Headline from November 1st’s Isolezwe:
Waphuza ugologo wadlwengula ugogo.
Horrific but rhetorically interesting. The phrase contains homoeoarxheia (words sharing the same prefix), alliteration (words sharing consonants), assonance (words sharing vowel-sounds) and it scans as a pair of semi-inverted 7-beat dactylic pentameters:
{long-short-short / short-short-long / short}
where Greek would have :
‘Raspberry Strawberry Jam’
{long-short-short / long-short-short / long} or
long-long / long-long / long
‘Raspeberry-Strawberry-Jam’ is how you remember Pentametric scansion in Greek and Latin. The rest of the line runs
“…eat-it-as-fast-as-you-can”
{long-short-short / long-short-short / long}
So the question you should be asking is “why such flowery prose for such a horrific article?” {Although you’d be equally justified in asking “why does isiKhovana speak such rubbish so early in the morning?” Pentameter? Rhetoric? Suka!}
What does it mean? Sorry, got a bit sidetracked there – it means:
“He drank some grog and raped some gogo”.
Horrific. As I said. There seems to be no reason why such horrific subject matter should be presented with such flair.
Except to make even more of an impact on you as a reader. Except to link, in puritanical ‘hellfire-and-damnation’ style, the following elements:
*phuza with *dlwengula (*drinking with *raping) and
*gologo with *gogo (*grog (hard liquor) with *granny)
If you read on in the story, the tone of the article is crystal clear in its condemnation of the man convicted of the rape. And the writer shows this through the way she uses rhetoric.
uMabhengwane 