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Book Review: The Lucky Man Bar
No full textThe action of The Lucky Man Bar is set in both Zambia and Nepal. There are also snippets of action that occur in Congo and Greece. In Zambia, the action vacillates mostly between the city of Lusaka and the small town of Kafue. The descriptive narration of the Kafue area suggests that the author is very familiar with the geography of the area in and around Kafue. A good example is the description of the physical features of the area where the drive takes place in the prologue. This is indicative of the fact that the author actually worked in the area for Sino Hydro, a Chinese construction company. Some of the similarities between the author and the narrator, as a matter of fact, invite questions regarding whether or not the novel is a palimpsest of part-fact and part-fiction
Book Review
No full textA review of Nation-Building in the Context of ‘One Zambia, One Nation’, by Mubanga E. Kashoki. (Lusaka: Gadsden Publishers, 2018)
Book Review
Get PDFA review of Nation-Building in the Context of ‘One Zambia, One Nation’, by Mubanga E. Kashoki. (Lusaka: Gadsden Publishers, 2018)
Namwali Serpell's the Old Drift as a Postcolonial Text: A Semiotic, Linguistic and Onomastic Analysis
Get PDFThis essay analyses Namwali Serpell’s seminal novel The Old Drift from a postcolonial perspective. In pursuing this goal, the essay utilises some aspects of postcolonial theory, semiotics, onomastics and linguistics. In particular, it looks at how Serpell reinterprets the history of colonial Zambia as projected and interpreted by colonial writers. The findings suggest that the novel epitomises a new drift in Zambian literature. The novel problematises the views of the imperial centre as exemplified in colonial literature and suggests that the colonisers used the gun, fraud, deception, language and names as some of the means of subjugating the local people and dispossessing them of their land. Therefore, the whole colonial enterprise was pursued for the benefit of the white settlers at the expense of the local people and was motivated by greed, selfishness and self-aggrandisement
The cultural factor in the Semiotics of contemporary African Drama
Get PDFThis study focuses on the influence of culture on the semiotics of modern African drama. Semiotics is the science of signs, or the study of how meaning is produced. Semiotics deals with the meaning of
everything that can be considered a sign, including words and actions. In other words, signs can be verbal and non-verbal; meaning can be produced both by speech and silence. This study however recognises the fact that some signs are culture-specific and that the semiotic process is largely determined by the cultural orientation of both the writer and the reader. This study will attempt to show that the reader needs to have an idea of the writer’s cultural orientation in order to conduct a meaningful semiotic reading of a text. In this study however the focus is on the relationship between culture and the semiotics of the contemporary
African dramatic text. It is concerned with how cultural factors influence the semiotic aspects of the writings of African dramatists, as well as how they influence the semiotic reading of the African dramatic
text. This study postulates that the dramatic text is different from the performance or theatrical text. While
the former is the text of the play before it is performed, the latter is the play when it is performed. This study is concerned only with the semiotic reading of the dramatic text and not the theatrical text. Since
African dramatists are influenced by African culture in their writings, it is important to take this factor into account when conducting a semiotic reading of an African dramatic text. It is possible to
misunderstand or misinterpret a play text because of failure to understand the relationship between its sign-vehicles and the text’s cultural context. On the other hand, an understanding of the cultural context of the text’s sign-vehicles, either by experience or research, can help in the process of semiotic interpretation of the text. In addition, it is possible to write a play about a culture one has never
experienced by studying it thoroughly and correctly employing its culture-driven sign-vehicles. The findings and conclusions of this study are based on the analysis of four contemporary African dramatic
texts: The Black Mamba Two by Kabwe Kasoma of Zambia, Nothing but the Truth by South African John Kani; The Dilemma of a Ghost by Ghana’s Ama Ata Aidoo and The Black Hermit by Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Anglophone Zambian Prose Fiction: Tradition or Transition?
Get PDFZambian literature is characterized by publications both in English and indigenous Zambian languages across all genres. It would be possible to investigate the emerging trends in Zambian literature in general. However, this paper explores and questions, whether an identifiable tradition has developed with regard to Anglophone Zambian prose fiction. Or could it be that Anglophone Zambian prose fiction has not yet developed an identifiable writing tradition and is merely undergoing a transition to some tradition? In seeking answers to these critical questions, the paper highlights trends in Anglophone Zambian prose fiction from the colonial era, which introduced western education and a writing system to Zambia, to the contemporary era. In essence this means tracing publications from the birth of Zambian publishing in 1937, when the quasi-governmental African Literature Committee of Northern Rhodesia was formed. In 1948 the body was transformed into an intergovernmental institution incorporating Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, now called Malawi and Zambia respectively. Hence the new body was named Joint Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland Publications Bureau. In 1962 the body collapsed and its Northern Rhodesian branch assumed the name Northern Rhodesia Publications Bureau, becoming the Zambia Publications Bureau in 1964, when Zambia became independent. This paper, therefore, will attempt to determine trends in this body of published works in terms of themes, characters, subject, style and types of authors
Editorial Comment
Get PDFThe six articles in this volume are almost evenly spread between language (linguistics) and literature, with one article focused on onomastics. The literature articles include: “Some Novels are Novels while Others are not: Carnivalesque and Spontaneity in Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger” (Gankhanani Moffat Moyo and Stewart Crehan). This article investigates the concept of novelness in the context of Marechera’s House of Hunger. Shadreck Kondala’s “Contradictions of a Society in Transition: A Look at Henry Musenge’s Novel Changing Shadows”. The paper highlights the contradictions that characterise a society undergoing cultural transition. Mukundwe Siame and Parnwell Munatamba contributed “’Our Hell is the Other’: ‘The Other’ in Albert Camus’s The Stranger” which examines Camus’ existentialist view of hell
Standing in the circle: images of old people in African literature.
Get PDFThis work focuses on portraits of old men and women in African literature.A lot has been written about the portrayal of women in African literature, but very little has been written on how the old are portrayed. This work focuses on portraits of old men and women in African literature. Are they positive or negative? What factors influence the portraiture of the old? Is there a correlation between the portrayal and treatment of elderly characters in African fiction and society? Are the old portrayed the same in African literature as they are in Western literature?MIKA GROUP OF HOTEL
“Crushing the anthill” Essentials of arts education development in Africa: The case of Zambia
Get PDFArts education training in Africa has lagged behind other continents largely because of the absence of appropriate policies and, where policy exists, lack of the political will to implement the content. Few African countries have formulated clear policies on arts education training, let alone cultural policies. This fact was spotlighted at the 1st Regional Conference on Arts Education in Africa held in Johannesburg, South Africa, 11-13 March 2015, organised by NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development). It was, in fact, the realisation that Africa lacks arts education training policy, and accompanying cultural policy, that necessitated the gathering meant for countries of the southern African region – the first of several regional conferences planned by NEPAD. While acknowledging the need for arts education training policy in Africa, however, this article argues that such policy needs to be both backward-looking and forward-looking. That is to say, it should not only help improve the state of arts training for a better future, but also draw from the African past in terms of experiences as well as training in the arts. This is because, as the article argues, the arts and education existed in Africa even before the dawn of colonialism or mission schools. For arts education training policy to work in Africa, it must include traditional art forms alongside western art forms, and, for implementation, must draw from both traditional and western forms of education. This article stresses the importance of Africa’s Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKSs) and anchors its arguments around five P’s: Pedigree (what have we done?), Practice (what are we doing?), Potential (what can we do?), Policy (what is the role of government?), and People (what have ordinary citizens done and what can they do?). Ultimately, this article argues that effective arts education policy must not only involve all the stakeholders in both formulation and implementation, but must also be able to target learners from early childhood to adulthood; that is, it must encompass all levels of education, both formal and informal. Further, this article argues that arts education training should ensure that the recipients are able to contribute the development of the cultural industries of African countries, and that African countries should share experiences and resources as a way of developing arts education training
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