WRITING IN PRACTICE VOL 11

ABSTRACT
Before the introduction of books, radio, and film through colonisation, folklore functioned as a vital form of home-schooling for the indigenous people of Zimbabwe. When creative writing in Zimbabwean indigenous languages began, the first Shona novel, Feso (1956), was widely regarded as a written folktale. Forty-three years later, in 1999, the author’s debut Shona novel, Mapenzi, also bore the strong imprint of folklore. This autoethnographic paper reflects on the enduring influence of oral storytelling during Zimbabwe’s transition from a traditional to a modern society under British colonial rule, and examines how this oral tradition shaped the author’s creative writing career in a context that lacked – and continues to lack – formal writing schools. 

Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s theory of the “third space,” the paper explores storytelling as a powerful tool for education, cultural preservation, language development, and creative expression. It concludes by advocating for the revival of Zimbabwe’s storytelling heritage, not merely as a means of transmitting traditional knowledge, but as a platform for co-creation – one that fosters the emergence of new, hybrid identities and bodies of knowledge.

KEYWORDS

English, Shona, Folklore, Colonization, Co-creation, Storytelling, Knowledge, Identity, Decolonial, Pedagogies, Autoethnography.

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE
Mabasa, Ignatius. (2025) The Black Man Cannot Write: Storytelling is My Other Mother
by Ignatius Mabasa. Writing in Practice. 11  DOI: 10.62959/WIP-11-2025-06