even though we cannot infer what he intends to do with the power, now that he’s among the most powerful men in the land.</p>
<p>The sprightly diction deployed in the narrative could help buffer readers from the obvious flaws in a story that’s peppered as a rags-to-riches fable, even though his trading parents were people of reasonable means, within their context.</p>
<h2>4. Uganda’s action-packed memoir</h2>
<p>If the new memoir by the Buganda queen is anything to go by, Uganda took literary candour a notch higher in 2023. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=adE1elPgR98">The Nnnabagereka</a>, Queen Sylvia Nagginda Luswata, the journalist-turned-monarch, recalls her eventful journey from New York, where she lived through most of her childhood, to her unconventional dating of <a href="https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/magazines/life/kabaka-30-years-of-roses-and-thorns-4320302">Prince Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II</a> of Uganda. The tale includes a proposal via email.</p>
<p>“Dear Sylvia, I think I am ready if you are,” Mutebi is reported to have written to his future wife. Another elliptical line in the memoir records another milestone, thus: “On December 6, 2010, I was blessed with two more girls Jade Nakato and Jasmine Babirye born in Kampala… They’re two amazing kids.”</p>
<p>The phraseology does not indicate if they belong to the Kabaka (or king). A statement from the Buganda king’s office clarified the twins did not receive the special drum sounded to herald the Kabaka’s biological children, which fanned online speculation about their paternity. The royal family is blended as the Kabaka has three other children from three different women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Kimani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Swahili readers who have not encountered Abdulrazak Gurnah’s work in other languages are in for a great treat.
Peter Kimani, Professor of Practice, Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/213370
2023-09-21T13:27:47Z
2023-09-21T13:27:47Z
Zimbabwean names are still haunted by the ghosts of colonialism
<p>In African cultures, the <a href="https://www.africarebirth.com/what-is-in-an-african-name-identity-and-naming-ceremonies-in-african-traditional-culture/">names given</a> to children play an important role because they are often laden with meanings. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/5392/professor-tendai-mangena">team</a> of <a href="https://afrikanistik.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/en/people/people/professors/mitchell-alice">professors</a> of literature, linguistics and onomastics (the scientific study of names and naming practices) we have shown in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00219096221141345">our research</a> that the names parents give their children at birth can help us make sense of many things, including a family’s heritage and events in history. </p>
<p>Our most recent <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2023.2232053">research paper</a> analyses naming practices in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/zimbabwe">Zimbabwe</a>. It shows that Zimbabweans in the former <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zimbabwe/The-British-South-Africa-Company">British colony</a> in southern Africa still often choose English names like Robert or Oliver over traditional ones like Vulindlela or Ntombenhle.</p>
<p>We conclude that names make it possible to understand the effects of colonialism and, in more recent years, the importance placed on restoring tradition. Embracing traditional practices matters as a way of keeping culture alive so that people can benefit from its knowledge.</p>
<h2>Relics of colonialism</h2>
<p>English-language names are abundant in Zimbabwe today. This could be one of the effects of the introduction of colonial languages and the displacement of indigenous languages. It demonstrates the difficulty of erasing the mentalities acquired in the colonial era. </p>
<p>We argue that British <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/european-missionaries-southern-africa-role-missionaries">missionaries</a> and colonisers “invaded” the “mental” space of the colonised and significantly changed the way Zimbabwean people use English and indigenous languages to name children.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-schools-use-language-as-a-way-to-exclude-children-64900">How schools use language as a way to exclude children</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>“Typical” English names maintain a connection to a time when schoolchildren would often be given new, English names to mould them into British-like subjects. </p>
<h2>Names in literature</h2>
<p>Literary works can help us better understand names and naming patterns. Celebrated Zimbabwean author <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/yvonne-vera">Yvonne Vera</a>’s novel <a href="https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/zimbabwe/veray1.htm">Butterfly Burning</a>, for example, shows how names in Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ndebele-South-African-people">Ndebele language</a> were progressively abandoned for English ones. </p>
<p>This change saw the use of abstract English names such as Gilbert instead of meaningful indigenous ones like Vulindlela, a boy’s name meaning “open the way” that expresses the parents’ hope that the child will bring good fortune to the family. </p>
<p>This cultural shift can be considered a form of erasure of a significant component of indigenous cultures. Such erasure is part of the larger-scale losses suffered through colonisation. This cultural loss was never fully recovered even in the decades after <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/zimbabawean-independence-day">independence</a> in Zimbabwe in 1980.</p>
<h2>Naming practices in Zimbabwe today</h2>
<p>There’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2023.2232053">evidence</a> that, in the last couple of decades, parents in Zimbabwe use both English and indigenous languages to name their children. Naming practices from colonial times live on.</p>
<p>In Zimbabwe these English names fall into different categories. There are typical English names like Ashley and Jean. There are also biblical names, like Isaac and Peter. We also find Africanised biblical names such as Jowero (Joel) and Mateu (Matthew). </p>
<p>And then there are “Zimbabwean English” names like Decent and Choice: English names translated from indigenous names. Zimbabwean English names offer an opportunity to understand the potential of drawing from traditional African knowledge – where names record personal experiences and aspirations – through using English. Colonial entanglements reveal adaptations of traditional forms. </p>
<p>We also notice “religious” names translated literally from indigenous names – like Takomborerwa (We have been blessed). The alterations are clear effects of colonialism, emanating from the establishment of Christianity. Examples of these “vernacular Christian names” include the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona-language">Shona language</a> names Tapiwanashe (We have been given by God), Tawananyasha (We have found God’s grace) and Anotidaishe (God loves us).</p>
<h2>Biblical English names and Africanised biblical names</h2>
<p>Like the English language, Christianity was <a href="https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/video/wasnt-christianity-in-africa-a-result-of-colonialism/">at the heart</a> of colonialism in Africa, spread through missionaries. This saw the increased popularity of biblical English names in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>“Africanised biblical” names are related to Christian biblical names, adapted to “fit” indigenous language rules of grammar. Since the translated Bible remains an “English book”, Africanised biblical names do not become indigenous names, rather they remain biblical English names. For instance the Shona name Ruka is adopted from the biblical name Luke. Ruka is simply a Shona version of Luke. </p>
<h2>Zimbabwean English names</h2>
<p>Besides typical English, biblical English and Africanised biblical names, a large category of Zimbabwean English names are popular at present. These have also been called “non-standard” English names to disrupt the dominance of British English that created tropes like <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/strange-sometimes-hilarious-names-of-zimbabweans/">“hilarious names”</a>. Examples of such names are Bastard and Darling – used in Zimbabwean novelist NoViolet Bulawayo’s award-winning novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15852479-we-need-new-names">We Need New Names</a>. </p>
<p>The majority of Zimbabwean English names are literal translations of indigenous personal names, illustrating the enduring power and assumed prestige of the language of Empire. At the same time, translating indigenous names shows a clear interest by Zimbabweans in retaining indigenous values and naming patterns.</p>
<h2>Refashioning imperial debris</h2>
<p>In these uses of English names with and without indigenous equivalents, the long-term effects of the language of colonisation are made visible. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-history-of-zimbabwe-played-out-on-the-countrys-cricket-fields-162035">How the history of Zimbabwe played out on the country's cricket fields</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>So, on the one hand, these names tell a story about how indigenous ways of life were looked down on and how this colonial disdain still influences people’s naming choices. This could be a result of an internalised colonial mentality in which the English language continues to index the power and prestige that it accumulated through the violence of the colonial era. </p>
<p>On the other hand, we see how these Zimbabwean English names draw on longstanding indigenous traditions and creatively reclaim the English language for local purposes. From this perspective, we interpret naming trends in Zimbabwe as a creative refashioning of imperial debris that helps keep traditional knowledge alive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tendai Mangena received funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the project on Names in Zimbabwe and the diaspora on which this work is based. </span></em></p>
Variations of English names reveal the enduring effects of British rule - but there’s also a return to tradition.
Tendai Mangena, Professor of African Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212466
2023-09-12T14:14:43Z
2023-09-12T14:14:43Z
African Literature in the Digital Age: new book traces the role of the internet, queers and class
<p><em>The first book-length <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847013637/african-literature-in-the-digital-age/">study</a> of digital literature in Africa has attracted a lot of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23277408.2023.2228648">academic</a> <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23277408.2023.2228649">attention</a>. African Literature in the Digital Age: Class and Sexual Politics in New Writing from Kenya and Nigeria considers the role of the internet and new media in finding and shaping new audiences for literature. We asked its author, former journalist, <a href="https://research.flw.ugent.be/en/olorunshola.adenekan">literature scholar</a>, publishing editor of <a href="http://thenewblackmagazine.com/">The New Black Magazine</a> and <a href="https://www.ugent.be/en/research/explorer/eu-trackrecord/h2020/erc-h2020/yorubaprint">associate professor</a> of African studies, Shola Adenekan, about the book.</em></p>
<h2>What prompted you to write this?</h2>
<p>The book came out of my own experience of the internet, especially my interactions with writers and thinkers who became acquaintances and friends through email listservs (electronic mailing lists) and social media platforms. This began around the turn of this century, when I was working as a journalist in London. I noticed a growing trend of literature being published online by African writers, on blogs, African-owned websites, MySpace, and later Facebook and Tumblr. I decided to set up a website – <a href="http://thenewblackmagazine.com/">The New Black Magazine</a> – to publish, and in some instances republish, some of the new ideas being espoused by these new voices.</p>
<p>Their work seemed more organic than much of what was being published in print at the time. Organic in the sense that their primary audience was the emerging African digital public, and not the traditional publishers like Macmillan and Random House. Some of the pioneering thinkers and writers were women and queer Africans whose works were not deemed worthy by traditional publishers. </p>
<p>I remember Nigerian novelist <a href="https://www.icorn.org/writer/jude-dibia">Jude Dibia</a> had a blog, as did Nigerian activist, photographer and author <a href="https://www.sokariekine.me/bio">Sokari Ekine</a>, blacklooks.org, which is unfortunately now defunct. Ekine’s blog was a cultural and literary network, where queer writers like Kenya’s <a href="https://www.shailja.com">Shailja Patel</a> and <a href="https://gukira.wordpress.com/">Keguro Macharia</a>, British Somali writer <a href="https://www.diriyeosman.com">Diriye Osman</a> and South African photographer and activist <a href="https://time.com/5917436/zanele-muholi/">Zanele Muholi</a> were congregating. Ekine is the ultimate networker, whose activism sheds light on queer Africa and its diaspora beyond the narratives of violence. </p>
<p>Another excellent digital networker was Professor <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/wambui-mwangi">Wambui Mwangi</a>, one of the founders of <a href="https://www.kwani.org/editorial/book_reviews/176/after_the_vote__5_dispatches_from_the_coalition_of_concerned_kenyan_writers.html">Concerned Kenyan Writers</a>, a listserv group on Gmail. She was the person who introduced me to many Kenyan writers and encouraged me to do a PhD and write a book about these exciting developments. This is why my book opens with a chapter on literary networks.</p>
<h2>How has the internet shaped Kenyan and Nigerian literature?</h2>
<p>The online space should be a starting point for any discussion of contemporary African writing. For example, some of Nigerian novelist <a href="https://www.chimamanda.com/about/">Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</a>’s earlier works were first published online. Kenyan writer <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/billy-k-kahora">Billy Kahora</a>’s non-fiction <a href="https://www.kwani.org/publication/kwani-series/163/the_true_story_of_david_munyakei.html">ibook</a> The True Story of David Munyakei grew out of a piece published online on Mwangi’s now defunct blog, the Diary of a Mad Kenyan Woman. </p>
<p>Apart from blogs, there were pioneering digital African magazines like African Writers, <a href="http://www.african-writing.com/eleven/">African Writing</a>, <a href="https://www.kwani.org">Kwani</a> and <a href="http://chimunrenga.co.za/">Chimurenga</a>. They provided a platform to grow for many of today’s established voices. They also used listservs to hone their skills. Some African book publishers were active participants in these listservs. Today, there are dozens of online magazines, like <a href="https://www.afreada.com">Afreada</a>, that publish exciting short stories.</p>
<h2>What does this have to do with queer life?</h2>
<p>If it seems that literary networks are somewhat centred on queer activists, it’s because many were at the forefront of digital African networks. Some left the continent for Europe and America due to homophobia, where they have also had to contend with racism and transphobia. Many other queer writers stayed behind to fight homophobia. </p>
<p>The online provides a space to articulate this experience and also to showcase that queer African life is more than violence. Queer Africans love, care and enjoy everyday routine things that heterosexual people enjoy. From blogs to online magazines, digital publications to social media platforms, queer activism in Africa has found a home in the digital space. Some of the most powerful writing on queer bodies and politics can be found here. </p>
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<p>The queer is arguably at the very core of twenty-first century African literature. The works of Macharia, Ekine, Patel, <a href="https://brittlepaper.com/2021/10/the-role-of-literature-in-preserving-lgbtq-history-interview-with-unoma-azuah/">Unoma Azuah</a> and <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/romeo-oriogun">Romeo Oriogun</a> constitute a starting point for theorising digital Africa. Their writing provides robust insight into the way in which queerness, politics and civil rights intersect. Additionally, privilege, visibility, marginalisation, omission and silence can all be articulated through an analysis of their work.</p>
<h2>And where does class fit in?</h2>
<p>The digital here is also arguably classed. There are millions of Africans who use the internet despite not being part of the educated professional middle class. But most – if not all – of the pioneers of the digital literary communities have a solid middle-class background. One of the main privileges of being middle class and a writer is that one is often asked to be a sort of cultural ambassador for the continent. This privilege also allows writers to speak to themes – such as sexuality – that have become taboo subjects in postcolonial Africa. </p>
<h2>What do you hope you have achieved with the book?</h2>
<p>I hope that the book will inspire others to not only write about African digital life but also to write about queer African life in all its totality. </p>
<p>Finally, let me revisit what I mentioned on in the final chapter in the book: there is a need to study Africa’s quotidian life. In addition to literary studies’ fixation with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2636740">African spectacular</a>, we should also be interested in the everyday rituals that are not rooted primarily in poverty, hunger, and war. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerias-queer-literature-offers-a-new-way-of-looking-at-blackness-133649">Nigeria's queer literature offers a new way of looking at blackness</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>What does the digital space provide Africans beyond the accounts of everyday stigmatisation and suppression? The ordinary and the commonplace need to be privileged, because the quotidian is at the very foundation of African art. On social media, often times, things like dressing up, kissing, wearing make-up, taking children to school, laughing and dancing – things that we may not considered as important – are statements of African humanity, of its defiance and resilience, through which many Africans affirm their Africanness, their ethnic and national identities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212466/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shola Adenekan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Digital platforms have birthed a new school of writers and activists in Nigeria and Kenya.
Shola Adenekan, Associate Professor of African Literature, Ghent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207065
2023-07-04T13:27:41Z
2023-07-04T13:27:41Z
Paulina Chiziane, Mozambique’s grand novelist, finally receives her prestigious award
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534576/original/file-20230628-29-rv1e03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paulina Chiziane in Portugal after being awarded the Camões Prize for writers from Portuguese-speaking countries.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/research-centres/centre-study-contemporary-womens-writing-ccww/ccww-author-pages/portuguese/paulina">Paulina Chiziane</a>, the first woman to publish a <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Balada_de_amor_ao_vento/0ccvAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=Balada%20de%20Amor%20ao%20Vento">novel</a> in Mozambique, has become the first African woman to <a href="https://www.portugal.gov.pt/en/gc23/communication/news-item?i=prize-giving-ceremony-for-the-camoes-prize-to-paulina-chiziane#:%7E:text=Set%20up%20by%20Portugal%20and,heritage%20of%20the%20Portuguese%20language.">receive</a> the most important award for Portuguese literature, the Camões Prize. She’s also the first to break all the rules about what a writer may reveal about Mozambique’s patriarchal culture and social taboos. </p>
<p>Born in Manjacaze in 1955 and raised in the capital, Maputo, Chiziane’s mother tongue is <a href="https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/11368/MZ">Chopi</a>, a Bantu language spoken along the southern coast of Mozambique, which she practised along with Portuguese, the language imposed during the colonial period. Today Chiziane has a degree in linguistics and is a leading global figure in Portuguese literature.</p>
<p>Speaking in a TV interview from the yard of her house in Zambezia province about winning the 2021 Camões Prize, she <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jG4BGhYpcQ">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This prize is for all the people of my country, because I always wrote from a collective experience, transmitting a collective voice … even if my novels are written in the first person.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She finally received the award in person at a ceremony in Lisbon in May 2023 – the annual event had been suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic. Named after the famed 16th century Portuguese poet <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Luis-de-Camoes">Luís de Camões</a>, the <a href="https://antigo.bn.gov.br/en/explore/literary-prizes/camoes-prize-literature">Camões Prize</a> was first awarded in 1988 to recognise great literature in Portuguese. In her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCCzfdQJ09Q">speech</a> in Lisbon, Chiziane said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was walking without knowing my direction, and yet I arrived somewhere. I come from Africa. I am black, and I am here, being the first black woman to receive this high recognition … I am black. Yes, and so what? If you want to be someone in life, in this world, you need to affirm your space. Leave traces of your feet on the ground, indelibly engraved, for other people to say: here someone has passed.</p>
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<p>As a <a href="https://cec.letras.ulisboa.pt/en/research-team/francesca-negro/">scholar</a> of comparative literature who has <a href="https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6102-3730">researched</a> African writing in Portuguese, I have followed Chiziane’s career and wish to shed some light on the work of this important writer and activist. Her groundbreaking novels and short stories have not all been translated into English and French, limiting her recognition in Africa.</p>
<h2>Her protagonists</h2>
<p>Chiziane’s first novel <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Balada_de_amor_ao_vento/0ccvAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=Balada%20de%20Amor%20ao%20Vento">Balada de Amor ao Vento</a> (Ballad of Love in the Wind) (1990) is a powerful story about a rural woman trapped in a patriarchal system. It anticipates her most famous novel, the 2002 <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Niketche.html?id=3slfPgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Niketche: A Story of Polygamy</a>, awarded the José Craveirinha Prize. Set in the south of Mozambique, it exposes the trials that Niketche must endure in a polygamous household. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534747/original/file-20230629-17-6bmvvo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with illustrations of green leaves, the title of the book in a red heart in the centre of them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534747/original/file-20230629-17-6bmvvo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534747/original/file-20230629-17-6bmvvo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534747/original/file-20230629-17-6bmvvo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534747/original/file-20230629-17-6bmvvo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534747/original/file-20230629-17-6bmvvo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534747/original/file-20230629-17-6bmvvo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534747/original/file-20230629-17-6bmvvo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caminho</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chiziane’s protagonists are characterised by a profound loneliness and sadness. They are victims of the painful subjugation of women that is still normalised – and seldom publicly discussed – in some regions of the country. She writes in absolute terms, revealing the good and the bad in society, and the emotions she evokes are extreme. And yet these women face their burdens and bear them bravely, discreetly and with dignity.</p>
<h2>A life in service</h2>
<p>Chiziane’s stories often reflect the social instability of a country oppressed by a war of liberation that was followed by civil conflicts after <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mozambique/Mozambique-under-the-New-State-regime">independence</a> from Portugal in 1975. They reflect her commitment to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Frelimo">Frelimo</a> liberation movement. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534771/original/file-20230629-21-hgr84q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with illustrations of two women wearing traditional African headgear." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534771/original/file-20230629-21-hgr84q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534771/original/file-20230629-21-hgr84q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534771/original/file-20230629-21-hgr84q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534771/original/file-20230629-21-hgr84q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534771/original/file-20230629-21-hgr84q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534771/original/file-20230629-21-hgr84q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534771/original/file-20230629-21-hgr84q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aflame Books</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the civil war of 1977 to 1992, she joined the <a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/movement">Red Cross</a> humanitarian organisation as a volunteer. This allowed her to observe the suffering of her people up close. Some of the most painful memories of that period converged in her second novel, the 1993 romance <a href="https://www.academia.edu/29416691/Ventos_do_Apocalipse_Paulina_Chiziane">Ventos do Apocalipse</a> (Winds of the Apocalypse). </p>
<p>As a volunteer, she encountered a woman who at first confused her with her dead daughter, establishing a profound bond with her. The painful memory of that mother <a href="https://www.publico.pt/1999/11/13/jornal/nunca-houve-arma-mais-fulminante-que-a-mulher-126390">inspired</a> her to write the book:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The two original names of the mother and the daughter, Minosse and Wusheni, are maintained in the novel as homage to that woman that has shaken my soul forever. I wish I could sit at her side now and tell her: of your tears I did this.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chiziane went on to join the Nucleus of Feminine Association of Zambezia or <a href="https://nafezamoz.wordpress.com/apresentacao">Nafeza</a>, a non-governmental organisation created in 1997. She was now fighting oppression through her literary works, as well as through political actions. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534786/original/file-20230629-21-uias31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with a figurative illustration of a person with a mouth at the top of their head and an animal listening to them speak." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534786/original/file-20230629-21-uias31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534786/original/file-20230629-21-uias31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534786/original/file-20230629-21-uias31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534786/original/file-20230629-21-uias31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534786/original/file-20230629-21-uias31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534786/original/file-20230629-21-uias31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534786/original/file-20230629-21-uias31.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caminho</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nafeza works at strengthening and coordinating the efforts of the country’s female associations and community-based organisations to improve women’s lives on all levels. </p>
<p>Currently, Chiziane advises on the development of international aid projects focused on conflict and the defence of women’s rights and dignity.</p>
<h2>Social realities and taboos</h2>
<p>Her third novel, <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/O_S%C3%A9timo_Juramento/3cJKEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">O Setimo Juramento</a> (The Seventh Pledge) in 2000, is again focused on daily life and the female condition. This time the context is the city. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534790/original/file-20230629-23-woykhe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration of a woman who appears to be floating underwater, with various animals swimming past her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534790/original/file-20230629-23-woykhe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534790/original/file-20230629-23-woykhe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534790/original/file-20230629-23-woykhe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534790/original/file-20230629-23-woykhe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534790/original/file-20230629-23-woykhe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534790/original/file-20230629-23-woykhe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534790/original/file-20230629-23-woykhe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caminho</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work explores the strategies women have developed to cope with the social inferiority they face. In a context of political and economic corruption, a group of women who were meant to be rivals band together to improve their lives.</p>
<p>Through tapping into a geography of the country’s imagination – with its legends and myths that crash against the concrete realities of urban life – Chiziane constructs a powerful allegory about Mozambique’s socio-cultural conditions, especially for women. </p>
<p>Here actual development is destined only for the elite few, while the rest wander through a forest of symbols that make them question what is real and what is not.</p>
<h2>Outspoken voice</h2>
<p>Chiziane is prolific. She is also the author of numerous other novels and short stories. Her 2015 novel <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340157964_Ngoma_Yethu_o_curandeiro_e_o_Novo_Testamento">Ngoma Yethu</a>: O Curandeiro e o Novo Testamento (Ngoma Yethu: the Healer and the Old Testament) is also notable.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/womens-memories-of-food-offer-insights-into-mozambiques-liberation-struggle-149003">Women's memories of food offer insights into Mozambique's liberation struggle</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ngoma Yethu created quite a scandal in Mozambique, especially because it was written by a woman (women are not supposed to talk about the rituals or the role of the nyanga or traditional healer) and for firmly denouncing the demonisation of traditional African spiritual beliefs by the Catholic church.</p>
<p>But apart from Niketche: A Story of Polygamy, none of her books are available in English. Her novel The Joyful Cry of the Partridge is, however, due to be published in English in 2024.</p>
<p>Chiziane has remained unwavering in amplifying women’s voices in her country. Her literary path has already made history and the Camões Prize, now officially celebrated, is a testament to the enormous importance of her role in representing African culture in the context of Portuguese-speaking countries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francesca Negro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Camões Prize is the most important award for Portuguese literature, and Paulina Chiziane is the first African woman to receive it.
Francesca Negro, Associate research scientist, Universidade de Lisboa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205251
2023-06-13T16:18:40Z
2023-06-13T16:18:40Z
South African activist Frank Anthony wrote a novel that has been forgotten: why it shouldn’t have been
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526767/original/file-20230517-11985-ieafwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of a photo of Frank Anthony (front left) on Robben Island with Walter Sisulu (front right).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Unknown/Courtesy Nelson Mandela Foundation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How does it come about that a man who dedicated the greater part of his life to a vision of a just South Africa, and sacrificed his family and personal relationships to do so, disappears from the annals of the country’s history?</p>
<p>How does a writer with consummate command of two of South Africa’s national languages – English and Afrikaans – and whose work in poetry and prose reflects deep insights into world politics, literature and culture come to be virtually totally forgotten?</p>
<p>This is what happened to Frank Anthony, a South African author and activist who lived a life committed to ending racial, economic and gender injustice in apartheid South Africa. Anthony was born in 1940 and died in 1993.</p>
<p>He is the author of an Afrikaans poetry collection <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Robbeneiland.html?id=rgniAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Robbeneiland: My Kruis, My Huis</a> (Robben Island: My Cross, My Home) and the novel <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Journey.html?id=nUIgAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Journey: The Revolutionary Anguish of Comrade B</a>. Both works draw on his six-year incarceration on <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/robben-island">Robben Island</a>, and the impact of being restricted within the Kraaifontein district of Cape Town for five years after his release.</p>
<p>I have studied his works, and his life, over the past three years, and have distilled my findings in a recently published <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/eia.v50i1.4">article</a> on his novel The Journey.</p>
<p>The novel is set in the 1980s. Yet it seems to speak to the betrayal and crisis of leadership experienced in South Africa at the present time. I am also interested in the ways the novel seems to exclude personal relationships, especially romantic love, in its political vision. </p>
<p>Investigating Anthony’s life and work, I discovered that his political and literary contributions had not been recognised. Almost <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frank-anthony-1">no information</a> is available about him online. Both his publications are out of print, so not easily available to the general reading public, and his work has completely fallen out of view in South African literary studies.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526770/original/file-20230517-15-sjf3sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526770/original/file-20230517-15-sjf3sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526770/original/file-20230517-15-sjf3sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526770/original/file-20230517-15-sjf3sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526770/original/file-20230517-15-sjf3sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526770/original/file-20230517-15-sjf3sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1196&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526770/original/file-20230517-15-sjf3sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1196&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526770/original/file-20230517-15-sjf3sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1196&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kampen</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In my view this is because of his implicit criticism of the leadership of the political organisation to which he belonged, the <a href="https://www.apdusa.org.za/about-us/">African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa</a>, which has expunged his presence and his political contribution from their website. Another factor was the racialised way in which his poetry and fiction were viewed. Reviews of his poetry collection at the time of its publication, for example, focus on the racial identity of the poet rather than on the literary sophistication of his collection. </p>
<p>For me, Anthony’s experience amounts to censorship and “banning”. This was something many South African writers experienced at the hands of a number of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> laws and censorship boards. </p>
<p>It also echoes the experience of dissident writers in Africa such as <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/nuruddin-farah.html">Nuruddin Farah</a>, as well as international writers like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/18/vaclav-havel">Václav Havel</a> who challenged authoritarian regimes through their life work and writing.</p>
<h2>The times</h2>
<p>Anthony was born in Stellenbosch in 1940. Stellenbosch is a town in the Cape winelands, steeped in colonial history. It is still home to the descendants of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-slavery-and-early-colonisation-south-africa">enslaved people</a> brought by the Dutch to the Cape from the mid-17th century.</p>
<p>Apartheid segregation and discrimination were layered onto this history by the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a>, which came into power in 1948. This was the society into which Anthony was born, and the context that influenced his political allegiances.</p>
<p>He joined the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Non-European Unity Movement</a>, and later its affiliate, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/african-peoples-democratic-union-southern-africa-apdusa">African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa</a>. </p>
<p>In 1972, Anthony was arrested and convicted on four counts under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1967-terrorism-act-no-83-1967">Terrorism Act</a>. The act gave the apartheid government the legal power to clamp down on resistance movements.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph of two prison guards standing supervising three men with gardening implements - a man on the left looking directly to camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frank Anthony (left).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Unknown/ Courtesy Nelson Mandela Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anthony was imprisoned for six years on Robben Island. Leaders like <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a> of the African National Congress were serving their sentences there at the time.</p>
<p>On his release in 1978 Anthony was put under a banning order. This meant that he was physically restricted to the Kraaifontein area, a semi-rural district of Cape Town. He worked at a supermarket in the area even though he was a qualified economics lecturer.</p>
<p>After his banning order was lifted, Anthony again become involved in clandestine anti-apartheid operations. </p>
<h2>Contributions to literature</h2>
<p>Anthony was one of a number of significant writers of his time who acknowledged that literature and culture reflected – and were affected by – politics. Other celebrated South African writers, including <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mongane-wally-serote-1944">Mongane Wally Serote</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/epitaph-for-a-baobab-remembering-south-african-poet-and-activist-don-mattera-187654">Don Mattera</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nadine-gordimer">Nadine Gordimer</a>, also believed that literature had the power to transform hearts, minds and the world. </p>
<p>Anthony’s Afrikaans poetry collection, Robbeneiland: My Kruis, My Huis, was published in 1983. It was titled after the extended poem where he reflects on his prison experience. This poem was also published in the well-known resistance literary magazine, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/staffrider-vol5-no2-1982">Staffrider</a>. </p>
<p>The collection was the first example of Afrikaans prison literature, and an exemplar of how Afrikaans could be an African language of resistance rather than “the oppressor’s tongue” as it had been seen, following the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto youth uprising</a>, when Afrikaans was imposed in black schools.</p>
<p>But the poetry collection has not been studied for its literary qualities and its creative exposition of debates and philosophies. Rather it has simply become a footnote in Afrikaans literary scholarship. </p>
<p>Anthony’s 1991 novel, written in English, has been almost completely elided from history, despite receiving good reviews in the South African press when it was published.</p>
<p>The highly satirical novel allegorically tells the story of the journey of Comrade B through South Africa to a neighbouring country where his political leaders are exiled. The organisation is never named in the novel. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/epitaph-for-a-baobab-remembering-south-african-poet-and-activist-don-mattera-187654">Epitaph for a baobab: remembering South African poet and activist Don Mattera</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The novel uses well-known literary allusions to foreground the idea of betrayal, especially by leaders who seem to have lost touch with realities on the ground.</p>
<p>The organisation Anthony was still close to read the novel narrowly and defensively. The leadership saw it as an autobiography rather than as a novel, presenting a non-fictional critique of organisational and leadership failings.</p>
<p>In its response to the novel in newsletters and other correspondence, references were made to the “mental instability” of its author. </p>
<h2>Importance</h2>
<p>In my view the novel is important for a number of reasons. </p>
<p>Firstly, it highlights the idea of betrayal of ethical and political principles. Current disillusionment with political parties is not new.</p>
<p>Secondly, the narrative seems, by omission, to be highlighting how personal lives and relationships, especially <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/8992">romantic love</a>, might be a politically radical concept. The novel, following dominant Marxist theory, regards love as a bourgeois preoccupation. Contemporary leftist and radical black debates, by contrast, have re-evaluated the importance of love in political struggle.</p>
<p>Today the novel is available only at the Library of Parliament, the National Library of South Africa, and a handful of university libraries. Its disappearance impoverishes our understanding of activists and resistance movements, and their missteps and misapprehensions, in the South African context, as well as worldwide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205251/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>F. Fiona Moolla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The activist and writer has been erased from South Africa’s history - but new academic work seeks to restore his voice.
F. Fiona Moolla, Senior Lecturer in English, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206966
2023-06-11T05:58:48Z
2023-06-11T05:58:48Z
Animal Farm has been translated into Shona – why a group of Zimbabwean writers undertook the task
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530850/original/file-20230608-30-g3nm04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Hopps/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since independence in 1980, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zimbabwe/Rhodesia-and-the-UDI">Zimbabwe</a> has in some ways become like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Animal-Farm">Animal Farm</a>. Like the pigs in the classic 1945 novel by English writer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Orwell">George Orwell</a>, the country’s post-liberation leaders have hijacked a revolution that was once rooted in righteous outrage. In Zimbabwe, the revolution was against colonialism and its practices of extraction and exploitation. </p>
<p>The lead characters in Animal Farm have the propensity for evil and the greed for power found in despots throughout history, including former Zimbabwe president <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Robert Mugabe</a>. Zimbabwe’s leaders have also acted for personal gain. They remain in power with no <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/04/zimbabwe-43-years-independence-commemoration-marred-by-rapidly-shrinking-civic-space/">accountability</a> to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-deepening-crisis-time-for-second-government-of-national-unity-122726">suffering</a> of the people they claim to represent. </p>
<p>Animal Farm’s relevance is echoed in celebrated young Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo’s recent novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/noviolet-bulawayos-new-novel-is-an-instant-zimbabwean-classic-185783">Glory</a>. Her satirical take on Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup and the fall of Mugabe is also narrated through animals. And visual artist <a href="https://zeitzmocaa.museum/artists/admire-kamudzengerere/">Admire Kamudzengerere</a> founded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjpVCcDZARQ">Animal Farm Artist Residency</a> in Chitungwiza as a space for creative experimentation.</p>
<p>It’s within this context that a group of Zimbabwean writers, led by novelist and lawyer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/13/petina-gappah-zimbabwe-writer-interview">Petina Gappah</a> and poet <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/wait-is-over-for-muchuri/">Tinashe Muchuri</a>, have translated Animal Farm into <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona">Shona</a>, the country’s most widely spoken language. A dozen writers contributed to the translation of <a href="https://houseofbookszim.com/product/chimurenga-chemhuka/">Chimurenga Chemhuka</a> (Animal Revolution) over five years.</p>
<p>It’s clear to me, as a <a href="https://www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk/cpt_people/mushakavanhu-dr-tinashe/">scholar</a> of Zimbabwean literature, that too few great books are available in the country’s indigenous languages. This matters particularly because there are few bookshops and libraries where young people can access good writing. But Zimbabwe’s writers are taking matters into their own hands. </p>
<h2>The translation project</h2>
<p>Translating Animal Farm into Shona makes perfect sense. Historically, Shona novelists have used animal imagery to conjure up worlds of tradition and custom, and also to examine human foibles. Great Shona writers – such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Solomon-M-Mutswairo">Solomon Mutswairo</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Patrick-Chakaipa">Patrick Chakaipa</a> and more recently <a href="https://munyori.org/2022/04/interview-with-ignatius-mabasa/">Ignatius Mabasa</a> – have written books that use allegory to respond to a range of crises in Zimbabwe. (Allegory is a literary device that uses hidden meaning to speak to political situations – such as using pigs instead of people in Animal Farm.) </p>
<p>Gappah kickstarted the <a href="https://pentransmissions.com/2015/10/22/on-translating-orwells-animal-farm/">translation project</a> in a private post on Facebook in 2015:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A group of friends and I thought it would be fun to bring the novel to new readers in all the languages spoken in Zimbabwe. This is important to us because Zimbabwe has been isolated so much in recent years, and translation is one way to bring other cultures and peoples closer to your own.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover featuring an illustration of the imprint of a pig's hoof in blood." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The House of Books</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eight years later, Chimurenga Chemhuka has come to life. It’s a big achievement, considering that publishing has not been performing well in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-economy-is-collapsing-why-mnangagwa-doesnt-have-the-answers-104960">dire Zimbabwean economy</a>. Gappah and her friends have ambitions to translate and publish Animal Farm in all indigenous languages taught in Zimbabwe’s schools. </p>
<h2>Chimurenga Chemhuka</h2>
<p>Though Chimurenga Chemhuka is mainly in standard Shona, its characters speak a medley of different Shona dialects – such as chiKaranga, chiZezuru, chiManyika – plus a smattering of contemporary slang. It’s a prismatic translation in one text. As leading UK translation theorist Matthew Reynolds <a href="https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0206/ch6.xhtml">explains</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>To translate is to remake, not only in a new language with its different nuances and ways of putting words together, but in a new culture where readers are likely to be attracted by different themes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The use of dialects activates the book in a comical way that also leaves it open to different interpretations and connections. For example, Zimbabwe’s president <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-mnangagwa-usher-in-a-new-democracy-the-view-from-zimbabwe-88023">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>, who does not have the same rhetorical gifts as his predecessor, has always tried to distinguish himself with his use of chiKaranga, a dominant dialect of Shona. He adopts a popular wailing Pentecostal style that rises and falls, raising laughter and dust among the rented crowds who attend his rallies.</p>
<p>The title, Chimurenga Chemhuka, is poignant and a direct reference to Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/renov82.10/renov82.10.pdf">liberation war</a>. Chemhuka (animal) Chimurenga (revolution) is not a literal translation of Animal Farm, but here the writers take liberties to connect the book to the country’s larger struggles for independence, commonly known as Chimurenga. </p>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>This translation project is a significant event in Shona literature. </p>
<p>It’s done by an eclectic group of writers who are passionate about language and literature. They use Orwell’s book and its satiric commentary as a way to creatively express themselves collectively. If this was a choir, the choristers Gappah and Muchuri do a good job of leading a harmonious ensemble.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/noviolet-bulawayos-new-novel-is-an-instant-zimbabwean-classic-185783">NoViolet Bulawayo’s new novel is an instant Zimbabwean classic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This is also the first of a series of Shona translations from <a href="https://houseofbookszim.com/">House of Books</a>, a new publishing house in Zimbabwe. The book is being promoted via social media platforms, where it is generating conversation about the need for more Zimbabwean translations of classic literature.</p>
<p>Translation was a major activity in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. It was a way for the newly emergent nation to reintegrate into the pan-African intellectual circuit. As Zimbabwe again reels from political and economic oppression, the translation of Animal Farm reveals to the country that what it’s going through is not new. It has happened before, and it will happen again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Novelist Petina Gappah’s call for translators on Facebook has resulted in the publication of Chimurenga Chemhuka.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205574
2023-05-25T15:40:13Z
2023-05-25T15:40:13Z
Abdellah Taïa is Morocco’s first openly gay writer – his work reimagines being Muslim, queer and African
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526986/original/file-20230518-29-700qj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Abdellah Taïa in Tangier, Morocco, in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abdelhak Senna/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://lecube-art.com/artiste/abdellah-taia/?lang=en">Abdellah Taïa</a> was born in 1973 in Rabat, Morocco. He currently lives in Paris. He is the first writer from north Africa – and in fact the Arab world – to openly declare that he is gay. In 2006, he came out in a highly publicised article in the Moroccan magazine <a href="https://telquel.ma/2021/11/12/il-y-a-15-ans-quand-abdellah-taia-faisait-son-coming-out-dans-nos-colonnes_1742972">Tel Quel</a>. This was considered <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/a-boy-to-be-sacrificed.html">scandalous</a> by conservative Muslims. </p>
<p>Being queer is often seen as conflicting with being religious. Yet, in African contexts – as in other parts of the world – religion and queerness intersect in multiple and productive ways. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/love-violence-and-daily-survival-inside-moroccos-lgbtiq-community-96760">Love, violence and daily survival: inside Morocco's LGBTIQ community</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Much of the academic study of religion and queerness in Africa has focused on <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2021/08/christianity-and-new-queer-african-imaginations">Christianity</a>. This runs the risk of reinforcing the idea of Islam as a more homophobic “other”. However, Islam can be a resource of queer creativity and subjectivity in contemporary Africa. </p>
<p>A small but growing body of <a href="https://adriaanvanklinken.wordpress.com/2020/04/16/life-stories-of-queer-africa/">literary works</a> have represented what queerness means in African Muslim societies. Taia’s <a href="http://abdellahtaia.free.fr">novels</a> are a significant example of this. </p>
<p>We came together as a scholar of French and queer literature, and a scholar of religion and African studies to consider Taïa’s work alongside texts by queer Muslim writers from other parts of the continent. In <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00020184.2023.2200367?journalCode=cast20">our research</a> we argue that doing so recognises the continent’s political, cultural and intellectual diversity. </p>
<p>We also tackle the problematic historical distinctions between north and sub-Saharan Africa, which are often imagined as different and diametrically opposed. In fact, they share many lived Muslim African experiences.</p>
<h2>Abdellah Taïa’s work</h2>
<p>Taïa has published numerous novels, often with a semi-autobiographical element. He also produced a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3016266/">film</a>, Salvation Army, that details the complexity of being gay in Muslim societies of Morocco. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526997/original/file-20230518-27-m22gb9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover showing a sepia photograph of a beach with people on it, three young men walking in a group together in the foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526997/original/file-20230518-27-m22gb9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526997/original/file-20230518-27-m22gb9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526997/original/file-20230518-27-m22gb9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526997/original/file-20230518-27-m22gb9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526997/original/file-20230518-27-m22gb9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526997/original/file-20230518-27-m22gb9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526997/original/file-20230518-27-m22gb9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIT Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although his work has received critical acclaim and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1655391/awards/">awards</a> <a href="https://pen.org/literary-awards/2021-pen-america-literary-awards-winners/">internationally</a>, this has not been the case in his home country. </p>
<p>His most notable novels that have been translated into English include <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781584350705/salvation-army/">Salvation Army</a> (2009), <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781584351115/an-arab-melancholia/">An Arab Melancholia</a> (2012) and <a href="https://www.sevenstories.com/books/3916-infidels">Infidels</a> (2016).</p>
<p>These all challenge the culture of <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2021/01/silence-and-skin-depicting-queerness-in-maghrebian-films/">discretion and silence</a> on queer-related issues in north Africa and the broader Muslim world. </p>
<p>Taïa’s books have played a key role in building an archive of African queerness and have foregrounded the place of Islam in such gender and sexual identities. </p>
<h2>Islam is not inherently homophobic</h2>
<p>Taïa’s novels demonstrate that <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Islam">Muslim cultures</a> and Islamic traditions are not inherently homophobic. This counters the common perception by Muslim conservatives that homosexuality is a sin. Rather, Muslim social spaces are portrayed as promoting physical closeness and contact between bodies – Muslim societies are linked to considerable levels of homosociality and tolerance for homoeroticism. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526999/original/file-20230518-21-1wfpa2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover showing two boys in a forest, the one in the foreground lighting a cigarette." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526999/original/file-20230518-21-1wfpa2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526999/original/file-20230518-21-1wfpa2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526999/original/file-20230518-21-1wfpa2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526999/original/file-20230518-21-1wfpa2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526999/original/file-20230518-21-1wfpa2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526999/original/file-20230518-21-1wfpa2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526999/original/file-20230518-21-1wfpa2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIT Press</span></span>
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<p>For Taïa, queer bodies can find intimacy, protection and acceptance in the ceremonial and mystical spaces created by Islamic practices of communal and private prayer.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://lambdaliterary.org/2016/05/infidels-by-abdellah-taia/">Infidels</a>, he describes how the space of the <a href="https://marocmama.com/use-moroccan-hammam/"><em>hammam</em></a>, or steam baths, is at once homosocial, intimate and erotic. During his first visit to a <em>hammam</em>, the narrator is surprised by how men showed off their virility. He sees men “in a new light: fragile, sensitive, handsome, and open to all experiences”. He says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An infinite tenderness passed between their bodies, through their strongly scented, intoxicating skin. They brushed against each other, they touched. Pure sensuality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Writers from sub-Saharan Africa have supported Taïa’s assertion of how Muslim cultures generally tolerate queerness. Novels like <a href="https://www.teamangelica.com/post/diriye-osman-fairytales-for-lost-children">Fairytales for Lost Children</a> by the Somali writer <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/diriye-osman-interview-somali-author/">Diriye Osman</a>, <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Confessions_of_a_Gambler/QzSsAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=Confessions%20of%20a%20gambler">Confessions of a Gambler</a> by <a href="https://oulitnet.co.za/ricochet/rjacobs.asp">Rayda Jacobs</a>, as well as <a href="https://therustintimes.com/2019/06/19/out-proud-and-african-jamil-f-khan/">Jamil F. Khan’s</a> <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/khamr-the-makings-of-a-waterslams/">Khamr: The Makings of a Waterslams</a> highlight how queer sexuality is tolerated in Muslim communities in different African countries.</p>
<h2>Reimagining Islam</h2>
<p>Islam, like the other <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rodriguez-orlando-religion-homophobia-20160614-snap-story.html">Abrahamic religions</a>, can be intolerant of queerness. <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2016/06/23/homosexuality-islam-quran-gay-people/">Different parts of the Quran</a> are cited in admonishing homosexuality. </p>
<p>Taïa’s novels, like those from sub-Saharan Africa, show that it’s possible to rethink Islam to find within it freedom of being and expression. This is a restorative and liberatory process. </p>
<p>Reimagining Islam is rooted in specific local contexts and histories. However, when these disparate histories, texts and contexts are read together, they give a rich impression of how Islam tolerates queerness on the continent, both historically and to date.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2LnqvjL7JZM?wmode=transparent&start=7" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>The protagonist of Salvation Army explains: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Little by little, I re-examine my views about Arab culture, Moroccan tradition, and Islam. Lose myself entirely, the better to find myself. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reimagining of Islam takes place not outside the religion, but rather within it.</p>
<p>Another character in Infidels finds that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>God already accepts us as we are. He made us this way. In this condition. In this situation. We accept his decisions … But He, God, Allah, is not like them, isn’t like the image they made of Him. God is in me. He’s also in you. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>Literary texts are crucial in illuminating the diverse ways queerness exists and is negotiated in Muslim contexts in Africa. What emerges from examining these novels is that practising Islamic ritual and faith does not necessarily have to conflict with queer African lived realities. Rather, Islam can affirm these marginalised ways of being. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527002/original/file-20230518-27-90hqq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover showing a photo of a boy, his head turned away, in front of a traditional metal Moroccan door." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527002/original/file-20230518-27-90hqq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527002/original/file-20230518-27-90hqq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527002/original/file-20230518-27-90hqq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527002/original/file-20230518-27-90hqq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527002/original/file-20230518-27-90hqq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527002/original/file-20230518-27-90hqq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527002/original/file-20230518-27-90hqq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Seven Stories Press</span></span>
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<p>Admittedly, some queer African Muslims experience considerable levels of religiously motivated queerphobia. This disparity, however, highlights the importance of creative and literary writing as a tool for representing, critiquing and reimagining religious realities and their impact on everyday lived experiences. </p>
<p>Literary texts do not simply reflect, but model the world. Therefore, they can be seen as forms of African Muslim queer worldmaking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205574/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adriaan van Klinken receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) and the British Academy. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gibson Ncube does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
His books bring north Africa into conversation with sub-Saharan Africa about lived queer experiences.
Gibson Ncube, Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
Adriaan van Klinken, Professor of Religion and African Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/185783
2022-07-27T14:52:14Z
2022-07-27T14:52:14Z
NoViolet Bulawayo’s new novel is an instant Zimbabwean classic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475654/original/file-20220722-234-kbs6yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Noviolet Bulawayo, Zimbabwean writer.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Zimbabwean author <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/19/noviolet-bulawayo-animal-farm-style-allegory-important-hope-zimbabwe-orwell-glory">NoViolet Bulawayo</a>’s new novel <a href="https://novioletbulawayo.com/books/glory/">Glory</a> – <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2022">longlisted</a> for the Booker Prize 2022 – animals take on human characteristics. Through this she explores what happens when an authoritarian regime implodes, using characters who are horses, pigs, dogs, cows, cats, chickens, crocodiles, birds and butterflies. </p>
<p>Bulawayo’s celebrated first novel, <a href="https://novioletbulawayo.com/books/we-need-new-names/">We Need New Names</a>, was a coming-of-age story about the escapades of a Zimbabwean girl named Darling who ends up living in America. Its hallmarks are accentuated in this new work: the troubled real world of class struggles, psychological dualities, colonial and postcolonial histories, war and the dog-eat-dog politics of contemporary Africa.</p>
<p>Glory is set in a kingdom called Jidada, which could be <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">Robert Mugabe</a>’s Zimbabwe, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Idi-Amin">Idi Amin</a>’s Uganda, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hastings-Kamuzu-Banda">Hastings Banda</a>’s Malawi, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mobutu-Sese-Seko">Mobutu Sese Seko</a>’s Zaire, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/12/1/the-hypocrisy-of-emmerson-mnangagwa">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>’s Zimbabwe or any other authoritarian regime in Africa, for there are many. The tropes Bulawayo makes fun of are so recognisable and familiar. </p>
<p>Perhaps as memorable as the names in her first novel (Bastard, Godknows) are those of these animal characters (Comrade Nevermiss Nzinga, General Judas Goodness Reza). There is also a Father of the Nation, Sisters of the Disappeared and Defenders of the Revolution, Seat of Power and the Chosen. And there’s the Soldiers of Christ Prophetic Church of Churches.</p>
<p>In fact, there is something almost playful about this book. When politics becomes a farce, it only requires a virtuoso like Bulawayo to marshal the faux pas into a memorable fictional narrative. </p>
<p>The novel fictionalises the real politics of Zimbabwe, from the removal of Mugabe to the rise to power of his former vice-president, Mnangagwa, in 2017 and the years since, during which Zimbabwe’s economy has suffered and the political promises of the “second republic” have gone unfulfilled. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover in bright red and green with black animals illustrated - a horse, cow, dog and a pig on a yellow moon with the words 'GLORY'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chatto & Windus/Penguin Books</span></span>
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<p>But in order to transcend the particular, the novel is allegoric, capturing the essence of the matter as told by a bold, vivid chorus of animal voices that helps us see our human world more clearly. </p>
<p>In Jidada, the tyrannical Old Horse is ousted in a coup after a 40-year rule. At first there is excitement about the change that will come. But Tuvius Delight Shasha (a former vice-president) leads the country into despair. Destiny Lozikeyi Khumalo, a goat who returns to Jidada after a decade away, becomes a chronicler of her nation’s history and an advocate for its future. </p>
<h2>Humour as resistance</h2>
<p>In an interview in the immediate aftermath of the Zimbabwe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2017/nov/15/zimbabwe-army-control-harare-coup-robert-mugabe-live">coup d’etat</a> in 2017, Bulawayo talked about attempting to write about the fall of <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Mugabe</a> in nonfiction but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/19/noviolet-bulawayo-animal-farm-style-allegory-important-hope-zimbabwe-orwell-glory">abandoning that effort</a>. She found the novel to be a better form for political satire.</p>
<p>Bulawayo’s writing is distinctive. There is a lyricism to her prose, a poetics of language that mesmerises and surprises. This gives her fiction an applied, intense focus. </p>
<p>Translating a present-day political and cultural milieu is tricky. The political language of contemporary Zimbabwe is oppositional, underpinned in historically deep-seated ethnic “for or against” binaries. By refusing to limit her language, Bulawayo shows the shallowness and historical ignorance behind political power in her utopian African country. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-orwells-1984-and-how-it-helps-us-understand-tyrannical-power-today-112066">Guide to the classics: Orwell's 1984 and how it helps us understand tyrannical power today</a>
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<p>Bulawayo also knows how to use language to good effect by deploying irony and comedy. Her use of humour in the novel is a form of political resistance that splinters the make-believe world of an out-of-touch political class.</p>
<h2>Massacres</h2>
<p>Glory is an unforgettable book that goes beyond the obvious comparison to its inspiration, the UK author George Orwell’s 1945 classic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Animal-Farm">Animal Farm</a>. His book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and provides a strong critique against <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stalinism">Stalinism</a>.</p>
<p>Glory has a lively rhetorical idiom; it is full of colour and vigour. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/books/review/noviolet-bulawayo-glory.html">one reviewer</a> wrote: “Bulawayo is really out-Orwelling Orwell.” Both authors reference the disarray and traumatic conditions of the world in a distinct and powerful way. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">How artists have preserved the memory of Zimbabwe's 1980s massacres</a>
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</em>
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<p>Bulawayo’s novel is also an epic that narrates the misdeeds and violent adventures of the past history of Jidada, such as the time of “Gukurahundi” when the rulers tortured, raped and executed the animals. The Gukurahundi was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">genocide</a> that took place in Zimbabwe between 1983 and 1987 when more than 20,000 people were massacred in Matebeleland.</p>
<h2>A global story</h2>
<p>The challenge for Bulawayo, or any writer for that matter, was how to write about a coup still in progress that was described as <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-20-zimbabwe-when-is-a-coup-not-a-coup/">a-coup-not-a-coup</a>. How could one write about the events that started when Mugabe was overthrown with the promise of new Zimbabwe that is yet to come?</p>
<p>The end of his reign was a festival of dancing and singing for a generation that knew nothing else but his brutality. Young people posed for Instagram photos with friendly-looking gun-wielding soldiers. They welcomed back a disgraced former vice-president who – like Tuvius Delight Shasha – became the new “Ruler of the Nation and Veteran of the Liberation War, the Greatest Leader of Jidada, Enemy of Corruption, Opener for Business, the Inventor of the Scarf of the Nation, the Survivor of All Assassination Attempts…”</p>
<p>It’s a particular challenge to write about regimes that enforce everything with violence. And yet Bulawayo’s vibrant satire succeeds in telling a political parable that also reflects the times. </p>
<p>Glory is a tour de force. It is not a story about endings but about unravellings. It is not a book about the past, but a book about the present and the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Playing out in an animal kingdom, Glory is a devastating political commentary on Zimbabwe today.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184188
2022-06-23T14:27:56Z
2022-06-23T14:27:56Z
Nigerian historian and thinker Toyin Falola on decolonising the academy in Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467935/original/file-20220609-14-6t06uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Toyin Falola </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy Boydell & Brewer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Nigerian intellectual and historian Toyin Falola’s latest book is called <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781648250279/decolonizing-african-studies/">Decolonizing African Studies</a>: Knowledge Production, Agency, and Voice. It sets out to respond to the urgent need to eliminate the vestiges of colonialism (the domination of foreign powers) in the academy and in research methodologies where African perspectives continue to be marginalised or excluded, creating the problem of misrepresentation of the continent. The book also critiques the limitations to and failures of decoloniality so far. It closes with a discussion of African futurism. In this interview Falola talks about some key battlegrounds for the decolonisation of knowledge production.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Olayinka Oyegbile:</strong> How do you or other African intellectuals hope to replace the hegemony of Western knowledge systems imposed on Africa in a one-sided world?</p>
<p><strong>Toyin Falola:</strong> I think we can both agree that the side of the narrative preferred by the western world is not that which entirely favours the best interest of Africa. Though the colonial masters have been gone for decades, they left behind intellectual legacies that are not so obvious to many of us in Africa. Such legacies include those that reflect in knowledge and how we acquire it, legacies that permeate the operations of our institutions and have an effect on the means of development of our continent. These are the legacies we are making positive efforts to remove through decolonisation. </p>
<p>My book is one of the materials that help set things straight about decolonisation. I know there are many materials out there, and there are many more that will come from scholars across Africa who understand the patriotic assignment of decolonising knowledge production. But this does not stop here. There is also sensitisation going on across Africa. Seminars and think tank assemblies are being held to develop strategies for fastening the grip on decolonisation in Africa. </p>
<p>An important mission is to integrate indigenous systems into the formal western-education style. What is ours? Our languages, ideas, crafts, stories, including festivals, ceremonies, useful knowledge from elders, and many more. And we must put what we have learned into practice as we play, interact with one another, and build purposeful communities.</p>
<p><strong>Olayinka Oyegbile:</strong> How do you redress the problem of the misrepresentation of how the history of the continent has been told?</p>
<p><strong>Toyin Falola:</strong> If you tell a story or the history of a people from a wrong perspective for too long, people will come to accept it, regardless of how untrue it is, while disregarding the other perspective or even believing that there cannot be any other perspective than the one they have been told. </p>
<p>For a long time, there has been a lot of westernisation of African history, and in return, African perspectives have been neglected or deemed nonexistent. It was not until after the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II">second world war</a> that African writers began to decolonise African history. So, yes, if you say there has been a misrepresentation of the continent, I wouldn’t deny it, but at the same time, we are already creating new narratives. We now have people strongly and tirelessly correcting this misinformation and replacing them with our truth. </p>
<p><strong>Olayinka Oyegbile:</strong> What do you mean by “African futurism”? (<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-afrofuturism-an-english-professor-explains-183707">Afrofuturism</a> is a movement in art, literature, etcetera featuring futuristic or science fiction themes that incorporate elements of black history and culture.)</p>
<p><strong>Toyin Falola:</strong> African futurism is the latest stage of decolonisation. It is a movement of the creative world that emphasises the relevance of Blackness, one that displays the energies of our youth to merge technology with performance, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-and-pan-africanism-from-blitz-the-ambassador-to-beyonce-151680">re-imagine Pan Africanism</a> in their own way. It borrows and integrates ideas and practices from various parts of the world and is receptive and adaptive to changes, innovations, enlightenment, reasoning, and many other legacies and concepts in Africa’s best interest. </p>
<p><strong>Olayinka Oyegbile:</strong> In the book you have a chapter on empowering marginal voices, this includes LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) Africans, who many believe are ‘unAfrican’ in nature?</p>
<p><strong>Toyin Falola:</strong> We must accept the reality of change, respect boundaries, embrace other identities, and accept that a new generation will replace the old. LGBTQ people should be considered a sexual orientation and human rights issue, and we need to acknowledge that they are Africans like you and me. We must treat all Africans with respect.</p>
<p>I believe that the obstacle is that the tool needed to advance Africa into a pro-LGBTQ continent is still within the control of the older generation. But I believe that change is constant and that when this change happens, and a new generation of Africans emerges to take positions of power, the animosity towards LGBTQ will be reduced, and there will be tolerance and the political will to implement a pro-LGBTQ agenda in Africa. </p>
<p><strong>Olayinka Oyegbile:</strong> You write about using language as a form of decolonisation as well as decolonising African literature?</p>
<p><strong>Toyin Falola:</strong> I have always believed that beyond being an art, language is also a science. It is a tool of transformation, and as far as decolonisation is concerned, language is a necessary tool. I do not think literature is worth anything without language, and the language in which it is told goes a long way to convey different things that can alter the perspective of a people or transform it. Of course, African literature needs to be decolonised.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/drama-that-shaped-ngugis-writing-and-activism-comes-home-to-kenya-184353">Drama that shaped Ngũgĩ’s writing and activism comes home to Kenya</a>
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<p>Many aspects of African literature cannot be adequately conveyed if you take it away from the African context. Meanwhile, leaving it in the African context means using the African language to properly communicate it. So, yes, language has a huge place in African literature, and we need to do a better job of harnessing it. Language is more than literature; it is an entry to socialisation and education, to people’s well-being, and to the advancement of cultures and civilisations. African languages are an integral part of our march of progress.</p>
<p><strong>Olayinka Oyegbile:</strong> What is the relevance of African history to the world or vice versa?</p>
<p><strong>Toyin Falola:</strong> We need to understand that the history of any people, no matter how small a group, is relevant to them and the world, even at a time of globalisation. Every one of us must be able to distinctly identify ourselves and our histories while being active partakers of the global village. African history is highly important to the world, and not just the history as told from outsiders’ perspective, but as told by Africans. Africans have made significant contributions to the growth of civilisation, from the very early humans to the advancement in technologies and the development of capitalism.</p>
<p><strong>Olayinka Oyegbile:</strong> Although it has been reintroduced, history was phased out of Nigeria’s school curriculum or relegated at some point, what does this portend?</p>
<p><strong>Toyin Falola:</strong> It is a bad idea to ignore the teaching of history because a river that forgets its source will surely dry up. History is crucial for the growth of any nation, and any nation that decides to forget it or undervalues its relevance in the educational system will suffer the consequences. There are no two ways to it. If you desire a better future for yourself or your country, you must consider where you are today, as well as where you have been coming from. The interrelation of these things will birth an encompassing understanding of what to do to reach where you need to be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olayinka Oyegbile does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Indigenous knowledge, African languages, queer rights and Afrofuturism are some of the issues discussed in the new book.
Olayinka Oyegbile, Communications scholar, Trinity University, Lagos
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184353
2022-06-09T13:55:19Z
2022-06-09T13:55:19Z
Drama that shaped Ngũgĩ’s writing and activism comes home to Kenya
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467218/original/file-20220606-16-mg8snb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Nikki Kahn/The The Washington Post via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Kenya marked its 59th anniversary of internal self-rule on 1 June 2022, a controversial play by the nation’s foremost author, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, was <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/return-of-ngugi-s-ngaahika-ndeenda-and-how-us-abandoned-playwright-3815914">staged</a> in sold-out shows. It had been 45 years since it was banned and the author <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40759669">detained</a>. The performance offers a useful filter to illuminate how the nation has fared in recent years. </p>
<p>Democracy is gradually <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-is-taking-root-in-africa-but-that-doesnt-mean-it-works-all-the-time-78273">taking root</a>, but corruption is still <a href="https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/van_rij_corruption_kenya_septembre2021_okac_en.pdf">rife</a>. This makes Kenya’s largely youthful population restive.</p>
<p>Without a doubt, Ngaahika Ndeenda (<a href="https://ngugiwathiongo.com/i-will-marry-when-i-want/">I Will Marry When I Want</a>) is the most consequential piece of writing by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and his collaborator, the late Ngũgĩ wa Mirii. The drama tells the story of Kiguunda, a peasant whose tiny strip of earth is being targeted by Ahab Kioi, a local tycoon who represents international financial interests.</p>
<p>Using multiple story threads, the play captures the tempestuous romance between Kiguunda’s daughter and Kioi’s son, which results in an unwanted pregnancy and a bleak future. Kiguunda’s delusion of a white wedding as social leverage leads to nothing but mockery and dispossession.</p>
<p>Within months of its writing and subsequent staging, in late 1977, Ngũgĩ was detained without trial. Under Kenya’s old constitution, which was replaced by a <a href="https://law.strathmore.edu/the-constitution-of-kenya-2010-panacea-or-nostrum/">more progressive one in 2010</a>, it was lawful for the president to detain anyone without trial. Although the reason for Ngũgĩ’s detention has never been given, he told me recently its timing affirmed he had been targeted for writing in his indigenous language, Gikuyu:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I thought: Wait a minute, I have been writing in English over the years and nobody ever bothered with me. I write one play in Gikuyu and I’m detained, so I’m going to write in Gikuyu…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ngũgĩ <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40759669">spent a year</a> at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. His detention helped shine a light on Kenya’s human rights record. It also shaped his life in writing and political activism. </p>
<p>Released in 1978, after the death of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, Ngũgĩ was denied the right to return to his old job at the University of Nairobi. He went into exile in 1982. Although the rest of his books were not banned, they were not taught in Kenyan schools for the next two decades. </p>
<p>In a sense, Ngaahika Ndeenda was both a point of departure and a point of return. </p>
<h2>From activism to exile</h2>
<p>In 1967, Ngũgĩ recorded in <a href="https://ngugiwathiongo.com/decolonising-the-mind/">Decolonising the Mind</a> how colonial power structures reproduce through education and the imposition of European languages and literature in Africa:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After I had written <a href="https://ngugiwathiongo.com/a-grain-of-wheat/">A Grain of Wheat</a> I underwent a crisis. I knew whom I was writing about but whom was I writing for … In an interview in 1967 with Union News, a student newspaper in Leeds University, I said: ‘I have reached a point of crisis. I don’t know whether it is worth any longer writing in English.‘</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1977, Ngũgĩ returned to his village in Limuru, just outside Nairobi, and mobilised the community to build a makeshift community theatre. This was to protest their denied access to the Kenya National Theatre.</p>
<p>He and Mirii scripted a play they thought reflected the realities that confronted ordinary villagers and factory workers in Limuru, subsisting on the verge of destitution. The actors, too, were ordinary workers and peasants from Limuru.</p>
<p>In a recent conversation, Ngũgĩ reflected on this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I still believe in the power of ordinary peasants in narrating their experience. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The open-air theatre in Kamiriithu was razed by the government. Ngũgĩ was detained. His co-author, Mirii, fled to Zimbabwe, as did the play’s director, Kimani Gecau.</p>
<p>In detention, Ngũgĩ produced the allegorical <a href="https://www.mathaga.com/products/caitani-mutharabaini-by-ngugi-wa-thiongo">Caitani Mutharaba-ini</a> (<a href="https://ngugiwathiongo.com/devil-on-the-cross/">Devil on the Cross</a>), which he wrote on toilet paper in Kamiti, alongside the prison memoir <a href="https://books.google.co.ke/books/about/Detained.html?id=yhByAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Detained</a>. It was while promoting these two texts in London, in July 1982, that Ngũgĩ received a coded message warning him he’d receive “red carpet treatment” upon his return.</p>
<p>He returned to Kenya only in July 2004, after multiparty democracy had been restored. Although he was mobbed by hordes of ordinary Kenyans at the airport, his return had a tinge of tragedy. He was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3569480.stm">brutally attacked and his wife raped</a>.</p>
<p>The return of Ngaahika Ndeenda to Kenyan theatres re-introduces the work to generations of Kenyans who were not yet born before the play’s initial release and subsequent exile of the author. It also marks the evolution of the nation’s artistic freedom arena. </p>
<p>“(Jomo) Kenyatta put me in a maximum security prison. Moi drove me into exile. Uhuru (Kenyatta) received me at the State House,” Ngugi says, recalling the 2014 visit when he was hosted by Kenya’s current president.</p>
<p>While Kenyatta’s hosting of a former dissident is a powerful visual of reform and expanding democratic space, the social ills that Ngũgĩ highlighted 45 years ago still fester.</p>
<h2>Stranger than fiction</h2>
<p>The core themes in Ngaahika Ndeenda – social inequities and justice – have universal appeal. Nairobi’s youthful population turned up to watch the new production, as did the urban expatriate community. But there were also enthusiasts bussed in from distant rural locations. They had no tickets, which had to be purchased in advance, online. </p>
<p>Ngahiika Ndeenda is prescient in its vision of a land riven with class strife, greed and avarice.</p>
<p>Ngũgĩ is now polishing a Gikuyu version of his first novel, The River Between, now titled Rui Rwa Muoyo (or The River of Life). He calls the process “restoration”: returning to African languages narratives that have been domiciled in European-language granaries. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Young people need to know it is possible to write and perform in African languages. They need to be reminded of that possibility.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184353/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Kimani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Banned 45 years ago, and its author detained, the Gikuyu language play Ngaahika Ndeenda profoundly shaped the literary legend.
Peter Kimani, Professor of Practice, Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181126
2022-05-01T08:28:22Z
2022-05-01T08:28:22Z
Can Themba: South Africa’s rebel journalist was a teacher at heart
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459054/original/file-20220421-60275-4z0ccn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of a photo of Can Themba at Drum magazine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Jürgen Schadeberg courtesy Wits University Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Siphiwo Mahala is well known as a South African short story writer, novelist, playwright and literary organiser. He is also an academic. In fact, his most recent book is a product of his PhD thesis, titled <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi</a>. <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">Can Themba</a> was a journalist and short story writer who challenged the apartheid state by foregrounding the pain and the joy of black life. We asked Mahala to tell us more.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Who was Can Themba and why does he matter?</h2>
<p>Can Themba was part of a generation of black writers that revolutionised journalism and the South African literary landscape in the 1950s and early 1960s. This was a culturally dynamic and politically volatile period in South Africa. In 1948 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> was introduced by the white minority government, followed by the enactment of draconian laws in the early 1950s, which sought to separate people according to race. This prompted the black oppressed majority to intensify its resistance struggle. Artists, intellectuals and the growing cohort of black journalists were at the forefront of finding platforms to speak against these socio-political ills and challenge the regime. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Drum</a> was the most widely distributed magazine that foregrounded the voices of urban black people at this time. Themba was associate editor and also wrote for Drum’s sister newspaper, the Golden City Post. He was central in chronicling the black condition. Themba had a penchant for ordinary stories – of the neglected, the marginalised and even the resented – and he wrote them in such a sensational way that they would attract global attention. He was a daring journalist, unafraid to put his body on the line in pursuit of a story.</p>
<p>The kind of stories he covered included the impact on ordinary people of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/1957-alexandra-bus-boycott-and-its-unsung-heroes-roseinnes-phahle-june-2019">1957 bus boycott</a> and of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">pass laws</a>. One of his most documented stories was Brothers in Christ, where he investigated if white churches would welcome black worshippers in accordance with the Christian doctrine of brotherhood. He was assaulted and charged for trespassing in churches, creating a controversy that solicited international attention. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo in which a man looks wryly into camera, a hat on his head and a floral button up shirt on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Can Themba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Jürgen Schadeberg courtesy Wits University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His romantic relationship was the subject of police interrogation because he dared to love across the colour line. He was manhandled and arrested for doing journalism. He was banned under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Suppression of Communism Amendment Act</a> and his writing could neither be published nor referenced in South Africa until 15 years after his death. Clearly the apartheid regime wished to erase him from the face of history. </p>
<p>He went to exile in the early 1960s, was banned shortly after and died in exile. This has made it difficult to trace his life’s journey. Although his works – especially his short story <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2017/02/14/the-suit-why-can-themba-s-1950s-complex-tale-of-love-is-still-a-hit"><em>The Suit</em></a> – have been celebrated for years, his personal story has been sketchy, limited to his period as a Drum journalist. </p>
<h2>How does your study approach him?</h2>
<p>My interest was in his construction. Tracing the factors that contributed to the making of the writer who became known as the winner of Drum’s short story competition in 1953, and the elements that contributed to his deterioration a few years later. I feel privileged to have been the first to <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/trending/can-themba-the-man-in-the-suit-20180912">document his life story</a> – more than 50 years after his passing in 1967. In this book, through the voices of people who knew him personally, we get to know Can Themba as a husband, father, a drinking buddy, a teacher, a colleague. As a person and not just the public figure. </p>
<p>More than half the people I interviewed as part of the research have since passed away. The unique insights shared by the late <a href="https://www.news24.com/drum/News/can-thembas-wife-passes-on-20170728">Anne Themba</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-nadine-gordimer-29224">Nadine Gordimer</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a>, <a href="http://new.observer.org.sz/details.php?id=14985">Parks Mangena</a>, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/prof-mbulelo-vizikhungo-mzamane-posthumous">Mbulelo Mzamane</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-kathrada-a-simple-life-full-of-love-after-26-years-of-incarceration-75361">Ahmed Kathrada</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/lindiwe-mabuza-feminist-icon-who-used-art-to-fight-for-democracy-in-south-africa-173638">Lindiwe Mabuza</a> cannot be replicated and could have been easily lost. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/celebrating-dolly-rathebe-south-africas-original-black-woman-superstar-172532">Celebrating Dolly Rathebe, South Africa's original black woman superstar</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>I trace him from an early age, his family background in the racially mixed community Marabastad, relocating to Atteridgeville, a township outside Pretoria. I trace his schooling as well as his years as a student at the University Fort Hare, where he studied towards a BA degree and majored in English which he passed with a distinction. Sharing the university syllabus helps us to understand the foundations of his literary apprenticeship, as it included literary criticism, the history of literature and the study of poetry. The earliest available record of Themba’s publication dates back to 1945, when he was a student at Fort Hare, and the influence of Shakespeare is palpable. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GFI6eIgbuG8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The author interviewed about the new Can Themba book.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This period also gives a glimpse of what he and some of his fellow students would become. Whereas Themba and his fellow literary enthusiast <a href="https://theconversation.com/dennis-brutus-south-african-literary-giant-who-was-reluctant-to-tell-his-life-story-141730">Dennis Brutus</a> contributed mainly poetry and short stories in student journals, political leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a> was contributing articles in political pamphlets. </p>
<p>I hope readers will take away a more holistic view of Can Themba and understand that he was an abundantly talented individual who was as flawed as the rest of us. He died before his fullest potential could be realised. </p>
<h2>What did you conclude about Themba?</h2>
<p>Much has been <a href="https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository;jsessionid=DB90F6AB0DA8180580F37290A3131738/uj:8643?exact=sm_mimeType%3A%22application%2Fpdf%22&f0=sm_type%3A%22Thesis%22">written</a> about the perceived lack of political commitment in his works, his romanticisation of the township and his excessive drinking. In this book, I reveal some of his sharpest political commentary. I reveal that Themba did not drink until he joined Drum. Former Drum photographer Jurgen Schadeberg states that drinking in the newsroom was encouraged. Schadeberg says Themba initially felt out of place in the newsroom, and kept wearing a tie just like the teacher he was. </p>
<p>Themba died in 1967, supposedly of alcohol related causes, only 14 years after he started drinking. I interrogate a number of personal, social and political factors that contributed to his early demise. As an epigraph to the book, I use a quote from his former protege, veteran journalist <a href="https://sanef.org.za/sanef-mourns-the-death-of-veteran-journalist-writer-and-researcher-harry-mashabela/">Harry Mashabela</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can Themba was what he was and not what he could have been because his country is what it is.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For a writer who believed in freedom of expression, living in a tyrannical society was a constant assault to his soul. </p>
<p>More than anything else, I realised that Can Themba was a teacher at heart. It’s common knowledge that before joining Drum in 1953, he had been working as a teacher, and that he taught at St Joseph’s Catholic School in Swaziland, where he passed away in 1967. It’s not very well known that he lived for teaching even when he was not teaching for a living. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover that foregrounds a photograph of a young man in glasses leaning back, a newspaper open in his hands and a typewriter on the desk in front of him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wits University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He was a teacher in his <a href="https://readinglist.click/sub/remember-can-themba-on-the-50th-anniversary-of-his-death-at-the-launch-of-the-house-of-truth-by-siphiwo-mahala/">House of Truth</a>, which he established in his room in Sophiatown as a forum for debate. He taught in the newsroom and in the drinking dens, becoming known as the “shebeen intellectual”. And in every space where he found himself. He did guest lectures at universities. He even offered English lessons to groups and individuals. For me, his greatest legacy is his determination to nurture young minds. </p>
<p><em>Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi is <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">available from</a> Wits University Press</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181126/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siphiwo Mahala is affiliated with the University of Johannesburg as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and a Senior Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.
</span></em></p>
Abundantly talented and flawed, apartheid-era writer Can Themba wasn’t afraid to put his body on the line for a story.
Siphiwo Mahala, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177227
2022-02-27T08:33:47Z
2022-02-27T08:33:47Z
A short story by Ghana’s Ama Ata Aidoo offers a view of humanity’s place in the world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446758/original/file-20220216-22-tb7ucj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ama Ata Aidoo</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent years, philosophers and other thinkers have been rethinking how we see humanity and its place in the world. One reason for this change in thinking has been climate change: it has made humans realise that our actions have large and irreversible consequences. Many ideologies, religions and philosophies see humans as being at the centre of existence on earth, or as the rulers or stewards of all other life on the planet. But climate change forces us to realise that such a view of humans is precisely what might lead to the destruction of the world. </p>
<p>Seeing people as separate from or above all other beings would lead to an overuse of resources and violence against other creatures.</p>
<p>But even thinkers who have moved away from that view sometimes ignore the fact that all humans are not equally responsible for climate disasters. And people do not equally suffer the consequences. Developed countries use most of the earth’s resources and cause the most destruction. But the world’s poorest people disproportionately suffer the results of climate change. </p>
<p>It is therefore necessary to think differently about what the relationships between the human and the non-human world are and should be. And it’s equally necessary to avoid lumping all humans together and ignoring the violence that humans wreak on each other. </p>
<p>What would such a way of thinking look like? One answer, I’ve suggested in a recent <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10130950.2021.2011334">analysis</a>, can be found in the Ghanaian author <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ama-Ata-Aidoo">Ama Ata Aidoo’s</a> short story <em>Nowhere Cool</em>. </p>
<p>The story was originally published in 1974 in the journal <a href="https://journal.ucc.edu.gh/index.php/asemka">Asemka</a>. A restructured version was published in the journal <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2931602?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Callaloo</a> in 1990 and was included in Aidoo’s short story collection <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Girl_who_Can.html?id=slvD0sBCUTEC&redir_esc=y"><em>The Girl Who Can</em></a> (1997). </p>
<p><em>Nowhere Cool</em> is less well-known than Aidoo’s other works (such as her novels <em>Sister Killjoy</em> and <em>Changes: A Love Story</em>). On reading it, I was immediately interested in how it foregrounds the relationships between human and non-human objects, rather than things like storyline and character which drive more traditional short stories. </p>
<h2>Human and non-human objects</h2>
<p><em>Nowhere Cool</em> consists of two parts.</p>
<p>The largest part takes place on an aeroplane flying from New York to the west coast of the United States of America. The story’s Ghanaian protagonist, Sissie, is in the US for a fellowship. On the flight she thinks about compromises she had to make in order to take up the fellowship, including leaving her husband and two young children behind. Prompted by a plastic address label pinned to the baby of the white woman sitting next to her, she starts to think about the label as object, plastic as a material, and its link to oil. This leads to thoughts on the extractive economy based on oil and cotton. Her thoughts turn to slavery and how slavery turns humans into inhuman cargo.</p>
<p>Most of <em>Nowhere Cool</em> is written in the third person and refers to Sissie as “she”. The first two paragraphs are written in the first person. This section depicts a schoolgirl sitting in an English literature classroom feeling like she could “never understand or cope with” aspects of the class. The schoolgirl, who is presumably also Sissie, is here called Sarah – an anglicised name perhaps chosen by the teacher, Miss Jones. Sissie is unable to take on the persona of “Sarah” expected of her in the literature class and read the prescribed text from a Eurocentric perspective. </p>
<p>While the classroom (presumably situated in humid Ghana) is warm enough to heat “great grandmother’s bath water, the students read about carriages getting stuck in the snow”. This makes “Sarah” feel sleepy, “So I would just sit like
a stone, my eyes wide open but staring at nothing, while my thoughts wandered around familiar things that were being chased away by the demands of the culture of our conquerors … ”</p>
<h2>Embodiment and identity</h2>
<p>This is a story about how humans see and interact with non-human objects. In the main body of the story, it is a plastic tag that sets Sissie’s thoughts running in a certain direction. In paragraphs set in the classroom, the literature that Sarah interacts with is one such object, but also the objects depicted in the text – the carriages getting stuck in snow. </p>
<p>In both sections the characters’ relationships with objects are influenced by other aspects of their identity and embodiment. Sissie and Sarah are not “neutral” humans, and their relationships with the objects are not the same as everyone else’s would be. Those relationships are influenced by their specific identities as Ghanaian women, and Ghanaian women with a specific politically informed worldview. </p>
<p>Sissie’s linking of plastic to extractive processes and the extractive exploitation of West African people enslaved and taken to America illustrates the specificity of her relationship to the non-human. </p>
<p>Similarly, Sarah’s frustration with the story about the snow-stuck carriages indicates how she is alienated by western cultures’ imposition on her own, and how they change her relationship to the world around her. She talks about “familiar things that were being chased away by the demands of the culture of our conquerors”.</p>
<p>Aidoo wrote the story long before today’s debates about the relationship between the human and the non-human. Yet it illustrates the possibility of centralising the non-human rather than the human, and still recognising the differences between humans and the existence of a history in which some humans are dehumanised.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177227/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bibi Burger receives funding from the American Council of Learned Societies as part of their African Humanities Program, and is an Iso Lomso fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.</span></em></p>
Ama Ata Aidoo recognises the differences between humans and the existence of a history in which some humans are dehumanised.
Bibi Burger, Lecturer in Afrikaans Literature and Literary Theory, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/174812
2022-02-02T14:35:54Z
2022-02-02T14:35:54Z
Book review: rewriting the script on patriarchal violence in South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443559/original/file-20220131-142871-t59tqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Academic and author Pumla Dineo Gqola in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">COLIN McPHERSON/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Author and academic <a href="https://cwgs.mandela.ac.za/Staff/Pumla-Dineo-Gqola">Pumla Dineo Gqola</a>’s latest book <em><a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9781990973093">Female Fear Factory</a></em> is a sibling of her award-winning earlier book <em><a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9781920601522">Rape: A South African Nightmare</a></em>. Her feminist scholarship and thought have spotlighted slavery, artistic practice, and the prevalence of gender-based violence that is a <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/human-rights-watch-gender-based-violence-remains-rampant-in-south-africa/a-59923515">scourge</a> in South Africa. </p>
<p>In <em>Female Fear Factory</em>, Gqola demonstrates how patriarchal institutions are factories, metaphorically, that encourage violence against women and other sexual minorities by producing and enacting female fear. As a sociology lecturer, I found this book useful in how it disrupts and exposes the operations of patriarchal violence. </p>
<h2>Disrupting norms</h2>
<p>In introduction to gender courses, we teach students the distinction between gender and sex: gender (‘girl’) is a social construction, while sex (‘female’) is a biological fact. Gender reveal parties should instead be called sex reveals because, at that point, it is only the sex – the biological (male or female) – that prospective parents are sure of. Boys and girls are later shaped by society through a series of positive and negative sanctions, mainly at home. For example, boys don’t wear pink, and girls don’t climb trees. This language of do’s and don'ts is habitually repeated until the child becomes fluent in the language and performance of a particular gender.</p>
<p><em>Female Fear Factory</em> begins by disrupting this neat distinction between social constructionism and biological determinism. It argues that ‘female’ – contrary to dominant discourse – is also socially made. The argument is particularly powerful when read alongside that of <a href="http://www.annefaustosterling.com">Anne Fausto-Sterling</a>, professor of biology and gender studies, in her <a href="http://www.annefaustosterling.com/book/">books</a> <em>Myths of Gender</em>, and <em>Sexing the Body</em>. Fausto-Sterling sees binary sex (identifying as distinctly either male or female) as “socially engineered for the erasure of other sexes”. Gqola also complicates binary sex as only a fact of anatomy and instead argues that females are, in hetero-patriarchal societies, socially constructed for political and cultural ideologies. This is intimately linked to “project patriarchy”. </p>
<h2>Project patriarchy</h2>
<p>Gqola draws from, among others, television series, novels, paintings and academic texts to offer us a language to recognise patriarchy and its logics so that we can strategise against it. </p>
<p>Through her sophisticated argumentation, we see ‘female’ as constructed by a male-dominant society for no reason other than the continuation of gendered violence: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Safe to be subjected to the female fear factory. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>She argues that the seemingly natural decision to box people into one of two opposite sexes – despite, for example, <a href="https://www.unfe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UNFE-Intersex.pdf">intersex</a> realities – is a historical, political and cultural consequence. Project patriarchy – with men historically being knowledge-makers, decision-makers, etc – uses biology to exaggerate the differences between the sexes. This catapults males, making females the lesser that need control and direction. </p>
<p>Gqola, however, takes it a step further. She broadens the scope of this socially made female to include all sexual minorities whose bodies are also safe to violate.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443490/original/file-20220131-124991-18e5rr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with the words 'Female Fear Factory Pumla Dineo Gqola' and an illustration of a woman with long hair wearing a short skirt that is formed by many squiggles, unravelling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443490/original/file-20220131-124991-18e5rr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443490/original/file-20220131-124991-18e5rr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443490/original/file-20220131-124991-18e5rr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443490/original/file-20220131-124991-18e5rr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443490/original/file-20220131-124991-18e5rr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443490/original/file-20220131-124991-18e5rr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443490/original/file-20220131-124991-18e5rr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melinda Ferguson Books/NB Publishers</span></span>
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<p>Gqola describes the female fear factory as “a theatrical and public performance of patriarchal policing of and violence towards” socially made females who are perpetually reminded to keep themselves in check. In this public performance, there is astute knowledge of who can be violated and who not. Which is why <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/sa-dancer-and-choreographer-kirvan-fortuin-stabbed-to-death-allegedly-by-14-year-old-girl-20200613">Kirvan Fortuin</a>, a 28-year-old gay choreographer, was stabbed to death by a 14-year-old girl. </p>
<p>The female fear factory is as public as it is private. Gqola shows that “like a real factory, it takes up public physical space and requires many different components”. However, unlike a physical factory, it is boundless. Fear is produced everywhere. </p>
<h2>The impossibility of freedom</h2>
<p>The book illuminates the impossibility of unfettered freedom once rendered female, and the ever-lurking possibility of violence. This possibility of violence is taught through scripts which we are made to believe that if we follow we will be safe. </p>
<p>In <em><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=ZmaWQgAACAAJ&dq=movement+in+black+pat+parker&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">Movement in Black</a></em>, the African-American poet <a href="https://poets.org/poet/pat-parker">Pat Parker</a> writes about these limitations of absolute freedom: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere, and not have to say to one of them, ‘No, you stay home tonight, you won’t be welcome, because I’m going to an all-white party where I can be gay, but not Black … The day all the different parts of me can come along, we would have what I would call a revolution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The limitations begin with seemingly well-intentioned routine warnings such as a grandmother correcting sitting postures and dress code. They become manifest in more insidious ways similar to questions about <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-10-the-khanga-womanhood-and-how-zumas-2006-rape-trial-changed-its-meaning/">Kwezi’s</a> kanga during that infamous rape trial. Kwezi – Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo – accused former South African President Jacob Zuma of rape. He testified that the sex was consensual because Kwezi was wearing a kanga (a wraparound cloth) which he interpreted as an invitation. </p>
<p>Gqola notes that this manufactured fear is inscribed through scripts “repeatedly handed down as part of the false promise of safety”. Be lesbian but not too butch else ’<a href="https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/southafrica1211.pdf">we’ll show you you’re a woman</a>’. Be gay but not too flamboyant. This language of ‘but’ and ‘unless’ negates absolute freedoms and authentic self-expressions. </p>
<p>Gqola’s analysis, grounded in a feminist lens, painstakingly shows that the promise of safety in these scripts is a lie. Like the fiction of ‘stranger danger’ in rape discourse is supported by scripts such as ‘don’t go to dodgy places’. But during only the first week of South Africa’s initial 21-day COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 the police received a staggering <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/saps-received-87-000-gender-based-violence-calls-during-first-week-of-lockdown-cele-46024648">87 000</a> gender-based violence calls. </p>
<p>While gendered violence may manifest as a moment, she wants us to see it as a sophisticated ecosystem kept alive by socially manufactured fear. Approaching these matters as individual encounters serves to obscure sexual violence as a public issue. </p>
<p>Gqola tells us that if we wish to absolve females from the burdensome responsibility of being held responsible for their safety, we need to unlearn our fluency in the female fear factory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thoko Sipungu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Female Fear Factory by Pumla Dineo Gqola sees gender violence as a sophisticated ecosystem kept alive by socially manufactured fear.
Thoko Sipungu, Lecturer in Sociology, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/174063
2022-01-09T08:31:04Z
2022-01-09T08:31:04Z
Book review: Zakes Mda’s subversive take on Lesotho’s traditions
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439684/original/file-20220106-13-y7in1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of a Lesotho shepherd, Ntoaesele Mashongoane.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">JOHN WESSELS/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2019 at the Abantu Book Festival in Soweto, South African writer and artist Zakes Mda was celebrating the publication of his final novel, <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/zulus-new-york/9781415210154">The Zulus of New York</a></em>, when he made a <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2019-12-09-mdas-new-novel-confession-caps-abantu-book-festival/">surprise announcement</a>. He had changed his mind and was writing another novel. He explained that “sometimes when you are a writer a story finds you and attacks you. It forces you to narrate it.” </p>
<p>The story is set in Lesotho, a landlocked and mountainous country neighbouring South Africa. It covers the growth of a kheleke – a wandering minstrel – and his career and the heights it is possible to reach, before tragedy engulfs and silences his accordion.</p>
<p>In <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/wayfarers-hymns/9781415210826">Wayfarers’ Hymns</a></em>, the author draws on his early life in Lesotho, where he joined his father in exile, and where he later taught at the national university. This novel re-connects the author to the land and culture of <a href="https://www.wantedonline.co.za/art-design/2017-02-01-how-the-basotho-blanket-became-the-brand-identity-of-a-nation/">colourful blankets</a>, <a href="https://pan-african-music.com/en/introducing-lesothos-accordion-music/">Famo musicians</a> and feuding factions, or “musical gangsters” as academic Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang calls them in a recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/zakes-mda-on-his-latest-novel-set-in-lesothos-musical-gang-wars-170839">interview</a> with Mda.</p>
<h2>Subverting traditions</h2>
<p>The central character is a nameless boy-child kheleke – “the eloquent one” – who sings the praises of his sister Moliehi. Despite the abundance of compliments sung by her brother, she describes him as a lazy <em>leloabe</em> (vagabond) and <em>molelere</em> (wanderer), with the connotations of a wastrel. But as the kheleke narrates the novel, it is his viewpoint that wins over. He explains in the first line that “she was the one I sang my hymns to” and he makes her name and beauty famous.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/zakes-mda-on-his-latest-novel-set-in-lesothos-musical-gang-wars-170839">Zakes Mda on his latest novel, set in Lesotho's musical gang wars</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The tradition is explained thus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A great hymn begins with the kheleke introducing himself to the world, repeating his name and his father’s, against his father’s if his father was a reprobate as men tend to be, and praising the virtues of his clan, his village and his chief.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And throughout Mda plays with this convention as the kheleke himself remains nameless, it is his “cult” (band) “of the arum-lily”, Mohalalitoe, that becomes famous. And although the kheleke sings about his father, it is a father who is missing, having died in a deep goldmine. He could not be buried among his kin in ancestral land and his spirit remains unappeased. In many ways it is the search for his father’s body that propels the action in the novel.</p>
<p>This apparently patriarchal form of music also praises the land, “even when the hymn is a lamentation. Even when the land is barren.” Before moving on to the sister: “A kheleke dwells on his sister and her unsurpassed qualities of womanhood.” Again the irony here is that the kheleke must sing about a “formidable woman in his life”, if he doesn’t have a sister, then his <em>rakhali</em> (paternal aunt) is the best he can do. </p>
<p>Most importantly, “No self-respecting kheleke sings the praises of his wife in public, lest he invites vultures to his homestead.” And yet the song the kheleke becomes famous for <em>U Ka Se Nqete</em> celebrates female polyamory, or at least the ability of women to take different sexual partners while their husbands are working in the gold mines of Johannesburg.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A bald man in a suit jacket stands in a garden smiling at the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zakes Mda.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">LEONARDO CENDAMO/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This song that celebrates cuckoldry becomes an unexpected hit. The duet that the kheleke creates with his girlfriend, the dancer Maleshoane, is what cements the success of the song. It’s upbeat and funny, and though the men claim to dislike it, they all sing along.</p>
<h2>Musical gangsters</h2>
<p>In the ensuing battle between rival bands, the kheleke’s Cult of the Arum Lily directly challenge The Cult of the Train, an antagonism that leads to his downfall. Unknown to him, the cults also operate illegal mining operations and, as his father’s age-mate Tau ea Khale explains, things have changed greatly since the days when “warriors were warriors and musicians were musicians”.</p>
<p>The gangs arose in 1999, escalating in 2007, when Tau ea Khale describes being in prison and hearing of “inmates sentenced to years because they killed others over music … Mosotho killing another Mosotho for a song … boys who used to look after cattle together.” It is this snapshot of Lesotho gang warfare that Mda expertly captures in this novel, though it also celebrates music, composition and creativity itself.</p>
<h2>Meditation on masculinity and femininity</h2>
<p>Mda develops a significant meditation on masculinity as <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em> continues the pattern of Siphiwo Mahala’s <em><a href="https://www.panmacmillan.co.za/authors/siphiwo-mahala/when-a-man-cries/9781770104075">When A Man Cries</a></em>, Thando Mgqolozana’s <em><a href="https://cassavarepublic.biz/product/a-man-who-is-not-a-man-2/">A Man Who is Not a Man</a></em>, and Masande Ntshanga’s <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/reactive/9781415207192">The Reactive</a></em>, all of which consider <em>ulwaluko</em> (traditional circumcision ritual) and what it means to be a man in southern Africa (during the HIV/AIDS pandemic).</p>
<p>A continued refrain amongst the men of his band is that the kheleke is disloyal because he is not circumcised and must “graduate from an initiation school” to be a man. He responds: “All I wanted was to be a kheleke of note, playing beautiful music, appearing on television … Radio.” But he is pushed by an attack on his sister to write a song which directly challenges The Cult of the Train and therein lies his downfall.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-sindiwe-magonas-devastating-uplifting-story-of-south-african-women-166186">Book review: Sindiwe Magona's devastating, uplifting story of South African women</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Mda develops different notions of freedom – in performance, singing, music and mourning – by bringing back the much-loved character of Toloki from his celebrated 1995 novel <em><a href="https://www.oxford.co.za/book/9780195714982-ways-of-dying#.Ydb5sS8RpQI">Ways of Dying</a></em>. Toloki seeks more ways of mourning, away from the township and the HIV/AIDS bereavements of South Africa, with the deaths of the Famo musicians in Lesotho. Although he is a background figure in <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em>, Toloki provides ample comic respite from the posturing and machismo of the gang warfare. He also challenges us to rethink categories, bringing his performance of ‘grief’ to Lesotho and then juxtaposing it with his own genuine grief at losing the love of his life.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439664/original/file-20220106-15-cg5jd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with the words 'Wayfarers' Hymns Zakes Mda' and an illustration, in greens and browns, of a man in a blanket standing on a rock looking out over hills, the moon full, an accordion and flowers filling up the page." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439664/original/file-20220106-15-cg5jd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439664/original/file-20220106-15-cg5jd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439664/original/file-20220106-15-cg5jd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439664/original/file-20220106-15-cg5jd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439664/original/file-20220106-15-cg5jd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439664/original/file-20220106-15-cg5jd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439664/original/file-20220106-15-cg5jd6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Umuzi</span></span>
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<p>Mda has always written strong female characters, but in <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em> he also classically undercuts notions of femininity by making Moliehi a woman who loves another woman, providing unexpected female khelekes and featuring female gangsters called MaRussia like Mme Mpuse. She offers her sage advice to the boy-child kheleke when he sings with her. She tells him, “One day you will be a sought-after kheleke. But never be led by your penis. That’s what has destroyed great men. Be led by the music.” The <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em> are songs worth listening to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lizzy Attree works for Blake Friedmann Literary Agency, where Isobel Dixon represents Zakes Mda.</span></em></p>
Set in the music wars of Lesotho, the new novel by the South African author tells of a wandering minstrel whose hit song leads to his downfall.
Lizzy Attree, Adjunct Professor, Richmond American International University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/173160
2021-12-14T14:32:39Z
2021-12-14T14:32:39Z
Holiday reading: Five picks from a great year for African writing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435603/original/file-20211203-23-1tgw8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist Wole Soyinka in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s been a great year for African writing, with Tanzania’s Abdulrazak Gurnah <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/07/abdulrazak-gurnah-wins-the-2021-nobel-prize-in-literature">winning</a> the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature. South Africa’s Damon Galgut <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59149960">lifted</a> the Man Booker Prize for his novel, The Promise, and exciting prose continued to sprout. Peter Kimani, leading Kenyan author, journalist and academic, lists his top 5 picks.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth</h2>
<p><strong><em>Wole Soyinka</em></strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435620/original/file-20211203-27-1h5mn01.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover with words Wole Soyinka Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth against a green background; in purple are illustrations of a human head, legs and arms, severed from one another" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435620/original/file-20211203-27-1h5mn01.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435620/original/file-20211203-27-1h5mn01.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435620/original/file-20211203-27-1h5mn01.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435620/original/file-20211203-27-1h5mn01.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435620/original/file-20211203-27-1h5mn01.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435620/original/file-20211203-27-1h5mn01.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435620/original/file-20211203-27-1h5mn01.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Wole Soyinka, the great Nigerian poet, playwright, activist and intellectual, released his first novel in nearly 50 years. He chuckled at CNN’s precise figure of 48 years. The the title of his <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675746/chronicles-from-the-land-of-the-happiest-people-on-earth-by-wole-soyinka/">latest novel</a> is inspired by a 2011 Gallup poll that listed Nigerians at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/2011/jan/04/nigerians-top-optimism-poll">top of its annual happiness index</a>, setting Soyinka off in search of utopia in his land of birth.</p>
<p>What he finds is a dystopian world inhabited by charlatans masquerading as Christians; young, skilled professionals lured home to perform nefarious acts; others reinventing themselves to survive the vicissitudes of politics. A sweeping satire of a land that Soyinka began to write about over 60 years ago, this is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/making-sense-of-wole-soyinkas-difficult-and-brilliant-new-novel-172634">important addition</a> to his impressive oeuvre.</p>
<h2>Afterlives</h2>
<p><strong><em>Abdulrazak Gurnah</em></strong></p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435624/original/file-20211203-13-zwxtyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A yellow and blue book cover with the words 'After Lives Abdulrazak Gurnah' and an illustration of a young black boy staring ahead, deadpan" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435624/original/file-20211203-13-zwxtyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435624/original/file-20211203-13-zwxtyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435624/original/file-20211203-13-zwxtyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435624/original/file-20211203-13-zwxtyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435624/original/file-20211203-13-zwxtyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435624/original/file-20211203-13-zwxtyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435624/original/file-20211203-13-zwxtyn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bloomsbury Publishing</span></span>
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<p>In this multigenerational <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52744975-afterlives">historical fiction </a>of Tanganyika in the shadow of German occupation at the turn of the 20th century, the new Nobel <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-winner-abdulrazak-gurnah-an-introduction-to-the-man-and-his-writing-169491">laureate</a> for literature presents the stories of individuals caught on both sides of the racial divide.</p>
<p>There are the locals lured into the service of the German empire; yet others are invested in pursuit of love and their optimism that it can suture broken lives. By offering intimate portraits of his characters, foregrounded by large, historical epochs, Gurnah asserts the place of indigenous narratives in a whitewashed, limiting view of European colonisation of Africa.</p>
<h2>The House of Rust</h2>
<p><strong><em>Khadija Abdalla Bajaber</em></strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435628/original/file-20211203-23-1sd2qxv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover with the words 'The House of Rust and wave-like illustrations across illustrations of a shark, a man inn a pointy hat and a centipede." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435628/original/file-20211203-23-1sd2qxv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435628/original/file-20211203-23-1sd2qxv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435628/original/file-20211203-23-1sd2qxv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435628/original/file-20211203-23-1sd2qxv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435628/original/file-20211203-23-1sd2qxv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435628/original/file-20211203-23-1sd2qxv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435628/original/file-20211203-23-1sd2qxv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Graywolf Press</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In an enchanting <a href="https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/house-rust">new story</a> from a new voice, Bajaber turns a familiar narrative trope into an invigorating journey of discovery. The main protagonist sets out to look for her fisherman father, who is lost at sea. Her voyage is on a unique contraption made of a skeleton, which morphs into other forms as she journeys deep into the unknown.</p>
<p>Bajaber is the winner of the inaugural Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, which came with a generous $12,000 advance. It’s easy to appreciate why the panel, led by the Nigerian author A. Igoni Barrett, settled on The House of Rust.</p>
<h2>Biubwa Amour Zahor: Mwanamke Mwanamapinduzi</h2>
<p><strong><em>Zuhura Yunus</em></strong></p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435630/original/file-20211203-25-1rxsxyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An image of a woman in black and white against a dark backdrop; she looks straight into camera with a wry expression." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435630/original/file-20211203-25-1rxsxyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435630/original/file-20211203-25-1rxsxyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435630/original/file-20211203-25-1rxsxyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435630/original/file-20211203-25-1rxsxyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435630/original/file-20211203-25-1rxsxyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435630/original/file-20211203-25-1rxsxyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435630/original/file-20211203-25-1rxsxyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">E&D Vision Publishing</span></span>
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<p>Tanzania might be in the news for producing East Africa’s first Nobel laureate for Literature, but there are other compelling reasons that merit attention, like the pathbreaking <a href="https://www.amazon.de/Biubwa-Amour-Zahor-Mwanamke-Mwanamapinduzi/dp/9987735843">biography</a> by BBC journalist Zuhura Yunus.</p>
<p><em>Biubwa Amour Zahor: Mwanamke Mwanamapinduzi</em> (Biubwa Amour Zahor: The Revolutionary Woman), written in Kiswahili, retrieves from the Tanzanian archives a colourful character whose exploits in the 1960s revolution have largely gone unnoticed. This act of recovery, hopefully, will draw attention to other forgotten heroines and introduce them to a younger generation of readers.</p>
<h2>Pioneers, Rebels and a Few Villains: 150 years of Journalism in Eastern Africa</h2>
<p><strong><em>Charles Onyango-Obbo</em></strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435631/original/file-20211203-21-19xna7c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover in blue with a large panel featuring dozens of photographs of people - the contributors" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435631/original/file-20211203-21-19xna7c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435631/original/file-20211203-21-19xna7c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435631/original/file-20211203-21-19xna7c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435631/original/file-20211203-21-19xna7c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435631/original/file-20211203-21-19xna7c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435631/original/file-20211203-21-19xna7c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435631/original/file-20211203-21-19xna7c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">KAS Media</span></span>
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<p>The adage that “journalism is the first draft of history” affirms the important work done by journalists in shaping what people know of the past. Yet seldom do we read the stories of those chroniclers of history. That’s exactly what Charles Onyango-Obbo, the doyen of East African journalism, Ugandan by birth and pan-African by work – his footprints are to be found everywhere, from Nairobi to Johannesburg -— seeks to redress.</p>
<p>The result: a compelling <a href="https://www.kas.de/en/web/medien-afrika/veranstaltungsberichte/detail/-/content/book-launch-pioneers-rebels-and-a-few-villains-150-years-of-journalism-in-eastern-africa">read</a> that should enrich our understanding of journalism pioneers in the region. Written in sprightly diction, the book is as entertaining as it is informative.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Kimani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Tanzania might be in the news for producing East Africa’s first Nobel laureate for literature, but there are other compelling authors that also merit attention.
Peter Kimani, Professor of Practice, Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/170839
2021-11-15T14:06:13Z
2021-11-15T14:06:13Z
Zakes Mda on his latest novel, set in Lesotho’s musical gang wars
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430839/original/file-20211108-21-1gx3sb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A masked herdsman in Lesotho.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edwin Remsberg/The Image Bank via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Zakes Mda is one of South Africa’s best-loved novelists – though he is also a celebrated playwright, children’s book author and an increasingly visible painter. His latest novel, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/wayfarers-hymns/9781415210826">Wayfarers’ Hymns</a>, is at once full of drama and mirth, set in Lesotho and playing out in the bloody world of famo musicians. At a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze1piSqrasA">launch of the book</a> at the University of Pretoria, Dr Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang interviewed Mda about it. This is an edited transcription of that interview.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang</strong> I was intrigued that yes, you talk about the culture of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sotho-south-sotho-or-basotho">Basotho</a> and the <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/musical-instruments-lesotho">instruments</a> of Basotho, but not in the way that you’ve done before, as a kind of healing salve to our colonial oppression and apartheid and so on. This is a different ballgame. Tell us a little bit about what inspired you. And about the process of writing this <a href="https://www.newframe.com/sharp-read-the-hymns-of-a-kheleke/">book about musical gangsters</a>, really.</p>
<p><strong>Zakes Mda</strong> This book is centred around <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/famo-music-lesotho">famo music</a>. Which is a genre of music in Lesotho. Very popular there, predominantly the instrument there is the accordion, it used to be the concertina before. So Basothos have taken the concertina and the accordion and turned them into Sesotho traditional instruments. And it’s a kind of music that’s full of poetry. And the poetry is known as hymns, <em>difela</em>, but these are secular hymns, they are not religious hymns. And so that is why the title is <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430988/original/file-20211109-19-ok7pso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with the title Wayfarers' Hymns and an illustration in blues and browns of a man in a blanket looking out over snow capped mountains beneath a full moon and an accordion , sheep and wild lilies also featured." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430988/original/file-20211109-19-ok7pso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430988/original/file-20211109-19-ok7pso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430988/original/file-20211109-19-ok7pso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430988/original/file-20211109-19-ok7pso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430988/original/file-20211109-19-ok7pso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430988/original/file-20211109-19-ok7pso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430988/original/file-20211109-19-ok7pso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House</span></span>
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<p>Wayfarers are travellers. The title comes from the Sesotho name of the genre, it’s <em>difela tsa batsamai</em>, which means the hymns of those who traverse the land … Now, I grew up knowing this music because I grew up in Lesotho. But it’s only recently that I learned new things about it, which are <a href="https://chimurengachronic.co.za/accordion-cowboys/">recent developments</a>, gang wars, the wars, amongst the <a href="https://www.thereporter.co.ls/2021/08/15/famo-gang-violence-leads-to-internal-displacement/">gangs</a> that are led by musicians themselves. </p>
<p>So these musicians have evolved into gang leaders. And every weekend in <a href="https://www.lesotho-info.co.za/country/province/29/mafeteng">Mafeteng</a>, which is a district in Lesotho, there are their funerals of musicians who have died in these wars, of their followers, of the chorus boys and so on. Fighting for territory, fighting for followers, but also fighting for <a href="https://www.mineralscouncil.org.za/work/illegal-mining">illegal mining</a>. </p>
<p>The illegal mining that happens here in Gauteng, in Welkom and so on, is actually led by the musicians, the leaders of these gangs. So I was fascinated to hear of this because I’ve never read about it, even in the newspapers. Sometimes you will hear that four <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2021/04/30/the-plight-of-south-africa-s-zama-zama-illegal-miners//"><em>zama zamas</em></a>, by which they mean the illegal miners, were found dead on the roadside or something like that. And they never dig deeper, who were they, why were they there? And then right into the fact that the mining operations, the illegal mining operations are actually run by syndicates of Basotho musicians. They are fighting over these territories as well.</p>
<p>And indeed, when you listen to the music, I mean, it’s beautiful, it’s healing, with wonderful poetry, but it engenders a lot of death. You know, which is a contradiction in terms. I think that’s what fascinated me to write a novel set in this community of famo music, examining the culture that gave birth to it, the culture of the old <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/200611080910.html">MaRussia gangs</a>, the Russian gangs of the 50s. And then up to the contemporary musicians, because you see, you trace the ancestry of the current famo musicians to those early MaRussia gangs.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/virtual-exhibition-breathes-life-into-lesothos-musical-tradition-and-clay-art-167315">Virtual exhibition breathes life into Lesotho's musical tradition and clay art</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p><strong>Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang:</strong> Scholars of African literature will know about the history of the MaRussia. And I grew up in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto-johannesburg">Soweto</a>, in Pimville. So MaRussia were really big in Pimville. We all knew even as children, that, you know, when you see a Mosotho with a blanket … It might be an <a href="https://theconversation.com/worlds-deadliest-inventor-mikhail-kalashnikov-and-his-ak-47-126253">AK47</a> under the blanket.</p>
<p><strong>Zakes Mda:</strong> We know <em>difela</em>, the wayfarers hymns, as melodic, it’s so deceptively beautiful and calm, you know, but there is this kind of underbelly. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ze1piSqrasA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Pretoria launch of Wayfarers’ Hymns.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang:</strong> And very elegantly done. The way you balance dramatic and sometimes very difficult issues, to do with race, to do with land, to do with economic freedom, but it’s tempered with humour. But specifically in this book, the issue of the toxic masculinities, the whole persona of the mine worker, you know, <em>o sebetsa dimaineng</em> don’t be a layabout, go and be a man and work in the mines, and the cost of that to the individuals and to the community. Talk to us about that, because in the past, you’ve spoken about strong women, but now you seem to be shining a light more on the many layers of masculinities.</p>
<p><strong>Zakes Mda:</strong> Yes. But even then, I still talk about strong women. But even there, it is not something that is preplanned, that this woman has to be strong, this man has to be toxic, and so on. The story takes me there. And the story is informed by the culture of the setting. The strong women don’t come from my imagination … “Oh, I wish there were strong women in the world, okay, let me create them in my fiction.” It is because in the environment that I’m writing about, they are there. In many instances, they’re the people who drive life in those environments. And therefore, they drive my story. The toxic environment of the men, in the setting of the wayfarers, this is one novel which is much more informed by the reality, than any other of my novels. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431780/original/file-20211113-15-slarr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a man in a denim shirt with a colourful scarf and a hat smiles and gestures with his hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431780/original/file-20211113-15-slarr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431780/original/file-20211113-15-slarr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431780/original/file-20211113-15-slarr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431780/original/file-20211113-15-slarr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431780/original/file-20211113-15-slarr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431780/original/file-20211113-15-slarr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431780/original/file-20211113-15-slarr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zakes Mda.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joanne Olivier/Courtesy Penguin Random House</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The story itself is told a lot through the lyrics of their songs, and of their poetry, and those lyrics are full of that toxic masculinity that you are talking about. Because they are lyrics of war, and they challenge one another. And they do in Sesotho what is known as <em>ho kobisa</em> which means, you know, talking obliquely about each other in an insulting way, even without directly mentioning the names. But when you hear the song, you know that song is about me. And I’m going back to kill those people.</p>
<p><strong>Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang:</strong> I’ve got a question from one of the people watching: what is the one thing Prof Mda would like to see his books do in African communities? What kind of impact does he hope to achieve?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-award-winning-lesotho-film-also-has-social-justice-at-heart-154204">This award-winning Lesotho film also has social justice at heart</a>
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<p><strong>Zakes Mda:</strong> Well, like every writer in the world, you hope that your books will be read, that’s the main reason you write them. And first and foremost, you want them to entertain, because that’s what the intention is. That’s why it is a novel and not a pamphlet of ideas. It’s a novel because storytelling in itself is entertaining and therefore highly digestible and you transmit knowledge through a medium that gives you joy, just the joy of the stories itself … </p>
<p>But of course, there is no writer in the world who will be loved by everybody. There will be those who will love your work. There will be others who will say it’s so-so, it’s mediocre, but okay. And there are others who say, this is awful. That’s what we live with as artists in all the arts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Lesotho’s famo music is known for the use of accordions - and gang violence. In Wayfarers’ Hymns, Zakes Mda explores this tradition.
Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang, Artist in Residency, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/171416
2021-11-09T14:58:01Z
2021-11-09T14:58:01Z
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr: Senegalese novelist’s win is a landmark for African literature
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430806/original/file-20211108-27-18iwrpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mohamed Mbougar Sarr on a TV show after winning the Prix Goncourt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Eric Fougere/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://www.academiegoncourt.com/home">Prix Goncourt</a> – the oldest and most prestigious literary prize in France – has been <a href="https://www.academiegoncourt.com/home">awarded</a> to 31-year-old Mohamed Mbougar Sarr from Senegal. He’s the youngest winner since 1976 and the <a href="https://qz.com/africa/2084805/mohamed-sarr-is-the-first-black-african-to-win-the-goncourt-prize/">first</a> from sub-Saharan Africa. Critics have been raving about The Most Secret Memory of Men, his novel about a young Senegalese writer living in Paris. The jury made a unanimous decision to award Mbougar Sarr the prize after just one round of voting, calling his work “a hymn to literature”. The prize will bring him literary fame and huge book sales, says Caroline D. Laurent, a specialist in Francophone African literature in France. We asked her more.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Who is Mohamed Mbougar Sarr?</strong></p>
<p>Author of the 2021 Prix Goncourt-winning novel <em>The Most Secret Memory of Men</em> (<a href="http://www.philippe-rey.fr/livre-11La_plus_secr%C3%A8te_m%C3%A9moire_des_hommes-504-1-1-0-1.html"><em>La Plus Secrète Mémoire des Hommes</em></a>) Mbougar Sarr is a young Senegalese author who grew up outside Dakar and moved to Paris to continue his studies. At just 31, he has already published three other novels, his first in 2015: <em>Encircled Earth</em> (<a href="https://www.presenceafricaine.com/romans-litterature-africaine-caraibes/832-terre-ceinte-9782708709119.html"><em>Terre Ceinte</em></a>), <em>Silence of the Choir</em> (<a href="https://www.presenceafricaine.com/romans-litterature-africaine-caraibes/990-silence-du-choeur-9782708709041.html"><em>Silence du Chœur</em></a>) and <em>Pure Men</em> (<a href="http://www.philippe-rey.fr/livre-De_purs_hommes-381-1-1-0-1.html"><em>De Purs Hommes</em></a>). </p>
<p>Starting his studies in Senegal, he began his doctorate at the prestigious <a href="https://www.ehess.fr/en/en/ehess-glance">School for Advanced Studies</a> in the Social Sciences in Paris, working on poet and Senegal’s first president, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-Senghor">Léopold Sédar Senghor</a>. Writing got in the way and prevented him from ever finishing and graduating. He now lives in Beauvais, a city north of Paris.</p>
<p><strong>What is the novel about?</strong></p>
<p><em>The Most Secret Memory of Men</em> plays with reality and fiction. It tells the story of a young Senegalese author, Diégane Latyr Faye, who lives in Paris. In high school in Senegal he had come across mentions of a mysterious novel published in 1938 by a Senegalese author called T.C. Elimane, <em>The Labyrinth of the Inhuman</em>. Unable to find a copy, he had put his quest aside, considering it to be one of the many lost books of literature. But, by chance a few years later, he meets a Senegalese writer, Siga D, who gives him a copy of the book. The reading (and numerous re-readings) of what he considers to be a masterpiece revives his desire to find out what happened to the mysterious T.C. Elimane.</p>
<p><strong>Why does the book matter?</strong></p>
<p><em>The Most Secret Memory of Men</em> is a novel about writing and literature. It is full of literary references – like to celebrated Chilean novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roberto-Bolano">Roberto Bolaño</a> and prolific Polish author <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Witold-Gombrowicz">Witold Gombrowicz</a>. But it’s the obscure references that are probably the most interesting: the fictional T.C. Elimane’s book and his fate echoes that of real-life Malian author <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yambo-Ouologuem">Yambo Ouologuem</a> – who Mbougar Sarr’s own novel is dedicated to. </p>
<p>Winner of the 1968 Prix Renaudot for <em>Bound to Violence</em> (<em>Le Devoir de Violence</em>), Ouologuem sparked controversy after a 1972 article in the Times Literary Supplement claimed he had plagiarised several authors, including Graham Greene and André Schwarz-Bart. He returned to Mali and never published again. Just as the narrator of Mbougar Sarr’s novel, Diégane Latyr Faye, is his alter ego, T.C. Elimane is Ouologuem’s.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/damon-galguts-booker-winning-novel-probes-white-south-africa-and-the-land-issue-171243">Damon Galgut's Booker-winning novel probes white South Africa and the land issue</a>
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<p>As much as it is about writing, <em>The Most Secret Memory of Men</em> is also about reading. The work is polyphonic (with many narrators besides Faye), it is transcultural (set in Europe, Africa and South America) and it mixes different literary genres (letters, articles, conversations), encouraging many different types of readings. Some may focus on the historical events depicted – the novel alludes to colonialism, the World Wars, Nazism and the Holocaust, the dictatorship in Argentina and recent Senegalese demonstrations against state corruption. Others may focus on the mysterious elements that recall some features of magical realism. Or on the literary references, both African and global, that punctuate the text. Or all of the above. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431073/original/file-20211109-19-1bteed8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with a brown and black illustration of an African man with turquoise written words in old-fashioned italics behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431073/original/file-20211109-19-1bteed8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431073/original/file-20211109-19-1bteed8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431073/original/file-20211109-19-1bteed8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431073/original/file-20211109-19-1bteed8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431073/original/file-20211109-19-1bteed8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431073/original/file-20211109-19-1bteed8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431073/original/file-20211109-19-1bteed8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philippe Rey</span></span>
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<p>It needs to be read for what it is – a great novel – and not because of the origin or the skin colour of its author. This is exactly why T.C. Elimane disappeared: hurt by some reviews, he felt misunderstood because his work was read through the lens of the work of others, notably that of French poet <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Rimbaud">Arthur Rimbaud</a> (he was called a “Rimbaud nègre” or black Rimbaud). </p>
<p><strong>Why does this Prix Goncourt win matter?</strong></p>
<p>For these reasons, winning the Prix Goncourt should be viewed as African literature finally being recognised for its literary qualities. One should focus on this (late) recognition and perhaps question why, faced with the many great novels by African writers, Mbougar Sarr’s win is so rare. <em>The Most Secret Memory of Men</em> is quite subversively brilliant in denouncing, through literature, the literary capture of African writers by former colonial powers.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-winner-abdulrazak-gurnah-an-introduction-to-the-man-and-his-writing-169491">Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah: an introduction to the man and his writing</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Jointly published by two small publishing houses, <a href="http://www.philippe-rey.fr/">Philippe Rey </a> in France and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Editions-Jimsaan-257846464392099/">Jimsaan</a> in Senegal, the novel is truly transnational. The recognition of these publishing houses on two continents will, hopefully, enhance and help rebalance African countries’ role in publishing and distributing the works of their authors. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is not only denouncing colonial and neocolonial practices, but also encouraging new ways of publishing and reaching readers. </p>
<p><em>The Most Secret Memory of Men</em> is a powerful text not only because of its writing, its themes, and what it says about the place of African literature in the world, but also because of how it opens up future possibilities for Francophone authors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline D. Laurent does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
He is the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to lift the Prix Goncourt, one of the book world’s most important prizes. And his win matters.
Caroline D. Laurent, Assistant Professor, American University of Paris (AUP)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164324
2021-07-28T15:40:42Z
2021-07-28T15:40:42Z
The story of an African children’s book that explains the science of skin colour
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411246/original/file-20210714-27-ig4bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://newafricabooks.com/products/skin-we-are-in-sindiwe-magona-nina-g-jablonski?variant=32109559742500">Skin We Are In</a> is a landmark South African book for children (and grown-ups) on the subject of skin colour. Published in 2018, it was co-authored by an artist and a scientist, both South African luminaries – the author <a href="https://theconversation.com/learning-from-the-story-of-pioneering-south-african-writer-sindiwe-magona-155670">Sindiwe Magona</a> and the anthropologist and palaeobiologist <a href="https://anth.la.psu.edu/people/ngj2">Nina Jablonski</a>. Here they talk about how – and why – the book came about.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Nina Jablonski:</strong> As someone who studies the human biological past, I had been writing about skin colour and race for academic journals and for adult readers for years. The idea of doing a children’s book was planted back in 2010 when a friend impressed on me the importance of writing up my <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520275898/skin">research</a> on <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520283862/living-color">skin colour and race</a> as an illustrated book for young readers. Like many South Africans, he realised that skin colour had been transformed through the country’s colonial history from a simple bodily trait – something that covers our bodies – to something that determines human worth and destiny. </p>
<p>I had found, in the course of my work, that people knew its social significance, but they didn’t understand it. Many were convinced that there was a genetic connection between skin colour and other physical and intellectual traits, including intelligence. This information – about how skin colour had evolved and how it didn’t determine any other human traits – really needed to be conveyed to the people who counted most: young people. </p>
<p>But I had no experience in writing for kids and no idea where the story would come from. I had the big challenge of finding a storyteller. I turned to the writer <a href="https://www.njabulondebele.co.za">Njabulo Ndebele</a> for advice. He suggested you, Sindiwe, saying “she has the spirit and spine needed”.</p>
<p><strong>Sindiwe Magona:</strong> The project scared me for I had never worked with a scientist. But the subject matter is one of the most important aspects of my life as it has been the bane of black life in this country and, indeed, the world. This was a book that could enable parents to broach the subject of skin colour with their children. All parents need help to deal with race and racism; many did not get good grounding as children. Skin colour is often a difficult subject and dealing with it through storytelling is a great aid.</p>
<p><strong>Nina Jablonski:</strong> One of the things that most impressed me, once we were talking, was your ability to express the everyday wear-and-tear of skin colour and colour-based racism.</p>
<p><strong>Sindiwe Magona:</strong> Racism in South Africa was a way of life as it was sanctioned. Social stratification, according to skin, was reinforced by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid laws</a> that in turn embedded and entrenched poverty and lack of mobility for the oppressed. The darker the skin colour, the less legal protection accorded, to the extent of denial of citizenship. Just as skin colour is inescapable, so was poverty inescapable. This created and reinforced a deep-seated sense of inferiority in most black people while most white people suffered the reverse and felt superior.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411224/original/file-20210714-19-12xcgux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with the words 'Skin we are in' on an illustration of five young people, each a different skin tone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411224/original/file-20210714-19-12xcgux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411224/original/file-20210714-19-12xcgux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411224/original/file-20210714-19-12xcgux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411224/original/file-20210714-19-12xcgux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411224/original/file-20210714-19-12xcgux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411224/original/file-20210714-19-12xcgux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411224/original/file-20210714-19-12xcgux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of the book written by two South African luminaries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New Africa Books</span></span>
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</figure>
<p><strong>Nina Jablonski:</strong> You found the hook to start writing the book quite by chance…</p>
<p><strong>Sindiwe Magona:</strong> Coming back from our first meeting, Nina, I walked through the gate and reached behind the post for mail. Right there, on the small bush whose leaves I often have to brush aside to look into the mailbox, sat a chameleon. I watched as it slowly made its way from the stalk onto a leaf … changing colour as it did. At once, I morphed into a child, a boy, and I envied the chameleon’s ability. If only I could do that. Strange thing is – never before and never since have I spied another in my garden.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/learning-from-the-story-of-pioneering-south-african-writer-sindiwe-magona-155670">Learning from the story of pioneering South African writer Sindiwe Magona</a>
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<p><strong>Nina Jablonski:</strong> When you told me about Njabulo, who longed to change his colour, I knew we had a great story. From there, we worked step by step, fitting the science alongside the developing text. We began working with Lynn Fellman, the illustrator, to create the look of the characters and their setting… </p>
<p><strong>Sindiwe Magona:</strong> Enter Uncle Joshua and a group of children – Njabulo, Aisha, Tim, Chris and Roshni. Given a recycling project, Njabulo offers his Uncle Joshua’s junkyard, where the group from a multiracial school should meet. Njabulo, waiting for his group, is suddenly assailed by misgivings. Will his “friends” find him wanting? Are they, indeed, his friends? That is when he comes across the chameleon and wishes they were all the same colour … or if one could change colour like the chameleon. Uncle Joshua is stricken by the realisation of the self-doubt that is the lot of the black child. Later, he gets the group talking about skin colour; and here Nina’s science comes in very handy. With understanding grows self acceptance and appreciation. The result is the song that the group presents with the instruments they make using bits and pieces from the scrap yard.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413535/original/file-20210728-23-k84xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elder woman smiles lightly as she looks into the camera, eyes warm and dressed in black, beaded traditional Xhosa attire, a zebra skin on the wall behind her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413535/original/file-20210728-23-k84xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413535/original/file-20210728-23-k84xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413535/original/file-20210728-23-k84xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413535/original/file-20210728-23-k84xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413535/original/file-20210728-23-k84xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413535/original/file-20210728-23-k84xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413535/original/file-20210728-23-k84xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sindiwe Magona has written over 130 children’s books.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Bjorn Rudner/Sindiwe Magona</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Nina Jablonski:</strong> Uncle Joshua was a believable and trusted wise uncle, who talked to the kids about things like the effects of sunlight on the body and how people got it wrong when they equated skin colour with intellectual potential. The science content boxes on each page provided basic facts backing up what Uncle Joshua was saying. The characters are very true, I don’t know how you do it.</p>
<p><strong>Sindiwe Magona:</strong> I am fortunate that I never discarded my childhood, or perhaps it never left me. This enables me to go into that world of the child, imagine its delights, its fears, its doubts, and the absolute thrill of discovery, of mastery.</p>
<p><strong>Nina Jablonski:</strong> We can’t force books into the hands of children, parents and teachers. But we made the book available in all of the official languages of South Africa, and made free copies readily available to schools in the Western Cape through <a href="http://www.biblionefsa.org.za">Biblionef South Africa</a>. We are incredibly fortunate that we had support from the businessman <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/koos-bekker/?sh=793484be416d">Koos Bekker</a> through the Babylonstoren Foundation to make these things possible.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-unpack-the-word-race-and-find-new-language-138379">We need to unpack the word 'race' and find new language</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p><strong>Sindiwe Magona:</strong> All parents are challenged by the issue of race and racism. White parents often feel “accused” of racism and black parents, by and large, feel since they are at the receiving end of racism, it is the other side that should learn. If white people would just stop being racist then the problem would be no more. Were it that simple. </p>
<p>We all need to forgive ourselves and one another … so we can go on and own our past and what it dealt us and then rid ourselves of beliefs we have come to know or recognise as unfounded. From there, we might be able to hand over a cleaner, wiser belief system to our children.</p>
<p><em>You can order a copy of Skin We Are In over <a href="https://newafricabooks.com/products/skin-we-are-in-sindiwe-magona-nina-g-jablonski">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164324/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nina G. Jablonski receives funding from the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) and is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of STIAS.. </span></em></p>
For parents, skin colour is often a difficult subject and dealing with it through storytelling can be a useful aid.
Nina G. Jablonski, Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, Penn State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164095
2021-07-12T14:18:30Z
2021-07-12T14:18:30Z
Adichie and Emezi: ignore the noise, pay attention to the conversation
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410297/original/file-20210708-13-1y8jjc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigerian writter Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a 2019 interview.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Borja B. Hojas/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent media <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1007350665/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-directs-fiery-essay-at-former-student-and-cancel-cultur">furore</a> surrounding the “feud” between the celebrated Nigeria-born African diaspora writers Chimamanda Ngozi <a href="https://www.chimamanda.com">Adichie</a> and Akwaeke <a href="https://www.akwaeke.com">Emezi</a> conflates issues too easily. </p>
<p>The very public disagreement began when Adichie presented her views on transgender women – or transwomen – in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP1C7VXUfZQ">interview</a> in 2017. Rather than affirm their status as women, Adichie <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10154640002756939">stated</a> that “transwomen are transwomen”. Emezi, once mentored by Adichie, responded with hurt and anger amid accusations that Adichie is <a href="https://brittlepaper.com/2017/03/read-adichies-apology-accused-transphobic/">transphobic</a> – prejudiced against transgender people. </p>
<p>The latest public disagreement between them on the issue was triggered by Adichie’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/16/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-social-media-sanctimony">reflections</a> on her <a href="https://www.chimamanda.com">website</a>. The post was about what she viewed as the unethical behaviour of and crossing of personal and professional boundaries by former (unnamed) mentees. It appeared to be a deeply personal, indeed bitter, lament on strained and broken relations.</p>
<p>Emezi <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-twitter-essay-akwaeke-emezi/">responded</a> with biting social media comments, saying the essay was “designed to incite hordes of transphobic Nigerians to target me”. Emezi repeated that Adichie’s views inflict harm on the trans community.</p>
<p>Their disagreements became <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9696317/Chimamanda-Ngozi-Adichie-launches-blistering-attack-woke-social-media-amid-row-novelist.html">sensationalised</a> in the media. But this only served to titillate and manipulate readers into taking hard and fast ideological positions without the necessary effort of paying careful attention to the actual conversation.</p>
<p>Aligned with the publishing industry’s own marketing logic, both authors are positioned as somewhat representative of supposedly disparate “African” concerns and ways of being. Because of this, their disagreement, and the way it’s been portrayed, raises age old questions. Who gets to represent Africa and what they are permitted to represent to the world? </p>
<p>African writers being portrayed as icons isn’t new. The same became true of the revered “fathers” of canonical postcolonial African fiction, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chinua-Achebe">Chinua Achebe</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ngugi-wa-Thiongo">Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o</a>, for example.</p>
<p>This is a (post-)colonial legacy that is accentuated in the media’s foregrounding and pitting of Adichie and Emezi as disparate, representative personalities. </p>
<p>While the media hype helps to keep them globally relevant, it distracts attention from what is an important concern regarding the qualitative merits of the “conversation”. </p>
<h2>The back story</h2>
<p>Adichie is the critically acclaimed author of the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), <a href="https://www.chimamanda.com/book/half-of-a-yellow-sun/">Half of a Yellow Sun</a> (2006) and <a href="https://www.chimamanda.com/book/americanah/">Americanah</a> (2013). She is one of the world’s most <a href="https://time.com/collection-post/3823296/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-2015-time-100/">visible</a> writers, attracting the attention of academics and pop stars, and held aloft as a face of feminism. </p>
<p>In relation to feminism, she was asked in a TV interview in 2017 to comment on whether transwomen could or should be considered women. Adichie <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10154640002756939">explained</a> that she believed that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>transwomen are transwomen. I think that if you’ve lived in the world as a man, with the privileges that the world accords to men and then, sort of change, switch gender … It’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate to your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman. And who has not been accorded those privileges that men are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.akwaeke.com/biography">Emezi</a> is the author of best-selling works that include the fictive memoir <a href="https://www.akwaeke.com/freshwater">Freshwater</a> (2018) and the novel <a href="https://www.akwaeke.com/the-death-of-vivek-oji">The Death of Vivek Oji</a> (2020). </p>
<p>A former participant and mentee of Adichie’s <a href="http://farafinatrust.org/programmes/literary-skills-enhancement-programme/">Farafina Creative Writing Workshop</a>, Emezi is <a href="https://time.com/collection-post/6047430/akwaeke-emezi-next-generation-leaders/">held up</a> as a face and voice of transgender people and joined the chorus of those who viewed Adichie’s response as transphobic. </p>
<p>Emezi, who identifies as non-binary transgender, viewed Adichie’s comments as symptomatic of a broader, mainstream culture of discrimination. The harmful “dismissal” and “disregard” to which trans people are subjected.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410300/original/file-20210708-23-18w9dlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young person presenting as a woman against a backdrop for a book event, thin gold face jewellery distinguishes her look." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410300/original/file-20210708-23-18w9dlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410300/original/file-20210708-23-18w9dlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410300/original/file-20210708-23-18w9dlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410300/original/file-20210708-23-18w9dlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410300/original/file-20210708-23-18w9dlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410300/original/file-20210708-23-18w9dlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410300/original/file-20210708-23-18w9dlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Theo Wargo/WireImage via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adichie in turn <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/a-controversy-followed-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-to-abantu-book-fest/">described</a> her critics as participating in “trans noise”. It’s a <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/15/14910900/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-transgender-women-comments-apology">reaction</a> she links to “<a href="https://www.vox.com/22384308/cancel-culture-free-speech-accountability-debate">cancel culture</a>”.</p>
<p>The exchanges between the two became increasingly acrimonious and personal.</p>
<h2>The issue at hand</h2>
<p>Critics continue to read her as <a href="https://time.com/6076606/chimamanda-adichie-akwaeke-emezi-trans-rights-essay/">transphobic</a>. But I would argue that when Adichie expressed her opinion on transwomen, she was highlighting our gendered experiences of society and societal norms. Contrary to claims that this trivialises or harms trans subjectivities, it in fact affirms the feminist view that gender, as with race, is not biological.</p>
<p>Assigned a male identity at birth, some transwomen opt to transition via hormone therapy or surgical procedures to their preferred gender identity. This reveals how gender is not normative; it is something we learn. We are acculturated and disciplined into it and, in turn, “perform” it. </p>
<p>To not acknowledge this by claiming that transwomen are “categorically” women would, in fact, be to reduce them to a simple stereotype. And in so doing invalidate their differential, lived experiences of gender.</p>
<p>Emezi’s own candid account of their non-binary transition is a case in point. <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/writer-and-artist-akwaeke-emezi-gender-transition-and-ogbanje.html">Describing</a> their “choice” to undergo various (non-reproductive) procedures, they explain that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wasn’t sure then what I was transitioning my body to, but I was clear that the gender I’d been raised as was inaccurate – I’d never been a woman … The surgeries were a bridge across realities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reading beyond the media’s hyper-sensationalism of both authors’ opinions would help us move away from taking purely ideological positions. It would allow more stimulating, material discussions about the societal structures and strictures to which we are all subjected, albeit unequally.</p>
<h2>Reading Adichie and Emezi</h2>
<p>Aligned to their civil-rights advocacy, Adichie and Emezi have spoken out against Nigeria’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-nigerian-gay-and-bisexual-men-cope-this-is-what-they-told-us-117121">draconian</a> anti-queer legislation. Their literature provides further, more nuanced and sophisticated insight and guidance on these issues.</p>
<p>Take, for example, Adichie’s On Monday of Last Week, from her acclaimed short story collection, <a href="https://www.chimamanda.com/book/the-thing-around-your-neck/">The Thing Around Your Neck</a>. It’s a complex, probing account of a possible sexual relationship between two women. One is African American, the other Nigerian African. The story does not just explore the possibilities of non-normative, same-sex relations. It uses this intimate, “border-crossing” exchange as the platform to interrogate global North-South power imbalances.</p>
<p>Emezi’s work similarly provides a space for the acknowledgement and celebration of so-called Other subjectivities. Their debut novel Freshwater’s depiction of hybridised African Igbo beliefs and world views provides a refreshing “<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerias-queer-literature-offers-a-new-way-of-looking-at-blackness-133649">corrective</a>” to more simplistic global (North) understandings of non-normative identities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerias-queer-literature-offers-a-new-way-of-looking-at-blackness-133649">Nigeria's queer literature offers a new way of looking at blackness</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The protagonist Ada’s gender-fluid, human/spiritual – ultimately “queer” – subjectivity enacts the potential for existential border-crossing liminality. Emezi’s novel is irreverently, eloquently “trans”. It does not just articulate the experiential fluidity of gender; it resists because it does not precisely “fit” our normative literary and ideological expectations.</p>
<p>Adichie and Emezi have demonstrated their proficiency in their craft. They are also both undeniably important contributors and necessary additions to the African diasporic and global literary landscape.</p>
<p>When mainstream and social media noise that beckons us to laud, dismiss or demonise them as representative personalities becomes deafening, we would do well to remember that their literature offers an alternative reality. </p>
<p>It asks us continuously to question our accepted “truths” and to imagine a world otherwise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164095/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aretha Phiri is an NRF rated researcher </span></em></p>
The public politics of African writers has been in the spotlight again due to the bitter disagreement between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Akwaeke Emezi over transgender issues.
Aretha Phiri, Associate Professor, Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163876
2021-07-07T15:04:17Z
2021-07-07T15:04:17Z
New Kiswahili science fiction award charts a path for African languages
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409866/original/file-20210706-21-17nf4h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The 6th edition of <a href="https://kiswahiliprize.cornell.edu/">The Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature</a>, suspended last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is back. Founded in 2014, the prize recognises writing in African languages and encourages translation from, between and into African languages. Kiswahili is widely spoken across the east coast of Africa. This year’s prize also offers a special award designed to promote and popularise a Kiswahili vocabulary for technology and digital rights. We spoke to the prize founders – literary academic Lizzy Attree, also of <a href="http://shortstorydayafrica.org">Short Story Day Africa</a>, and literature professor and celebrated <a href="http://www.mukomawangugi.com/books.html">author</a> Mukoma Wa Ngugi – on the challenges of growing literature in African languages.</em></p>
<h2>What’s the idea behind the special Nyabola prize?</h2>
<p><strong>Lizzy Attree:</strong> The <a href="https://kiswahiliprize.cornell.edu/special-prize-for-2021/">Nyabola prize</a> gives us the opportunity to work in a new area that is really exciting for us. <a href="https://www.nanjalawrites.com">Nanjala Nyabola</a>, the Kenyan writer and activist, approached us with the idea and the funding to target vocabulary for technology and digital rights. This was particularly interesting to us for two reasons. Firstly, we have long wanted to offer a short story prize, but have stuck with longer works because of the opportunity it gives us to focus on <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Swahili-language">Kiswahili</a> literature as a fully mastered form. But we are aware that a short story prize is a good place to start for those who are only beginning to write. Secondly, Kiswahili is often considered to be steeped in archaic, or historically poetic technical words and forms. These must be updated to accommodate the modern language of science and technology. It has been an interesting adventure to find out which words can be adapted or amended to fit with modern digital and technological advancement.</p>
<p><strong>Mukoma Wa Ngugi:</strong> There is also the idea that African languages are social languages, emotive and cannot carry science. Most definitely not true. All languages can convey the most complex ideas but we have to let them. There is something beautiful about African languages carrying science, fictionalised of course, into imagined futures.</p>
<h2>Mukoma, you also write speculative fiction; what is its power?</h2>
<p><strong>Mukoma Wa Ngugi:</strong> At the height of dictatorship in Kenya under president <a href="https://theconversation.com/daniel-arap-moi-the-making-of-a-kenyan-big-man-127177">Daniel arap Moi</a>, when writers and intellectuals were being <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4186808">detained and exiled</a>, and their books <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1991/02/13/in-kenya-animal-farm-corralled/136feeb9-6d5b-421a-a6a2-72072e15e8ff/">banned</a>, it was the genre writers who kept the politics alive. In fact I dedicated my detective novel <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/212059/nairobi-heat-by-mukoma-wa-ngugi/"><em>Nairobi Heat</em></a> to two such Kenyan writers, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/441171.David_G_Maillu">David Mailu</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Meja-Mwangi">Meja Mwangi</a>. We inherited a hierarchy of what counts as serious literature from colonialism, the division between minor and major literatures. It is important for us to blur the lines between literary and genre fiction – they are both doing serious work but in different styles. And the same goes between written literature and orature (spoken literature). Orature is seen lesser-than but, as writers and scholars have <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820568">argued</a>, orature has its own discipline and aesthetics.</p>
<h2>How has African language publishing changed since the prize began?</h2>
<p><strong>Lizzy Attree:</strong> Sadly I don’t think African language publishing has advanced very much in the last seven years or that there are enough academic studies focusing on this area. The demise of the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/5194-noma-award-for-publishing-in-africa">Noma Award</a> for Publishing in Africa was part of the decline, or indicative of it. However, book festivals are <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1684458/the-rise-of-literary-festivals-in-african-cities-lagos-hargeysa/">growing</a>, and we hope that in time this will lead to more awards and more publishing in African languages. Mukoma’s father, <a href="https://theconversation.com/tipped-to-win-nobel-literature-prize-kenyas-ngugi-misses-out-again-67009">Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o</a>, is a pioneer in this area, and it’s been wonderful to see his novel shortlisted for the International Booker Prize recently. Although there are many other good examples of where changes are happening, considering the size of the continent and the number of languages, there is still a huge gap.</p>
<p><strong>Mukoma Wa Ngugi:</strong> <a href="https://jaladaafrica.org/">Jalada Journal</a> is a good example of how attitudes to writing in African languages have changed for the better. In 2015 Jalada took a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/29/jalada-africa-short-story-ngugi-wa-thiongo-translated-over-30-languages-publication">short story</a> written by Ngugi in Gikuyu and self-translated into English and had it translated to close to 100 languages. This made it the most translated African short story. But the genius of their initiative was that most of the translations were between African languages. The Jalada example is important for two reasons – it shows that innovation can happen when African languages talk to each other. And that for the younger writers, African languages do not carry the same sense of inferiority – English is just another language. All in all I don’t think the Nyabola prize, for example, would have been possible 10 years ago. A lot has changed where it matters the most; the ideology around African languages is shifting.</p>
<h2>Do awards work and why are there so few major literary prizes in Africa?</h2>
<p><strong>Lizzy Attree:</strong> I think awards certainly work in raising the profile of writers and their work, but it is difficult to find funding for these kinds of projects.</p>
<p><strong>Mukoma Wa Ngugi:</strong> It is all about setting up a viable and thriving literary ecosystem for writing in African languages. Literary agents, publishers, readership, critics, literary prizes and so on. Prizes are just one aspect. We realised that from the onset so our winners, in addition to the monetary awards, have also been published by <a href="https://mkukinanyota.com">Mkuki na Nyota Press</a> in Tanzania. We have been trying to get them translated into English but as Lizzy points out, funding is a huge problem. We were lucky to partner with Mabati Rolling Mills and the Safal Group. We have a de facto slogan: African philanthropy for African cultural development. But all the living parts of the African literary ecosystem have to be thriving. In this, we all have work to do.</p>
<h2>Why is African language literature so important?</h2>
<p><strong>Lizzy Attree:</strong> It’s been clearly demonstrated that learning in one’s mother tongue brings huge advantages to students. And where else must we find ourselves reflected if not in our own literature, in our own languages?</p>
<p><strong>Mukoma Wa Ngugi:</strong> You can think of language as the sum total of a people’s history and knowledge. We store history and knowledge in language. To speak only English is to be alienated from your past, present and future. It is a pain we should all feel deeply. In my <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/9724578/rise_of_the_african_novel">book</a>, <em>The Rise of the African Novel: Language, Identity and Ownership</em>, I give the example of how early writing in South African languages remains outside our literary tradition. I talk about how that leads to truncated imaginations. We write within literary traditions, but what happens to your imagination when you cannot access your literary tradition?</p>
<p><em>The shortlist will be announced in October/November 2021, with the winners announced in Dar es Salaam in December 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There is something beautiful about African languages carrying science, fictionalised of course, into imagined futures.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Associate Professor of literatures in English, Cornell University
Lizzy Attree, Adjunct Professor, Richmond American International University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/161445
2021-05-30T07:57:50Z
2021-05-30T07:57:50Z
Black feminist writers in South Africa raise their voices in a new book
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402857/original/file-20210526-17-3knnz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from the cover of the book Surfacing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wits University Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the third decade of the new millennium, despite many publishers still seeing black women’s writing as having a limited market, readers have far more access than before to publications by writers from the global South. In particular, the perspectives of black women are certainly more visible in the public domain. </p>
<p>Yet gaps and erasures – based on intellectual authority, financial resources and visibility in the knowledge commons – mean that it’s still easier for work by black, postcolonial and decolonial feminists from global centres to secure publication and wide distribution. </p>
<p>As a result, the growing audience of radical young readers grappling with questions about race, gender, sexuality and freedom in global peripheries often have to turn to critical writing outside their national contexts, which inflect the topics they want to explore. Even for many restless and radical readers in the global North, much remains silenced and absent. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402684/original/file-20210525-13-visxn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover for 'Surfacing' with the names of the contributors written out in ink pen italics across the surface of the book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402684/original/file-20210525-13-visxn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402684/original/file-20210525-13-visxn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402684/original/file-20210525-13-visxn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402684/original/file-20210525-13-visxn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402684/original/file-20210525-13-visxn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402684/original/file-20210525-13-visxn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402684/original/file-20210525-13-visxn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wits University Press</span></span>
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<p>In the new book <em><a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/surfacing/">Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa</a></em>, South African author <a href="https://brittlepaper.com/2020/12/zukiswa-wanner-african-literary-person-of-the-year/">Zukiswa Wanner</a> has contributed a piece titled <em>Do I Make You Uncomfortable?</em> about writing in a white publishing industry. </p>
<p>It reminds us that black women writers in South Africa have distinct experiences of being stereotyped. Wanner sums this up in her confrontation with one reviewer who described her work as “chick lit”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And if black women are the majority in South Africa and I am therefore the standard, shouldn’t it just be called a good book? And I was chick lit versus what? Could she point out to me the male authors in South Africa whose books she’d referred to as ‘cock lit’? Take (JM) Coetzee, with his women characters who aren’t well-rounded and don’t seem to have any agency; was he cock lit?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Undocumented and innovative</h2>
<p><a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/surfacing/"><em>Surfacing</em></a> traces a path within black South African feminist thought in 20 dazzling chapters. The collection shows how radical black South African women have been part of several traditions of undocumented intellectual and artistic legacies. In the book Mary Hames recalls, for example, the radical spaces outside conventional classrooms in which she studied banned material during the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">anti-apartheid struggle</a>. </p>
<p>Our aim as editors was to show how writers in the academy, fiction-writing, journalism and the art world are grappling innovatively with essential topics. Like the politics of self, the complexities of sexual freedoms and identities beyond the blunt frameworks of human rights models. And how to think about “knowledge” more completely and adventurously.</p>
<p>The rich descriptions and interpretations of local realities in <em>Surfacing</em> refine the categories of transnational and black feminism. They bring the breadth of black feminist engagement in the south of the continent into fuller view.</p>
<h2>Sara Baartman and Winnie Mandela</h2>
<p>The book is acutely aware of the contrast between the absence of acknowledgement of most black South African women writers and the way certain women, like Khoi historical figure <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sara-saartjie-baartman">Sara Baartman</a> and activist and politician <a href="https://theconversation.com/winnie-madikizela-mandela-revolutionary-who-kept-the-spirit-of-resistance-alive-94300">Winnie Mandela</a>, have been made into global icons. It therefore starts with reflections on them. </p>
<p>Sara Baartman has been exhaustively examined in the north and Winnie Mandela has been the subject of numerous biographical, fictional and non-fictional projects by white scholars. </p>
<p>Intervening into this legacy, author <a href="https://www.sisonkemsimang.com">Sisonke Msimang</a> writes an emphatically self-reflexive study which reframes Winnie Mandela. Yet in doing so her interest “was never about ‘cleaning up’ her image or revising facts. It was about recognising that the facts about her required contextualisation.”</p>
<p>Most publications by black South African women are seen as testimonial or fictional. But the contributors of <em>Surfacing</em> seek both to contribute to and to interpret existing bodies of knowledge. In addition, the collection will undoubtedly be remembered for its enthralling writing. </p>
<h2>New narratives</h2>
<p>Many chapters take the elastic form of the personal essay. For example, academic and poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/danai-mupotsa-296051">Danai S. Mupotsa</a> draws on poetry to talk about experiences of both intimate and public scale. Academic and author <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-08-11-00-a-beautiful-feminist-mind-divorced-from-self-indulgence/">Pumla Dineo Gqola</a> pens a playfully serious letter to the South African artist <a href="https://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/gabrielle-goliath#bio">Gabrielle Goliath</a>. And photographer and curator <a href="https://www.vogue.it/fotografia/article/not-the-usual-suspects">Ingrid Masondo</a> collaboratively authors an essay with the photographers about whom she writes. </p>
<p>In other pieces, academic and author <a href="https://www.newframe.com/barbara-boswell-on-the-audacity-to-write/">Barbara Boswell</a> recounts her fascinating exchanges with feminist student activists during the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">#RhodesMustFall</a> protests in her essay about the meanings of pioneering feminist author <a href="https://theconversation.com/rest-in-power-miriam-tlali-author-enemy-of-apartheid-and-feminist-73790">Miriam Tlali</a> for the present. Academic <a href="https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2020/07/03/thinking-while-black-read-grace-a-musilas-essay-from-the-award-winning-book-black-academic-voices-the-south-african-experience/">Grace Musila</a>’s delightful <em>My Two Husbands</em> unfurls the experience of being a brilliant student whose intellectual accomplishment was seen by some men as undermining theirs. Yet within her family her education constituted a cherished and defining achievement. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rest-in-power-miriam-tlali-author-enemy-of-apartheid-and-feminist-73790">Rest in power, Miriam Tlali: author, enemy of apartheid and feminist</a>
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<p>Several chapters in the collection trace the intersections of religion and feminist thinking in South Africa. Academics <a href="http://www.religion.uct.ac.za/religion/staff/academicstaff/sadiyyashaikh">Sa’diyya Shaikh</a> and <a href="http://www.agi.ac.za/agi/gender-studies/axl/people/fatima-seedat">Fatima Seedat</a> offer vivid reflections as Muslim feminists on the costs of feminist neglect of the gender of divinity. Dancer, choreographer and academic <a href="https://zeitzmocaa.museum/artists/jackie-job/">jackï job</a>’s striking memoir traces a shift from Christian expectations of how to be a “lady” to finding a language in dance for becoming “more than just this body”. And scholar and activist <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article/10/1/189/2356899">gertrude fester-wicomb</a> recounts her experience as a Christian lesbian anti-apartheid activist of the constrained spaces for queerness during the 1980s. </p>
<p>How to recover histories in the face of reticence is evocatively described by essayist and novelist <a href="http://www.panashechigumadzi.com/bio">Panashe Chigumadzi</a>. Through patient listening, she discovers how to hear the language of her grandmother’s silences. In <em>The Music of My Orgasm</em>, anthologist, essayist and poet <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/users/makhosazana-xaba">Makhosazana Xaba</a> movingly testifies to the heritage of feminism she received from her grandfather and her mother. She describes how she learned to cultivate the pleasures of her own body as a force of radical sexual and political liberation. </p>
<p>In their tender relationship to the land on which they grow organic food and medicine, historian and farmer <a href="https://habitat3.org/the-conference/programme/speakers/yvette-abrahams/">Yvette Abrahams</a> and sociologist and activist <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/patricia-mcfadden/m0gfd769?hl=en">Patricia McFadden</a>’s chapters map a visionary future of sharing and abundance.</p>
<h2>Why these writings matter</h2>
<p>Throughout the book, it is therefore made clear that foregrounding the positionality of the writer – the social and political contexts that shape their identities – can deepen what is being said. </p>
<p>Who the author is and what perspective she speaks from are in fact integral to her view of the world. </p>
<p>Contrary to advocates of “universality” and “detachment”, this stance seeks to strengthen growing efforts to “surface” the rich diversity of ways of seeing and understanding our world.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/surfacing/">Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa</a> is available from <a href="http://witspress.co.za">Wits University Press</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161445/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Undocumented for decades, black South African feminists are increasingly visible. The essays in Surfacing present 22 leading thinkers.
Desiree Lewis, Professor of Gender Studies, University of the Western Cape
Gabeba Baderoon, Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and African Studies, Penn State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/158135
2021-04-01T07:44:30Z
2021-04-01T07:44:30Z
An Egyptian woman who dared: the Nawal El Saadawi I knew
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392585/original/file-20210330-19-rfa4cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nawal El Saadawi protesting at Tahrir Square, Egypt, 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amel Pain/EPA-EFE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Throughout the Middle East and beyond, the name <a href="https://theconversation.com/nawal-el-saadawi-egypts-grand-novelist-physician-and-global-activist-157817">Nawal El Saadawi</a> is not one that can be received with indifference. During her lifetime and even after her passing on 21 March 2021, the Egyptian author, physician and activist evokes intense feelings that range from love and respect to hatred and offence. </p>
<p>This comes as no surprise. Nawal was someone who unabashedly crossed all boundaries set by religious, political and societal authorities. When I had the privilege of meeting her, we immediately became friends. </p>
<p>Something in her eyes, manner and voice gripped my attention. She spoke for me and for millions of others who were silenced by layers and layers of falsehoods and banal obligations in the name of honour and duty. She ‘adopted’ me, like she did with many of the young people she met. </p>
<p>Nawal <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-58730-5_5">said</a> that she realised from a tender age that she was born into an undeniable hypocritical patriarchal standard that colours every aspect of life. The standards which set boundaries against the forbidden seemed to vanish when it came to her brother and other men. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nawal-el-saadawis-intellectual-life-reflected-eight-decades-of-arab-society-and-culture-157972">Nawal El Saadawi’s intellectual life reflected eight decades of Arab society and culture</a>
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<p>Social norms and religious orders not only protected men but bestowed many liberties on them, from sexual freedom to rights of education and self-expression. The young Nawal’s sharp analytical mind soon realised that the same double standards applied to colonial powers, who gave themselves the right to plunder, abuse and occupy poor and underprivileged societies in the name of enlightenment, science and progress.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392591/original/file-20210330-21-l5hr82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dressed in pale blue, a smiling young woman holds the arm of a grey-haired older woman dressed in pink." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392591/original/file-20210330-21-l5hr82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392591/original/file-20210330-21-l5hr82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392591/original/file-20210330-21-l5hr82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392591/original/file-20210330-21-l5hr82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392591/original/file-20210330-21-l5hr82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392591/original/file-20210330-21-l5hr82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392591/original/file-20210330-21-l5hr82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The author, left, with El Saadawi in Cairo, 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy of Omnia Amin</span></span>
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<p>Finding herself and fellow Egyptians suffering under patriarchal and British colonial rule, Nawal went on a personal search for God, truth and justice. </p>
<p>In her search she went beyond everything presented to her as a given: the sacred and profane, the divine and blasphemous, the allowed and the forbidden. </p>
<h2>The girl who tipped the coffee tray</h2>
<p>Her life took a natural course of militancy and dissidence when she had to stand up for her rights at an early age. Born in a small village in Kafr Talha in Egypt in 1931, Nawal, as was common with girls of her age, was presented with a suitor at the age of 10. </p>
<p>Without consulting or fearing anyone, she tipped the coffee tray over him as a sign of disrespect. With the same tenacity, she fought to become a psychiatrist and excelled academically.</p>
<p>Later, in her medical clinic in the village, women facing the threat of an ‘honour killing’ were brought to her for examination, accused of having lost their virginity before marriage. Nawal discovered that many of these women were still virgins, scapegoats for the impotence or fickleness of their partner.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nawal-el-saadawi-egypts-grand-novelist-physician-and-global-activist-157817">Nawal El Saadawi: Egypt's grand novelist, physician and global activist</a>
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<p>Outraged by the prevailing double standards, she wrote <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-books-of-nawal-el-saadawi"><em>Women and Sex</em></a> to educate the public, particularly about <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-difficult-to-end-female-genital-mutilation-131162">female genital mutilation</a>, starting a campaign against the practice.</p>
<p>Her action was seen as outrageous; not only was her book banned – the first of many – but Nawal also lost her job in the country’s health ministry and the health magazine she headed was closed down. Not to be stopped, she founded one NGO after another, the most famous of which is the <a href="https://www.devex.com/organizations/arab-women-solidarity-association-awsa-47773">Arab Women’s Solidarity Association</a>, which became synonymous with the slogan “<a href="https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/egypt-el-saadawi-veil-political-symbol">lifting the veil from the mind</a>”. </p>
<p>She said that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Later, in exile mostly in the US and the UK where she was frequently hosted by universities, she recorded her struggles in her three-volume autobiography and in her many talks and teachings.</p>
<h2>Everything for Nawal was linked</h2>
<p>I had the good fortune of becoming Nawal’s translator, I also produced English versions of many of her books. Later, when weakened by illness, she chose me as her official spokesperson. Today I mourn not the writer and activist the world knows, but a mother, friend and mentor who had no equal. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392589/original/file-20210330-19-a6hztq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three people smile for the camera, from left an elderly man in thick-rimmed glasses, in the centre a young woman looking glamorous and on the right a grey-hairs woman in a striped blouse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392589/original/file-20210330-19-a6hztq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392589/original/file-20210330-19-a6hztq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392589/original/file-20210330-19-a6hztq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392589/original/file-20210330-19-a6hztq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392589/original/file-20210330-19-a6hztq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392589/original/file-20210330-19-a6hztq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392589/original/file-20210330-19-a6hztq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">El Saadawi (right) and her then-husband Sherif Hetata with the author.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Omnia Amin</span></span>
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<p>Like many others, I had first met Nawal through her writings and talks. She confronted not only those who were present but the entire world with her reinterpretation, reintegration and reevaluation of history, politics, the so-called economic world order, religion, gender and self. Everything for Nawal was linked. </p>
<p>She knew that domestic oppression and violence was linked not only to political and economic oppression, but also to a distortion, manipulation and forgery of history and religion. She easily ripped the veils off the minds of her audience, showing that these links are undeniable. </p>
<p>She spared no one in her attack and was ready to pay the price. Her books were banned, she was imprisoned and exiled. She received many <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-women-rights-idUSKCN1IP2V9">death threats</a> and her name was on Islamic fundamentalist death lists. She was accused of apostasy (abandoning her religion) and had to face one <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2001/06/el-saadawi629.html">court trial</a> after another in which her husband and family were not spared.</p>
<h2>An elder at Tahrir Square</h2>
<p>Nawal taught me that illusions take many guises – and the worst are fear and death. She told me that she feared prison until she was thrown into one and realised that her fear was ungrounded. </p>
<p>Prison gave her the chance to prove to herself that nothing is impossible. As a political prisoner, she was denied pen and paper; in reaction, she borrowed an eyebrow pencil from the prostitutes’ section and got hold of toilet paper on which she wrote her immortal story <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/memoirs-from-the-womens-prison/"><em>Memoirs From The Women’s Prison</em></a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The author interviewing El Saadawi in 2020.</span></figcaption>
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<p>What saved Nawal was her open and optimistic spirit and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvzTus88xho">resonance</a> that her voice found with succeeding generations of young people. </p>
<p>In Tahrir Square in 2011 young people surrounded her and saved her from physical attacks as she <a href="https://msmagazine.com/2011/02/07/egyptian-feminist-nawal-el-saadawi-in-tahrir-square-i-saw-with-my-own-eyes-the-barbarism/">participated</a> in the Egyptian revolution. She filled the young with hope, telling them that as we dream, we will succeed. </p>
<h2>The honest word endures</h2>
<p>Nawal saw that dissidence is key to creativity; that true creativity is the key to revolution; and that revolution is the path for liberated humanity. In her teaching and writing, she adhered to her trinity: creativity, dissidence and revolution. </p>
<p>She believed that writing is an act of speaking the truth, an act of courage – otherwise it is cheating the self and others because it serves the interest of those in power and does not serve the people. </p>
<p>In my last interview with her in November 2020, around the occasion of her 89th birthday, I asked her what message she would like to tell the world. She said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tell them that the honest word is the one that endures.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To my mentor, mother and friend I dedicate this humble tribute that does not do her justice, as words become mean and meaningless in their description of a giant like herself. I say goodbye to a woman who was able to create a cultural revolution in the hearts, minds and souls of those people whose lives she touched.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omnia Amin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
She believed that writing is an act of speaking the truth, an act of courage, that must serve the people and not those in power.
Omnia Amin, Professor, Zayed University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.