Faculty of Humanities (ETDs)

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Browsing Faculty of Humanities (ETDs) by Department "Department of African Literature"

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    Literary and visual representations of queer ecologies in South Africa’s maritime and terrestrial environments
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Dimond, Harvey Lewis; Hofmeyr, Isabel
    Not Available
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    “People is people”: African personhood in the works of Bessie Head
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Castrillón, Gloria Ledger; Hofmeyr, Isabel
    From the vantage point of Bessie Head’s oeuvre as a whole, I trace the development of her approach to personhood. Rooted in a post-oppositional view of love expressed as acts of ubuntu, she develops a new paradigm of African personhood distinct from western conceptions of the person. In Nguni languages, ubuntu is the term given to the view that personhood derives from a network of relationships, encapsulated in the saying “I am because you are; we are because you are” (Ogude, 2018, p. 1, emphasis in original). Rejecting the forms of literary and political protest of her time and focusing on the rural context, Head applies three narrative tools to lever change. These are, love-based relationships between individuals; love as acts of ubuntu between people; and sage philosophers who mediate history, embedding Head’s view of personhood in Africa’s history. Chapter 1 places Head’s works in context and sets out the parameters of the relationship between law and human rights. The chapter examines the post-oppositional approach which informs Head’s attempts to deviate from binary-based views of tradition and progress, western and African, from which she proposes her particular view of African personhood. Chapter 2 examines Head’s life, works and critical reception. Chapter 3 examines human rights with specific reference to South Africa’s Freedom Charter. The Charter and the political pressures surrounding its generation were central to Head’s contemporaries’ protest literature. Head rejects this genre, so the chapter also surveys her political outlook. In Chapter 4, the roots of Head’s re-envisioning are examined in The Cardinals and When Rain Clouds Gather. In these early novels, Head uses love as the stimulus for personal and communal change. In The Cardinals, love is individual, and change is limited to two characters. In When Rain Clouds Gather, love expands in scope and, realised through acts of ubuntu, provides the foundation for the marriages and other individual relationships. Together, these enable the realisation of personhood in the context of community. In Chapter 5, the operation of love extends further in Maru and A Question of Power. In Maru, love is tasked with overturning the foundations of racism and reversing the tyranny of tribal, hereditary supremacy. In A Question of Power, love is set against its biggest foe: evil and Satan. By the end, however, it is clear it is unable to perform the transformative social work Head assigns it. Thus, in the last three books, she galvanizes a set of semi-fictional, semi-historical sage philosophers whose words and actions typify her post-oppositional reconceptualisation of Serowe’s history. Chapter 6 examines the liminal position of The Collector of Treasures as it bridges the transition from the first four to the last two texts. In it, diverse storytellers debate the incongruities and ambiguities in the African and western traditions. Chapter 7 examines how Head’s sages become more overt spokespeople for her argument that change is essentially African and animated by love and ubuntu will give rise to an African personhood. In Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind, Khama the Great, Tshekedi Khama and Patrick van Rensburg are actualised African persons as they effect love-grounded, ubuntu motivated change, creating the basis of Africa’s future. In A Bewitched Crossroad, Head uses the fictional interpolations of her most developed sage, Sebina, to mine both the ‘real’ history of Southern Africa and western ways to develop a post-oppositional African vision. In the Chapter 8, Head’s efforts to breathe life into a new ‘race’ of Africans are summed up. Head proposes that ‘African’ is not defined by race, colour or ethnic identity, but by post-oppositional responses, the ability to transform the lives of others, and leadership qualities needed for the future. Identifying the common thread across the texts clarifies Head’s articulation personhood as embedded in Africanness and not in the western presumptions underpinning the novel form.
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    She’s Not a Bad Girl, Brenda Fassie: Past, Present and Future, A Canon for the Construction of Post Colonial Feminist Consciousness
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Qwesha, Qhama; Mupotsa, Danai S.
    In this research report, I examine the ways that icon Brenda Fassie operates as an important archive for the articulation of quotidian feminist consciousness. In paying close attention to the present re-emergence of Fassie in South African intimate publics that include idioms, modes, praxes, aesthetics, and consumptive forms that she currently figuratively circulates. I approach the question of an archive from two central sensibilities: first, with regards to authoritative narrative accounts related to her memorialization; and second, in the ways that her figure (re)appears in these intimate publics to reconfigure the meanings we attach to African femme/womanhood and sexualities. Looking to multiple archives is a methodological gesture at assembling a range of cultural objects that include her body of work, including the aural, visual, and aesthetic performance of her work; along with the archive of work produced with or about her that often situates itself around accounts of her biography. With this understanding of her archive, the approach is to see how Fassie figuratively operates, presenting contesting identities through which she can move in and out of multiple temporalities that are often contradictory. Fassie’s ability to transgress while equally forming a part of national historic discourse allows us to inquire into the ways that she complicates notions of gender and sexuality – and how these continue to shape current articulations of feminism in post-apartheid South Africa.