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Indigenous Oral traditions should be explored

Two researchers from the University of the Free State (UFS) aim with their research to examine the portrayal of environmental conservation in oral stories from indigenous South African cultures. They also hope to add the under-researched genres of oral cultures to mainstream inter-/cross-/multi-disciplinary inquiries on environmentalism, the climate crisis, conservation and indigenous knowledge systems.  

Dr Oliver Nyambi, Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, and Dr Patricks Voua Otomo, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Zoology and Entomology, interdisciplinary research project titled; Environmentalism in South African oral cultures: an indigenous knowledge system approach, started in 2017. The research is about indigenous South African oral culture as a potential knowledge system in which indigenous forms of environmental awareness is simultaneously circulated and archived.

Understanding oral folk stories

According to Dr Nyambi the research brings together the disciplines of cultural and environmental studies, inquiring into the relationship between indigenous knowledge mediated by oral culture, and environmental awareness. “Our main interest is how we can understand folk oral stories about humanity’s interactions with the environment as creating possibilities for knowing how traditional societies consciously thought about environmental conservation, preserving plant and animal species, and sustaining ecological balance,” says Dr Nyambi

The project has been on hold since 2018 as Dr Nyambi took up a two-and-a-half-year Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship in Germany. It will resume in earnest upon his return to South Africa at the end of February 2021. The duo’s first article on the “Zulu environmental imagination” has since received favorable peer reviews in the reputable journal African Studies Review published by Cambridge University Press.

The aim and impact of the research

Focusing on oral stories from the Zulu, Sotho and Tsonga traditions, the study seeks to understand what, in the stories as well as modes of their transmission, reflects certain consciousness, knowledge and histories of African indigenous environmentalism before the advent of Western forms of conservation. A key dimension to the project is the focus on how indigenous knowledge about the environment and its conservation was/is shared and consequently preserved through storytelling, explains Dr Nyambi.

“We envision our research to spotlight the potential but currently untapped utility of oral cultures in conservation. Our field work in rural KwaZulu-Natal revealed a rich tradition of environmental knowledge, environmental awareness and nature conservation which is mediated and transmitted through folk stories.

“However, traditional modes of storytelling have rapidly declined, mostly due to the pressures of modernity, the often uncritical reverent acceptance of conventional science and its knowledge systems, as well as the dwindling number of human repositories and tellers of indigenous stories. Our research will recommend a systematic approach to the preservation of these stories before they completely disappear,” says Dr Nyambi.

He continues: “Beyond the usual promotion of traditional storytelling as a mechanism of cultural preservation, we will recommend the archiving of the stories in written form, inclusion in school material as part of moral education, and modernisation for easy circulation through, for instance, animation.”

Receiving funding

The researchers successfully applied for funding which they mainly used for field work. The project involves travelling to rural communities where much of the oral stories and storytelling exist. They also use the money to purchase, where applicable, published stories for analysis.

“We wouldn't be able to do this vital study without funding so we feel that the grant is a crucial enabler of this process of seeking and indeed making knowledge of this rarely-talked-about topic with implications for how indigenous knowledge can be harnessed in ongoing attempts at arresting the climate crisis.”

News Archive

University publishes its Integrated Report
2013-08-23

23 August 2013

The university is proud to have published an integrated report in line with the King III requirements on corporate governance. The university is one of the first universities – if not the first – in South Africa to do so. The UFS sees integrated reporting as a public process through which we report to all our stakeholders, using evidence-based data, on the achievements and challenges of a public university.

Our first Integrated Report reviews the overall performance, non-financial and financial, of the UFS for the 2012 academic year. It is the first report of its kind delivered to stakeholders and guided by the King III framework which recommends integrated, sustainable performance that is reported in a way that enables stakeholders to make an informed assessment of an institution.

The Integrated Report notes that the conditions under which higher education institutions operate have become more demanding in the last two decades and there is a growing need for universities to be more explicit and transparent about the manner in which their core functions (teaching, research and public duty), as well as its administrative operations, are defined by and support good governance, sustainability and corporate citizenship.

The university welcomes this opportunity to present in public an integrated account of itself. In particular, the UFS sees this report as an opportunity to align more strongly its financial and non-financial reporting in pursuit of organisational sustainability and social transformation in South Africa.

Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector, notes in the report that in the past four years the university has made significant progress in respect of its two foundational commitments, the Academic Project and the Human Project.

There are now more students entering the university who satisfy the higher requirements set for admission. “This will improve the throughput and graduation rates of incoming students, ensuring their personal success and satisfaction with higher education.” The establishment of a state-of-the-art Postgraduate School, for example, is expected to increase the number, quality and success rates of postgraduate students.

The research output has increased steadily and the contribution of the new Senior Professors project, as well as the five research clusters, have helped to improve the quality of research and the spread of postgraduate recruitment beyond South Africa.

On transformation, the Vice-Chancellor observes that “We have made significant progress in building inclusive, democratic and embracing campus cultures which affirm the value and dignity of all students and staff. With the steady increase of black students in a majority black campus, our goal remains to retain our diversity in a university that serves as an experiment in teaching students to live and learn and love together.”

Financial sustainability is a major commitment and the UFS has not only maintained its record of unqualified audits, but has steadily built a culture of risk management and performance evaluation throughout the system. Internal auditing is a strong instrument in our arsenal to secure financial and operational compliance in every department of the university.

“What integrates the systems and functions of the university is the alignment of everything we do with our two pillars, the Academic and Human Projects, built on a solid foundation of professional support services as described in the Strategic Plan adopted in 2012. In the process of preparing the Integrated Report we discovered how much still needs to be done to align the still disparate and independent activities of the three campuses, seven faculties and more than 100 departments of this large university,” according to the Vice-Chancellor.

The report is available at: http://www.ufs.ac.za/content.aspx?id=184.

 

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