Julius Malema’s Thematization of Afrocentricity and Blackism in South African Gendered Public Space by Christopher Babatunde Ogunyemi

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HTTP://DOI.ORG/10.33234/SSR.18.10

 

Abstract

Julius Malema’s public speeches do not correspondingly exude that dramaturgy which is theatrically discernable from the trajectory of youthful exuberance as some critics erroneously allay. Rather his speeches are embodiments of corollary of liberation ostensibly presented in oscillation to apparently dovetail into the motifs of Afrocentricity, transnational African development and Black’s consciousness in South African gendered space. Malema’s speeches at various fora orchestrated paradoxically a disenchanted voice of the African Black persona and the escapist dexterity obliquely suffered in the fangs of acclaimed societal hegemony and Apartheid bellicosity. This article is a reaction and expansion to Mazama’s article published in 2001 on ‘The Afrocentric Paradigm: Contours and definitions’ and Kgomotso Michael Masemola’s article published in 2020 on ‘African Cultural Memory in Fred Khumalo’s Touch my Blood and its Meta-fictional Paratexts’. Both Mazama and Masemola’s articles overtly threw a discernable and impetus searchlight on different shades of Masemola’s ‘Frenkel’s palimpsestic observations’ (p.103) on the divergent applications of Afrocentric tendencies which are capsule presentations of Black significance, ethnic imperative and ethical re-invigoration. The area of diversion in this article lends axiomatic credence to the expansion of Afrocentric and Blackish phenomena in the gendered space to the epistemic public speeches rather than literary texts. This literarily strengthens the onus and nexus of the meta-texts of Malema’s speeches by re-defining the meanings and beleaguered natured presentations. These speeches may seem though orchestrated hegemonies and fervently appease theatrically to the conscientious of Black’s psyche and cosmo-idiosyncrasies.

Keywords: Afrocentricity, Black Consciousness, Paradigm Shift, African Epistemology, Julius Malema and South African Gendered Space