ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author considers how one might approach the apparently singular figure of Nontsizi Mgqwetho, a Xhosa woman who produced an extraordinary series of Christian izibongo in newspapers in the 1920s: through what kind of language. Kwok Pui-lan’s exposition of a specifically postcolonial feminist interpretation of the Bible might also provide a model. ‘A postcolonial feminist interpretation of the Bible needs to investigate the deployment of the gender in the narration of identity, the negotiation of power differentials between the colonizers and the colonized, and the reinforcement of patriarchal control over spheres where these elites could exercise control’. Ntsikana is invoked by Mgqwetho in relation to prophecy and her own voice is powerfully prophetic. In a poem produced towards the end of 1924, Mgqwetho links Ntsikana with Isaiah, and the two prophets seem to hold the same status.
