Covid-19 has brought about unsuspected possibilities and death on a large global scale since its advent on the shores of the global community in early March of 2020. The novel pandemic has undoubtedly challenged and changed the normative operations of the social, political and economic activities all across the globe. Religious fraternities and activities have experienced challenging dynamics in how fellowship and worship are practised. Businesses and the entertainment industry have their share of suffering and enduring the suspending effect that has since been forcefully occasioned by the strategic global lockdown. The labour market metrics have realised a drastic decline due to companies closing down owing to the challenges that Covid-19 has rendered against their financial fragility and profit share. Academic institutions have also seen drastic challenges and a need for change in how they perform their curricula duties in the unpredictable context of Covid-19. Evidently, the advent of the Coronavirus has pointedly offered the nations of the world an opportunity to re-imagine a number of issues and social conducts. With millions of people dying across the globe, funerals have taken a new, strange turn in how the rites of passage for the deceased are practised. In light of this, the current essay presents the argument around re-imagining funerary rites in the Covid-19 context. The paper adopts Victor Tuner’s theoretical assumptions of ritual purported in his text entitled The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, so as to theoretically problematise the idea of re-imagining funerary rites in the undesirable ‘new normal’? situation of Covid-19.

Covid-19 has infected approximately 160 million people globally since its first occurrence in China in 2019. Consequently, the whole world has been negatively impacted, with numerous people losing their lives, jobs and loved ones, including breadwinners in families. With the prevalence of the pandemic also came various views on the challenges that came with it. Literature cannot be left out of the modes that are providing an understanding of the negative impact of Covid-19 on the world. Therefore, this paper explores the poetry of the Nigerian poet, novelist and essayist, Ben Okri, in light of his thematisation of spirituality. By spirituality, it is meant the ‘recognition of a feeling or sense or belief that there is something greater than myself’, the times and situation(s) in which one exists’. In this paper, Okri’s poetry is considered as an essential index into how ‘the spiritual’ is conceived and articulated, even in times of pandemics. The paper adopts the Hermeneutical Approach as a theoretical lens through which Okri’s poetry may be best viewed and understood. The Hermeneutical Approach essentially entails the analysis of texts in order to develop insight or thoughtful wisdom. Furthermore, the paper proffers that Okri’s poetry is invested with a spiritual temper that makes it relevant as it encourages and makes and keeps ‘awake’ a spiritual sensibility in the people during the Covid-19 pandemic. The analysis is undergirded by a predetermined set of themes, namely; race, identity, healing, spirituality, thought and consciousness that Okri poeticises about and subsequently interrogates in his poetry. In the process, Okri’s poetry also encourages spiritual renaissance and the awakening of consciousness, by tempering in a reader the inalienable fact that to change or shape reality, people ought to do it themselves. Okri’s poetry challenges people to define themselves and defy all false definitions of themselves made by others. Ultimately, the paper explicates that Okri’s poetry is charged with pointed rebuke of people’s apparent apathy towards issues such as freedom, equality and transformation (all of which belong to the great stream of ‘the spiritual’), of which he submits that people ought to take charge of how these three important entities come about and exist in society.

Among the Vhavenḓa people of South Africa, dance does not serve entertainment purposes only, but also functions as a carrier of their philosophy. This is evinced by a representative sample of Tshivenḓa poetry produced by the Vhavenḓa poets Ramudzuli Ralson Matshili and Daniel Malivhadza Ngwana. This article analyses three poems which thematise three Tshivenḓa traditional dances, namely, Malende, Tshikona and Malombo. These three dances are viewed in this article as being under the threat of extinction, particularly due to the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic. This paper, therefore, is a clarion call to Vhavenḓa cultural experts in particular and the Vhavenḓa people in general to salvage these embalmers of culture and tradition. The article adopts a qualitative approach to analyse the three purposively selected poems based on a set of themes, namely, dance as an index into the Vhavenḓa’s cosmology, dance as a pedagogical and an epistemological tool, and dance as an expression of selfhood and culture. This article relied on the Philosophical Aesthetic Theory and Sociological Aesthetic Theory to analyse the selected poems on Tshivenḓa dance. It was noted that Malende largely facilitates courtship and marriage in Venḓa; Tshikona accompanies all events of national importance in Venḓa whereas Malombo aids communion with the ancestors among Vhavenḓa. The paper recommends that Tshivenḓa traditional dances feature in the development of curricula on African indigenous knowledge systems that should be offered at basic and tertiary institutions of education in South Africa.