Innocentia Mhlambi - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Innocentia Mhlambi

Boydell and Brewer eBooks, Dec 31, 2014

Wits University Press eBooks, Jun 1, 2022

Journal of the African Literature Association

Tydskrif vir Letterkunde

The year 2022 marks the first anniversary of a double tragedy; the passing of Professor James Ste... more The year 2022 marks the first anniversary of a double tragedy; the passing of Professor James Stephen Mzilikazi Khumalo (1932-2021), Emeritus Professor in the African Languages from the University of the Witwatersrand, and his wife, Rose Litlhare Khumalo (1933-2021). While his wife left a blazing trail as an educationist in African schools, Professor Khumalo went on to leave behind a rich legacy in African Languages academy, and in the choral music of amakwaya, and classical music. Mzilikazi Khumalo's expansive work intersected his intellectual and cultural life with the nation's post-1994's search for a specific South African musical idiom and national identity. His academic work in isiZulu tonology became increasingly a frame on which he built a powerful African musical language as witnessed in his choral repertoire, his oratorio, UShaka KaSenzangakhona, and his opera, Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu. Born from a humble family of Salvation Army ministers in KwaNgelu, in Hlabisa, Khumalo went on to study for his teacher certificate at the Bantu Normal College, a Teachers' Training College in Mamelodi. Through correspondence study at the University of South Africa, he qualified for a Bachelor's degree with majors in isiZulu and English. His second degree, Bachelor of Arts Honours was also obtained from this university. His employment at the University of the Witwatersrand as a tutor afforded him space to further his studies in African languages and linguistics. His Master's and PhD degrees contributed to groundbreaking understanding of African linguistics, particularly isiZulu tonology and phonology, respectively. For his PhD studies, he also worked with Professor Charles Kisseberth, a phonologist from the University of Illinois in the United States. Khumalo grew up in a family and community context which was infused with music. His participation in the Salvation Army church brass band choir sharpened his ear for musical consciousness-an aspect which he pursued with vigour at the Teacher Training College with his amakwaya choral composition. Until his time of passing Khumalo was respected for his seminal work on African tonology and phonology and his extraordinary contribution to African choral music of amakwaya and classical music. His contributions to tonology and phonology were transposed to his music composition consciousness to experiment with complex processes between speaking and progression to prosody, elements characteristic in African music. In terms of Tonic Solfa, a musical language in which he composed all his work, including his classical ones (the oratorio and the opera), Khumalo linked the pronunciation of certain rising and falling isiZulu words to the musical concept of glissando. In his compositions, he employed these rising and falling tones to open up Tonic Solfa notation to accommodate natural language cadences found in the isiZulu language. Khumalo also conceptualised his musical consciousness broadly to link up with the sensibilities of the 'New Africanists' like B. W. Vilakazi. His transposition of Vilakazi's poem, "Ma Ngificwa Ngukufa" in 1958, clearly signalled his role in the intellectual, cultural and political life of Africans and the South Africa's renaissance generally. His dialogue with Vilakazi in this poem registers just some of his views about racialism in South Africa:

Radio, Public Life and Citizen Deliberation in South Africa, 2021

Shooting the subversive : when “Rinkebysvenska” and “Tsotsitaal” go mainstream in the media

South African Journal of African Languages, 2002

From the turn of the 20th century, Pan-Africanism and the African renaissance became major politi... more From the turn of the 20th century, Pan-Africanism and the African renaissance became major political and cultural discourses in the Afro-American Diaspora. The post-racist experience in South African politics saw the resuscitation of the African renaissance as an ideological concept in the history of black politics. Foresights into the African renaissance and Pan-Africanism led to their exploration in a number of spheres. In view of the re-emergent rhetoric about the concept, there has been an urge for their exploration in isiZulu literature as revealed in Buthelezi's narratives. Also explored are internalized hegemonic boundaries that explain the contradictory consciousness in the treatment of the central theme and the (un)conscious silences in the texts.

South African Journal of African Languages, 2011

From the early 1990s, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) emphasized social enginee... more From the early 1990s, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) emphasized social engineering policies such as nation building and neo-liberalist policies in their programming that were in line with South Africa's new political economy. Through a study of two South African drama series, Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, this article will demonstrate how these films drew from the neo-liberal policies and popular culture discourses germane to contemporary creolized cultural processes to construct 'aspirational' narratives (as defined by Vundla and McCarthy, producers of Generations and Gaz' Lam II respectively), that reflect changing economic patterns in post-apartheid African society. Furthermore, the article will demonstrate how these films highlight notions of contemporeinity brought about by the interplay between tradition and modernity, the international world system and the local, and the flow of metropolitan meaning through national culture right up to that of the most remote backwater villages. The change underpinned by the thematic frontiers of these films is read against the traditional cultural frames of inheritance convention, which in both filmic narratives are signalled by the pivotal use of the genres from the oral/popular discourse. Changing dramatic form or the technical apparatus of theatre or other media does not automatically lead to the transformation of society. ... only a full transformation of the social relations that determine who produces, finances and validates the dramatic form-whether in the theatre, radio or film, or in our day, in television, and an array of new media-will amount to a revolution.

South African Journal of African Languages, 2016

African Studies, 2016

ABSTRACT The opera of black America and opera Indigene of settler-invaded continents initiated a ... more ABSTRACT The opera of black America and opera Indigene of settler-invaded continents initiated a trend in opera criticism that introduces new insights into the role of this classical genre in modern times. The treatment of black and indigenes operatic subjects in all of these operas signals that operas inevitably draw on historicities and other contemporary social variables in explaining the personal or national country's unfolding narratives. In both the black American tradition and opera of the indigenous people, grammars and vocabularies which share continuities with the indigenous world and further speak to complex intricacies of contemporary life, feature significantly. Profound in these registers are congealed indigenous or emerging idioms and vernaculars embodied as texts which function as signifying practices in the operas. A similar stylistic is noticeable in a South African opera by Ndodana-Breen, Vundla and Wilensky's Winnie (2011). This opera not only draws on these isiXhosa-coded oral texts but further juxtaposes them to the western world to play on the tensions and contrasting worldviews embedded in them. The plurality of consciousnesses refracted by the unstable interaction of the co-existence of these worlds brought about by these languages as well as the status of the latter in the South African linguistic terrain invites a reading that foregrounds polyphony, dialogism and dialecticism. The cultural scripts suggested by isiXhosa disrupt the autonomy of interpreting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's political image which owing to the nature of South Africa's media politics has been the preserve of the dominant language worldview. This discussion investigates these hidden scripts and draws from tenets of Brecht's dialectical theatre by demonstrating (a) the extent to which they upset dominant iconographies of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela; and (b) how the typology of her iconisation is located and historicised within the context of the time that shaped it. This makes her iconisation to be a commentary on issues of justice both before and after 1994.

Journal of Literary Studies, 2012

Summary In the view of many commentators, the picture with regard to African-language literature ... more Summary In the view of many commentators, the picture with regard to African-language literature is bleak. To many critics, African-language literature both in the present and the past is a failed enterprise. In their view it is a literature dominated by the demands of the school market, and it has tended to produce repetitive and childish plots. It is a literature that has failed to respond to the socio-political and historical realities from which it has emerged (Chapman 1996; Mphahlele 1992; Kunene 1991, 1992). Many critics and commentators expected that after 1994, the situation might change. However, for many critics, this promise has not materialised. Instead, much African-language literature simply repeats old themes, styles, discourses, plots and strategies of characterisation (Grobler 1995; Mtuze 1994). This article seeks to engage with existing modes of criticism to ask whether these are the most appropriate and whether they might not be limited understandings of African-language literature. It also seeks to utilise a new approach, formulated by Barber, whose studies focus on African everyday culture and draw on Bakhtin's (1981) and Lefebvre's (1947) studies of ordinary people and everyday life experiences, a domain which African-language literature addresses. Such an approach will allow us to read old themes and texts in new ways while locating the emergence of new post-apartheid themes in African-language literature.

Critical Arts, 2020

ABSTRACT The death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was accompanied by startling revelations concerni... more ABSTRACT The death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was accompanied by startling revelations concerning the strategies employed by the apartheid state in the (un)making of her political image. This commentary considers how documentary representation of Madikizela-Mandela derailed her political ambitions in the context of the new post-apartheid hegemony, and confused the manner in which her responses to apartheid-era trauma were represented in collective memory. In the documentaries under discussion, Madikizela-Mandela is portrayed in contradictory poses: as a powerful, internationally renowned female leader and as a deranged tyrant. Arguably, such representations capture aspects of South Africa’s “difficult past” which the ANC-led government sought to manage. Given this context, this essay explores the ways in which representations of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela be viewed as a site for remembering and forgetting. And how are her individual acts of memorialising apartheid’s trauma to be received.

Occult imaginaries have remained a constant feature in numerous publications ever since the nasce... more Occult imaginaries have remained a constant feature in numerous publications ever since the nascent period of isiZulu literary tradition. Recurrent prismic refractions of this theme in isiZulu fictional works through different political epochs in South Africa are beginning to advance a sense of a continuous dialogical engagement with the global political economy in ways that put forward local understandings of wealth accumulation within those of international capitalist flows. Scholarship in anthropology has shown how proliferation of witchcraft in Africa is the result of contemporary inequalities among Africans, capitalist/neoliberal penetration, and postcolonial political economies that have produced wealth by means beyond the comprehension and control of most ordinary people. Wealth accumulation through ‘hidden secrets’ has thus become a major aspect animating the popular imagination in Africa, the African diaspora and beyond. Nonetheless, popular understandings of this phenomeno...

Mintirho ya Vulavula, 2021