Investigating the depiction of masculinity in isiZulu literature of the apartheid and post-apartheid epoch

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the portrayal of masculinity in isiZulu literature of the apartheid and post-apartheid epoch. The novels under discussion are S, Nyembezi’s Inkinsela YaseMgungundlovu (1960), I,S Kubheka’s Ulaka LwabeNguni (1988), N.C Msimang’s, Umsebenzi Uyindlala (2005) and E.D.M. Sibiya’s Ngiyolibala Ngifile (2010). The study examines ways in which African epistemology is underpinnedas an aesthetic of protest in African languages literature written in the apartheid and post-apartheid epoch. Furthermore, the studyinvestigate how these African epistemologies are incorporated in the representation of masculinity. Using Marxism and Afrocentrism as a theoretical framework the study further zooms into socio-political and socio-economic aberrations highlighted by the African languages’ novel writers in these different eras. The whole bulk of African languages has been considered a failed enterprise on the premise that it has failed to respond to the socio-political milieu of its emergence. This study therefore counter-argues through proposing that these critics used critical paradigms that are fundamentally mismatched for the types of narratives with which isiZulu literature and African languages literature in general is engaged