Redemption, resistance, rebellion: The three "R's" of African folklore

Jean-Marie Dederen
University of Venda

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1. G. Bloomhill, The Sacred Drum (Howard Timmens, Cape Town, 1960).         [ Links ]
2. H.A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe II (Macmillan, London, 1927), p 211.
3. I. le Roux, "Net die woorde het oorgebly: 'n godsdiens-wetenskaplike interpretasie van Venda volksverhale." D.Litt. & Phil. proefskrif, UNISA, 1996.
4. He explored "resistance" quite extensively under the label "wisdom of the little ones".
5. A. Kriel, An African Horizon (Permanent Publishing House, Cape Town, 1971). The study (based on a doctoral project) investigates Shona "ideals and values" through the medium of folkore. He particularly focuses on the "protest against muscular power, against the power of status, the power of knowledge and the power of erotic attraction".
6. For example, the "triumph of the despised" in the folktales of the Zuni. See R. Benedict, Zuni Mythology I & II (Columbia University Press, New York, 1935).
7. "The general outcome of the lessons based on ngano is that young learners should be aware of their political and social rights" (p 7).
8. This ambiguity is found also in the trickster tales from which Mister Hare emerges simultaneously as hero and as villain.
9. The "misbehaviour" of initiates (insulting language; the mock fight against seniors of the lodge; stealing from relatives, and so forth) can be accounted for along the same logic. The initiates live in seclusion outside the normal social order.
10. The perception of a clear class distinction and the unpopularity of Venda rulers is a theme that runs through the many publications of government ethnologist N.J. van Warmelo. It also features strongly in the early writings of the Berlin Mission, which shaped his thinking.
11. Early anthropological literature defines these two strains of power as "white" and "black" magic.
12. Three of them are man-eaters, a feature that might have misled the editors into believing that rulers are perceived as naturally abusive.
13. Kruger and Le Roux use the term "interdependency" (pp 13, 15) to refer to the balance of power between superordinate and subordinate. However, this concept does not seem to play any substantial role in their analysis.
14. Junod, The Life, p 211.
15. The editors are aware of the general moral-didactic function of the dzingano. Some of the narrators, they suggest, defined ngano as milayonyana, little law. However they then go on defining this function in their usual critical way, as "formalizing conformity and submission" (pp 13, 15).
16. For example, Benedict, Zuni Mythhology, from p 236, on the individual artist in Zuni mythology.
17. For the Shona versions, see: Kriel, African Horizon, p 71.