Portraying political violence, rape and masculinities in post-apartheid African language literature: The case of the novel Ngiyolibala Ngifile

Abstract

The canon of African language literature has been critiqued in its entirety by local and foreign scholars on the premise that it has failed to respond to sociopolitical and colonial realities. This article argues that African language literature has been and continues to be socially  committed in the post-apartheid epoch. This is argued through an analysis of the novel Ngiyolibala Ngifile by Sibiya. The analysis focuses  on the portrayal of violence, rape and the construction of masculinities in post-apartheid South Africa. Through the utilisation of a post- colonial framework, the article shows how African language writers like Sibiya use the African milieu to link political violence, rape and  masculinities to the colonial matrix, while simultaneously pointing to the causes and continuum of these topics. It further displays the  author’s critique of the black bourgeoisie as stakeholders of colonialism, which unleashed violence on black bodies. This study is a  significant insertion of masculinity as a critical unit, along with race, language and women, in the analysis of African language literature.  This study recommends and proposes an expansion of the theoretical paradigm of reading African languages to accommodate neoteric  frameworks of reading. It further suggests a close reading of African language literary texts through the postcolonial lens and with  masculinities as a critical unit.