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10
Contents
editorial
NYOKABI KARIŨKI
On Learning that one of the first Electronic Works was by an African, Halim El-Dabh
MARIMBA ANI
An Aesthetic of Control
JANNIKE BERGH in conversation with HAIDAR EID
Even Ghosts Weep in Gaza
WANELISA XABA
White psychology, Black indecipherability and iThongo
Theme African Psychology
DYLAN VALLEY & BISO MATHA RIALGO
An Epidemic of Loneliness - introduction to the African Psychology theme section of herri #10
KOPANO RATELE in dialogue with ARYAN KAGANOF
Psychology Contra Psychology: In Search of the Most Appropriate Definition of African Psychology
N CHABANI MANGANYI
On Becoming a Psychologist in Apartheid South Africa
THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN
African Psychology: serving as a reminder of human universals which have been lost or forgotten in mainstream Western psychology.
AUGUSTINE NWOYE
From Psychological Humanities to African Psychology: A Review of Sources and Traditions
SAM MATHE
Naming
ZETHU CAKATA
Ubugqirha: healing beyond the Western gaze
KOPANO RATELE
Dethingifying
PUMEZA MATSHIKIZA
A Psychological Explanation of Myself
SYLVIA VOLLENHOVEN
The Elephants in the Room
GWEN ANSELL
A New African String Theory: The Art of Being Yourself and Being with Others
ISMAHAN SOUKEYNA DIOP
Exploring Afro-centric approaches to mental healthcare
KOPANO RATELE
Four (African) Psychologies
LOU-MARIE KRUGER
Hunger
FIKILE-NTSIKELELO MOYA
"We are a wounded people."
CHARLA SMITH
Die “kywies” by die deur
KOPANO RATELE
Estrangement
MWELELA CELE
Sisi Khosi Xaba and the translation of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth into isiZulu
HUGO KA CANHAM
Leaving psychology to look for shades and complexity in despair
MALAIKA MAHLATSI
When Black academics leave historically White institutions
PAUL KHAHLISO
AGAINST COLONIAL PSYCHOLOGY
KOPANO RATELE
The interior life of Mtutu: Psychological fact or fiction?
MTUTUZELI MATSHOBA
Call Me Not a Man
WILFRED BARETT DAMON
James Joyce En Ek
ASHRAF KAGEE
Three friends in Gaza: We grieve, we mourn, we condemn, we deplore, we march, we demonstrate, we attend seminars and webinars, we wave flags, we wear keffiyas, we show off our t-shirts, but still the killing continues.
KOPANO RATELE AND SOPHIA SANAN
African Art, Black Subjectivity, and African Psychology: Refusing Racialised Structures of Aesthetic or Identity Theories
galleri
DATHINI MZAYIYA
Musidrawology as Methodology
STEVEN J. FOWLER
Dathini Mzayiya – the sound of the mark as it comes into being.
NONCEDO GXEKWA
Musidrawology as Portraits of the Artist Dathini Mzayiya & his Art
NONCEDO GXEKWA & NADINE CLOETE
Musidrawology as Methodology: a work of art by Dathini Mzayiya
NJABULO PHUNGULA
Like Knotted Strings
SPACE AFRIKA
oh baby
STRAND COMMUNITY ART PROJECT
Hands of the Future
DENIS-CONSTANT MARTIN
The Blue Notes: Searching for Form and Freedom
DESMOND PAINTER
'with all the ambivalence of a car in the city...'
KOPANO RATELE
Ngoana Salemone/Mother
SOPHIA OLIVIA SANAN
Art as commodity, art as philosophy, art as world-making: notes from a conversation with Kopano Ratele on African Art, Black Subjectivity and African Psychology
ROBIN TOMENS
"Why don't you do something right and make a mistake?"
SIMON TAYLOR
On The Ontological Status of the Image
borborygmus
NAPO MASHEANE
Manifesto ea mokha oa makomonisi
MAKHOSAZANA XABA
Curious and Willing: Ngazibuza Ngaziphendula, Ngahumusha Kwahumusheka
RICHARD PITHOUSE
The Wretched of the Earth becomes Izimpabanga Zomhlaba
FRANTZ FANON/ MAKHOSAZANA XABA
The Wretched of the Earth - Conclusion
EUGENE SKEEF
Yighube!
VUYOKAZI NGEMNTU
Amahubo
MBE MBHELE
Who cares about Mandisi Dyantyis Anyway?
KARABO KGOLENG
Women and Water
BONGANI TAU
Notes on Spirit Capital
ADDAMMS MUTUTA
Conflict Cultures and the New South Africa
ADAM KEITH
A Conversation with Debby Friday
DICK EL DEMASIADO
Some Notes on Cumbia and Dub
MULTIPLE AUTHORS
Thinking decolonially towards music’s institution: A post-conference reflection
frictions
AAKRITI KUNTAL
Still
FORTUNATE JWARA
In between wor(l)ds
KHADIJA TRACEY HEEGER
A Love Letter
SHAFINAAZ HASSIM
Take your freedom and run
MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
10 New Poems
KHULILE NXUMALO
Two Poems For
HENNING PIETERSE
Translating Van den vos Reynaerde (Of Reynaert the Fox) into Afrikaans
OSWALD KUCHERERA
Words to Treasure
MTUTUZELI MATSHOBA
To kill a man's pride
KELWYN SOLE
Political Fiction, Representation and the Canon: The Case of Mtutuzeli Matshoba
SABATA-MPHO MOKAE
Maboko a ga Alexander Pushkin 1799 - 1837
NAÒMI MORGAN
Why translate Godot into Afrikaans?
TENZIN TSUNDUE
Three Poems
claque
DILIP M. MENON
Hugo ka Canham’s Riotous Deathscapes
BARBARA ROUSSEAUX
Undoing Fascism: Notes on Milisuthando
WAMUWI MBAO
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Reclaiming the Territory of the Mind
SISCA JULIUS
Ausi Told Me: My Cape Herstoriography
SERGIO HENRY BEN
Read. Write. Relevance. A review of Herman Lategan's Hoerkind.
MARIO PISSARRA
the Imagined New is a Work in Progress
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI
The city is mine by Niq Mhlongo: A review
KARABO KGOLENG
The Comrade’s Wife by Barbara Boswell
DOMINIC DAULA
Pain, Loss, and Reconciliation in Music and Society
KNEO MOKGOPA
Normal Bandits: Mix Tape Memories by Anders Høg Hansen
ADDAMMS MUTUTA
‘Southern Cinema Aesthetics’: broadly imagined in multiple frames
RUTH MARGALIT
Writing the Nakba in Hebrew
LESEGO RAMPOLOKENG
Coming to Johnson
ekaya
KOPANO RATELE
From "Wilcocks" to "Krotoa": The Name Changing Ceremony
ARYAN KAGANOF
The herriverse: Introducing a new kind of Research Method, one that is Structural or even Meta- insofar as it exists in the Reader’s Navigation of the Curated Space and the Possible Contingent Connections as much as in the Objects being Curated; an Epistemic Construction therefore, that is obliquely but absolutely determined by Ontologically Unpredictable Exchanges.
MARTIJN PANTLIN
Introducing herri Search
off the record
UHURU PHALAFALA
Keorapetse Kgositsile & The Black Arts Movement Book Launch, Book Lounge, Cape Town Wednesday 24 April 2024.
PALESA MOKWENA
Lefifi Tladi - "invisible caring" or, seeing and being seen through a spiritual lens
CHRISTOPHER BALLANTINE
Edmund "Ntemi” Piliso Jazzing Through Defeat And Triumph: An Interview
DENIS-CONSTANT MARTIN
CHRIS McGREGOR (1936-1990): Searching for Form and Freedom
SHAUN JOHANNES
In Memoriam Clement Benny
VEIT ERLMANN
"Singing Brings Joy To The Distressed" The Social History Of Zulu Migrant Workers' Choral Competitions
SAM MATHE
Stimela Sase Zola
MARKO PHIRI
Majaivana's Odyssey
EZEKIEL MPHAHLELE
The Non-European Character in South African English Fiction
BASIAMI “CYNTHIA” WAGAFA
Hyper-Literary Fiction: The (meta)Poetics Of Digital Fragmentation – an interview with August Highland
feedback
DIANA FERRUS
Thursday 20 February, 2020
LWAZI LUSHABA
Saturday 4 April 2020
NJABULO NDEBELE
Sunday 5 December 2021
BEN WATSON
6 June 2023 20:50
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Facebook
herri_gram FEEDBACK
Instagram
the selektah
LERATO “Lavas” MLAMBO
Real human person – a mix by Lavas
SIEMON ALLEN & CHRIS ALBERTYN
Celebrating the genius of Ntemi Edmund Piliso: A mix-tape of twenty five tunes recorded on 78rpm shellac in 25 years – 1953 to 1968
ALEKSANDAR JEVTIĆ
Stone Unturned 18: The Static Cargo of Stars
PhD
WARRICK SWINNEY
Stick Fighting against extinction: end beginnings and other dada nihilismus polemics
hotlynx
HOTLYNX
hotlynx
shopping
SHOPPING
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contributors
the back page
ELMI MULLER
Fugitive reflections on pain, death, and surgery
DICK TUINDER
Rob Schröder (13 November 1950 - 6 July 2024)
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    #10
  • Theme African Psychology

SAM MATHE

Naming

I only discovered that I had an African name when I was fourteen and in standard five (grade 7). It may sound strange but the Christian identity was an essential part of the naming culture. In my case the family had strong Catholic leanings from the maternal side. As children we were literally baptised with biblical names and I took pride in the fact that I was named after Samuel, an Old Testament prophet – a handle that I also shared with a maternal uncle whom I adored.

The discovery happened one day at school after our Mathematics teacher, choir conductor and deputy principal, Meneer Mahlangu suddenly became unreasonable – at least that’s what I thought at the time – when he demanded to have our indigenous names. I swear the whole class only answered to their so-called slave names. To our shame and embarrassment, we were ordered to go home immediately and come back with what the no-nonsense deputy said were our real names.

He added that it was an urgent matter and those who won’t be able to get this important information shouldn’t bother to return to his beloved Ukuphumula Kwe Sizwe Primary School. At that stage I had acquired seven years of experience behind the desk and was in the final year of higher primary school level. And throughout that entire period no teacher had kicked a fuss about African names.

So something must be seriously wrong with our beloved teacher whose bark was usually worse than his bite. In fact I don’t remember him spanking a single pupil despite the fact that he taught at the height of the time of corporal punishment which most of his contemporaries embraced as an article of faith and some badge of honour. But on that fateful morning Meneer Mahlangu must have woken up on the left side of the bed.

Otherwise how were one supposed to explain such an irrational and definitely outrageous order, I reasoned as my classmates and I trudged to our homes. It was a huge relief to discover that I had an African name, after all. I remember that my dear mother revealed the coveted information in a casual sort of way. “Your name is Mphahlele. You were named after a forebear from your father’s side,” she told me matter-of-factly.

Despite the fact that she never used it there was no indication that she had to remember it. There was no need to retrieve the precious birth certificate to confirm the fact. And knowing this fact felt like being gifted with a hidden treasure. It was okay that I was named after a biblical character – we were Catholics after all, as already indicated – but it was a special feeling to discover that I was also an inheritor of a name that was part of my lineage.

Shortly after this incident I discovered the name Ezekiel Mphahlele. It was in a short story titled ‘He And The Cat’ from a collection named Ex-Africa Stories for Secondary Schools. Although the author had changed his name to Es’kia Mphahlele in 1977, I would see the old version for years to come. Like Samuel, Ezekiel was also borrowed from the Good Book and belonged to another Jewish prophet.

Although I didn’t regard him as a kinsman, the similarities of our names suggested to fifteen-year-old me that we had a special bond. He was a writer and I was destined to follow in his footsteps. His colossal standing in the world of letters was still a closed book to me but the fact that his name appeared alongside those of white writers suggested that he was not an ordinary black writer.

At that stage the only African writers that I had encountered through their works were those who were published in their native tongues. So I thought a black man who wrote in the Queen’s language was a rare breed indeed. Interesting enough, the short biography at the end of his contribution indicated that he was born in Marabastad. That was familiar territory although I didn’t know that in bygone days it was a black residential area, a slum that was teeming with young, gifted and black talent about to be unleashed on the world.

In my formative years Marabastad was a slice of the Orient in a white city that represented the national culture called apartheid. The Asiatic Bazaar was a thriving trading space where Indian merchants sold all sorts of goods to their African customers. This was and I guess it’s still home to Makuloo Hopaan, an ancient general dealership that sold every household item ranging from tonkana blankets to primus stove needles. Even our Christmas and school clothes were bought here.

In my adolescent imagination writers only lived in their books. They came from a bygone era and had since passed on. Who could blame me for such naivety? The school syllabus elevated ancient English writers – Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, Milton – above the rest. So I assumed that the rest – JM Ntsime, Sibusiso Nyembezi, RL Peteni, OK Matsepe – were also dead authors. And I therefore concluded that this namesake of mine could not be counted among the living. After all, the short biography published at the end of his short story didn’t reveal much.

There was no indication that he was a fine scholar and Nobel Prize nominee who taught at a number of top universities on the continent and abroad. It didn’t state that he left the country in 1957 after he was banned from teaching because he opposed the introduction of Bantu Education in African schools. I also don’t remember mention being made of the fact that on his return from exile in 1977, he was once more denied a teaching post as a lecturer at the University of the North (Turfloop) and was eventually accepted by Wits University where he founded the Department of African Literature.

It was here that I saw him for the first time one morning in-between lectures. He was wearing one of his trademark Afro-shirts with a polo-neck jersey underneath to cushion against standing on the steps of the Great Hall. As I greeted him it was not lost on 18-year-old me that I was in the company of a great man. This short, bespectacled fellow with receding hair and a beaming face had no airs whatsoever about him. His voice was soft and urbane. The encounter didn’t last for ten minutes but it was one of the biggest highlights of my campus experience.

So why am I not using Mphahlele as part of my pen name? The answer is simple. There will always be one Es’kia Mphahlele. It’s a fact that I respect. Secondly, I love Sam Mathe. The name rhymes with Can and the surname is a near-anagram of Themba, another legend from Marabastad.

So why was Mr Mahlangu so impatient with us that morning? What was so important and urgent about our names? That, my friends, is probably a story for another day.

Nomvula Mabena
I remember that day quite vividly. I always thought it was Mr Mnguni(the one we used to call “Mlahlaphansi”) who sent us home to get our african names but I guess you are right. It was the time were were to acquire our Std 5 certificates. He said he does not want to see names like Oupa, Sister or Benjamin appearing in our Std 5 certificates. We were the last (Class of 1982) to be issued with them. I am glad he made us appreciate our African names

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