Masenya’s Scholarship Legacy: Bosadi/Bomwasi Womanhood Hermeneutics and Its Appropriation in the Mongo Context

Abstract

This essay examines Masenya’s hermeneutic approach to the biblical text. Influenced by her postcolonial, apartheid, and patriarchal context, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan’a Mphahlele) developed the bosadi (womanhood) approach to reading the Bible in a South African context. Bosadi addresses poverty, HIV and AIDS, sexism, racism, foreignness, classism, family, suffering, and African cultural practices. Bosadi, originating from African culture, redefines the role of African women by recognising their significant contribution as wives and mothers within their society. The bosadi framework also problematises and challenges oppressive traditional definitions and roles of women while affirming positive definitions, identities, and roles. It takes into account both the biblical context and the reader’s context. While the bosadi concept highlights the significance of the family within the African setting, it challenges any death-dealing elements in the African family setting and the biblical text. In her reading, Northern Sotho proverbs are also used as a lens for a better understanding of the Old Testament and unlocking its reality. Masenya’s hermeneutics is an African woman’s effort to redefine and rename herself and her fellow women by urging them to call themselves by their own names and to carry out biblical interpretation through their voices. Masenya’s bosadi approach is used in this paper to analyse Masenya’s research scholarship legacy.