The Complexities of Silence in Buhle Ngaba’s The Girl Without a Sound in the Context of Contemporary South African Tertiary Education Protest

Abstract

This paper aims to read Buhle Ngaba’s The Girl Without a Sound, a children’s book available for free online, alongside readings of silence in the context of the protests against rape culture at the university currently known as Rhodes (UCKAR/Rhodes University). The allegorical power of the text in the context of a genre largely populated by white, male protagonists is significant. This paper will also consider the role of children’s books as social texts and how these can be used to impart ideologies, for better or worse. I will argue that The Girl Without a Sound resists silencing in both historical and contemporary contexts. The protagonist is a little girl with a “fluff of hair, a mouth the shape of a cherry blossom and brown pools for eyes” (Ngaba 2016: 2), an atypical protagonist in most English-medium children’s literature industries. This paper aims to articulate the allegorical power of The Girl Without a Sound and to read it against theories of silence, protest and the contemporary moment of student protest, particularly with regard to the protests against rape culture that took place at UCKAR in April 2016. Ultimately, the text offers an affirmation of the agential power of girls of colour, speaking in concert with calls for intersectionality in contemporary political movements.