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Finex Ndhlovu
Language, Vernacular Discourse
and Nationalisms
 Finex Ndhlovu

Language,
Vernacular Discourse
and Nationalisms
Uncovering the Myths of
Transnational Worlds
Finex Ndhlovu
Linguistics
University of New England
Armidale, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-3-319-76134-3 ISBN 978-3-319-76135-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76135-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934628

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
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 In memory of my father and hero, James Mabhuku Ndhlovu-Mhaso
(1896–1994). Although you did not get the opportunity to receive modern
education, you nevertheless understood its transformative power and the
promises it holds for a better society. All the toil and personal sacrifices you
made to ensure I receive a good education did pay off. You must be smiling
wherever you are right now.
Izinkomo zakho kazihambelanga ize Babamkhulu.
 Preface

The roots of this book lie in three stories about my personal encounter
with how perceived identities of non-desired ‘Others’ are imagined and
constructed in everyday casual conversations. The first story is this. A
few years ago, I visited my aunt, umalumekazi (the wife of my moth-
er’s late brother). She had just lost one of her daughters, so I had gone
there to extend my condolences. My aunt and I then spoke about sev-
eral issues, one of which was about her other children who were not
at home at the time. As I had not met them for a long time, I asked
curiously about the whereabouts of all my cousins, including four boys,
one of whom had been with me in primary school several years back.
She told me about the whereabouts of three of her boys—two were
in South Africa, and the other one was said to be in the local city of
Bulawayo. The only boy she skipped mentioning was the one I went to
school with. So, I reminded my aunt that she had not told me where
my primary school classmate was. She looked at me with a smile and
said in the Ndebele language ‘Ah! Ungatshona ubuza lowo? Angithi lowo
usenguPhiri!’ (Ah! Why would you bother asking about that one? Isn’t
he now a Mr. Phiri!) I could not understand why my aunt called her

vii
viii   Preface

son ‘Phiri’—because this was not his real name. She explained further,
followed by a somewhat sarcastic laughter: ‘Ukhonapha eHarare kodwa
uvele kasalugxobi ekhaya. Yikho nje ngisithi usenguPhiri’ (He is right here
in Harare, but he never sets his foot home anymore. This is why I said
he is now a Mr. Phiri!) We both laughed about it.
The surname ‘Phiri’ is common in Malawi and Zambia, and most
people who migrated to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in the 1950s to
take on menial jobs on farms and in mines used this surname. Because
they never had rural homes in Zimbabwe, most such people stayed at
the mine and farm compounds and city townships, even during the fes-
tive holidays, such as Christmas, when locals often travel to their rural
homes to catch up with family and friends. The surname Phiri, then,
became a derogatory label or identity marker, not only for people orig-
inally from Zambia and Malawi, but also for local Zimbabwean people
who, upon gaining employment in the cities, chose to stay there and
lost ties with their rural roots. It was precisely why my aunt called her
son ‘Mr. Phiri’; he had stopped coming home several years ago.
The second story happened sometime in 2011 when I visited
my elder brother’s daughters who live in Harare, the capital city of
Zimbabwe. They are both married—the older sister resides in the sub-
urb of Kuwadzana and the younger in Kambuzuma. They, however,
always have regular contact with each other at community events such
as church services, weddings and funeral vigils. So, on my visit in 2011,
I went to Kuwadzana where efforts were made to call the younger sister
to come over and greet me as I had not met her in a very long time. Her
mobile phone kept on going straight to voicemail, prompting the elder
sister to try and figure out what the problem could have been. Speaking
in the local Ndebele language, she provided the following explanation
for why her younger sister’s mobile phone was not being answered:

USazini ube elele emfeni eKambuzuma. Angabe etshontshelwe ifoni yakhe

ngoba eKambuzuma kugcwele amaNyasarandi.
(Sazini spent last night at a funeral vigil in Kambuzuma. Her mobile
phone might have been stolen while she was there because there are a lot
of maNyasarandi people in Kambuzuma).
 Preface   ix

Like in the first story, the so-called maNyasarandi in question are

descendants of black African migrants from Zambia and Malawi who
came to Zimbabwe in the mid-1900s. The name maNyasarandi is a
local rendition of Nyasaland, the colonial name of the present-day
country of Malawi. All Zimbabweans who trace their roots to either
Malawi or Zambia are derogatorily labelled as maNyasarandi up to this
day. Regardless of whether they were born in Zimbabwe or not and of
whether they are Zimbabwean citizens by naturalisation or by birth,
such people are perceived as foreigners who are associated with all sorts
of negative things such as petty thieving, pick pocketing, being uncul-
tured and having lack of understanding and respect for local traditions
and customs. It was for this reason that Sazini’s failure to answer her
phone was said to have been possibly as a result of the phone being sto-
len by maNyasarandi who were suspected to have been at the funeral
vigil as most of them live in the suburb of Kambuzuma. Three questions
are prompted by this story. Why is it that all Zimbabweans of Malawian
and Zambian origin are perceived as foreigners, outsiders, strangers and
non-desired ‘Others’? How do entire communities of people, some born
and raised in Zimbabwe (and have never set foot in either Malawi or
Zambia) become associated with petty criminal activities? What is the
effect of the languages used in the discursive construction of the iden-
tities and character traits of the descendants of black African migrants
who arrived in colonial Zimbabwe in the mid-1900s?
The third and most recent story happened in Pretoria, South Africa,
where I spent six months as a visiting research professor at the Archie
Mafeje Research Institute, University of South Africa. I arrived in
Pretoria on 30 June 2015 and stayed at Protea Hotel for two weeks
while looking for long-term accommodation. During my stay at
the hotel, I interacted with lots of people I had met for the first time
although I struggled with language as most of them spoke either
Setswana or Sepedi. However, on one lucky day I bumped onto a young
lady who spoke isiXhosa, which is one of the languages that I can speak
very well. At the start of the conversation, I spoke with her in English
thinking that she also spoke either Setswana or Sepedi that I could not
x   Preface

speak very well. As the conversation progressed, it came to light that she
was in a similar situation as me because she couldn’t speak or under-
stand the two local languages. When I asked her whether she could
speak either Setswana or Sepedi, she replied with a rather sarcastic tone
expressing her frustration about being perceived as a foreigner by the
majority of people in Pretoria. This is what she said: ‘No, I don’t speak
any of these languages and I don’t want to speak them because these people
think that we are foreigners when in fact, we are all South Africans.’ The
question here is: How does a black South African person get labelled
as a foreigner by fellow black South Africans? In what ways do the
myths of foreignness, belonging and indigeneity both defy and coincide
with normatively defined nation-state-centric identity imaginings? Is it
still tenable to frame notions of belonging on language-based identity
imaginings inherited from colonial and apartheid social engineering
policies of separate existence and development of each people?
Together, these three stories sowed the seeds that got me thinking
about the ways we talk about each other, and the cultural and politi-
cal discourses we use to describe others. As stories such as these gain
resonance beyond the micro-social settings of local communities and
get expressed and acted upon at national and international levels, their
effects become even more pervasive. I thought of the role of ‘small talk’
in shaping popular thinking about what it means to be an insider or
an outsider in the context of the well-known migration histories across
current national borders. The identity question and the associated
meanings of belonging are even more complex when identity markers
normally reserved for foreigners are sarcastically used to describe locals
who would have transgressed local traditional norms and expectations
about what it means to belong and behave—like an indigene and not
like a foreigner—or those who happen to speak a different language.
Language, Vernacular Discourse and Nationalisms extends these three
stories and uses them as an entry point in reading new meanings into
contemporary identity debates and imaginings at a global scale. The
book addresses key issues and cross-cutting themes around the evolu-
tion of discursive practices, identity narratives and vocabularies of race,
culture, ethnicity and belonging that tend to be framed in ways that
 Preface   xi

contradict popular assumptions about the existence of a transnational

world. It brings to the limelight the social construction of national
identity, which is often seen as a product of political processes. The
argument is that the focus on the political has led to the marginalisation
of the social side of national identity construction.

Armidale, Australia Finex Ndhlovu

 Acknowledgements

The genealogy of my academic interest in language and society ­studies

is relatively short, spanning a period of just over two decades. It was
in the early days of my academic career when, as an undergraduate
student in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the
University of Zimbabwe, I got inspired by professors who taught a
unit that was vaguely titled ‘Language in Social Context’. This was an
elective unit that was not very popular with most fellow students in my
class. However, I found the unit quite fascinating as it was markedly
different from what seemed to be a dry, boring, uninspiring and con-
fusing study of theoretical linguistics—phonetics and phonology, X-bar
theory and so on. In this elective unit, I was introduced for the very
first time to the social, cultural and political dimensions of language
that spoke directly to my experiences with the workings of languages in
education and in society writ large. I still remember very well a l­ecture
on language policy and planning by Prof. Herbert Chimhundu that was
to be the genesis of my long-standing interest in sociolinguistics. To
Prof. Chimhundu, I say thank you so much for being such an inspiring
university teacher because the motivation I got from that one lecture
you gave in the Llewellyn Lecture Theatre became the foundation on

xiii
xiv   Acknowledgements

which I have built my academic career. In those early days, I also had
the good fortune of being taught introductory sociolinguistics by Prof.
Juliet Thondhlana. To Juliet, I also say thank you for those passionate
and well-articulated lectures that still linger vividly in my memory.
In the years that followed my completion of Honours and postgrad-
uate studies, I was appointed to the academic position of lecturer in the
Department of African Languages and Culture at the Midlands State
University (MSU). It was at MSU that my budding academic interests
in language and society studies blossomed as I taught sociolinguistics
units in both the B.A. Honours and B.A. General Degree programmes.
To all my former colleagues and students at MSU, I say thank you for
your collegiality and the challenging questions that we debated together.
Starting from 2005 to the present and, being based in Australia, I have
received tremendous support and mentoring from many senior aca-
demic colleagues: first while at Monash University (where I did my
Ph.D.), then at Victoria University (where I was a postdoctoral research
fellow for three years) and presently at the University of New England
(where I now hold a senior academic position). I am exceedingly grate-
ful to all three institutions for their various research grant schemes and
other forms of academic support that have facilitated the flourishing
of my academic work in language and society studies. To Dr. Sophia
Waters and all my past and current Ph.D. students, thank you for
always asking me about my next book even before the one I am work-
ing on is not yet out. I am especially grateful to the following former
Ph.D. students of mine for challenging my thinking around the issues
discussed in this book: Dr. Thoai Ton, Dr. Jesta Masuku, Dr. Sura Alani
and Dr. Arvind Vijaykumar Iyengar.
To Prof. Lewis Bizo, Head of the School of Behavioural, Cognitive
and Social Sciences at the University of New England, and Assoc. Prof.
Debra Dunstan, Deputy Head of the same School, I say thank you
so much for all your support and encouragement. You both very gen-
erously supported my request to spend four months at the Graduate
Center, City University of New York (CUNY), which enabled me to
finalise the manuscript for this book. I also extend my sincere grati-
tude to the Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) Program at the
CUNY Graduate Center for appointing me to the esteemed position of
 Acknowledgements   xv

Distinguished Visiting Professor. This was an excellent opportunity that

provided a vibrant and collegial intellectual environment that enriched
my research and finalisation of the book manuscript. The office space
with a computer and access to the CUNY intranet and other facili-
ties were invaluable. I would like to thank in particular, Kay Powell
(ARC Fellowship Program Manager), Profs. Don Robothan (Director
of the ARC Fellowship Program), Ofelia García, Tatyna Kleyn, Leketi
Makalela and all other ARC faculty and student fellows for all your sup-
port and the opportunity to network and exchange research ideas.
To my daughter Andiswa, thank you for accompanying me to New
York. It was such a great joy to have you take some time off your main
business of ‘exploring New York City’ and attend seminars with me.
And to the rest of my family—Thembi, Sindiso, Thandi, Zoe and Mylo
(our kelpie who thinks he is human)—I say thank you all for under-
standing that I had to be away from home researching and writing this
book. I hope you will find satisfaction in the pages that follow.
Two of the chapters in this book are greatly revised versions of my
journal articles. I am, therefore, thankful to Taylor and Francis for per-
mission to use the following chapters: Chapter 2 ‘Emergent Political
Languages, Nation Building and Social Cohesion’ (a revised version of
Ndhlovu 2017a) and Chapter 6 ‘Alternative Language of Development
and Economic Empowerment’ (a revised version of Ndhlovu 2017b).
Last but not least, I extend my gratitude to Beth Farrow and the
Production team at Palgrave Macmillan for a job well done.

References
Ndhlovu, F. (2017a). Vernacular Discourse, Emergent Political Languages
and Belonging in Southern Africa. Africa Review, 10(1). [Online version]
https://doi.org/10.1080/09744053.2017.1401783.
Ndhlovu, F. (2017b). Southern Development Discourse for Southern Africa:
Linguistic and Cultural Imperatives. Journal of Multicultural Discourses,
12(2), 89–109.
 Contents

Part I Setting the Scene

1 Introduction—Theories, Concepts, Debates 3

2 Emergent Political Languages, Nation Building, Social

Cohesion 41

Part II Language, Vernacular Discourse, Narrow Nationalisms

3 Language Policy, Vernacular Discourse, Empire Building 65

4 Language, Mobility, People 105

Part III Citizenship, Indigeneity, Economic Empowerment

5 Chimurengas, Indigenisation, Black Economic

Empowerment 135

xvii
xviii   Contents

6 Alternative Language of Development and Economic

Empowerment 207

Part IV Migration, Borders, Exclusion

7 Migration, Integration Discourse, Exclusion 243

8 Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders—A World

Without Others? 291

Part V Conclusion

9 Conclusion—Transnationalism or Resurgent Narrow

Nationalisms? 339

Bibiliography 351

Index 377
 Abbreviations and Acronyms

ABC Australian Broadcasting Services

ACALAN African Academy of Languages
ACCESS Australian Assessment of Communicative English Skills
ACPEA Australian Council on Ethnic and Population Affairs
ALRI African Languages Research Institute
ANC African National Congress
AU African Union
B-BBEE Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment
CDA Critical Discourse Analysis
CLaRA Communal Land Rights Act
COMESA Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa
CPDA Critical Political Discourse Analysis
DACST Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology
DIEA Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs
DRC Democratic Republic of Congo
ELICOS English Language Intensive Course for Overseas Students
ESAP Economic Structural Adjustment Programme
ESB English Speaking Background
ESL English as a Second Language
EU European Union
FET Further Education and Training

xix
xx   Abbreviations and Acronyms

FTLR Fast Track Land Reform Programme

IMF International Monetary Fund
IRA Immigration Restriction Act
KKK Ku Klux Klan
MDC Movement for Democratic Change
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NCPZ National Cultural Policy of Zimbabwe
NESB Non-English Speaking Background
NLPAP National Language Policy Advisory Panel
OAU Organisation of African Unity
OREs Occupations Requiring English
OSB Operation Sovereign Borders
PF-ZAPU Patriotic Front-Zimbabwe African People’s Union
PRC People’s Republic of China
SADC Southern African Development Community
SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations
SBS Special Broadcasting Services
SIEVs Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels
STEP Special Test of English Proficiency
TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
TPVs Temporary Protection Visas
UK United Kingdom
UKIP United Kingdom Independence Party
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
USA United States of America
VCBLs Vehicular Cross-border Languages
WB World Bank
ZANU PF Zimbabwe African Nationalist Union Patriotic Front
ZTV Zimbabwe Television
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Statistics on education, literacy and employment

in South Africa 44
Table 6.1 Cross-border languages of Southern Africa
(Adapted from Elugbe 1998) 228

xxi
 Part I
Setting the Scene
 1
Introduction—Theories,
Concepts, Debates

The things that we supposedly know so foundationally about national

identities, national borders, citizenship, parameters of belonging and
entitlement to social and economic benefits of the welfare state, trans-
nationalism and associated meta-languages are not as straightforward
as they seem to be. We are told and believe that the world has become
more and more transnational and interconnected than ever before. We
are also told that societies have become superdiverse—that suppos-
edly unprecedented and unpredictable form of diversity that is per-
ceived to be an outflow of contemporary trends in migration where
people are moving from many places, to many places, through many
places (Vertovec 2007). But in the midst of all this are deep-seated sen-
timents—loud and muted, formal and informal—for narrow, paro-
chial, inward-looking, autochthonous and nation-state-centric narratives
and imaginings of identity and belonging. How do we explain the ten-
sions and contradictions that emerge out of this situation? Language,
Vernacular Discourse and Nationalisms seeks to address this and many
other related questions. It examines linguistic and discursive elements
of social and economic policies and national political leader statements
as an entry point in reading new meanings into current topical debates
on border protection, national sovereignty, immigration, economic
© The Author(s) 2018 3
F. Ndhlovu, Language, Vernacular Discourse and Nationalisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76135-0_1
4   F. Ndhlovu

indigenisation, land reform and black economic empowerment. The

book is a critique of resurgent nationalism-speak that mediates social
and economic policy debates in a world that is otherwise considered to
be transnational and interconnected. It tells the story of tensions and
contradictions between formal policy enunciations on transnation-
alism on the one hand and vernacular expressions of the same on the
other, as they are articulated at the level of the nation-state. The book
adopts the novel yet rarely used vernacular discourse approach to con-
tribute new points of method and interpretation that help us see what
we couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see before in scholarly conversations on
nationalisms, transnationalism and other forms of identity imaginings
in a transient world. The framework of vernacular discourse is leveraged
to unpack and understand political communication in the reproduction
of political power, or domination through political discourse, including
the various forms of resistance or counter-power against such forms of
discursive dominance. In particular, the analysis deals with the discur-
sive conditions and consequences of social and political inequality that
result from the strategic use of language by political elites, bureaucrats
and other political actors, both state and non-state. Case studies include
Australia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, with some passing remarks on
other comparable countries around the world.
Since the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to end the thir-
ty-year war among major European continental states—Holy Roman
Empire, Spain, France, Sweden and the Dutch Republic—the modern
world system has largely been a world of sovereign nation-states. The
nation-state remains as the most enduring instrument of social and
political closure. In the midst of other emerging units of analysis that
are much bigger and broader, such as regionalism, globalisation and
transnationalism, the nation-state appears to have mutated and taken
new forms that are different from what obtained during the golden age
of nationalism (1950s–1960s). During the golden age of nationalism,
recognition of autonomous nation-states was a major rallying point
for anti-colonial nationalist liberation movements in Africa, Asia and
other regions of the Global South. The nationalist movements were
pushing for political independence and self-determination in those ter-
ritories that were still under European colonial occupation. However,
 1 Introduction—Theories, Concepts, Debates    
5

while the nation-state could have been rightfully typified as a container

in the 1950s–1960s, its present-day iteration sits rather uneasily within
a world system that is now largely governed by the dictates of greater
social, political, economic and cultural cooperation that are somewhat
transnational in outlook. The nation-state is now under immense pres-
sure both from below and from above. From below, the hegemony of
the nation-state is being challenged by the increasing discontent and
dissention of minority groups while forces of globalisation and trans-
national human population movements constitute a potent threat from
above. It suffices to say notwithstanding these challenges posed by both
local and translocal developments that are tied to forces of transnation-
alism and globalisation, the political significance of the nation-state
seems to still remain relevant—but with its borders reconfigured, taking
at least the following three forms.
First, nation-states retain clearly delineated physical borders that
demarcate parameters of territorial rule, sovereignty, monopoly on the
use of force and ‘collectivisation of social risks by means of a state-­
sponsored welfare system’ (Mau 2012: 7). This iteration of the nation-
state does not depart that much from the foundational characteristic
of the nation as ‘container’. The second mutation of the contemporary
nation-state is one that relies heavily on citizenship as an instrument of
social closure. This is not about whether one resides within or without
the clearly demarcated physical borders of the nation-state. Rather, it
has more to do with what Halfmann (1998, cited in Mau 2012: 8) calls
the ‘civil inclusionary exclusivity’ acquired by the nation-state. This is
about how the nation-state is still able to control the inclusion—and
by extension, the exclusion—of people in various functional systems.
Regardless of their close connection to the geographical space known
as the nation-state, diverse groups of people can be treated differently
according to whether they are citizens or not. In this context ‘special
rules [may] apply to those persons not citizens of the state in which they
live, rules that regulate the length and status of residence as well as the
rights associated with their residence’ (Mau 2012: 8).
Third, the nation-state remains in symbolic and performative terms
that reflect what some scholars have described as ‘vanishing borders’
and ‘borderless’ or ‘seamless’ worlds (French 2000; Krugman and
6   F. Ndhlovu

Venables 1995; Ohmae 1990). In other words, the prime markers of

belonging to a particular nation-state now have less to do with the phys-
ically bounded container territory and more to do with the symbolic—
the national identity documents we carry, the national cuisine that we
believe defines us, the national dress code that we associate with, the
national day(s) we celebrate and so on. This is about nationalisms of the
mind whereby the idea of belonging to a particular nation-state thrives
in the hearts and minds of individuals and groups alike—regardless
of where those groups and individuals reside physically. Their loyalties
and allegiances are to the nation-state inscribed in their minds, and
the way they are treated by the governing authorities of other nation-
states is largely determined by the travel and identity documents they
carry. So, in the era in which ‘more people are now moving from more
places, through more places, to more places’ (Vertovec 2010: 86), the
nation-state has assumed a different kind of a container—one where
temporalities of closure, inclusion and exclusion coexist within highly
mobile individuals. In other words, though we may not necessarily be
physically located in the nation-states of our citizenship or nationality,
those nation-states still play a significant role in how we live our lives
because we carry them wherever we go. Thus, in its decentralised form,
the nation-state ‘crosses nation-state boundaries, penetrates and is real-
ised in the daily activities of people’ (Albrow 1996: 172).
What is of greater significance here is that in all three reconfigu-
rations, nation-states still retain a double process of closure. That is,
nation-states continue to be characterised by closure of the geographic
space through border controls and closure of the social and political
space for membership through the control of nationality, citizenship and
access to social security and other protections by the state. These two
forms of closure are mutually constitutive: on the one hand, controls of
human population movements into and from a nation-state serve as an
external casing that regulates access to territories. On the other hand,
this casing is embedded with the space of social and political member-
ship through which access to welfare services is managed (Mau 2012).
This essentially means the boundaries of the nation-state have not yet
disappeared and are most likely not going to disappear any time soon.
 1 Introduction—Theories, Concepts, Debates    
7

Today, the boundaries of the nation-state are ubiquitous, temporal and

continue to be drawn everywhere. They are no longer only physical, but
are also largely symbolic, performative and invisible and yet still remain
real with their impacts and significance felt everywhere, by all of us.
While the physical border as the only imaginary of nation-state’s sphere
of influence has to some extent receded, it still contains several attributes
of its former self. Traditional attributes of the nation-state such as auton-
omy, self-determination, territorial integrity and non-interference from
other nation-states still remain. Thus, though the previously presumed
congruence between nation-state and society is on the wane and increas-
ingly becoming unpopular, nation-states continue to have the decisive
voice about membership of societies bounded by their borders—no
matter how porous and fluid the borders might be. Nation-states are
not necessarily assuming a new role. Rather, their role has been trans-
formed, reconfigured and expanded beyond the traditional architecture
of a bounded container.

Previous Theorisations
Nearly half a century ago, John W. Barton wrote about dominant per-
spectives on the configuration of the world and implications for the
paths we follow in seeking solutions to world problems.

Which is the more representative model of the world–the world of con-

tinents, islands and states or the world of transactions? If we adopt the
nation-state we will use the language of relations between states and their
relevant power, and have one set of solutions to the problems of conflict
and world organisation. If we adopt the transaction one, we will use a
different language to describe the world society, and have a different set of
solutions to world problems. (John W. Burton 1972: 43)

Persistent changes in the phenomenology of the nation-state (that is no

longer only spatial and physical) are somewhat of a response to social,
cultural, economic and political transformations taking place in the
8   F. Ndhlovu

postmodern world system. Key among these developments are several

complex societal challenges associated with the surge in the mobility
of people, goods, services and capital within and across national bor-
ders. Consequently, we have witnessed the burgeoning of conceptual
approaches seeking to clarify previously unseen tendencies towards
ethno-nationalist and autochthonous sentiment even in those coun-
tries that are generally typified as liberal democracies. Scholars across
the humanities and social sciences have tried to capture the nature of
these unpredictable developments using various summary terms that
are now widely used in mainstream academic conversations and social
policy frameworks. Some such theoretical paradigms include notions of
globalisation, denationalisation, deterritorialisation, postnationalisation
and, more recently, transnationalisation. What unites all these explana-
tory paradigms is that they are couched in a language that betrays imag-
inings of contemporary identities as reified, inflexible and tied to the
now increasingly problematic notion of nationality (in singular terms).
In the remaining paragraphs of this section, I explicate the meanings
and applications of each of these terms as they are understood in pre-
vious research reports. I also show their omissions and blind spots in
greater detail. This is followed by a discussion on how the concept of
vernacular discourse advanced in this book departs from these main-
stream traditional theorisations in ways that take the debate into a new
and innovative direction that draws our attention to mundane everyday
small talk of both political elites and ordinary people.

Post Nationalisation

Pioneered by Yasemin Nuhoğlu Soysal, the postnational model of mem-

bership posits that in transnational or regionalised contexts ‘the rights
and the claims of individuals are legitimated by ideologies grounded in
a transnational community, through international codes, conventions
and laws on human rights, independent of their citizenship in a nation-
state’ (Soysal 1994: 142). In postnational membership, Soysal (1994)
challenges the predominant assumption, both scholarly and popular,
 1 Introduction—Theories, Concepts, Debates    
9

that the actions and decisions of the nation-state are the ultimate imper-
ative to regional and transnational engagement. Unlike the classical
model of national identity, which is anchored in territorialised notions
of cultural belonging, the postnational model is an open one that
emphasises fluid and deterritorialised modes of identity and belong-
ing. Thus, from the perspective of the postnational model, national
belonging does not mean containment within geographical confines
of the nation-state in question. Instead, it is about a geographical area
being open to multiple possibilities of trade, social networking and eco-
nomic and cultural exchanges with other players at national, regional
and international levels. Under the postnational model of membership,
the intensification and connectedness of national, regional and global
systems do not necessarily signal that nation-states are organisationally
irrelevant or that their formal sovereignty is questioned (Soysal 1994).
Rather, the point is this: nation-states remain as authorised actors that
function concurrently with regional and international structures of
organising membership, participation and rules of social, cultural, eco-
nomic and political engagement.
Overall, the notion of post nationalism constitutes the foundation
for subsequent theorisations about the present world system whereby
the notion of the nation-state as container is challenged. The usefulness
of seeing the nation-state as the unit of social and political analysis is
problematised because, as Anthony Giddens (1990) observed, virtually
no pre-modern societies were clearly bounded as modern nation-states.
The proliferation of transboundary dynamics and formation has meant
that the thesis on the nation as container category is now untenable and
inadequate—both conceptually and methodologically (Taylor 1996;
Sassen 2003). This means the popular habit of seeing the world through
the lenses of the nation-state is flawed due to the coalescence of mul-
tiple structurations of the global and the local inside a space that has
historically been understood as the national. While nation-state as con-
tainers are thick-walled with their societies perceived as relatively homo-
geneous and isolated from each other (Mau 2012: 7), the reality that
obtains in the atoms of society is quite different.
10   F. Ndhlovu

Globalisation

The term globalisation is among the most mundane concepts that

have come to be associated with the twenty-first-century world system.
Though there are numerable competing interpretations and understand-
ings of how far back we should go in tracing the roots of ‘globalisation’,
there is general consensus on the impact it has in the way we live our
lives today. One thing worth noting from the onset is the root of the
word ‘globalisation’, which derives from ‘global’, thus referring to some-
thing ‘concerned with the whole world, something related to, covering
or influencing the world taken as a whole’ (Elden 2005: 9). A generally
accepted understanding of this concept is one provided by Held et al.
(1999: 16) who define globalisation as a:

Process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spa-

tial organisation of social relations and transactions – assessed in terms of
extensity, intensity, velocity and impact – generating transcontinental or
interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction, and the exercise
of power.

Steffen Mau (2012) simplifies this somewhat loaded definition by relat-

ing the notion of globalisation to the declining significance and influ-
ence of the nation-state as a unit of social and political analysis. He
characterises globalisation as ‘worldwide process of economic, social,
and cultural internationalisation that dilutes the significance of nation-
state borders and [that] leads to an (almost unlimited) expansion of
spaces of action’ (p. 11). Mau cites the work of Albrow (1996) to elab-
orate this definition even further: ‘globalisation is the process whereby
the population of the world is increasingly bound into a single society’
(Mau 2012: 11). For Saskia Sassen (2003), the term globalisation cap-
tures two distinct sets of dynamics. The first involves the formation of
explicitly global institutions and processes—World Trade Organisation,
World Bank, International Monetary Fund, War Crimes Tribunals and
so on. The second is a set of local processes that does not necessarily
scale at the global level as such but still constitutes part of globalisa-
tion. Some such processes include localised national, subnational and
 1 Introduction—Theories, Concepts, Debates    
11

regional cross-border social and economic networks and activities ‘with

an explicit or implicit global agenda, as is the case with many human
rights and environmental organisations’ (Sassen 2003: 2). This is essen-
tially about practices that constitute the global and yet are taking place
at a level that is traditionally conceived as the domain of the national
scale.
Amin (1997: 133) interprets globalisation in relational terms as
‘the interdependence and intermingling of global, distant and local
layers, resulting in the greater hybridisation and perforation of social,
economic and political life’. This suggests the rise of what Krükan
and Drori (2009) call a ‘world society’. The notion of ‘world society’
is shorthand for how Western principles and habits of modernity are
exported to the rest of the world through processes that normatively
replicate corresponding standardisations of cultural practices, values,
economic models, institutions and so on. In short, when taken on its
face value, globalisation is about the emergence of a new world order
that is characterised by equality among all—with shared cultural ­values,
dreams, visions and aspirations about how to live life and live it well.
But a critical look at this concept would indicate that this idealistic
notion of globalisation does, in fact, hide a lot more than it reveals.
The rather uncritical and almost cultic embrace of the concept of
‘globalisation’ and its associated metalanguage of ‘global village’ is prob-
lematic and untenable. Some crucial questions remain unanswered: As
every village has a village head, who is the head of the global village?
And, as every village has a language for conducting its affairs, which lan-
guage is the language of the global village? Any person who grew up or
lived in a village for a reasonable amount of time will know that not
all villages—whether big or small—are democratic and inclusive of the
views of all members of the village community. Most village heads are
never democratic as they often rule with an iron fist usually surrounded
by an equally autocratic palaver of mostly male securocrats. This way of
running the affairs of the village is deliberately designed to give a sem-
blance of rule by consensus while simultaneously concealing the author-
itarian nature of the village system (Ndhlovu 2014). Furthermore, while
every local village might have several languages, it is often the case that
the language of the village head and those within the inner circle of the
12   F. Ndhlovu

political establishment is the one that is the medium for conducting

official business of the village. Tariq Ramadan (2011) has weighed in on
the hypocrisy of the village metaphor:

The global world is a village, they say, yet this village currently appears to
be populated by heedless villagers who ignore their own identity as much
as the identity of their neighbours. Instead of a confident celebration of
our riches, such a situation can only lead to timid, fearful, latent conflicts.
(Ramadan 2011: 20)

Ramadan extends his argument further, noting that ‘life in the ‘global
village’, which is increasingly marked by individualism, has even led
us to doubt that there remain any traces of philosophy behind the cal-
culation of our drives for power and of our respective interests’ (ibid.,
p. 21). The significant point here is that the discourses and metaphors
that underpin the notion of globalisation (and other postmodernist the-
oretical frameworks) are fraught with numerous inadequacies. The idea
that the global world is some kind of a village gives the false impres-
sion that villages are populated by fully engaged villagers who actively
participate in the everyday affairs of their village and who do so in the
interests of their fellow villagers. As Ramadan (2011) clearly argues, this
is simply not true; the majority of people in small local villages (and
by extension members of the global village) are passive, disengaged,
non-proactive and above all driven by self-interest in whatever they do.
Both the local and global villages are also spaces dominated and con-
trolled by a few hegemonic elite who propagate and cultivate normative
linguistic and cultural values that are subsequently imposed on every
other member of the village under the guise of universalism and/or
social cohesion. Therefore, by drawing on the metaphor of the village to
describe issues of culture and identity in contemporary society, the con-
cept of globalisation gives a false sense of equality among world cultures
and a misleading impression that all cultures and identities are recog-
nised as integral part of the so-called global village. What the champi-
ons of globalisation fail to reveal is the fact that beneath this thin veneer
of horizontal global cultural and identity comradeship lie simmering
tensions and multiple forms of both spoken and unspoken or symbolic
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 Rectangular Opening to Use over Camera View
Finder

The Rectangular Opening Allows Only That Portion of the View to be Seen
Which will Show on the Picture

Ordinary view finders on cameras, having the cut-out in the shape

of a Maltese cross, are quite confusing to some camera users. To
overcome this difficulty, I cut a piece of celluloid to the shape shown,
and in taking a picture, the proper opening is held over the view
finder so that only the view that will appear in the picture can be
seen.—Contributed by E. Everett Buchanan, Elmira, N. Y.
 Clipping File Made of Envelopes

The Flaps Hold All the Envelopes Together, Producing a File of Several
Compartments

Handy pockets for holding notes, or small articles, may be made

by anyone from ordinary envelopes. The gummed flaps of the
envelopes are stuck together after spacing the envelopes to allow a
small margin at the end on which the contents of each separate
pocket may be written.—Contributed by H. Goodacre, Wolcott, Ind.
 Handle for a Drinking Glass
Measure the bottom part of the glass and make a band of copper
that will neatly fit it. The ends of the copper can be riveted, but if a
neat job is desired, flatten or file the copper ends on a slant, and
braze or solder them together.

Attach to the band an upright copper piece a little longer than the
glass is high. To this upright piece a bent piece of copper to form a
handle is riveted or soldered. The glass is set in the band and the
upper end of the vertical piece is bent over the glass edge.—
Contributed by William King, Monessen, Pa.

¶A simple and handy pincushion can be made of a large cork

fastened to any support or base with a nail or screw.
 Combination Camp-Kitchen Cabinet
and Table
By J. D. BOYLAN

Thebeing
combination camp-kitchen cabinet and table is the result of not
able to take the members of my family on an outing unless
they could have some home conveniences on the trip, and perhaps
the sketch and description may help solve the same problem for
others. The table will accommodate four persons comfortably, and
extra compartments may be added if desired. The cabinet, when
closed, is strong and compact, and if well made with a snug-fitting
cover, is bug-proof, and the contents will not be injured greatly, even
though drenched by rain or a mishap in a craft.
 This Outfit Provides Accommodations for Four Persons, and Folds
Compactly

For coffee, tea, sugar, salt, etc., I used small screw-top glass jars.
They are set in pocket shelves at both ends. When closed, one can
sit on the box or even walk on it if necessary when in the boat, and if
an armful or two of coarse marsh grass is spread over it, the
contents will keep quite cool, even when out in the hot sun. When
open for use, the metal table top F is supported on metal straps, E,
which also act as braces and supports for the table leaf, G, on each
side of the box. This affords plenty of table surface and one can
easily get at the contents of the cabinet while cooking or eating. The
legs, D, are stored inside of the box when closed for traveling. They
are held in place under metal straps when in use, and held at their
upper ends by the metal plate and blocks, B and C. The bent metal
pieces, A, on the ends of the top, spring over the blocks at B and C,
and form the handles.
 A Homemade Life Buoy
A serviceable circular life buoy may be made by sewing together
rings of canvas, filling the resulting form with ground cork, and
waterproofing the covering. Cut two disks of canvas about 30 in. in
diameter, and cut out a circular portion from the center of each,
about 12 in. in diameter. Sew the pieces together at their edges,
leaving a small opening at a point on the outer edge. Fill the cover
with cork used in packing grapes, and sew up the opening. Paint the
buoy thoroughly, with white lead, and attach hand grips of rope.
 Locking Device for Latch Hook on Gate or Door

The troublesome opening of a latch hook on a gate or door,

permitting intruders to enter or possibly injuring the door in the wind,
can be easily overcome by fitting a small catch over the hook, as
indicated in the sketch. The U-shaped locking device is cut from a
piece of tin, and fastened on the screw over which the hook is set.
When locked, it is pushed back over the head of the hook, and
cannot be easily jarred out of place.
 A Vanishing-Cuff Parlor Trick
A trick which is interesting and amusing for the entertainment of
the home audience, is performed with a derby hat and a gentleman’s
cuff. The effect is produced as follows: The performer takes the
derby from his head and shows that it is empty. He removes one of
his cuffs and drops it into the hat. He tips the hat over so that the
spectators can see the inside, and the hat appears empty. He then
shakes his arm, and the white cuff reappears, whereupon he places
the hat back on his head. The explanation is simple: The white cuff,
dropped into the hat, contains a false cuff link, and the inside of the
cuff is painted black. A thread holds the cuff in shape until the latter
is dropped into the hat, when the thread is broken without the
spectators being aware of it. The cuff just fits into the hat, and its
ends are deftly snapped beneath the hatband, the hat thus
appearing empty. The duplicate cuff is kept on the forearm of the
performer, and with a shake, slides into place.—Merritt Hale,
Hartford, Conn.

¶A little fresh developer added occasionally to old developing

solutions will bring them up in speed and intensity.
Inexpensive Table Lamp Made of Electrical-
Fixture Parts
 A small table lamp that is light and easily portable, can be made at
a cost of less than $1 from electrical-fixture parts, either old or
purchased at a supply store for the job. The base is a bracket, with
its brass canopy inverted, as shown. The upright is a ¹⁄₈-in. brass
pipe, and it is fitted to a standard socket. The shade holder can be
made complete from a strip of tin and two wires; or adapted from a
commercial shade holder used for candlesticks. Various types of
shades, homemade if desired, can be used.
 Wire Holders Keep Cabinet Doors Open

Doors of cabinets often have an annoying tendency to swing shut

when articles are being removed from the shelves. To overcome this
trouble with a kitchen cabinet, I fitted brackets of No. 9 gauge wire
into the sides of the cabinet, the wire being bent to the shape shown
in the sketch. When the doors are to be held open, the wires are slid
forward from their original position, as indicated by the dotted lines,
and set in front of the doors. Before the doors are closed, the wires
are quickly snapped back into place.—A. S. Thomas, Amherstburg,
Ont., Canada.
 “Switchboard” Protects Milker from Cow’s Tail

The Legend Put On the “Switchboard” by the Boys Shows How They Value It
 A simple and effective device for guarding a person milking a cow
from being hit in the face by the cow’s tail is made of a board, about
10 in. wide and 5 ft. long. This is hung by two wire hooks from a long
wire running lengthwise of the stable just over the front edge of the
gutter. It is moved along with the milker and effectually protects his
face while milking. The device was made by a Wisconsin farmer
after nearly losing the sight of an eye in being hit by a cow’s tail. He
tried tying the tails of the cows while milking them, but found by
actual test that some cows dropped down as much as 25 per cent in
milk production when their tails were tied. The “switchboard” gives
the cows the necessary freedom.—D. S. B., Wisconsin Live Stock
Breeders’ Association.
 Reflected-Light Illumination with Homemade
Arrangement
“Friend wife” does not complain any longer because of poor light
over the kitchen stove. The windows in the kitchen were so disposed
that the light was partly shut off from the stove by the person
standing before it. I solved the difficulty in this way: A small window
was cut directly back of the stove, in a partition between the kitchen
and an adjoining storeroom, locating it just a few inches above the
top of the stove. A mirror was placed, after some experimenting, so
that the light from an outside window in the storeroom was reflected
through the small window in the partition and onto the top of the
stove. Plenty of light was thus afforded. Various adaptations of this
arrangement may be worked out.—F. E. Brimmer, Dalton, N. Y.
 Bedroom Shade and Curtains Arranged for
Thorough Ventilation

This Arrangement of Curtains and Shade Permits Through Ventilation in the

Sleeping Room

Curtains, shades, and similar fixtures, often interfere with the

proper ventilation of sleeping rooms. By arranging these features as
shown in the sketch, the ventilation is not interfered with, and the
shades and curtains give the same service as with the usual
arrangement. The curtains are hung singly on hinged bars, which
may be homemade or those used as towel bars. Details of the
supports, at A and B, are shown in the sketch. Two pairs of fixtures
are provided for the shade, permitting it to be lowered at night, with
free circulation of the air at the top and bottom. The shade is quickly
raised, and the curtains swung into their closed position.—J. E.
McCoy, Philadelphia, Pa.