Insight

Myth and literature

Published

3 years ago

March 30, 2021

The relationship between the fields of literature and myth is one of mutual dependence, even though one cannot be reduced to the other. Myth cannot exist without literature and literature cannot exist without myth, neither of the two can exist on its own. Myth forms the basis of literature and remains an integral element of the different types of literature one comes across.

Myth is the actual and primal repository of multifaceted stories for the fictional world-making of literature and helps expand simple plots into ‘super-plots’ that leave audiences entranced in the works of literature. The understanding of myth on the part of the author helps the writer to modify their work from the simple and blasé to the level where the work is considered a classic.

What the literary author knows about myth is in actual terms the element that helps the writer to rewrite the story of the world in that salient phase in the process of creative reception before the penning of the word. The tales one heard around the fire in the early years of living is the actual source of the narrative strategies from which literature evolves.

From Aristotle’s Poetics, it is indicated the terms mythos (“word”), or, myth epitomises the very origin of literature, which is rooted in oral tradition and the performance of literary texts as is seen in the recital of folktales around the fire. The literary writer heard the folktale, which is a type of myth, before maturing and writing for the audience.

Northrop Frye conceives myth as “a structural organising principle of literary form” that forms the basis for the invented, or traditional story recounted in the work of literature the audience comes across in the study or the reading of literature. According to S. Baumbach, myth in simple terms is that story “which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, or a natural phenomenon”.

The analysis on the origins of mythological narratives in antiquity helps the literary author to gain the focus needed in the penning of stories. Myths can in a way be considered as the original literatures of a given society or people as they have been transmitted and received by the current generation.

The forms of literature in mythology have from time immemorial served as the foundation for modern literature-making. This means that such literature ends up providing the mythological archive for characters and themes found in literature and art. In the investigation of the connection between literature and myth, “literature” should be understood as the texts that have been entered into writing or printing.

This differentiation between literature and myth, which first emerges from story-telling rooted in oral tradition, reveals that myth is dependent on its translation into other media, primarily art and literature. These fields serve to preserve and perpetuate myth’s imagery as well as to reveal the “knowledge” contained in its various tales and accounts that are retrievable in different cultural spheres across the world.

The understanding of mythological elements that appear in literature and art requires that they are rewritten into literary forms where they can be read and interpreted. In this manner, literature emerges as the supreme instrument for the transportation of mythical stories. Literature thus constitutes the understanding of, and is also core in the communication of myth for the ordinary people and the scholar.

Even though establishing the difference between literature and myth is not problematic when one considers the fact that myth cannot exist outside literature and that literature does not collapse in myth, the scholar should be wary that he or she does not conflate the two schools. By merging them, the scholar risks misunderstanding their different connection points to “knowledge” and the role they play in its acquisition.

It is very significant for one as a scholar to make a close analysis of the reality of “knowledge of literature”, which relies upon, and yet cannot be reduced to the “knowledge of myth”. The triangular relationship between literature, myth, and “knowledge” needs one to consider the function of myth in the dissemination of knowledge in literature, and vice-versa. This is because mythological elements are retrieved both as evidence of the knowledge of literature and as a device for reflecting on this adapted knowledge.

The extent to which the employment of mythological elements are used supports the dissemination of knowledge in literature and also determines the ways the knowledge of literature can be attained. One’s awareness of its significance as a medium for the communication of knowledge is critical when it comes to the self-reflective or educative function as well as establishing its own “thinking” that is affected by integrating the knowledge of myth into the literary sphere. The death of the mythical figure whose life ends in death, incorporates the tension between the climax and the anticlimax.

Between the beginning and the closure of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Macbeth the myth of seeing and believing serves to drive the plots, the core to the plots is situated at the crossroads found in the behaviour of the characters. This relationship between the mythical supernatural and the mundane human nature is the measure of the limits and potentialities of both myth and literature and the role they play in the dissemination of knowledge.

The death of a character in a literary work weaves this tension of origin and death into a mythological narrative, which on the textual as well as on the metatextual level raises a monument to the memory of myth while re-membering and restoring its silent power of fascination in a poetic framing (such as for example Mark Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me yours ears” that has in essence become the template for modern political speeches).

Poetic fascination and the production of knowledge as we come to understand them have their source in the interrelation between myth and literature. The knowledge we have of the world is generated and communicated in the relationship between literature and myth.
Sybille Baumbach states, “The “knowledge” of literature and myth and the idea that literature might harbour its own mode of knowledge reaches back into antiquity where the knowledge of literature was not always seen as being desirable or particularly beneficial as it is famously expressed by Plato’s expulsion of poets from the city in his Republic.”

The question remains: what kind of knowledge does literature afford to the individuals that form its audience? Contrasted with “opinion” or “belief”, “knowledge” constitutes information that can ultimately be classified into clear categories.
The question of the division between “knowledge” and “belief” however poses a problem since it is ultimately bound to the individual’s sense of certainty rather than deriving from any kind of objective “knowledge”.

While knowledge can be defined as founded by the individual understanding across different modes of thinking and acting, it is quite hard to pin down an exact definition because knowledge is never static but is always in progress.
Knowledge is ever progressing over time, and its scope metamorphoses to integrate the latest findings in the studies of culture, history, philosophy, and the sciences that form part of continuous academic or independent research. Through engaging in fictional world-making, literature absorbs knowledge that is generated outside the literary realm and appropriates this knowledge in a dynamic process of negotiation and exchange.

Literature is not limited only to the oral and the artistic, it borrows from almost every field in existence in the creation of its fiction, biographies, thrillers and other modes of literary writing. It is ever changing; it has to, otherwise it would fall by the wayside and be part of irrelevant knowledge for knowledge demands that one should always be up to date at all times.

According to Baumbach, “the knowledge transmitted by literature can be classified into different categories, these include: 1. specific or sectoral knowledge, which is bound to a particular field of knowledge and comprises expert knowledge, which can be declarative or procedural, 2. strategic knowledge, which serves as an heuristic tool focussing on processes that are not restricted to a specific area of knowledge and which reveal strategies of how to close a specific gap in one’s own system of knowledge as well as ways to infer, structure, and add new knowledge to one’s intellectual reservoir, and finally 3. meta-cognitive knowledge, which serves to critically reflect upon both the sources of knowledge and man’s capability of epistemological reasoning.”

Her statement is further supported by Michael Wood who remarks that literature comes into being wherever words have savour and serve the role of expanding the etymological connection between knowledge (savoir) and savour (saveur), in short, literature can only give us “a taste of knowledge […] a sample, rather than an elaborate or plentiful meal. We are going to have to go elsewhere for the continuous main course”.

The need to know factor in literature is particularly triggered when it comes to the exploration of some of the glaring gaps in knowledge.
What is little understood is often integrated into literary narratives to promote, in a Socratic manner, the interaction of text and audience by activating the elements of experience and memory in the reader’s collective and private knowledge reservoir. Baumbach further states, “It is within the indeterminable space of literature’s archive that cultural knowledge, which is informed by science, religion, aesthetics, literature, and myth, is not only stored and made retrievable for future generations but it is restored, re-contextualised, and revived either to affirm and contribute to existent systems of knowledge or to establish a subversive counter-discourse, which emphasizes the shifting relations and blind spots of powers in ongoing discourses of knowledge.”

The reality in scholarship when it comes to knowledge and its acquisition is that information does not only have to be verified by critical revision in order to be regarded as “truth”. Information has to be proven and verified for it to be regarded it as “knowledge”, and literature plays a seminal role in the communication of knowledge while revealing a certain awareness of its unbiased nature; a central position that gives it the capacity for absorbing ideas and meaning that can be translated: giving the searcher for knowledge the ability to reflect upon its literariness or its fictitiousness.

Literature in this manner therefore does not only communicate but also generates knowledge through meanings and interpretations when certain strategies of reading are applied. Literature introduces its readers to the art of knowledge acquisition by involving them in the process of restoring knowledge by creating written stimuli integrated into the text.
Through names, events, dates, or allusions to discoveries or findings that activate their reasoning, literature evokes a sense of awareness found in its varied texts. The structures of these literary texts usually drawn from the design of mythical stories are effective tools that contribute to the collective role literature plays in fostering the promotion of knowledge.

The explanatory nature of myth, its imagery, its role as a tool of entertainment, its universality, and role as a tool for the transmission of oral tradition and folklore plays the central part in the generation and communication of knowledge in literature. For literature, myth is the axis of its role as a tool of knowledge acquisition. Myth usually refers to the origins of narratives (“Ba re e n’e re-It was said…” as is the usual norm in Lesotho myth recounting or folktale telling) and provides the structural devices for communicating information, in the process giving the basis for literature (Think how the myth of Sankatana or Chaka have come to influence current trends in literary writing in the mini-African renaissance movements on the continent and the world).

As Johann Gottfried Herder argues, myths in a sense represent a field of possibility to self-acquire knowledge for the individual by presenting insights into the blind spots in current knowledge. The understanding of literary truths, whether scientific or philosophical, is determined both by their concreteness and immediate evidence on offer. Scholars such as Plato tapped the full potential of myth and invented mythological narratives in order to convey philosophical, ethical, or geographical knowledge as it is in his story of Atlantis the mythical city that is said to have been buried under the sea, in a sense giving one the notion of a lost civilisation that disappeared with the most comprehensive libraries ever seen.

This imaginary world presented in the real literature of the period ignited the spark to know in the audiences gathered, it still is fascinating even it the present era and forms part of the media despite its age. The synthetic power of mythopoetic spaces has retained the unifying effect until the present day and it offers an explanation for the persistence of myth in secularised and enlightened society.

The birth of the comic hero marked the beginning of the long-held but hidden relationship between myth and literature. The now apparent union has pushed notions of the supernatural and the spiritual to the margins because the figures are now seen in every form of literary representation and have somehow become common.
The reader of myth experiences a sense of shared identity with the figures he or she reads about or sees in the literature. In a sense, the mythical figures have become transmitters and translators of knowledge in written literature. Literature and myth are therefore also tools that not only promote the revival of ancient thought and culture but also the ethos of the human race.

Tšepiso S. Mothibi

Insight

An open letter to President Hichilema

Published

1 week ago

April 17, 2024

The Post

Your Excellency,

I am certain that you are wondering where and/or how I have the temerity to write to you directly, but a recent post you put on WhatsApp piqued my interest; your meeting with His Excellency the Prime Minister of Lesotho, and his delegation. The delegation came to introduce to you and your good office the candidate of the Government of Lesotho, for the post of Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Joshua Setipa.

Let me set off by stating that I have a friendship with Setipa, for over 50 years, so I may not be the best person to give an objective appraisal or opinion of him; this I will leave to the government.

Further to that, as a citizen of Lesotho, I may embellish the information that I would provide on Lesotho, thus I will as far as possible keep to information that is contained in books. This is not a research report, but more a simplified literature review of what I have read. I shall not quote them, or reference them, thus allowing others the space to research this matter further.

First, let me state my surprise at the alignment of time that I see; Commonwealth Day in 2024 is on the 11th March, the day we celebrate a life well lived, that of Morena Moshoeshoe.

Further to that, this year also starts the 200th anniversary of the move by Morena Moshoeshoe and his followers from Menkhoaneng to Thaba Bosiu. They arrived at Thaba Bosiu in winter, circa 1824.

Next year, 2025 will also be the 100th anniversary of the ‘plenary’ that saw the birth of this Commonwealth of Nations. A handover from the bi-centenary, to the centenary celebrations.

We are all aware that the Commonwealth was started at the Imperial Conference of 1926, but it had what I call a plenary in 1925; this happened in Maseru, Basutoland. It was held at the ‘secretariat’ building on Kingsway. The building was used as the Prime Ministers’ office after independence, more recently, and to date as the Ministry of Defence.

When King George came to visit Lesotho in 1948, to thank the country and her citizens for their participation in the Second World War, High street as it was then known, had its name changed to Kingsway.

At this plenary Britain called the ANZaC states, Australia, New Zeeland and Canada, together with South Africa. It had been only 13 years (1912) since the Basotho monarch had been asked to attend the formation of the South African National Native Conference (SANNC), whose aim was to preserve African land. The SANNC was the forerunner to the African National Congress (ANC).

With the formation of the Union of South Africa, the union wanted to engulf Bechuanaland (Botswana) Swaziland (eSwatini) and Basutoland (Lesotho). This had been unsuccessful.

Next they came up with the Native Land Act of 1913, to remove African land rights. So, the conference that brought about the birth of the SANNC was a pre-emptive response to this act; an attempt to keep African land rights and traditions intact.

I would like to point out that the founding document of the Imperial Conference that brought about the Commonwealth states that all member states are autonomous and not subordinate to another.

At the time of the plenary, Basutoland was subordinate to Britain. But in a masterstoke became what I believe to be one of the founders of the Commonwealth.

Despite her subordination, Basutoland had placed so strong an objection to the presence of a representative South Africa in Basutoland, that South Africa’s invitation had to be withdrawn, and South Africa did not attend. This was the first ‘anti-apartheid’ shot, made in the world; what is more important is that it was made by an African country.

No matter how one looks at it, she may not have been a ‘founding member state’, but Basutoland was part of the founding fabric of the Commonwealth.

One just has to imagine the anger of the South Africans and their government: Dr. D. F. Malan, the first Nationalist Prime Minister of South Africa, was a minister responsible for housing at that time.

Had Basutoland’s lead been followed, spatial apartheid might never have happened. The Commonwealth would take till the 1960’s, and the formal legalisation/legislation of apartheid to remove South Africa from within her fold. A matter that Basutoland saw as far back as the 1920’s.

As shown, at the conceptualisation of the Commonwealth Lesotho was not just there, but an active and formidable participant; though one has to look further to see her relationship with Great Britain/the United Kingdom.

Basutoland/Lesotho’s history is strange, to say the least. The first Europeans to arrive here in 1833, were French Missionaries. At this time Europe was embroiled in wars, which inevitably included the French and English.

But it is these same priests, most notably Casalis, who helped steer the country to Britain, and British protection. Casalis acted almost as a foreign secretary/minister of foreign affairs at that time.

The first treaty between Basutoland and England was the Napier Treaty of 1843, though it took till 1866 to solidify this treaty into a protected land.

The history of the cavalry in Lesotho, the only African cavalry south of the Sahara, is quite long. It starts in about 1825, when F. D. Ellenberger in his book ‘History of the Basutho’, states that Morena Moletsane had come across gun powder quite by mistake.

They had been raiding a missionary’s home and came across a strange powder, which they found useless, so they threw it into a fire, which ‘exploded’. Thus, to his people called European style housing, ‘Ntlo-ea-thunya’, a house that shoots. But after having his people ravaged/savaged by Mzilikazi, he sent his best warriors to work on Boer farms, and with their remuneration purchase arms and horses.

We are often told of a ‘battle of/at Berea’. My answer is that it was not a battle but a cattle raid. Its importance is not just in the battle, but in democracy. The British called Morena Moshoeshoe ‘paramount chief’, a first amongst the others. The time before Berea shows something slightly different.

As Casalis writes in ‘My life in Basutoland’, the British had demanded 10,000 head of cattle, for stock theft. A great ‘pitso’ was called and all eligible men, those who owned land, were called.

At the end of the pitso, after many votes, the citizens refused to give their cattle to pay the demand of the British. The significance herein is that there was a plebiscite, a vote. Morena Moshoeshoe lost the backing of the people and thus the vote; the British then attacked to ‘collect’ the cattle themselves.

Both Morena Moshoeshoe and Morena Moletsane were heavily involved in the ‘battle’ which was won by the strength of the Basutho cavalry. Looking forward to the gun wars, it was most fortuitous that Morena Moshoeshoe’s ally, Morena Moletsane would outlive him, till the end of the gun wars.

After annexation in 1866, in the mid 1870’s the British, citing distance and as such expense, ceded Basutoland to the Cape, which was what the Basotho had been fighting against for a long time; they wanted direct British rule. They wanted to be ruled by Mofumahali Queen Victoria.

The first, and most critical mistake that the Cape made was, not so much in attacking Morena Moorosi, accusing his son of cattle theft, but in beheading him.

So, when some years later they wanted to disarm the Basutho, and they found those of the south of Basutoland who knew of the beheading, reluctant to go with the plan. The Cape decided to go ahead with disarmament forcefully and met equal if not greater force.

The Basutho were better armed, more knowledgeable on the terrain and better supplied. Helped by his father’s long-standing ally, Morena Moletsane, Morena Lerotholi was able to field a well-armed strong cavalry, which inflict great pain to the Cape.

This led to the Cape defeat. Together with the number of other wars that the Cape was fighting, there was fight fatigue among her people.

So bad was it, that they did not come and collect their fallen troops; in Mafeteng there is a cemetery called ‘mabitla-a-makhooa’, or graves of the white men. The SA Military History Society has a ‘roll of honour’ for some of the dead, as not all were buried in Basutoland.

There are two significant outcomes of the war. In his book ‘The Mabille’s of Basutoland’, Edwin W. Smith states that there was a fact-finding mission to Basutoland by members of the Cape parliament, including Rhodes. Their conclusion was that the Basutho should be handed back to Britain for direct rule; which was the original wish of the Basutho.

As Whitehall was reluctant to take this role back, Basutoland spent a period of close to two years of self-rule. Thus it became the first African country (only?) to unshackle itself of colonial rule. And became the first African country to get the colonial rule it wanted; and re-shackled itself to Britain.

The second is how Britain agreed to go back and rule Basutoland. In his book, Rhodes Goes North, J. E. S. Green shows how the Prime Minister of the Cape went to Britain to sue for peace, and eventually agreed to give Britain 20 000 pounds per annum, of her import tax revenues to govern Basutoland.

Whilst not a founding member of the Commonwealth, Basutoland has carried her fair weight in the battle to save both the Commonwealth, and together the rest of the Commonwealth, the world at large.

Whilst SA will hype the losses during the maritime accident of the SS Mendi in the English Channel, Lesotho is less inclined to speak of the losses on the SS Erinpura. The Erinpura was sunk by German war planes in the Mediterranean Sea. Though I should say that, the prayer of the men on the Mendi would resound so well with those who lost their lives on the Erinpura.

When British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill said; never was so much owed by so many to so few, I am certain he was speaking not just of the people of the British Isles, but the broader community within the Commonwealth, that stood together at this time of international need.

But having heard Sir Winston, there is a special bond of Basutoland within, and with the Commonwealth, that I would like to highlight. Apart from the ANZaC countries and South Africa, there were no air squadrons from other Commonwealth countries that I am aware of; except for Basutoland that is.

They paid for 12 or so Spitfire aircraft that would form the 72nd Basutoland, which flew in the Battle of Britain. No moSotho actually flew (in?) them, but they had been financed by the Basotho.

For all the prowess of a moSotho man with arms, in his book ‘Basotho Soldiers in Hitler’s War’, Brian Gary not only writes about the gift of aircraft that fought in the Battle of Britain, he also shows that Basotho soldiers, who were hauling various ordinances through the Italian Alps, were allowed to carry arms.

Aircraft and carrying arms for an African in World War II; Lesotho is not just a pioneer member of the Commonwealth, but a beacon.

As Lesotho many of these pioneering attributes continued. Whist South Africa was banned from sports and entertainment, Lesotho filled the gap for her. Exiles like Hugh Masekela and Mirriam Makeba were hosted for sell out concerts in Lesotho. South African interracial sports, with matches between the likes of Orlando Pirate, Wits University, Kaiser Chiefs, to name those I remember, started in Maseru.

I have touched on politics and war, sport and entertainment; let me go to superstition. It would go against what is expected of me not to go without anything superstitious.

Britain has given the world three major sporting codes. Rugby, which is dominated by the big three of New Zeeland and South Africa. Cricket, which expands from the rugby three to include India, Pakistan, most of the Caribbean states and a few African counties.

These sports are obviously ‘Commonwealth Sports’, as they are dominated, or played predominantly by Commonwealth countries. They have also given us football. This is a truly global sport, the largest sport played across the world, on all types of surfaces, with all types of round looking objects. We can’t call all of these footballs.

The last time a Commonwealth country won the World Cup it was England in 1966; the year Lesotho gained her independence.

The next World Cup is in 2026, the millennium celebrations of the Commonwealth; who will head the Commonwealth then? Will a Commonwealth team have the necessary ‘juju’ to make it?

Your Excellency, this is but a brief note on Lesotho, and it is my way of using the words attributed to Morena Moshoeshoe, when asking for protection from Queen Victoria that say; take me, and all the lice (those that are symbiotic to me) in my blanket. I do hope that these words will be of use to you as seek consensus on Lesotho and her candidate for the post of Secretary General of the Commonwealth.

Yours truly

Khasane Ramolefe

Insight

Culture quibbles

Published

1 week ago

April 17, 2024

The Post

A few weeks ago these pages carried a substantial piece by Mokhosi Mohapi titled “A reversal of our traditions and culture”, written in the form of an open letter to the government of Lesotho. The first sentence of Mohapi’s article took me by surprise, as he stated: MPs and Senators’ primary role is to protect and preserve the traditions and culture of the Basotho people. I would have thought the primary role of MPs and Senators would be to ensure that Basotho are secure (being protected, for example, from criminals), that they have adequate access to social services such as education and healthcare, that the economy is sufficiently stable to offer citizens some chance of employment, and so on. Fat chance, you might scoff.

But then I realised that Mohapi had a more specific contention in mind, as he stated: The Laws of Lerotholi were set to protect social order, traditions and culture of Basotho. Mohapi’s immediate concern is with the 2024 Estates and Inheritance Bill, which proposes radical changes to the existing order of things. (See the article in last week’s thepost, “MPs bulldoze through Inheritance Bill”, which gives a good idea of the background).

I’m aware that this Bill has provoked considerable controversy, and that is not my topic in this article. Nor do I wish to contest what Mohapi was saying in his piece — this is by no means a case of Dunton v Mohapi. But I did take note of the way the phrase “traditions and culture” kept resounding in Mohapi’s article, rather like a cracked bell, and what I want to do is open up those terms for examination.

Please bear with me as I slip aside for a moment with a little academic stuff. Back in 2006 I published an article titled “Problematizing Keywords: Culture, tradition and modernity.” For those of my readers with a scholarly bent and who might want to hunt it down, this was published in a journal called Boleswa Occasional Papers in Theology and Religion 2:3 (2006), pages 5-11. There I made a number of points I want to bring up in what follows.

The first fallacy I tackled in that article was the tradition/modernity binary — the notion that in Africa there was tradition and then, wham!, the white man arrived and there was modernity. Are we seriously to believe there were no great cities in Africa before the white man landed, that the peoples of a whole continent lived entirely in villages? Nigeria tells a different story.

Are we to believe there were no great libraries? Mali and Ethiopia tell a different tale. No writing systems? No medicine? I’m not saying that if I’m in pain I don’t prefer a dose of oramorph to an infusion made from some leaves picked off the slopes of Thaba Bosiu, but the point remains: the tradition/modernity binary is crude and crass and it’s demeaning about Africa.

We cannot get very far with simplistic ideas about where we are coming from and where we are at. And yet of course we do come from a past. I’ll quote — or, rather, paraphrase from memory, as I don’t have the work to hand — an observation made by T.S Eliot in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”: We know so much more than those who came before us. But they are a large part of what we know.

But of those who came before who is it, exactly, that we know? When Mohapi repeatedly uses the phrase “the traditions and culture of the Basotho people” I take it he is thinking of the Basotho as constituted under Moshoeshoe I and the descendants of those generations.

For how much do we know about the “traditions and culture” of the various Sotho-speaking groups let’s say two hundred years before Moshoeshoe gathered them together to form the modern Lesotho state? Isn’t it likely there were significant differences between the “traditions and culture” of these groups, differences that were later rationalised or homogenised?

Two points here. First, we mustn’t forget what an extraordinary innovator Moshoeshoe was —and I guess that might be said also of Lerotholi, whose laws are the chief focus of Mohapi’s article. Second, culture is not static, it is not immutable. It evolves all the time.

For example, for how long has it been the case that adherence to the Christian faith could be said to be part of the culture of Basotho? (Or, for how long has football been part of the culture of the English? We are credited with the invention of football, but that doesn’t mean it’s been part of who we are since time immemorial).

That brings me to my next point, or a string of points, moving from England back to Lesotho. When I was a schoolboy I bought myself a copy of the book Components of the National Culture (1968) by the great British Marxist Perry Anderson. One of my schoolmasters — one of the few who didn’t like me — caught me with it and said “just the sort of book I’d expect a troublemaker like you to be reading. Just don’t show it to anyone else!”

The significant term in Anderson’s title is “components.” Culture is put together — it is an assemblage — and its components may have different sources.
That leads me on to the invention of tradition, and an example for Basotho.

I guess all my readers know Qiloane, the sandstone pillar at Thaba Bosiu the distinctive peak of which is said to be the inspiration for the shape of the traditional Basotho straw hat. Well, that notion is dubious to say the least; there were hats of the same shape from elsewhere in the region long before the Basotho got hold of the design.

Does this really matter? Well, no, because even if a tradition is invented, it still has the persuasiveness of a tradition. It’s just that knowing this might dissuade us from making big claims about the unchangeable nature and sanctity of tradition.

And the same goes for culture. I leave you with a quotation from the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah (it’s from his terrific book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers): We do not need, have never needed, a homogenous system of values, in order to have a home. Cultural purity is an oxymoron.

Chris Dunton is a former Professor of English and Dean of Humanities at the National University of Lesotho.

Insight

The Joker Returns: Conclusion

Published

2 weeks ago

April 9, 2024

The Post

Last week I was talking about how jokes, or humour generally, can help get one through the most desperate situations (although it’s like taking a paracetamol for a headache; a much, much stronger resort is faith). I used the example of how Polish Jews, trapped and dying in the Warsaw ghetto, used humour to get them through day by day.

A similar, though less nightmarish, situation obtains in today’s Nigeria. Conditions there are less hellish than those of the Warsaw ghetto, but still pretty awful. There are massive redundancies, so millions of people are jobless. Inflation is at about 30% and the cost of living is sky-rocketing, with the most basic foodstuffs often unavailable. There is the breakdown of basic social services.

And endemic violence, with widespread armed robbery (to travel by road from one city to another you take your life in your hands) and the frequent kidnapping for ransom of schoolchildren and teachers. In a recent issue of the Punch newspaper (Lagos) Taiwo Obindo, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Jos, writes of the effects of economic hardship and insecurity on his people’s mental health.

He concludes: “We should see the funny side of things. We can use humour to handle some things. Don’t take things to heart; laugh it off.”

Professor Obindo doesn’t, regrettably, give examples of the humour he prescribes, but I remember two from a period when things were less grim. Power-cuts happened all the time — a big problem if you’re trying to work at night and can’t afford a generator.

And so the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) was universally referred to as Never Expect Power Always. And second, for inter-city travel there was a company called Luxurious Buses. Believe me, the average Lesotho kombi is a great deal more luxurious (I can’t remember ever having to sit on the floor of one of those).

And because of the dreadful state of Nigerian roads and the frequent fatal crashes, Luxurious Buses were referred to as Luxurious Hearses.

Lesotho’s newspaper thepost, for which I slave away tirelessly, doesn’t use humour very much. But there is Muckraker. I’ve always wondered whether Muckraker is the pen-name of a single person or a group who alternate writing the column.

Whatever, I’d love to have a drink with him / her/ them and chew things over. I like the ironic pen-name of the author(s). Traditionally speaking, a muckraker is a gossip, someone who scrabbles around for titbits (usually sexual) on the personal life of a celebrity — not exactly a noble thing to do.

But thepost’s Muckraker exposes big problems, deep demerits, conducted by those who should know and do better — problems that the powerful would like to be swept under the carpet, and the intention of Muckraker’s exposure is corrective.

And I always join in the closing exasperated “Ichuuuu!” (as I do this rather loudly, my housemates probably think I’m going bonkers).

Finally I want to mention television satire. The Brits are renowned for this, an achievement dating back to the early 1960s and the weekly satirical programme “TW3” (That Was The Week That Was). More recently we have had “Mock the Week”, though, despite its popularity, the BBC has cancelled this.

The cancellation wasn’t for political reasons. For decades the UK has been encumbered with a foul Conservative government, though this year’s election may be won by Labour (not such very good news, as the Labour leadership is only pseudo-socialist). “Mock the Week” was pretty even-handed in deriding politicians; the BBC’s problem was, I imagine, with the programme’s frequent obscenity.

As an example of their political jokes, I quote a discussion on the less than inspiring leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer. One member of the panel said: “Labour may well have a huge lead in the polls at present, but the day before election day Starmer will destroy it by doing something like accidentally infecting David Attenborough with chicken-pox.”

And a favourite, basically non-political interchange on “Mock the Week” had to do with our former monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Whatever one thinks about the British monarchy as an institution, the Queen was much loved, but the following interchange between two panellists (A and B) was fun:

A: Is the Queen’s nickname really Lilibet?
B: Yes, it is.
A: I thought her nickname was Her Majesty.
B: That’s her gang name.

OK, dear readers, that’s enough humour from me for a while. Next week I’m turning dead serious — and more than a little controversial — responding to a recent Insight piece by Mokhosi Mohapi titled “A reversal of our traditions and culture.” To be forewarned is to be prepared.

Chris Dunton