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Mythology, Temporality and Power Rangarirayi Mapanzure

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Mythology, Temporality and Power Rangarirayi Mapanzure Writing Dictatorship, Rewriting African Writing: Mythology, Temporality and Power Rangarirayi Mapanzure A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements of degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg, 2020 Declaration I declare that this is my own unaided work submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand for the fulfilment of the Doctor of Philosophy degree. It has not been submitted before for examination in any other university. Parts of Chapter 7 appeared in the journal Scrutiny 2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, published online on 22 May 2020. Signature ___________________ Date: 10 June 2020 Rangarirayi Mapanzure Johannesburg, 2020 i Dedication To Gladys, Kudzai, Tafara, Kule Tamuka Shumba and Mbuya Gwaya. Your love, patience and understanding will always be cherished. To my late father, Cornius Dzingi Mapanzure, who held my hand on my first day to school, makaita basa Banzure. ii Acknowledgements My sincere gratitude to all those who made this possible: my teachers, mentors, colleagues and friends - Professor Isabel Hofmeyr, Professor Bhekizizwe Peterson, Professor James Ogude, Professor Dan Ojwang, Professor Pumla Gqola, Mr Booker Jambaya, Mr Augustine Muvodzi, Mr Vitalis Takarinda, Rodney Mamvura Gudyanga, Dr David Magege, Elias Dowera, Kudzai Mapanzure, Dr Danai Mupotsa, Professor Hazel Ngoshi, Mrs Celestine L.P. Moyo, Mrs Merle Govind and many others too numerous to mention here. Special thanks go to my supervisor Professor Dan Ojwang for his patience, assistance, attention to detail and being always ready to nudge me in the right direction. Thanks Prof! I am also grateful for the three years of generous financial support from the Wits University Post Graduate Merit Award. The financial assistance of the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, in collaboration with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to NIHSS and CODESRIA. To my wife Gladys Pade Mapanzure, the journey would not have been possible without your love and support. iii Abstract This study explores the various representations of the dictator and the postcolonial condition in what can be termed the African dictator text. Adopting a panoramic approach that selects texts from several regions of Africa, the study critically examines the ambivalence and paradox of power, focusing on the various strategies devised and deployed by African writers to re-interpret and re-imagine postcolonial identities, time, space and authority in a globalised terrain, while arguing that the selected texts simultaneously entrench and destabilise content, form, views, attitudes, positions and meaning. The study also argues, in this respect, that the selected texts problematize representation of the performance of power as they reinforce, perpetuate and destabilise age-old but persistent stereo-typical notions of ‘exoticism’, ‘backwardness’ and the ‘dark continent’. This comes out through what the study sees as the collusion, tension and entanglement of myths, power and temporality which places the African and the continent in a completely different time-frame. The conclusion reached is that the dictator text continues to be an arena where African experiences are vigorously interrogated, re-interpreted and re-imagined, and in the process, the genre continues to spawn new and innovative strategies of representing the perennially confounding African postcolonial condition. iv Contents Declaration.................................................................................................................................. i Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ... ii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… . iii Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... iv Contents…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ... v Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………..1 1.1 Burying the Father of the Nation...…………………………………………………………………1 1.2 Aim and Rationale of the Study… ………………………………………………………………….5 1.3 Repositioning the African Dictator Text.………………………………………………………14 1.4 Re-reading African Dictator Texts: Theoretical Paths and Directions…………..17 1.5 Chapter Breakdown…………………………………………………………………………………….19 Chapter 2: Sculpting the Figure of the African Dictator in Wole Soyinka’s A Play of Giants …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..22 2.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………22 2.2 The Question of Genre……………………………………………………………………………….26 2.3 “Power is everywhere”……………………………………………………………………………….31 2.4 Inside and outside literature……………………………………………………………………….37 2.5 Naming, Appearance and Myth-making in A Play of Giants…………………………44 2.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………..56 Chapter 3: The Ambivalence and Paradox of Power in Hama Tuma’s The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories ……………………………………………………..57 3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………..57 3.2 Synopsis………………………………………………………………………………………………………63 v 3.3 Myth, Illusion and Reality in the Dictator’s Courtroom………………………………..65 3.4 “Is it a Twitch or a Wink?”….............................................................................75 3.5 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………87 Chapter 4: Boundaries and Transgressions in Life and a Half………………………………………. 89 4.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………..89 4.2 Sony Labou Tansi and Life and a Half: Synopsis..………………………………………….95 4.3 Re-working a Tradition in Life and a Half?.......................................................97 4.4 “we’ll go get her from her grave, we’ll court-martial her bones, she’ll be posthumously condemned to death”……….……………………………………………..106 4.5 “But time. Time has tumbled”……………………………………………………………………112 4.6 Boundaries and Transgressions in Life and a Half …….…………………………………….117 4.7 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………120 Chapter 5: The Griot and the Hero in Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote…………………..121 5.1 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………..121 5.2 Kourouma and Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote: Overview………………… 125 5.3 Pioneers, Founders, Heroes and Villains.….…..…………………………………………..129 5.4 Conflicted Roles……………………………………………………………………………………….140 5.5 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………..145 Chapter 6: Reinvention, Power and Representation in Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Wizard of the Crow…………………………………………………………………………………………………………146 6.1 Introduction……..………………………………………………………………………………………146 6.2 Background and Synopsis..…………….……………………………………………………….. 151 6.3 Postcolonial/ Aburirian Re-invention…..……………………………………………………154 6.4 Words and the Contestation for Power……………………………………………………..158 6.5 Mythic Figures, Mythic Time and Mythic Terrain……………………………………..170 vi 6.6 Conclusion.…………………………………………………………………………………………….176 CHAPTER 7: Power and Extroversion in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names….177 7.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….177 7.2 Emergence of the Writer and Synopsis…………………………………………........185 7.3 When Old Names Refuse to Go……………………………………………………………..189 7.4 Myths and Power in We Need New Names……………………………………………196 7.5 Extroverted Images: Power, Gazers and Victims…………………………………...198 7.6 Dissident Images, Dissident Readings: Deconstructing Extroversion…..…207 7.7 Dystopic Power, Dystopic Childhoods, Dystopic Lives………….……………….209 7.8 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………213 Chapter 8: Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………215 References ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….221 vii Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Burying the ‘Father of the Nation’ On the 6th of September 2019 Zimbabweans woke up to the news that their founding leader Robert Mugabe had died at a private hospital in Singapore. Although he died after he had been deposed back in November 2017, his death was a major topic, not only in Zimbabwe but it was a story also carried by some of the world’s major news outlets. To some in the country and beyond he was an African hero, while others reviled him as a brutal tyrant. In his home country his death became a subject of intense debate, primarily over his legacy. To many Zimbabweans, there was curiosity over how and where he was to be interred after pronouncements had been made by some of his family members that Gushungo, as he was known, out of bitterness over how he had been removed from power, had insisted that he should not be buried at the Heroes Acre but at his rural home. As the news of his demise was confirmed, his successors in the party and government that he had led for decades sought to reclaim his name, legacy and, literally, his body, by quickly declaring him a national hero and insisting that he should be buried at the Heroes Acre. Perched on a hill close to a once imposing National Sports Stadium just a few kilometres from the capital Harare, is the burial ground that the government of Zimbabwe named Heroes Acre. It is a piece of ground that Robert Mugabe and his ZANU (PF) party, the victors of the war of independence, Chimurenga, had carved out and set aside for the interment of ‘national heroes’, that is, those deemed to have played pivotal roles in the struggle for independence and the subsequent formation and consolidation of the nation of Zimbabwe. Over
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