Lesibana Rafapa

Tapestries of hope : film, youths and HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe and South Africa

In Zimbabwe, the marauding effects of the human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) are felt in almost all families, among different age groups, class lines, races and creed. The effects are debated and discussed, and different intervention measures are suggested using various forms of media. The communication-science-based interventions and advocacy promoted through film are an integral part of biomedically based scientific research into understanding the nature and manifestations of HIV/AIDS. However, it is worrisome that in most of the research, debates and discussions that focus on HIV /AIDS, adults take the centre-stage. This practice of speaking for youths, and not to and with them, denies the reality that youths are agents of social change whose ‘‘voice’’ and action can have the capacity to transform society for the better in the face of HIV /AIDS. In Zimbabwe, one methodological approach that youths can use to debate and spread the message about the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS is film. In the Zimbabwean section, this article singles out the short film The sharing day (2009) as an informative and communicative tool that features youths dramatising narratives of hope, pain and sorrow as they are confronted by the reality of HIV/AIDS. In the South African section of the article, the abcnews.com documentary (2001) on Xolani Nkosi Johnson’s struggle with HIV/AIDS is used to signal hope. The article critiques documentary filmmaking on Johnson, using criteria such as youth involvement (Harrison et al. 2010; Wang 2006), effectiveness of the message (Hanan 2009) and bonding and bridging social capital (Foulis et al. 2007).

Negotiating Social Change in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions

Abstract Black African women writers have been publishing for well over five decades. They have, through their works, attempted to lend agency to hitherto objectified female characters within male dominated literary discourse. In spite of this laudable contribution, their works have received little critical attention from both sides of gender. Likewise, Tsitsi Dangarembga has not received enough critical attention, despite her making a distinct and worthy contribution towards an unbiased depiction of the plight of women on the African literary scene. This paper traces how Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions takes such a cause further by essentially interrogating the concept of agency manifested in choice, together with its attendant social reconfigurations. The means by which Dangarembga’s outstanding literary innovation is demonstrated is the investigation of the characters Lucia and Nyasha within the framework of the misrepresentation of Black African women in the fiction of Black Africans writing in English. It will be investigated how the choices of women characters affect the lives of other women characters in the novel in a manner that enriches the discourse of social change/transformation. Thus Lucia and Nyasha show that women can stand up for themselves and become liberated in a male dominated society.

Rethinking Marikana: Warm and Cold Lenses in Plea for Humanity

Summary This article examines a rethinking of the historic Marikana tragedy of 16 August 2012, as encoded in the eNCA documentary film The Marikana Massacre: Through the Lens. My approach is in the form of commentary on the act, scene, actor, agent and agency pertaining to the way the Marikana massacre is selectively revived in the documentary film. I make these comments in order to scaffold discussions of the documentary producers’ poíésis and praxis giving shape to their narrative. The presencing and absencing of the documentary are discussed in making the case for a need to analyse carefully the background of the Marikana shootings and the situation in which they occurred, in much the same way as it is necessary to explore the producers’ purpose and narrative in selecting to produce the documentary as they did. The study argues that the producers of the documentary film chose to narrate the small-person plight of the killed Marikana miners, security guards and police officers by silencing issues around other main actors one may categorise as symbolic of big-person state power, only to enrich the supposed bigger meaning contingent upon the audiences pre-existing knowledge of the context of the incidents. In this way the illusory objectivity of the narration is strengthened towards a more cogent correlation with what obtains in the real world of nearly two decades of post-apartheid South Africa.

Popular music in the Zion Christian Church

Abstract The article dwells, in the main, in rationalizing the popularity of ZCC (Zion Christian Church) worship songs. Lest the point of this paper is misconstrued as a homogenization of the ZCC and the collective of South African black cultural groups, only segments of which belong to the ZCC, the reasons for qualifying this brand of music as popular are outlined. This discussion isolates features of the music that render it a refracted image of South African black folk music. The purpose is to trace the remoulding of such popular black music in the ZCC in order to pin down its identifiable functions. Aspects by which this kind of music belongs at least to sections of the black nation reflected overwhelmingly in the membership of the AIC (African Initiated Church) are also explored. Apart from probing the uniquely ZCC features of this kind of culturally inflected music, the peculiar way in which the music is put to use in this church is discussed, including how such uses differ from those evident in the greater community sharing its origins.