Breaking new ground
A PhD student in the African Language Studies Section in the School of Languages and Literatures, Mr Ignatius Mabasa, has been awarded a PhD for the first-ever thesis written in ChiShona at Rhodes University.
His thesis is titled “CHAVE CHEMUTENGURE VHIRI RENGORO: HUSARUNGANO NERWENDO RWENGANO DZEVASHONA.
The folktale in confrontation with a changing world: a Shona storyteller’s autoethnography, encompasses his story as a Shona folklorist and creative writer, and the story of the Shona people. Mr Mabasa cited several reasons why he decided to write his thesis in his mother tongue.
“The elephant must after his nature trumpet and not meow like a cat. I am a Shona storyteller, film-maker and author who started telling stories before I could read or write., he said.
His thesis is also a revolt against attitudes that systematically deny Africans an agenda in their own land and languages.
“The choice to use ChiShona is a response to the exclusion and marginalisation of other knowledges. By using the
Shona language, I am rethinking pedagogy and targeting a disenfranchised audience.
“Brutal colonial conquest and forced acculturation have disturbed and created insecure conditions for Africans. Africans have had other people tell their stories for them – othering them, judging them, labelling them, misrepresenting them.
“My thesis in Shona is part of unthinking Eurocentrism and searching for alternative epistemologies. The African cannot continue thinking as if he is still living in a colonial world, perpetuating colonial discourses and perspectives.”
At its core, the thesis rests on a Zimbabwean foundational narrative called Chemutengure that indigenous people sung when the British colonised them in 1890.
“It is a song of resisting disruption, and talking about it in the very language and culture that was being resisted, namely English, is some kind of betrayal,.
According to Mr Mabasa, his use of ChiShona also acts as a challenge to gatekeeping in academia where research and the language it uses marginalises certain classes, creating dangerous dominant narratives and pseudo-realities.
In his thesis, he makes use of autoethnography, which is a methodology that deliberately seeks to make research and knowledge accessible. – www.ru.ac.za
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