Abstract
My dissertation interrogates the ways in which Zakes Mda has made women
central to his novels. I argue that the women characters in Mda's novels are key to
the idea of the rebirth
of Africa (and the simultaneous birth of a (South) African
identity) a
rebirth
made necessary by years of dispossession through colonialism
and apartheid. I will explore how on one level Mda, through magical realism,
represents women as symbols of both destruction and construction; and how on
another level he represents them as complex characters existing as agents of
history. Mda’s novels: Ways of Dying (1995), She Plays With the Darkness (1995),
The Heart of Redness (2000) and The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) critique the
topdown
approach of the postapartheid,
postcolonial
discourse of African
Renaissance a
discourse which aims to reverse the damage done to the lives of
Africans who have been brutalised by history. Mda writes an African renaissance
(with a lower case “r”), which acknowledges and explores the ways in which people
on the margins of power, recreate and transform their lives, without necessarily
waiting for politicians to come up with policies and solutions. The renaissance of
ordinary people privileges the spirit of ubuntu, whereby the individual strives to
work with the collective to achieve a more humane world. Mda’s female characters
are central to the debate on renaissance and reconstruction in that he questions
existing gender roles by
ii
highlighting strongly the rights still denied African women his
challenge to the
discourse is whether a renaissance is possible if the humanity of women (and
others marginalised by class, age, location, ethnicity, and other categories)
continues to be denied. I ask the question whether Mda, goes further, and
envisions women participating as leaders in traditionally male spaces.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/4725 |
| Date | 31 March 2008 |
| Creators | Mazibuko, Nokuthula |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | Spanish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1528667 bytes, 426093 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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