The modern era demands a radical pedagogical shift and a complete overhaul of traditional teaching methods that flaunt teachers as the sole producers of knowledge and learners as impetuous consumers of knowledge. In this article I propose interactive teaching methods and strategies as the pedagogical approach to be advocated by 21st-century isiZulu teachers so that learners are empowered on all cognitive levels as producers of knowledge. This pedagogical shift in the isiZulu classroom has the power to revoke the historical debt of the marginalisation of indigenous African languages, which native speakers of these languages inherited from the apartheid education system of South Africa. Used as the guiding theoretical framework, the transformative learning theory is set to challenge the status quo and disrupt the current instructional classroom practice that is regressive to change demanded by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The participatory action research methodology, reflecting the encounters with student teachers at a teacher education institution in South Africa, provides a critical analysis of how interactive teaching methods and strategies can be used in an authentic classroom environment.
Two worlds exist, the seen and the unseen. Mortals or living beings populate the seen world and immortals or the living dead populate the unseen world. Through ilobolo (bride wealth) and traditional Zulu marriage, the two worlds are brought closer together by spilling an animal’s blood and anointing the wedded couple with bile. This is a religious offering, inviting the ancestors of the wedded couple to bless the union. Ilobolo, in the space of the Zulu marriage, therefore, becomes a spiritual undertaking, warranting a deep understanding of Afrocentrism, which informs the philosophical and theoretical framework of this article. Through the lens of Afrocentrism, this
article reports interpretively on how the Zulu people perceive ilobolo and marriage as two concepts connecting the seen and unseen worlds. The blood and bile of an animal are perceived as symbolic purifiers or religious cement gluing together the two families with their ancestors for eternity, because even death cannot tear them apart. In trying to understand how ilobolo and Zulu marriage and all the customs associated with these two concepts connect the seen and unseen worlds, the article draws its data from the novel, Umshado (Marriage, Wedding Ceremony) and the play, Isiko Nelungelo (Culture and Rights). Both these literary books were written by Nelisiwe Zulu, whose style of writing is always seen as interrogating the essence of Zulu culture and how it is perceived in modern times or post-1994 democratic South Africa.
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