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Beyond African Nationalism: Isaiah Shembe’s Hymns and African Literature

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This article deals with Isaiah Shembe’s hymns and proposes that they should be read as literature because, in them, Shembe employs a number of literary features. He also uses features of oral literature and uses the hymns to reflect on a number of issues that concerned him and his fellow black people. The hymns that are examined here are more akin to poetry than hymns in that Shembe uses them to engage with the issues of his time rather than to praise God. However, this does not mean that all the hymns should be misconstrued as political texts: They are generally songs of worship for the members to sing when praising God, yet Shembe also found in the genre of hymns a powerful medium for voicing his concerns as an African. Whilst other scholars have noted Shembe’s concern with Zulu ethnicity and his contribution to Zulu literature, I suggest here a reading of the hymns that goes beyond Zulu ethnicity, looking at them as part of African literature since Shembe himself was not just concerned with the Zulus and their problems, but he was also concerned with the matters that concerned Africa as a whole.

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English
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African literature
Literary features
Fellow Black People
Isaiah Shembe’s hymns
African Nationalism
Zulu ethnicity
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Article
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