Decoloniality: African vernacular idioms and visual language in post-apartheid television

Abstract

The combination between verbal indigenous languages and domestic visual languages is vital to redefine the postcolonial African experiences and this combination must be responsible for championing the struggle of Africans during this rapid speed of globalization, thus an alternative space should be created to articulate modern world views of Africans. The aim of this study is to investigate the deployment of indigenous verbal languages and the visual language in Rolie Nikiwe‟s oeuvre such as Tsha Tsha (2004), InterSexions (2010) and (2013) and Matatiele (2015). In this investigation, the study seeks to explore and investigate how Rolie Nikiwe constructs visual aesthetics and verbal indigenous African languages in the manner that brings a different perspective as compared to previous visual grammars. Thus one has cast Nikiwe as an Afrofuturistic image creator who privileges African mode of thought students. This dissertation seeks to engage existing scholarship in the South African film and television industry and existing film and television practices such as drama series. This dissertation will pursue the study of Rolie Nikiwe‟s work using the sociological definition of what language is. It is of paramount importance to mention that by visual language, one is referring to a superordinate terminology for photography, fine arts, films, documentary films and television drama series. As such, it should be stated clearly that, it is in the best interest of this dissertation to pay detailed attention only on films and television dramas under this umbrella term, and that is the visual language. The argument is that one of the reasons why the Western conquest upon the African continent was a success was because of the political and cultural use of indigenous and visual languages that were used by colonizers and apartheid officials to create different social identities.