Storytelling & Reparations

This session examines storytelling as a form of historical repair and collective healing, and as a tool for imagining just futures.

Through the stories of Mekatilili wa Menza, the Kasigau Massacre of 1914, and Zulu Queen Mkabayi, speakers and performers show how memory, research, and imagination expose colonial violence and its lasting harm. The session brings these histories to life through performance, reflection, and a mock trial that confronts colonial injustice head-on.

Across Africa, oral storytelling has long served as a living archive. This roundtable returns to that tradition, highlighting the role of oratorists as community-rooted historians and political thinkers. Dr. Mshai Mwangola’s retelling of Mekatilili’s life traces prophecy, loss, resistance, and research as interconnected forces shaping historical memory.

StoryMoja’s performances revisit erased histories, including the Kasigau Massacre, and resurrect figures like Queen Mkabayi, whose political leadership has been written out of dominant narratives.

The discussion closes by affirming storytelling as a site of power, emotional truth, and repair, and by inviting all of us to participate in restoring broken histories.

Moderator
Dr. Jocelyn Poe, Assistant Professor, Cornell University

Speakers
Dr. Mshai Mwangola, Performance Scholar, African Leadership Centre
Jibran Clifford Bukheri, Editor, StoryMoja (SHIZU series)
Samuel Msungu Moturi, Editor, StoryMoja Publishers