African-Language Literatures. Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi
The last three chapters of the book discuss black television series, in particular the focus is on new themes that emerged in television drama series after 1994. From the early 1990s, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, in their programming, emphasised social engineering policies, such as nation-building and neo-liberalist policies, that were to be aligned with South Africa’s new political economy. In the fourth chapter, through a study of two South African drama series, Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, I will discuss how these African-language television series drew from changing, post-1994 economic policies and popular culture discourses to construct narratives that were ‘aspirational’ (as defined by Vundla and McCathy, producers of Generations and Gaz’ Lam II (respectively). As part of broader concerns of this chapter I will highlight notions of contemporaneity brought about by the interplay between tradition and modernity, the international world and the local, and the flow of metropolitan meaning through national culture to that of the most remote backwater villages. The change, emphasised by the thematic frontiers of these series, is read against the cultural frames of inheritance conventions which, in both filmic narratives, are signalled by the pivotal use of the genres from oral or popular discourse.
Whereas Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo represent earlier series that signalled the new directions to be taken by the national broadcaster after 1994, the following TV series, Gaz’ Lam and Yizo Yizo, which come much later, after the new dispensation, offer a sober and reflective reality which resonates in intricate ways with the social tone established much earlier by the isiZulu literary tradition. In the next chapters I discuss the intertextual dialogism between the isiZulu literary tradition and these filmic narratives.
These series, as emerging black film in African languages, provide a new site for further exploring and contesting African experiences in post-apartheid contemporary society. In terms of aesthetics, these series illuminate Barber’s contentions that there is mutual allusiveness between African artistic products. The porous nature of African artistic products is also visible between these series and isiZulu fiction. The themes treated in these series complement those found in the written literature as well as draw from popular debates in the society. In my discussion I will analyse how older narrative tropes are redeployed to address emergent areas of social concern. I will focus on how the drama series in the post-apartheid context not only offers retrospectively conventional reviews and dispels received meanings, but also how it offers fresh new readings in line with the socio-economic and political realities of the post-apartheid African society.
I conclude this section in chapter six with a comparative analysis of the depiction of crime in Yizo Yizo and in one isiZulu novel. Drawing on Altbeker’s (2001) ground-breaking research on post-apartheid crime realties and legal consciousness in South Africa, I explore the tensions brought to light in Yizo Yizo and Kuyoqhuma Nhlamvana (What has been concealed will be revealed) and argue that the parallel existence of the white world, seen as continuous with South Africa’s colonial past, and the Black marginalised world, has led to a diminished respect for the law among many Black South Africans. More significantly I will show how Yizo Yizo’s perspective on, and treatment of, crime influence this isiZulu novel.
Endnotes
1 See the materials compiled by Ntuli 1983, 1984 and 1985 and Gule 1995 and 1996. The notes that these scholars produced as study guides had simplified explanations of the theoretical model in use during this period. Furthermore, as these scholars are also creative writers, the conceptualisations of their literary works exemplified a symmetrical alignment of theory and the work of art itself, so that there is a one to one reading between the theoretical principle and the different aspects of the work of art. As their works and influence were ubiquitous during this period, budding authors followed these notes religiously when creating their own art.
2 The simplified versions of Structuralism and New Criticism that came to dominate African-language literatures if they have been part of these literary models at all, focused not on critical thinking and objectivity. Instead focus was and still is on measuring rudimentary comprehension skills.
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Proverbs in narratives: Seeing the contemporary through archaic gazes in Aphelile Agambaqa and Impi YaboMdabu Isethunjini
The modern approach to the study of folklore1 has created a discursive terrain that allows for the reconsideration of the role of folklore material in contemporary society (Thosago, 2004: 13). This approach rejects conventional conceptions of folklore as ‘antediluvian’, ‘backward’, ‘illiterate’ and ‘primitive’ and instead seeks to regenerate folklore. Thosago’s perspective highlights the interrelation between folklore and postmodernity and how technical spaces such as the broadcast media can be exploited for the rejuvenation of folklore, an aspect I explore in the last three chapters of the book. However his views on this matter are not new. Since the inception of isiZulu literature in colonial times, writers have made use of a syncretic admixture of traditional knowledge and Western civilisation when writing about modernity. This has since become a convention of creative writing in isiZulu. Therefore at the conceptual level, re-narrating contemporary experiences entails a need to revisit this ancient tradition, thus creating a hybridised continuity, complex as it might be, between the idyllic, unattainable past and the self-conscious writings that typify post-modern textuality (Obiechina, 1972, 1973; Msimang, 1986).2
It is against this background that I discuss proverbs and their reinvocation in two post-apartheid isiZulu novels. The study of proverbs has led to significant advances in our understanding of their nature and their function in discourses of orature, literature, and every day speech acts. The uses of proverbs and other oral genres are various and wide, but their significance lies in their ability to explain language, thought and society (Pridmore, 1991, cited in Zounmenou, 2004). It is not only the thoughts of a society presented through proverbs but also its philosophical views that are reflected and passed down from one generation to the next. In some African societies the use of proverbs in daily conversations is a highly valued verbal experience because it develops the ingenuity seen as linguistic preparation for the performance of lengthy verbal art forms like folk stories or izibongo (praises).
Okpewho (1992) discusses the application of proverbs, especially the role of proverbs in everyday conversation and the ‘twists’ that are discerned in the proverbs used by individuals to ‘spice up the talk’. Further scholarly views emphasise their didactic illocutionary function (Monye, 1966; Pelling, 1977; Mokitimi, 1997; Okpewho, 1992). It is the intended didacticism in proverbs that I focus on in this chapter. IsiZulu literature is dominated by didacticism. This didacticism has always been located within a traditional knowledge though accentuated by the advent of Christianity which brought its own moral discourses. The tensions and the conflicts that have existed between these two discourses, tradition and Christianity, with each vying for dominance in literary discourses have characterised isiZulu literature from its inception.
The Christian discourses are not the only prominent force that shaped isiZulu literature. A host of other Western influences shaped its content and form. According to Barber (1999: 20) the use of Western stylistic criteria firstly excluded oral art forms from those texts that are ‘constituted to invite comment, analysis and assessment’ and secondly, prevented recognition of the fact that these indigenous forms could have formed a basis for an indigenous African aesthetics. When Western literary conventions are applied to isiZulu literature, those oral art forms that have been used in novels, short stories and dramas have been regarded only as ‘the author’s use of language’ rather than as examples of African discursive practices. In such instances the author is praised for including idioms and proverbs in his work and is castigated if their quantity is found to be wanting.3 According to Barber’s model, African discourses are constituted by oral art forms such as folk narratives, legends, riddles, proverbs, axioms and everyday sayings. These oral art forms perpetuate and reaffirm the authority of the traditional world. They are able to improvise, and they are fluid and flexible, which allows them to incorporate new materials and migrate to other genres. In spite of this apparent flexibility and mobility there are certain valuable elements, constituted by unchanging fixed formulations, that make it possible for these art forms to be identified as independent, detached texts. Akinnaso (1985) points