In this paper we offer glimpses of the way some teachers may work creatively within the constrain... more In this paper we offer glimpses of the way some teachers may work creatively within the constraints of our South African education system.There are many studies that focus on issues such as teacher attrition, low morale, work load, job security, and teacher migration, all suggesting something of the dire straits in which education is located in the postapartheid era (Hall, Altman, Nkomo, Peltzer and Zuma, 2005; Ramrathan, 2002; Singh, 2001; Manik, 2005; Hayward, 2002). Against these negative impressions, we wish to present counter-narratives of teacher success, resistance and inventiveness, exploring teachersi?½ lives and their narratives through the theme of home. The theme of home [and homelessness] has been an important one in post-colonial experience, and a variety of genre of writings have shown how dislocation and unhomeliness [unheimlich], and the attendant i?½dis-easei?½ that results, are experienced, managed and contested. We begin the paper by providing a brief theoretical...
Durban Dialogues Dissected: An Analysis of Ashwin Singh's Plays
If literature holds up a mirror to society, nowhere is this truer than in South Africa. South Afr... more If literature holds up a mirror to society, nowhere is this truer than in South Africa. South African literature, from colonial times, and especially through the apartheid era, has shown up the society to itself. The watershed events of South African history after 1948, when the National Party came into power-the Sharpeville Massacre in 1961, the Soweto Riots in 1976, and Steve Biko's assassination in 1977, to name a few-all served, especially, to influence the output of literary writings in different genres, and also determine the direction of the writings. South African theatre has particularly played this critically reflective role in the context of our history. The key plays in South African theatre have all zeroed in on living under apartheid-Fugard's
We are living in a period of momentous happenings in South Africa. One of the most difficult and ... more We are living in a period of momentous happenings in South Africa. One of the most difficult and challenging areas in our communal life is related to changing an educational system that has been entrenched on the basis of inequality and prejudice. In this paper I begin by reflecting in an impressionistic way on the legacy of reading literature under apartheid in my own educational journey. To situate the discussion in a South African context, I have woven particular personal experiences with institutional and historical realities, reading my way into theory from the bedrock of my experience and vice versa. In the second half of the paper I shall extrapolate from such experience some of the challenges that we face in the sphere of cultural and educational politics for the present and corning years.
I was looking forward to attending the Opening Night of the Durban Passion Play on 25 March 2020.... more I was looking forward to attending the Opening Night of the Durban Passion Play on 25 March 2020. I had first seen it as a young teenager in the 1950’s, with David Horner in the leading role, and i...
It is my pleasure to introduce Professor Rosemary Gray. Rosemary is emeritus professor in the Dep... more It is my pleasure to introduce Professor Rosemary Gray. Rosemary is emeritus professor in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria. She is a rated researcher, specialising in Old English and Pan-African texts; her current research interest is the work of Ben Okri. She has presented twenty-seven papers on Okri’s oeuvre in the past decade on a variety of international platforms and has published many more.
abstract In this essay, I shall present potted stories of two women from the global South, with v... more abstract In this essay, I shall present potted stories of two women from the global South, with vastly different, yet connected, histories. The one is the story of my grandmother, who came to South Africa with her family from India in the early 20th century, when she was seven years old, and worked as an indentured labourer in Colonial Natal. The other is of Grada Kilomba, a strident decolonial feminist, artist and poet, born in the late 1960s, whose ancestral family were from Guinea Bissau, and linked historically to the Black Atlantic slave trade. I shall reflect critically and broadly on their lives in the wider context of decolonial feminist thinking and writing from the South.
This is why Lucy Valerie Graham’s new book, State of Peril Race and Rape in South African Literat... more This is why Lucy Valerie Graham’s new book, State of Peril Race and Rape in South African Literature (published by Oxford University Press, 2012) is a timely and compelling read for anyone wishing to understand from different vantage points the dynamics surrounding the issue of rape in South Africa. The study is a critical exploration of rape through the prism of stories of gender violence in South African literature. There are largely two categories of narratives, where ‘‘black peril’’ (p 4) narratives depict rape of white women by black men, and ‘‘white peril’’ (p 6) narratives deal with the rape of black or colonised women by white or colonising men.
This special edition of Agenda invited writings of women’s lives from perspectives that capture t... more This special edition of Agenda invited writings of women’s lives from perspectives that capture the multiple and subjective realities of women as one way to counter dominant male depictions of life, of history, of culture, of politics and lived experiences – depictions which not only marginalised women but rendered them invisible. It has sought to correct androcentric and mono-dimensional views of theworld, by speaking back to narratives which erased women’s voices. The stories are in some ways about women’s stolen lives, retrieved histories, agentic incursions and evolutionary shifts in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
One of the writers mentioned in Imraan Coovadia’s novel, Tales of the Metric System (2014) is the... more One of the writers mentioned in Imraan Coovadia’s novel, Tales of the Metric System (2014) is the Russian philosopher, Alexandre Kojève,1 who wrote the treatise, The Notion of Authority (which was directed at post-revolutionary Russia). In this essay I shall use the notion of authority, in various forms and understandings, as a pivot around which some important issues in the novel, Tales of the Metric System, may rotate.
It is clear that the last word has not been written on Gandhi, nor is it likely to be in the futu... more It is clear that the last word has not been written on Gandhi, nor is it likely to be in the future. A multitude of scholars – from India and South Africa, and from other parts of the world – have produced studies on Gandhi, and the corpus extends to a wide spectrum, from the variously hagiographical or informative, to the critical and contentious. In this article, I consider the particular criticism of Gandhi in relation to his attitude and relationships with Africans. I argue that Gandhi must be seen in the context of the highly fraught politics of the colonial frontier in Natal, and the wider ambiguities, of the period during which he was is South Africa.
Three distinct vignettes on "Salisbury Island", have been composed for this discussion on the tri... more Three distinct vignettes on "Salisbury Island", have been composed for this discussion on the tribal college for Indians inaugurated in 1961 on Salisbury Island, an old naval base at the Durban Harbour. It was prompted by the reunion that took place in 2011 at the Sibaya Complex outside Durban, as part of the 50 th anniversary commemoration of its inauguration. I present diverse aspects of life on Salisbury Island, from different, shifting vantage points and perspectives-combining the banal as well as the critical, rhetorical and historical, autobiographical and discursive-in order to recreate a lost world that was experienced during apartheid, the composition "reflects the syntax of memory itself " [Hirson 2004:134]. Remembering the past in South Africa, especially the apartheid past, re-threads both positive and negative experiences, and weaves a varied quilt of personal, institutional and historical memory. For history educators this would provide a creative and critical way of engaging with the past in order to live in the present.
In this paper we offer glimpses of the way some teachers may work creatively within the constrain... more In this paper we offer glimpses of the way some teachers may work creatively within the constraints of our South African education system.There are many studies that focus on issues such as teacher attrition, low morale, work load, job security, and teacher migration, all suggesting something of the dire straits in which education is located in the postapartheid era (Hall, Altman, Nkomo, Peltzer and Zuma, 2005; Ramrathan, 2002; Singh, 2001; Manik, 2005; Hayward, 2002). Against these negative impressions, we wish to present counter-narratives of teacher success, resistance and inventiveness, exploring teachersi?½ lives and their narratives through the theme of home. The theme of home [and homelessness] has been an important one in post-colonial experience, and a variety of genre of writings have shown how dislocation and unhomeliness [unheimlich], and the attendant i?½dis-easei?½ that results, are experienced, managed and contested. We begin the paper by providing a brief theoretical...
Durban Dialogues Dissected: An Analysis of Ashwin Singh's Plays
If literature holds up a mirror to society, nowhere is this truer than in South Africa. South Afr... more If literature holds up a mirror to society, nowhere is this truer than in South Africa. South African literature, from colonial times, and especially through the apartheid era, has shown up the society to itself. The watershed events of South African history after 1948, when the National Party came into power-the Sharpeville Massacre in 1961, the Soweto Riots in 1976, and Steve Biko's assassination in 1977, to name a few-all served, especially, to influence the output of literary writings in different genres, and also determine the direction of the writings. South African theatre has particularly played this critically reflective role in the context of our history. The key plays in South African theatre have all zeroed in on living under apartheid-Fugard's
We are living in a period of momentous happenings in South Africa. One of the most difficult and ... more We are living in a period of momentous happenings in South Africa. One of the most difficult and challenging areas in our communal life is related to changing an educational system that has been entrenched on the basis of inequality and prejudice. In this paper I begin by reflecting in an impressionistic way on the legacy of reading literature under apartheid in my own educational journey. To situate the discussion in a South African context, I have woven particular personal experiences with institutional and historical realities, reading my way into theory from the bedrock of my experience and vice versa. In the second half of the paper I shall extrapolate from such experience some of the challenges that we face in the sphere of cultural and educational politics for the present and corning years.
I was looking forward to attending the Opening Night of the Durban Passion Play on 25 March 2020.... more I was looking forward to attending the Opening Night of the Durban Passion Play on 25 March 2020. I had first seen it as a young teenager in the 1950’s, with David Horner in the leading role, and i...
It is my pleasure to introduce Professor Rosemary Gray. Rosemary is emeritus professor in the Dep... more It is my pleasure to introduce Professor Rosemary Gray. Rosemary is emeritus professor in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria. She is a rated researcher, specialising in Old English and Pan-African texts; her current research interest is the work of Ben Okri. She has presented twenty-seven papers on Okri’s oeuvre in the past decade on a variety of international platforms and has published many more.
abstract In this essay, I shall present potted stories of two women from the global South, with v... more abstract In this essay, I shall present potted stories of two women from the global South, with vastly different, yet connected, histories. The one is the story of my grandmother, who came to South Africa with her family from India in the early 20th century, when she was seven years old, and worked as an indentured labourer in Colonial Natal. The other is of Grada Kilomba, a strident decolonial feminist, artist and poet, born in the late 1960s, whose ancestral family were from Guinea Bissau, and linked historically to the Black Atlantic slave trade. I shall reflect critically and broadly on their lives in the wider context of decolonial feminist thinking and writing from the South.
This is why Lucy Valerie Graham’s new book, State of Peril Race and Rape in South African Literat... more This is why Lucy Valerie Graham’s new book, State of Peril Race and Rape in South African Literature (published by Oxford University Press, 2012) is a timely and compelling read for anyone wishing to understand from different vantage points the dynamics surrounding the issue of rape in South Africa. The study is a critical exploration of rape through the prism of stories of gender violence in South African literature. There are largely two categories of narratives, where ‘‘black peril’’ (p 4) narratives depict rape of white women by black men, and ‘‘white peril’’ (p 6) narratives deal with the rape of black or colonised women by white or colonising men.
This special edition of Agenda invited writings of women’s lives from perspectives that capture t... more This special edition of Agenda invited writings of women’s lives from perspectives that capture the multiple and subjective realities of women as one way to counter dominant male depictions of life, of history, of culture, of politics and lived experiences – depictions which not only marginalised women but rendered them invisible. It has sought to correct androcentric and mono-dimensional views of theworld, by speaking back to narratives which erased women’s voices. The stories are in some ways about women’s stolen lives, retrieved histories, agentic incursions and evolutionary shifts in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
One of the writers mentioned in Imraan Coovadia’s novel, Tales of the Metric System (2014) is the... more One of the writers mentioned in Imraan Coovadia’s novel, Tales of the Metric System (2014) is the Russian philosopher, Alexandre Kojève,1 who wrote the treatise, The Notion of Authority (which was directed at post-revolutionary Russia). In this essay I shall use the notion of authority, in various forms and understandings, as a pivot around which some important issues in the novel, Tales of the Metric System, may rotate.
It is clear that the last word has not been written on Gandhi, nor is it likely to be in the futu... more It is clear that the last word has not been written on Gandhi, nor is it likely to be in the future. A multitude of scholars – from India and South Africa, and from other parts of the world – have produced studies on Gandhi, and the corpus extends to a wide spectrum, from the variously hagiographical or informative, to the critical and contentious. In this article, I consider the particular criticism of Gandhi in relation to his attitude and relationships with Africans. I argue that Gandhi must be seen in the context of the highly fraught politics of the colonial frontier in Natal, and the wider ambiguities, of the period during which he was is South Africa.
Three distinct vignettes on "Salisbury Island", have been composed for this discussion on the tri... more Three distinct vignettes on "Salisbury Island", have been composed for this discussion on the tribal college for Indians inaugurated in 1961 on Salisbury Island, an old naval base at the Durban Harbour. It was prompted by the reunion that took place in 2011 at the Sibaya Complex outside Durban, as part of the 50 th anniversary commemoration of its inauguration. I present diverse aspects of life on Salisbury Island, from different, shifting vantage points and perspectives-combining the banal as well as the critical, rhetorical and historical, autobiographical and discursive-in order to recreate a lost world that was experienced during apartheid, the composition "reflects the syntax of memory itself " [Hirson 2004:134]. Remembering the past in South Africa, especially the apartheid past, re-threads both positive and negative experiences, and weaves a varied quilt of personal, institutional and historical memory. For history educators this would provide a creative and critical way of engaging with the past in order to live in the present.
Uploads
Papers by Betty Govinden