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In this book the texts selected to illustrate the interpenetration between written and oral or popular discourse in post-apartheid written and broadcast narratives are divided into two categories. The first category is comprised of written novels: Radebe’s (1998) Aphelile Agambaqa (Words have been finished); Buthelezi’s (1996) Impi YaboMdabu Isethunjini (The War of the Africans is in the intestines); Ngubo’s (1996) Yekanini Ukuzenza (I have done this to myself); Muthwa’s (1996) Isifungo (The Vow); and Masondo’s (1994) two detective novels, Ingwe Nengonyama (The lion and the leopard) and Ingalo Yomthetho (The arm of the law). The second category comprises popular television serials: Shabangu and De Kock’s Ifa LakwaMthethwa (The Inheritance of the Mthethwa Clan), Whener’s Hlala Kwabafileyo (Remain with the dead), Yazbek’s Gaz’ Lam (My friend/kin) and Mahlatsi’s Yizo Yizo (This is it).

The first three chapters of the book discuss how proverbs, folktales and naming practices have been redeployed to infuse into the contemporary world aspects of the traditional past. Through such textual analysis, the book demonstrates how older or traditional forms are made contemporary through being applied to the new circumstances. In this way the book shows how apparently stale themes can produce novel readings.

In chapter one the focus is on proverbs. The proverbs in the texts play a central and complex role. In instances where proverbs are used as titles of narratives, or aligned with the leading characters driving the moral of the lesson, the narrative is usually structured in such a way as to refer back to these proverbs at the end. The proverbs encapsulate the known, absolute truth about life experiences which then are re-enacted in the narrative producing similar conclusions. By drawing on Barber’s model, we not only understand how the proverb works aesthetically in the text, we also understand it as an implied reading strategy. This strategy provides the reader with instructions on how the axioms in the text should be applied. The intended texts for study in this chapter are Radebe’s (1998) Aphelile Agambaqa and Buthelezi’s (1996) Impi YaboMdabu Isethunjini.

In chapter two I focus on those narratives that use folktale motifs as a way of structuring the moral lesson of the story. Ngubo’s (1996) Yekanini Ukuzenza and Muthwa’s (1996) Isifungo are representative of a broader class of novels which rely on folktale motifs to construct a didactic outcome. The first novel draws its structural motif from the folktale of the piglet called Maqinase, (the self-willed one). In the novel Yekanini Ukuzenza, Busisiswe, a self-willed leading female character, is drawn into a life of fast living through crime. The second novel is heavily indebted to the structural motif of the folktale Mamba KaMaquba (Mamba son of Maquba). Drawing again on Barber’s model, I will analyse these novels to illuminate how such motifs are used to produce a lesson with emphasis on how such texts invite the readers to apply these lessons to the world beyond the book.

Chapter three is concerned with isiZulu narratives which have been influenced by oral forms like praises and naming. According to Masondo (1997) naming has been the most valued practice in the culture of the Zulu people. He points out that there are different reasons why people choose particular names. With regard to names for people, some names are coined even before they are born or when they are born or long after they have been born, in their adulthood. Certain messages are sent by the people who coin the name. Given that praises and naming play such a crucial role in the traditions of the Zulu people, in this book, drawing on Barber’s model, I will discuss narratives where the creative use of names and praises in the text reflects not only a stylistic form but a moral lesson which the reader knows to be encapsulated in the meaning of the names. In chapter three I will explore the uses of naming in Ingwe Nengonyama (1994) (The Leopard and the Lion) and Ingalo Yomthetho (1994) (The arm of the law), which are detective narratives by Masondo.

The last three chapters of the book discuss black television series, in particular the focus is on new themes that emerged in television drama series after 1994. From the early 1990s, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, in their programming, emphasised social engineering policies, such as nation-building and neo-liberalist policies, that were to be aligned with South Africa’s new political economy. In the fourth chapter, through a study of two South African drama series, Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, I will discuss how these African-language television series drew from changing, post-1994 economic policies and popular culture discourses to construct narratives that were ‘aspirational’ (as defined by Vundla and McCathy, producers of Generations and Gaz’ Lam II (respectively). As part of broader concerns of this chapter I will highlight notions of contemporaneity brought about by the interplay between tradition and modernity, the international world and the local, and the flow of metropolitan meaning through national culture to that of the most remote backwater villages. The change, emphasised by the thematic frontiers of these series, is read against the cultural frames of inheritance conventions which, in both filmic narratives, are signalled by the pivotal use of the genres from oral or popular discourse.

Whereas Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo represent earlier series that signalled the new directions to be taken by the national broadcaster after 1994, the following TV series, Gaz’ Lam and Yizo Yizo, which come much later, after the new dispensation, offer a sober and reflective reality which resonates in intricate ways with the social tone established much earlier by the isiZulu literary tradition. In the next chapters I discuss the intertextual dialogism between the isiZulu literary tradition and these filmic narratives.

These series, as emerging black film in African languages, provide a new site for further exploring and contesting African experiences in post-apartheid contemporary society. In terms of aesthetics, these series illuminate Barber’s contentions that there is mutual allusiveness between African artistic products. The porous nature of African artistic products is also visible between these series and isiZulu fiction. The themes treated in these series complement those found in the written literature as well as draw from popular debates in the society. In my discussion I will analyse how older narrative tropes are redeployed to address emergent areas of social concern. I will focus on how the drama series in the post-apartheid context not only offers retrospectively conventional reviews and dispels received meanings, but also how it offers fresh new readings in line with the socio-economic and political realities of the post-apartheid African society.

I conclude this section in chapter six with a comparative analysis of the depiction of crime in Yizo Yizo and in one isiZulu novel. Drawing on Altbeker’s (2001) ground-breaking research on post-apartheid crime realties and legal consciousness in South Africa, I explore the tensions brought to light in Yizo Yizo and Kuyoqhuma Nhlamvana (What has been concealed will be revealed) and argue that the parallel existence of the white world, seen as continuous with South Africa’s colonial past, and the Black marginalised world, has led to a diminished respect for the law among many Black South Africans. More significantly I will show how Yizo Yizo’s perspective on, and treatment of, crime influence this isiZulu novel.

Endnotes

1 See the materials compiled by Ntuli 1983, 1984 and 1985 and Gule 1995 and 1996. The notes that these scholars produced as study guides had simplified explanations of the theoretical model in use during this period. Furthermore, as these scholars are also creative writers, the conceptualisations of their literary works exemplified a symmetrical alignment of theory and the work of art itself, so that there is a one to one reading between the theoretical principle and the different aspects of the work of art. As their works and influence were ubiquitous during this period, budding authors followed these notes religiously when creating their own art.

2 The simplified versions of Structuralism and New Criticism that came to dominate African-language literatures if they have been part of these literary models at all, focused not on critical thinking and objectivity. Instead focus was and still is on measuring rudimentary comprehension skills.