This article examines the nature, use and meanings of proverbs as both tools of discourse and for expressing the ideological outlook among the Vhavenda of South Africa and the mores of the Yorùbá of south-western Nigeria. Within the Vhavenda and Yorùbá cultures and traditions, proverbs, as a form of folklore, are verbally expressed and transmitted from one generation to another. Inherent in these elements are the cultural and ideological traits that are easily identified by both the native speakers and listeners of the two cultures. To satisfy its exegetical and hermeneutic ambitions, this article analysed a selection of Tshivenda and Yorùbá proverbs, with the analysis undergirded by ethnopragmatics and the contextual theory of meaning. The proverbs were selected on the basis of a predetermined set of themes, namely, proverbs about cooperation and interdependence, nature, trees and other plants, animals and reptiles, people, body parts, children, craftiness and consequences, ingratitude, obstinacy and pride as well as didactic, motivational and reassuring proverbs. Tshivenda and Yorùbá proverbs were found to be both direct and indirect tools that are used to bring out the Vhavenda’s and the Yorùbá’s cultural identity and the inherent traits of their ideologies. It is recommended that paroemiology be considered in the various spheres of “formal” African epistemologies and pedagogies.

Tshivenda poetry thematises varied notions of selfhood and culture, among others. Within this thematisation, longings for the freedom to self-identify and (re)present the self or selves show up as recurrent themes. For analytical convenience, 10 Tshivenda poems were purposively selected and analysed in this article. The analysis is based on a predetermined set of themes, namely, the quest for identity and authenticity, notions of being and belonging, and intersections of identity, memory, home and renaissance. The paper deployed a qualitative research approach and was theoretically undergirded by Afrocentricity. The analysis reveals that Tshivenda poetry demystifies the metanarratives propounded by colonialists and apartheid exponents to negate African people’s selfhood and culture. The analysis further reveals that the indigenes have always had ways to express their selfhood and ideological outlook, including agentively challenging false hegemonic discourses about them. This paper adds to the ongoing discourse on the politics of identity, belonging and discourses focused on how the formerly colonised asserted and still assert their presence and agency during and after decades of marginalisation and repression. It is recommended that aspects of African selfhood and culture captured in Tshivenda literature should form part of African indigenous knowledge systems that need to be studied in institutions of basic and higher education.

In this article, I analyse the thematization of alienation in the poetry of the Muvenḓa poet, playwright, and scholar Ntshavheni Alfred Milubi. Milubi ascribes people’s abandonment of moral values to their perpetual frustrations, herein described as alienation. Reference is made to the crumbling African traditional institutions, which, in the past, seemingly functioned as havens for the rehabilitation of alienated individuals in African communities. These institutions are shown to be triggering alienation in the modernising and globalising space, seemingly with no room for recuperation unless one heeds the poet’s clarion calls. I restrict my analysis of Milubi’s poetry only to social and cosmic alienation, guided by a fixed set of themes, namely, from society, a romantic lover, and God, respectively. The article represents the idea that African-language literatures provide insights into how the indigenes have grappled with the interface between tradition and modernity. The three forms of alienation as treated by Milubi serve as a representative sample of how Tshivenḓa poetry in particular and African-language literatures in general often register subaltern voices and the ways in which they inscribe their experiences to explain their relationship with God or god(s), society, and intimate partners, among others. This trifocal relationship is essential to the Vhavenḓa and other African communities because it reveals their concept of cosmology, community, and intimacy.

Contemporary scholarship largely ignores the role of Tshiven?a literature in reflecting the Vhaven?a people’s identity, culture and ideology. This article argues that there is a formidable connection between Tshiven?a literature and Tshiven?a culture. Underpinned by a trifocal theoretical framework that draws on Afrocentricity, the hermeneutic approach and postcolonial theory, this article brings into critical focus the Vhaven?a poets’ articulation of selfhood. The selected Vhaven?a poets are W. M. R. Sigwavhulimu, N. A. Milubi and R. F. Ratshi?anga. The aim of this article is to reflect on how these poets reveal the Vhaven?a people’s construction and articulation of selfhood.

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