Reimagining ecological justice: intersections of Unhu and African eco-feminism in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and Tsitsi Mapepa’s Ndima Ndima

This article employs the concepts of Unhu (the Shona term for ethical human behaviour) and African eco-feminism to analyse how Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1973) and Tsitsi Mapepa’s Ndima Ndima (2023) engage with ecological justice. It focuses on how the texts appeal to Unhu principles of mutual respect, shared responsibility, respect for nature, and community empowerment in their call for ethical custodianship of the environment in the face of increasing ecological injustice. Examining the experiences of the central characters, the article interprets the two novels as feminist ecological narratives that mobilise nature as a political agent for challenging gender inequality and environmental injustice. It argues that both novels harness feminist sensibilities and indigenous ecological philosophy to critique social injustice and anthropocentrism. Thus, the article is situated at the intersection of African philosophy and eco-feminism, enabling it to innovatively assert the critical role of African literary imagination in re-grounding indigenous conservation epistemologies.