Professor Hove introduces decolonial lens for reading Southern African literature
The publication – titled Rereading Chenjerai Hove Rupture and Suture in Zimbabwean Literature – challenges approaches that rely heavily on Western literary theories to interpret African texts and instead proposes a framework grounded in African realities, languages and cultural experiences.
Black News 
For decades, African literature has often been interpreted through theories developed outside the continent.
Prof. Muchativugwa Liberty Hove wants to change that now through a new book published by Routledge that places southern African experiences, histories and indigenous knowledge systems at the centre of literary analysis.
Prof. Hove from the School of Language Education (SLE) at the North-West University (NWU) and an established (C2) National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated researcher, has introduced what he describes as a decolonial theoretical lens for reading southern African literature.
The publication – titled Rereading Chenjerai Hove Rupture and Suture in Zimbabwean Literature – challenges approaches that rely heavily on Western literary theories to interpret African texts and instead proposes a framework grounded in African realities, languages and cultural experiences.
“The development of a new theoretical, decolonial lens for reading southern African literature is the greatest of my academic labours,” says Prof. Hove.
He says the book seeks to reposition African literature within frameworks that recognise local histories, oral traditions and indigenous systems of knowledge that have often been sidelined in mainstream literary criticism.
According to the opening chapter, the publication argues that literary scholarship in Africa must move beyond Eurocentric assumptions that continue to shape teaching, research and interpretation at universities and academic institutions.
Prof. Hove says the work forms part of wider debates on decolonisation in higher education and the humanities.
“We cannot continue to read African texts only through borrowed frameworks that do not fully speak to African realities and lived experiences,” he says.
“There is a need to foreground African perspectives in literary interpretation.”
The book also contributes to ongoing conversations about curriculum transformation at African universities, where scholars are increasingly calling for knowledge systems rooted in the intellectual traditions of the continent.
Prof. Hove says the publication was written for literary scholars, postgraduate students and researchers interested in African literature, decoloniality and cultural representation.
The work positions southern African literature not as material to be explained through external theories, but as a body of knowledge capable of producing its own theoretical approaches and critical traditions.
The publication adds to a growing body of scholarship aimed at reshaping how African literature is taught and theorised globally, while expanding the place of indigenous perspectives within academic discourse.
