Search results for ""Author Bhekizizwe Peterson""

Much of the work in the field of African studies still relies on rigid distinctions of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’, ‘indigenous’ and ‘foreign’. This book moves well beyond these frameworks to probe the complex entanglements of different intellectual traditions in the South African context, by examining two case studies. The case studies constitute the core around which is woven this intriguing story of the development of black theatre in South Africa in the early years of the century. It also highlights the dialogue between African and African-American intellectuals, and the intellectual formation of the early African elite in relation to colonial authority and how each affected the other in complicated ways.The first case study centres on Mariannhill Mission in KwaZulu-Natal. Here the evangelical and pedagogical drama pioneered by the Rev Bernard Huss, is considered alongside the work of one of the mission’s most eminent alumni, the poet and scholar, B.W. Vilakazi. The second moves to Johannesburg and gives a detailed insight into the working of the Bantu Dramatic Society and the drama of H.I.E. Dhlomo in relation to the British Drama League and other white liberal cultural activities.

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The essays in this collection were crafted in celebration of the centenaries, in 2019, of Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi and Es’kia Mphahlele, all of whom were born in 1919. These foundational writers produced more than a half-century of writing and cultural production spanning criticism, editorials, essays, fiction, journalism, life writing and orature. The essays in the collection showcase these writers’ multifaceted engagements and generative insights on a wide range of issues, including precolonial existence, colonialism, empire, race, the language question, tradition, gender, modernity, exile, Pan-Africanism and decolonisation. A number of political and thematic threads cut across the essays, including those that explore the significance of the ‘colour line’, the role of education and cultural practices amidst the unfolding of colonial modernity, state racism and print culture in South Africa and elsewhere. Foundational African Writers examines the ways in which the centenarians’ legacies still resonate in the present and how the body of work that they produced is crucial to the genealogies and institutions of modern African and diasporic black arts and letters. Studying their works revisits established debates, provokes possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement with the imperatives of decolonisation and opens up new trajectories for future scholarship.

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