Urther Rwafa
Biographic Data
| ID | 3099677 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Urther Rwafa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Urther |
| FAMILY NAME | Rwafa |
| SIGNATURE | RWAFA U |
| AFFILIATIONS | Midlands State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Three pandemics in post-2017 Zimbabwe
Existing work on Zimbabwe’s crises of governance post-2017 focuses on searching for continuities and discontinuities between Mugabe’s policies and those of Mnangagwa. This article questions the assumptions that continuities can occur without disruption in such a context and that Mnangagwa’s discontinuity with the past is a straightforward road that will lead to a positive culture of governance. It particularly considers the domains of life in whi…
Media, Minority Discourses and Identity Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda
This article explores how media has been used to shape the contours of political debate and ethnic identities in post-genocide Rwanda. The article will argue that although the government of Paul Kagame has loosened control on media, its obsession with constructing an “exeptionalised genocide narrative”, has been to a larger measure used as a weapon to gag media freedom. The poor and marginalised Rwandans or “minority discourses” find it very diff…
Theorising Mandela
Nelson Mandela can be said to be the most celebrated leader so far to have emerged from the African continent. He has been variously written about in literary works and history books, differently presented in [auto] biographies and the mainstream media [newspapers and television], fictionalized and actualised in film, immortalised through art work such as painting and sculpture. In liberal-driven South African and Western media, Mandela is/was pr…
Culture and Religion as Sources of Gender Inequality
The aim of this article is to explore how the contentious issues of culture and religion remain sources of gender inequality and oppression for most women in Africa. Culture refers to the “learned and ideational aspects of human society” (Jenks 1993: 9). In its subjectivity, culture carries the illusion of shared concerns and values in the face of the real and contentious divisions that exist among classes, gender, race and ethnic groups. Religio…
An Encounter With the Enigma
Hosiah Chipanga is dubbed one of the most controversial musicians to have emerged in post-independent Zimbabwe. His music strongly condemns acts of corruption, avariciousness, bribery, nepotism and political power struggles that threaten to tear apart the moral fibre of the Zimbabwean society. Through the songs “Gushungo”, “Dafi” and “Vatsigiri vangu”, Chipanga attempts to salvage truth and sanity out of the “debris” of moral laxity that makes so…
Re)inventing African oral traditions and national heritage(s) through film images
The aim of this article is to explore how African films such as Keita! The Heritage of the Griot and Kare Kare Zvako: Mother's Day reinvent oral traditions on-screen, so that the traditions are revitalised and given new life in a contemporary world where visual and literary narratives have tended to dominate the collection and dissemination of information. The ontological and cosmological dimensions of African oral traditions provide the cultural…
Violence and Genocide in African Literature and Film
Studies on violence and genocide in Africa have for many years relied on the disciplines of history, sociology, and individual testimonies to make sense of the crimes against humanity. The main justification for using anthropological and sociological accounts to explain violence and genocide in Africa has been encouraged by an empiricist research culture that relied on quantitative methods to measure the impact of violence and genocide in Africa.…
Playing the Politics of Erasure
Cultural genocide is much maligned and often simply ignored. Yet it is an epistemic condition powerful enough to cause a physical elimination of a targeted “tribe” or group of people. The aim of this article is to highlight cultural genocide and explore how this type of genocide was used in images in European colonial films to destroy or “erase” some important cultural and traditional activities of black people in Africa. It also critically exami…
Singing peace and forgiveness
The album Moyo Munyoro (2013) is a product of a collaborative effort in which four Zimbabwean musicians, Jah Prayzah, Sulumani Chimbetu, Edith Weutonga and the late Chioniso Maraire combined skill and commitment to sing about peace, forgiveness and development in Zimbabwe. The July 31st elections of 2013 have come and gone. Yet before the elections, there was a general anxiety and fear among Zimbabweans that the July 31st elections would simply r…
Music, land and liberation theology
The aim of this article is to explore the textual meanings of Mai Charamba's song, Africa, and Fungisai Zvakavapano's Hamheno anoramba. This article investigates how the music of the two female artists expresses the subject of land, in the context of liberation theology. We have purposefully sampled these two artists – first, because they sing about ownership of land and natural resources, which are themes that dominate current discourses in Zimb…
Representations of Matabeleland and Midlands disturbances through the documentary film Gukurahundi
In the post-independent Zimbabwe, to mention the word 'Gukurahundi' is to make a reference to a taboo subject matter. The word 'Gukurahundi' invokes profound and bitter memories, torture and murder of more than 20,000 people – mostly of Ndebele origin, in Matabeleland and parts of Midlands. The killings were carried out between 1982 and 1987 by North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade that operated under the auspices of the new government. Gukurahundi:…
Song and the Zimbabwean film, Flame (1996)
The Zimbabwean film Flame (1996) encountered its public life in a controversial way. Its producer Ingrid Sinclair aimed to produce a film that would reveal the seamy side of Zimbabwe's liberation war, the rape of women being the central motive to the narrative plot of the film that sought to symbolically ‘overthrow’ the regimes of heroic images that the armed struggle had monopolised itself. Some ex-combatants, mainly from the ZANLA wing, staged …
Theorising african-language literatures in the twenty-first century
Media and development
To frame gender struggles is to set an agenda on what people should think about it in respect of the contradictory roles that men and women play in society and culture. In this article, three films in the Shona language – Mwanasikana (1995), Kapfupi (2009) and Nhasi tave nehama (1993) have been sampled out to explore gender struggles inherent in the Zimbabwean society. The premise of this article is rooted in the ideological doubleness of the wor…
Song and political satire in the play, The Honourable MP (1987)
Post-independence Zimbabwe, like some other countries in Africa, is a space disfigured by greedy, unfulfilled promises, corruption and political discontentment. The play, Honorable MP by Gonzo Musengezi subtly captures Zimbabwe's socio-political environment with its pot-bellied politicians who drain the national coffers, abuse young girls and abandon the electorate only to surface towards election time. Honourable MP (1987) uses the language of p…
Film representations of the Rwandan genocide
In 1994 Rwanda experienced a devastating genocide in which nearly a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed by Hutu extremists. Written scholarly works explain the Rwandan genocide in historical terms. Academic work on media and the genocide tend to emphasise the role played by Radio-Television Libre Des Mille Collines (RTLM) and the newspaper Kangura in instigating the Rwandan genocide. A steady output of literature on the depiction of the g…
Cybermusic, copyright issues and the democratic ‘deficit’ in Zimbabwe
Human beings are born to struggle in order to create ‘space’ in which to establish their identities and independence through self expression. Computer technology enhances the creation of unrestricted space in which people can air their ideas, opinions and values in contexts of political struggles. E-mail and the Internet have come to symbolise people's struggles mediated through modern communication systems. This article examines how cyberspace h…
Textualizing the visual and visualizing the text
In the absence of the international coverage of the Rwandan genocide, most international audiences came to know the Rwandan tragedy through the film, Hotel Rwanda, which was directed by Terry George, and which came out in 2004 – ten years after the genocide of 1994. The film is a chilling visual account of how nearly one million Tutsis were massacred by Hutu extremists in the span of nearly 100 days. However, following on the “heels” of the produ…
Lyrical film
This article explores the power and significance of music lyrics in the Zimbabwean feature film Tanyaradzwa. Critical works written on popular culture in Zimbabwe tend to lack depth because the works analyse, selectively, some lyrics in the song genre. What has not been done is to interrogate the ideological functions of music lyrics in film. A critical analysis of music lyrics in a film such as Tanyaradzwa can reveal patterns of meanings embedde…
In Defence of ‘Special Issues’ editions
Representations of Matabeleland and Midlands disturbances through the documentary film Gukurahundi
In the post-independent Zimbabwe, to mention the word 'Gukurahundi' is to make a reference to a taboo subject matter. The word 'Gukurahundi' invokes profound and bitter memories, torture and murder of more than 20,000 people – mostly of Ndebele origin, in Matabeleland and parts of Midlands. The killings were carried out between 1982 and 1987 by North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade that operated under the auspices of the new government. Gukurahundi:…
Three pandemics in post-2017 Zimbabwe
Existing work on Zimbabwe’s crises of governance post-2017 focuses on searching for continuities and discontinuities between Mugabe’s policies and those of Mnangagwa. This article questions the assumptions that continuities can occur without disruption in such a context and that Mnangagwa’s discontinuity with the past is a straightforward road that will lead to a positive culture of governance. It particularly considers the domains of life in whi…
Re)inventing African oral traditions and national heritage(s) through film images
The aim of this article is to explore how African films such as Keita! The Heritage of the Griot and Kare Kare Zvako: Mother's Day reinvent oral traditions on-screen, so that the traditions are revitalised and given new life in a contemporary world where visual and literary narratives have tended to dominate the collection and dissemination of information. The ontological and cosmological dimensions of African oral traditions provide the cultural…
In Defence of ‘Special Issues’ editions
Lyrical film
This article explores the power and significance of music lyrics in the Zimbabwean feature film Tanyaradzwa. Critical works written on popular culture in Zimbabwe tend to lack depth because the works analyse, selectively, some lyrics in the song genre. What has not been done is to interrogate the ideological functions of music lyrics in film. A critical analysis of music lyrics in a film such as Tanyaradzwa can reveal patterns of meanings embedde…
Cybermusic, copyright issues and the democratic ‘deficit’ in Zimbabwe
Human beings are born to struggle in order to create ‘space’ in which to establish their identities and independence through self expression. Computer technology enhances the creation of unrestricted space in which people can air their ideas, opinions and values in contexts of political struggles. E-mail and the Internet have come to symbolise people's struggles mediated through modern communication systems. This article examines how cyberspace h…
Textualizing the visual and visualizing the text
In the absence of the international coverage of the Rwandan genocide, most international audiences came to know the Rwandan tragedy through the film, Hotel Rwanda, which was directed by Terry George, and which came out in 2004 – ten years after the genocide of 1994. The film is a chilling visual account of how nearly one million Tutsis were massacred by Hutu extremists in the span of nearly 100 days. However, following on the “heels” of the produ…
Song and political satire in the play, The Honourable MP (1987)
Post-independence Zimbabwe, like some other countries in Africa, is a space disfigured by greedy, unfulfilled promises, corruption and political discontentment. The play, Honorable MP by Gonzo Musengezi subtly captures Zimbabwe's socio-political environment with its pot-bellied politicians who drain the national coffers, abuse young girls and abandon the electorate only to surface towards election time. Honourable MP (1987) uses the language of p…
Film representations of the Rwandan genocide
In 1994 Rwanda experienced a devastating genocide in which nearly a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed by Hutu extremists. Written scholarly works explain the Rwandan genocide in historical terms. Academic work on media and the genocide tend to emphasise the role played by Radio-Television Libre Des Mille Collines (RTLM) and the newspaper Kangura in instigating the Rwandan genocide. A steady output of literature on the depiction of the g…
Song and the Zimbabwean film, Flame (1996)
The Zimbabwean film Flame (1996) encountered its public life in a controversial way. Its producer Ingrid Sinclair aimed to produce a film that would reveal the seamy side of Zimbabwe's liberation war, the rape of women being the central motive to the narrative plot of the film that sought to symbolically ‘overthrow’ the regimes of heroic images that the armed struggle had monopolised itself. Some ex-combatants, mainly from the ZANLA wing, staged …
Theorising african-language literatures in the twenty-first century
Media and development
To frame gender struggles is to set an agenda on what people should think about it in respect of the contradictory roles that men and women play in society and culture. In this article, three films in the Shona language – Mwanasikana (1995), Kapfupi (2009) and Nhasi tave nehama (1993) have been sampled out to explore gender struggles inherent in the Zimbabwean society. The premise of this article is rooted in the ideological doubleness of the wor…
Representations of Matabeleland and Midlands disturbances through the documentary film Gukurahundi
In the post-independent Zimbabwe, to mention the word 'Gukurahundi' is to make a reference to a taboo subject matter. The word 'Gukurahundi' invokes profound and bitter memories, torture and murder of more than 20,000 people – mostly of Ndebele origin, in Matabeleland and parts of Midlands. The killings were carried out between 1982 and 1987 by North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade that operated under the auspices of the new government. Gukurahundi:…
Music, land and liberation theology
The aim of this article is to explore the textual meanings of Mai Charamba's song, Africa, and Fungisai Zvakavapano's Hamheno anoramba. This article investigates how the music of the two female artists expresses the subject of land, in the context of liberation theology. We have purposefully sampled these two artists – first, because they sing about ownership of land and natural resources, which are themes that dominate current discourses in Zimb…
Violence and Genocide in African Literature and Film
Studies on violence and genocide in Africa have for many years relied on the disciplines of history, sociology, and individual testimonies to make sense of the crimes against humanity. The main justification for using anthropological and sociological accounts to explain violence and genocide in Africa has been encouraged by an empiricist research culture that relied on quantitative methods to measure the impact of violence and genocide in Africa.…
Playing the Politics of Erasure
Cultural genocide is much maligned and often simply ignored. Yet it is an epistemic condition powerful enough to cause a physical elimination of a targeted “tribe” or group of people. The aim of this article is to highlight cultural genocide and explore how this type of genocide was used in images in European colonial films to destroy or “erase” some important cultural and traditional activities of black people in Africa. It also critically exami…
Singing peace and forgiveness
The album Moyo Munyoro (2013) is a product of a collaborative effort in which four Zimbabwean musicians, Jah Prayzah, Sulumani Chimbetu, Edith Weutonga and the late Chioniso Maraire combined skill and commitment to sing about peace, forgiveness and development in Zimbabwe. The July 31st elections of 2013 have come and gone. Yet before the elections, there was a general anxiety and fear among Zimbabweans that the July 31st elections would simply r…
An Encounter With the Enigma
Hosiah Chipanga is dubbed one of the most controversial musicians to have emerged in post-independent Zimbabwe. His music strongly condemns acts of corruption, avariciousness, bribery, nepotism and political power struggles that threaten to tear apart the moral fibre of the Zimbabwean society. Through the songs “Gushungo”, “Dafi” and “Vatsigiri vangu”, Chipanga attempts to salvage truth and sanity out of the “debris” of moral laxity that makes so…
Re)inventing African oral traditions and national heritage(s) through film images
The aim of this article is to explore how African films such as Keita! The Heritage of the Griot and Kare Kare Zvako: Mother's Day reinvent oral traditions on-screen, so that the traditions are revitalised and given new life in a contemporary world where visual and literary narratives have tended to dominate the collection and dissemination of information. The ontological and cosmological dimensions of African oral traditions provide the cultural…
Culture and Religion as Sources of Gender Inequality
The aim of this article is to explore how the contentious issues of culture and religion remain sources of gender inequality and oppression for most women in Africa. Culture refers to the “learned and ideational aspects of human society” (Jenks 1993: 9). In its subjectivity, culture carries the illusion of shared concerns and values in the face of the real and contentious divisions that exist among classes, gender, race and ethnic groups. Religio…
Theorising Mandela
Nelson Mandela can be said to be the most celebrated leader so far to have emerged from the African continent. He has been variously written about in literary works and history books, differently presented in [auto] biographies and the mainstream media [newspapers and television], fictionalized and actualised in film, immortalised through art work such as painting and sculpture. In liberal-driven South African and Western media, Mandela is/was pr…
Media, Minority Discourses and Identity Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda
This article explores how media has been used to shape the contours of political debate and ethnic identities in post-genocide Rwanda. The article will argue that although the government of Paul Kagame has loosened control on media, its obsession with constructing an “exeptionalised genocide narrative”, has been to a larger measure used as a weapon to gag media freedom. The poor and marginalised Rwandans or “minority discourses” find it very diff…
Three pandemics in post-2017 Zimbabwe
Existing work on Zimbabwe’s crises of governance post-2017 focuses on searching for continuities and discontinuities between Mugabe’s policies and those of Mnangagwa. This article questions the assumptions that continuities can occur without disruption in such a context and that Mnangagwa’s discontinuity with the past is a straightforward road that will lead to a positive culture of governance. It particularly considers the domains of life in whi…
Sociology (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · African studies and sociopolitical issues (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Art (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Literature (8 works) · African history and culture studies (7 works)