http://hdl.handle.net/10500/176 2013-05-21T17:46:46Z http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5278 The use of oral hymns in African traditional Religion and the Judeo-Christian Rafapa, Lesibana When the Mamaala African rainmaking clan of South Africa performed rituals after which rain would fall in keeping with the research-established fact that African rainmaking rituals actually bring about rain (Makgopa 2005), they sang specific songs as part of the rituals (Rafapa 2007). This paper explores the nature and context of these poetic performances. The context will be considered from both the culture-specific and cross-cultural perspectives to, hopefully, enrich debate around the impact of globalisation on world cultures. The paper will attempt to show that rather than being mistaken for a culturally inane phenomenon, globalisation can be problematised for what it is as well as negotiated for the modification of those of its features that may lead to cultural distortion and imperialism. It will be demonstrated that oral poems that are a concomitant part of this specific segment of the African cultural complex can serve to reveal facts of culture that have significant implications for globalisation, especially in the context within which globalisation has been conceptualised by writers such as Okwori (2007). University of Venda office equipment was used for this research 2009-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5268 At the heart of African rainmaking Rafapa, Lesibana This paper reports on findings regarding one African community that has practiced rainmaking until the early 1960s. Rainmaking among Africans was recorded in 19th century travel writing by imperialist Europeans such as Rider Haggard in his books Ayesha: the Return of She (1905) and King Solomon’s Mines (1985). In keeping with the agenda of imperialism and colonisation, the art of rainmaking among Africans was reduced to writing in a distorted, Eurocentric manner. Therefore, an Afrocentric investigation of the religiouscultural practice of African communities to bring about rain is warranted. It is hoped that the resulting balanced view of African rainmaking rituals will, among others, discourage Eurocentric tendencies of seeing its exponents such as The Rain Queen Modjadji as inscrutable exotica. Rain Queen Modjadji has been immortalised with the same attitude regretted by writers such as Caitlin Davies (2003). Davies (2003) remarks how subaltern victims such as Sara Baartman and El Negro were removed to museums in places like Spain and London as curious exotica to be studied by the “naturalists” of the 1830s. Research into the disappearing phenomenon of rainmaking among Africans should preserve the indigenous knowledge as well as purge it of Eurocentric distortions. A sample of 10 informants was used, determined by the role categories historically known to have been a feature of rainmaking among the African community under the spotlight University of Venda Research and Innovation Office funded my empirical research which gave rise to this article. 2008-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5238 Alan Paton’s unpublished fiction (1922-1934): an initial appraisal Levey, David This article considers selected issues in the early fiction of Alan Paton, which is in manuscript form: three novels or parts of novels, namely, “Ship of Truth” (1922-1923), “Brother Death” (1930), “John Henry Dane” (1934b), the novel/novella “Secret for seven” (1934d), and the short stories “Little Barbee”, (1928?) and “Calvin Doone” (1930a). Attention is given to the first novel. A summary of the findings follows: even though Paton’s longer unpublished fiction is religiously earnest and at times rhetorically effective, it is simplistic and tends to perpetuate the white, English-speaking patriarchal hegemony of Natal, rather than offer any sustained critique of it. These works are set against the background of the Natal Midlands in the 1920s and 1930s. The shorter fiction is slightly different in nature 2007-12-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5205 The intersection of experience, imaginative writing and meaning-making in Es'kia Mphahlele Rafapa, Lesibana After his birth in Pretoria on 17 December 1919 followed by the formative years of his cognition at the Maupaneng village of GaMphahlele in Limpopo - as both expository and fictive writings by and on him reveal - Es'kia Mphahlele's cultural and political activism saw him grappling with identity formation as an African, including at the time he was traversing exile territories in a number of African states, in France and in America. 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z