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Prophets without honour at home: A view from the margins
Full text linkThis article is a personal reflection on how serving as a lecturer of an African language at a multi-lingual South African university has been like thus far for the author. In its narrative and perhaps even autobiographical mode, the article further encapsulates the author’s formative influences towards pursuing, studying, teaching and writing in an African language (Tshivenḓa) within an academic sphere of South Africa. Furthermore, the article foregrounds the challenges faced by a novice lecturer and scholar in marginalised languages such as Tshivenḓa, which include, among others, the lack of intensive mentorship in the teaching and learning of Tshivenḓa, limited opportunities to publish in scholarly and accredited journals, students’ and lecturers’ negative perceptions towards the mother-tongue, minimal reviewers and examiners of journal articles, research proposals, dissertations and theses written in Tshivenḓa. Apart from airing the author’s grievances, the article also vanguards the author’s hope that African languages such as Tshivenḓa will eventually move from the margins to the centre of epistemic and other forms of pedagogic discourse within the South African context, and perhaps even beyond. To this end, some opinions on how this hope can be fulfilled are provided.
 
Tsenguluso ya vhurendi ha N. A. Milubi yo livhahanywa na thyiori ya new criticism
Full text linkThesis (M. A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2019The study analyses N.A. Milubi’s Tshivenḓa poetry. N.A. Milubi is one of the prominent Tshivenḓa modern poets. The study selected N.A. Milubi’s poems from the books he published as an individual as well as from the poetry anthologies in which he contributed his poetry. The publications that are analysed in this study are: Muhumbuli-Mutambuli (1981), Vhuṱungu ha Vhupfa (1982) Ipfi ḽa Lurere, Muimawoga (1990), Muungo wa Vhuhwi (1995) and Khavhu dza Muhumbulo (2001). The study is based on the New Criticism theory where both the form and meaning of the poem are analysed. The New Criticism theory emphasises a close reading of the text as a significant factor that determines or reflects the artistic and aesthetic value of a literary work. An appraisal for N.A. Milubi’s artistic prowess, in as far as Tshivenḓa poetry is concerned, is also provided in this study
Alienation in Ntshavheni Alfred Milubi’s poetry
No full textIn this article, I analyse the thematization of alienation in the poetry of the Muvenḓa poet, playwright, and scholar Ntshavheni Alfred Milubi. Milubi ascribes people’s abandonment of moral values to their perpetual frustrations, herein described as alienation. Reference is made to the crumbling African traditional institutions, which, in the past, seemingly functioned as havens for the rehabilitation of alienated individuals in African communities. These institutions are shown to be triggering alienation in the modernising and globalising space, seemingly with no room for recuperation unless one heeds the poet’s clarion calls. I restrict my analysis of Milubi’s poetry only to social and cosmic alienation, guided by a fixed set of themes, namely, from society, a romantic lover, and God, respectively. The article represents the idea that African-language literatures provide insights into how the indigenes have grappled with the interface between tradition and modernity. The three forms of alienation as treated by Milubi serve as a representative sample of how Tshivenḓa poetry in particular and African-language literatures in general often register subaltern voices and the ways in which they inscribe their experiences to explain their relationship with God or god(s), society, and intimate partners, among others. This trifocal relationship is essential to the Vhavenḓa and other African communities because it reveals their concept of cosmology, community, and intimacy
Refiguring Blackness and Decolonisation in Femi Abodunrin’s It Would Tke Time: Conversation with Living Ancestors and Other Poems
No full textThis article focuses on Femi Abodunrin’s poetry in order to reflect on the ideological conditions from which his articulation of Blackness and decolonisation emanates. Although Abodunrin’s creative oeuvre transcends a single poetry anthology, the study nevertheless restricts itself to one poetry anthology, It Would Take Time: Conversation with Living Ancestors, and excerpts from three other poems, “Whatever I Hang,” “The Pursuit of Happiness” and “Going to Meet the Man,” published in Splinters of a Mirage Dawn: An Anthology of Migrant Poetry from South Africa. Arguably, Abodunrin’s poetry is a quintessential postulation on Blackness and decolonisation in a postcolonial context. Hence, his work represents a coherent response, a reappropriation and refiguring of the syncretic experiences of Black Africans within the circumstantial whole of a postcolonial social reality. The phenomenology of decolonisation, depersonalisation and an inhabitation of an alienating and somewhat fragmented reality are some of Abodunrin’s thematic interests. His tactic to subvert a Eurocentric approach to the politics of African identity, literature and culture, Africans’ displacement and the psycho-affective dimension of this tussle confirms that despite the struggles, Africans can assert their presence and agency in the conception and articulation of their culture and identity. It Would Take Time and Abodunrin’s other three poems are reflective of the uphill efforts channelled towards recentralising African agency, refiguring Blackness and also emphasising the triumph of a unique ideological outlook on decoloniality without ambiguities of reference
Sense in the nonsense: Deciphering the meaning of u kumela in Tshivenḓa culture
No full textU kumela (paying homage to the royal leader) is a widely accepted practice in Tshivenḓa culture. U kumela not only serves as an aspect of praise to royal leadership but also functions as an addressive device. Zwikumelo (‘referential praises’) often have no definite or rigid pattern and are uncensored. As such, the praise singer may start the way he or she wishes and utter whatever he or she likes. Hence, praise singers often utter somewhat humorous, sarcastic, hyperbolic and senseless phrases and sentences when bestowing honour upon royalty. Undergirded by the theory of ethnopragmatics, this study employs the qualitative method (descriptive and explanatory in nature) with the aim of generating the communicative translations and meanings of zwikumelo in Tshivenḓa culture. Abetted by the author’s intuitive knowledge, this study interpreted zwikumelo in MER Mathivha’s Tshivenḓa play, Mabalanganye. It was found that most zwikumelo in the play ascribe qualities such as immortality, sovereignty, unapproachability, bravery and generosity to the chief or king
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Selfhood in Tshivenda Poetry: Reflections on Vhavenda’s Identity, Culture and Ideology
No full textContemporary scholarship largely ignores the role of Tshiven?a literature in reflecting the Vhaven?a people’s identity, culture and ideology. This article argues that there is a formidable connection between Tshiven?a literature and Tshiven?a culture. Underpinned by a trifocal theoretical framework that draws on Afrocentricity, the hermeneutic approach and postcolonial theory, this article brings into critical focus the Vhaven?a poets’ articulation of selfhood. The selected Vhaven?a poets are W. M. R. Sigwavhulimu, N. A. Milubi and R. F. Ratshi?anga. The aim of this article is to reflect on how these poets reveal the Vhaven?a people’s construction and articulation of selfhood
Appropriating and Exploiting Dreams as Technology in Kgašane’s Narrative of Conversion
No full textThe study of mission history is seldom reported through imaginative literature, drama in particular, and dreams as a technique to justify conversion into Christianity. This article is based on a literary work, Kgašane, named after a Molobedu kinsman who is credited with sowing the seeds of Christianity in Bolobedu and the establishment of the Medingen Mission station of the Berlin Missionary Society. The article examines how the writer, Makwala, uses dreams as a divine revelation; an agency used to convert Kgashane. Though fictional, the narrative concerns itself with a factual tale that has dominated the Lutheran Church in the Northern Transvaal. The dreams represent various instances of multivocality and heteroglossia that this article hopes to unravel. The article uses an Afrocentric approach to the study of dreams, with touches of Jung as part of the theoretical framework. The design of the article is qualitative, using purposively selected literary works as secondary data. The choice of the work, Kgašane, is informed by the topical nature of its content within the Berlin Missionary Society and its application as the first written narrative to explain the story of a local martyr within the Medingen Mission
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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