Existential Nihilism in Ignatius Mabasa’s Poetry: Implications for the Development of the Human Factor

This article finds its fountainhead in the trend in Ignatius Mabasa’s poetry to cast existential nihilism as a way of life. That is, despite the fact that the poetry grapples with big issues that breed social malaise, it lacks the necessary optimism that is indispensable to struggles to transcend life’s challenges. Hopelessness and despair have no place in Africa and literature has to recognise this fact. African people celebrate agency and revolution. Be that as it may, the poems explicated in this paper seem to be inspired by the Euro-modernist tradition which canonises meaninglessness or the absurdity of life. The centrepiece of this paper is that Mabasa abstracts his art and subsequently his audience from African existential philosophy, a philosophy premised on resistance and optimistic struggle. It is largely lachrymal art that negates struggle and transcendence. Contrary to optimism in the face of the inevitability of struggle, which is the hallmark of African philosophy of existence, Mabasa’s poetry tends to entrap rather than contribute to the development and liberation of African people. The artist is quintessentially a proponent of self-defeating literature. The paper is broadly steeped in Afrocentric theory and draws inspiration from Maulana Karenga’s thoughts on Black art.

Images of woman and the search for happiness in Cynthia Jele's Happiness is a four letter word

Over the years, African ‘feminist’ scholars have expressed reservations about embracing feminism as an analytical framework for theorizing issues that affect African women. This is particularly because in many African societies, feminism has been perceived as a negative influence that seeks to tear the cultural fabric and value systems of African communities. Some scholars such as Clenora Hudson-Weems, Chikenje Ogunyemi, Tiamoyo Karenga and Chimbuko Tembo contend that feminism as developed by Western scholars is incapable of addressing context-specific concerns of African women. As a result, they developed womanism as an alternative framework for analysing the realities of women in African cultures. Womanism is premised on the view that African women need an Afrocentric theory that can adequately deal with their specific struggles. Drawing from ideas that have been developed by womanist scholars, this article critically interrogates the portrayal of women in Cynthia Jele’s Happiness is a four-letter word (2010), with particular focus on the choices that they make in love relationships, marriage and motherhood. My argument is that Jele’s text affirms the womanist view that African women exist within a specific cultural context that shapes their needs, aspirations and choices in a different way.