Africa Insight

The Politics of Translation Towards Centring African Languages

Puleng Segalo — 2023-06-23

Many scholars have argued that translation is more than just understanding words in one language and rendering them into another. While the process of translation may be perceived as a form of empowerment that brings to the greater public experiences that would otherwise remain in the private, it should also be acknowledged that the shift in voice through this process can be a form of silencing. This paper re-asserts the importance of taking the role played by language seriously in our meaning-making processes and understanding of the world. In particular, the paper engages the role of translation as violence in our research endeavours. The paper further points to the need to strive towards acknowledging how realities may be understood through multiple lenses, i.e., the pluriversal notion of knowing and being and the critical role that African languages can play towards re- defining the academic project.

Musicking ubuntu/unhu Sustainability Human Rights and Social Justice Activism in the Chimurenga Music of Thomas Mapfumo

Solomon Gwerevende — 2023-06-23

During the Second Chimurenga – Zimbabwe Liberation War – music was used to promote social justice and fight the oppressive colonial system. The struggle for justice for all was driven by the spirit of ubuntu/unhu, which embraces the capacity of indigenous African cultures to express humanity, respect, solidarity, and justice relevant to building an inclusive community. Chimurenga music, performed and popularised by Thomas Mapfumo who coined the term in the 1960s, played an important role during the liberation struggle, delivering messages on socio-political concerns, and engaging Zimbabweans on the issues of human rights, corruption, democracy, resistance, and economic transformation. This article discusses the use of Mapfumo’s Chimurenga music in post-colonial Zimbabwe as socio-political discourse and a dialogue generator for sustainability

Unrecognised in African History African Women and their Fight for Liberation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Ibrahim Bahati — 2023-06-23

Women’s contribution to Africa’s decolonisation and independence struggle has not always received recognition equal to that of men in today’s African political history studies. Their influence on African politics today is also usually silenced. This article thus goes on a historical journey to show that women in Sub-Saharan Africa have been at the forefront of subverting colonial patriarchal politics, which persist in many African states to this day. Through the conceptual thinking of Afro-feminism, the article gives examples of women across Africa and in African history who fought at the frontlines of liberation and decolonisation battles to create equal, equitable, culturally-conscious, and gender-aware political systems on the continent.

Virtualising Africa’s Arts, Securing the Future Engendering Africa’s Popular Songs on TikTok’s Enchanted Space

Stephen Mutie — 2023-06-23

This paper, locating itself within the locus of Southern Perspectives, examines how TikTok, rehabilitating the local memories imbued in the African popular song genre, re-situates African popular knowledge at the centre of dialogues around the human question. The paper used a lit-crit methodology to show how African female content creators, by creatively archiving and curating Black voices into what was the realm of Northern thought, have used TikTok’s space to dissolve epistemological and ontological boundaries. This paper posits that TikTok is the new canvas for espousing indigenous knowledge within popular literary meditations in Africa and provides a veritable space that has placed contemporary African art forms at the centre of transformative possibilities. The paper concludes that African music on TikTok is an epistemological tool that communicates context and community- specific knowledges.

Post-African Fashion The Bathu Sneaker Story

Pfunzo Sidogi — 2023-06-23

In this paper, I use the notion of Post-Africanism to rationalise the Bathu sneaker brand as an exemplar of post-African fashion in South Africa. Founded in 2015 by Theo Baloyi, Bathu has become an iconic and highly lucrative sneaker business that is synonymous with the apparel and street culture trends of youthful Black urbanites in South Africa. A discussion of the significance of sneakers within the global urban ecosystem is presented as a backdrop to the semiotic analysis of Bathu. The main argument proposed in this article is that the Bathu story is symbolic of how post-African innovation is a viable alternative to cultivating and growing the country’s fashion industry, informed by the African experience but not limited to the logic of Afrocentrism.

Editorial

Olga Bialostocka — 2023-06-23

No Abstract