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Authors:Segun Ige; David Green Abstract: The African Association for Rhetoric (AAR) and the Howard University Division of Humanities Common Text Project owe a debt of gratitude to a number of people for the successful organization of the Spring 2015 colloquium on the theme, Rhetoric, Transformational Leadership and W. E. B. Du Bois. We must recognize the contributions of Howard University administrators who were instrumental in providing the space and opportunity for this important event to hold at the historic institution, Howard University. We thank Professors Segun Gbadegesin and Clarence Lee for the quality of leadership that they provided as two consecutive Deans of the College of Arts and Sciences, Howard University. They provided meaningful support, encouragement and leadership. Professor Gbadegesin also presented the most elevating and thought provoking Keynote address at the colloquium. We also thank Dr. Garry Harris, Deputy Provost, Graduate School, for his unrelenting support, even beyond the colloquium. We are profoundly grateful to Dr Gregory Carr who also vigorously supported the project. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Abstract: Rhetoric, Transfomational Leadership and W.E.B. Du Bois -The 2015 project that culminated in this special edition was a collaboration between a number of Divisions, Units and Departments at Howard University, Washington DC, and the African Association for Rhetoric (AAR). The point of convergence was the classic book published by W. E. B. Du Bois, entitled: The Education of Black People (Aptheker, H. [ed.] 1973). The College of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Division Freshman Seminar Series had chosen the book as the core text for the 2014/2015 freshman class, and the same book was proposed and approved for the year's HU Humanities Division, Common Text Project, out of a number of proposed texts, as a way of engaging with Du Bois' thought, rhetoric and the notion of transformational leadership. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Omedi Ochieng Abstract: In this paper, I argue that a robust understanding of the definition, role, and value of the public intellectual ought to begin by contextualizing the history and meaning of the word 'public.' A genealogy of the term, I posit, reveals that the idea of the 'public' has been conceptualized in at least three major ways: as an 'economy of attention,' as a denominator of the 'common;' and as a signifier of the 'political.' The upshot of such an understanding of the public is the manner in which it allows both for the plurality and diversity of public intellectualism, while at the same time offering resources for a rigorous critique of specific public intellectuals. Toward this end, I examine the work and practice of W. E. B. Du Bois as a public intellectual. I argue that Du Bois offers a particularly striking and exemplary illustration of the dialectic between publics and intellectuals. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Mario H. Beatty Abstract: In 1966 at the First World Festival of Black Arts held in Dakar, Senegal, W. E. B. Du Bois and Cheikh Anta Diop were both awarded with the prize for the most influential African intellectuals of the 20th century because their works represented an African intellectual revolution against the colonial/White supremacist order of knowledge and opened up the space for a new epistemology of African studies. Although Du Bois and Diop never directly engaged the ideas of each other in writing, they share an intellectual kinship in their broad theoretical framework that manifests in many significant similarities in their explorations and conceptions of African history and politics that has not been examined closely enough by existing scholarship. This study seeks to fill these lacunae through outlining a brief comparative study of the views of Diop and Du Bois in their respective examinations of the origins and race of the Ancient Egyptians and the importance that each attached to it in conversation with charting the future of African people in the modern world. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Ambrose A. Adebayo Abstract: Spatial policies and interventions that focus on promoting sustainable city development from the end of the 20th century in South Africa have been informed by two main underlying imperatives. There has been an urgent need to positively transform the apartheid legacy of socio-economic spatial disequilibrium along racial lines in cities. The intensification of economic global linkages and integration in the era of globalization has also meant that the spatial structure of cities has to be responsive to new rules of competitiveness in the era of economic change regardless of the localized need for political transformation. These spatial imperatives for South African cities in the era of social, political and economic transformation are articulated in various government policy documents which agitate for the integration and transformation of city spaces to promote sustainable development. This paper empirically evaluates the socio-economic spatial imprint of this policy discourse in South Africa, using the case study of Durban. Based on various strategic architectural and urban design projects, the paper argues that the policy discourse of sustainable city transformation is nothing but mere rhetoric, as it is not being successfully articulated in architectural, urban design and housing spatial interventions. Transformation for sustainable development in strategic urban design and architectural spatial intervention projects is still at cross-roads, as socio-economic integration is being relegated to the background by market forces of free enterprise and class relations. The paper recommends a way forward to address the policy claims in respect of sustainable development. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Valethia Watkins Abstract: W. E. B. Du Bois was a leading advocate for granting women the right to vote. This aspect of his political activism, although highly significant, does not receive nearly as much attention as it deserves. Consequently, it is not as widely known as other aspects of his political views. This essay examines Du Bois' views and writings on woman suffrage within the pages of the NAACP's Crisis magazine. This analysis highlights W. E. B. Du Bois' constructive engagement of the suffrage issue along with his biting critique of the racial politics of the suffrage movement. Moreover, it interrogates the ways in which Du Bois' highly visible advocacy of the woman suffrage cause helps to challenge the myth that Black men did not support enfranchising women (including Black women). PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Winnie Obike Abstract: In this essay I illustrate how Mandela's appeal for human rights is grounded in arguments about inherent human dignity and I combine aspects of Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy and Christian moral philosophy with Ubuntu, an African philosophy of ethics. In this analysis, I argue that Mandela transformed his appeal for human dignity into demands for economic rights through the rhetoric of economic moralism. I assert that due to his advocacy, principles of economic equality based on human dignity have taken a stronger hold in international law and national constitutions and have been used to expand economic rights for citizens of the world. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Adeyemi Adegoju; Ifeanyi E. Arua Abstract: This paper examines the rhetoric of power resistance of the opposition party in Southwestern Nigeria against the ruling party at the federal level, drawing upon the 26th November 2010 inaugural speech of Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State. Applying the tools of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) expounded in Fairclough's (1992) social theory of discourse, the paper examines how the rhetor configures the nullity of the suppressive 'instruments of federal power' on the political will, culture and structure of the Southwest (the then acclaimed political enclave of the opposition in Nigeria's party politics). The paper further examines the rhetor's configuration of the ruling party as being 'reactionary' in contrast to the 'progressive' orientation of the opposition party. In doing so, the resistance discourse celebrates the philosophy of 'Awoism' - the social and political teachings of Obafemi Awolowo about good governance - on which the acclaimed progressive principles of the opposition are anchored. The study reveals that contest for the acquisition and retention of power by the ruling party and the opposition still largely dominates the trajectory of rhetoric in contemporary Nigerian politics as opposed to the increase of rhetoric of social and political commitment whereby enduring ideological formations and sound policy issues define the development of coveted democratic ideals in Africa's political landscape. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Christopher Isike; Efe Isike Abstract: This paper underscores the need for a different and transformative mode of politics in Nigeria's Niger-Delta. This entails a change from the present conception and practice of politics which excludes, alienates and oppresses the majority of the population (women) to one that is inclusive, participatory and treats them as the collaborative partners in the development process. It uses the lived experiences of rural women in Odi, Uzere and Igbokoda in the Niger-Delta to explore the plausibility of this human-factor approach to politics as a means to alleviate the crisis of under-development, environmental degradation and perennial armed conflict which continues to bedevil the Niger-Delta. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Caroline Stark Abstract: In his 1908 speech to Fisk University, W. E. B. Du Bois uses the power of rhetoric to argue for a system of education that he believed would imbue the student with intellectual dignity and moral ethos and would uplift and sustain the black race for generations: training in the liberal arts. This essay analyzes the ways in which Du Bois draws upon classical and humanist rhetoric in his early critiques of education to celebrate the power of the mind and to affirm the importance of moral courage in the face of opposition and oppression. For Du Bois, Galileo Galilei's life and trial becomes emblematic of humankind's greatest achievement and failure, respectively. Whereas Galileo's scientific discoveries represent the power and potential of human knowledge to advance our understanding of the universe for the betterment of all humankind, his lack of moral courage at his trial in the face of death to stand for the truth of those discoveries, undermined his achievements and set back scientific progress for generations. By casting the leaders of Fisk as another Galileo faced with an analogous situation regarding the future of the university, Du Bois urges Fisk to choose over the temporary economic expediency of industrial education to foster intellectual and moral achievement in pursuit of the highest aspirations of human endeavor. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Z. Ngubane Abstract: Arguably, apartheid policies such as the 'reservation of jobs for whites' and 'bantu education' further entrenched the disenfranchisement of the majority of the South African populace. Unfortunately, very little seems to be improving for the poor even today, notwithstanding government efforts to provide basic services to people whom the apartheid regime gave little consideration. We will argue and attempt to demonstrate in this article that if South Africa is to have any hope of taking significant strides in achieving economic emancipation, firstly; the government needs to lead decisively in the actual provision of quality education at all levels and not simply pay lip service to this ideal. Secondly; ensure that access to higher education, in particular, is guaranteed as a right to all who qualify on merit regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds. We also will argue that it is in fact unconstitutional and retrogressive for any South African to be turned away from an Institution of higher learning based solely on their inability to pay for their studies. While Government efforts to fund students through the NSFAS system are acknowledged, we propose that this is insufficient and that twenty-one years into democracy necessitates the exploration of different strategies in order to ensure that education becomes a right that is accessible to all who seek and desire it and not only a matter of rhetoric. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Ernest Jakaza; Marianna W. Visser Abstract: Delving into the semantics of a notion in order to resolve an impasse between parties with differing standpoints worsen the problem. An argument that could have started with a minor difference of opinion can degenerate into a controversy. Thus, this paper opines that efforts to define the notion 'hero' or 'heroism' in order to determine who is supposed to be buried at the Zimbabwean National Heroes Acre makes the problem 'irresolvable' between the political parties in government. Debates on conferment of hero status in the Zimbabwean parliament are examined. These debates are selected on the basis of their controversiality and representativeness of the major political parties in government. We provide a critical analysis of the rhetorical, pragmatic and evaluative forms realised in the discourse of parliamentarians advancing standpoints in an effort to resolve the problem. The analysis of these debates is couched within the Extended Pragma Dialectic Theory, Controversy Analysis and Appraisal Theory. This multi- theoretic approach to controversial debates unearths essential discourse- linguistic insights on parliamentary discourse and transformative rhetoric. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Yunana Ahmed Abstract: The paper sets out to investigate the extent to which the former President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan used religious allusions to legitimize himself as a credible candidate for the 2015 campaign election. The use of religious rhetoric in politics is not new, but Jonathan's explicit and implicit conflation of political language and religious beliefs deserves attention. The paper employs the etic/emic approach to rhetorical criticism provided by linguist Kenneth Pike in 1967 and adopted by Mao (2003). The etic approach is the initial approach to a rhetorical transaction from outside the culture, which interprets the rhetorical traditions of that culture in terms of a readily available terminology or a pre-existing theory. In using the etic approach, I will employ classical model of analysis - specifically, I will focus on the concepts deliberative rhetoric: stasis and ethical appeal (ethos) broadly. The emic approach, on the other hand, considers rhetorical transactions from within a particular culture without conscious expectations drawn from sources other than the tradition itself. In considering the emic approach, I will focus on how Nigerian cultural contexts influence the use of religion in its national politics. Based on the analysis, it is possible to pick out features of Jonathan's speech which evoke religious notions directly and indirectly through lexical selection, such as 'God,' and syntactic selection, such as 'humanly possible.' The analysis shows that Jonathan's explicit and implicit invocation of the deity of God is used not so much as what Burke (1970) would describe as the use of religion to unify, but it is used largely as a form of legitimizing Jonathan's credibility and goodwill. PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Joshua Myers Abstract: W. E. B. Du Bois is a thinker that has been linked to many different intellectual projects. The best way to understand what he believed his work meant, however, is to return him to his own words. What it means to be African in the modern world, to think as an African intellectual to solve the problems of the modern world the answers to these questions ground his own thinking about his work. This essay is a brief reflection on those meanings. It seeks to (re)introduce, though not resolve, the question: How do we think of Du Bois as an African intellectual? PubDate: 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Segun Ige Abstract: Following the most interesting conference in 2014 at Tsogo Sun Hotel, Strand Street, Cape Town, and the unabated effort of our profoundly dedicated editorial crew, we have been able to produce yet another Volume of the African Journal of Rhetoric (AJR). PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Abstract: 2014 and an African coutnry in TransitionThe African Association for Rhetoric has some attachment to South Africa as a country. The reason is dual fold: first, that the Association was founded in South Africa, and secondly, that AAR has, in the same country, received significant support from some institutions and well-meaning individuals who believe in the project. The project also has been an object of suspicion from certain individuals, who, for whatever reason concocted by their imagination, believe that the African Rhetoric Project is a nationalist project. Suffice to say that the African Rhetoric Project is established to cater for discourses around Africa as she struggles with the forces that aid or impede her transition and transformational agenda. This would also include those relating to Africa in the diaspora. When discussing these forces, more blame is projected on exogenous forces over endogenous ones. The latter for the most part are more responsible in formulating policies required to move respective countries on the continent forward into a more developmental state. By implication, they have greater responsibility in ensuring the smooth running of the state. However, for the most part, the dream of a developmental state has been rather elusive to the majority of countries on the continent who terminated the dominance of Western imperialism by securing independence in the respective states. Perhaps the most protracted and most popularised struggle for independence in Africa is that of South Africa that had Nelson Rohihlala Mandela as one of its frontline struggle icons. PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Mabel Osakwe; Mabel Osakwe Abstract: This paper attempts to highlight some issues raised by Soyinka in an adulatory composition, public tribute (Mandela's Earth and Other Poems) to Nelson Mandela and the gains arising thereof for progressive leadership in Africa. The text is handled as a political poem, since it celebrates the anti-apartheid, and a psychic weapon for fostering 'African brotherhood.' Four Yoruba poetic forms (Owe, Alo Apamo, Oriki and Ofo) and their rhetorical strategies in creative translation are examined and adopted along with functional linguistic stylistic model as theoretical framework. Seventeen excerpts are then quoted in situ and analysed within the extra linguistic context of Vintage Mandela's death and continuing adulation. It concludes that Yoruba rhetoric adopted and integrated into EL2 expression are signals of an expressive compromise which by the poet's mature handling of cultural and linguistic translatability communicates only as effectively as possible while revealing the limits of translation. On misrule and transformative democracy in Africa, it advocates urgent election of able and sincere leaders to show how much of the Mandela-gain-from-pain lessons can help to liberate Africa from the ills of misrule: hunger, chronic poverty, disease, ignorance, avoidable wars, pseudo democracy, other forms of injustices and terrorism. PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Rewai Makamani; Rewai Makamani Abstract: This paper examines the high frequency of certain lexical items, such as, African people, ANC, violence, Umkhonto, struggle, country policy and white in select speeches of Nelson Mandela as leader of the ANC and president of South Africa. A corpus-based method has been chosen for this study using Critical Discourse Analysis. In this article, I argue that these key words are imbued with African values based on Ubuntu philosophy. The keywords help frame Nelson Mandela as an example of servant-leadership and model for transformational leadership. Additionally, I suggest that these key terms configure Mandela as a fearless visionary, philosopher-king, strategist, champion of the oppressed and extraordinary human being, whose rare leadership qualities and action contributed significantly to the destruction of the apartheid regime in South Africa. This analysis reveals Mandela as a pro-people leader and performative exemplar of Ubuntu epistemology, whose summation is conceived thus: 'I am because WE are and, since we are, therefore I am' (Mbiti 1989: 141). The select speeches include: the Rivonia Trial speech at the Pretoria Supreme Court on April 20, 1964; his speech on 11 February, 1990 when he addressed a rally in Cape Town upon his release from prison; the speech he delivered at the launch of Mindset Network at the University of Witwatersrand on 16 July, 2003, and his poverty speech delivered in London at the Trafalgar Square on 3rd February, 2005. PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Trevor Manuel Abstract: I want to thank the African Association for Rhetoric for the invitation to address you here this morning. The topic on 'Transitions and Transformation' is an interesting topic and one we must engage with from a number of different angles. PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Brilliant Mhlanga Abstract: This article offers a critical engagement of Sir Quett Ketumile Masire's eighteen years in power (1980-1998). Masire epitomises the kind of transformational political leadership that has sustained Botswana's political stability since independence. By presenting a discussion of Masire's political philosophy, his leadership style, and the underlying internal and external factors, the paper concludes by drawing lessons from his leadership style for the benefit of political leadership development in Africa. Most discussions about Botswana's leadership, its philosophy and style tend to conclude that Botswana is a 'citadel' of democracy in Africa without providing details of the various political factors that have contributed to the country's current configurations and its leadership style, which exists as a form of state capture. PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Petrus Mbenzi; Jairos Kangira Abstract: The liberation war in Namibia was fought using both the bullet and the word. It is the purpose of this paper to analyse how Bishop Kleopas Dumeni, one of the eminent religious leaders in Namibia, seized opportunities to use speeches for political purpose in a country that was ravaged by war. The conclusion that this paper makes is that Bishop Dumeni used these occasions to expose the crimes of the colonial regime, thereby soliciting sympathy from his immediate audience to support him in the struggle for peace and freedom in Namibia. On the whole, this paper contributes to the study of political language employed by political-cum-religious leaders to appeal to the emotions (pathos) of the oppressed and to challenge the abuse of power by those in government. PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Advice Viriri Abstract: The article seeks to initiate debate about Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, with a special focus on the rhetorical engagements surrounding the promise of transition and transformation. It further asserts that the principal aim of the struggle was the rhetoric of land redistribution in the post-independence era imbued in the current dialectic between transition and transformation. The selected war literature mirrors a period of national reconstruction that is characterised by writers who register not only the joys and pains of national rebirth, but writers who begin to constitute a critical consciousness embedded within the context of Zimbabwe's developmental politics. This literature laments the failure to fulfill most of the aspirations after Zimbabwe's independence. It examines the consequence of the regression of the liberation movement into nationalism that focused on the transfer of power from the Rhodesian regime to the African nationalists, rather than the transformation of society to realise the ideals of the liberation struggle. This left all the despotic Rhodesian institutions and statutes intact and this could hardly have facilitated the outcome of what the struggle stood for. It is intriguing that the common liberation war rhetoric deliberately eulogises the contribution of the war veterans who negate what the liberation movement stood for before and after independence. It is through this rhetoric of transition and transformation that Zimbabwe's current socio-political dire straits are no more than the inevitable consequence and outcome of two decades of misguided economic policies founded on populism, politics of patronage, mismanagement, incompetence and corruption. PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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Authors:Mershen Pillay; Harsha Kathard Abstract: We argue that there is an urgent need to transform how we educate health professionals in South Africa. We focus on Audiology and Speech-Language Therapy, which are health professions that manage people with communication disorders and swallowing difficulties. Our argument for a radical shift in higher education practice is linked directly to an untenable failure of care for the majority population. This failure is deeply rooted in the joint forces of imperialism, colonialism and apartheid which reflexively shaped these health professions' curriculum of practice, viz.: its science, education, policies and clinical practices. The key consequence of this historical precedence is a vastly inequitable practice that has not served the interests of the majority Black African population in South Africa. We refer to three key concepts, viz.: essentialism, reductionism and dis-othering to explain how the professions' curriculum of practice is inextricably intertwined with the colonial empire and its project of domination.As part of regenerating practices, which are relevant for our people and context, we examine one avenue for change: our graduate education. We argue that only through strong political (re) conscientising in educational processes will we find new ways of being health professionals who take ownership of developing practices relevant to Africa. To this end we offer suggestions for how we might educate in a way that works to decolonise health services in South Africa. PubDate: 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
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