Oral poetry and development ideology in South Africa’s Eastern Cape

Abstract

In rural and peri-urban areas of South Africa’s Eastern Cape, iimbongi, or praise poets, are artists with a gift for both language and healing who play an important and varied role in contemporary society. Although the tradition is diverse and changing, the imbongi’s literary practice is widely understood to have spiritual and ritual functions, much like the practices of traditional healers. Iimbongi have much to offer South Africa’s decolonisation process, helping to heal communities struggling through the aftermath of historical violence by actively affirming indigenous agency, language and identity.

Keywords:

• Oral literature
• South Africa
• traditional healer
• development
• imbongi
• igqirha

Acknowledgements

This research was possible thanks to the assistance of Nontlantla Busakwe, Monde Ntshudu and Dumisa Mpupha. Thanks are also due to iimbongi who volunteered their time and expertise: Thukela Poswayo, Dumisa Mpupha, Yakobi Sixham and Mandlenkosi Dyakala among others, and to Ilan Kapoor and Russell Kaschula for reviewing the manuscript. All the poet-participants named in this article have agreed to be identified.

Notes

1. See, for example, Demombynes and Özler, “Crime and Local Inequality”; Gibson, “Promised Land”; Gibson, Fanonian Practices; Hart, “The Provocations of Neoliberalism”; Bond, Elite Transition; Desai, We Are the Poors; and Bond and Ruiters, “Uneven Development and Scale Politics.”

2. Kruger, “Crime and the Physical Environment.”

3. Evans, “Resettlement”; Fairweather, A Common Hunger; and Friedman, Race, Class and Power.

4. Richardson et al., “Forced Removals”; Shortt and Hammett, “Housing and Health”; Jewkes and Abrahams, “The Epidemiology of Rape”; and Buiten and Naidoo, “Framing the Problem of Rape.”

5. Biko, I Write What I Like; Mashige, “Mi Hlatshwayo and Temba Qabula”; McGiffin, “Yim’uthi Gomololo”; and Sitas, “The Moving Black Forest.”

6. UNDP, “Human Development Reports.”

7. UNDP, “Human Development Reports”; and Posel, “Adult Literacy Rates.”

8. Mallinson, “Thando Mgqolozana.”

9. Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized; and Ngugi, Decolonising.

10. Seddon, “Written Out, Writing In”; and Brown, Voicing the Text.

11. For example, McGiffin, “Iimbongi of the Resistance,” “Yim’uthi Gomololo.”

12. Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa, 1.

13. For historical details, see Peires, The House of Phalo; and Mqhayi, Abantu Besizwe.

14. Eagleton, How to Read, 90; Attridge, The Work of Literature; and Carper and Attridge, Meter and Meaning.

15. For example, Barford, “Emotional Responses to World Inequality”; Jasper, “Emotions and Social Movements”; and Hercus, “Identity, Emotion.”

16. Barford, “Emotional Responses to World Inequality,” 25.

17. Ong, Orality and Literacy; Furniss and Gunner, Power, Marginality; and Abram, Spell of the Sensuous.

18. Opland, Xhosa Oral Poetry.

19. Ibid.

20. Kaschula and Diop, “Political Processes”; and Neser, Stranger at Home.

21. See, for example, Kaschula, The Bones of the Ancestors; and Opland, The Dassie and the Hunter.

22. Furniss and Gunner, Power, Marginality.

23. Neser, Stranger at Home, 14.

24. Tsheola, “Basic Needs”; and Marais, “South Africa Pushed.”

25. Rist, The History of Development, viii.

26. Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction”; Selwyn, Global Development Crisis; Smith, Uneven Development; and Biel, The New Imperialism.

27. Rist, The History of Development, 258.

28. Kapoor, Postcolonial Politics of Development, 19.

29. See for example Kepe and Ntsebeza, Rural Resistance; Mbeki, The Peasants’ Revolt; and Beinart, “Beyond homelands.”

30. Opland, “Structural Patterns”; Opland, Xhosa Oral Poetry; Opland, Xhosa Poets and Poetry; Kaschula, “Role of the Xhosa Oral Poet”; d’Abdon, “Commercialization of Celebratory Poetry”; and Sitas, “The Moving Black Forest.”

31. For example, Hirst, “Dreams and Medicines”; Booi and Edwards, “Becoming a Xhosa Healer”; and Mabona, Diviners and Prophets.

32. Opland, Xhosa Oral Poetry, 270.

33. e.g., Kaschula and Mostert, “Analyzing, Digitizing and Technologizing”; and Opland, The Dassie and the Hunter.

34. Mpupha, personal communication.

35. Opland, Xhosa Oral Poetry, 126.

36. Mabona, Diviners and Prophets.

37. Booi and Edwards, “Becoming a Xhosa Healer”; Hirst, “Dreams and Medicines.”

38. Mabona, Diviners and Prophets, 379.

39. Discussed in detail in Mabona, Diviners and Prophets.

40. Opland, Xhosa Oral Poetry, 264.

41. For example, Fraser, “Land Reform”; and Ainslie and Kepe, “Resurgence of Traditional Authorities.”

42. Desai, We are the Poors; and Wood and Jewkes, “‘Dangerous’ Love.”

43. For a discussion on censorship in contemporary South Africa see Gumede, The Poverty of Ideas.

44. Translates loosely as ‘humanity’.

45. Opland, Xhosa Poets and Poetry; and Kaschula, “Oppression of IsiXhosa Literature.”

46. Ngugi, Decolonising the Mind.

47. For example, Nxasana, “Nontsizi Mgqwetho”; and Kaschula, “Imbongi and Griot,” “Myth and Reality.”

48. Nyamnjoh, “Fiction and Reality of Mobility”; Sylvester, “Development Poetics”; and Lewis et al., “The Fiction of Development.”

49. Brown discusses aspects of citizen politics in South Africa’s Insurgent Citizens.