University of KwaZulu-Natal Press – förlag

In this book, Adrian Koopman describes the complex relationship between birds, the Zulu language and Zulu culture. A number of chapters look at the underlying meaning of bird names, and here we will find that the Zulu name of the Goliath Heron means ‘what gives birth to baby crocodiles’, the dikkop (umbangaqhwa) means ‘what causes frost’, and the African Hoopoe is a party-goer who wears a colourful blanket. The book goes further than just Zulu names, exploring the underlying meanings of bird names from other South African languages and languages from Central and East Africa. Here we find birds with names that translate as ‘cool-porridge’, ‘kiss-banana-flower’ and ‘waiter-at-the-end-of-the furrow’.A focus on Zulu traditional oral literature details the roles birds have played in Zulu praise poetry (including the praise poems of certain birds themselves) and in proverbs, riddles and children’s games. Also considered is traditional bird lore, examining the role played by various species as omens and portents, as indicators of bad luck and evil, as forecasters of rain and storm, and as harbingers of the seasons. Here we see that the Bateleur Eagle (ingqungqulu) is linked to war, the Southern Ground Hornbill (insingizi) to thunder and heavy rain, the Red-chested Cuckoo (uphezukokhono) to the start of the ploughing season, and the Jacobin Cuckoo (inkanku) to the start of summer.Zulu Bird Names and Bird Lore discusses the Zulu Bird Name Project, a series of Zulu bird name workshops held between 2013 and 2017 with Zulu-speaking bird guides designed to confirm (or otherwise) all previously recorded Zulu names for birds, while at the same time devising new names for those without previously recorded names. The result has been a list of species-specific names for all birds in the Zulu-speaking region. Finally, the book turns to the role such new bird names can play in conservation education and in avi-tourism.

In this book Adrian Koopman details the complex relationship between plants, the Zulu language and Zulu culture.Zulu plant names do not just identify plants, they tell us a lot more about the plant, or how it is perceived or used in Zulu culture. For example, the plant name umhlulambazo (what defeats the axe’ tells us that this is a tree with hard, dense wood, and that usondelangange (come closer so I can embrace you) is a tree with large thorns that snag the passer-by. In a similar vein, both umakuphole (let it cool down) and icishamlilo (put out the fire) refer to plants that are used medicinally to treat fevers and inflammations. Plants used as the base of love-charms have names that are particularly colourful, such as unginakile (she has noticed me), uvelabahleke (appear and they smile) and the wonderfully named ungcingci-wafika-umntakwethu (how happy I am that you have arrived, my sweetheart!).And then there are those plant names that are just plain intriguing, if not mystifying: umakhandakansele (the heads of Mr Ratel), isandlasonwabu (hand of a chameleon), intombikayibhinci (the girl does not wear clothes) and ukhuningomile (piece of firewood, I am thirsty).

Solomon, Zulu king from 1913 to 1933, devoted himself to fostering Zulu unity and instilling an enduring sense of nationhood. Particularly important was his central position in the first Inkatha organization which was founded in 1924 and did not outlive him. Solomon was also a focal point for the trade union and other political movements, his influence spanning the increasing disparity between rural and urban Zulu. In this book, Cope traces the career of Solomon from hopeful youth to frustration, disillusion and collapse. In focusing on Solomon as a cornerstone in the founding of 20th-century Zulu nationalism, this book offers insights into its present manifestations.

On Pietermaritzburg station in 1893 a young Indian lawyer, newly arrived in South Africa, was ejected from a train to Pretoria for insisting on his right to travel first class. It was to the cold night hours spent in the waiting room that Gandhi himself traced the genesis of his great resolve - to fight injustice by non-violent means. Crucial as this episode was, it was but one of the manifold influences which shaped the Gandhi-to-be during his sojourn in South Africa. This title arose from a conference held a century later, in 1993, at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, to reaffirm the South African Gandhi. It traces some of the influences, which effected his transformation from an unsuccessful and insecure young man to a mature political and spiritual leader ready to carve his niche in history after his return to India in 1914. The Mahatma's moral vision, of a way to resolve conflict and right injustice without resorting to violence, remains relevant to post-apartheid South Africa and to the world. It also remains a difficult vision to grasp; but a better understanding of his vital formative years will perhaps help to make it more accessible.

Founded by MK Gandhi early in his career, the Natal Indian Congress is one of the oldest political organizations in South Africa. This book traces its course through colonial anti-Asiatic feeling, past apartheid, and into the new democracy.

Joan Metelerkamp has perfected a voice which weaves its repetitions and hesitations into a powerful tool, revealing how love and illumination have to be struggled for in daily routine and tedium. Into the day breaking describes a domestic world face to face with the dry contours and harsh economics of a small sawmill community in the southern Cape, and traces those not always visible connections that tie us to each other and to the earth. Metelerkamp is always meticulous in her search for the exact word and image to serve her quest for a new language: I say to chattering consciousness: walk; take your body through pines on pale clay leave me to look up at the mountains the bush, the blue - I say to the willing mind move over, move let me be - I am waiting for something like some Word, some words, to take me -

Drum was launched as a popular magazine in the 1950s and quickly came to reflect the image and interests of the urban African. Its reports of the Defiance Campaign, the Congress of the People and the Treason Trial shared column-space with stories of soccer, sex and sin. This combination of yellow-press sensation and social concern gave rise to the short story by black South African writers, and several of Drum's writers established themselves as important figures in South African literature: Es'kia Mphahlele, Can Themba, Richard Rive, James Matthews, Nat Nakasa and Casey Motsisi.This anthology presents a selection of more than 90 stories that appeared in Drum. They depict the danger, the poverty and the spurious glamour of Sophiatown, where the New African - the tsotsi, the jazz musician, the journalist and the writer - affirmed identity and style and refused to submit to the government's determination to 'retribalize'.This second edition (third reprint) contains a new foreword by John Matshikiza in addition to the essay by Michael Chapman, which addresses the significance of the magazine and puts it into historical perspective: 'Most of the writers were concerned with more than just telling a story. They were concerned with what was happening to their people and, in consequence, with moral and social questions.'

Lesego Rampolokeng is a poet and performance maestro, and the author of 12 books, including two plays and three novels. He has collaborated with visual artists, playwrights, film-makers, theatre and opera producers, poets and musicians. His no-holds-barred style, radical political-aesthetic perspective and instantly recognisable voice have brought him a unique place in South African literature.Rampolokeng’s third novel Bird-Monk Seding is a stark picture of life in a rural township two decades into South Africa’s democracy. Listening and observing in the streets and taverns, narrator Bavino Sekete, often feeling desperate himself, is thrown back to his own violent childhood in Soweto. To get through, he turns to his pantheon of jazz innovators and radical writers.This place is called SEDING, short for Leseding, place of light. Quite ironic given the darkness throbbing at its core and spilling out bubbling in the blackest rage when least expected. Surrounded by farmland in all directions, it is a settlement of about 700 households crammed in tiny structures. Average 7 souls per hovel. It used to be made up of ramshackle corrugated iron shacks that seemed tossed down regardless of aesthetics. Then the new administration’s housing programme kicked in.Man in the bush in quest of Bosman’s ghost. Finding AWB rabidity. Tranquillity so deep it kills. Hate-hounds. Beneath the surface quiet, such racist rotten-heartedness. & children dying. Starvation abounds. Raw sewage in the water supply. Crap in the taps. Skin matters. Ancient white beards sexing black teens for tins, food exchange. The soul’s impoverishment. The starved get their humanity halved. And weekends of sex-tourism. Alcoholic stares everywhere. Deep fear too.

Gcina Mhlophe is a poet, playwright, performer and storyteller. In this retrospective collection, she shares her personal journey through the social and political landscapes of the 1980s, with its recollected moments of struggle and transformation along the way. Written in a variety of styles and voices, ranging from anecdotal memory to historical moment to folklore tradition, these simply presented poems and stories are by turns funny, touching, chilling, thought-provoking and absorbing. ""Love Child"" is a collection for the new millennium generation. It is valuable not just for the deeply-felt personal and political insights is has to offer, but for the accessible ease with which it manages to capture the seminal moments of black South African history in the preserving amber of the author's personal recollection.

Have You Seen Zandile? is a wonderful South African resource, still as fresh and absorbing as when it was first written. Perfectly scripted, and with Gcina Mhlophe’s sure instinct for stagecraft, it recounts the very personal story of Zandile, who is snatched away from her grandmother’s loving care and taken to live with her matriarchal family in rural Transkei. Moving, funny and convincing, full of Zandile’s shrewd, youthful insights, the play offers an illuminating window onto the 1960s world that it depicts, with its issues of white dominance, rural hardship and black female repression.Have You Seen Zandile? is already an established favourite in performance circles, and is fast becoming a South African classic.

This is a collection of poems, in English, by over 50 South African poets (and some Zimbabweans), with some contemporary translations from /Xam, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Xitsonga and Zulu. All the poems were published in the poetry journal ""New Coin"", between 1989 and 1999. These poems were written over a period which included the brutal last years of apartheid, the release of Mandela, the country's first democratic elections, and the disturbing trends of the post-Mandela era. During this time the violence of previous decades continued (although in different forms), while the poor became poorer. For poets, it was a time of innovation. Music, street rhythms, and international influences were opening up the vocabulary. Many of the poems were unnoticed when they were first published. Collected in this anthology, they demonstrate the aesthetic diversity and truthtelling power of South African poetry.

When the African National Congress inherited an economy in 1994 that had been shrinking for 5 years, and that had not grown in per capita terms for almost 15, it was also one of the most unequal societies in the world. The government deficit had risen to 9.5 per cent of GDP, and inflation had been in double figures for 20 years. How could an organisation with no previous experience of governing and a history of socialist rhetoric accomplish both a peaceful transition to democracy and set South Africa on a path toward sustained economic growth and development? How did they do it and where are they going? These are the questions addressed in this book. Very little has been written on South African economic reform since 1994, and there are no booklength studies at all. This study, written by an insider who is a former economic historian, offers an insight into the circumstances under which the policies were developed, implemented and reviewed, as well as a thorough study of the outcomes. South Africa today enjoys an economy which is booming and this is providing support for expanded options required for the delivery of social policy goals.

In 1906, the authorities in the Colony of Natal put down, with great loss of life, an uprising that has become known as the Zulu or Bhambatha rebellion. Accounts have tended to concentrate on Bhambatha, the man who led the guerrilla war in the Nkandla forest, but this book shifts the focus to the Maphumulo area where two famous chiefs led their people in violent resistance to the colonial militia. This account also goes beyond the physical conflict. It examines the rituals that preceded it and the life and death struggle in the courts which followed as the colonial authorities sought to make an example of those who, they alleged, had used not just African weapons but African medicine and superstition/religion to drive the white man out of Africa.

This folklore story collection offers a feast of enjoyment for young South African readers. Ten enchanting tales, steeped in the imaginative richness of African storytelling: Where did the first stories in the world come from? How did little Tortoise win the respect of all the other animals? Who was Nanana Bo Sele Sele and what happened when she built her house in the middle of the animals' road? Why was young Crocodile so determined to get hold of Monkey's heart? Told with inimitable aplomb by South Africa's most popular performance storyteller and illustrated by a lively selection of KwaZulu-Natal artistic talent, Stories of Africa is a classic to delight new readers across the multicultural spectrum.

Lost city of the Kalahari is the author's hitherto unpublished account of the odd adventure. Recounted by hand-drawn maps, provisions lists, photographs, 8mm film stills and other fascinating memorabilia from the period, this travelogue brings to life the quirky cast of characters, rough discomforts of the journey, tedium of unvarying landscape, vast deserts vistas, and encounters with 'wild Bushmen' and other Kalahari people.

It is rare that a story comes along that sweeps you into its heart. Painstakingly handwritten over a three year period, it is the life story of William Zulu, a linocut artist, highly acclaimed for his evocative art-works. Having contracted spinal TB as a baby, William underwent misplaced corrective surgery to his spine in his late teens which left him paralysed and permanently wheelchair bound. William's story is no victim's litany. It recounts with zest and humour the events of his life, his unfolding artistic development and the world of deep rural Africa in which he is rooted. His artist's eye paints in the details of his world with vivid observation. This book is full of disarming lapses, diverting anecdotes - such as how he acquired a car in order to travel to Jo'burg in the hope of finding there a woman who might be more willing to love someone disabled. Weaving through the personal narrative is a strong political consciousnesss that sketches the fortunes of a country in violent transition, wracked by the ethnic rivalries that overshadowed every aspect of black life in the 1980s. William Zulu's writing is informed and articulate. He has an instinctive grasp of storytelling with pace. He conveys the unrelenting hardship of rural life and offers a fascinating window to the world of traditional Africa - with all its superstition, patriarchal rigidity and prejudices on the one hand, and its humour, shrewd observance and innovative survival strategies on the other. Reading his work, one is left with a strong sense of the battles for survival that pit ingenuity against lack of resources - and of the redemptive power of 'ubuntu' demonstrated in the kindness of strangers of all races, who extend helping hand and heart in the midst of penury. Spring Will Come is a story that lives up to its title.

Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History connects the black literary archive in South Africa - from the nineteenth-century writing of Tiyo Soga to Zakes Mda in the twenty-first century - to international postcolonial studies via the theory of transculturation, a position adapted from the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. Attwell provides a welcome complication of the linear black literary history - literature as a reflection of the process of political emancipation - that is so often presented. He focuses on cultural transactions in a series of key moments, and argues that black writers in South Africa have used print culture to map themselves onto modernity as contemporary subjects, to negotiate, counteract, re-invent and recast their positioning within colonialism, apartheid and in the context of democracy.

This wonderful collection of stories, narrated by South Africa's most popular performance storyteller, in her inimitable style, is drawn from her well known book ""Stories of Africa"". In addition, there are a number of songs, most of them written by Gcina Mhlophe - with the exception of ""Imfene emthini - Baboon in the tree"" (which is a well known traditional children's song). For the vocals on this CD, Gcina is joined by her daughter, Nomakhwezi Becker, as well as members of the Children's Choir from 'Entakemazolo H.P. School in Hammarsdale (a rural area in KwaZulu-Natal. In Gcina's words: ""I love sharing my songs and stories with others. But my favourite way of relating them is the ancient way of my people - telling them face to face, in front of a live audience. Oh the thrill of seeing faces reacting to what you are saying, of feeling the energy go from the storyteller and back again! I hope that this CD will carry some of that thrill to you, the listener, and that you, too, will feel a story or a song awaken inside you and find yourself wishing to tell it to others. Yes you! Because every living being has a story to tell. So let's keep passing on the magic

The beauty and fashion world attracts enormous interest. Everybody knows who Naomi Campbell is, but few know who South Africa's local Naomi Campbells were (and are)! This title is an extraordinary mix of glamour, nostalgia and social analysis. It takes the reader on a journey through our South African history and politics from the unusual perspective of the beauty industry. Backed by a photo gallery of classic icons from the 50s, 60s and 70s to the present, it celebrates the inspirational role of beautiful and courageous Black women, especially models and beauty queens. It also looks at the business of beauty and recounts the struggles and successes of Black practitioners trying to make it in this competitive sector. The author is someone who herself was a leading model of the 1980s. Nakedi Ribane co-owned one of the very few Black modeling agencies of note in South Africa. She is ideally placed to offer a fascinating 'behind-the-scenes' look at one of the most under-rated yet influential industries of our time.

Carlo Michelstaedter (1887-1910) committed suicide at the age of 23, days after completing this devastating treatise on the human condition and the course of Western civilisation. This work was deemed to be so radically nihilistic, or so radically idealistic, that publishers shied away from it for decades. This new English translation brings to life the heartfelt text of the precocious Italian-Jewish writer, poet and painter, who - refusing to compromise with life - remained loyal to his ideal of a perfect world. Keenly aware of the inevitable catastrophe that the values of his time held in store for humanity, Carlo Michelstaedter, with ""Persuasion and Rhetoric"", also provides a pithy - albeit idiosyncratic - synthesis of the major currents of philosophical thought that held sway at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its searing honesty and mordant critique have lost none of their immediacy, almost a century after the work was completed as a university thesis. The reader is challenged to re-examine the dull norms, conventions and patterns of thought all too readily adopted as humanity willingly, pathetically, courts its own demise. And yet, amidst this gloomy vision, Michelstaedter forces the reader to re-appraise the here-and-now, to summon the courage to live 'a life worthy of being lived'.

This study of mental illness and its cures in colonial and immediately post-Union Natal and Zululand investigates Westernised treatments of insanity at the Natal Government Asylum, as well as less well-known routes back to health via African and Indian modes of healing. Julie Parle writes of the amandiki, bands of frenzied women who explained their illness as caused by possession by a male ancestor. She discusses quacks, medicines for hysteria and drunkenness, faith healers of different kinds, and suicide in all communities. Finally, she considers how mental health services became centralised under state control from Pretoria, with important consequences for the future of psychiatry and mental health services in modern South Africa.

Stories with magic inspire us to believe in hope and dreams. How will anyone recognise 'real life' miracles if they have not learned about magic from stories? ""Our Story Magic"" is a collection of enchanting and compelling tales written by Gcina Mhlophe. The illustrations are by artists from KwaZulu-Natal. Read and share these stories with the love that went into the writing of them. Some of the magical titles in this collection include: ""Sun And The Moon""; ""Queen Of The Tortoises""; ""Moonlight Magic""; ""Dad Is Eating Ashes""; ""The Singing Dog' Jojela's Wooden Spoon""; and, ""Sunset Colours"".

Remembering the rebellion narrates and commemorates the Zulu or Bhambatha rebellion of 1906 with riveting anecdotes, maps and illustrations, many of them previously unpublished. The people of KwaZulu-Natal, already suffering the material and social consequences of colonialism, were further provoked by the imposition of a poll tax and the official determination to treat all protests against the tax as defiance. The resistance that followed was put down with uncompromising violence - but the memory of rebellion became an inspiration to those who continued the struggle against racial exploitation in South Africa. This is the centenary year of the rebellion. When President Thabo Mbeki bestowed National orders on 28 South Africans recently, the order Mendi for bravery in Gold was awarded posthumously to Bhambatha Ka Mancinza Zondi for his bravery in leading a rebellion against the repressive laws of the colonialist government and for laying down his life for the cause of justice.

With the end of apartheid and the exciting, but elusive, advent of a new nation, South Africa is witness to the emergence of a new generation of oral historians whose aim is to develop a broader, more inclusive and culturally sensitive understanding of the South African past. In a country still wounded by a legacy of racial discrimination, the retrieving of oral memories is a task more urgent than ever.""Oral History in a Wounded Country"" shows how the cultural, political, socio-economic and intellectual evolutions that gave birth to South Africa as we know it today affect the oral history process. It seeks to help practitioners, whether they use oral history as one technique among others to gain a better knowledge of the past, or envisage oral history as an academic discipline in its own right, to reflect critically on their practice and find better ways of handling the interview process. The challenge is to appreciate the complexity of South Africa's diverse histories, while being attentive to the dynamics of the interview and their effect on both interviewers' and interviewees' sense of identity.

Much public historical mythology asserts that Chief Albert Luthuli, former President of the African National Congress (ANC), launched the armed struggle upon his return to South Africa after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. This misinterpretation sparks what is arguably one of the most relevant and controversial historical debates in South Africa. Due to Luthuli’s domestic and international prominence and impeccable moral character, liberation struggle icons, political parties and politicians justify in part their past actions and their contemporary relevance upon a contrived historical memory. Often that memory is not compatible with the archival record. Contrary to a nationalist inspired historical perspective, in this book Scott Couper argues that Luthuli did not support the initiation of violence in December 1961. Luthuli’s ecclesiastical tradition, Congregationalism, embedded within him the primacy of democracy, education, sacrificial service, multiracialism and egalitarianism, propelling him to the heights of political leadership. However, these same seminal emphases rendered Luthuli obsolete as a political leader within an increasingly radicalised, desperate and violent environment. While Christian faith fuelled his political success, it engendered the inertia for his irrelevance following the ANC’s resort to violence. By not supporting the ANC’s armed movement, Luthuli’s political career proved to be ‘bound by faith’.

How To Be a Real Gay takes its title from a series of workshops organised by gay activists in the small town of Ermelo, South Africa. Focusing on everyday practices of gayness in hair salons, churches, taverns, and meeting halls, the book explores the ambivalent space that homosexuality occupies in the newly democratic South Africa: on the one hand, protection of gay rights is a litmus test for the country's constitutional democracy, yet on the other, homosexuality is seen to threaten traditional values, customs, and beliefs.The book is the first to emerge that recounts how gays in small-town South Africa negotiate this difficult symbolic terrain. How do discourses on international gay and lesbian social movements and gay equality hang together with local views on identity, gender, and relationships? Why do small-town gays harness fashion, style, and glamour in the making and sustaining of identity? How do economically vulnerable gays organise, access resources, and create networks linking small towns to cities? How To Be a Real Gay delves to the core of what it means to be 'the other' in contexts of risk, exclusion, and inclusion. In its richly textured way, the book also speaks to the tremendous capacity of gays to imagine and create life-worlds in a harsh environment.

Being at ‘Home’ stimulates careful conversation about some of the most pressing issues facing higher education institutions in South Africa today – race, transformation and institutional culture.While there are many reasons to be despondent about the current state of affairs in the South African tertiary sector, this collection is intended as an invitation for the reader to see these problems as opportunities for rethinking the very idea of what it is to be a university in contemporary South Africa. It is also, more generally, an invitation for us to think about what it is that the intellectual project should ultimately be about, and to question certain prevalent trends that affect – or, perhaps, infect – the current global academic system. This book will be of interest to all those who are concerned about the state of the contemporary university, both in South Africa and beyond.

The cross-cultural usage of a particular cloth type – blueprint – is central to South African cultural history. Known locally as seshoeshoe or isishweshwe, among many other localised names, South African blueprint originated in the Far East and East Asia. Adapted and absorbed by the West, blueprint in Africa was originally associated with trade, coercion, colonisation, Westernisation, religious conversion and even slavery, but residing within its hues and patterns was a resonance that endured. The cloth came to reflect histories of hardship, courage and survival, but it also conveyed the taste and aesthetic predilections of its users, preferences often shared across racial and cultural divides. In its indigenisation, isishweshwe has subverted its former history and alien origins and has come to reflect the authority of its users and their culture, conveying resilience, innovation and adaptation and above all a distinctive South Africanness.In this beautifully illustrated book Juliette Leeb-du Toit traces the origins of the cloth, its early usage and cultural adaptations, and its emerging regional, cultural and aesthetic significance. In examining its usage and current national significance, she highlights some of the salient features associated with histories of indigenisation.

Is crime fiction the new ‘political novel’ in South Africa? Why did the apartheid censors disapprove of crime fiction more than any other genre? Crime fiction continues to be a burgeoning literary category in post-apartheid South Africa, with more new authors, titles and themes emerging every year. This book is the first comprehensive survey of South African crime fiction. It provides an overview of this phenomenally successful literary category, and places it within its wider social and historical context. The authors specialise in both literary studies and print culture, and this combination informs a critical analysis and publishing history of South African crime fiction from the nineteenth century to the present day. The book provides a literary lineage while considering different genres and sub-genres, as well as specific themes such as gender and eco-criticism. The inclusion of a detailed bibliography of crime fiction since the 1890s makes A Survey of South African Crime Fiction an indispensable teaching and study aid.