African-Language Literatures. Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi
for though it will recycle much existing material it will also always exceed it in one way or another’ (2000: 9–10). These comments are applicable to much of isiZulu literature and black television drama. The revisiting of many themes in television dramas may be seen as recapitulation, but the broadcast media versions, established much later than the print version, always introduce something new that speaks to the topical, the current and the sensational in society.
Barber’s approach also considers expressions of ‘critical creative metalinguistic consciousness’ such as proverbs and epithets. These paralinguistic aspects are at work even in the briefest and most mundane of everyday utterances. Not only are these inherently aesthetic, the consideration of these linguistic features is central, as Barber sees them, not only as the seeds of all the great literary genres but also as their summation. These verbal formulations are mental, archaeological sites that have found ways of being repeatedly cited and of being relevantly applied in contemporary textual productions. These metalinguistic features are encapsulated in a ‘discourse of the axiom’ as Barber calls it. Barber’s (2000: 267) view is that the proverbial sayings in a society constantly act as authoritative, moral codes and can always be used to explain similar situations in different contexts. Messages or themes in African-language written discourses tend to be encoded in ‘axiomatic expressions’. These proverbial injunctions constitute generations of folk wisdom from the traditional world, which is shown to be still applicable in modern society.
The repeated stories, observable in different types of media, have been drawn from daily phenomena in order to forge new perspectives on contemporary life styles. Barber points out that
In the generation of popular Yoruba plays, every moment and every level of production is a site of creative potentiality. Stories are drawn from available repertories but are reshaped; characters are excavated from the repositories of the actors’ personal experience, which is always incrementally growing; speech emerges from moment to moment, infused with what is currently in the streets, adapted in the light of the audience’s reactions, adjusted to the speech of the other characters in the scene, and fed by the actors’ own inspiration as well as the manager’s continually updated instructions (2000: 9).
Barber indicates that recapitulations in different periods and their transmutation into popular media like radio and television concretise local experiences. These recapitulations hold lessons steeped in recurrent and other related experiences that have generally been read and interpreted in the same manner. Eventually these assume authority. Barber’s premise in the study of Yoruba popular theatre stems from the observation that the stories that were staged mostly dealt with concrete, localised and familiar experiences (ibid: 266). The experiences presented were not only familiar but were also ‘real’ as the stories were a collective and interactive improvisation by actors who drew extensively from their own reservoir of experience, personality and competence based on hearsay, daily metaphors and proverbial sayings, contemporary events, anecdotes of experience circulating in popular culture, and so forth. Barber’s analysis of Yoruba popular culture is useful in explaining the recurrent morality lessons in African-language literatures generally, isiZulu literature specifically and in television dramas.
This way of analysing indigenous expression is supported by Chapman (1996) who points out that an evaluation of South African indigenous literature in terms of realistic criteria is misleading. In a realistic reading the oral ‘residue,’ which manifests itself in strong storylines, episodic plots, and copious repetitions, might not be recognised. This trend in thinking about indigenous literary expression is not entirely new. As early as the 1960s Ramsaran made a case for ‘old mythologies’ that propagated themselves anew as signs of the continued growth of a cultural life which, while it evolves, also preserves the vitality of the ‘old mythology’. Barber’s observations on Yoruba popular plays illustrate this point as does her emphasis on the moral aspects the plays perform as responses to the demands of modernity. When transferred to other contexts, like that of African language generally and literature specifically, these moral aspects contribute to our understanding of the role played by orality in responding to the complexities that resulted from modernity. Furthermore, this insistent recurrence of folkloric material in new textual forms points to both folklore and life experiences as sources for thematic material.
Barber’s approach, which focuses on everyday culture through the exploration of textual productions that aim to edify audiences through demonstrations of moral lessons, will be used to explain the recurrence of the old themes in new contexts and the emergence of new themes in both print and broadcast media.
Overview of the book
In this book the texts selected to illustrate the interpenetration between written and oral or popular discourse in post-apartheid written and broadcast narratives are divided into two categories. The first category is comprised of written novels: Radebe’s (1998) Aphelile Agambaqa (Words have been finished); Buthelezi’s (1996) Impi YaboMdabu Isethunjini (The War of the Africans is in the intestines); Ngubo’s (1996) Yekanini Ukuzenza (I have done this to myself); Muthwa’s (1996) Isifungo (The Vow); and Masondo’s (1994) two detective novels, Ingwe Nengonyama (The lion and the leopard) and Ingalo Yomthetho (The arm of the law). The second category comprises popular television serials: Shabangu and De Kock’s Ifa LakwaMthethwa (The Inheritance of the Mthethwa Clan), Whener’s Hlala Kwabafileyo (Remain with the dead), Yazbek’s Gaz’ Lam (My friend/kin) and Mahlatsi’s Yizo Yizo (This is it).
The first three chapters of the book discuss how proverbs, folktales and naming practices have been redeployed to infuse into the contemporary world aspects of the traditional past. Through such textual analysis, the book demonstrates how older or traditional forms are made contemporary through being applied to the new circumstances. In this way the book shows how apparently stale themes can produce novel readings.
In chapter one the focus is on proverbs. The proverbs in the texts play a central and complex role. In instances where proverbs are used as titles of narratives, or aligned with the leading characters driving the moral of the lesson, the narrative is usually structured in such a way as to refer back to these proverbs at the end. The proverbs encapsulate the known, absolute truth about life experiences which then are re-enacted in the narrative producing similar conclusions. By drawing on Barber’s model, we not only understand how the proverb works aesthetically in the text, we also understand it as an implied reading strategy. This strategy provides the reader with instructions on how the axioms in the text should be applied. The intended texts for study in this chapter are Radebe’s (1998) Aphelile Agambaqa and Buthelezi’s (1996) Impi YaboMdabu Isethunjini.
In chapter two I focus on those narratives that use folktale motifs as a way of structuring the moral lesson of the story. Ngubo’s (1996) Yekanini Ukuzenza and Muthwa’s (1996) Isifungo are representative of a broader class of novels which rely on folktale motifs to construct a didactic outcome. The first novel draws its structural motif from the folktale of the piglet called Maqinase, (the self-willed one). In the novel Yekanini Ukuzenza, Busisiswe, a self-willed leading female character, is drawn into a life of fast living through crime. The second novel is heavily indebted to the structural motif of the folktale Mamba KaMaquba (Mamba son of Maquba). Drawing again on Barber’s model, I will analyse these novels to illuminate how such motifs are used to produce a lesson with emphasis on how such texts invite the readers to apply these lessons to the world beyond the book.
Chapter three is concerned with isiZulu narratives which have been influenced by oral forms like praises and naming. According to Masondo (1997) naming has been the most valued practice in the culture of the Zulu people. He points out that there are different reasons why people choose particular names. With regard to names for people, some names are coined even before they are born or when they are born or long after they have been born, in their adulthood. Certain messages are sent by the people who coin the name. Given that praises and naming play such a crucial role in the traditions of the Zulu people, in this book, drawing on Barber’s model, I will discuss narratives where the creative use of names and praises in the text reflects not only a stylistic form but a moral lesson which the reader knows to be encapsulated in the meaning of the names. In chapter three I will explore the uses of naming in Ingwe Nengonyama (1994) (The Leopard and the Lion) and Ingalo Yomthetho (1994) (The arm of