Journal articles on the topic 'African languages – Namibia – Grammar'

The multilingual situation in Africa has led to the development of ‘hybrid’ languages in multi-lingual and multi-cultural situations. These hybrid languages are sometimes associated with urban youth born and bred in multicultural environments. In this category we place the Kenyan variety referred to as ‘Engsh’. We compared this hybrid urban language with Nigerian Pidgin English to establish whether there are any sociolinguistic similarities between the two African indigenized varieties of English. This entailed analyzing the grammar of the two varieties then scrutinizing the semantic shift processes to assess whether the languages express any African world view in terms of semantic interpretation. The significance of this study is to demonstrate the extent to which African speakers have adapted the grammar and lexicon of English (a former colonial language) to reflect their unique African speech styles and cultural experiences

Increasingly, there have been proposals for grammar writers to take into account the realities and needs of the community in order to produce grammars that can serve the interests of the native speakers (e.g. Kadanya 2006, Rehg 2014). Obviously, a grammar of an endangered language should, among other things, lead to the maintenance and/or revitalization of the language. However, grammars that are comprehensive and clear (Noonan 2007, Payne 2014, Rice 2006), and yet focus on and meet the needs of the target community, are still rare. This paper provides a reflection, from a community linguist’s perspective, on how a community-based grammar could be conceived and written in the African context. It is based on an exploration of the existing grammars written the by native and non-native speakers, as well as on the feedback from the native speakers. The paper points out some practical challenges involved (e.g. with data collection, and actual use of the grammars), and upholds that a grammar that is based on community mobilization, sensitization, and training requires a greater involvement and follow-up by the grammar writer, especially after publication.

An advantage of Namibia's late attainment of independence is that it can benefit from the experience of other African countries that achieved independence some thirty years earlier. Hence Namibia is unique in that it is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that at the time of attaining independence already provided for constitutional rights for its local languages. The major policy document of the then liberation movement SWAPO, Toward a language policy for an independent Namibia (United Nations Institute for Namibia 1981), which was published in Lusaka by the institute (UNIN) as proceedings of a seminar held in 1980, essentially set the trend for the policies pursued since independence in 1990.

Some orthographies represent tone phonemically by means of diacritics; others favor zero marking. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory. The former leads to graphic overload; the latter to a profusion of homographs; both may reduce fluency. But there is a ‘third way’: to highlight the grammar rather than the tone system itself. To test this approach, we developed two experimental strategies for Kabiye: a grammar orthography and a tone orthography. Both are modifications of the standard orthography that does not mark tone. We tested these in a quantitative experiment involving literate L1 speakers that included dictation and spontaneous writing. Writers of the grammar orthography perform faster and more accurately than writers of the tone orthography, suggesting that they have an awareness of the morphological and syntactic structure of their language that may exceed their awareness of its phonology. This suggests that languages with grammatical tone might benefit from grammatical markers in the orthography. Keywords: tone; grammar; orthography; African languages; quantitative experiment

This study sets out to investigate the “poetry of grammar”, more specifically the role of the body in figurative speech, in African languages mainly belonging to Nilotic and Bantu. Apprehending the semantics and pragmatics of metaphorical and metonymic expressions in these languages presupposes an interaction between a number of cognitive processes, as argued below. Interestingly, these languages seem to use these strategies involving figurative speech in tandem with alternative strategies involving on-record statements. This multivocality only makes sense if we place language and language structure more in the social world in which it is used.

The collection of papers in this volume presents results of a collaborative project between the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS) in Berlin, and the University of Leiden. All three institutions have a strong interest in the linguistics of Bantu languages, and in 2003 decided to set up a network to compare results and to provide a platform for on-going discussion of different topics on which their research interests converged. The project received funding from the British Academy International Networks Programme, and from 2003 to 2006 seven meetings were held at the institutions involved under the title Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory, indicating the shared belief that current research in Bantu is best served by combining the description of new data with theoretically informed analysis. During the life-time of the network, and partly in conjunction with it, larger externally funded Bantu research projects have been set up at all institutions: projects on word-order and morphological marking and on phrasal phonology in Leiden, on pronominal reference, agreement and clitics in Romance and Bantu at SOAS, and on focus in Southern Bantu languages at ZAS. The papers in this volume provide a sampling of the work developed within the network and show, or so we think, how fruitful the sharing of ideas over the last three years has been. While the current British Academy-funded network is coming to an end in 2006, we hope that the cooperative structures we have established will continue to develop - and be expanded - in the future, providing many future opportunities to exchange findings and ideas about Bantu linguistics.

In this article, my point of departure is that language change is driven by acquisition, and I argue that the triggers for establishing the properties of language-specific grammars differ according to whether first language (L1) or second language (L2) acquisition is involved. The reason for this is that in L2 acquisition evidence about the target grammar may be ambiguous in ways which do not occur in L1 acquisition. To illustrate the argument, I present two case studies of Mozambican African Portuguese, a nonnative variety of Portuguese acquired during childhood by L1 speakers of Bantu languages. These case studies show that strings generated by the grammar of European Portuguese may trigger ‘wrong/new’ parameter values which, although nonexistent in the original grammatical system, are perfectly legitimate from the point of view of the speakers’ L1 grammars. In both cases, although the new parameter settings (NPSs) are not convergent with the target grammar, resetting is blocked because the new parameter values successfully analyse the input. The nonresetting of the ‘wrong/new’ parameter values in the direction of the target European norm can be attributed to the social context of language acquisition, where the original European model is considerably diluted, and the surface effects they set off appear to be denser since the L2 speakers are in the majority.

Bickerton's bioprogram hypothesis uses serial verbs as a primary demonstration that Saramaccan represents the closest approximation to Universal Grammar extant, judging from the fact that speakers of mutually unintelligible West African languages formulated it with little contact with European languages. Closer examination of Saramaccan and its substrate languages suggests, however, that the creole is a prime demonstration of substrate influence. The uniformity of serials across the substrate languages can be shown to have provided the opportunity for compromise between the small differences in the constructions in forming the language, according to perceptual saliency relative to the languages involved. A survey of serializing language families shows that serials in Saramaccan are most similar to those in its substrate, while a survey of créoles around the world shows that serials appear in créoles with similar substrates and almost never in those with nonserializing substrates. Furthermore, the explanation of serials as compensation for missing categories in Saramaccan is belied by an evaluation of this argument as applied to prepositions, which shows that the Saramaccan system mirrors that of its substrate with limited accommodations to its superstrate.

Abstract In spite of the prominent role of missionary linguists in shaping the field of modern African linguistics, the approaches adopted in their early grammar descriptions remain virtually unstudied, just as the descriptions themselves are largely ignored by modern linguists. This study explores the ways two 19th century missionary grammarians, R. Maxwell MacBrair and John Kemp, approached the task of describing verbal morphology of two languages from the Mande family, Mandinka and Susu. I discuss important differences between their approach and the one that has become prevalent in modern descriptive studies; these differences reflect to a large extent the different interests and goals of missionary and academic linguists. I also use the example of the two early grammars to illustrate the diversity of attitudes and approaches to language description concealed behind the label “missionary linguistics”. Even in the narrow domain of verbal morphology – which is far from prominent in the isolating Mande languages – the two grammarians resort to very different strategies for coping with the otherness of the material they describe. The diversity gives us a glimpse of the early stages of the development of a typology-sensitive descriptive tradition that informed the study of African languages as we presently know it.

Of the official languages of South Africa, Afrikaans has the widest geographical, demographic and racial distribution (Webb 2003). According to the latest South African census of 2011 (StatsSA 2012), Afrikaans as first language is spoken by 13.5% of the country's inhabitants, only surpassed in numbers by Zulu (22.7%) and Xhosa (16%). In neighbouring Namibia, 10.4% of the population has Afrikaans as their first language. A noteworthy number of recent emigrants to United Kingdom, Australia, Europe and North America are likely to be Afrikaans speakers as well.1 A handful of elderly persons in Patagonia still speak Afrikaans; they are descendants of some 600 Afrikaans speakers who settled in Patagonia at the beginning of the 20th century (Du Toit 1995, Coetzee et al. 2018).

Ideophone is a phenomenon dominant in African languages. Dzə is an under-investigated and under-documented Adamawa language found in Taraba, Adamawa and Gombe States, Northeastern Nigeria. It was noticed that the language has a lot of ideophones. It became necessary to study it to understand its importance in the language. This study is to draw the attention of scholars working on Adamawa languages and ideophones. It will also thus form part of the grammar of Dzə someday. The study of ideophone is not exhaustive, especially in the minority languages of Northeastern Nigeria. The study shows that Dzə ideophones express intensity, emphasis and description. Dzə ideophones have unique phonological features and some of the sounds found in the conventional phonology of Dzə are not found in the ideophones. The phoneme /ŋ/ is common in the coda position of the ideophones. Ideophones modify verbs, adjectives and nouns in Dzə. They also function as adverbs and are elements that constitute a noun phrase. They augment other word classes like nouns, verbs and adjectives.

Abstract We sought to develop and evaluate a health literacy measure in a multi-national study and to examine demographic characteristics associated with health literacy. Data were obtained from Demographic Health Surveys conducted between 2006–15 in 14 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Surveys were the same in all countries but translated to local languages as appropriate. We identified eight questions that corresponded to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) definition of health literacy. Factor analysis was used to extract one measure of health literacy. Logistic regression was employed to examine the relationship between demographic characteristics and health literacy. A total of 224 751 individuals between the ages of 15 and 49 years were included. The derived health literacy measure demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.72) and good content validity. The prevalence of high health literacy overall was 35.77%; females 34.08% and males 39.17%; less than or equal to primary education 8.93%, some secondary education 69.40% and ≥complete secondary 84.35%. High health literacy varied across nations, from 8.51% in Niger to 63.89% in Namibia. This is the first known study to evaluate a measure of health literacy relying on the NAM definition utilizing a large sample from 14 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our study derived a robust indicator of NAM-defined health literacy. This indicator could be used to examine determinants and outcomes of health literacy in additional countries.

The article deals with the local-specific features of the functioning of grammatical forms in the Spanish language of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Examples of the influence of Native American languages on the grammatical structure of the Spanish language are analyzed and given. The co-existence of the dominant Spanish and Indian languages had an impact on the Mexican variant of Spanish. During the three hundred years of Spanish colonization, the cultural diversity of the State of Oaxaca was mixed and expanded. Thus, a mixture of Spanish, autochthonous and African groups emerged, which defined the language of the residents of the region in particular. The implementation of language units in the state is characterized by a peculiarity that is expressed at the grammatical level. The purpose of the article is to analyze the influence of Indian languages on the grammatical structure of Spanish in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The research was based on articles, fiction written by Oaxaca authors. Textbooks on grammar of autochthonous languages of the Oto-Manguean group were studied. Interviews with governors, poets, state linguists and Oaxacan speakers in markets, streets, cafes were analyzed. As a result of the study, the Oaxaca resident’s speech revealed grammatical features influenced by Indian languages that distinguish local speech from that of the capital. As a result of the findings, there are prospects for further research into the influence of indigenous languages on Spanish in the State of Oaxaca.

Many African languages employ body parts as adpositions (Heine 1989), the general pattern in Gaahmg, with one locative postposition perhaps derived from ‘vagina’. In addition, Gaahmg has locative postpositions and locative pronouns that include a person-marker vowel: a, ə = 1st person; ɔ, u = 2nd person; ɛ, i = 3rd person. Most locative postpositions and locative pronouns are distinct in form and syntax from their source nouns, and postpositions with person-marker vowels do not synchronically refer to person. Thus, they are analyzed as grammaticalized forms, categorically distinct from nouns. In addition to describing these aspects of the grammar, we will posit two grammaticalization routes based on Heine’s (1989) model to trace the changes from the source nouns to the postpositions and locative pronouns.

Verb serialization involves the use of two or more verbs in the expression of series of related events. This feature has been established for West African languages and also for Etulo, an Idomoid language of the Benue Congo language family. This present study examines verb serialization in Etulo in order to ascertain the juncture types that can be confirmed for the language. The study adopts the Role and Reference Grammar theoretical approach in the analysis of the data. Data for the study were elicited from Etulo native speakers resident in Adi, Buruku Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria. Based on the analysis of the collected data, the study confirms both nuclear and core junctures for Etulo language. Furthermore, these junctures are distinguished on the basis of argument realization and sharing in the language.

The paper investigates the linguistic challenges faced by Setswana-speaking Grade 7 learners when writing Science examinations in English. In South African schools, non-mother tongue speakers of English learners are only introduced to English as a language of learning and teaching in Grade 4, which creates problems for these learners because English is foreign to them. The purpose of conducting this research was to help policymakers meet the linguistic needs of non-native English speakers, make curriculum development specialists aware of the linguistic challenges faced by non-native speakers of English and help readers gain a better understanding of why some teachers prefer to use indigenous languages when they teach in English. The participants comprised four purposively selected Grade 7 Natural Science teachers, two school governing bodies (SGBs) and Grade 7 learners from two primary schools in Hammanskraal, Gauteng. Data gathered indicated that Setswana-speaking learners made basic errors related to spelling, sentence construction, grammar, incomplete sentences, mixed languages, using words that do not exist, tenses and understanding instructions. As a result, SGBs should consider these linguistic challenges when they draft language policies for rural and township schools.

ABSTRACTAn account of the need for appropriate language skills in a developing multilingual context.Language issues in Southern Africa have always been marked by political struggle. In South Africa, these were sometimes violent, as with, for example, the 1976 Soweto uprisings, in which protests over the medium of education were prominent. One of the priorities of the first democratically elected government of 1994 was to democratise the situation by making eleven languages official, in contrast to the two prior to that, namely Afrikaans and English. In other Southern African countries, language issues have also been characterised by debates and struggles. A prime example is the decision by the Namibian government to make English the official language of the country, even though English had never even been a colonial language in Namibia. Another example is Lesotho, a former British protectorate, with two official languages, English and Sesotho. In the last two decades, there have been numerous debates about the status of English as a subject necessary for a pass in schools and as a prerequisite for admission to university. Kramsch's observation that ‘[l]inguistic wars are always also political and cultural wars’ captures the situation well. Language issues are still on many speakers' minds and influence their sense of self and identity. As Baugh observes, ‘[i]n societies like the United States and South Africa, where race and language development have strongly been influenced by racial strife, many students do not aspire to “talk like Whites”’.

The Socio-Cultural Context of Greetings in Swahili1 Today most linguists agree that language and culture are tightly connected. It is also argued that in order to communicate successfully, we need to achieve a level of socio-cultural competence along with an ability to use the grammar and the lexicon of a particular language. There are many kinds of cultural norms and values that one has to obey, as there may be fundamental communication and discourse differences between one language and another. This paper is primarily concerned with some issues of discourse strategies and pragmatics of African languages. While the study focuses on greeting practices among the Swahili, it also investigates how learners acquire the pragmatics of Swahili greetings in a foreign language context, and how Swahili, as a language of wider communication, is infl uenced by cultural norms and values of its speakers, for whom Swahili is not a primary language.

In the continuing debate on the origins of creole languages, Lefebvre has long taken a strong stance in favor of an essential contribution of the West African substratum to the grammatical makeup of Haitian Creole; thus, she opposes both a universalist account along the lines of Derek Bickerton's bioprogram (e.g. 1984), and Robert Chaudenson's superstratist approach (e.g. 1992). Lefebvre's present book summarizes the main findings of two decades of research by herself and others (such as John Lumsden and Anne-Marie Brousseau) through various projects carried out at the Université du Québec à Montréal. The overall aim of this enterprise has been to test the hypothesis that adult speakers of the substratum languages, in creating a new creole language, use the properties of their native lexicons as well as the parametric values and semantic interpretation rules of their native grammars (9). In order to test this hypothesis, Haitian Creole is compared, on the one hand, with its superstratum or lexifier language, French, and on the other hand, with Fongbe (or Fon, belonging to the Gbe cluster of Kwa languages), as a representative of the substratum. Most of the book consists of the presentation of such three-way comparisons in regard to nominal structure (Chap. 4), the marking of tense, mood, and aspect (Chap. 5), pronouns (Chap. 6), clausal operators and the structure of the clause (Chaps. 7–8), the properties of verbs (Chap. 9), derivational affixes (Chap. 10), compounds (Chap. 11), and parametric options (Chap. 12). In all these areas, striking similarities between Haitian and Fongbe are revealed.

Focus theories distinguish different types of focus according to the pragmatic conditions or communicative point on the one side and different scopes of focus on the other side. The assertion in term focus constructions (Dik 1989), called by others argument focus constructions or identificational sentences (Lambrecht 1994), has the purpose of establishing a relation between an argument and an open proposition. Kar, a north-eastern Senufo language of Burkina Faso, which has the basic word order S-Aux-O-V-other, has at its disposal different strategies to mark argument focus, among them fronting of the focused item. In many West African languages the displacement of the focused argument involves other devices, such as the use of special verb forms. In Kar fronting of a focused argument requires the use of special pronouns in the out-of-focus part of the sentence, called background subject pronouns. They are used in other backgrounded contexts, too, for example in relative clauses, adverbial clauses and constituent questions. Their inconsistent use is attributed to a particular sociolinguistic situation in which the data has been collected. The use of the same focus strategies for completive and contrastive focus suggests that Kar does not distinguish pragmatic conditions on the level of sentence grammar.

The invention of numeration system is regarded as one of the great accomplishments of man, as it greatly assist man in expressing his communication needs and also serve as an important tool in language pedagogy, historical linguistics, comparative study of African languages and computational linguistics. However, numeral system is reported to be an endangered area being identified in the use and study of language, and in no distant time, the traditional number system of the African indigenous counting systems may lose its contact with the new generation. This paper presents a Hindu-Arabic to Hausa number transcription system. Secondary data used was sourced from literature. Context-Free Grammar (CFG) and Unified Modelling Language (UML) was used to design the system. The system designed was implemented using Python programming language. Mean Opinion Score (MOS) evaluation approach was used to evaluate the implemented system. The result of the evaluation on Numbers with Single Representations (NSR), and Numbers with Multiple Representations (NMR) is based on three (3) metrics: syllable accuracy, orthography accuracy and syntax accuracy. The experimental respondents’, system developed and human expert average scores on NSR were respectively 0%, 100% and 100% for syllable accuracy, 40.1%, 100% and 100% for orthography accuracy, and 62.8%, 100% and 100% for syntax accuracy. Similarly, the experimental respondents’, system developed and human expert average scores on NMR were respectively 0%, 100% and 100% for syllable accuracy, 21.4%, 100% and 100% for orthography accuracy, and 31.7%, 100% and 100% for syntax accuracy. The system transcribes from 1 to 1-billion, and the expert response confirmed the accuracy of the output of the system developed. The study concluded that among others, the system developed is of great importance in the teaching and learning of the traditional Hausa counting system. Future work on contextual Hausa numeral system analysis is recommended.

Abstract This paper discusses the relation between focus marking and focus interpretation in Akan (Kwa), Ga (Kwa), and Ngamo (West Chadic). In all three languages, there is a special morphosyntactically marked focus/background construction, as well as morphosyntactically unmarked focus. We present data stemming from original fieldwork investigating whether marked focus/background constructions in these three languages also have additional interpretative effects apart from standard focus interpretation. Crosslinguistically, different additional inferences have been found for marked focus constructions, e.g. contrast (e.g. Vallduví, Enric & Maria Vilkuna. 1997. On rheme and kontrast. In Peter Culicover & Louise McNally (eds.), The limits of syntax (Syntax and semantics 29), 79–108. New York: Academic Press; Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann. 2007b. In place – Out of place: Focus in Hausa. In Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 365–403. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.; Destruel, Emilie & Leah Velleman. 2014. Refining contrast: Empirical evidence from the English it-cleft. In Christopher Piñón (ed.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 10, 197–214. Paris: Colloque de syntaxe et sémantique à Paris (CSSP). http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss10/), exhaustivity (e.g. É. Kiss, Katalin. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74(2). 245–273.; Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann. 2007a. Exhaustivity marking in Hausa: A re-evaluation of the particle nee/cee. In Enoch O. Aboh, Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann (eds.), Focus strategies in African languages: The interaction of focus and grammar in Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic (Trends in Linguistics 191), 241–263. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.), and existence (e.g. Rooth, Mats. 1999. Association with focus or association with presupposition? In Peter Bosch & Rob van der Sandt (eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives, 232–244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; von Fintel, Kai & Lisa Matthewson. 2008. Universals in semantics. The Linguistic Review 25(1–2). 139–201). This paper investigates these three inferences. In Akan and Ga, the marked focus constructions are found to be contrastive, while in Ngamo, no effect of contrast was found. We also show that marked focus constructions in Ga and Akan trigger exhaustivity and existence presuppositions, while the marked construction in Ngamo merely gives rise to an exhaustive conversational implicature and does not trigger an existence presupposition. Instead, the marked construction in Ngamo merely indicates salience of the backgrounded part via a morphological background marker related to the definite determiner (Schuh, Russell G. 2005. Yobe state, Nigeria as a linguistic area. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 31(2). 77–94; Güldemann, Tom. 2016. Maximal backgrounding=focus without (necessary) focus encoding. Studies in Language 40(3). 551–590). The paper thus contributes to the understanding of the semantics of marked focus constructions across languages and points to the crosslinguistic variation in expressing and interpreting marked focus/background constructions.

-Stephen J. Appold, Heidi Dahles ,Tourism and small entrepreneurs; Development, national policy, and entrepreneurial culture: Indonesian cases. Elmsford, New York: Cognizant Communication Corporation, 1999, vi + 165 pp., Karin Bras (eds) -Jean-Pascal Bassino, Peter Boothroyd ,Socioeconomic renovation in Vietnam; The origin, evolution and impact of Doi Moi. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2001, xv + 175 pp., Pham Xuan Nam (eds) -Peter Boomgaard, Patrick Vinton Kirch, The wet and the dry; Irrigation and agricultural intensification in Polynesia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994, xxii + 385 pp. -A.Th. Boone, Chr.G.F. de Jong, De Gereformeerde Zending in Midden-Java 1931-1975; Een bronnenpublicatie. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1997, xxiv + 890 pp. [Uitgaven van de Werkgroep voor de Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Zending en Overzeese Kerken, Grote Reeks 6.] -Okke Braadbaart, Colin Barlow, Institutions and economic change in Southeast Asia; The context of development from the 1960s to the 1990s. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, xi + 204 pp. -Freek Colombijn, Abidin Kusno, Behind the postcolonial; Architecture, urban space, and political cultures in Indonesia. London: Routledge, 2000, xiv + 250 pp. -Raymond Corbey, Michael O'Hanlon ,Hunting the gatherers; Ethnographic collectors, agents and agency in Melanesia, 1870s -1930s. Oxford: Bergahn Books, 2000, xviii + 286 pp. [Methodology and History in Anthropology 6.], Robert L. Welsch (eds) -Olga Deshpande, Hans Penth, A brief histroy of Lan Na; Civilizations of North Thailand. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2000, v + 74 pp. -Aone van Engelenhoven, I Ketut Artawa, Ergativity and Balinese syntax. Jakarta: Badan Penyelenggaran Seri NUSA, Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya, 1998, v + 169 pp (in 3 volumes). [NUSA Linguistic Studies of Indonesian and Other Languages in Indonesia 42, 43, 44.] -Rens Heringa, Jill Forshee, Between the folds; Stories of cloth, lives, and travels from Sumba. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001, xiv + 266 pp. -Roy E. Jordaan, Marijke J. Klokke ,Fruits of inspiration; Studies in honour of Prof. J.G. de Casparis, retired Professor of the Early History and Archeology of South and Southeast Asia at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands on the occasion of his 85th birthday. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2001, xxiii + 566 pp. [Gonda Indological Studies 11.], Karel R. van Kooij (eds) -Gerrit Knaap, Germen Boelens ,Natuur en samenleving van de Molukken, (met medewerking van Nanneke Wigard). Utrecht: Landelijk Steunpunt Educatie Molukkers, 2001, 375 pp., Chris van Fraassen, Hans Straver (eds) -Henk Maier, Virginia Matheson Hooker, Writing a new society; Social change through the novel in Malay. Leiden: KITLV Press (in association with the Asian Studies Association of Australia), 2000, xix + 492 pp. -Niels Mulder, Penny van Esterik, Materializing Thailand. Oxford: Berg, 2000, xi + 274 pp. -Jean Robert Opgenort, Ger P. Reesink, Studies in Irian Languages; Part II. Jakarta: Badan Penyelenggara Seri NUSA, Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya. [NUSA Linguistic Studies of Indonesian and Other Languages in Indonesia 47.] 2000, iv + 151 pp. -Gerard Termorshuizen, Kester Freriks, Geheim Indië; Het leven van Maria Dermoût, 1888-1962. Amsterdam: Querido, 2000 (herdurk 2001), 357 pp. -Donald Tuzin, Eric Kline Silverman, Masculinity, motherhood, and mockery; Psychoanalyzing culture and the naven rite in New Guinea. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001, vi + 243 pp. -Alexander Verpoorte, Jet Bakels, Het verbond met de tijger; Visies op mensenetende dieren in Kerinci, Sumatra. Leiden: Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), 2000, XV + 378 pp. [CNWS Publications 93.] -Sikko Visscher, Twang Peck Yang, The Chinese business elite in Indonesia and the transition to independence, 1940-1950. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1998, xix + 372 pp. -René Vos, Gerard Termorshuizen, Journalisten en heethoofden; Een geschiedenis van de Indisch-Nederlandse dagbladpers, 1744-1905. Amsterdam: Nijgh en Van Ditmar, Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij, 2001, 862 pp. -Edwin Wieringa, Marijke J. Klokke, Narrative sculpture and literary traditions in South and Southeast Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2000, xiv + 127 pp. [Studies in Asian Art and Archaeology (continuation of: Studies in South Asian Culture) 23.] -Catharina Williams-van Klinken, Mark Donohue, A grammar of Tukang Besi. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999, xxvi + 576 pp. [Mouton Grammar Library 20.] -Kees Zandvliet, Thomas Suárez, Early mapping of Southeast Asia. Singapore: Periplus Editions, 1999, 280 pp. -Claudia Zingerli, Bernhard Dahm ,Vietnamese villages in transition; Background and consequences of reform policies in rural Vietnam. Passau: Department of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Passau, 1999, xiv + 224 pp. [Passau Contributions to Southeast Asian Studies 7.], Vincent J.H. Houben (eds)

The first issue of 2013 contains fifteen contributions dealing with a potpourri of themes. The first contribution is an oratio presented by the retired Dean of the Faculty of Law of the NWU and former editor of PER, Francois Venter, during his exodus in October 2012. He gave his presentation in his mother tongue, Afrikaans, and asks the question if one may assume that being a professor entails belonging to a profession, in other words, an academic profession. The second oratio was a keynote speech delivered by Torsten Stein, the Director of the Institute of European Studies and holder of the chair for European law and European Public Law at Saarland University, Germany. He delivered his speech during November 2012 at the 3rdHuman Rights Indaba on The Role of International Law in Understanding and Applying the Socio-economic Rights in South Africa's Bill of Rights, which was held by the Faculty of Law (NWU, Potchefstroom Campus) in collaboration with the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation. He shared some thoughts about the nature, development and implementation of socio-economic rights within an international and European setting. The next nine articles make up the bulk of this issue. The first one is by Babatunde Fagbayibo, who gives an analytical overview of the common problems affecting supranational attempts in Africa. He argues that Africa's efforts to solidify its unity should be geared towards building on the experiences of past and present experiments at the sub-regional level. Samantha Goosen discusses the very thorny issue of battered women and the elements of self-defence if she has to stand trial for killing her husband. Recent developments in the area of pro bono legal services are the heart of Dave Holness' article. He focuses on legal service delivery for the indigent by attorneys in private practice acting pro bono in civil rather than criminal matters. Henk Kloppers discusses the very topical issue of corporate social responsibility. He gives an overview of the social and ethics committee created in terms of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 as a potential driver of corporate social responsibility. The always newsworthy theme of HIV/AIDS and the question of whether to disclose or not to disclose one's status forms the focal point of Andra le Roux-Kemp's contribution. Chucks Okpaluba gives an overview of South African and Commonwealth decisions dealing with the issue of reasonable and probable cause in the law of malicious prosecution. The never-ending problem of language diversity once again comes to the fore in the article by Loot Pretorius. He asks the question if the recently adopted Use of Official Languages Act 12 of 2012 complies with the normative instructions of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. In his second essay on the Child Justice Act 75 of 2008, Stephan Terblanche deals with a number of procedural issues related to the sentencing of child offenders. The last article, which is by Bonnie Venter, deals with the ethical question of whether the payment of kidney donors could be regarded as constitutionally acceptable or not. In the first of five notes, Nqobizwe Ngema asks if the African custom of theleka (the withholding of a wife by her father or guardian from her husband to coerce him to pay the outstanding lobolo) has an impact on the custody of children in the context of the best interest of the child. The central question Phazha Ngandwe asks is how states can discharge their duties and obligations vis-à-vis their nationals without perpetuating the bottlenecks to and the stigma that attaches to migration and thereby upsetting the international and regional integration objectives of the free movement of people. Mzukisi Njotini's note discusses the adequacy of South Africa's measures designed to protect critical information infrastructures. In the second last note, Anthea Wagener considers the practice of South African motor-vehicle insurers of using gender as a rating variable to classify risks into certain classes, thereby determining insurance premiums, and asks if this practice boils down to unfair discrimination. The final note by Anri Botes deals with the history of labour hire in our neighbouring country, Namibia.

This study sets out to investigate the “poetry of grammar”, more specifically the role of the body in figurative speech, in African languages mainly belonging to Nilotic and Bantu. Apprehending the semantics and pragmatics of metaphorical and metonymic expressions in these languages presupposes an interaction between a number of cognitive processes, as argued below. Interestingly, these languages seem to use these strategies involving figurative speech in tandem with alternative strategies involving on-record statements. This multivocality only makes sense if we place language and language structure more in the social world in which it is used.

AbstractThis study generally looks at indigenization in languages historically introduced and promoted by colonial regimes. The case study that it presents involves Namibia, a Subsaharan African country formerly administered by South Africa, where Afrikaans was the dominant official language before being replaced by English upon independence. Afrikaans in Namibia still functions as an informal urban lingua franca while being spoken as a native language by substantial White and Coloured minorities. To what extent does the downranking of Afrikaans in Namibia co-occur with divergence from standard models historically located in South Africa? To answer this question, the study identifies variation patterns in Namibian Afrikaans phonetic data elicited from ethnically diverse young urban informants and links these patterns with perceptions and language ideologies. The phonetic data reveal divergence between Whites and Non-Whites and some convergence among Black L2 Afrikaans-speakers with Coloured varieties, while suggesting that a distinctive Black variety is emerging. The observed trends generally reflect perceived ethnoracial distinctions and segregation. They must be read against the background of shifting inter-group power relations and sociolinguistic prestige norms in independent Namibia, as well as of emergent ethnically inclusive Black urban identities.

This study investigates the manifestation of Transfer or Cross-Linguistic Influence (CLI) from language learners’ previouslyknown languages in the learning of a third language, Northern Sotho, by examining errors identified in their written productions in the target language. Data for the study was gathered from first year university students learning Northern Sotho L3, with a roughly homogeneouslanguage background of isiZulu L1 and English L2 (elicitation tasks and questionnaires), and from three of their lecturers (interviews). The focus of the study was to determine whether the subjects produced patterns in their interlanguage that could be traced to one or both of their previously-known languages. Contrastive Analysis (CA) and Error Analysis (EA) techniques were used in the analyses of the learners’interlanguage (IL), to identify and quantify the errors, as well as to compare and contrast the three language systems at play in the learners’ minds, so as to pinpoint the possible source languages of the transfer. The findings indicate that most errors relating to spelling,vocabulary, and grammar, in general, showed evidence of prevalent influence from the language learners’ previouslyknown Black South African language (isiZulu L1), with no visible evidence of influence from English L2.

The two African English-lexifier Creole languages Krio (Sierra Leone) and Pichi (Equatorial Guinea) are closely related. A close look at specific aspects of their grammar, however, shows divergence due to differing contact ecologies since their split in the 19th century. Krio has been spoken alongside its lexifier (the main lexicon-providing language) and superstrate (the socially dominant colonial language) English since its beginnings and Pichi alongside its superstrate Spanish for almost two centuries, but not alongside English. Resulting differences in contact outcomes transpire in the expression of tense, aspect, and mood, and the use of prepositions for the marking of participants. In these two areas, Krio has converged more with English than Pichi with Spanish because existing overlaps between Creole and lexifier forms have facilitated transfer from English. There is therefore evidence for different contact outcomes in Creoles depending on whether they continue to be in contact with a superstrate that is simultaneously the lexifier (in this case English), or not. No previous work has compared Krio and Pichi nor looked at these two Creole languages from the viewpoint of their differing linguistic ecologies and their resulting differentiation.

IntroductionThere are two types of Africa. The first is a place where people and cultures live. The second is the image of Africa that has been invented through colonial knowledge and power. The colonial image of Africa, as the Other of Europe, a land “enveloped in the dark mantle of night” was supported by western states as it justified their colonial practices (Hegel 91). Any evidence that challenged the myth of the Dark Continent was destroyed, removed or ignored. While the looting of African natural resources has been studied, the looting of African knowledges hasn’t received as much attention, partly based on the assumption that Africans did not produce knowledge that could be stolen. This article invalidates this myth by examining the legacy of Ethiopia’s indigenous Ge’ez literature, and its looting and abduction by powerful western agents. The article argues that this has resulted in epistemic violence, where students of the Ethiopian indigenous education system do not have access to their books, while European orientalists use them to interpret Ethiopian history and philosophy using a foreign lens. The analysis is based on interviews with teachers and students of ten Ge’ez schools in Ethiopia, and trips to the Ethiopian manuscript collections in The British Library, The Princeton Library, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and The National Archives in Addis Ababa.The Context of Ethiopian Indigenous KnowledgesGe’ez is one of the ancient languages of Africa. According to Professor Ephraim Isaac, “about 10,000 years ago, one single nation or community of a single linguistic group existed in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Horn of Africa” (The Habesha). The language of this group is known as Proto-Afroasiatic or Afrasian languages. It is the ancestor of the Semitic, Cushitic, Nilotic, Omotic and other languages that are currently spoken in Ethiopia by its 80 ethnic groups, and the neighbouring countries (Diakonoff). Ethiopians developed the Ge’ez language as their lingua franca with its own writing system some 2000 years ago. Currently, Ge’ez is the language of academic scholarship, studied through the traditional education system (Isaac, The Ethiopian). Since the fourth century, an estimated 1 million Ge’ez manuscripts have been written, covering religious, historical, mathematical, medicinal, and philosophical texts.One of the most famous Ge’ez manuscripts is the Kebra Nagast, a foundational text that embodied the indigenous conception of nationhood in Ethiopia. The philosophical, political and religious themes in this book, which craft Ethiopia as God’s country and the home of the Ark of the Covenant, contributed to the country’s success in defending itself from European colonialism. The production of books like the Kebra Nagast went hand in hand with a robust indigenous education system that trained poets, scribes, judges, artists, administrators and priests. Achieving the highest stages of learning requires about 30 years after which the scholar would be given the rare title Arat-Ayina, which means “four eyed”, a person with the ability to see the past as well as the future. Today, there are around 50,000 Ge’ez schools across the country, most of which are in rural villages and churches.Ge’ez manuscripts are important textbooks and reference materials for students. They are carefully prepared from vellum “to make them last forever” (interview, 3 Oct. 2019). Some of the religious books are regarded as “holy persons who breathe wisdom that gives light and food to the human soul”. Other manuscripts, often prepared as scrolls are used for medicinal purposes. Each manuscript is uniquely prepared reflecting inherited wisdom on contemporary lives using the method called Tirguamme, the act of giving meaning to sacred texts. Preparation of books is costly. Smaller manuscript require the skins of 50-70 goats/sheep and large manuscript needed 100-120 goats/sheep (Tefera).The Loss of Ethiopian ManuscriptsSince the 18th century, a large quantity of these manuscripts have been stolen, looted, or smuggled out of the country by travellers who came to the country as explorers, diplomats and scientists. The total number of Ethiopian manuscripts taken is still unknown. Amsalu Tefera counted 6928 Ethiopian manuscripts currently held in foreign libraries and museums. This figure does not include privately held or unofficial collections (41).Looting and smuggling were sponsored by western governments, institutions, and notable individuals. For example, in 1868, The British Museum Acting Director Richard Holms joined the British army which was sent to ‘rescue’ British hostages at Maqdala, the capital of Emperor Tewodros. Holms’ mission was to bring treasures for the Museum. Before the battle, Tewodros had established the Medhanialem library with more than 1000 manuscripts as part of Ethiopia’s “industrial revolution”. When Tewodros lost the war and committed suicide, British soldiers looted the capital, including the treasury and the library. They needed 200 mules and 15 elephants to transport the loot and “set fire to all buildings so that no trace was left of the edifices which once housed the manuscripts” (Rita Pankhurst 224). Richard Holmes collected 356 manuscripts for the Museum. A wealthy British woman called Lady Meux acquired some of the most illuminated manuscripts. In her will, she bequeathed them to be returned to Ethiopia. However, her will was reversed by court due to a campaign from the British press (Richard Pankhurst). In 2018, the V&A Museum in London displayed some of the treasures by incorporating Maqdala into the imperial narrative of Britain (Woldeyes, Reflections).Britain is by no means the only country to seek Ethiopian manuscripts for their collections. Smuggling occurred in the name of science, an act of collecting manuscripts for study. Looting involved local collaborators and powerful foreign sponsors from places like France, Germany and the Vatican. Like Maqdala, this was often sponsored by governments or powerful financers. For example, the French government sponsored the Dakar-Djibouti Mission led by Marcel Griaule, which “brought back about 350 manuscripts and scrolls from Gondar” (Wion 2). It was often claimed that these manuscripts were purchased, rather than looted. Johannes Flemming of Germany was said to have purchased 70 manuscripts and ten scrolls for the Royal Library of Berlin in 1905. However, there was no local market for buying manuscripts. Ge’ez manuscripts were, and still are, written to serve spiritual and secular life in Ethiopia, not for buying and selling. There are countless other examples, but space limits how many can be provided in this article. What is important to note is that museums and libraries have accrued impressive collections without emphasising how those collections were first obtained. The loss of the intellectual heritage of Ethiopians to western collectors has had an enormous impact on the country.Knowledge Grabbing: The Denial of Access to KnowledgeWith so many manuscripts lost, European collectors became the narrators of Ethiopian knowledge and history. Edward Ullendorff, a known orientalist in Ethiopian studies, refers to James Bruce as “the explorer of Abyssinia” (114). Ullendorff commented on the significance of Bruce’s travel to Ethiopia asperhaps the most important aspect of Bruce’s travels was the collection of Ethiopic manuscripts… . They opened up entirely new vistas for the study of Ethiopian languages and placed this branch of Oriental scholarship on a much more secure basis. It is not known how many MSS. reached Europe through his endeavours, but the present writer is aware of at least twenty-seven, all of which are exquisite examples of Ethiopian manuscript art. (133)This quote encompasses three major ways in which epistemic violence occurs: denial of access to knowledge, Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts, and the handling of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts from the past. These will be discussed below.Western ‘travellers’, such as Bruce, did not fully disclose how many manuscripts they took or how they acquired them. The abundance of Ethiopian manuscripts in western institutions can be compared to the scarcity of such materials among traditional schools in Ethiopia. In this research, I have visited ten indigenous schools in Wollo (Lalibela, Neakutoleab, Asheten, Wadla), in Gondar (Bahita, Kuskwam, Menbere Mengist), and Gojam (Bahirdar, Selam Argiew Maryam, Giorgis). In all of the schools, there is lack of Ge’ez manuscripts. Students often come from rural villages and do not receive any government support. The scarcity of Ge’ez manuscripts, and the lack of funding which might allow for the purchasing of books, means the students depend mainly on memorising Ge’ez texts told to them from the mouth of their teacher. Although this method of learning is not new, it currently is the only way for passing indigenous knowledges across generations.The absence of manuscripts is most strongly felt in the advanced schools. For instance, in the school of Qene, poetic literature is created through an in-depth study of the vocabulary and grammar of Ge’ez. A Qene student is required to develop a deep knowledge of Ge’ez in order to understand ancient and medieval Ge’ez texts which are used to produce poetry with multiple meanings. Without Ge’ez manuscripts, students cannot draw their creative works from the broad intellectual tradition of their ancestors. When asked how students gain access to textbooks, one student commented:we don’t have access to Birana books (Ge’ez manuscripts written on vellum). We cannot learn the ancient wisdom of painting, writing, and computing developed by our ancestors. We simply buy paper books such as Dawit (Psalms), Sewasew (grammar) or Degwa (book of songs with notations) and depend on our teachers to teach us the rest. We also lend these books to each other as many students cannot afford to buy them. Without textbooks, we expect to spend double the amount of time it would take if we had textbooks. (Interview, 3 Sep. 2019)Many students interrupt their studies and work as labourers to save up and buy paper textbooks, but they still don’t have access to the finest works taken to Europe. Most Ge’ez manuscripts remaining in Ethiopia are locked away in monasteries, church stores or other places to prevent further looting. The manuscripts in Addis Ababa University and the National Archives are available for researchers but not to the students of the indigenous system, creating a condition of internal knowledge grabbing.While the absence of Ge’ez manuscripts denied, and continues to deny, Ethiopians the chance to enrich their indigenous education, it benefited western orientalists to garner intellectual authority on the field of Ethiopian studies. In 1981, British Museum Director John Wilson said, “our Abyssinian holdings are more important than our Indian collection” (Bell 231). In reaction, Richard Pankhurst, the Director of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, responded that the collection was acquired through plunder. Defending the retaining of Maqdala manuscripts in Europe, Ullendorff wrote:neither Dr. Pankhurst nor the Ethiopian and western scholars who have worked on this collection (and indeed on others in Europe) could have contributed so significantly to the elucidation of Ethiopian history without the rich resources available in this country. Had they remained insitu, none of this would have been possible. (Qtd. in Bell 234)The manuscripts are therefore valued based on their contribution to western scholarship only. This is a continuation of epistemic violence whereby local knowledges are used as raw materials to produce Eurocentric knowledge, which in turn is used to teach Africans as though they had no prior knowledge. Scholars are defined as those western educated persons who can speak European languages and can travel to modern institutions to access the manuscripts. Knowledge grabbing regards previous owners as inexistent or irrelevant for the use of the grabbed knowledges.Knowledge grabbing also means indigenous scholars are deprived of critical resources to produce new knowledge based on their intellectual heritage. A Qene teacher commented: our students could not devote their time and energy to produce new knowledges in the same way our ancestors did. We have the tradition of Madeladel, Kimera, Kuteta, Mielad, Qene and tirguamme where students develop their own system of remembering, reinterpreting, practicing, and rewriting previous manuscripts and current ones. Without access to older manuscripts, we increasingly depend on preserving what is being taught orally by elders. (Interview, 4 Sep. 2019)This point is important as it relates to the common myth that indigenous knowledges are artefacts belonging to the past, not the present. There are millions of people who still use these knowledges, but the conditions necessary for their reproduction and improvement is denied through knowledge grabbing. The view of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts dismisses the Ethiopian view that Birana manuscripts are living persons. As a scholar told me in Gondar, “they are creations of Egziabher (God), like all of us. Keeping them in institutions is like keeping living bodies in graveyards” (interview, 5 Oct. 2019).Recently, the collection of Ethiopian manuscripts by western institutions has also been conducted digitally. Thousands of manuscripts have been microfilmed or digitised. For example, the EU funded Ethio-SPaRe project resulted in the digital collection of 2000 Ethiopian manuscripts (Nosnitsin). While digitisation promises better access for people who may not be able to visit institutions to see physical copies, online manuscripts are not accessible to indigenous school students in Ethiopia. They simply do not have computer or internet access and the manuscripts are catalogued in European languages. Both physical and digital knowledge grabbing results in the robbing of Ethiopian intellectual heritage, and denies the possibility of such manuscripts being used to inform local scholarship. Epistemic Violence: The European as ExpertWhen considered in relation to stolen or appropriated manuscripts, epistemic violence is the way in which local knowledge is interpreted using a foreign epistemology and gained dominance over indigenous worldviews. European scholars have monopolised the field of Ethiopian Studies by producing books, encyclopaedias and digital archives based on Ethiopian manuscripts, almost exclusively in European languages. The contributions of their work for western scholarship is undeniable. However, Kebede argues that one of the detrimental effects of this orientalist literature is the thesis of Semiticisation, the designation of the origin of Ethiopian civilisation to the arrival of Middle Eastern colonisers rather than indigenous sources.The thesis is invented to make the history of Ethiopia consistent with the Hegelian western view that Africa is a Dark Continent devoid of a civilisation of its own. “In light of the dominant belief that black peoples are incapable of great achievements, the existence of an early and highly advanced civilization constitutes a serious anomaly in the Eurocentric construction of the world” (Kebede 4). To address this anomaly, orientalists like Ludolph attributed the origin of Ethiopia’s writing system, agriculture, literature, and civilisation to the arrival of South Arabian settlers. For example, in his translation of the Kebra Nagast, Budge wrote: “the SEMITES found them [indigenous Ethiopians] negro savages, and taught them civilization and culture and the whole scriptures on which their whole literature is based” (x).In line with the above thesis, Dillman wrote that “the Abyssinians borrowed their Numerical Signs from the Greeks” (33). The views of these orientalist scholars have been challenged. For instance, leading scholar of Semitic languages Professor Ephraim Isaac considers the thesis of the Arabian origin of Ethiopian civilization “a Hegelian Eurocentric philosophical perspective of history” (2). Isaac shows that there is historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence that suggest Ethiopia to be more advanced than South Arabia from pre-historic times. Various Ethiopian sources including the Kebra Nagast, the works of historian Asres Yenesew, and Ethiopian linguist Girma Demeke provide evidence for the indigenous origin of Ethiopian civilisation and languages.The epistemic violence of the Semeticisation thesis lies in how this Eurocentric ideological construction is the dominant narrative in the field of Ethiopian history and the education system. Unlike the indigenous view, the orientalist view is backed by strong institutional power both in Ethiopia and abroad. The orientalists control the field of Ethiopian studies and have access to Ge’ez manuscripts. Their publications are the only references for Ethiopian students. Due to Native Colonialism, a system of power run by native elites through the use of colonial ideas and practices (Woldeyes), the education system is the imitation of western curricula, including English as a medium of instruction from high school onwards. Students study the west more than Ethiopia. Indigenous sources are generally excluded as unscientific. Only the Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts is regarded as scientific and objective.ConclusionEthiopia is the only African country never to be colonised. In its history it produced a large quantity of manuscripts in the Ge’ez language through an indigenous education system that involves the study of these manuscripts. Since the 19th century, there has been an ongoing loss of these manuscripts. European travellers who came to Ethiopia as discoverers, missionaries and scholars took a large number of manuscripts. The Battle of Maqdala involved the looting of the intellectual products of Ethiopia that were collected at the capital. With the introduction of western education and use of English as a medium of instruction, the state disregarded indigenous schools whose students have little access to the manuscripts. This article brings the issue of knowledge grapping, a situation whereby European institutions and scholars accumulate Ethiopia manuscripts without providing the students in Ethiopia to have access to those collections.Items such as manuscripts that are held in western institutions are not dead artefacts of the past to be preserved for prosperity. They are living sources of knowledge that should be put to use in their intended contexts. Local Ethiopian scholars cannot study ancient and medieval Ethiopia without travelling and gaining access to western institutions. This lack of access and resources has made European Ethiopianists almost the sole producers of knowledge about Ethiopian history and culture. For example, indigenous sources and critical research that challenge the Semeticisation thesis are rarely available to Ethiopian students. Here we see epistemic violence in action. Western control over knowledge production has the detrimental effect of inventing new identities, subjectivities and histories that translate into material effects in the lives of African people. In this way, Ethiopians and people all over Africa internalise western understandings of themselves and their history as primitive and in need of development or outside intervention. African’s intellectual and cultural heritage, these living bodies locked away in graveyards, must be put back into the hands of Africans.AcknowledgementThe author acknowledges the support of the Australian Academy of the Humanities' 2019 Humanities Travelling Fellowship Award in conducting this research.ReferencesBell, Stephen. “Cultural Treasures Looted from Maqdala: A Summary of Correspondence in British National Newspapers since 1981.” Kasa and Kasa. Eds. Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, and Shifereraw Bekele. Addis Ababa: Ababa University Book Centre, 1990. 231-246.Budge, Wallis. A History of Ethiopia, Nubia and Abyssinia. London: Methuen and Co, 1982.Demeke, Girma Awgichew. The Origin of Amharic. Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2013.Diakonoff, Igor M. Afrasian Languages. Moscow: Nauka, 1988.Dillmann, August. Ethiopic Grammar. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2005.Hegel, Georg W.F. The Philosophy of History. New York: Dover, 1956.Isaac, Ephraim. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church. New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 2013.———. “An Open Letter to an Inquisitive Ethiopian Sister.” The Habesha, 2013. 1 Feb. 2020 <http://www.zehabesha.com/an-open-letter-to-an-inquisitive-young-ethiopian-sister-ethiopian-history-is-not-three-thousand-years/>.Kebra Nagast. "The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelik I." Trans. Wallis Budge. London: Oxford UP, 1932.Pankhurst, Richard. "The Napier Expedition and the Loot Form Maqdala." Presence Africaine 133-4 (1985): 233-40.Pankhurst, Rita. "The Maqdala Library of Tewodros." Kasa and Kasa. Eds. Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, and Shifereraw Bekele. Addis Ababa: Ababa University Book Centre, 1990. 223-230.Tefera, Amsalu. ነቅዐ መጻህፍት ከ መቶ በላይ በግዕዝ የተጻፉ የእኢትዮጵያ መጻህፍት ዝርዝር ከማብራሪያ ጋር።. Addis Ababa: Jajaw, 2019.Nosnitsin, Denis. "Ethio-Spare Cultural Heritage of Christian Ethiopia: Salvation, Preservation and Research." 2010. 5 Jan. 2019 <https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/en/ethiostudies/research/ethiospare/missions/pdf/report2010-1.pdf>. Ullendorff, Edward. "James Bruce of Kinnaird." The Scottish Historical Review 32.114, part 2 (1953): 128-43.Wion, Anaïs. "Collecting Manuscripts and Scrolls in Ethiopia: The Missions of Johannes Flemming (1905) and Enno Littmann (1906)." 2012. 5 Jan. 2019 <https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00524382/document>. Woldeyes, Yirga Gelaw. Native Colonialism: Education and the Economy of Violence against Traditions in Ethiopia. Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2017.———. “Reflections on Ethiopia’s Stolen Treasures on Display in a London Museum.” The Conversation. 2018. 5 June 2018 <https://theconversation.com/reflections-on-ethiopias-stolen-treasures-on-display-in-a-london-museum-97346>.Yenesew, Asres. ትቤ፡አክሱም፡መኑ፡ አንተ? Addis Ababa: Nigid Printing House, 1959 [1951 EC].

This paper argues that artist Dope Saint Jude is transforming South African hip-hop by queering a genre that has predominantly been male and heteronormative. Specifically, I analyse the opening skit of her music video “Keep in Touch” in order to unpack the ways which she revives Gayle, a gay language that adopted double-coded forms of speech during the apartheid era—a context in which homosexuals were criminalised. The use of Gayle and spaces close to the city centre of Cape Town (such as Salt River and Woodstock) speaks to the city as it was before it was transformed by the decline of industries due to the country’s adoption of neoliberal economics and, more recently, by the gentrification of these spaces. Dope Saint Jude therefore reclaims these city spaces through her use of gay modes of speech that have a long history in Cape Town and by positioning her work as hip-hop, which has been popular in the city for well over two decades. Her inclusion of transgender MC and DJ Angel Ho pushes the boundaries of hegemonic and binary conceptions of gender identity even further. In essence, Dope Saint Jude is transforming local hip-hop in a context that is shaped significantly by US cultural imperialism. The artist is also transforming our perspective of spaces that have been altered by neoliberal economics.Setting the SceneDope Saint Jude (DSJ) is a queer MC from Elsies River, a working class township located on Cape Town's Cape Flats in South Africa. Elsies River was defined as a “coloured” neighbourhood under the apartheid state's Group Areas Act, which segregated South Africans racially. With the aid of the Population Registration Act, citizens were classified, not merely along the lines of white, Asian, or black—black subjects were also divided into further categories. The apartheid state also distinguished between black and “coloured” subjects. Michael MacDonald contends that segregation “ordained blacks to be inferior to whites; apartheid cast them to be indelibly different” (11). Apartheid declared “African claims in South Africa to be inferior to white claims” and effectively claimed that black subjects “belonged elsewhere, in societies of their own, because their race was different” (ibid). The term “coloured” defined people as “mixed race” to separate communities that might otherwise have identified as black in the broad and inclusive sense (Erasmus 16). Racial categorisation was used to create a racial hierarchy with white subjects at the top of that hierarchy and those classified as black receiving the least resources and benefits. This frustrated attempts to establish broad alliances of black struggles against apartheid. It is in this sense that race is socially and politically constructed and continues to have currency, despite the fact that biologically essentialist understandings of race have been discredited (Yudell 13–14). Thanks to apartheid town planning and resource allocation, many townships on the Cape Flats were poverty-stricken and plagued by gang violence (Salo 363). This continues to be the case because post-apartheid South Africa's embrace of neoliberal economics failed to address racialised class inequalities significantly (Haupt, Static 6–8). This is the '90s context in which socially conscious hip-hop crews, such as Prophets of da City or Black Noise, came together. They drew inspiration from Black Consciousness philosophy via their exposure to US hip-hop crews such as Public Enemy in order to challenge apartheid policies, including their racial interpellation as “coloured” as distinct from the more inclusive category, black (Haupt, “Black Thing” 178). Prophets of da City—whose co-founding member, Shaheen Ariefdien, also lived in Elsies River—was the first South African hip-hop outfit to record an album. Whilst much of their work was performed in English, they quickly transformed the genre by rapping in non-standard varieties of Afrikaans and by including MCs who rap in African languages (ibid). They therefore succeeded in addressing key issues related to race, language, and class disparities in relation to South Africa's transition to democracy (Haupt, “Black Thing”; Haupt, Stealing Empire). However, as is the case with mainstream US hip-hop, specifically gangsta rap (Clay 149), South African hip-hop has been largely dominated by heterosexual men. This includes the more commercial hip-hop scene, which is largely perceived to be located in Johannesburg, where male MCs like AKA and Cassper Nyovest became celebrities. However, certain female MCs have claimed the genre, notably EJ von Lyrik and Burni Aman who are formerly of Godessa, the first female hip-hop crew to record and perform locally and internationally (Haupt, Stealing Empire 166; Haupt, “Can a Woman in Hip-Hop”). DSJ therefore presents the exception to a largely heteronormative and male-dominated South African music industry and hip-hop scene as she transforms it with her queer politics. While queer hip-hop is not new in the US (Pabón and Smalls), this is new territory for South Africa. Writing about the US MC Jean Grae in the context of a “male-dominated music industry and genre,” Shanté Paradigm Smalls contends,Heteronormativity blocks the materiality of the experiences of Black people. Yet, many Black people strive for a heteronormative effect if not “reality”. In hip hop, there is a particular emphasis on maintaining the rigidity of categories, even if those categories fail [sic]. (87) DSJ challenges these rigid categories. Keep in TouchDSJ's most visible entry onto the media landscape to date has been her appearance in an H&M recycling campaign with British Sri Lankan artist MIA (H&M), some fashion shoots, her new EP—Reimagine (Dope Saint Jude)—and recent Finnish, US and French tours as well as her YouTube channel, which features her music videos. As the characters’ theatrical costumes suggest, “Keep in Touch” is possibly the most camp and playful music video she has produced. It commences somewhat comically with Dope Saint Jude walking down Salt River main road to a public telephone, where she and a young woman in pig tails exchange dirty looks. Salt River is located at the foot of Devil's Peak not far from Cape Town's CBD. Many factories were located there, but the area is also surrounded by low-income housing, which was designated a “coloured” area under apartheid. After apartheid, neighbourhoods such as Salt River, Woodstock, and the Bo-Kaap became increasingly gentrified and, instead of becoming more inclusive, many parts of Cape Town continued to be influenced by policies that enable racialised inequalities. Dope Saint Jude calls Angel Ho: DSJ: Awêh, Angie! Yoh, you must check this kak sturvy girl here by the pay phone. [Turns to the girl, who walks away as she bursts a chewing gum bubble.] Ja, you better keep in touch. Anyway, listen here, what are you wys?Angel Ho: Ah, just at the salon getting my hair did. What's good? DSJ: Wanna catch on kak today?Angel Ho: Yes, honey. But, first, let me Gayle you this. By the jol by the art gallery, this Wendy, nuh. This Wendy tapped me on the shoulder and wys me, “This is a place of decorum.”DSJ: What did she wys?Angel Ho: De-corum. She basically told me this is not your house. DSJ: I know you told that girl to keep in touch!Angel Ho: Yes, Mama! I'm Paula, I told that bitch, “Keep in touch!” [Points index finger in the air.](Saint Jude, Dope, “Keep in Touch”)Angel Ho's name is a play on the male name Angelo and refers to the trope of the ho (whore) in gangsta rap lyrics and in music videos that present objectified women as secondary to male, heterosexual narratives (Sharpley-Whiting 23; Collins 27). The queering of Angelo, along with Angel Ho’s non-binary styling in terms of hair, make-up, and attire, appropriates a heterosexist, sexualised stereotype of women in order to create room for a gender identity that operates beyond heteronormative male-female binaries. Angel Ho’s location in a hair salon also speaks to stereotypical associations of salons with women and gay subjects. In a discussion of gender stereotypes about hair salons, Kristen Barber argues that beauty work has traditionally been “associated with women and with gay men” and that “the body beautiful has been tightly linked to the concept of femininity” (455–56). During the telephonic exchange, Angel Ho and Dope Saint Jude code-switch between standard and non-standard varieties of English and Afrikaans, as the opening appellation, “Awêh,” suggests. In this context, the term is a friendly greeting, which intimates solidarity. “Sturvy” means pretentious, whilst “kak” means shit, but here it is used to qualify “sturvy” and means that the girl at the pay phone is very pretentious or “full of airs.” To be “wys” means to be wise, but it can also mean that you are showing someone something or educating them. The meanings of these terms shift, depending on the context. The language practices in this skit are in line with the work of earlier hip-hop crews, such as Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap, to validate black, multilingual forms of speech and expression that challenge the linguistic imperialism of standard English and Afrikaans in South Africa, which has eleven official languages (Haupt, “Black Thing”; Haupt, Stealing Empire; Williams). Henry Louis Gates’s research on African American speech varieties and literary practices emerging from the repressive context of slavery is essential to understanding hip-hop’s language politics. Hip-hop artists' multilingual wordplay creates parallel discursive universes that operate both on the syntagmatic axis of meaning-making and the paradigmatic axis (Gates 49; Haupt, “Stealing Empire” 76–77). Historically, these discursive universes were those of the slave masters and the slaves, respectively. While white hegemonic meanings are produced on the syntagmatic axis (which is ordered and linear), black modes of speech as seen in hip-hop word play operate on the paradigmatic axis, which is connotative and non-linear (ibid). Distinguishing between Signifyin(g) / Signification (upper case, meaning black expression) and signification (lower case, meaning white dominant expression), he argues that “the signifier ‘Signification’ has remained identical in spelling to its white counterpart to demonstrate [. . .] that a simultaneous, but negated, parallel discursive (ontological, political) universe exists within the larger white discursive universe” (Gates 49). The meanings of terms and expressions can change, depending on the context and manner in which they are used. It is therefore the shared experiences of speech communities (such as slavery or racist/sexist oppression) that determine the negotiated meanings of certain forms of expression. Gayle as a Parallel Discursive UniverseDSJ and Angel Ho's performance of Gayle takes these linguistic practices further. Viewers are offered points of entry into Gayle via the music video’s subtitles. We learn that Wendy is code for a white person and that to keep in touch means exactly the opposite. Saint Jude explains that Gayle is a very fun queer language that was used to kind of mask what people were saying [. . .] It hides meanings and it makes use of women's names [. . . .] But the thing about Gayle is it's constantly changing [. . .] So everywhere you go, you kind of have to pick it up according to the context that you're in. (Ovens, Saint Jude and Haupt)According to Kathryn Luyt, “Gayle originated as Moffietaal [gay language] in the coloured gay drag culture of the Western Cape as a form of slang amongst Afrikaans-speakers which over time, grew into a stylect used by gay English and Afrikaans-speakers across South Africa” (Luyt 8; Cage 4). Given that the apartheid state criminalised homosexuals, Gayle was coded to evade detection and to seek out other members of this speech community (Luyt 8). Luyt qualifies the term “language” by arguing, “The term ‘language’ here, is used not as a constructed language with its own grammar, syntax, morphology and phonology, but in the same way as linguists would discuss women’s language, as a way of speaking, a kind of sociolect” (Luyt 8; Cage 1). However, the double-coded nature of Gayle allows one to think of it as creating a parallel discursive universe as Gates describes it (49). Whereas African American and Cape Flats discursive practices function parallel to white, hegemonic discourses, gay modes of speech run parallel to heteronormative communication. Exclusion and MicroaggressionsThe skit brings both discursive practices into play by creating room for one to consider that DSJ queers a male-dominated genre that is shaped by US cultural imperialism (Haupt, Stealing Empire 166) as a way of speaking back to intersectional forms of marginalisation (Crenshaw 1244), which are created by “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks 116). This is significant in South Africa where “curative rape” of lesbians and other forms of homophobic violence are prominent (cf. Gqola; Hames; Msibi). Angel Ho's anecdote conveys a sense of the extent to which black individuals are subject to scrutiny. Ho's interpretation of the claim that the gallery “is a place of decorum” is correct: it is not Ho's house. Black queer subjects are not meant to feel at home or feel a sense of ownership. This functions as a racial microaggression: “subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual) directed toward people of color, often automatically or unconsciously” (Solorzano, Ceja, and Yosso 60). This speaks to DSJ's use of Salt River, Woodstock, and Bo-Kaap for the music video, which features black queer bodies in performance—all of these spaces are being gentrified, effectively pushing working class people of colour out of the city (cf. Didier, Morange, and Peyroux; Lemanski). Gustav Visser explains that gentrification has come to mean a unit-by-unit acquisition of housing which replaces low-income residents with high-income residents, and which occurs independent of the structural condition, architecture, tenure or original cost level of the housing (although it is usually renovated for or by the new occupiers). (81–82) In South Africa this inequity plays out along racial lines because its neoliberal economic policies created a small black elite without improving the lives of the black working class. Instead, the “new African bourgeoisie, because it shares racial identities with the bulk of the poor and class interests with white economic elites, is in position to mediate the reinforcing cleavages between rich whites and poor blacks without having to make more radical changes” (MacDonald 158). In a news article about a working class Salt River family of colour’s battle against an eviction, Christine Hogg explains, “Gentrification often means the poor are displaced as the rich move in or buildings are upgraded by new businesses. In Woodstock and Salt River both are happening at a pace.” Angel Ho’s anecdote, as told from a Woodstock hair salon, conveys a sense of what Woodstock’s transformation from a coloured, working class Group Area to an upmarket, trendy, and arty space would mean for people of colour, including black, queer subjects. One could argue that this reading of the video is undermined by DSJ’s work with global brand H&M. Was she was snared by neoliberal economics? Perhaps, but one response is that the seeds of any subculture’s commercial co-option lie in the fact it speaks through commodities (for example clothing, make-up, CDs, vinyl, or iTunes / mp3 downloads (Hebdige 95; Haupt, Stealing Empire 144–45). Subcultures have a window period in which to challenge hegemonic ideologies before they are delegitimated or commercially co-opted. Hardt and Negri contend that the means that extend the reach of corporate globalisation could be used to challenge it from within it (44–46; Haupt, Stealing Empire 26). DSJ utilises her H&M work, social media, the hip-hop genre, and international networks to exploit that window period to help mainstream black queer identity politics.ConclusionDSJ speaks back to processes of exclusion from the city, which was transformed by apartheid and, more recently, gentrification, by claiming it as a creative and playful space for queer subjects of colour. She uses Gayle to lay claim to the city as it has a long history in Cape Town. In fact, she says that she is not reviving Gayle, but is simply “putting it on a bigger platform” (Ovens, Saint Jude, and Haupt). The use of subtitles in the video suggests that she wants to mainstream queer identity politics. Saint Jude also transforms hip-hop heteronormativity by queering the genre and by locating her work within the history of Cape hip-hop’s multilingual wordplay. ReferencesBarber, Kristin. “The Well-Coiffed Man: Class, Race, and Heterosexual Masculinity in the Hair Salon.” Gender and Society 22.4 (2008): 455–76.Cage, Ken. “An Investigation into the Form and Function of Language Used by Gay Men in South Africa.” Rand Afrikaans University: MA thesis, 1999.Clay, Andreana. “‘I Used to Be Scared of the Dick’: Queer Women of Color and Hip-Hop Masculinity.” Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology. Ed. Gwendolyn D. Pough, Elain Richardson, Aisha Durham, and Rachel Raimist. California: Sojourns, 2007.Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2005. Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color”. Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241–299.Didier, Sophie, Marianne Morange, and Elisabeth Peyroux. “The Adaptative Nature of Neoliberalism at the Local Scale: Fifteen Years of City Improvement Districts in Cape Town and Johannesburg.” Antipode 45.1 (2012): 121–39.Erasmus, Zimitri. “Introduction.” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place. Ed. Zimitri Erasmus. Cape Town: Kwela Books & SA History Online, 2001. Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.Gqola, Pumla Dineo. Rape: A South African Nightmare. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2015.Hames, Mary. “Violence against Black Lesbians: Minding Our Language.” Agenda 25.4 (2011): 87–91.Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. London: Harvard UP, 2000.Haupt, Adam. “Can a Woman in Hip Hop Speak on Her Own Terms?” Africa Is a Country. 23 Mar. 2015. <http://africasacountry.com/2015/03/the-double-consciousness-of-burni-aman-can-a-woman-in-hip-hop-speak-on-her-own-terms/>.Haupt, Adam. Static: Race & Representation in Post-Apartheid Music, Media & Film. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2012. Haupt, Adam. Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008. Haupt, Adam. “Black Thing: Hip-Hop Nationalism, ‘Race’ and Gender in Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap.” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place. Ed. Zimitri Erasmus. Cape Town: Kwela Books & SA History Online, 2001. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1979.Hogg, Christine. “In Salt River Gentrification Often Means Eviction: Family Set to Lose Their Home of 11 Years.” Ground Up. 15 June 2016. <http://www.groundup.org.za/article/salt-river-gentrification-often-means-eviction/>.hooks, bell. Outlaw: Culture: Resisting Representations. New York: Routledge, 1994.Lemanski, Charlotte. “Hybrid Gentrification in South Africa: Theorising across Southern and Northern Cities.” Urban Studies 51.14 (2014): 2943–60.Luyt, Kathryn. “Gay Language in Cape Town: A Study of Gayle – Attitudes, History and Usage.” University of Cape Town: MA thesis, 2014.MacDonald, Michael. Why Race Matters in South Africa. University of Kwazulu-Natal Press: Scottsville, 2006.Msibi, Thabo. “Not Crossing the Line: Masculinities and Homophobic Violence in South Africa”. Agenda. 23.80 (2009): 50–54.Pabón, Jessica N., and Shanté Paradigm Smalls. “Critical Intimacies: Hip Hop as Queer Feminist Pedagogy.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (2014): 1–7.Salo, Elaine. “Negotiating Gender and Personhood in the New South Africa: Adolescent Women and Gangsters in Manenberg Township on the Cape Flats.” Journal of European Cultural Studies 6.3 (2003): 345–65.Solórzano, Daniel, Miguel Ceja, and Tara Yosso. “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students.” Journal of Negro Education 69.1/2 (2000): 60–73.Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women. New York: New York UP, 2007.Smalls, Shanté Paradigm. “‘The Rain Comes Down’: Jean Grae and Hip Hop Heteronormativity.” American Behavioral Scientist 55.1 (2011): 86–95.Visser, Gustav. “Gentrification: Prospects for Urban South African Society?” Acta Academica Supplementum 1 (2003): 79–104.Williams, Quentin E. “Youth Multilingualism in South Africa’s Hip-Hop Culture: a Metapragmatic Analysis.” Sociolinguistic Studies 10.1 (2016): 109–33.Yudell, Michael. “A Short History of the Race Concept.” Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture. Ed. Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.InterviewsOvens, Neil, Dope Saint Jude, and Adam Haupt. One FM Radio interview. Cape Town. 21 Apr. 2016.VideosSaint Jude, Dope. “Keep in Touch.” YouTube. 23 Feb. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2ux9R839lE>. H&M. “H&M World Recycle Week Featuring M.I.A.” YouTube. 11 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7MskKkn2Jg>. MusicSaint Jude, Dope. Reimagine. 15 June 2016. <https://dopesaintjude.bandcamp.com/album/reimagine>.

It is often heard, and even more often seen written, for example on social media, that that there is nothing new in the competitive intelligence (CI) field. There are no new ideas, the ideas that are being expressed are the same old, there is no development, there is, at best, stagnation. Even the old claim that CI is dead[1] reappears with a certain frequency[2]: “Competitive intelligence as a profession is dead. There are fewer and fewer full-time, dedicated CI professionals in organizations, and even fewer legitimate CI departments or functions. The need to understand an organization’s competitors has been diffused to several other functions including market research, finance, sales, R&D and others. What the founders of the profession - Jan Herring, Leonard Fuld, and Ben Gilad - built through the 80s and 90s no longer exists. And organizations are the worse off for it”[3]. Is this true? Yes and No. From a research perspective CI has developed and emerged with information technology (IT) solutions over the past ten years. It has come to the point where it does not make much sense to talk about new CI practices. Most advancements and developments are now about IT solutions and applications. This has again given rise to a whole new world of intelligence related problems and opportunities, not only for engineers but for users of these technologies. It is probably fair to say that the intelligence perspective has never been as important for businesses as it is today. Companies and organizations have never collected and analyzed as much information. Another way to explain this development is to say that CI has evolved, thus is no longer the same. Trying to look for the same or insisting that it has not changed gives the impression that there is nothing new in CI. CI consists of an interesting body of literature, but it was not the first term to deal with questions of intelligence in private organizations, and it is not the last. Before CI there was social intelligence, strategic intelligence and corporate intelligence with their own consultants and literature. As Sawka rightly points out CI was a label used in the 80s and 90s. Other terms used include market intelligence, marketing intelligence, business intelligence, collective intelligence, financial intelligence, scientific and technical intelligence, foresight, insight, and equivalent terms in other languages, like “l’information stratégique et de la sécurité économiques” (Sisse) [previously “intelligence économique"], “veille” in French and “omvärldsanalys” in Swedish. All these fields, where a field is defined as a body of literature, basically study the same phenomenon, how to gather information to make better decisions. As such intelligence studies is a part of the information age. The information age gave birth to several bodies of literature, of which the more established include information systems, management information systems and customer relations management. The intelligence perspective never really caught on among business scholars, maybe because it was associated with industrial espionage. The intelligence parallel in business is also a bet, the argument that private organizations are better organized as intelligence organizations, much like in state and/or military organizations. The idea is that this will give better information, which again will lead to a competitive advantage. So far, this bet has not caught on. Business organizations continue to be organized much as they were a hundred years ago: into production, sales, marketing, HR, finance and accounting. However, the way people work in all of these departments with ever larger amounts of information and data is starting to look more like intelligence operatives with their extensive system of files. In other words, the CI position never really saw a breakthrough, but CI has become an ever more important part of employees’ jobs, as a function.How can we then explain the frequently raised discussion related to the problems of CI? Let me suggest two answers, one general, the other more specific. Once we create something, we insist that it has either to exist, as it is, or it must disappear, thus at the end it is declared dead. This is the western mind at work, thinking in dichotomies, a thing either exist or it does not exist. There is no room for evolution, only constants. If a phenomenon such as a discipline evolves, we shouldn’t say that it’s dead, it just isn’t the same anymore, and nothing is more natural than that. So, what must change is rather the way in which we think about the fields we study. The other suggestion is that the critic of CI has more to do with another problem, the selling of consulting services. The market for consultancy services is highly segmented and fiercely competitive. As consultants we are trying to make a name for ourselves in a niche we can call our own and strive to be an acknowledged expert in it. This takes years, often a whole career. Academic careers are created much according to the same logic so the problem is the same there. The underlying message is “this is my area”, my niche, and as such I will defend it. What often happens is that another persons’ or group’s area grows into our own and sometimes is better at explaining the reality of our business problem, thus challenging our very raison d'être. Instead we insist that we are still relevant refusing to read up on other areas. We cease to be curious and the very business problems we study pass on to others. Some would argue this is what happened to CI.So, where is CI today? There certainly are many answers to this question. One suggestion is that it is more often treated as business intelligence again (it very much started there, but then without the IT association), data mining, search engine optimization, social media marketing and digital marketing in general. It suffices to look at the articles in this issue to find other examples: Bleoju et al. write about how MOOCs can be used to teach intelligence. Sperkova writes about customer experience (CX) and voice of customer (VoC). Poblano-Ojinaga et al. write about structural equation modeling for the identification of the intelligence factors. All authors have that in common that the are studying how organizations handle intelligence.In more detail, the first article by Bleoju et al. entitled “Empirical evidence from a connectivist competitive intelligence massive open online course (CI cMOOC) proof of concept” reveals how “the CI learning community perceives the capability of a cMOOC to train foreknowledge practices, given the best match between its content and context.” The paper argues for “an open intelligence approach to cMOOC collective training.”The second article by Maune entitled “Competitive intelligence as a game changer for Africa’s competitiveness in the global economy” develops a conceptual framework for how competitive intelligence can be adopted by African countries to improve their performance in the global economy.The third article by Sperkova entitled “Integration of textual VoC into a CX data model for business intelligence use in B2C” is a summary of her PhD, which will be defended in February 2020 at the University of Economics in Prague, the Department of Information Technologies. The author presents a model to store the customer experience (CX) and voice of customer (VoC) data as part of a business intelligence system. The model can help to improve customer relationships and make future performance more automatic and effective.The fourth article by Palilingan and Batmetan Entitled “How competitive intelligence can be used to improve a management vocational high school: A case from Indonesia” shows how competitive intelligence can be applied to make a vocational high school more efficient.The fifth and last article by Poblano-Ojinaga et al. entitled “Effect of the competitive intelligence on the innovation capability: an exploratory study in Mexican companies”, is an investigation using a methodology of structural equation modeling for the identification of the intelligence factors, to evaluate their relative importance and relationships with the innovation capability of Mexican companies. The empirical results show that the relationship between competitive intelligence and the innovation capability is indirect, with knowledge management as a mediating factor.Some news worth mentioning: we would like to thank the Swedish Research Council/ NOP-HS for receiving the “large” grant for Open Access journals for two years starting in 2020. JISIB is now indexed by Crossref, which should give users direct access to PDF full text through databases like Scopus and Web of Science. The SCIP organization, owned by Frost & Sullivan, has been reignited with a new executive director. We wish them good luck. There are numerous conferences on intelligence related topics this spring and next winter. See the JISIB website for details. Some of the editors of JISIB will be at the ICI in Bad Nauheim 11-14 May 2020. We hope to see you there.As always, we would above all like to thank the authors for their contributions to this issue of JISIB. Thanks to Dr. Allison Perrigo for reviewing English grammar and helping with layout design for all articles.[1] Sawka, Kenneth. (2010). The death of the competitive intelligence professional. Outward Insights, 13(2), 36-39.[2] Sawka, Kenneth. The death of the competitive intelligence professional. Retrieved January 30, 2020 from https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6627549366062194688[3] Idem