Ikisiri Bwana Yesu asifiwe ni miongoni mwa semo ambazo hutumiwa mara kwa mara na baadhi ya waumini wa makanisa ya Kikristo. Licha ya usemi huo kuwa na maana yake ya msingi, hutumiwa kwa dhima mbalimbali za kipragmatiki. Makala hii inalenga kuchunguza dhima hizo ili kuongeza maarifa kuhusu namna muktadha unavyochangia kupata maana katika lugha. Matokeo kutoka katika sharika tatu za Kanisa la Kilutheri yanaonesha kwamba usemi Bwana Yesu asifiwe una dhima mbalimbali, zikiwamo kusalimia, kuanzisha mazungumzo, kuziba pengo la ukimya, kusisitiza jambo na kuchangamsha waumini. Kwa kuzingatia matokeo haya, makala hii inahitimisha kwamba dhima za usemi Bwana Yesu asifiwe zinaweza kueleweka vizuri pale msikilizaji anapohusisha muktadha wa kiutamaduni, kipragmatiki na kilongo husika.
Ikisiri Taarifa za matamshi katika kamusi zina umuhimu mkubwa katika kuwawezesha watumiaji kutamka maneno kwa usahihi na kuelewa tofauti za kifonolojia zinazojitokeza katika lugha. Mapungufu katika taarifa hizo yanaweza kuathiri uwazi na usahihi wa utamkaji wa maneno, hali inayoweza kuwapotosha watumiaji wa kamusi hizo, kama wanafunzi, walimu na watafiti, na hivyo kupunguza kuaminika kwa kamusi hizo. Makala hii inalenga kutathmini taarifa za matamshi katika Kamusi Kuu ya Kiswahili Toleo la Pili (2015) ili kubaini uzingatiaji wa kaida za kifonolojia za Kiswahili sanifu. Uchambuzi wa data umeongozwa na Nadharia ya Fonolojia Zalishi na Nadharia ya Leksikografia. Matokeo yanaonesha kuwa, licha ya jitihada za kuwasilisha baadhi ya vipengele vya matamshi kwa usahihi, bado kuna upungufu katika usilabi, urefu wa irabu, mkazo na matumizi ya alama za unukuzi zisizo sahihi katika baadhi ya vipengele. Makala inapendekeza maboresho ya kitaaluma ili kuimarisha usahihi na uelewekaji wa taarifa hizi. Maboresho hayo ni muhimu kwa ajili ya kuongeza ubora na manufaa ya kamusi kwa watumiaji ikizingatiwa kuwa kamusi hii ni ya taasisi muhimu katika kukuza na kuendeleza Kiswahili Nchini Tanzania.
Ikisiri Mtazamo ni kipengele muhimu cha maudhui katika kazi za fasihi. Kupitia mtazamo, msomaji hupata mawazo ya msanii kuhusu jambo analolizungumzia katika kazi yake. Shaaban Robert, mwanafasihi nguli katika uga wa Kiswahili, kazi zake zinazungumzia masuala mbalimbali katika jamii, ikiwamo lugha ya Kiswahili. Tafiti kadhaa zimefanywa kuhusu kazi zake, lakini hakuna ambazo zimechunguza mtazamo wake kimahususi kuhusu lugha ya Kiswahili. Lengo la makala hii ni kujadili mtazamo wake kuhusu lugha ya Kiswahili ulivyochangia na unavyochangia maendeleo ya lugha hiyo. Data za makala ya utafiti huu zimekusanywa kwa kusoma kazi zake kwa kuzingatia maudhui yenye kuzungumzia lugha ya Kiswahili. Kwa kuongozwa na Nadharia ya Uhistoria Mpya katika uchambuzi wa data, matokeo ya utafiti yanaonesha kwamba Shaaban Robert ana mitazamo chanya na endelevu kuhusu lugha ya Kiswahili yenye kugusa watu, taasisi na sekta mbalimbali. Mitazamo hiyo inaakisi kipindi alichoishi na inafaa pia katika kipindi cha sasa. Mitazamo yake inakuza Kiswahili, ikizidi kuzingatiwa na wadau wa lugha na asasi mbalimbali itaendeleza zaidi lugha hiyo.
Abstract The implicit irony, the issues fomenting African states’ objections to the Biafran declaration of independence in the 1960s, revolved around two warring polarities: dictation on the one hand, and volition on the other – ironic because these were the very terms that had brought these African nations into arbitrary being as their own entities. Yet the disapproval of African nations, a majority of whom comprised the Organisation of African Unity, was characterised by a stunning pietism unmediated by lessons from world history – such as the tenacity of the human sense of identity. The liberation narrative sustained throughout Africa has not only been one of peoples attaining the status of modern states; it has been a story of ongoing struggle on behalf of others worldwide, in the broader, collective liberation undertaking. This essay pursues the most pertinent and instructive lessons for African leadership’s majority rejection of the breakaway Biafra from the nation-space known as Nigeria in 1967.
Abstract The current vitality of the Maasai language may be evaluated by analyzing the language portraits produced by secondary-school students in the predominantly Maasai region of Arusha. Two kinds of data – pictorial (presentational) and verbal (discursive) – suggest that a devaluation of Maasai, which has been observed previously among the older generation of school-age children’s parents, is evident in this generation of children as well. Three factors of this demotion are dominant in the data: (a) although ethnic Maasai students – who tend to be trilingual speakers of Maasai, Kiswahili and English – attribute to Maasai a significance exceeding that associated with Kiswahili and English, the relevance of Maasai is primarily connected to their emotions and their regional and traditional identity and immediate lifeworld context (Maasai being related to the past and the local); (b) Kiswahili entertains an interethnic and statal relevance for these children, being viewed as a tool necessary for work, prosperity, and life in the country (the present and the national); (c) the relevance of English is perceived by them as pertaining to affairs of the external-community and to their international economic prospects and opportunities (the future and the global).
Abstract Linguistic negation in naming is a culturally dependent device to express people’s attitudes both of approval and disapproval. In particular, personal names in Haya containing the negative markers ta- and ti- , paired with different agreement markers depending on the intended referent, exhibit a formal semantic paradox: they are negative in morphological form but sometimes carry inherently positive connotations, expressing positive attitudes. This analysis reveals that negation in Haya anthroponymy does more than signal the absence of a trait; it serves as a sophisticated vehicle for expressing complex attitudes toward the self and others. Negated names guide one in learning what behaviour and characteristics are desirable and undesirable in the Haya community. This compelling aspect of pragmatics evident in Haya anthroponyms supports the growing campaign to dispel outright the dichotomy classically drawn between text and context.
Ikisiri Ufundishaji wa lugha ya kigeni nje ya mazingira yake ya matumizi ni sekta inayokua kwa kasi duniani. Tafiti zinaonesha kwamba ni rahisi kujifunza lugha ya kigeni kwa kushiriki moja kwa moja katika mazingira ya kiutamaduni ya jamii inayozungumza lugha hiyo kila siku. Hata hivyo, kutokana na mahitaji ya kielimu na kiuchumi, maendeleo ya teknolojia, pamoja na kuongezeka kwa mwingiliano wa kimataifa, ufundishaji wa lugha ya kigeni nje ya mazingira yake ya matumizi unaendelea kukua. Hali hii inaweza kuathiri ufundishaji wa vipengele vya kiutamaduni vinavyohusiana na lugha lengwa. Lengo la makala hii ni kubainisha vipengele vya utamaduni wa Kiswahili na namna vinavyoweza kufundishwa kwa wajifunzaji wa Kiswahili kama lugha ya kigeni, hususan katika mazingira ambayo lugha hiyo haitumiki katika maisha ya kila siku. Vipengele vilivyobainishwa katika makala hii ni salamu, mavazi, vyakula, sherehe na misiba, tamathali za semi, imani na dini, pamoja na sanaa na burudani.
Abstract Over many years, director and producer Haile Gerima, a man with profound interest in promoting Afrikan=Black histories and social realities through film, has received global recognition for his ‘Auteuristic’ and Afrikan=Black-Centred filmmaking style. One of his films Teza (2008) has received significant recognition and won several awards, yet it remains underexplored in scholarly discourse. We discuss this film using textual analysis and a historicist approach to examine how the film engages themes of national politics, racism, education through riddles, and Afrikan=Black-Centred consciousness. We further examine how the film critiques Africa’s strong ideological dependence on foreign models of governance. We show how the film implicitly advances an Afrikan=Black-Centred approach to filmmaking, one that is grounded in the ancestral legacies of Black people and informed by the principle of Abibifahodie ‘Black Liberation’. We recommend an advancement of Afrikan=Black film production and scholarship by continuing to deepen Afrikan=Black-Centred and historicist analyses; we urge practitioners to invest in indigenous narratives, to strengthen archival recovery, and to build sustainable production models centring upon Afrikan=Black voices, histories, and epistemologies.
Abstract Land-related issues have always been quite complex in urban Tanzania. Statistics indicate that twenty eight million people live in Tanzania’s urban regions, with around seventy per cent residing on ‘unregistered land’. Against this backdrop, in December 2023, the Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development in Tanzania issued a ministerial ban prohibiting urban dwellers from selling ‘unregistered land’. This ban has neither been lifted nor modified and continues to be a source of tension among real estate buyers and sellers. Despite this concern, there is a notable lack of literature analysing the ministerial ban’s legal impact upon both buyers and sellers of unregistered land in urban Tanzania. Here we explore the fascinating conundrum arising from a government minister issuing a decree which contravenes the constitutionally protected right of Tanzanian citizens to sustain their personal interests in their private properties, including real estate, and to dispose of those properties as they see fit.
Abstract There appears to be a remarkable yet unexplored resemblance between some African and Western conceptions of the metaphysical nature of suffering. This paper endeavours to enter what may be considered uncharted territory by examining this resemblance and its advantages. I argue that the resemblance lies in the metaphysical understanding of suffering both as a destructive and an affirmative force of life. My focus is on Nietzsche’s metaphysics of pain-related suffering and its connection with traditional African metaphysics. The connection is that suffering may be viewed as a communal power, one that can empower sufferers to cope with it despite its destructive dimensions. I attempt to show that a translation of this metaphysical understanding of suffering in contemporary terms usefully supplements currently dominant approaches to pain-related suffering and its management.
Abstract The Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka is widely known for his notion of a ‘human minimum’ as a basic human right submitted to clarify the defense of global justice as a realisable goal. Yet his model abides by the prevalent ‘adultist’ perspective in regard to human dignity. Like ‘white’, ‘male’, and ‘middle-class’, tacit notions of adulthood are conceptual norms worthy of deconstruction. Here I critically reflect upon the inter-culturally entrenched conception of an ‘adult’ and its implications for adult-child-relationships. Further, I introduce a ‘childist’ perspective to the dialectic surrounding global justice, by focusing on the notion of ‘play’ as both the basic mode of children’s ‘world-building’ and as a key condition of being human. Elaborating Oruka’s model of respecting human integrity with this ‘child-human minimum’ may help to clarify his ideal of global justice (not only) for children.
Abstract Questions have been raised across the human sciences as to whether children’s moral development proceeds as a universal process or whether instead it varies with socio-political factors, culture, or life experiences. However, these investigations rarely countenance children as fully constituted moral agents in their own right. This paper looks at how rural African children demonstrate moral agency in their spontaneous, unstructured and undirected activities on playgrounds around their homes. Such activities take various forms, including musical and poetic recreations of intergenerational oral traditions such as sung and chanted games, folktales, folk songs and riddles. Children adapt, subvert, appropriate, and reinterpret formulae, imagery, and other aesthetic features in response to immediate social phenomena including acts of cruelty, violence, intimidation, bigotry, and coercion – thereby they traverse spectrums of right-wrong, good-bad, just-unjust. Through these moral practices children interpret, speak and act for themselves. Children’s life experiences in northern Ghana demonstrate how they create and transform moral rectitude for themselves and for their communities as a whole.
Abstract In his book Ezumezu: A System of Logic for African Philosophy and Studies Jonathan Chimakonam prototypes and defends a logical system that he presents as drawing its inspiration from Africa and African culture rather than from the West and Western culture. I do not focus here on the Ezumezu logical system that he presents but instead upon the strategy by which he marshals his arguments in defence of the system. I interrogate some crucial aspects of that strategy, and I propose some strengthening measures. I ground my discussion in a close reading of Chimakonam’s text and the texts of two other African logicians with whom he takes himself to be in profound disagreement, namely, Godwin Sogolo and Kwasi Wiredu. I argue that differences among the logical approaches of Chimakonam, Sogolo, and Wiredu are not what Chimakonam takes them to be.
Abstract Translating Classical Arabic into literary English has challenged scholars since the seventeenth century: ‘new’ translations, such as those of the Qurʾān, often regurgitate earlier works. Insights from the author’s twenty-two-year work on an Arabic critical edition and English literary translation of Nahj al-Balāghah , the fifth/tenth century compilation of the word of Imām ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 60 AH /661 CE ), demonstrate that scholars must engage directly with language and the text to produce original translations from Semitic languages into Indo-European languages. Palaeography, Classical Arabic grammar, and a thorough knowledge of the literature, culture, and history of both source and target languages are essential. But the scholar must become a ‘forerunner’ ( rāʾid ), going beyond lexicons, countering linguistic ‘obsolescence’ with ‘literary precedent’, and reflecting the status of Imām ʿAlī as a maker of the Arabic language through original English translations capturing the grammatical, semantic, and literary nuances of Classical Arabic.
Abstract Masks and rites of masking dominate many indigenous African philosophical worldviews and religious practices; hence they have attracted a considerable amount of study as sacred art and as ritual ceremonial objects. The major focus has been on their aesthetic qualities, their functional use as costume in religious ceremony, ritual and masquerading; and to some degree, in the reconstruction of cultural history for specific populations. Several other studies focus on the symbolic structure of masks and the ways they express notions concerning death, the ancestors and cosmology. This contribution is an analysis of the symbolic nature and language of masks. It provides an in-depth ethnographic description of the religious, philosophical and cultural practices and statements of masking neophytes during the Bagr initiation rites among the Dagara of northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso in West Africa.
