Theses and Dissertations (Literature, Language and Media)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/10539/35935

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Start date: 2006End date: 2009

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    'African discourses' : the old and the new in post-apartheid isiZulu literature and South African black television dramas
    (2009-02-02T11:38:06Z) Mhlambi, Innocentia Jabulisile
    ABSTARCT This thesis sets out to explore the problematic perceptions regarding African indigenous language literature. The general view regarding this literature is that it is immature, irrelevant school-market driven and shows no artistic complexities and ingenuity.1 These disparaging remarks resonated persistently after the first democratic elections in 1994. Both local and international critics expected marked shifts in post-apartheid isiZulu literary productions because factors that hampered its development have been removed. The dominant Western and postcolonial critical approaches from which these critics articulated their views, operated on assumptions that failed to look at the role and centrality of the broader concerns usually covered by this literature. Barber (1994: 3) points out that these Western and postcolonial critical approaches, block a properly historical localized understanding of any scene of colonial and postindependence literary production in Africa. Instead it selects and overemphasized one sliver of literary and cultural production…and this is experience’. Furthermore it is the contention of this thesis that these critics used critical tools that are fundamentally mismatched for the types of narratives with which isiZulu literature and African-language literatures in general are engaged. It is the view of the author of this thesis that if a new set of critical tools are used, a paradigm shift may result which allows for revisiting creative conceptualisations involved in the production of these literatures. The primary aim of this thesis is to read post-apartheid isiZulu novels and the black television dramas using theoretical tenets postulated by Karin Barber. Barber’s research on African everyday culture is the key epistemological and cosmological framework with which to study post-apartheid literary and film productions that narrate the everyday life experiences of ordinary South Africans. The basic assumption is that orality which is the maximal point of reference for 1 See Mpahlele, 1992; Kunene, D. P. 1992 and 1994; Kunene, M. 1976 and 1991; and Chapman, 1996 any African work of imagination continues to thrive in black everyday popular culture as manifest in both print and broadcast media. The first part of this thesis deals with the use of oral genres in print media. Six novels are selected to explore the uses of proverbs, folktale motifs and naming as strategies for reading post-apartheid contemporary South African society. The thesis proceeds from an analysis of what these oral forms aim to achieve in the post-apartheid context. It is argued that through these oral verbal art forms the narratives transpose the traditional episteme and re-inscribe it for modern contemporary African society, where traditional morality is made to continue to shape and animate contemporary morality. The second section deals with the implications of some of these traditional epistemologies in broadcast media texts. Four post-apartheid black television dramas are selected. With Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, the thesis, demonstrates how these films position the middle-class as a solution to post-apartheid leadership challenges. The discussion of Gaz’ Lam and Yizo Yizo demonstrates the nature of orality, where oral texts are seen to be endlessly recycling similar themes in different media forms. The emphasis is on how renditions of texts always bring in new elements and topical issues, fresh and precise photographic capturing of key moments in society. In view of the nature of Barber’s theoretical model and that of isiZulu fiction and film, this thesis argues that it is the most appropriate to use for the analysis of Africanlanguages literatures. Barber’s theoretical model has intertextual links with the Black Film theoretical traditions in the Diaspora and the Third Cinema in Africa. These black film traditions, like Barber’s model, centralise the black experience, everyday culture and orality as the basic reference for African work of imagination and aesthetics.
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    "Distinctly African ": the representation of Africans in City Press.
    (2008-06-10T12:13:33Z) Gongo, Kuselwa
    This study examines the representation of Africans by fellow Africans in a South African Sunday paper, City Press, after the paper changed its motto from ‘The People's Paper’ to ‘Distinctly African’ in October 2004. This editorial repositioning of City Press coincided with some of the tenets of the African Renaissance and African nationalism. The representation of Africa in the media, both outside and inside the continent, has been problematic for centuries. This study examines whether the claim by City Press, of a representation that is “Distinctly African” is achieved or refuted. This is done through analysing the way in which Africa, Africans, and African issues are framed and represented over a period of two years. In analysing these representations of Africa, Africans and African issues, the study looks at whether or not the way in which City Press represents Africa conforms to the ideals of the African Renaissance and African nationalism.
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    "100 papers": an anthology of flash fiction and prose poetry with a theoretical postscript
    (2008-05-30T07:24:40Z) Jobson, Liesl Karen
    [NO ABSTRACT PRESENT]
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    ‘The Old Iron Cooking Pot of Europe’ Storytelling, Sleuthing and Neo-colonialism in the Botswana novels of Alexander McCall Smith
    (2006-11-02T12:27:25Z) Finnegan, Lesley
    In this study I will interrogate some of the issues and contradictions raised by Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana novels. These texts feature a black African woman protagonist in a developing society, and have achieved huge popular and commercial success, but they are written by a white European man. I will examine briefly whether the books can be considered as ‘African Literature,’ and how the author has negotiated the interface between history and literature to convince readers and critics in ‘the West’ that he is portraying ‘the real Africa.’ I will investigate the strategies used by the author to create this ‘authentic’, ‘traditional’ effect, how he writes convincingly as, about and on behalf of women, and the use he makes of the detective fiction mode. Ultimately I will consider whether these novels represent a restorative ‘writing back’ or whether they constitute a continuing appropriation of African history, culture and identity, a further re-invention of Africa by and for ‘the West’.