Department of Literature

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Sexism and misogyny in selected proverbs of the Chaga of Machame
(UMMA: The Journal of Contemporary Literature and Creative Arts, 2021) Emmanuel, Lema
This work employs a feminist perspective to examine how some proverbs of the Chaga of Machame portray a sexist ideology that supports patriarchal relations as well as social systems or environments in which women face cultural stereotyping. It discusses the impressions that some proverbs create and how such impressions set rules which govern how women are, should be treated and how they are expected to behave. It has been argued that some life-long gendered attitudes towards women are evident in the selected proverbs and that they take part in the creation of a social system which explains how women are seen, represented and how gender relations are organized, promoted, and shaped. The paper shows that proverbs constitute a powerful rhetorical device for the shaping of moral consciousness, opinions, and beliefs.
Fictional reconstruction of history of Kilwa in M.G Vassanji's The Magic of Saida
(Tanzania Zamani: A Journal of Historical Research and Writing, 2019) Emmanuel, Emmanuel; Emmanuel, Lema
This paper explores M.G Vassanji’s novel, The Magic of Saida (2012). It draws on the idea of reconstruction of history used in anthropology and utilizes it as an approach in carrying out textual analysis of the novel and exploring how the novel reconstructs the history of Kilwa. Additionally, it employs Stephen Greeblatt idea of New Historicism, whereby, appreciation of the text history and textuality of history is done on the assumption that the novel is a closely-knit fabric composed of both historical and literary threads. The paper argues that Kamal Punja’s story about his return to Kilwa to look for his childhood lover, Saida is well intertwined with accounts and varying versions of stories of old Kilwa, slavery and slave trade in Kilwa, German intervention in Kilwa and African resistances. It is further argued that Vassanji is not only writing Kamal’s story but also allowing Kamal to revisit his past and reconstruct the history and in that way through the novel fiction and history have been used by Vassanji to propose a view that there are differences between actual historical events, varying perceptions of the events and the histories about the events, thus Vassanji has provided readers with a room to question the process by which we represent ourselves and our world and to become aware of the means by which we make sense of and construct our history.
Politics and Ideology in Tanzanian Prose Fiction in English
(Dar es Salaam University Press, 2019) Mwaifuge, Eliah S
Eliah Sibonike Mwaifuge is a Senior Lecturer of Literature in English at the University of Dar es Salaam, where he is also the Head of the Department of Literature. Prior to joining the University of Dar es Salaam, as an Assistant Lecturer in the 2000s, he served as a primary school teacher and later a tutor in colleges of education. He has written extensively on Tanzanian Literature in English. His coverage has included all three major genres of Poetry, Drama and the Novel. This book provides critical reading of the neglected field of Tanzania’s fiction in English. The book uses ideology as a trajectory to examine how the varied fictional representation question and expose the inequalities that persist in Tanzania. As the study of Tanzania fiction in English is minimal, this book provides critical information scholars need to gain a deeper understanding of the country’s Anglophone prose fiction in addition to stimulating debate on research and scholarship. In addition, the book will help people understand how these prose fictions in English respond to the political and ideological agenda of the nation, and use the dominant ideology of the day to subvert the status quo and underline the dynamics of Tanzania’s socio-economic development. “I am fortunate to have been involved with this project over the past several months as a “development editor,” and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Mwaifuge and to learn in the process a great deal about Tanzania and about the way the African literary project has developed in that country. It is my privilege to introduce to the world this latest addition to the canon of modern African literary criticism.” Gareth Cornwell, Professor Emeritus, Rhodes University
Pracarity and Affiliative Relationships in Elieshi Lema's In the Belly of Dar es Salaam
(Rhodes University, 2019) Ng'umbi, Yunusy Castory
This paper examines the representation of dynamics in a family that result in the separation of family members and their subsequent failure to reunite as a family. It specifically explores how Elieshi Lema’s In the Belly of Dar es Salaam represents characters who are victims of economic and political pressures that force them not only to be migrants but also to negotiate alternative affiliative relationships in order to survive. I explore the narrative in relation to the socio-cultural, economic and political instabilities that disrupt the lives of postcolonial subjects in Africa, producing migrants detached from their biological families. Since characters in this novel move from rural areas to urban spaces, this narrative offers an opportunity to read the city of Dar es Salaam as an agential space in the production of meanings and identities. These characters are forced by circumstances to forge new identities to meet certain needs at a particular time. I thus suggest that the novel portrays the precarity of existence in the city of Dar es Salaam as experienced by marginalised groups and how these groups negotiate affiliative relationships amongst themselves. This paper is interested in answering the following questions: how do characters move from rural to urban contexts? How do these marginalised characters negotiate their survival in the city of Dar es Salaam? How does the narrative conflate Sara and the city of Dar es Salaam as mothers to street children?
Intimate Family Affairs and Re-imagining Nationhood in Maaza Mengiste's Beneath the Lion's Gaze
(Fountain, 2019) Ng'umbi, Yunusy Castory
This paper examines the representation of dynamics in a family that result in the separation of family members and their subsequent failure to reunite as a family. It specifically explores how Elieshi Lema’s In the Belly of Dar es Salaam represents characters who are victims of economic and political pressures that force them not only to be migrants but also to negotiate alternative affiliative relationships in order to survive. I explore the narrative in relation to the socio-cultural, economic and political instabilities that disrupt the lives of postcolonial subjects in Africa, producing migrants detached from their biological families. Since characters in this novel move from rural areas to urban spaces, this narrative offers an opportunity to read the city of Dar es Salaam as an agential space in the production of meanings and identities. These characters are forced by circumstances to forge new identities to meet certain needs at a particular time. I thus suggest that the novel portrays the precarity of existence in the city of Dar es Salaam as experienced by marginalised groups and how these groups negotiate affiliative relationships amongst themselves. This paper is interested in answering the following questions: how do characters move from rural to urban contexts? How do these marginalised characters negotiate their survival in the city of Dar es Salaam? How does the narrative conflate Sara and the city of Dar es Salaam as mothers to street children?
Intimate Family Affairs and Re-imagining Nationhood in Maaza Mengiste's Beneath the Lion's Gaze
(Fountain Publishers, 2019) Ng'umbi, Yunusy Castory
It is an undeniable fact that in East Africa and the Horn of Africa — Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan — have been blacklisted by global communities such as the United Nations (UN), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the African Union (AU) as unstable nations because of continued civil wars, coups, violence, genocide, drought and famine that have resulted in the migration of people with their property. However, this state of instability, apart from suggesting the ‘failure’ of the post-colonial nation, it impliedly calls for ways on how to re-construct the ‘so called’ failed or unstable nations in order to resettle the displaced souls. Reading Maaza Mengiste’s Beneath the Lion’s Gaze from a post-colonial perspective, this paper explores how the narrative uses a family-nation metaphor to enter socio-cultural, economic and political spaces in order to interrogate the disintegration of the nation and, using family as a microcosm of the nation, proposes ways of re-building the bygone fragmented nation of Ethiopia. In illuminating how Mengiste joins other African women writers who assume authority in commenting ‘the state’ of the post-colonial nation , I try to argue that Mengiste’s narrative suggests the institution of the family as a central pillar towards re-construction of nations wrecked by wars.
The Journey Motif and the Re-reading of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o: Devil on the Cross, Matigari and Wizard of the Crow, A Gikuyu Trilogy
(2018) Lema, Emmanuel. P
This essay employs the journey motif to re-read three novels by Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Devil on the Cross, Matigari and Wizard of the Crow. It is argued here that these three novels form Ngugi’s era of Gikuyu fiction; they are chosen to represent his celebrated decision to freely tap from Gikuyu orature. Ngugi’s use of indigenous language in these novels bridges the historical and chronological gaps separating the three narratives; they constitute a trilogy that retells Ngugi's parable about postcolonial Kenya and Independent Africa more generally. By exploring the different physical, metaphorical and psychological journeys that permeate the atmosphere of all three novels, this interpretation enhances their value in light of Ngugi’s broader political and social agenda.
Betwixt and Between: Negotiating Parental Abandonment and Family Life in Sade Adeniran's Imagine This
(University of Dar es Salaam, College of Humanities, 2018) Ng'umbi, Yunusy Castory
Using African feminist and post-colonial theories, this paper examines the representation of the institution of family in Sade Adeniran’s Imagine This, in order to explore the character’s creation of a third space – one that is ambivalent and traumatic – in her context of divorce and family abandonment. As depicted in the narrative, a major reason behind such family tragedies is an overlap between patriarchy and the postcolonial state. Thus, through the protagonist’s troubled identity and traumatic experience due to her family’s dynamics, the narrative questions the role of a child in reconnecting fragmented family bonds. This heroine’s traumatised hatred of her culture and of the institution of motherhood raises questions about the future of African feminism. If this ideology marginalises culture and renders motherhood as an institution no longer centrally important to contemporary African women, then it requires critical engagement. I explore how the literary genre inspired by African feminism enters established socio-cultural spaces critically and interrogates family dynamics ruthlessly. And I query whether it offers any solutions to the dilemmas of women that are uncovered and illuminated thereby. I will argue that the child protagonist in this narrative is presented not merely as a victim of circumstance – existing as she does betwixt and between family identities that are simultaneously familiar and strange – she is also depicted as attempting valiantly to reconnect the fragmented family bonds.
Tanzanian Anglophone Fiction
(College of Humanities, 2016) John, Wakota
Tanzanian Anglophone fiction is extant and bustling. The invisibility of Tanzanian fiction in English is not due to the country‘s inability to produce good- quality Anglophone novels but is related to the challenge in accessing the texts both within and outside Tanzania. Studies about East African fiction tend to ignore the contribution of Tanzanian Anglophone writers in the region. In Tanzania people know more about other canonical African novelists than their very own Anglophone writers. This article explores the emergence and development of Tanzanian Anglophone fiction, paying particular attention to the emergence of Tanzanian Anglophone literary canons and how these canons have inspired and continue to inspire the production of Tanzanian fiction. Starting with the novels produced by the inaugural Tanzanian Anglophone writers in the sixties, and continuing with the most recent works, the paper examines the interface between Swahili and English, translation and self-translation, diasporic writers, universities‘ and researchers‘ contributions to the definition of the canon and to the visibility of the fiction in general.
Beliefs and the Spiritual World: Socio-cultural and Material Conditions of Tanzania’s Occult Fiction
(Taylor and Francis, 2018) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
This paper examines how traditional beliefs and spirituality inform and are represented in A. M Hokororo's Salma's Spirit (1997), A. S. Mmasi's Satanic Tortures (1998) and I. Yohana's Tears from a Lonely Heart (2013). The paper proceeds from the assumption that these works expose the link between beliefs and the spiritual world on the one hand, and social and historical conditions on the other. Using an eclectic approach due to the multifaceted and multi-disciplinary nature of issues covered in the works, the paper explores how these beliefs serve as a source of the authors' materials and inform the thematisation and characterisation of their works. Specifically, the paper looks at how local beliefs influence characterisation and thematisation in Salma's Spirit, Satanic Tortures and Tears from a Lonely Heart. It argues that the authors use beliefs to account for the actions of characters and concretise the themes behind the novels’ rhetorical agenda.
The Troubleed Image of Africa in Shilia Kaaya's Poetry
(Contemporary Journal of African Studies, 2017) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
This paper examines representations of Africa in Shilia Kaaya’s poetry. Kaaya’s The Bleeding Heart and other Poems (2009) features thirty-eight poems covering diverse themes. This paper focuses on ten poems which are devoted to colonialism, neo-colonialism and political problems besetting contemporary Africa. It argues that Kaaya’s poetry interrogates the dynamics of colonialism, neo-colonialism and the political problems in Africa and their effect on the development of Africa. It demonstrates how Kaaya’s poems raise salient issues about how Africa’s development — economically and politically, is undermined by both the European coloniser and Africans themselves. The Archetypal approach, which describes images found in a variety of poems written by a single poet, is applied to enhance understanding of the core message (s) of the poems.
Dramatizing Aborted Ritual: Postmodernist Imaginings in Wole Soyinka's Death and the Kings Horseman
(UNISA, 2017) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.; Omigbule, Morufu B.
Death and King’s Horseman showcases a condition of cultural rupture. Wole Soyinka’s manner of realizing this is through theoretical adventure that reveals his own very postmodernist imaginings, perhaps prior to the play’s composition but certainly at “the creative furor”. Recognizing and focusing on an overriding theoretical influence in a composite artistic production such as Death would significantly defuse the burden of interpreting Death which on its own constitutes a distinct unit in Soyinka’s repertoire of creative writings labelled as complex and obscure. The present study reveals the play’s robust discursive worth by identifying and exploring its postmodernist constitutive parameters. As the study further reinforces the claim that the playwright is cultural analyst of the avant-gardist category, the postmodernist figuration of the play deserves to be noted for all it entails and should inspire renewed criticism of the text, whose canonical status promises a prolonged regime in African and world literary studies.
INTERROGATING THE LINK BETWEEN HISTORY AND LITERATURE: INSIGHTS FROM THINGS FALL APART, KINJEKITILE AND ‘STANLEY MEETS MUTESA’
(Tanzania Zamani, 2017) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
Literature as representation has not only been able to capture the people’s imagination of a given epoch but has in itself constituted a historical account that goes deeper than mere representation of historical fact. As such, literature is a good tool for historical representation and examination, which complements historical records. Whereas history deals with hard historical facts, literature deals with fictionalised history inspired by historical events or imagination but in either case shaped by the society it represents. Thus, one can read a historical novel as both a fictional and factual representation of the historical fact. In this regard, the paper argues that the intersection between literature and history is inevitable because fiction uses the creative industry to represent historical events with both history and literature being products of society. Using a historical approach, this paper uses Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Hussein’s Kinjeketile and Rubadili’s “Stanley Meets Mutesa,” which represents the three key genres—novel, drama and poetry, respectively, to interrogate how history and literature are connected. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart depicts the historical encounter during the advent of colonialism. Hussein’s Kinjeketile portrays the struggle between the colonised and the coloniser in the fictionalised Tanganyika. Rubadili’s “Stanley Meets Mutesa” depicts a cruel encounter between the colonised and the coloniser with the colonised seemingly blind to the machinations of the coloniser. The three literary texts are used to illustrate the historical connection between history and literature.
Patriarchy and Social Determinism: Interrogating Feminist Agenda in Tanzania's Neglected Poetry
(Marang, 2017) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
This paper examines poems written in English by Tanzanians from a feminist perspective. Specifically, the paper examines how Tanzanian poets in English handle feminist ideas. It interrogates how the poets address issues of human rights, dignity and equality from a feminist perspective in a predominantly patriarchal society. Through a feminist lens, the paper also delineates how the poets depict the reaction of women against masculinity and often female-gender insensitive traditional cultural beliefs which continue to subjugate and marginalise women. The paper contends that despite being ignored in terms of scholarship, Tanzanian poets in English have been preoccupied with the question of gender equality, which helps to define and place their contribution to literary and gender discourse in Tanzania. The paper concludes that Tanzanian poets in English have rhetorically been fostering the feminist agenda to undermine prevalent patriarchal norms and values. Keywords: Feminists, patriarchy, Tanzanian poets in English, masculinity, identity
The Subversion of Patriarchy and Women’s Empowerment in Henry Ole Kulet’s Blossoms of the Savannah
(Dar es Salaam University College of Education, 2016) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
This paper builds on the arguments presented by Muriungi and Muriiki (2013) on gender-based violence (GBV) in African literature. Focusing on Ole Kulet‘s Blossoms of the Savannah, Muriungi and Muriiki furnish the particulars of Nasila culture and its effect on women in general terms. They do not explain how the novel attempts to subvert patriarchy and empower women characters. They further demonstrate the way Ole Kulet uses the novel to explore GBV among the Maasai in Kenya. As a result, the novel‘s powerful and deliberate attempt to subvert patriarchy remains largely unexplored. This study, therefore, examines how Ole Kulet‘s Blossoms of the Savannah subverts the patriarchy system of the Nasila culture to empower the projection of the female characters in the novel. In this regards, it is argued that the characters of Taiyo, Resian and Minik are manifestations of the novel‘s rejection of the patriarchy system. Consequently, the novel turns a traditional negative depiction of women into a positive depiction of women. The paper further argues that the novel uses the patriarchy system as a backdrop to subvert the system. In fact, the portrayal of women in the novel is informed by feminists‘ theory of equity between men and women, coupled with the need to foster women‘s dignity. This feminist leaning emboldens the novel‘s rhetorical agenda of subverting patriarchy to empower women characters.
Thematic Concerns of Contemporary Tanzanian Poetry in English
(ISEL, 2016) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.; Omigbule, Morufu B.
This paper explores the search for identity, displacement and belonging in Allen Sawaya’s Destined to Fame. The novel destined to fame depicts the world as a site of horror and interrogates the way the notions of identity, displacement and belonging affect an individual. In the novel, Sawaya emphasizes that the notions of identity, displacement and belonging are shaped by social and political situations which in turn result into emotional experiences or attachment to the affected individual. Through the protagonist William Forster- an African adopted child living in the UK, this paper argues that even though an individual can belong to the world but that individual can not belong home. This paper uses the postcolonial theory because the issues of identity, displacement or unhomliness and belonging are central topics in postcolonial thoughts.
Disciplacement and Identity Formation in Allen Sawaya's Destined to Fame
(Global Journal of English Language and Literature, 2016-09-16) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
This paper explores the search for identity, displacement and belonging in Allen Sawaya’s Destined to Fame. The novel destined to fame depicts the world as a site of horror and interrogates the way the notions of identity, displacement and belonging affect an individual. In the novel, Sawaya emphasizes that the notions of identity, displacement and belonging are shaped by social and political situations which in turn result into emotional experiences or attachment to the affected individual. Through the protagonist William Forster- an African adopted child living in the UK, this paper argues that even though an individual can belong to the world but that individual can not belong home. This paper uses the postcolonial theory because the issues of identity, displacement or unhomliness and belonging are central topics in postcolonial thoughts.
Writing the City Space: Migration, Precariousness and Affilial Relationships
(Dar es Salaam University College of Education, 2017) Ng'umbi, Yunusy Castory
Since independence, Africa as a geo-political space has been experiencing a number of instabilities. One among them is continued civil wars and the accompanied mayhems such as migration, exile, refugeeism and the fragmentation of the institution of the family. Through such underlying forces, the post-colonial subject is subjected to various intersecting dilemmas in terms of socio-cultural identity. Using a post-colonial framework, this paper attempts to explore how literature enters such socio-cultural spaces by interrogating the ‗failure‘ of the post-colonial state. It specifically examines how the selected narrative interrogates rural-urban and diaspora migration in relation to the ‗failure‘ of the post-colonial state, how it represents the precariousness of the city that results in the marginalisation of some social groups such as prostitutes, and it reconfigures the institution of the family by creating an affilial relationship to supress the loss of familial bond. The paper argues that the precariousness of urban spaces provides an opportunity to explore the dynamics of marginalised groups and voices from the fringes, and ways in which they negotiate affilial relationships amongst themselves as relegated or displaced characters.
Re-imagining Family and Gender Roles in Aminatta Forna's Ancestor Stones
(University of Pretoria, 2017-07-10) Ng'umbi, Yunusy Castory
This paper examines the interplay between polygyny and gender by exploring the way in which family structure and gender roles are negotiated, imagined and exercised in fiction. Aminatta Forna’s Ancestor stones (2006) is read in order to explore how the institution of polygyny changes over time and how it influences gender role negotiation. Using an African feminist approach, the paper juxtaposes the historical and contemporary institution of polygyny in relation to gender role negotiation and how contemporary writers build on their literary precursors in re-writing the history of polygyny and gender according to the socio-cultural needs of twenty-first century Africans. These changes in socio-cultural, economic and political spheres in Africa have played a pivotal role in altering family structure and arrangements. I therefore argue that the changes in familial structure and arrangement necessitate gender role negotiation.
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.

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