Carrying the Cross: Isaac William(s) Wauchope's Ingcamango Ebunzimeni

摘要

AbstractudThis study was conceived and developed with the intention of initiating a discussionudaround the prison poems of Isaac William(s) Wauchope, Ingcamango Ebunzimeni. That anudAfrican minister had published poems that were initially composed in prison seemed toudsuggest to me that a complex matrix of events might have informed the writing ofudIngcamango Ebunzimeni. Thus this study has sought to read the poems closely against theudhistorical context that spawned them into being. The imprisonment of an African ministerudfor fraud seemed to present, on its own, a curious development which needed to be pursuedudfor Ingcamango Ebunzimeni to be read closely.udMy concern with Ingcamango Ebunzimeni is buttressed by another purpose. As a writer,udWauchope has received attention for largely one poem that he wrote. It therefore seemedudgermane to bring to the fore for further analysis a wider range of his writings in order toudunderstand the uses which writing, as a social and political practice was put under byudWauchope. The colonial setting under which Wauchope lived out his life informed theseudwritings and Ingcamango Ebunzimeni in profound ways. At the heart of this study and theudsubject that it explores there is, then, a certain kind of awareness of the contradictory natureudof colonial modernity and how, in turn, this forced Christian Africans such as Wauchope toudadopt stances that questioned the benevolence of such a social formation to Africans evenudwhere he and his contemporaries represented an emergent class of Africans that hadudassimilated into a largely westernised way of life.