S.M. Guma and the Sesotho historical novel: an Afrocentric perspective

Abstract

Afrocentricity seems to be emerging as one of the potent critical tools that could be used to re-establish and qualify African cultural identity through literary study among others. The primary objective of this movement is to reinterpret world history from an African perspective. This article will therefore examine some historical features of S.M. Guma’s novels from the 1960s to the 1990s from an African perspective. By applying the Afrocentric paradigm this will attempt to demonstrate how material conditions of the period have provided useful raw materials for the Sesotho historical novel, which tends to illuminate a better understanding of the Basotho culture, history, identity and nationhood.