Imbizo

“One Does Not Do That to a Human Being”: Reading A Man of Good Hope (2015) as a Testimonio of Human Rights

Nonki Motahane — 2024-03-04

Human rights are central to South Africa’s nationalist struggle and imaginings of a democratic dispensation. Amongst other institutions, the Human Rights Commission, the South African Constitution, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Freedom Charter have historically been tasked with enshrining human rights in processes, relationships and moralities defining South African democracy. However, over the years, conceptions of who is entitled to human rights and protection have continued to shift, especially in the wake of increasing numbers of migrants seeking different forms of refuge in South Africa. This article turns to literature as a site to encounter contemporary discourse on migrant human rights in the country. Using Jonny Steinberg’s biography A Man of Good Hope (2015), the article explores how the biography’s styling as a testimonio allows it to critically engage the question of human rights and (in)justice in relation to migrants. Focusing on the protagonist’s witnessing of migrants’ violated lives and themes of victimhood, suffering and dehumanisation, the article examines the ethics of human rights and justice in A Man of Good Hope.

The Moral Law of Ngozi Crime in Two Zimbabwean Novels: The Case of Emmanuel Ribeiro’s Muchadura (1967) and Solomon Mwapangidza’s Rebel Soldier (2013)

Beauty Vambe — 2024-10-01

The modern Western-inspired Literature and Law movement has inspired African works of art in which the creative imagination perceives itself as a form of moral law. In Africa, a literature and law movement has given rise to dynamic discourses of human rights. Human rights scholars have then tended to read imaginative works with a legal handbook on the side to try to verify the veracity of legal acts in works of art. In these legal-literary perspectives, the question regarding the extent to which the literary imagination imagines itself as a source of indigenous law is undervalued. This current desktop study examines what can be gained by prefacing African and indigenous literature as the point of departure when debating the elements of a contemporary literature and law movement in Africa. My unit of analysis consists of two novels, Muchadura (You shall confess) by Emmanuel Ribeiro, and Rebel Soldier (2013) by Solomon Mwapangidza. My argument is that in the two novels the narrativisation of the ngozi crime challenges current understandings of transitional justices such as retributive, compensatory, restorative, distributive, and emancipatory justices and denies the stability ascribed to them in African legal scholarship.

Finding the Power in Not Telling: A Critical Exploration of the Strategies Used by South African Writers to Avoid Apartheid Literary Censorship from the 1950s to the 1980s

Magezi Thompson Mabunda — 2024-08-28

One of the most unfortunate circumstances that characterised apartheid South Africa was the banning of writers whose literary works were deemed undesirable and/or offensive by the then government. The banning of writers and their artistic works was driven by the need to prevent literary artists from the alleged peddling of falsehood about apartheid and its deleterious effects on the majority of Black South Africans. It was this censorious climate in the history of South African politics that prompted various scholars to interrogate the effects of apartheid’s identitarian policies and censorship especially on writers in general. While some looked at why literature became the object of repressive measures under apartheid South Africa in particular, others traced the historical continuum on how literature came to be viewed as a phenomenon in need of regulation in the world in general. This article observes that none of the existing studies looks at the strategies employed by writers, amid serious repressive measures and censorial mechanisms put in place, to expose the injustices faced by Africans under apartheid. The article sought to investigate various strategies used by John Maxwell Coetzee, James Matthews, Dyke Sontse, Ezekiel Mphahlele, and Nadine Gordimer in their respective literary works to expose the effects of apartheid policies on South Africans. To achieve this, the article critically analysed selected short stories and novels written from the 1950s to the 1980s—a period during which censorship laws were constantly revised and tightened to deprive writers of freedom of expression. The findings of this study revealed that writers employed complex narrative strategies such as, amongst others, omission and concealment, symbolism, and allegorism to find spaces within the censorious system to get their voices heard.

Analysing the Intersection between Law and Creative Writing: An Analysis of Petina Gappah’s Literary Writing Prose

Josephat Mutangadura — 2024-09-18

This study is an analytical transposition of law and creative writing. The article starts by exposing how the intersection is experienced and positioned. The two fields are based on rhetoric. Rhetoric serves as the foundation for both forensic argument and creative writing, and the dynamic relationships between the two fields also leave many other traces, as we can see in the dramatic performances that connect judges and attorneys to actors, the performative effects of literary language, jurists’ and literary critics’ shared concerns with interpretation, demonstration, and proof, and the function of narrative schemas as templates. There are more similarities between legal scripts and creative writing than there are conflicts. Petina Gappah is someone who has managed well in the two fields, making her writings a marvel to both lay readers and those with a law background. The short stories and novels discussed in the article are embedded in the African culture and legal frameworks of reality. The short story “In the Matter between Goto and Goto” is a thought-provoking depiction of divorce in the Zimbabwean context. The story illustrates the conflicts between the customary and the legal face of marriage. The article picks and analyses three major themes emerging from this story, which are, culture and the law, the issue of gender and justice, and lastly, the limits of law in a legal system.

Resistance to Heteronormative Laws and Homophobic Religions in Selected Short Stories from Sub-Saharan Africa

Ben de Souza — 2024-03-04

This article explores the resistance exhibited by queer characters against homophobic legislation and religious norms within the framework of gender performativity in selected short stories from Sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis focuses on narratives from diverse regions, including Stanley Kenani’s “Love on Trial” and “In the Best Interests of the Child” (Malawi), Monica Arac de Nyeko’s “Jambula Tree” (Uganda), Davina Owombre’s “Pelican Driver” (Nigeria), Emil Rorke’s “Poisoned Grief” (Zimbabwe), and Dolar Vasani’s “All Covered Up” (Tanzania). The article argues that the queer protagonists featured in the chosen short stories actively resist societal pressures towards compulsory sexuality and assigned gender roles. Within the sociopolitical contexts of the characters, laws and religious doctrines prescribe and enforce a heteronormative framework that homosexual characters are compelled to adhere to. The theoretical framework guiding this analysis draws from Judith Butler’s gender performativity, which challenges the assumption of a direct alignment between biological sex and gender identity. According to Butler, being biologically male or female does not dictate one’s gender identity, and the same principle applies to sexuality. The article examines how heteronormative laws and homophobic religious doctrines contribute to the construction of mandatory sexuality and assigned gender roles. Through the lens of characterisation, the article analyses how queer characters in the selected stories actively challenge and denounce the homophobia perpetuated by these legal and religious structures. This exploration sheds light on the nuanced ways in which gender performativity theory manifests in the lived experiences and narratives of queer individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Epistemic Codification of Satiric Indictment and the Decrying Gender Grotesque in Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s 491 Days and the Zimbabwean Maverick Movie Neria

Christopher Babatunde Ogunyemi — 2024-09-18

Language, law, and literatures have at times discernibly and theatrically attempted the development of satire in academic discourses. They have raised a poignant question on the articulation of gender in society. Critical discourses have valorised the epistemic exegesis on how language is transfigured and re-interpreted to spur the dramaturgy and trajectory of gender through autobiography, biography, fiction, and movies. This article crystallises the societal perception of how satire has been used to ridicule and make distinctions by invoking scorn and pity on both men and women in society. The article probes the sensitivity of contemporary male obsessions with phallic power under an apartheid government. It dovetails through the existing epistemic configurations exhibited to recuperate women in revoking the phallocentric codifications in Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s epoch-making autobiography, 491 Days (1969). With the symbolic, ironic, iconic, and satiric prison number of “1322/69,” Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s anti-apartheid autobiography re-invokes the male imperative devices built up for years against vulnerable Black females and weak Black males in the apartheid South African regime. Similarly, the same epistemic vein and codification are obsessively projected by possessed and aggressive phallic patriarchs in the Zimbabwean film Neria (1992). The article relies on the theory of Nawal El Saadawi, which proposes confrontation on the questions of female polarisation, women’s objectification, and the quest for resistance against legally recognised social exegesis. This includes the application of coercive force and the rejection of satiric linguistic indictments against women and the weak as exemplified in the autobiographic and filmic works from South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Flags, Verdicts and Texts: Dissident Narratives and Literary Mandates for Re-Writing Empire

Muchativugwa Liberty Hove — 2024-09-18

Researchers theorising the intersection and intertextuality between literature and law have explored and analysed democracy, governance, and trust from diverse analytical approaches. Political and legal structures are undergoing polycrises and governance is assailed by wicked policy problems, while democratic norms and legitimacy are eroded. Trust—in all its elasticity—is increasingly polarised among groups and linked to ethnic, cultural, and place-based identities and resentments. Past and present experiences in the lace of memory show that racial categories have persisted into the postcolonial chronos, and we need to question what this means for the rhizome of democracy. New ideas and identities challenge how democracy can represent diverse groups and interests, emphasising the nourishing and symbiotic relationships between literature and law within the context of decolonising notions of global-glocal knowledge economies. Governance and legal architecture are held hostage by powerful interest groups, and axiomatic aspirations to kairos and trust in the fair distribution of wealth and resources for the institutionalisation of democracy have been enfeebled. New forms of democratic participation are emerging which challenge the concepts and premises of choice and plurality. Repeated pressures to understand major crises such as criminal and gendered violence where geopolitical instabilities weaken trust in the capacity of democratic processes have not provided acceptable and socially just verdicts. If external pressures on democratic institutions are growing, criticisms against forms of poor governance (e.g., corruption, presidential personalisation of the state, short-termism, polarisation) are also increasingly made against legal and political institutions. New expressions of distrust in flags and resistance against legal, cultural, and economic powers are immanent in literary texts. This article uses Native Son, Mating Birds, and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi to address the following question: What are the pre-requisites and co-requisites for democracy and socially just governance to flourish in legal and literary situations of heightened economic marginalisation, extreme cultural oppressions, and diminishing political legitimacy? The nexus and intersectionality between legal and literary textual structures allow for an analysis of the role and impact of social, cultural, political, and juridical reformulations in the three selected texts. I argue that the (counter)story, as interdisciplinary method, is thus tasked (and suffused) with immense possibilities.

The New Prison Narrative in Zimbabwe: Re-Imagining (In)Justice in the Second Republic

Oliver Nyambi — 2024-08-21

The prison has long functioned in Zimbabwe’s official post-colonial history as a symbolic, ideologised, and often politicised mnemonic of colonial injustice. This conception of the prison allows for its convenient summoning and implementation in hegemonic (neo)nationalist identity projects of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU PF) party. As a metaphor of colonial oppression and injustice, the colonial prison enters ZANU PF’s “patriotic” narratives of self-legitimation as a historical testament of nationalist rites of passage to political power that define and ring-fence nationalist sacrifice. It would be fascinating, in the context of the proliferation of various forms of prison narratives in post-colonial Zimbabwe, to consider what is (un)changing with the meaning of the prison vis-à-vis its paradoxical function as, on one hand, a symbolic monument archiving liberation struggle sacrifice and, on the other, a site of inspiration for incarcerated opposition activists to chart alternative forms of liberation from “liberation.” Using a purposefully selected set of prison writings and anecdotes, mostly in the form of epistles and speeches by jailed Zimbabwean opposition activists, this article argues that new prison narratives use the prison as an aesthetic and discursive metaphor for unsettling the state’s epistemic justice in Zimbabwe. Invoking Maria Pia Lara’s ideas about the disclosive effect of narratives by oppressed groups, the article looks at how certain aesthetic constructions of political victimhood in prison narratives create a new logic of justice. It explores the various ways in which the post-colonial prison in Zimbabwe is re-imagined in emerging prison narratives that portray it as emblematic of a new form of injustice that underscores the inherent instability of post-colonial justice in independent Zimbabwe.

“The Country We Built Up”: Geocriticism, Rhodesian Places and the Nefarious Bush in John Eppel’s The Holy Innocents

Nhlanhla Dube — 2024-08-07

This article discusses John Eppel’s Bulawayo novel, The Holy Innocents, in order to see how space and place are constructed. By deploying geocriticism as a spatially oriented theory, the article shows how attention to literary geography reveals political insights into histories of race and Zimbabwean belonging. The city of Bulawayo and the literature it inspires provide a unique commentary on the cultural imagining of place. It is demonstrated that the suburb, as a locale in John Eppel’s writing, is a key unit of analysis in exploring the literary city. The political transition and cultural metamorphosis of Rhodesia into Zimbabwe are discussed through the prism of geography. Through recognising the power of space and the arguments about place Eppel makes, our understanding of Zimbabwean literary culture and its interactions with spatiality is developed.

Guilty at Law: Analysing Simon Chimbetu’s and Paul Matavire’s Memoirs from Prison

Charles Tembo — 2023-11-20

A prison is limiting, dehumanising, isolating, stressful and dismembering. Such experiences are expressed through different sites of expression including but not limited to novels, poetry, autobiographies and even music. Zimbabwean musicians Simon Chimbetu and Paul Matavire are some of the artists who served jail terms having been found guilty at law and then decided to recount their experiences through music. Against that background, this article critically engages Simon Chimbetu’s and Paul Matavire’s music within the context of their attitude towards prison. Emerging in the exegesis of the songs is that in terms of attitude, Simon Chimbetu largely laments the horrendous experiences that involve entrapment, loss and angst, while Matavire deliberately mocks the prison itself to the extent that he is not as disillusioned as Chimbetu. He adopts an approach that helps him regain strength, confidence and agency in the midst of incarceration. It is the vision(s) of the artists that is of keen interest in this critical dialogue. It is apparent in Chimbetu’s lyricism that a prison is a dehumanising and depersonalising entity that generates pain, envy, grief, denial and in turn dislocates, disorients and decentres, while Matavire tends to mock his handlers in a subtle but powerful manner. He transcends victimhood and adopts a perspective in which the prison is viewed as a site of rehabilitation, reformation and human factor development. Our analysis is guided and oriented by the reformative theory of criminal justice.

Darkening Blackness: Race, Gender, Class, and Pessimism in 21st-Century Black Thought, by Norman Ajari

Adebola Fawole — 2024-08-07

I Am a Victim Here!

Lindokuhle Khumalo — 2024-10-01

The Secret Lurking in the Shadow

Zinhle Selane — 2023-11-28

In this short story, a young girl is sexually assaulted by a family member. She struggles to come to terms with the violence and the trauma that speaking up could cause.

My Brother's Protection

Lehlogonolo Maditse — 2023-11-20

This short story exposes sexual violence against women by family members. It follows Mahlodi, a nine-year-old girl who finds herself unaware of the harm done to her by her brother, Ofentse. Coupled with a mother who will do anything to protect her son, Mahlodi is left ill-protected.

Retraction Notice: “Queer Sexualities and the Reconstruction of Alternative Modes of Being in Kenyan Society in the Film Rafiki”

The Editor — 2024-01-22

We, the Editors and Publishers of Imbizo: International Journal of African Literary and Comparative Studies, have retracted the following article:

Mokaya, Gloria Kemunto, and Charles Kebaya. 2022. “Queer Sexualities and the Reconstruction of Alternative Modes of Being in Kenyan Society in the Film Rafiki”. Imbizo 13 (2): #11120. https://doi.org/10.25159/2663-6565/11120

Following its publication, it was brought to our attention that this article contains significant overlap with the following thesis:

Eils, Marc Sebastian. 2020. “Queer Kenyan Cinema: An analysis of the films Stories of Our Lives (2014) by Jim Chuchu and Rafiki (2018) by Wanuri Kahiu.” Master’s thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. https://doi.org/10.18452/22918

We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The cover page only of the retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked as “Retracted.”