English in Africa

Creating multilingual spaces: Sindiwe Magona’s autobiographical works

Namrata Dey Roy — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Writing against the backdrop of a complex postcolonial, multilingual scenario and discriminatory language policies of post-apartheid, independent South Africa, contemporary South African anglophone writers resort to appropriation and abrogation of English language by mixing marginalised languages to actualise their own linguistic identities. Sindiwe Magona has amalgamated her mother-tongue isiXhosa with the English language to counter the dominance of the English language and to question the language policies of both apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Specifically, in
her autobiographical writings, To My Children’s Children (1990) and Forced to Grow (1992), she has used code switching, translation and transliteration to relate the Xhosa culture and life. These works exemplify the process of a South African writer’s linguistic struggle to reach a global audience and to enlighten them about the issues of linguistic discrimination in South Africa while writing in English. Applying the theory of translanguaging, this paper analyses Magona’s autobiographies and aims to discuss how bilingual or multilingual writers gain their authority or linguistic competence in a lingua franca and create a dialogic space in their literary works that dismantles the hegemony of English.

“Where is my own father?”- studying the missing father and the abusive paternal government in Mother to Mother

Swati Baruah — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Colonisation and apartheid in South Africa have left deep-rooted trauma
in people, especially the black youth. Writer Sindiwe Magona explores the
aftermath of apartheid in her novel Mother to Mother (1998), tracing familial
and generational tragedies. This article, while exploring the consequences of
apartheid, focuses on the role of the absent father and the abusive government
in the context of the text. Set around the event of the murder of anti-apartheid
activist Amy Biehl in 1993 in Gugulethu, this article investigates the politically
volatile environment which impacted black youth psychologically and gives
particular attention to the effects of abandonment by a father in the formative
years of a child. Therefore, this article explores the nuances of apartheid which
impacted the young people to perpetrate further violence, incited by the unjust
and racially biased government and the abandonment of fathers.

Realities of apartheid and idyllic futures: Afropessimism and Afro-optimism in Magona’s Mother to Mother

Jessica Lyons — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sindiwe Magona’s novel Mother to Mother (1993) captures the grim realities
of Apartheid through the portrayal of the murder of Fulbright white student
Amy Biehl. As she fictionalises the real-life murder, Magona – through her
narrator Mandisa – brings to light the plights and struggles of black South
Africans under the Apartheid system in its final years. This is seen through
the presentation of different forms of black mobility, the stagnant economic
and cultural mobility and the regressive physical mobility the novel discusses.
These forms of mobility, or lack thereof, represent a theme of Afropessimism,
which is the pessimistic view of blacks in a given society and how their
blackness becomes entrenched in politics of oppression. To accompany her
discussion of Afropessimism, Magona also provides the foundation and
discourse on Afro-optimism, the inverse of Afropessimism which sees the
positive reinforcement and prediction of African people’s past and future.
This is done through Magona’s discussion of the polarizing historical account
of the Xhosa cattle-killing and the very form in which the novel is written,
aiming to bridge the gap between the black, Mandisa, and the white, Amy
Biehl’s mother.

Performing Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother: the transformative power of theatre adaptation

Marcia Blumberg — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article analyses the transformation of Magona’s novel Mother to Mother
into a performance-adapted collaboration between Sindiwe Magona (writer),
Thembi Mtshali Jones (actor/singer), and Janice Honeyman (director) which
shortens the 224-page epistolary novel into an 80-minute, one-woman
performance that maintains the novel’s narrative complexity and historical/
political contexts. The essay recounts Magona’s presentation of the main
event in this drama – the 1993 murder of the American Fulbright scholar Amy
Biehl which ensued from the violence of the transition years that encapsulated
apartheid – and examines the underestimated role of black mothers; the
plight of black youth, who have grown up with minimal education, lack of
opportunity, and broken family structures; and the humanity that inspires the
imagined epistolary communication by the protagonist and the mother of Amy
Biehl. By capturing the pathos of this relationship and featuring poignant
scenarios that are suffused with the sounds and sights of the township of
Gugulethu, this transformative staging reveals the power of adaptation to
convey the essence of a work of fiction and showcases the educative and
healing potential of theatre.

The quest for living: resilience and coping mechanisms in Sindiwe Magona’s Beauty’s Gift

Cathryne Cherop, Thulani Mkhize — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The article examines the theme of hope and coping mechanisms in Sindiwe
Magona’s novel Beauty’s Gift (2008). The research addresses the issues and
concerns raised in the text through analysing the traumatic experiences of
women living with HIV and AIDS and how they deal with their challenges.
Different forms of coping mechanisms employed by female characters in
Beauty’s Gift are captured. Additionally, the article demonstrates the characters’
resilience and their agency in overcoming their traumatic experiences. The
article will rely on textual critique and close reading of the text, in order to
illustrate the structure, functions and content of messages contained in the
narrative. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of HIV and
AIDS from the standpoint of creative voices which have the ability to imbue
meaning and signification to the experiences of HIV positive individuals.

Between nostalgia and trauma: love, loyalty, and betrayal in Sindiwe Magona’s Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle

Ewald Mengel — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sindiwe Magona’s historical novel from 2015 is an impressive fictional
achievement with great narrative complexity. The focus of this essay will be
on the prominent aspect of nostalgia and on the close relation of trauma and
nostalgia in this narrative. While nostalgic memory and traumatic memory
are two different ways of remembering the past, we will show that they also
have much in common by sharing a future-oriented perspective that might
serve the strengthening of the self and the rebuilding of one’s identity. Despite
the critical views of nostalgia in earlier scholarship, more recent publications
have shown that it does not solely boost an escapist or reality-denying attitude
but can also be future-oriented and stimulate approach orientation. Narration
has the potential of playing the role of mediator for both nostalgia and trauma,
and in Sindiwe Magona’s novel, both may be ‘re-lated’ in a positive way.
Although the novel foregrounds the traumatic experience of loss and betrayal,
nostalgia paves the way and opens the door for the significant process of
‘working through’ trauma, so that healing can take place.

Some influences from isiXhosa literary texts on Sindiwe Magona’s When the Village Sleeps

Antjie Krog — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The title of Sindiwe Magona’s book, When the Village Sleeps, draws on the
old African proverb: ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, reflecting that the text
is rooted in African and more specifically isiXhosa language and culture. The
book challenges convention. Its use of ancestral voices, not only as characters,
but also as literary influences is unique. The voice of a foetus joins the
ancestral voices as they weave a powerful image of current living conditions
in poverty-stricken areas. Sindiwe Magona makes frequent use of isiXhosa in
the novel, often without translation, and sometimes inserts excerpts from the
work of S. E. K. Mqhayi and A. C. Jordan into her text. This essay explores
Sindiwe Magona’s use of the “ancestral” and Mqhayi’s and Jordan’s themes.
Drawing on Bhekisizwe Peterson, I suggest that Magona, together with S. E.
K. Mqhayi and other African novelists, is “inaugurating an underappreciated
method or genre of creative meditation: that is, creatively thinking through
a range of difficult historical, political and social questions and challenges”
(125).

Introduction

Renée Schatteman; Meg Vandermerwe — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.