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PhD student receives Timothy Dow Adams Award
Author: Lynne Rippenaar-Moses
Published: 26/07/2016

Nick Mdika Tembo, a PhD candidate in English Department at Stellenbosch University (SU), is this year's co-recipient of the Timothy Dow Adams Award along with two other recipients, Fethiye Çetin and Orly Lael Netzer.

The prize was awarded to him at the Tenth IABA World Conference at the University of Cyprus, which ran from 26-29 May 2016. The award is made in honour of Timothy Dow Adams, one of the founding editors of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies journal, which is owned by The Autobiography Society and is part of the Routledge Literature Portfolio of journals.

Prof Ricia Anne Chansky presented the award to Tembo on behalf of the editors of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, in anticipation of his paper Writing the Self, Writing Human Rights Violations in Two Post-1994 Rwandan Testimonios. The paper will appear in the next issue of the journal. Besides the award, Tembo and Netzer were given monetary support to cover their expenses at the conference, and an essay mentorship with the journal editors.

While at the conference, Tembo presented sections of the paper to delegates in attendance.

"Soon after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) is alleged to have carried out what the draft UN High Commissioner for Human Rights report suspects to be 'systematic, methodological and premeditated attacks against the Hutus' in eastern Zaïre (now the Democratic Republic of Congo)," explains Tembo as he reflects on his paper and his doctoral research in general.

"These widespread attacks 'reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterised as crimes of genocide.' The basis of the report is the more than 200,000 refugees, most of them Hutu, who were either unaccounted for or perished on Zaïrean soil, especially between October 1996 and September 1997. Although not discussed in the same breath as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, these pogroms are quite fresh in the minds of so many Rwandans today. There are then many compelling reasons for examining testimonios that mourn and memorialise this 'major human event that is rarely discussed or even acknowledged' in most post-1994 discourses on Rwanda."

His paper, he says, drew on key debates on literary representations of truth and reconciliation, and examined Marie Béatrice Umutesi's Surviving the Slaughter (2004) and Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga's Dying to Live (2012) as narratives that destabilise and deconstruct the claim of genocide in Rwanda today.

"To illustrate the ideological purpose at work in the two narratives, I anchored my paper on three interrelated concepts – Michel Foucault's notions of parrhesia, (the concept of speaking truth to power), John Beverley's theorisations on testimonio, and Judith Butler's work on violence and mourning – as interpretive frameworks for understanding how the authors contest genocide memories in Rwanda."

Tembo was also one of the panellists for the Round Table Refugee Life Writing at the conference, a session that brought together various academics to share ideas, experiences and projects that involve stories of escape and migration.

Back home, Tembo is once again focusing on his research which looks at the  representations of trauma in selected East African fiction and life writings on civil wars.

"Since the mid-twentieth century, most countries of East Africa have experienced a spate of armed conflicts often leading either to civil or interstate wars. My research offers a critical study and analysis of the specificity of civil war traumas and the narrative representations of these traumas in fiction and life-writings that emerge from countries such as Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.

"In what ways do survivor testimonies as well as imagined narratives of pain and suffering interrogate social crises and how do representations of these experiences function in contexts of conflict and their aftermath? How do they retrieve, relieve and re-evaluate contexts of violent crisis and displacement and their continuities in East Africa today? What do they tell us about the place of East Africa in the world, and about the nature of East African literature of civil wars and/or armed conflicts? And lastly, how – and to what extent – do the texts articulate the notion of those displaced by the violent conflicts as traumatised subjects? These are some of the broader questions I explore in my project,' explains Tembo, who teaches in the Department of English at Chancellor College at the University of Malawi.

Since starting his PhD via the Graduate School in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at SU in 2014, Tembo has been invited to speak about his research at three other international conferences.

While he specialises in teaching African and European Literature in the University of Malawi, Tembo decided to expand his research interests by focusing on trauma studies for his doctoral degree. "Like most colleagues back home, I wanted to conduct an interdisciplinary research. I thought an interface between literature and history, politics, psychology and the medical humanities would provide interesting results. I believe the field of trauma studies will help me get there, as well as understand how different disciplines dialogue with each other."

Tembo is analysing 12 texts that evoke civil war traumas. Asked about how he has experienced the process of reading such painful testimonies, he says: "When I read about these narratives, especially the memoirs and autobiographies, the first thought that comes to my mind is: 'how can a human being do this to another'? This cannot be mere stories, something must be horribly wrong somewhere. The more you read these texts, the more you start asking yourself 'where have we failed as human beings'? So my focus is on what is going on in our society and what it is that we should be doing differently so that our societies are better places to be.'

He hopes his own success is not only a testament that hard work pays off, but that this will inspire other postgraduate students in the faculty.

"I thank God for letting my light shine. I'd also like to thank my mentors in the English Department at Stellenbosch University, especially Prof Grace Musila, Prof Annie Gagiano, Dr Tilla Slabbert, Prof Sally-Ann Murray, Prof Louisie Green, Prof Tina Steiner and Dr Kylie Thomas. These are friendly, selfless and academically engaging senior colleagues who always renew my academic hopes. The entire department deserves special mention too, for the moral and financial support they always give me during my endless quest for knowledge and networking with international scholars through conference attendances and presentations.'

Reflecting on his time in Cyprus, Tembo says: "It was a very humbling experience for me. I interacted with a number of scholars. I also received a number of business cards from book publishers and journal editors asking me to publish with them. This shows that someone out there believes in my work, and I don't take that for granted. Currently, I am working on three journal articles, to be sent to some of these editors."

Photo: Nick Mdika Tembo (third from the left) was recently awarded the Timothy Dow Adams Award and was able to participate in a panel discussion  at the 2016 International Auto/Biography Association conference held by the University of Cyprus, Greece, at the end of May. With him are fellow Award winners Fethiye Çetin (left), Orly Lael Netzer (middle) and a/b:Auto/Biography Studies editor, Ricia Anne Chansky (far right).