Thesis (Ph.D. (English studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2011 / This thesis explores the theme of identity in Es’kia Mpha-hele’s fictional and autobiographical novels, with special attention given to the quest for the lost identity of Afri-can cultural and philosophical integrity. In other words, the revival of the core African experience and the efforts to preserve and promote things African. Mphahlele wrote most of his novels during the time when Africa was under colonial influence. His native land was under the abhorred apartheid system which sought to relegate the African expe-rience to the background. In this sense, he was the voice of the people, reminding them of their past and giving them direction for the future. Chapter One of the thesis outlines the background to the study, defines concepts and gives a survey of African lit-erary identity. It also probes salient aspects which have influenced Mphahlele’s perspective on African identity dur-ing his early years as a writer and socio-cultural activ-ist. Approaches and methodology employed to examine Mphahlele’s writings are also outlined. Chapter Two synthesises the theoretical underpinnings of the study. The thesis adopts Afrocentricity as the basis of analysis, looking at aspects such as the African worldview, humanism (ubuntu) and collectivism. Views by different Af-rican literary critics on what African literature should entail in its distinctive definition are also discussed. Two main literary traditions, orality and the contemporary tradition, which give African literature its unique charac-ter as well as its phases are identified and brought to the fore.Identity in African literature is discussed in detail in Chapters three and four where Mphahlele’s literary works are closely examined. Chapter Five concludes the study and recommends that in order for Africa to forge ahead in her attempt to reclaim and promote her cultural identity, a new perspective must be cultivated and Mphahlele proposes hy-bridity, which is a harmonious co-existence of two or more cultural beliefs without one oppressing the other. / The University of Limpopo

Thesis ( M.A. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2014

This thesis represents the first extended study of South African poetry in English from a gender perspective. It is conceived in two parts: firstly, a deconstructive analysis of the dominant tradition of South African English poetry in order to reveal its masculine or androcentric base; and secondly, the reconstruction of an alternative gynocentric tradition that gives primacy to women and the feminine in poetry. The first section consists of an examination of the ways in which the feminine has been. excluded from the poetic tradition in historical terms by means of social and economic constraints on women. The study begins with a brief reference to the beginnings of cultural gender discrimination in British poetry, from which South African English poetry derives, and then moves to a more extended consideration of the ways in which this discrimination has manifested itself in the South African context in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is followed by an analysis of the "poetics of exclusion", the ways in which the tradition genders itself as masculine by defining its central speaking position or subjectivity as male and masculine, and so excludes women and the feminine. The second section commences with the reconstruction or recovery of a gynocentric tradition of women's poetry in English in South Africa by means of a gynocritical "map" or survey, followed by a discussion of the nature of the feminine discourse or "poetics" required to provide the critical context for this poetry. The preliminary "map" is given greater detail by in-depth discussion of the women poets considered to be major contributors to the gynocentric tradition: Mary Morison Webster, Elisabeth Eybers, Tania van Zyl, Adele Naude, Ruth Miller, Ingrid Jonker and Eva Bezwoda. The study ends with an examination of the work of contemporary women poets in South Africa, especially the black women poets of the 1970s and '80s, and the poets - both black women and white women - who wrote from exile in the 1980s. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1993.

This study is a comparison of female characters portrayed by different authors in selected Venda novels. Chapter One comprises the aim of the study, approach, life history of authors, comments on their work, a short summary of the selected novels, cultural fulfilment of a Venda woman, and the scope and composition of chapters. Chapter Two deals with characterization. The definition and methods of characterization are discussed in this chapter. The merits and demerits of various methods of character portrayal are also examined in some detail. Chapter Three discusses the different female characters portrayed in the selected novels. Chapter Four comprises a comparison of female characters in the selected novels. Chapter Five is the general conclusion to this study / African Languages / M.A. (African languages)

From Introduction: Thus for the black South African, the act of creative writing is inescapably a form of political action, and unless he turns his back on the reality which confronts him and retreats into a private imaginary world, it is also a form of social action, Yet Ezekiel Mphahlele has rightly cautioned that "creating an imaginary world" can never be an effective substitute for social act ion . Composing fictions about social and political problems is an indubitably oblique way of seeking a solution to them, and even the tendentious recreation of reality is only a metaphor for its actual transformation. Protest writing in South Africa is paradoxically a form of social action which is also only a parasitical imitation of social action, and therefore its avoidance . The freedom of literary creation described above is ambiguously not only a freedom to express reality, but also a freedom from the constraints of reality. And this suggests why the outlaw was such an important symbol to an earlier generation of rather more self-conscious writers.

This dissertation re-examines an era in the production and reception of English language poetry in South Africa by black writers. Intellectually the 1970's was the Black Consciousness phase of South African history and very few aspects of life in the country were untouched by the intellectual movement led by Steve Biko and other young black student leaders. The aesthetic and literary output of the time, like all other facets of South African life, exhibited the influence and pressures brought to bear by Black Consciousness. Moreover, the Black Consciousness poets introduced the most vibrant and innovative phase for English language poetry produced in South Africa. It is my contention, however, that such vibrancy and innovation has consistently been compromised by unsympathetic, often hostile, and almost-always ill-informed criticism. The dissertation offers a critique of the academic and journalistic practice of criticism in South Africa. I argue that critical practice in South Africa has been engaged throughout the twentieth century in the discursive enforcement of ‘discipline’. In his Discipline and Punish (1977) the French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault demonstrated how power is wielded against oppressed/suppressed groups through self regulated proscriptions, and argued that power is a discursive rather than a corporeal phenomenon. My dissertation follows Foucault in reading the critical reception of Black Consciousness poetry as the practice of disciplinary power. The dissertation also engages critically with the poetry of Oswald Mtshali, Mongane Serote and Sipho Sepamla, and argues that their work is the inscription of black subjectivity into the literary and cultural mainstream. It situates their work within wider 6 societal debates and definitions of ‘blackness’. In this regard use is made again of Michel Foucault’s insights and methodology of discourse analysis as shown in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). I argue that Oswald Mtshali’s work is a failed attempt at a dissection of apartheid and colonialism from a broadly Christian and humanist perspective. In my reading of Mongane Serote I explore the relationship between women’s bodies and the practice of representation. It is my contention that Serote is most concerned with claims of belonging, and this is shown through his extensive use of the trope of ‘Mother’. My discussion of the poetry of Sipho Sepamla focuses on language and (self- )representation, particularly the use of practices of naming in constructing subjectivity. My contention is that Sepamla ultimately abandons attempts at representation in favour of oppositional self-construction in language. In the concluding chapter I defend the thesis that the politics of discipline have prevented the broad critical establishment from gaining access to these discursive constructions of blackness in the committed poetry of South Africa.

This thesis discovers the spiritual and aesthetic vision of poet-journalist Robert Grendon (c. 1867–1949), a man of Irish-Herero parentage. It situates him in the wider Swedenborgian discourse regarding African ‘regeneration’. While preserving the overall diachronic continuity of a literary biography, it treats his principal thematic preoccupations synchronically. The objective has been to show the imaginative ways in which he employs his rich and diverse religio-philosophical background to account for South Africa’s social problems, to pass judgement upon the principal players, and to point out an alternative path to a brighter future. Chapter 1 looks at Emanuel Swedenborg’s mystical revelations on the heightened spiritual proclivity of the ‘celestial’ African, and the consequences of New Jerusalem’s descent over the heart of Africa, which Swedenborg believed to be taking place, undetected by Europeans, around 1770. It also examines how those pronouncements were received in Europe, America, and—most particularly—in Africa. Chapter 2 examines the circumstances surrounding Grendon’s birth and childhood in what is today Namibia. It takes note of a family tradition that Joseph Grendon married a daughter of Maharero, a prominent Herero chief, and it looks at Robert Grendon’s views on ‘miscegenation’. Chapter 3 deals with Grendon’s schooling at Zonnebloem College, Cape Town. Chapter 4 describes his cultural, sporting, and political activities in Kimberley and Uitenhage in the 1890s, bringing to light his editorship of Coloured South African in 1899. It also considers his conception of ‘progress’. Chapter 5 looks at some early poems, including the domestic verse-drama, ‘Melia and Pietro’ (1897–98). It also contextualizes a single, surviving editorial from Coloured South African. Chapter 6 treats Grendon’s tour de force, the epic poem, Paul Kruger’s Dream (1902), as well as his personal involvement in the South African War, and his spiritualized account of the ‘Struggle for Supremacy’ in South Africa. Chapter 7 relates to Grendon’s fruitful Natal period, 1900–05: his headmastership of the Edendale Training Institute and of Ohlange College, and his editorship of Ilanga’s English columns during the foreign absence of the editor-in-chief, John L. Dube, from February 1904 to May 1905. Chapter 8 analyzes some of the shorter and medium-length poems written in Natal, 1901–04. Chapter 9 is a close examination of the poem, ‘Pro Aliis Damnati’, showing its Swedenborgian basis, and how it dramatizes Swedenborg’s concept of ‘scortatory’ love. Chapter 10 describes Grendon’s early years in Swaziland from 1905. Chapter 11 deals with his period as editor of Abantu-Batho in Johannesburg, 1915–16. Chapter 12 describes his last years in Swaziland, and his relationship with the Swazi royal family. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

Thesis (M. A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2004 / Refer to document

Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2014 / This study discusses African identity as portrayed in Zakes Mda’s The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) and Bessie Head’s Maru (1971). It explores identity and its subcomponents within the South African context as asserted in these novels. Mda employs a retrospective communal voice that blends historical accounts with fiction in order to subvert and satirise apartheid nationalism. Head, on the other hand, constructs a positive image of feminine identity in the world characterised by tribalism, patriarchal system and stereotypical subjugation of women. She dismantles established racial and ethnic prejudice against minority groups and the underprivileged. The study applies a trilogy of theoretical framework to analyse and interpret selected data: Discourse Analysis, Text Analysis and Afrocentricity. It further examines a fluidity of identities in both social and political spheres and demonstrates how suppression of these identities affects individuals and nation states. It reveals that, as a microcosm of Africa, South Africa reflects atrocious injustices of the past, carried out in the form of colonisation and apartheid, bringing about a different kind of identity of the African people. These two novels take us back to the past so that we can understand the present and subsequently build Africa’s identity of the future. KEY CONCEPTS Afrocentricity; Identity; Discrimination; Miscegenation; Otherness; Hybridity; Animalistic Dehumanisation.

Chapter One will introduce the central area of exploration of this study and establish the main terms of reference and guidelines of the research. Chapter Two will deal with the background and history of the project, and will include a discussion on creative writing as therapy in the context of a prison. Chapter Three will present a critical overview of the project's aims and results, as well as an account of the pedagogical methods employed. It will also analyse the work of three members of the writing group: Vusi Mthembu, Themba Vilakazi and Sibusiso Majola. Chapter Four will outline the socio-political context of my primary research material: a collection of poems written in prison by Bheki Mkhize, Sipho Mkhize and Bhek'themba Mbhele. It will also include a brief biographical account of the three writers, as well as an historical examination of the Seven Days War in Pietermaritzburg in the early nineties. Chapter Five will focus on the three writers' accounts of incarceration, the threat of violence in prison and their resistance through writing to the loss of identity. Chapter Six will deal with the issue of alterity, and the way that the writers represent issues of identity in their poetry, and create spaces of difference and distinction. It will also focus on intertextuality, and analyse the manner in which the writers negotiate the Western tradition of aesthetics in order to stake claim to their own spaces of difference in the prison. Chapter Seven will conclude the study, and will examine contemporary cultural studies theory with specific reference to South Africa. It will also include an overview of the proposition of the research, and elaborate the way forward for a popular culture embracing such findings. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.