Matatu – serie

This wide-ranging collection deals with the dynamics of current developments in literature, language, and culture in Kenya and Tanzania. It testifies to a spirited exchange of ideas between writers and academics and promotes transdisciplinary dialogue among several academic fields – anglophone and Swahili studies, literary studies and linguistics, East African and German academic discourse, Kenyan and Tanzanian perspectives. The contributions create a ‘contact zone’ of their own that will generate productive impulses for transdisciplinary research and allow readers to gain new insights into trajectories of Swahili and anglophone writing in East Africa.Topics covered include literary language choice and translation, popular fiction and codeswitching, Swahili hip-hop texts, HIV/AIDS discourse, the advance of ‘Sheng’ and ‘Engsh’ in literary-linguistic space, contemporary women’s literature in Kenya, and special studies of Abdulrazak Gurnah and David G. Maillu.CONTRIBUTORSMIKHAIL D. GROMOV • ABDULRAZAK GURNAH • SISSY HELFF • LILLIAN KAVITI • EUPHRASE KEZILAHABI • SAID A.M. KHAMIS • ALDIN K. MUTEMBEI • YVONNE ADHIAMBO OWUOR • UTA REUSTER–JAHN • ALINA N. RINKANYA • GABRIEL RUHUMBIKA • CLARISSA VIERKE • KYALLO WADI WAMITILA

The notion of ‘landlines’ intimates communication, and is a fairly safe bet as far as most of the writing offered here, critical and creative, is concerned. In a way, of course, the metaphor is a rearguard action, and blows up in one’s face, as it were, suggesting as it does a system of telephonic communication that is no longer typical of Africa, which is at the forefront of cellphone culture. On the more positive side, it is hoped that ‘landlines’ evoke traditional values, permitting the endorsement of communicative standards that are higher than those fostered by the ‘etherial’ chaos of cyberspace.The essays included are overwhelmingly concerned with Nigeria (productive power-house of the continent), covering such writers as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Vincent Egbuson, Buchi Emecheta, D.O. Fágúnwà, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Femi Osofisan (two articles), Wole Soyinka, and Ahmed Yerima. The Nigerian novel (four articles) is roughly matched by studies of Nigerian dramatists (five articles). Also offered are three essays on fiction from outside Nigeria, by Alexander McCall Smith (Botswana), J.M. Coetzee (South Africa), and Marie NDiaye (France), and a treatment of the poetry of Jack Mapanje (Malawi). A further, wide-ranging essay, on cityscapes, discusses novels from Cameroon, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Kenya, as well as paintings from Equatorial Guinea and public placarding in Accra. Social awareness, a firm sense of history and traditional culture, the contemporary challenges of gender and identity-politics, and the perennial theme of endemic corruption are themes that underpin all of the contributions to Matatu 47.Matatu has traditionally fostered the publication of creative writing, and the present issue is no exception, featuring as it does poetry from Trinidad, a play from Nigeria, and short stories from Burundi, Ghana, and Nigeria. The volume closes with in-depth reviews of books on Yorùbá proverbs, Chinua Achebe, and transnational literature.Contributors are: E.B. Adeleke, Tony E. Afejuku, Sophia Akhuemokhan, Niyi Akingbe, Sunday Victor Akwu, Félix Ayoh’Omidire, Dele Bamidele, Gilbert Braspenning, Clare Counihan, Jane Duran, Summer Edward, Pelumi Folajimi, Fausat M. Ibrahim, Isaiah U. Ilo, Ayodele S. Jegede, Mahrukh Khan, Adele King, Adebayo Mosobalaje, Dorothy Odartey–Wellington, H. Oby Okolocha, Harry Olufunwa, Owojecho Omoha, Wumi Raji, Marie–Thérèse Toyi, Flora A. Trebi–Ollennu, Kenneth Usongo, and Lendzemo Constantine Yuka.

The terms ‘creole’ and ‘creolization’ have witnessed a number of significant semantic changes in the course of their history. Originating in the vocabulary associated with colonial expansion in the Americas it had been successively narrowed down to the field of black American culture or of particular linguistic phenomena. Recently ‘creole’ has expanded again to cover the broad area of cultural contact and transformation characterizing the processes of globalization initiated by the colonial migrations of past centuries.The present volume is intended to illustrate these various stages either by historical and/or theoretical discussion of the concept or through selected case studies. The authors are established scholars from the areas of literature, linguistics and cultural studies; they all share a lively and committed interest in the Caribbean area – certainly not the only or even oldest realm in which processes of creolization have shaped human societies, but one that offers, by virtue of its history of colonialization and cross-cultural contact, its most pertinent example. The collection, beyond its theoretical interest, thus also constitutes an important survey of Caribbean studies in Europe and the Americas.As well as searching overview essays, there are– sociolinguistic contributions on the linguistic geography of ‘criollo’ in Spanish America, the Limonese creole speakers of Costa Rica, ‘creole’ language and identity in the Netherlands Antilles and the affinities between Papiamentu and Chinese in Curaçao– ethnohistorical examinations of such topics as creole transgression in the Dominican/Haitian borderland, the Haitian Mandingo and African fundamentalism, creolization and identity in West-Central Jamaica, Afro-Nicaraguans and national identity, and the Creole heritage of Haiti– studies of religion and folk culture, including voodoo and creolization in New York City, the creolization of the “Mami Wata” water spirit, and signifyin(g) processes in New World Anancy tales– a group of essays focusing on the thought of Édouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, and the Créolité writers– and case-studies of artistic expression, including creole identities in Caribbean women’s writing, Port-au-Prince in the Haitian novel, Cynthia McLeod and Astrid Roemer and Surinamese fiction, Afro-Cuban artistic expression, and metacreolization in the fiction of Robert Antoni and Nalo Hopkinson.

Literary representations of the body from Africa as well as narrative strategies of writing the body have only recently begun to receive wider critical attention. The reflections on body, sexuality, and gender in African literary texts brought together in this volume do not consider these three terms as separate entities but instead as closely related to each other, each term questioning the other: bodies and sexualities that are transgressing concepts of gender, gender that is probing body and sexuality. With regard to Africa, the three concepts form a particularly contested space, because body and sexuality are not only subjected to power relations in terms of gender, but also in terms of race, ethnicity, and the legacy of colonialism.While the sections “Gifted Bodies” and “Queered Bodies” show new developments in viewing body and sexuality as creative powers, the sections “Tainted Bodies” and “Violated Bodies” comprise essays that investigate the exposure of the body to physical aggression and other traumatic experiences.Some of the authors treated in detail are: Ama Ata Aidoo, Mariama Bâ, Calixthe Beyala, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Bessie Head, Sheila Kohler, Flora Nwapa, Promise Okekwe, Yvonne Vera; André Brink, J.M. Coetzee, K. Sello Duiker, Nuruddin Farah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Dambudzo Marechera, Arthur Nortje, Ben Okri, Shamim Sarif, and Williams Sassine.Contributors: Akachi Adimora--Ezeigbo, Susan Arndt, Unoma N. Azuah, Elleke Boehmer, Monica Bungaro, Lucy Valerie Graham, Jessica Hemmings, Sigrid G. Köhler, Martina Kopf, Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, Marion Pape, Robert Muponde, Sarah Nuttall, Drew Shaw, Alioune Sow, Cheryl Stobie, Alexie Tcheuyap

African literary theory has recently gained immensely from an emerging multitude of perspectives and scholarly approaches. This volume offers a welcome opportunity to assess trends in the twenty-first century’s discourse on African literature: Twelve different articles treat such lively issues as modernity, nation, civil society, postcolonial theory, and feminism, relating these both to more recent short stories, poems, and novels and to a large variety of texts that have in one way or another acquired canonical status. The first section “Language, Modernity and Modernism” explores ocial and aesthetic figurations of modernity in African literary discourse. “New Readings in African Literature and Postcolonial Theory” offers fresh and critical approaches to this hotly contested area. In the closing section, “Identity, Dissidence and Cultural Practice,” the questions tackled concern the role of literature and the African writer in an increasingly plural and diversifying social environment. Some of the authors treated in detail are: Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Okot p’Bitek, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nuruddin Farah, Nadine Gordimer, Helon Habila, Kojo Laing, Alexander Kanengoni, Farida Karodia, Lewis Nkosi, Flora Nwapa, Ike Oguine, Ben Okri, and Wole Soyinka.

This collection of essays on Zimbabwean literature brings together studies of both Rhodesian and Zimbabwean literature, spanning different languages and genres. It charts the at times painful process of the evolution of Rhodesian/ Zimbabwean identities that was shaped by pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial realities. The hybrid nature of the society emerges as different writers endeavour to make sense of their world.Two essays focus on the literature of the white settler. The first distils the essence of white settlers’ alienation from the Africa they purport to civilize, revealing the delusional fixations of the racist mindset that permeates the discourse of the “white man’s burden” in imperial narratives. The second takes up the theme of alienation found in settler discourse, showing how the collapse of the white supremacists’ dream when southern African countries gained independence left many settlers caught up in a profound identity crisis.Four essays are devoted to Ndebele writing. They focus on the praise poetry composed for kings Mzilikazi and Lobengula; the preponderance of historical themes in Ndebele literature; the dilemma that lies at the heart of the modern Ndebele identity; and the fossilized views on gender roles found in the works of leading Ndebele novelists, both female and male.The essays on English-language writing chart the predominantly negative view of women found in the fiction of Stanley Nyamfukudza, assess the destabilization of masculine identities in post-colonial Zimbabwe, evaluate the complex vision of life and “reality” in Charles Mungoshi’s short stories as exemplified in the tragic isolation of many of his protagonists, and explore Dambudzo Marechera’s obsession with isolated, threatened individuals in his hitherto generally neglected dramas.The development of Shona writing is surveyed in two articles: the first traces its development from its origins as a colonial educational tool to the more critical works of the post-1980 independence phase; the second turns the spotlight on written drama from 1968 when plays seemed divorced from the everyday realities of people’s lives to more recent work which engages with corruption and the perversion of the moral order.The volume also includes an illuminating interview with Irene Staunton, the former publisher of Baobab Books and now of Weaver Press.

The swelling flows of migration from Africa towards Europe have aroused interest not only in the socio-political consequences of the migrants’ insistent appeals to ‘fortress Europe’ but also in the artistic integration of African migrants into the cultural world of Europe. While in recent years the creative output of Africans living in Europe has received attention from the media and in academia, little critical consideration has been given to African migrants’ modes of narration and the manner in which these modes give expression to, or are an expression of, their creators’ transcultural realities. Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe responds to this need for reflection by examining the manner in which migrants compose and negotiate their Euro-African affiliations in their narratives. The book brings together scholars in the fields of literary and art criticism, cultural studies, and anthropology for an extensive interdisciplinary exchange on the specific modes of narration displayed in Euro-African literatures, the visual arts, and cinema, as well as offering ethnographic case studies. The result is a wide range of reflections on how African artists, writers, and ordinary people living in Europe experience and explore their transcultural and/or postcolonial environments, and how their experiences and explorations in turn contribute to the construction of modern Euro-African life-worlds.

Often labelled ‘rituals’ or ‘customs’, male circumcision and female excision are also irreversible amputations of human genitalia, with disastrous and at times life-long consequences for both males and females. However, scholars and activists alike have been diffident about making a case for symmetry between these two practices. Fearful Symmetries investigates the sociological, medical, legal, and religious justifications for male circumcision and female excision while it points to various symmetries and asymmetries in their discursive representation in cultural anthropology, law, medicine, and literature.Experts have been convened in the above fields – SAMI ALDEEB ABU-SAHLIEH, DOMINIQUE ARNAUD, LAURENCE COX, ROBERT DARBY, ANNE–MARIE DAUPHIN–TINTURIER, TOBE LEVIN, MICHAEL SINGLETON, J. STEVEN SVOBODA – along with first-person testimonies from J.K. BRAYTON, SAFAA FATHY, KOFFI KWAHULÉ, and ALEX WANJALA. The volume covers various genres such as sacred writings, literary and philosophical texts, websites, songs, experiential vignettes, cartoons, and film as well as a vast geographical spectrum – from Algeria, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Kenya, and Somalia to the then Congo and contemporary Northern Zambia; from Syria to Australia and the United States. In addressing many variants of excision and circumcision as well as other practices such as the elongation of the labia, and various forms of circumcision in Jewish, Islamic, and African contexts, Fearful Symmetries provides an unprecedented, panoptical view of both practices.

Twenty years after the fall of apartheid, South Africa is still struggling with its traumatic past. In this interdisciplinary collection of interviews, prominent South African novelists, psychologists, and academics reflect on the issues of trauma, memory, and narrative.The authors André Brink, Maxine Case, Sindiwe Magona, Susan Mann, and Zoë Wicomb recount their personal experiences of writing about trauma, discussing its literary-aesthetic relevance and potential. The psychologists Don Foster, Ashraf Kagee, Pumla Gobodo–Madikizela, and Miriam Fredericks reflect on traditional Western conceptualizations of trauma and the need to extend and even re-write trauma theory from a postcolonial perspective. In the third part, Neville Alexander and Alex Boraine look back on the achievements and shortcomings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, describe the state of the nation, and underscore the need to relocate trauma structurally and historically. Annie Gagiano, Helen Moffett, Tlhalo Raditlhalo, and Chris van der Merwe show how trauma theory can open new horizons and create a new vocabulary for literary criticism by tackling issues of gender, representation, and genre.All in all, these interviews provide fascinating insights into the present state of the South African soul, its current hopes and anxieties. Rather than claiming final answers to a complex and controversial issue, this volume aims at opening up debate and making a contribution to the already existing discussion about trauma in the South African context.

The coverage displayed here is predominantly on sub-Saharan literary production, and with a – perhaps systemic – focus on important aspects of political history and socio-political structures (including marxian analyses of the ‘public sphere’) and such crucial arenas as religious discipline, the tension between tradition and modernity, ecological awareness, family, and gender.Most of the discussions are traditionally content-oriented, but there are at least two essays (on Soyinka’s Aké and on Amma Darko’s The Housemaid) that attempt to come to grips narratologically with the medium of prose fiction itself. A quartet of essays with a more general purview – including a refreshing demontage of exclusive obeisance to (Western) écriture – is followed by a section on poets, some canonical, others emergent: Ogaga Ifowodo, Jack Mapanje, Olu Oguibe, Tanure Ojaide, Okot p’Bitek, Wole Soyinka, Ladé Wosornu. Essays on fiction cover general topics (women’s fiction; political writing in Nigeria; the nightmare of Biafra), and landmark texts both anglophone (Chinua Achebe, Amma Darko, Festus Iyayi, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka), francophone (Mariama Bâ, Mongo Beti, and Ousmane Sembène), and – a novum for Matatu – hispanophone (Donato Ndongo). The theatre section has essays on Ama Ata Aidoo, Zakes Mda, Anne Tanyi–Tang, Soyinka, and Ahmed Yerima, as well as Ngũgĩ and Mugo.We are especially pleased to be able to offer accomplished original poetry, short stories, and a complete drama text. Four comprehensive essay-reviews (on literary criticism, cinema, graphic art, and traditional African society) round out this issue.

This issue of Matatu offers cutting-edge studies of contemporary Nigerian literature, a selection of short fiction and poetry, and a range of essays on various themes of political, artistic, socio-linguistic, and sociological interest. Contributions on theatre focus on the fool as dramatic character and on the feminist theatre of exclusion (Tracie Uto-Ezeajugh). Several essays examine the poetry of Hope Eghagha and the Delta writer Tanure Ojaide. Studies of the prose fiction of Chinua Achebe, Tayo Olafioye, Uwem Akpan, and Chimamanda Adichie are complemented by a searching exposé of the exploitation of Ayi Kwei Armah on the part of the metropolitan publishing world and by a recent interview with the poet Jumoko Verissimo. Traditional culture is considered in articles on historical sites in Ile-Ife, witchcraft in Etsako warfare, and the Awonmili women’s collective in Awka. Linguistically oriented studies consider political speeches, drug advertising, and Yoruba anthroponyms. Performance-focused essays focus on Emirate court spectacle (durbar), Yoruba drum poetry in contemporary media, gospel music, indigenization and islamization of military music, and the role of the filmmaker. Contributions of broader relevance deal with Islamic components of Nigerian culture, the decline of the educational system, and the socio-economic impact of acquisitive culture.

Besides searching book reviews, an interview with the writer Tijan M. Sallah, a full report on the 6th Ethiopian International Film Festival, and a stimulating selection of creative writing (including a showcase of recent South African poetry), this issue of Matatu offers general essays on African women’s poetry, anglophone Cameroonian literature, and Zimbabwean fiction of the Gukurahundi period, along with studies of J.M. Coetzee, Kalpana Lalji, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Aminata Sow Fall, Wole Soyinka, and Yvonne Vera.The bulk of this issue, however, is given over to coverage of cultural and sociological topics from North Africa to the Cape, ranging from cultural identity in contemporary North Africa, two contributions on Kenyan naming ceremonies and initiation songs, and three studies of the function of Shona and Ndebele proverbs, to national history in Zimbabwean autobiography, traditional mourning dress of the Akans of Ghana, and the precolonial origins of traditional leadership in South Africa.Contributors: Jude Aigbe Agho, Nasima Ali, Uchenna Bethrand Anih, Aboneh Ashagrie, Francis T. Cheo, Gordon Collier, Abdel Karim Daragmeh, Geoffrey V. Davis, Nozizwe Dhlamini, Kola Eke, Phyllis Forster, Frances Hardie, James Hlongwana, Pede Hollist, John M. Kobia, Samuelson Freddie Khunou, Mea Lashbrooke, María J. López, Brian Macaskill, Evans Mandova, Richard Sgadreck Maposa, Michael Mazuru, Corwin L. Mhlahlo. Zanoxolo Mnqobi Mkhize, Kobus Moolman, Thamsanqa Moyo, Felix M. Muchomba, Collins Kenga Mumbo, Tabitha Wanja Mwangi, Bhekezakhe Ncube, Christopher Joseph Odhiambo, Ode S. Ogede, H. Oby Okolocha, Wumi Raji, Dosia Reichhardt, Rashi Rohatgi, Kamal Salhi, Ekremah Shehab, Faith Sibanda, John A Stotesbury, Nick Mdika Tembo, Kenneth Usongo, Wellington Wasosa.

Drama for Life, University of the Witwatersrand, aims “to enhance the capacity of young people, theatre practitioners and their communities to take responsibility for the quality of their lives in the context of HIV and AIDS in Africa. We achieve this through participatory and experiential drama and theatre that is appropriate to current social realities but draws on the rich indigenous knowledge of African communities.”Collected here is a representative set of research essays written to facilitate dialogue across disciplines on the role of drama and theatre in HIV/AIDS education, prevention, and rehabilitation. Reflections are offered on present praxis and the media, as well as on innovative research approaches in an interdisciplinary paradigm, along with HIV/AIDS education via performance poetry and other experimental methods such as participant-led workshops.Topics include: the call for a move away from the binaries of much critical pedagogy; a project, undertaken in Ghana and Malawi with people living with AIDS, to create and present theatre; the contradictions between global and local expectations of applied drama and theatre methodology, in relation to folk media, participation, and syncretism. Three case studies report on mapping as a creative device for playmaking; the methodology of Themba Interactive Theatre; and applying drama with women living with HIV in the Zandspruit Informal Settlement.The essays validate the importance of play in both energizing those in positions of hopelessness and enabling the distancing essential to observe one’s situation and enable change. The book stimulates the ongoing investigation of current practice and extends an invitation to further develop innovative approaches.

This second volume of research emanating from Drama for Life, University of the Witwatersrand, explores the transformative and healing qualities of the arts in South Africa, Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. Essays on arts for social change illuminate the difficulties of conflict-resolution (in war-scarred countries, tertiary institutions, and child-offender programmes) to promote broader understanding of diversity and difference. Further essays focus on arts and healing, in which music therapy diagnoses, repairs, sustains, and enhances collective health. Intervention theatre – in prisons, fieldwork, and the ethics and politics of storytelling – is examined as a basis for collaboration with children and youth. The musical theatre traditions of Botswana’s San people are investigated, as well as the benefits of arts counselling with educators to alleviate psycho-social stress in classrooms. Important insights are provided into ways of applying the arts and raise questions of ethics, effectiveness, and apposite usage.Also treated is the role of aesthetics in the effectiveness of art, particularly in social contexts. Included are overviews of the ways in which the aesthetics of drama have changed over the past four decades and of the cohesive potential of the arts. How can arts practitioners engage in inter-cultural dialogue to facilitate healing? The energy and inventiveness of the playful mode engender new ways of contending with social issues, whereby the focus is on how theatre affects an audience and on how communication in applied theatre and drama can reach audiences more effectively.These essays provide an insight into the application of the arts for transformation across Africa. Through their juxtaposition in this volume they speak to the variety and purposes of arts approaches and offer fresh perspectives on and to the field.

This is the third collection produced by members of a six-year research project, funded by the NUFU (Norwegian Programme for Development, Research, and Education), whose concern was to find, preserve, and analyse ‘orature’ – spoken forms of all kinds, both their unique qualities and their equivalence in importance to ‘literature’. A major focus was the ways in which forms of orature can be made relevant to the demands of rapidly developing nations faced with insistent problems (HIV/AIDS, administrative needs, shifts in social and familial structure, the changing roles of women).Both innovative and archival, the essays explore older legends and modern performances to outline their positive and dynamic contribution to a protean society. Some contributors address the ways in which traditional forms may be adapted: e.g., via new media to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to educate children in social and individual responsibility. Traditional narratives and children’s songs can function to counter cannibalism and child sacrifice.Less dark aspects of contemporary society also receive attention. Traditional patterns of leadership are adapted to today’s conditions, especially by offering women models in the form of earlier figures and their actions. Two essays analyse the use of proverbs in the speeches of political candidates and discussing traditional music festivals as celebrations of traditional kingship and rule. Others examine the nature and operation of specific forms of orature – riddles and their subtle alteration according to performer and audience; concepts of heroism; stories of origin; and variants of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. These sensitive analyses are framed by pieces from members of the research project in Norway and Uganda.