African Story Research Articles

Obiajulu’s Children and the Wicked Sons of Eli (1 Sam 2:11–17)

The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas (1 Sam 2:11-36), served along with their father as priests at Shiloh in the tabernacle, where the ark of the covenant was housed (11am 1:3). While in service, Eli’s children became sons of worthlessness (bənȇ-bəliyyaʿal), dishonest, wicked and corrupt, as well as refused to know the Lord (lō’ yāḏə‘û ՚eṯ-ʾădōnāi) and his teachings. They were unrighteous, greedy, intimidating, immoral, and abusive to women at the entrance of the temple (vv. 12-22). Eli did little to correct them, leading to God’s punishment. Some scholars have examined this narrative with Western historical models, lacking African stories, cultures, customs, and experiences, where there are similar incidences of children’s misbehaviors and challenges of their upbringing in the African context. Using an African Biblical Hermeneutical approach with illustrative stories from Zain E. Asher’s memoir, “Where the Children Take Us: How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable,” this work contextually examines 1 Sam 2:11-17, within the theological contexts of the Books of Samuel and Deuteronomistic History (Josh–2 Kings). It compares Obiajulu’s disciplined and trained children (Obinze, Chiwetel, Zain, Kandibe) and the obedient boy, Samuel (vv. 18-22), with the consequences of the blasphemies and corruption of Eli’s children (vv. 11-17). It proposes lessons that no matter how we perform our duties in the church, schools and families, sadness may still come if we neglect to train our children responsibly in righteousness, integrity, hard work, and in the fear of the Lord.

On the Religious and the Secular in Nineteenth-Century Buganda

Abstract The case of nineteenth-century Buganda opens up a number of assumptions within scholarship about religion, secularity, and politics in African history. Although much scholarship focuses on European colonizers introduced alien categories such as religion and imposed distinctions between religion and politics, this paper foregrounds a different set of historical transformations in what is now Uganda – transformations that ultimately increased rather than diminished connections between the exercise of political power and markedly religious convictions. Along the way, it locates some of the most important pieces of this story in ‘the precolonial’. This allows the paper to trace the emergence of the category of religion, as well as analyze the sense in which it is meaningful to think of precolonial Buganda as secular at a particular moment. In so doing, the paper puts an African story in dialogue with wider conversations on the secular.

The Playful Karoo: Translating a South African Story into the Metaverse

ABSTRACT This research paper explores different game design methodologies that can be used to translate the South African novel Souvenir by Jane Rosenthal, set in the semi-desert region known as the Karoo into a Virtual Reality experience, which can live on the Metaverse. The paper suggests that the translated Virtual Reality experience can be used as a tool for climate change action and awareness, as well as a way to preserve South African stories on the Metaverse. The paper focuses on various narrative design methodologies for storytelling in game design, suggesting which would work best for the translation of a novel into a Virtual Reality experience. Additionally, it explores practical methodologies for the production of 3D game objects and assets required to recreate the Karoo landscape as described in the novel. This encompasses an exploratory excursion conducted within the Karoo region itself, wherein the collection of primary data is executed for the creation of game assets. Additionally, this involves a comprehensive examination of Henry Jenkins’ methodologies in game design, particularly focusing on narrative elements within gaming. A meaningful impact on the Metaverse is pursued through the translation of this Karoo-based South African novel, into Virtual Reality.

Decolonizing African (hi)stories through visual arts: African contemporary art as a way of looking back and moving ahead

AbstractConsidered for a long time by the art world as “primitive,” African art has always been used by Africans as a way of telling the story of their time, of establishing a connection between the visible and the invisible, the here and the hereafter. With colonization and then Independence, the notion and forms of African art have evolved through complex and diverse encounters with modernity to a contemporary art form that reflects the multiple identities of the continent and its diasporas. While the notion of modern art was initially strongly influenced by the West, as evidenced by the first schools of arts established on the continent, it gradually asserted its place and identity as both universal and specific to the continent and its history. This (r)evolution is taking place through two parallel movements, both within and outside Africa, supported by the organization of major international and regional events and the establishment of dedicated art spaces in Africa and globally.

Energy poverty and mental distress in South Africa: Assessing linkages and potential pathways

Despite the increasing attention on energy poverty due to its health implications, the South African story is yet to be told, while pathways of influence have received little empirical investigation in the extant literature. This study examines how energy poverty affects mental distress in post-apartheid South Africa and explores gender and locational heterogeneities in outcomes as well as potential pathways. We use five years of longitudinal data extracted from the National Income Dynamics Survey (NIDS). We employ the Lewbel instrumental variable method to resolve endogeneity and apply causal mediation analysis to identify potential channels of effect. The findings suggest that energy poverty is associated with an increase in mental distress. This outcome is consistent across different estimation methods and conceptualisations of energy poverty. The deteriorating effect of energy poverty on mental distress is more pronounced among females and rural residents. We further establish that experiences of persistent cough and chest pains/tightness serve as potential pathways in the link between energy poverty and mental distress. We encourage the South African government to increase budgetary allocations to the free basic electricity policy and provide connection subsidies to poor households, which have the potential to alleviate energy poverty and reduce mental distress as a result.

A Life of Integrity: The Maccabean Story

The experience of ontological and epistemological dominations made Africans lose their self-consciousness and become unfulfilled in life. Every human being has a life of integrity that must be lived. The Maccabees in the Bible were dominated by Antiochus IV, the King of Syria. He desecrated the Temple, changed their religion, politics, economy, and social life and above all made himself a god to be worshipped. He deprived the Jews of their identity and dominated them ontologically, but they had a life of integrity to live. Some of the Jews accepted the new way of life by Antiochus and helped to betray those few Jews who stood against this new system of Antiochus. Many of the pious Jews lost their lives, but with hope in Yahweh and persistent endurance they regained their identity and life of integrity. The plague of coloniality made Africans invariably lose their identity, and consequently their integrity as others determined their pace of life. The African story is like the Maccabean story; this article studies selected texts in Maccabees (1 Maccabees 2 and 3; 2 Maccabees 6 and 7) and suggests their regaining of identity and life of integrity to the African situation. The paper uses biblical exegesis and intercultural interpretations to unearth the buried African treasures for an integrity of life.

P108 The case for inspiratory muscle training: a (true) South African story

P108 The case for inspiratory muscle training: a (true) South African story

Reflections of South African educators on the enablement of at-risk learners with protective systems via the Read-me-to-Resilience intervention

Resilience-promoting interventions, such as the Read-me-to-Resilience intervention strategy, that consists of culturally relevant indigenous stories has been shown to encourage resilience in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) orphans. In this study, educator participants reflected on the protective systems that the Read-me-to-Resilience stories might offer for at-risk learners within their school context. Resilience protective systems include self-regulation, attachment relationships, agency and mastery motivation systems, cultural traditions and religion, cognitive competence and meaning making. The exploration of the Read-me-to-Resilience intervention as a protective strategy was rooted in the social-ecological perspective of resilience, which focuses on positive adjustment to adversity through resilience protective systems. Fifteen South African educators were requested to implement the Read-me-to-Resilience intervention strategy within their school context. Participation in the study was voluntary. An explorative qualitative research approach was used. Three unstructured focus-group interviews were conducted, and research diaries were kept by the participants. The educator participants reported that the indigenous African stories had promoted problem-solving and leadership skills, personal positive strengths and attachment relationships and had stimulated renewed appreciation for resources within the traditional African culture. Relevant literature on protective systems for resilience development supports my research findings. It is proposed that culturally relevant stories, as an inexpensive strategy, should be utilised within the school community to promote adaptive and preventive protective systems for at-risk learners.

Colonialism and a history of oppression in Africa: Scenes from selected African novels

Examining the African suffering during the colonialism period and describing the different miseries of the African people have been the core theme of almost all African and Western writers during the colonial age and post-colonial time. Undoubtedly, all of these writings fluctuate considerably between exaggeration and degrading the human sacrifices of those countries during this period. Then, the African writers started taking the responsibility of narrating their history and describing their suffering to correct many false ideas and assumptions, many false conceptions which were established in the minds of consecutive generations. Chinua Achebe is one of the prominent authors and thinkers who has received international recognition due to his creative style of telling the African story and has impacted African literature in different ways. Through his books, he exposed many of the negative colonial impacts on the African communities and how they did their best to invade these countries politically, economically, and culturally. Achebe tried to uncover their claims, like linking Christianity and commerce together, and the only way to African progress should be through the European gates. In his novel Things Fall Apart, he tried to expose the side effects of the colonizers’ intentions to redesign the African communities up to Western standards. He assured that all colonial actions resulted in the colonizers’ good interests and were against African people. On the other hand, Ngugi Thiogn’o is interested in examining the post-colonial impacts on the African nations and how the Western colonizers succeeded in producing loyal followers adopting their beliefs and concepts. Those followers replaced the foreign occupation with another type of occupation where the people’s acceptance should be evaluated by their adaptability to the Western criteria in all life aspects. In his novel, Pedals of Blood, Thiog’o narrated the impacts of using foreign languages to diffuse the indigenous culture and lose the African identity. Throughout the novel, he examined the political elite’s corruption in African countries during the post-colonial period and how they continued colonial suppression of their nations.

Performance on the African neuropsychology battery using the learning ratio in a sample of healthy Congolese.

Using the African Neuropsychology Battery (ANB), we seek to develop normative data by examining the demographic effects for two learning process scores: initial learning (Trial One) and learning ratio (LR, the percentage of items learned relative of to-be-learned material following Trial 1). Healthy participants from the Democratic Republic of Congo completed the four memory tests of the ANB: the African Story Memory Test (ASMT), African List Memory Test (ALMT), African Visuospatial Memory Test (AVMT), and African Contextual Visuospatial Memory Test (ACVMT). We developed indices of learning for each subtest, as well as aggregate learning indices for Trial 1 and LR, and composite indices examining verbal, visual, contextual, and noncontextual learning, and grand indices comprising all four subtests. Trial 1 and LR scores each demonstrated acceptable intercorrelations across memory tests. We present normative data for Trial 1 and LR by age and education. These data provide normative standards for evaluating learning in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Adapting MAIN to isiZulu – some reflections on ecological validity

The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) was developed as an instrument to assess the narrative skills of children in multilingual and multicultural contexts. The aim was to compile an instrument that is ecologically valid and culturally neutral so it can be used to assess children’s narrative skills regardless of their linguistic, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. While storytelling occurs in all communities and cultures, storytelling customs may differ from culture to culture. For example, African storytelling is based on oral traditions passed on from one generation to the next. In the Zulu culture, which has a very rich anthology of folktales and oral traditions, stories are often used to teach moral lessons. This paper reflects on the possible challenges that clinicians may encounter when using MAIN to assess young children who may have only been exposed to traditional Zulu folklore stories that differ in structure from the MAIN stories. We also consider the Southern African Story Grammar model that was proposed by Tappe (2018) as a better reflection of African storytelling than the classical Stein and Glenn (1979) story grammar model. We discuss how some aspects of the MAIN stories and assessment procedures may not resemble the typical stories or storytelling customs in traditional isiZulu-speaking populations and therefore compromise the ecological validity of MAIN. In this paper, our focus is on isiZulu, but our questions about the ecological validity of MAIN may also be relevant for other language groups and cultures in the growing international community of MAIN users.

Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa by Brian Valente-Quinn

Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa by Brian Valente-Quinn

魔幻與現實的交織：本·奧克瑞的非洲書寫

The magic in the works of Ben Okri is closely related to the influence of Yoruba culture in Nigeria. With his keen observation, rich imagination and inexhaustible creativity, he draws on the experience of African myths and legends, traces its origin to African culture, and presents an African picture with a combination of magic and realism. Based on Africa, Ben Okri portrays the real image of Africa from an objective and intuitive perspective. As the son of Africa, he tells a thought-provoking African story in an enlightening voice of Africa with a sense of responsibility, so as to realize his original intention of writing.

Journalistic narratives amid the US and Chinese media expansion in Africa: What it means to tell an African journalistic story

With the Joe Biden–Kamala Harris administration working toward the resetting of policies and strategies toward Africa and China, the question of whether African journalists will be accorded a chance to tell an African narrative amid the trilateral relationship has become more apparent. The influence exerted by China in African poses questions of whether China is “constructively” reporting Africa and whether journalists do see themselves as telling an African story. This study interrogates the role of African journalistic paradigms within a broader framework of what it means to constructively report Africa. It argues that despite the overwhelming challenges, the African media can tell its narrative if, (a). it seriously interrogates its journalism education system, (b). focus on in-depth reporting as opposed to efficiency and convenience, and (c). value its epistemologies and localize its content.

ON THE JOURNEY TO BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY, BIM AND THE BEE IN THE CONSTRUCTION SECTOR

The study appraises the features in the South African construction projects supply chain that are amenable to blockchain technology. An integrative review of purposively sampled extant literature from multidisciplinary databases: Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, Sage, Taylor and Francis, and Emerald Insight were adopted. Descriptors for literature search are “integrative review”, “black economic empowerment”, “building information modelling”, and “blockchain technology application in the South African construction sector”. The study is in a bid to determine the South African story regarding the adaptability of her infrastructure supply chain using blockchain technology. The study establishes the need for a paradigm shift where figments of science have become reality, and technology synthesis is the main driver. Thus, guaranteeing that technology preference is ideal and to the benefit of everyone. Results show that South Africa is willing to try new technologies including blockchain technology however; there is need for the human workforce and stakeholders within the construction sector to be trained to attain technical and personal skills capabilities. The study proposes the need to integrate blockchain technology concepts into the current education system, especially in developing countries.

Authenticity and the African story

This keynote presentation by Femi Odugbemi, titled ‘Authenticity and the African story’, delves into the intricate relationship between authenticity and the representation of African narratives in the global creative landscape. It explores the tension between maintaining the authenticity of cultural stories while adapting them to reach a global audience. Through compelling examples like the success of films such as Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and The Woman King, the presentation examines how narratives rooted in African cultures can achieve widespread popularity even when not created by Indigenous African storytellers. The exploration of this phenomenon leads to an examination of the complex debate surrounding authenticity vs. commercial viability. The article acknowledges the challenges and risks of cultural appropriation, misrepresentation and inequality inherent in the commodification of cultural content. Balancing creative freedom and market demand, the presentation advocates for a collaborative approach, ensuring equitable compensation and involvement of originating cultures in the creative process. The discussion expands to the influence of technology, particularly AI and VR, in preserving, sharing and enhancing African narratives on a global scale. Ultimately, the presentation emphasizes that authentic storytelling involves a nuanced portrayal of human experiences, fostering empathy, understanding and economic opportunities while preserving cultural heritage and promoting a more truthful representation of Africa.

The Environmental Questions in Global Economics: The African Story

The book “The Environmental Questions in Global Economics: The African Story” was written by Adela Barungi. The book focuses on global economics and trade policies while revealing the extent to which it has affected the African continent. The author analyzed the current crises of the environment in Africa in the historical processes of Western exploitation and underdevelopment of the continent. The author argued that Africa had assumed an environment greatly shaped by Western values. To concretize what is discussed in the book, Uganda is taken as an example of a third-world country that is environmentally affected by global economic and trade policies.

Of Space and Alienation: South African stories of unfree life under racial capitalism

ABSTRACT This article explores how to make sense of the feeling of unfreedom in South Africa today and how this unfreedom, charged with local and historical legacies, can be connected to global capitalist dynamics. Paralleling excerpts of the oral histories of Khumo who moved to Johannesburg in 1976, and Kagiso, who moved in 2015, this piece discusses how dispossession characterises unfreedom. Bringing literature on racial capitalism back to South Africa, its place of origin, and grounding it in the narratives of Khumo and Kagiso, the piece discusses the history and development of global dynamics of spatial exclusion and subjective, material, and productive-creative alienation. Furthermore, it discusses how Khumo and Kagiso perceive dispossession as historical thus racialised and manufactured, and contest it by negating racialisation and the idea of freedom. The article thus contributes to wider debates about neoliberalism in Africa, and (global) racial capitalism, showing how dispossession remains the main expression of unfreedom under capitalism; and how unfree life is reproduced every day in and through cities, and is lived as alienation.

Transformation of Home into Social Space in Doris Lessing's "Getting off the Altitude"

Doris Lessing’s two collections of African Stories – This Was the Old Chief’s Country (1952) and The Sun Between Their Feet (1973) – exemplify the theme of colonialism displaying the hegemony of the whites over the blacks. The stories in the former collection are mainly about colonial issues, while the ones in the latter cover a variety of subjects such as racial and gender conflicts, power of nature and effects of the Second World War. Since geographical features of Africa have a significant role in shaping social and cultural values, the interconnectedness between space and gender is also a fundemental issue in these stories. “Getting off the Altitude” from her collection, The Sun Between Their Feet, recounts the story of how white settler community in Central Africa deals with the problem of alienation due to physical characteristics of the area. The spatially enclosed structure of the society on one hand, preserves the social norms and values but at the same time leads to non-conformist relationships between the genders. The impact of the altitude in the district is also observed in the way the society is structured and gender relations are performed. With respect to this, the story shows not only how space is perceived as a physical reality where everyday life takes place but also how it is conceived as a space of thoughts which defines relations and confines people into certain places. What differentiates “Getting off the Altitude” from the other stories in the collection is related to the multiplicity of male and female characters and their lived experiences, which pave the way for new modes of thinking about space. This study, through its portrayal of spatial practices and everyday experiences of various characters, discusses to what extent they are able to appropriate and configure spaces they occupy in different ways and how they transform the private sphere of a house from its restrictive conceptualisation to alternative ones within the framework of Henri Lefebvre’s and Edward Soja’s space theories.

This field I call home: black feminist (auto)ethnography in Alexandra Township, South Africa

ABSTRACT This article is based on a study of Pentecostal Charismatic constructions of femininity in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg. I narrate my ‘native’ and (auto)ethnographic standing within the community I study and show how this stance accounts for my ethical considerations and for the building of relationships with my participants. Relying on ‘Blackwomen’ scholarship (Gqola, 2017), this article addresses the gaps and misconceptions in anthropological accounts of Black African Pentecostal women by writing as an embodied voice within the movement, rather than a mere object of research. This article then, heeds to Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s argument for ethnographies ‘that offer new points of reentry by questioning the symbolic world upon which “nativeness” is premised’ and ‘that aim explicitly at the destabilization and eventual destruction of the Savage slot’ (Trouillot, 2003, p. 22). I argue that Black and African feminist autoethnography is a research method that can destruct this Savage slot as it not only questions reductionist representations of what Black African women are. Black African feminist autoethnography also takes seriously the foregrounding and offering of Black women’s voices to transform the anthropological canon so that it reflects the richness and validity of Black feminist thought. In this way, I take a stand for the telling of African stories by African women in a responsibility for engagement and change, and to illuminate the meaning of township women’s everyday experiences as a legitimate source of knowledge.