AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Inventions, Imaginings, Codification: Authorising Versions of Ndebele Cultural Tradition |
| Author: | Kaarsholm, Preben |
| Year: | 1997 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies |
| Volume: | 23 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Period: | June |
| Pages: | 243-258 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Zimbabwe United Kingdom |
| Subjects: | Ndebele (Zimbabwe) colonialism indirect rule History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637620 |
| Abstract: | This paper examines an example of the interaction between State authority and local intellectual effort which concerns the nature and status of the cultural tradition of the Ndebele of Zimbabwe, and which stretches across the divide between colonial past and postcolonial present. It is an example which demonstrates some of the different motivations which have been involved in striving to provide codified versions of tradition and history in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe. The paper is based on an interview conducted in 1992 with the prominent Ndebele cultural nationalist Hudson Ndlovu, and a book he referred to: 'The history of the amaNdebele' (1968) by Harold Child, a retired Native Commissioner in Rhodesia in the 1960s. At one level, Child's book was written as a manual meant to be useful for Native Commissioners, educators, missionaries, etc. At another level, it was directed at an African readership, seeking to legitimize and to argue the correctness of the representation of Ndebele culture it provided. At a third level, the book was more directly a propaganda text, directed at both a Rhodesian and an international audience, seeking to justify Rhodesian policies of African administration. In this case of intertextuality, a contemporary Ndebele nationalist relates for authority to the rendering of tradition provided by a colonial administrator. Notes, ref. |
