Munashe is a bright adolescent girl living in Zimbabwe. She feels a pressure to leave Zimbabwe and to follow most of her peers to a university or to work in the West. However, she is not convinced that this is what she really wants. Via Thomas, an experienced European scientist and manager, initiating a technical Start-up Hub at her boarding school, Munashe comes in contact with Anne. Imwe imba - the other room - is a novel covering the last 2 high-school years of Munashe and Anne in letters between the young women as well as from Thomas to Simon, his now retired personal and business coach. Through the letters, Anne and Simon discover unknown and fascinating aspects of the (southern) African society. Especially, since Thomas includes stories from Nelson, Munashe's grandfather and small holder farmer. Based on the stories and hearing about Munashe's activities in more technical projects, Anne develops a critical attitude towards both the current Western school system and the effectiveness of traditional Western development or aid projects. On the other side, Munashe learns that Europe is not the land of milk and honey for everybody. Munashe and Anne, assisted by Thomas, review the so-called development work activities in emerging markets and propose a promising approach to economically uplift more rural areas. In part 2, the Start-up Hub activities are proven to be sustainable and Munashe asks "where do we want to go?" A design is made for a more ideal (global) society and the issues faced, implementing their ideas, are discussed. The letters in this novel cover a wide spectrum of topics: personal struggles and contemplations, educational and business practices, science and art, geopolitics and historical backgrounds, change management as well as social developments. Each letter is written in an accessible language and underlined with references to allow the reader to explore more. Most of all, "imwe imba" wants to create awareness. Awareness for the wonderful, "real" life in Africa. Awareness that Africa is prosperity. Awareness that our younger generation is perfectly able to initiate change. That a single person can initiate change. That complaining or being upset about various (unacceptable) global happenings or actions is not enough. That a further polarisation and blaming "the others" doesn't help. That we have to do things. That we should not fear change but embrace the changes that are needed to come to the necessary improvements.
Munashe is a bright adolescent girl living in Zimbabwe. She feels a pressure to leave Zimbabwe and to follow most of her peers to a university or to work in the West. However, she is not convinced that this is what she really wants. Via Thomas, an experienced European scientist and manager, initiating a technical Start-up Hub at her boarding school, Munashe comes in contact with Anne. Imwe imba, the other room, is a novel covering the last 2 high-school years of Munashe and Anne in letters between the young women as well as from Thomas to Simon, his now retired personal and business coach. Through the letters, Anne and Simon discover unknown and fascinating aspects of the (southern) African society. Especially, since Thomas includes stories from Nelson, Munashe's grandfather and small holder farmer. Based on the stories and hearing about Munashe's activities in more technical projects, Anne develops a critical attitude towards both the current Western school system and the effectiveness of traditional Western development or aid projects. On the other side, Munashe learns that Europe is not the land of milk and honey for everybody. Munashe and Anne, assisted by Thomas, review the so-called development work activities in emerging markets and propose a promising approach to economically uplift more rural areas. In part 2, the Start-up Hub activities are proven to be sustainable and Munashe asks "where do we want to go?" A design is made for a more ideal (global) society and the issues faced, implementing their ideas, are discussed. The letters in this novel cover a wide spectrum of topics: personal struggles and contemplations, educational and business practices, science and art, geopolitics and historical backgrounds, change management as well as social developments. Each letter is written in an accessible language and underlined with references to allow the reader to explore more. Most of all, "imwe imba" wants to create awareness. Awareness for the wonderful, "real" life in Africa. Awareness that Africa is prosperity. Awareness that our younger generation is perfectly able to initiate change. That a single person can initiate change. That complaining or being upset about various (unacceptable) global happenings or actions is not enough. That a further polarisation and blaming "the others" doesn't help. That we have to do things. That we should not fear change but embrace the changes that are needed to come to the necessary improvements.
This is the first of two volumes collecting the key proceedings of the 30th International Congress of Psychology, the first to be held in Africa in the 123 years of its history. The theme of the conference was "Psychology Serving Humanity", a recognition of psychology's unfulfilled mission in the majority world and a reflection of what that world requires from psychology. Mainstream Psychology finds its largest number of exponents and leading personalities in the high income countries of the global West. The Other Psychologies, referred to by different names, are scattered across the rest of the world. Some of the names of these other forms of Psychology include indigenous Psychology. The main driver of indigenous and other forms of non-mainstream Psychology is the endeavour to embed the discipline in the dynamics of local societies. Psychology has entered an interesting era, however. While the dominant philosophy underpinning the discipline remains Western, Psychology in the majority world in 2000s may have reached a tipping point. It took over a hundred years but the 2004 and 2012 International Congresses of Psychology held in China and South Africa heralded a newfound possibility for the discipline. There is an opening of the field to potentially new thought and forms of the practice of Psychology. These proceedings are published in the hope that all psychologists, especially those located in well-resourced institutions in the West, confront the divided reality that characterizes Psychology so as to creatively consider the opportunity opened up by the growing field at the peripheries. Care was taken when assembling both conference and proceedings to ensure that the entire international psychological community was represented. Volume One contains contributions to Majority World Psychology. Volume Two contains contributions to Western Psychology.
Compelling memoir of Flora Veit-Wild and her relationship with the Zimbabwean novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist Dambudzo Marechera, one of Africa''s most innovative and subversive writers and a significant voice in contemporary world literature.How shall I tell our story? I hear your voice ringing in mine. I struggle to disentangle a dense tapestry of memories. One thread will be caught up in another. Early images will embrace later ones. My gaze will often be filtered through your eyes, your poems. In the end I will not always be able to tell the original from the reflection. Just as you wrote, Time''s fingers on the piano / play emotion into motion / the dancers in the looking glass never recognise us as their originals.This book is a memoir with a ''double heartbeat''. At its centre is the author''s relationship with the late Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, whose award-winning book The House of Hunger marked him as a powerful, disruptive, perhaps prophetic voice in African literature. Flora Veit-Wild is internationally recognised for her significant contribution to preserving Marechera''s legacy. What is less known about Marechera and Veit-Wild is that they had an intense, personal and sexual relationship. This memoir explores this: the couple''s first encounter in 1983, amidst the euphoria of the newly independent Zimbabwe; the tumultuous months when the homeless writer moved in with his lover and her family; the bouts of creativity once he had his own flat followed by feelings of abandonment; the increasing despair about a love affair that could not stand up against reality; and the illness of the writer and his death of HIV related pneumonia in August 1987. What follows are the struggles Flora went through once Dambudzo had died. On the one hand she became the custodian of his life and work, on the other she had to live with her own HIV infection and the ensuing threats to her health.Jacana: Southern Africaora Veit-Wild is internationally recognised for her significant contribution to preserving Marechera''s legacy. What is less known about Marechera and Veit-Wild is that they had an intense, personal and sexual relationship. This memoir explores this: the couple''s first encounter in 1983, amidst the euphoria of the newly independent Zimbabwe; the tumultuous months when the homeless writer moved in with his lover and her family; the bouts of creativity once he had his own flat followed by feelings of abandonment; the increasing despair about a love affair that could not stand up against reality; and the illness of the writer and his death of HIV related pneumonia in August 1987. What follows are the struggles Flora went through once Dambudzo had died. On the one hand she became the custodian of his life and work, on the other she had to live with her own HIV infection and the ensuing threats to her health.Jacana: Southern Africaora Veit-Wild is internationally recognised for her significant contribution to preserving Marechera''s legacy. What is less known about Marechera and Veit-Wild is that they had an intense, personal and sexual relationship. This memoir explores this: the couple''s first encounter in 1983, amidst the euphoria of the newly independent Zimbabwe; the tumultuous months when the homeless writer moved in with his lover and her family; the bouts of creativity once he had his own flat followed by feelings of abandonment; the increasing despair about a love affair that could not stand up against reality; and the illness of the writer and his death of HIV related pneumonia in August 1987. What follows are the struggles Flora went through once Dambudzo had died. On the one hand she became the custodian of his life and work, on the other she had to live with her own HIV infection and the ensuing threats to her health.Jacana: Southern Africaora Veit-Wild is internationally recognised for her significant contribution to preserving Marechera''s legacy. What is less known about Marechera and Veit-Wild is that they had an intense, personal and sexual relationship. This memoir explores this: the couple''s first encounter in 1983, amidst the euphoria of the newly independent Zimbabwe; the tumultuous months when the homeless writer moved in with his lover and her family; the bouts of creativity once he had his own flat followed by feelings of abandonment; the increasing despair about a love affair that could not stand up against reality; and the illness of the writer and his death of HIV related pneumonia in August 1987. What follows are the struggles Flora went through once Dambudzo had died. On the one hand she became the custodian of his life and work, on the other she had to live with her own HIV infection and the ensuing threats to her health.Jacana: Southern Africation to preserving Marechera''s legacy. What is less known about Marechera and Veit-Wild is that they had an intense, personal and sexual relationship. This memoir explores this: the couple''s first encounter in 1983, amidst the euphoria of the newly independent Zimbabwe; the tumultuous months when the homeless writer moved in with his lover and her family; the bouts of creativity once he had his own flat followed by feelings of abandonment; the increasing despair about a love affair that could not stand up against reality; and the illness of the writer and his death of HIV related pneumonia in August 1987. What follows are the struggles Flora went through once Dambudzo had died. On the one hand she became the custodian of his life and work, on the other she had to live with her own HIV infection and the ensuing threats to her health.Jacana: Southern Africa
This book is the first cross-linguistic study of clausal negation based on an extensive and systematic language sample. Methodological issues, especially sampling, are discussed at length. Standard negation – the basic structural means languages have for negating declarative verbal main clauses – is typologized from a new perspective, paying attention to structural differences between affirmatives and negatives. In symmetric negation affirmative and negative structures show no differences except for the presence of the negative marker(s), whereas in asymmetric negation there are further structural differences, i.e. asymmetries. A distinction is made between constructional and paradigmatic asymmetry; in the former the addition of the negative marker(s) is accompanied by further structural differences in comparison to the corresponding affirmative, and in the latter the correspondences between the members of (verbal etc.) paradigms used in affirmatives and negatives are not one-to-one. Cross-cutting the constructional-paradigmatic distinction, asymmetric negation can be further divided into subtypes according to the nature of the asymmetry. Standard negation structures found in the 297 sample languages are exemplified and discussed in detail. The frequencies of the different types and some typological correlations are also examined. Functional motivations are proposed for the structural types – symmetric negatives are language-internally analogous to the linguistic structure of the affirmative and asymmetric negatives are language-externally analogous to different asymmetries between affirmation and negation on the functional level. Relevant diachronic issues are also discussed. The book is of interest to language typologists, descriptive linguists and to all linguists interested in negation.
This collection of essays on Zimbabwean literature brings together studies of both Rhodesian and Zimbabwean literature, spanning different languages and genres. It charts the at times painful process of the evolution of Rhodesian/ Zimbabwean identities that was shaped by pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial realities. The hybrid nature of the society emerges as different writers endeavour to make sense of their world. Two essays focus on the literature of the white settler. The first distils the essence of white settlers' alienation from the Africa they purport to civilize, revealing the delusional fixations of the racist mindset that permeates the discourse of the "white man's burden" in imperial narratives. The second takes up the theme of alienation found in settler discourse, showing how the collapse of the white supremacists' dream when southern African countries gained independence left many settlers caught up in a profound identity crisis. Four essays are devoted to Ndebele writing. They focus on the praise poetry composed for kings Mzilikazi and Lobengula; the preponderance of historical themes in Ndebele literature; the dilemma that lies at the heart of the modern Ndebele identity; and the fossilized views on gender roles found in the works of leading Ndebele novelists, both female and male. The essays on English-language writing chart the predominantly negative view of women found in the fiction of Stanley Nyamfukudza, assess the destabilization of masculine identities in post-colonial Zimbabwe, evaluate the complex vision of life and "reality" in Charles Mungoshi's short stories as exemplified in the tragic isolation of many of his protagonists, and explore Dambudzo Marechera's obsession with isolated, threatened individuals in his hitherto generally neglected dramas. The development of Shona writing is surveyed in two articles: the first traces its development from its origins as a colonial educational tool to the more critical works of the post-1980 independence phase; the second turns the spotlight on written drama from 1968 when plays seemed divorced from the everyday realities of people's lives to more recent work which engages with corruption and the perversion of the moral order. The volume also includes an illuminating interview with Irene Staunton, the former publisher of Baobab Books and now of Weaver Press.
