Artistic Innovation Through Cultural Symbols: A Strategy for Sustainable Development in Kgebetli Moele's Room 207

Abstract

This peer-reviewed book chapter looks at the post-1994 Hillbrow novel, Room 207 by Kgebetli Moele, (2006), with a view to tracing its thematic and stylistic successes or failures in branding indigenous African thinking as a niche market within today’s knowledge economy. The feature of any knowledge economy, including the stronghold of indigenous African thinking, assumed to be fundamental, is the ability to shape the past, present and future of contemporary societies in a manner that impacts positively on sustainable development. I argue that Moele’s novel manages to empower indigenous African thinking, in the manner in which Pradervand (1989: xvii) describes sustainable development from the socio-cultural vantage point as the ‘ability of the members of a community to relate creatively to themselves, their neighbours, their environment and the world at large, so that each one might express his maximum potential.’ I see an overlap between such a creative relationship with the environment and postcolonial African communities’ agentive self-definition. The paper attempts to demonstrate how the novel Room 207 can be seen as a worthy contribution to sustainable development in that its approach in addressing social challenges satisfies the needs of sustainable development according to writers such as Parry-Davies (2007), who describes sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ Such a function of sustainable development is achievable through ‘care and respect for people, the planet and economic prosperity – with the three pillars of people, planet and prosperity satisfied simultaneously to ensure that the development does not suffer from an imbalance’ (Parry-Davies 2007). In the paper I intend to analyse Moele’s novel as an artistic innovation for social change, which harnesses an art product as a significant intersection of African cultural symbols, in the positive reinforcement of literature in the service of humanity to ensure sustainable development.