Sikhumbuzo Mngadi - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Sikhumbuzo Mngadi

Foundational African Writers

Africa Review of Books

Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series & the Launch of African Literature by James Currey... more Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series & the Launch of African Literature by James Currey. James Currey Ltd/ Wits University Press/ Ohio University Press/ Weaver. Press/ East African Educational Publishers Ltd/ HEBN Ltd/. Mkuki na Nyota, 2008, paperback, 318 pp. ISBN: 978-1-84701-502-0 In Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series & The Launch of African Literature, Currey provides a rich narrative of the emergence of the African Writers Series as part of Heinemann Educational Books and of the authors that were published in the series. In addition, he provides insight into the historical contexts of the works, brief synopses of the contents of the works themselves, excerpts from reports by readers, pre- and post-publication correspondence with authors and, even more interestingly, descriptions of the active literary scene of 1960s and 70s London, where it all began. Readers of Africa Writes Back have the opportunity to revisit imaginatively the times in which the bulk of...

Research in African Literatures

Recent studies of contemporary South african writing have remarked on the challenges that have co... more Recent studies of contemporary South african writing have remarked on the challenges that have come with naming the time and place, and thus the interpretive framework, in which this writing could be situated today. in part, this is because the past remains the point of reference and the foundational moment for both the writing and the studies of it in the present. Moreover, it is not a singular and absolute past that has shaped the present, but a multiplicity of contending senses of the past. another reason for the challenge could lie in the nature of the time itself, in its relation to space and events. This is especially so when the time seems, as hamlet says of his own time, "out of joint" (Hamlet, 1.5.195-96). besides marking particular historical sensibilities and trajectories-they are all conspicuous by their sense of time as moving inexorably forward, even though what has actually been said about South african literature under these terms suggests a more complex reality-the terms "post-apartheid," "transition," "post-transition," "post-post-apartheid," "post-anti-apartheid," "post-Marikana," and others that have served at various times to give the present shape and meaning are indicative of the groping for fitting calibrations of our times. Nevertheless, they have had something to say about what is otherwise a "dizzyingly heterogeneous corpus" of "postapartheid South african literature" (de kock 1).

Still Beating the Drum, 2005

Gender and behaviour, 2017

In her essay, ""No Longer in a Future Heaven"": women and nationalism in Sout... more In her essay, ""No Longer in a Future Heaven"": women and nationalism in South Africa', Anne McClintock (1991: 109) focuses on the Afrikaner Vrouemonument (Women's Monument): 'erected in homage to the female victims of the (Anglo-Boer) war,' in which, '[i]n a circular enclosure, women stand weeping with their children'. McClintock theorises the image of weeping Afrikaner women in gender terms, as a by-product of Afrikaner patriarchal condescension, in which women were given a domesticated heroine status, in spite of historical evidence pointing to their having participated on the front-line of the war.

Writingi'c,trcnl viiil Wyk 'Popular Memory' and Social Change in South African liistorical Drama ... more Writingi'c,trcnl viiil Wyk 'Popular Memory' and Social Change in South African liistorical Drama of the Seventies in English: the Case of Credo Mutwzi'!; ufisilirnela-Sikhutrzhuzo Mngadi Towards an Anthropology o?. Wr~tlng-Alun Thoroltl A Rr~cf Cfvervlew of Zulu Orrd Traditions-Noleen Turner The Writings of H.F. Fynn: History, Myth or Fiction?-Jc~lie Pridnlorr This is the first issue of ALTERNATION, the journal of the Gentre for the Study of Southern African Literature and Languages (CSSALL). The Centre was established at the beginning of I994 at the University of Durban-Westville with the purpose of promoting an interdisciplinary study of the great variety of southern African literatures and languages. Besides being a research centre, the CSSALL offers a course-work Masters degree which provides a systematic knowledge of the literary history and languages of the region. The Centre is also committed to hosting a biennial conference on southern African iiterary and language studies. As Helize van Vuuren demonstrates in her paper included in this volume, the discourses of colonialism and apartheid have led to the radical 'segmentation of South African literature and literary studies'. In the first historical surveys written in a period marked by the construction of an inclusive settler nationalism, the focus is on what J.M. Coetzee has called

Mandela’s Ego (2006), Nkosi says, developed from a fantastical idea1 1 ‘I had wonderful students ... more Mandela’s Ego (2006), Nkosi says, developed from a fantastical idea1 1 ‘I had wonderful students at Brandeis University, in Boston, in my writing class. … I wanted to encourage them to write. As an act of solidarity, I told

An incident takes place in Credo Mutwa's UNosilimela, which reminds us that the act of recons... more An incident takes place in Credo Mutwa's UNosilimela, which reminds us that the act of reconstructing 'homely' identities is at once an act of manufacturing evidence to compensate for the 'loss' of home to the world a condition that feeds to sustain a feeling of 'unhomeliness' in one's 'home'. There is an almost pervasive insistence, in this text, on a notion of difference that does not differentiate, on a racial hierarchy that is not racist.

This article interrogates the notion or cultural transformation as implied and sometimes overtly ... more This article interrogates the notion or cultural transformation as implied and sometimes overtly articulated in the colonial, anti-colonial and resistance discourses or the past. It is argued that the basic assumption that cultural transformation is a punctual occurrence with unambiguous values or before/after, positive/negative, progressive/counterprogressive cannot be accepted. These values emerge from and remain trapped in closed dualistic structures or thought and reading. The argument against this view is two-fold: in the context or material change, these values constitute a transformation that conceals value judgements which only benefit the values or an emergent civil society; secondly, civil society-whether old or new-springs forth from a base of different forms or sexual and psychic repression which disrupt its unisonance.

Today, how can we not speak of the university? I put my question in the negative, for two reasons... more Today, how can we not speak of the university? I put my question in the negative, for two reasons. On the one hand, as we all know, it is impossible, now more than ever, to dissociate the work we do, within one discipline or several, from a reflection on the political and institutional conditions of that work. Such a reflection is unavoidable.

During the course of his 1984 Sol Plaatje Memorial Lecture at the then University of Bophuthatswa... more During the course of his 1984 Sol Plaatje Memorial Lecture at the then University of Bophuthatswana, entitled 'Actors and Interpreters: Popular Culture and Progressive Formalism', the text of which was later published in his collection of essays1, Njabulo Ndebele (1991:85) made the following observation about his sense of the relation of South African literature to 'contemporary African culture in South Africa': Literature appears not to have found a place in the development of contemporary African culture in South Africa. Instead, in groping for this place, literature has located itself in the field of politics. And it has done so without discovering and defining the basis of its integrity as an art form. Its form therefore, has not developed, since to be fictional or poetic was to be political [e.a.].

In the conclusion of an essay that appeared in the third number of the twenty-sixth volume of Aft... more In the conclusion of an essay that appeared in the third number of the twenty-sixth volume of Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism (1998), in which I considered, mainly, Kobena Mercer's rereading of his reading of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of black men, and, to a limited extent, a photograph by the South African photo-journalist, Peter Magubane, of black men lined up naked for inspection before being allowed to take up employment on the farms and mines, I alluded to the view that it would be interesting if a photograph was considered in terms of the multiple effects of meaning that it engenders, rather than as a statement of evidence.

Mandela's Ego (2006), Nkosi says, developed from a fantastical ideal, which is, of course, wh... more Mandela's Ego (2006), Nkosi says, developed from a fantastical ideal, which is, of course, why it is a novel, in a certain sense of the word anyway. It can be seen against what Lewis Nkosi has said about writing by black South Africans in English, namely, that ... its [writing by black South Africans in English] formal insufficiencies, its disappointing breadline asceticism and prim disapproval of irony, and its well-known predilection for what Lukacs called 'petty realism, the trivially detailed painting of local colour' ... can be seen to be a result, in part, of a claustrophobia related to ... internal colonialism from which, it is hoped, a post-apartheid condition will set it free (1998:77).Whereas this line of inquiry into black South African writing in English has become all too familiar, albeit its credentials remain contested, what is a more urgent question today is whether the hope of the freedom to experiment (with irony and fantastical tales, for instance) pos...

There is a particular photograph that comes to mind when the issue of black masculinity in South ... more There is a particular photograph that comes to mind when the issue of black masculinity in South Africa is raised. It is a 1968 picture by Peter Magubane depicting more than a dozen black men, lined up and naked in what appears to be a dimly lit shower room. The photograph's caption states that the men are being inspected by a "Wenela" health official before being allowed to begin employment in farms and mines. Wenela is identified as a "private organization in Johannesburg that recruits farm and mine labour in all the tribal areas."(1) The photograph intersects a number of discourses about "social death" and its consequent mourning, as well as sexuality, race, civility and other associated discourses that marked the second phase of intense colonial prohibitions in South Africa. Over the years this particular photograph has spurred a multitude of readings. These "captions" extend the historical and political relevance of photography and ap...

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 18125449708565885, May 31, 2008

Journal of African Cinemas, 2015

The shifts in the priorities of literary and cultural theory and criticism were already underway ... more The shifts in the priorities of literary and cultural theory and criticism were already underway in the South African academy by the end of the 1980s, with the gathering momentum of the mass political movement reaching its apotheosis with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990. Whereas creative literary and cultural expression has often lagged behind advances in theory, there was nevertheless a steady acknowledgement of the necessity for a corresponding shift in the discursive character of the creative arts, even if the material conditions on the ground remained largely unchanged. Ramadan Suleman's film Fools, which appeared in 1997 as an adaptation of Njabulo Ndebele's 1983 novella by the same title, entered the fray with its argument for a new or, as it were, broader consciousness of the deeper, more complex legacy of 'sexual violence'. This legacy included the weak 'place of women in the everyday life of the township' (Suleman 1995: 1), and indeed in the very idea of 'the everyday' that some in literary and cultural circles sought to inscribe. 1 This article provides an assessment of the nature and extent of the film's intervention in the context of the systematic breakdown of the old certainties of race, identity and nation post-apartheid, together with the literary-critical cultures and apparatuses that presided over their coherences and raptures. I take as my starting point Robert Stam and Louise Spence's (1983: 3) assertion that '[a]though […] those questions bearing on the cinematic industry, its processes of production, distribution and exhibition'-in short, questions bearing on 'the contextual'-are of 'crucial importance', they need to be tempered with those bearing on the 'textual and intertextual' (emphasis in original). Fools is a film that enters the textual and contextual terrain of Ndebele's novella, but in doing so contests its textuality by shifting its narrative ground and voice.

Foundational African Writers

Africa Review of Books

Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series & the Launch of African Literature by James Currey... more Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series & the Launch of African Literature by James Currey. James Currey Ltd/ Wits University Press/ Ohio University Press/ Weaver. Press/ East African Educational Publishers Ltd/ HEBN Ltd/. Mkuki na Nyota, 2008, paperback, 318 pp. ISBN: 978-1-84701-502-0 In Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series & The Launch of African Literature, Currey provides a rich narrative of the emergence of the African Writers Series as part of Heinemann Educational Books and of the authors that were published in the series. In addition, he provides insight into the historical contexts of the works, brief synopses of the contents of the works themselves, excerpts from reports by readers, pre- and post-publication correspondence with authors and, even more interestingly, descriptions of the active literary scene of 1960s and 70s London, where it all began. Readers of Africa Writes Back have the opportunity to revisit imaginatively the times in which the bulk of...

Research in African Literatures

Recent studies of contemporary South african writing have remarked on the challenges that have co... more Recent studies of contemporary South african writing have remarked on the challenges that have come with naming the time and place, and thus the interpretive framework, in which this writing could be situated today. in part, this is because the past remains the point of reference and the foundational moment for both the writing and the studies of it in the present. Moreover, it is not a singular and absolute past that has shaped the present, but a multiplicity of contending senses of the past. another reason for the challenge could lie in the nature of the time itself, in its relation to space and events. This is especially so when the time seems, as hamlet says of his own time, "out of joint" (Hamlet, 1.5.195-96). besides marking particular historical sensibilities and trajectories-they are all conspicuous by their sense of time as moving inexorably forward, even though what has actually been said about South african literature under these terms suggests a more complex reality-the terms "post-apartheid," "transition," "post-transition," "post-post-apartheid," "post-anti-apartheid," "post-Marikana," and others that have served at various times to give the present shape and meaning are indicative of the groping for fitting calibrations of our times. Nevertheless, they have had something to say about what is otherwise a "dizzyingly heterogeneous corpus" of "postapartheid South african literature" (de kock 1).

Still Beating the Drum, 2005

Gender and behaviour, 2017

In her essay, ""No Longer in a Future Heaven"": women and nationalism in Sout... more In her essay, ""No Longer in a Future Heaven"": women and nationalism in South Africa', Anne McClintock (1991: 109) focuses on the Afrikaner Vrouemonument (Women's Monument): 'erected in homage to the female victims of the (Anglo-Boer) war,' in which, '[i]n a circular enclosure, women stand weeping with their children'. McClintock theorises the image of weeping Afrikaner women in gender terms, as a by-product of Afrikaner patriarchal condescension, in which women were given a domesticated heroine status, in spite of historical evidence pointing to their having participated on the front-line of the war.

Writingi'c,trcnl viiil Wyk 'Popular Memory' and Social Change in South African liistorical Drama ... more Writingi'c,trcnl viiil Wyk 'Popular Memory' and Social Change in South African liistorical Drama of the Seventies in English: the Case of Credo Mutwzi'!; ufisilirnela-Sikhutrzhuzo Mngadi Towards an Anthropology o?. Wr~tlng-Alun Thoroltl A Rr~cf Cfvervlew of Zulu Orrd Traditions-Noleen Turner The Writings of H.F. Fynn: History, Myth or Fiction?-Jc~lie Pridnlorr This is the first issue of ALTERNATION, the journal of the Gentre for the Study of Southern African Literature and Languages (CSSALL). The Centre was established at the beginning of I994 at the University of Durban-Westville with the purpose of promoting an interdisciplinary study of the great variety of southern African literatures and languages. Besides being a research centre, the CSSALL offers a course-work Masters degree which provides a systematic knowledge of the literary history and languages of the region. The Centre is also committed to hosting a biennial conference on southern African iiterary and language studies. As Helize van Vuuren demonstrates in her paper included in this volume, the discourses of colonialism and apartheid have led to the radical 'segmentation of South African literature and literary studies'. In the first historical surveys written in a period marked by the construction of an inclusive settler nationalism, the focus is on what J.M. Coetzee has called

Mandela’s Ego (2006), Nkosi says, developed from a fantastical idea1 1 ‘I had wonderful students ... more Mandela’s Ego (2006), Nkosi says, developed from a fantastical idea1 1 ‘I had wonderful students at Brandeis University, in Boston, in my writing class. … I wanted to encourage them to write. As an act of solidarity, I told

An incident takes place in Credo Mutwa's UNosilimela, which reminds us that the act of recons... more An incident takes place in Credo Mutwa's UNosilimela, which reminds us that the act of reconstructing 'homely' identities is at once an act of manufacturing evidence to compensate for the 'loss' of home to the world a condition that feeds to sustain a feeling of 'unhomeliness' in one's 'home'. There is an almost pervasive insistence, in this text, on a notion of difference that does not differentiate, on a racial hierarchy that is not racist.

This article interrogates the notion or cultural transformation as implied and sometimes overtly ... more This article interrogates the notion or cultural transformation as implied and sometimes overtly articulated in the colonial, anti-colonial and resistance discourses or the past. It is argued that the basic assumption that cultural transformation is a punctual occurrence with unambiguous values or before/after, positive/negative, progressive/counterprogressive cannot be accepted. These values emerge from and remain trapped in closed dualistic structures or thought and reading. The argument against this view is two-fold: in the context or material change, these values constitute a transformation that conceals value judgements which only benefit the values or an emergent civil society; secondly, civil society-whether old or new-springs forth from a base of different forms or sexual and psychic repression which disrupt its unisonance.

Today, how can we not speak of the university? I put my question in the negative, for two reasons... more Today, how can we not speak of the university? I put my question in the negative, for two reasons. On the one hand, as we all know, it is impossible, now more than ever, to dissociate the work we do, within one discipline or several, from a reflection on the political and institutional conditions of that work. Such a reflection is unavoidable.

During the course of his 1984 Sol Plaatje Memorial Lecture at the then University of Bophuthatswa... more During the course of his 1984 Sol Plaatje Memorial Lecture at the then University of Bophuthatswana, entitled 'Actors and Interpreters: Popular Culture and Progressive Formalism', the text of which was later published in his collection of essays1, Njabulo Ndebele (1991:85) made the following observation about his sense of the relation of South African literature to 'contemporary African culture in South Africa': Literature appears not to have found a place in the development of contemporary African culture in South Africa. Instead, in groping for this place, literature has located itself in the field of politics. And it has done so without discovering and defining the basis of its integrity as an art form. Its form therefore, has not developed, since to be fictional or poetic was to be political [e.a.].

In the conclusion of an essay that appeared in the third number of the twenty-sixth volume of Aft... more In the conclusion of an essay that appeared in the third number of the twenty-sixth volume of Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism (1998), in which I considered, mainly, Kobena Mercer's rereading of his reading of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of black men, and, to a limited extent, a photograph by the South African photo-journalist, Peter Magubane, of black men lined up naked for inspection before being allowed to take up employment on the farms and mines, I alluded to the view that it would be interesting if a photograph was considered in terms of the multiple effects of meaning that it engenders, rather than as a statement of evidence.

Mandela's Ego (2006), Nkosi says, developed from a fantastical ideal, which is, of course, wh... more Mandela's Ego (2006), Nkosi says, developed from a fantastical ideal, which is, of course, why it is a novel, in a certain sense of the word anyway. It can be seen against what Lewis Nkosi has said about writing by black South Africans in English, namely, that ... its [writing by black South Africans in English] formal insufficiencies, its disappointing breadline asceticism and prim disapproval of irony, and its well-known predilection for what Lukacs called 'petty realism, the trivially detailed painting of local colour' ... can be seen to be a result, in part, of a claustrophobia related to ... internal colonialism from which, it is hoped, a post-apartheid condition will set it free (1998:77).Whereas this line of inquiry into black South African writing in English has become all too familiar, albeit its credentials remain contested, what is a more urgent question today is whether the hope of the freedom to experiment (with irony and fantastical tales, for instance) pos...

There is a particular photograph that comes to mind when the issue of black masculinity in South ... more There is a particular photograph that comes to mind when the issue of black masculinity in South Africa is raised. It is a 1968 picture by Peter Magubane depicting more than a dozen black men, lined up and naked in what appears to be a dimly lit shower room. The photograph's caption states that the men are being inspected by a "Wenela" health official before being allowed to begin employment in farms and mines. Wenela is identified as a "private organization in Johannesburg that recruits farm and mine labour in all the tribal areas."(1) The photograph intersects a number of discourses about "social death" and its consequent mourning, as well as sexuality, race, civility and other associated discourses that marked the second phase of intense colonial prohibitions in South Africa. Over the years this particular photograph has spurred a multitude of readings. These "captions" extend the historical and political relevance of photography and ap...

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 18125449708565885, May 31, 2008

Journal of African Cinemas, 2015

The shifts in the priorities of literary and cultural theory and criticism were already underway ... more The shifts in the priorities of literary and cultural theory and criticism were already underway in the South African academy by the end of the 1980s, with the gathering momentum of the mass political movement reaching its apotheosis with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990. Whereas creative literary and cultural expression has often lagged behind advances in theory, there was nevertheless a steady acknowledgement of the necessity for a corresponding shift in the discursive character of the creative arts, even if the material conditions on the ground remained largely unchanged. Ramadan Suleman's film Fools, which appeared in 1997 as an adaptation of Njabulo Ndebele's 1983 novella by the same title, entered the fray with its argument for a new or, as it were, broader consciousness of the deeper, more complex legacy of 'sexual violence'. This legacy included the weak 'place of women in the everyday life of the township' (Suleman 1995: 1), and indeed in the very idea of 'the everyday' that some in literary and cultural circles sought to inscribe. 1 This article provides an assessment of the nature and extent of the film's intervention in the context of the systematic breakdown of the old certainties of race, identity and nation post-apartheid, together with the literary-critical cultures and apparatuses that presided over their coherences and raptures. I take as my starting point Robert Stam and Louise Spence's (1983: 3) assertion that '[a]though […] those questions bearing on the cinematic industry, its processes of production, distribution and exhibition'-in short, questions bearing on 'the contextual'-are of 'crucial importance', they need to be tempered with those bearing on the 'textual and intertextual' (emphasis in original). Fools is a film that enters the textual and contextual terrain of Ndebele's novella, but in doing so contests its textuality by shifting its narrative ground and voice.