ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to simply look at how Chaka’s myth reveals both strengths and weaknesses that either embrace or reject Pan-Africanism. It attempts to examine Chaka’s legend as one of the narratives that can be compared with the Malian Epic of Sundiata Keita that was popularized with the publication of Djibril Tamsir Niane’s 1965 version of the story. This comparison shows that both Chaka’s and Sundiata’s epics focus on the incredible and supernatural journeys of heroes and heroines who are compelled to leave their land of birth and forcefully go to foreign nations in search of survival and substance, and return home to claim their rightful place in a society that had shunned them before. The chapter contributes to the aforementioned conversations by exploring the roots of literary Pan-Africanism in the epics of Chaka and Sundiata. These narratives represent the two respective heroes’ personifications or disembodiments of Pan-Africanism through their life cycles and relationships with their particular families and kingdom.
