Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:06:46.741Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Praise, politics, performance: from Zulu izibongo to the Zionists

from PART I - ORATURES, ORAL HISTORIES, ORIGINS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2012

By
Mbongiseni Buthelezi
Edited by
David Attwell  and
Derek Attridge
David Attwell
Affiliation:
University of York
Derek Attridge
Affiliation:
University of York
Get access

Summary

As South Africa hurtled towards its third national democratic election in 2009 an old anti-apartheid struggle song jostled with poetry and songs from the long oral tradition to bolster the public images of politicians. At rallies the leader of the largest political party led supporters in singing ‘Umshini wami’ (‘My machine [gun]’), a song with a long career in the underground camps of the liberation struggle. The song was imbued with new meanings and sung with relish by those seeking to voice popular dissatisfaction with the perceived failures of the state and of political leadership (Gunner, ‘Jacob Zuma’, pp. 28, 30). The same song had in the preceding months been transformed into countless cellular telephone ringtones by entrepreneurs seeing a popular cultural phenomenon out of which to score sales. Sound and video clips of singing crowds were also heard and seen on radio and television. At the same time debate raged under trees, in offices, on numerous blogs, news websites, and on radio and television talk shows about the public uses of a song with an illustrious history of galvanising fighters for justice by a politician whose post-liberation character was allegedly dubious. To add to the maelstrom of reinvented cultural idioms and symbols, some of the politicians were being lauded in praise poetry, izibongo, and songs in the maskanda genre performed at live concerts. The poetry and music were recorded and disseminated through fast-selling compact discs.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of South African Literature , pp. 77 - 94
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brown, D.Voicing the Text: South African Oral Poetry and Performance, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Bryant, A. T.Olden Times in Zululand and Natal: Continuing Earlier Political History of the Eastern-Nguni Clans, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1929.Google Scholar
Chapman, M. (ed.). Soweto Poetry, Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 1982.Google Scholar
Cope, T.Izibongo: Zulu Oral Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Coplan, D. ‘Sounds of the “Third Way”: Identity and the African Renaissance in Contemporary South African Popular Traditional Music’, Black Music Research Journal 21:1 (2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finnegan, R.The Oral and Beyond: Doing Things with Words in Africa, London: James Currey, University of Chicago Press and Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-NatalPress, 2007.Google Scholar
Finnegan, R.Oral Literature in Africa, Oxford University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Gunner, L. ‘Africa and Orality’, in Irele, F. A. and Gikandi, S. (eds.), The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature, 2 vols. Cambridge University Press, 2004, vol. 1.Google Scholar
Gunner, L. ‘Clashes of Interest: Gender, Status and Power in Zulu Praise Poetry’, in Furniss, G. and Gunner, L. (eds.), Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Gunner, L. ‘Jacob Zuma, the Social Body and the Unruly Power of Song’, African Affairs 108:430 (2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunner, L.The Man of Heaven and the Beautiful Ones of God: Isaiah Shembe and the Nazareth Church, Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Gunner, L., and Gwala, M.. Musho!: Zulu Popular Praises, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Hodgsen, J.The God of the Xhosa. A Study of the Origins and Development of the Traditional Concepts of the Supreme Being, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, I. ‘Making Symmetrical Knowledge Possible: Recent Trends in the Field of Southern African Oral Performance Studies’, in Brown, Duncan (ed.), Oral Literature and Peformance in Southern Africa, London: James Currey, 1999.Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, I. ‘We Spend our Years as a Tale that is Told’: Oral Historical Narrative in a South African Chiefdom, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, I.Mfaz' Omnyama, Ngihlanze Ngedela, Gallo Record Company, 2001.Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, I. ‘Motlanthe swearing in likely to be delayed’, Mail and Guardian, 3 May 2009, www.mg.co.za/article/2009-–05–06-motlanthe-swearing-in-likely-to-be-delayed, accessed 6 May 2009.Google Scholar
Msimgang, C.Kusadliwa Ngoludala [1975], Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 1991.Google Scholar
Sienaert, E., and Bell, N. (eds.). Oral Tradition and Education, Durban: Natal University Oral Documentation and Research Centre, 1988.Google Scholar
Sitas, A. (ed.). Black Mamba Rising: South African Worker Poets in Struggle, Durban: Worker Resistance and Culture Publications, 1986.Google Scholar
Sithole, E. T.Izithakazelo Nezibongo ZakwaZulu, Ashwood: Mariannhill Mission Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Stuart, J.The James Stuart Archive, vols. I–V, Pietermaritzburg and Durban: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press and Campbell Collections, 1976–2001.Google Scholar
Vail, L., and White, L.. Power and the Praise Poem: Southern African Voices in History, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press and London: James Currey, 1991.Google Scholar
Vilakazi, B. W. ‘The Conception and Development of Poetry in Zulu’, Bantu Studies 12 (1938).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, J. ‘Politics, Ideology and the Invention of the Nguni’, in Lodge, T. (ed.), Resistance and Ideology in Settler Societies, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×