Earlier this month, the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre (TCC) was established as a Research Unit in the School of Literature, Language and Media at the University of the Witwatersrand. Building on a significant but often-neglected history of translating Shakespeare’s plays into South African languages, the TCC seeks to promote scholarship, teaching and performance that engages with Shakespeare as a multilingual phenomenon. This focus is complemented by an emphasis on transnationalism: understanding Shakespearean histories and contemporary practices in different national contexts by situating Shakespeare outside of limited ‘English’ paradigms (and vice versa).
William Tsikinya-Chaka?
The Centre takes its name from Solomon T. Plaatje’s contribution to the 1916 Book of Homage to Shakespeare. Plaatje – a political activist, journalist, historian, novelist and linguist – is recognised as producing the first published translations of Shakespeare’s plays into an African language. As Plaatje himself noted, however, he was working within an already established practice of translating Shakespeare: he cites the reference of a Motswana court chieftain to “William Tsikinya-Chaka”, or “William Shake-the-Sword” (a Setswana translation, Plaatje tells us, that is “perhaps more free than literal”). The Book of Homage is, of course, bound up in British colonialism and in competing European nationalisms.
Yet it is also a significant manifestation of ‘global Shakespeare’ and of multilingual Shakespeares – arguably even foreshadowing the advent of postcolonial Shakespeares. Its paradoxes, and those of a figure like Sol Plaatje, remind us to approach multilingualism and transnationalism in Shakespeare studies with critical rigour.
Vision and mission
The Tsikinya-Chaka Centre will support researchers, teachers and arts practitioners whose work is informed by historical and/or contemporary translation, adaptation and appropriation beyond the narrow national and linguistic confines of ‘English’ Shakespeare. It will advocate for the consideration of these histories and current practices as key factors in arguments for and against Shakespeare’s presence on educational curricula at secondary and tertiary level, and in discussions about pedagogy – how Shakespeare is taught (if he is to be taught), and indeed what is taught with or through Shakespeare. The Centre will emphasise and promote Shakespeare in performance. It will also seek to digitise and curate textual archives of Shakespeare in translation.
In an era of closing borders and the ongoing threat of chauvinistic ethno-nationalism in many countries around the world, it is more urgent than ever to find ways of affirming transnational (‘global’) connections without dismissing the nuances of national (‘local’) contexts. A focus on language, translation and translanguaging via Shakespeare is one means of doing so. This multilingual emphasis also mitigates against the colonial biases infused into the notion of a ‘universal’ Shakespeare. To study Shakespeare as a global figure is to undertake a sustained confrontation with racism, elitism and even jingoism – both in the imperial processes of the last four centuries and in our contemporary moment.
The TCC is committed to:
Producing innovative research at the intersection of Shakespeare, transnationalism and multilingualism
Establishing connections between Wits and other South African universities
Partnering with institutions and with scholars internationally
Promoting multilingualism and translanguaging in teaching at schools and universities, as well as in Shakespearean performance
Facilitating transnational exchange and cooperation between performing artists and scholars
Supervising and teaching postgraduate students
Seeking to inform education and arts policy development
Maintaining a programme of public events and publication in non-specialist platforms to raise the profile of the research and practice undertaken by the TCC and its affiliates.