Department of Literature

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Fasihi ya Kiswahili na rushwa Tanzania: Thomas A. R. Kamugisha na Kitu Kidogo Tu
(Idara ya Kiswahili, Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam, 2006) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
Makala hii inajaribu kuelezea mchango wa fasihi ya Kiswahili katika kuijadili rushwa. Kwa kurejea kwenye Riwaya ya Thomas A.R. Kamugisha Kitu Kidogo tu! makala hii inasawilisha miongo takribani mitatu ya dhana ya “kitu kidogo” na athari zake kwa jamii ya Tanzania. Kwa kuijadili riwaya ya Kitu Kidogo tu! makala hii inajaribu pia kutoa picha ya Tanzania ya leo na kesho.
Reimagining African Communities: Achebe, Ngugi, Gordimer, Farah and the Anglophone African novel
(2007) Andindilile, Michael
This dissertation examines the novels of Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Nadine Gordimer, and Nuruddin Farah, paying special attention to the relationship between language and nation, nation and race, as well as culture and language. The study explores how each of these contemporary Anglophone African writers uses modified versions of English to help build cross-cultural bridges in an increasingly trans-national world. It examines how the various manifestations of the English language in the traditionally non-English speaking nations of these writers constitute an anglophone African literary-linguistic continuum. This anglophone African literary-linguistic continuum provides the point of reference for examining how diverse linguistic, literary, cultural, as well as religious expressions converge into a discourse that facilitates intra-, pan- and trans-national communication within and outside the continent. The dissertation establishes that the works of these four authors—from four different parts of the African continent—affirm the plurality of Anglophone African writings, a plurality which continues to defy a unified theory, mainly due to the literary-linguistic and cultural circumstances of the authors and their respective nations. It also affirms that any language—foreign or indigenous—can help subjects reimagine their nation, regardless of their ethnic background, race or religious affiliation, so long as they make that language relevant to their literary expression. The dissertation emphasizes how the many manifestations of English help rather than harm cross-cultural national and transnational discourse. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the English language embodies the various discourses of sub-Saharan anglophone Africa in an attempt to enable cross-cultural, intra-national and transnational literary discourse
'"We have lost sight of Africa": America, Europe and the Diaspora in Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River'
(Afroeuropa: Journal of Afroeuropean Studies, 2009) Michael, Andindilile
More than any of Caryl Phillips' historical novels of the transatlantic experience, Crossing the River, published in 1995, is a Pro-diaspora novel. By pro-diaspora novel, I mean that it is a novel written primarily to subvert history in order to stress diasporic connections and the need for redemption within the African diaspora. Readers of this novel such as Wendy Walters, Benedict Ledent, Claude Julien and Gail Low have noted Phillips’s unwavering commitment to the African Diaspora. However, they have paid little attention to the connection between America and England that Phillips deliberately draws in the plotting of Crossing the River as part of his rhetorical strategy. In this essay, I contend that this Anglo-American connection exposes America's and Europe's bigotry in the treatment of African diasporans, and attaches that bigotry to their attempt to purge rather than redeem Africans in the diaspora.
Art and History: Ebrahim Hussein's Kinjeketile
(The Department of History and Archaeology, University of Dar es Salaam and The Historical Association of Tanzania, 2009) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
Patriarchy, Women and HIV/AIDS in Mapalala's Passed like a Shadow
(UAS, 2010) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
Although HIV/AIDS affects both men and women, the infection rate amongst women over the years outstrips the number of men contracting this disease. The gravity of the situation has prompted many African writers to use the ready-made materials on HIV/AIDS in their society to create works of art. The purpose of this paper is to examine Bernard Mapalala’s short story “Passed like a Shadow” in relation to the HIV/AIDS scourge, focusing on how the story represents the women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. The paper argues that the story identifies patriarchy and its attendant problems as the primary contributing factor to the rapid spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic amongst women.
‘All Men Are Created Equal’: Walker, Delany and the African Colonisation Bigotry
(TTI Publishing Ltd, 2010) Andindilile, Michael
This essay examines two historical documents—David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World and Martin R. Delany’s The Condition, Elevation, and Destiny of the Colored People published in 1929 and 1952, respectively—to stress the rhetorical astuteness of African-Americans writing from the margins in hostile antebellum America. The essay argues that, rhetorically these documents expose America’s weaknesses and contradictions between the principles of freedom that motivated the country’s founding fathers and the compromises that recognised and permitted the continuation of slavery. Specifically, these rhetoricians exploit and subvert Thomas Jefferson’s paradoxical, if not conflicting, thesis on the status of African-Americans in America to advance their argument. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
When ‘the Centre Cannot Hold’: Achebe and Anglophone African Literary Discourse
(TTI Publishing Ltd, 2011) Andindilile, Michael
Extending Derek Bickerton’s pioneering study on the Creole Continuum; this essay argues that English, a former colonial language, serves as an arbiter in the reimagining of diverse African communities. The essay revisits Chinua Achebe’s fiction to examine the relationship between literary English and the indigenous languages, and cultures it imaginatively and concretely embodies in traditionally nonnative universes of discourse. The essay considers how Achebe’s literary English embodies the local cultural-specific literary elements to illustrate that anglophonism can thrive in the national discourse of a non-native English environment if it has both a functional and utilitarian value, an integral part of Achebe’s theory on the language of African literature. Achebe’s works show that English serves as a linguistic bridge in the complex multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Nigeria. Finally, the essay establishes that the local aspects introduced into literary English do not necessarily represent a break from the main Anglophone literary-linguistic tradition, but rather a manifestation of an anglophone African literary-linguistic continuum with peculiar characteristics and divergences imposed by a localised context.
Democracy and Good Governance in PB Mayega’s ‘The People’s Schoolmaster’
(JOAAG, 2011) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
This essay uses P.B. Mayega’s The People’s Schoolmaster, which exposes the true face of democracy in many African countries. The essay focuses on Mayega’s fictional account because fiction in Africa tends to paint a more realistic picture about democracy in Africa. It is commonly accepted that democracy and good governance are necessary development tools, whether in a developed or developing country. Whereas there is ample evidence in the Western world to illustrate that this democratic principle does actually work when put into practice, in developing countries, especially in Africa, evidence on the ground demonstrates otherwise. Though many African countries profess and market themselves as democratic nations, they fail to implement democratic principles. The kind of democracy practiced in many African countries is largely symbolic and cosmetic and stifles rather than promote democratic principles.
Individualism and Collectivism in Ebrahim Hussein's Plays
(Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili, Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam, 2012) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
African Anglophonism, Translation and the Teaching of Ngugi’s Works
(Modern Languages of America, 2012) Andindilile, Michael
Alterity in Hybridity:Examining the Impact of Globalization on African Children's Literature through the Works of Tololwa M. Mollel
(Sankofa: A Journal of African Children's and Young Adult Literature, 2012) Mpale Yvonne Mwansasu Silkiluwasha
The articles examines the stereotype of the younger generation holding decision-making power over adults in three picture books by Tanzanian author Tololwa Mollel, namely “Song Bird”, “Orphan Boy”, and “Shadow Dance”. It demonstrates that the author compromises the interests of Africans by striving to adopt Western values. It explores the theory of hybridity by Homi Bhabha, which calls for the construction of new identity for immigrant writers who live in Western countries.
‘Imagine Someone Speaking as They Speak’: Linguistic Divide and Convoluted Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nadine Gordimer’s Apartheid-Era Work
(2013) Andindilile, Michael
Nadine Gordimer’s delicate, perceptive, and oftentimes idiosyncratic treatment of controversial issues has received a lot of critical enquiry. Scant attention, however, has been paid to how Gordimer’s critical appraisal of apartheid policies emerges from her attempt to concretely embody African languages, discourses, and cultures in her fiction. This essay, therefore, revisits Gordimer’s apartheid-era fiction to examine how the representation of a range of discourses in Gordimer’s fiction constitutes a means through which she appraises apartheid power relations and the effects of divisive policies. The paper argues that Gordimer’s treatise on apartheid and its divisive policies is manifested in her attempt to embody African discourses in her apartheid-era fiction. In this paper, I rely on Foucault’s definition of discourse as “ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them . . . [d]iscourses [that] are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. . . . They constitute the ‘nature’ of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern” (qtd. in Weedon 108). They are also “a form of power that circulates in the social field and can attach to strategies of domination as well as those of resistance” (qtd. in Diamond and Quinby 185). Both of these definitions refer to discourse not as an innocent act, but one that conditions subjects in their social, cultural and economic interactions.
German Colonialism, Memory and Ebrahim Hussein’s Kinjeketile
(IISTE, 2014) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
This paper examines how Ebrahim Hussein in Kinjeketile uses memory of German colonial rule in the then Tanganyika, a part of German East Africa to interrogate the encounter between the coloniser and colonised. Hussein’s play largely deploys the African belief system to represent a moment of great conflict between the German colonial administration and native Tanganyikans as the locals struggle to build national consciousness under nascent nationalism. The paper uses a new historicist approach to determine the discrepancy between fact and fiction, much as the play is based on an actual event that took place in the 1905-1907 period. It argues that the reconstruction of the Maji Maji rebellion is geared towards evoking the memory of the past to teach the present and the future generations rather than present a historical fact. Thus the paper demonstrates the power of memory in invigorating the present in relation to the future.
Beyond Nativism: Translingualism and Ngũgĩ's Engagement with Anglophonism
(Taylor & Francis, 2014) Andindilile, Michael
In the face of the controversies surrounding the writings of the East African writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, this article contends that his Gikuyu fictions (also in English translation) are as much an integral part of Ngũgĩ's engagement with the Anglophone tradition as his earlier works published in English. Negotiating through various critical issues raised on Ngũgĩ and his articulations on the language of African literature, the paper uses his works to show that those originally written in English and those in Gikuyu benefit from similar processes of translingualism. It addresses the subject of the relationship between translation and minor languages, arguing that translation involves an inevitable and continuous manipulation of texts in which the words' subjectivity, ideology, visibility and power complicate the very process of translation and reception of texts from minor languages to major languages. Finally, the paper shows that Ngũgĩ's Anglophone and Gikuyu novels (in translation) are complementary in the exploitation of various manifestations of translingualism, despite arguments to the contrary.
English, Cosmopolitanism and the Myth of National Linguistic Homogeneity in Nuruddin Farah's Fiction
(Oxford University Press, 2014-06-24) Andindilile, Michael
This paper analyses the intricacies of using English in a traditionally non-English context such as Somalia through the work of its foremost anglophone writer, Nuruddin Farah. Farah uses English to re-imagine the nation and promote intra-, pan- and transnational discourses within and outside Africa. The analysis of Farah has been informed by the articulations of Ernest Renan, Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson, within the view of Somalia's now-contested exceptionalism. In Farah's hands, English becomes a vehicle for bringing together diverse linguistic, literary, cultural and religious expressions into a genre that facilitates transnational discourse. The paper argues that the anglophone African literary tradition that Farah embraces gains the capacity to transcend national boundaries and broadens – rather than limits – the scope and coverage of national and transnational literatures.
The Prophetic Vision in Kagwema’s Fear of the Unknown
(SEAHI PUBLICATIONS, 2015) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
From 1967 to 1986, Tanzanians passed through a very testing period full of challenging situations against ujamaa and self-reliance-the model of social and economic development Tanzanians choose. In Fear of the Unknown-a story and a prose narrative, Prince Kagwema presents the “truth” about socialism and capitalism in an artistic way. In Fear of the Unknown, the dialogue on socialism and capitalism is presented by the diehard capitalist and an unflinching, steadfast socialist. This paper examines the role of prophecy in Kagwema’s Fear of the Unknown. The paper argues that in Fear of the Unknown prophecy is used as a driving factor of a story, a sort of motivation to the writer and an outline of where events should go. Moreover, this paper argues that through literary skills the author has managed to predict and foretell the future of Tanzania. This paper uses the sociological approach to literary criticism. Under sociological approach, the assumption is that since literature is produced in a social context then literary writers affirm or criticise the values of the society in which they live. As such, in Fear of the Unknown, Prince Kagwema, the writer addresses the social economic and the political contexts in which this literary text was produced.
Diasporic Post-Colonial African Children's Books and the Logic of Abjection
(Marang: Journal of Language and Literature, 2015) Mpale Yvonne Mwansasu Silkiluwasha
Lacan's mirror stage points out to the human tendency in desiring wholeness while objecting what is considered to be the lack, and in this article whiteness represents the desired wholeness. using children's books written by diasporic writers I demonstrate the logic of abjection while analyzing the inability of these writers to establish the symbolic identity.
Can't a Girl have it All? Interrogating Gender Paradigms in Ama Ata Aidoo's The Girl Who Can and Other Stories.
(Tanzania Journal of Population Studies and Development, 2015) Mpale Yvonne Mwansasu Silkiluwasha
This article seeks to explore Ama Ata Aidioo’s (2002) work for the purpose of interrogating how African feminists and/or women writers represent challenges facing African women, as well as suggested or implied solutions to their problems. The analysis interprets four stories: “Lice”, “Comparisons”, “The Girl Who Can”, and “Heavy Moments” in an attempts to identify elements of women’s oppressions under patriarchy rule, and to what extent women can challenge that system. Although some female characters in these stories have proved to challenge the system and subverted men’s hierarchy, the underlying implications as to what a woman ought to do to overcome the oppression leaves a lot to be desired. The article attempts to disentangle Aidoos’s narratives, and in the process of disentangling it demonstrates newly established feminist constructs that ought to be subverted.
Metaphors of Resistance: Nicknames in Tanzanian Fiction
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2016) Wakota, John
This chapter explores the fictional representation of Tanzania’s colonial history, especially the relations between the indigenous people and the colonists that are conveyed through the nicknames used in selected fiction. It proposes that nicknames in Tanzanian fiction that span the colonial period are some of the most straightforward ways of understanding relationships between the colonised indigenous people and their colonisers. Through the decoding of these fictionalised nicknames, the essay seeks to demonstrate the extent to which these nicknames can be considered as storehouses that offer a glimpse of social relations.
Houseboying: Negotiating the Intersectionality of Race, Gender, Class and Age in Selected Fiction
(Dar es Salaam university College of Education, 2016) Wakota, John
Tracing a thread from the fictionalized pre-colonial to the post-independence period, this paper analyzes the representation of houseboying by locating it at the intersection of gender, race, and class. Reading the representation of domestic service against a backcloth of a discourse that constructs the houseboy as a primitive being, the paper analyzes houseboying as a process of civilization; a form of power relations; and a site where social inequalities and social differences are produced; contested; negotiated; and renegotiated. Since houseboying requires servile postures and is stereotypically based on reversal of gender roles, the question this paper asks is how does the houseboy acquire them given that his background is portrayed to be patriarchal per se where even boys are groomed to be prospective paterfamilias? In analyzing the portrayal of how the houseboy’s masculinity is compromised and how he deals with the resultant societal stigma associated with his work, the paper also examines how, ironically, the houseboys are portrayed to be complacent in sustaining and occasionally enforcing the asymmetrical master-servant relationship. It argues that the houseboy’s ‘slavish’ posture is only situational—a performance and a strategic adaptation to the demands of domestic service.

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