2025/08/01 by Makhosazana Xaba, Ruchi Chaturvedi, Victoria J. Collis-Buthelezi +1 · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #African cultural and philosophical studies #Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies #South African History and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.1215/26410478-11809271
openalex publication_date 2025/08/01 · openalex created_date 2026/01/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Abstract This interview with Makhosazana Xaba, renowned South African feminist poet and writer, centers on Izimpabanga Zomhlaba (2024), Xaba's isiZulu translation of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961). Excerpted from a longer conversation, Act 1 of the interview dwells on the practice and politics of translanguaging and the relationship between peace, freedom, and translation among African vernacular languages. The incomplete nature of freedom and the persistence of structural, social, and political violence in postcolonial, postapartheid, contemporary South Africa are recurrent themes in Act 2 of the interview. Fanon's assertion that decolonization makes and requires “a new humanity” and the possibilities and limits of recuperating humility, tenderness, and solicitude for the sake of a new humanism—one that refuses to mimic Europe or America—take center stage as this conversation with Xaba concludes.