African folklore: Tradition and transformation

Unlike some of his unimaginative peers who collect African folklore in order to imprison it, thus delimiting its potential implacability to literary thought, Harold Scheub takes cognizance of the fact that the import of collection is to make possible interpretation, which expands on the possibilities inherent in the primary (oral) texts. My fascination with oral literature led me to the reading of Scheub’s recent work on oral tales from Southern Africa. This book can be seen as a scholarly return to a study of the nexus between folklore and literary criticism. Using oral tales culled from various ethnic groups in South Africa (San or Bushmen, Zulu, Nguni, Swati, and Xhosa), Scheub establishes an interface between oral traditions and contemporary African literature.

He starts off by underscoring the seemingly insuperable challenges that transcribers of oral literature may face in the task of translating orality into the written word: ‘The problems for the translator of oral materials into the written form are enormous, some of them insurmountable except by extensive multimedia productions, and even then the impact of the original performance is diminished.’ (p.116) Scheub further points out that the task of developing literary correspondence for oral non-verbal artistic techniques are staggering, the more so because the translation of a single narrative performance involves profound transformations from the oral form to the written word.

He notes that the transcriber of oral traditions must not only be aware of the images developed on the surface of the story but also of the metaphorical connotations embedded in the oral narratives. Better yet, the transcriber must be sensitive to the aesthetic principles that guide the creation of the work, for as Scheub would have it ‘what might appear on the written page as an awkwardly conceived-of fragmented story may not be so regarded during its actual performance’. (p.118) In short, what initially appears as simply a matter of verbal equivalence may actually be that unique trope that the unwary translator would inadvertently bungle. Scheub resorts to the trope of ‘the uncoiling python’ to adumbrate some key features of South African oral performance.

He observes that the uncoiling python is a reference to those traditions that are necessary for the survival of autochthonous people. When traditions are broken, he posits, society as a whole is broken. The storyteller arrests time and brings the audience into the presence of history, the heart and substance of the culture. Storytelling is, therefore, not a memorised art: ‘Oral performers take images from the present and wed them to the past and in that way the past regularly shapes our experience of the present.’ (p.105) In short, storytellers are the repositories of the memories of the people.

Reference to the Xhosa story titled ‘The Magician’s Daughter’ (p.135-141), Scheub notes that the uncoiling python in this particular case is an allusion to the tradition of the youth, a tradition that, with the allied force of nature, deals with that intrusive force in the lives of adolescents. The snake’s significance becomes evident in tales in which the python is used as a symbol of transformation - of the transition of young people from childhood to adulthood. The python is the poetic image of rebirth. As Scheub puts it, ‘In the praises of kings and other significant figures, this is a common image…’ (p.2)

The metaphor of the uncoiling python is not the exclusive preserve of Xhosa storytellers. Scheub observes that Nguni narratives are the means whereby a people become uncoiling pythons. In his own words, ‘the word poetically evokes the…symbol of rebirth, as is evident in a series of stories performed by Nguni people of Southern Africa.’ (p.119) Oral stories are not obvious preachments; they are much more complex, some serving as tools of resistance. Scheub states that ‘as major means of combating the racist system of apartheid, they were, for 350 years, splendidly effective. These stories were the force within the uncoiling python.’ (p.206) The uncoiling python becomes the poetic image of the slowly uncoiling resistance to what was transpiring in South Africa during the apartheid era.

‘The Uncoiling Python: South African Storytellers and Resistance’ is fascinating in many respects but the aspect that grabs the attention of the reader most firmly is Scheub’s discourse on the social functions of African folklore. Oral tales encapsulate the most deeply felt emotions of the people whose lives are mirrored in the stories. Stories show us the way to wholesomeness. They chronicle our way in the world, log the trajectory as we make life’s corrections and move through our personal and national rites of passage. During the momentous rites of passage - birth, puberty, marriage, death - and all of the other crises that erupt in life, storytellers are there to provide imaged explanations and emotional cushioning. In other words, the stories become our means of making those corrections in movement through our life cycles. They are the mirrors of our nature, the guardians of our ideals, the means whereby we find our connections.

The stories that make up the corpus in ‘The Uncoiling Python: South African Storytellers and Resistance’ take us into the innermost recesses of our souls and, by means of their luminous images, cast soul-shattering light into our deepest and most secret places. As Scheub would have it, ‘storytelling chronicles our great transformations and helps us to undertake periodic transfigurations’. (p.198) At the explosive centre of the storyteller’s art can be found our most profound hopes and dreams, the quintessence of life. Oral tales create a continuum from the past to the present. Scheub postulates that ‘it is the task of the storyteller to forge the phantasmagorical images of the past into masks of the realistic images of the present, thus, enabling the performer to pitch the present to the past, to visualize the present within a context of and, therefore, in terms of the past.’ (p.201)

A number of salient themes constitute the matrix on which Scheub’s appreciation of South African oral tales is anchored. The concept of humanism is a leitmotif in all the stories revisited in this book. Scheub contends that ‘storytelling contains the humanism of the people, keeps them and their traditions alive despite life’s vicissitudes’. (p.198) The theme of reconciliation is also ubiquitous in the stories analysed by Scheub, who underscores the fact that these stories reflect ‘the way we remember, the way we make judgments’. (p.196) And perhaps, because they touch the heart, the stories ‘point the way to forgiveness and understanding’. (p.196)

In the Xhosa story ‘The House with Seven Heads’ (p.166-180) Scheub broaches the theme of cohabitation of good with evil. Interestingly, this story is the narrative of the struggle between benevolent and malevolent forces in action. The question that begs to be asked in the reading of this story is whether Sathana’s daughter is a harbinger of good or evil. This existential question is posed consistently throughout the narrative in a bid to underscore the theme of duality in the community of humans.

The theme of transmutation weaves through this book. The oral stories of the San and Nguni people of Southern Africa are essentially constructed around the theme of transformation. Scheub points out that constant reference to transformation sheds light on the way the people of the region survived the onslaught of colonialism. The retelling of the oral tales of the people serves as an indication of the way they withstood the humiliations of the colonial administration.

San myths deal with the transformation of humans into birds or beasts. Scheub notes that ‘the majority of San myths…have to do with the origin of and differentiation between men and animals…’ (p.49) The transformation activity occurs as one character becomes another. At the core of these stories is transmutation, the essential metaphorical movement. ‘That movement runs a gamut in these stories from realistic to mystical’ (p.35), to borrow words from Scheub. In the story by Kholekile (p.20-24), the transition deals with the ritual movement from childhood to adulthood, with the two sisters representing the two sides of the equation. The fantasy level of this tale is the movement of Mambakamaqula from snake to human. In the story by Lydia umkaSethemba (p.24-31), the transformation of Mamba from snake to human is a mirror of the girl’s passage from adolescence to womanhood.

Scheub sheds ample light on the importance of historicity in the oral narratives that constitute the bull’s eye in his book. The interplay of history and story has been a pulse through time. The one informs the other; the one is composed of shards of the other and then is developed into a fictional metaphor of the other.

In a nutshell, ‘Scheub’s The Uncoiling Python: South African Storytellers and Resistance’ is yet another tour de force accomplished by a literary virtuoso. Written with a certain gusto and savoir-faire, and reveling in hermeneutics and explication, Scheub’s book offers readers new prisms through which to perceive and appreciate oral literature from Africa. What he has accomplished is to unravel the mysticism that surrounds the trope of the uncoiling python in South African oral narrative. This book is a treasure trove of information for both the casual and the experienced reader. It is undoubtedly a fascinating work to read.

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* Harold Scheub’s 'The Uncoiling Python: South African Storytellers and Resistance' is published by Athens: Ohio University Press (ISBN 978-0-8214-1922-9).
* Dr Vakunta is professor of modern languages at the US Department Defense Language Institute in California. He is the author of numerous books including ‘Cry My Beloved Africa: Essays on the Postcolonial Aura in Africa’ (2007), ‘No Love Lost’ (2008), ‘Ntarikon’ (2009) and ‘Indigenization of Language in the Francophone Novel of Africa: A New Literary Canon’ (2011). He blogs at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.