SCI-CULTURA

I was in Uhuru Park on 27th August for the promulgation of Kenya’s new constitution.

Rather than post  pictures from the day, or write – and I am still reflecting on the experience -this collage came to mind.

The image on the right from the book “Kenyatta A Photographic Biography” by Anthony Howarth is  © Forota (used with permission), whilst the one on the left is by yours truly at the National Museum in Nairobi

The text on the main image says ‘Kenyatta, Mboya and Kibaki are overwhelmed with joy on hearing that K.A.N.U. had won the election.’ (Kenyatta is not seen in this cropped image)

That this image has the then future President Kibaki who wanted to leave a legacy of a new constitution and that the young man represents the people whose life will be affected by the new constitution are some of the thoughts that this image invoked for me.

I wonder if Kibaki’s heart leapt for joy just as he did back then in 1963 when the Kenyan people voted for the constitution at 4th August referendum.

King Julio Bonifaz Pinedo, Afro-Bolivian King © Guardian

Having arrived to Bolivia as slaves over 5 centuries ago, the Afro-Bolivians seek to be recognised in the South American country which has made great strides in that they voted in their first indigenous president and have a multiethnic and pluricultural constitution.
Julio Bonifaz Pinedo, the first Afro-Bolivian King in 500 years and the only African King in the global North, is the face of the struggle of the Afro-Bolivians, having being recently recognised as a direct descendant of Bonifaz, a king from a central African country who worked in the silver mines of Potosi. His great-grandfather moved to work in the coca fields in the Yungas region, in the eastern piedmont of the Bolivian Andes Mountains.

It was a bit like a slave scheme, but as everybody was ‘Afro’ we were used to being treated like slaves. We grew citrus, coffee and most of all coca – the ‘sacred’ leaf, as this is what gives us life. Without coca there would be nothing in the Yungas. Coca is our means of support; it allows our children to go to school; it feeds us, dresses us and gives us life. People don’t understand that it is not a drug. We don’t even know how to make cocaine; we have never touched it, seen it or tasted it.

King Julio continues to live a modest life, while fighting for recogition of his people in Bolivia and the world at large.

Saya [Afro-Bolivian music] started to get popular in the area – and in the country as well – and people started to realise that we, the Afro-Bolivians, existed. We are the last in a country of forgotten people. We have an indigenous government, but we are not considered indigenous, and we are not part of the white minority, of course. So we are just forgotten. But we are not slaves any more: we are free people, free farmers. We’re poor but free, and we would like the country to know – the world to know – that we exist.

Jorge Medina, an Afro-Bolivian leader echos these sentiments, whilst seeking office in Bolivia.

“….we are not here in Bolivia only to make people dance to black music. We are here to make people think, believe and consider the black people. This is our awakening.”

Sources: UK Guardian and BBC

Also, in connection, I recently stumbled on an Afro-Latino website AFRO-PRESENCIA. Interestingly, they use the Adinkra (symbology by the Akan in Ghana) DWENNIMMEN which stands for humilty and strength.

viva el Rey!

Tiris are certainly doing their bit for putting Western Sahara on the map. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Singing in Hassaniya, their sound is distinctive and carries unmistakably Arab and even Spanish flamenco influences – a reflection of Western Sahara’s colonial history. Listening to this fills me with a formidable sense of awe at what an incredibly diverse continent Africa is and as much as I am one who has previously casually thrown in the label ‘African’ in conversation, it really doesn’t tell you much. If anything at all, apart from point to a geographical terrain. Regardless, I feel a sense of something that feels like pride to be a part of this ‘undefinable’ rich mix without breaking it down into microcosms. I digress.

Surprisingly, Tiris haven’t yet made it to YouTube (I checked), but have performed at various locales including my dream destination, the Festival au Desert in Mali. You can listen to samples of Tiris’ delightful debut album, Sandtracks via Sandblast, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes artists from Western Sahara to bring their cause for self-determination to the global centre stage. More samples here. I particularly love the throaty haunting call at the intro of El Leil, El Leil (The Night).

An interesting read in the Guardian today that gives a laudable account of Parisian photographer Fabien Breuvart, who in show of solidarity with hard working, tax-paying but non-social-benefits-claiming illegal African immigrants a.k.a sans papiers (without papers) has taken hundreds of photos (500+ and counting) of these workers alongside documented members of the public. The body of work is entitled Vas-y, montre ta carte! (Go on, show your card!) and carries a clear message: ‘the only difference between these two people is a piece of paper’.

See the article for more of Breuvart’s photos and details on Sarkozy-son-of-an-immigrant’s tough immigration policies that have allegedly resulted in an 80% increase of deportations of the sans-papiers since last year. The article also contains personal accounts of interviewees that reflect France’s colonial history – Algeria, Ivory Coast and Mali. Apparently the French mantra liberté, equalité et fraternité does not apply to the sans-papiers. Domage.

This is by no means a political blog. However, in discussing the arts, politics is bound to emerge as the two are sometimes intimately entwined. As I have mentioned before, the arts are a uniquely powerful tool to voice oppression. So too are the arts a useful means to explore change and its impact. Such as the transition of a nation.

I had intended for this post to coincide with South African Freedom Day. In my defence, however, the issues it raises will surely be relevant at the forthcoming annual celebration of the official release of South Africa from the chains of apartheid – the day that led to Nelson “Madiba” Mandela to become the first black president of the Rainbow Nation.

The [Truth and Reconciliation] Commission had been founded in the belief that the truth was the only means by which the people of South Africa could come to a common understanding of their past, and that this understanding was necessary if the country was to forge a new national identity in the future.
Excerpt from: The Truth Commission by Jillian Edelstein – published in Granta 66, Summer 1999.

Molora, a Sesotho word that translates to ash (thanks OnSesotho), is a raw, intense and captivating play, written and directed by Yael Farber. If you plan on seeing this play, be warned that this post contains a spoiler – all is revealed.

Farber cleverly adapted and juxtapositioned the Greek tragedy about mother and daughter, Elektra and Klytemnestra, which is part of the violent cycle of the Oresteia Trilogy and effectively correlated it with South Africa’s own relatively recent tragedy. Apartheid.

Klytemnestra (Dorothy Ann Gould), the audacious, forceful and seemingly heartless mother portrayed the white South African institution, while her daughter, the gentle yet strong, vulnerable yet courageous and unyielding Elektra (Jabulile Tshabalala), portrayed black South Africans with all heart and soul. The face-twisting pain and oppression that Elektra was subjugated to and evidently carried with her was conveyed time and time and time again.

Although I am not one for this type of melodramatic acting, the talented actors conveyed raw emotion with much candor and intensity, drawing the audience not only into their minds, but more importantly into their hearts. The symbolism throughout the play cleverly transcended multiple layers. A simple mound of sand took centre stage, which the audience knew to be the grave of her father, Agamemnon, Elektra’s husband, who was murdered in cold blood, by his own wife. The white, gumboot-wearing mother Klytemnestra had a bloodstained face and clothes. In addition, the appropriation of well known quotes that pervaded many layers were also used to depict the incredibly challenging topics of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the much needed healing of the South African people.

What effortlessly remains with me, a true sign of the successful conveyance of her fight for survival, include the re-enactments at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Klytemnestra’s ruthless torturing of her daughter Elektra by immersing her head in water and holding it down – the “wet bag” technique of the apartheid era. Or when Klytemnestra forceably seals a plastic bag over Elektra’s head as Elektra lies face down with her mother Klytemnestra sitting on her bottom, rendering her helpless and at her mercy. Or when Klytemnestra burns Elektra with her lit cigarette. On each occasion, moments before Elektra gasped loudly as she painstakingly inhaled, desperately sucking in precious oxygen into her deprived lungs, some of the audience, myself included, fidgeted in our seats; the urgency palpable as tens of seconds that felt like minutes ticked, dictating raised heartbeats and miniature beads of sweat collecting on our brows as we quietly watched the ruthless and inhumane treatment Elektra suffered.

Although none of this was news to us, it was still shocking. It was as if we had been sucked into an unrelenting black hole and were falling to infinity as we helplessly watched Elektra suffer, knowing that the one woman’s pain that we felt and witnessed was only multiplied not-so-long-ago by a nation of millions. Or perhaps it was as if we had been grabbed by the hand by an unseen, unmatched force beneath us and pulled into a bottomless unillumined body of water. And when we came up for breath and eventually crawled out, there was no denying that we had been immersed as we were now dripping wet. Regrettably, we could not be reassured that this was just a play. For they were not just actors and what they conveyed was not based on fiction. I imagined that Elektra really had lived the pain. Knowing that one woman’s pain was so raw and so palpable left me overwhelmed, unable to imagine the pain of an entire nation.

At the core of the play was the message/question: is revenge the only and natural response? In other words, is forgiveness possible?

Once Elektra and her brother Orestes are re-united, Elektra voices her simple but heartfelt monologue, quoting Shakespeare:

If you prick us do we not bleed?
If you tickle us do we not laugh?
If you poison us do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Throughout the play, the Xhosa women and one man of the Ngqoko Cultural Group mainly stood at the sidelines of the set, creating the ritualistic ambience through their split tone harmonies and instruments that include a milking drum and calabash and bow. Later, as grief consumes the wailing Elektra, she lies across the group of the kneeling Xhosa women who lovingly embrace her and envelope her, caressing her body that emanates with raw and tender grief from every pore, singing to her to give her spiritual healing through touch and song – insinuating this is the only way to heal the grief, the anger and the deep-seated desire for revenge. And later, brother and sister, Elektra and Orestes, unlike in the storyline of the Greek myth, spare their mother’s life.

The message is clear: revenge will not undo any of the wrongs inflicted upon them but only cause more grief.

The play ends with a silent yet incredibly powerful message – falling ash onto the shoulders of the silent, still and onward-looking cast. The ash, a tribute to the uncountable victims of the apartheid era, as a new South Africa emerges.

But the stars of the evening, in my opinion were the women of the Ngqoko Cultural Group. Their split tone guttural singing was not only captivating and haunting, but like none other I have ever heard. At first I was perplexed at their lack of eye contact with the audience, including during the bows at the end of the play. As I walked towards the tube station minutes later, our paths crossed. Star struck and unconcealingly impressed by these women, I approached them to thank them and their translator, the man of the group, willingly obliged. It instantly struck me that the reason they did not interact with the audience in their body language was simply because they were not actors. They were authentic Xhosa singers, their faces unwashed and still adorned in bodypaint and dressed in the same clothes they had worn on stage. That evening, they had simply done what they usually did. The only difference being that a random audience in a basement theatre in central London had watched them. I felt incredibly humbled by these women and grateful to have been a witness and to have been immersed in their enchanting primordial, ancestral sounds.

For a taste of Molora click here.
Molora is currently on tour in Europe and USA.

“Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge…What presides over the poem is not the most lucid intelligence, the sharpest sensibility or the subtlest feelings, but experience as a whole.”

(via A Poetics of Anticolonialism)

Photo from AP

The much loved and revered poet, author and politician Aimé Césaire was laid to rest in Martinique in a state funeral yesterday. Arguably mostly renowned for spear-heading the Pan-African and anti-colonial movement by being part of the trio that coined the concept and movement “negritude” (defined as the affirmation that one is black and proud of it) while studying and living in Paris in the 1930s, with his friends Léon Damas (from French Guiana) and Léopold Senghor (the then future president of Senegal) in their joint university publication L’etudiant Noir (The Black Student), a literary review whose goal was to unite students of the Diaspora – from Africa and the West Indies.

In one of his most renowned works, a book-long poem titled Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1947) (Notebook of a return to my native land), Césaire embraced and celebrated the ancestral homelands of Africa and the Caribbean.

ma negritude n’est pas une pierre, sa surdite ruee contre
la clameur du jour
ma negritude n’est pas une taie d’eau morte sur l’il
mort de la terre
ma negritude n’est ni une tour ni une cathedrale
elle plonge dans la chair rouge du sol
elle plonge dans la chair ardente du ciel
elle troue l’accablement opaque de sa droite patience.

my Negritude is not a stone, its deafness dashed against
the clamor of the day
my Negritude is not an opaque spot of dead water
on the dead eye of the earth
my Negritude is neither a tower nor a cathedral
it plunges into the red flesh of the soil
it plunges into the ardent flesh of the sky
it pierces opaque prostration with its upright patience

(via A Slant Truth)

Césaire’s unapologetic attack on Eurocentric hegemony and notions of restoring African identity was later elaborated on in Discours sur le Colonialisme (1955) (Discourse on Colonialism), a manifesto which is said to have influenced one of his equally influential students, Frantz Fanon in his revolutionary pontification “Black Skin, White Masks” (1967), which examines the psychological, cultural and social damage inflicted by colonialism. A book on Césaire’s collected works is available here.

Excerpt from The Independent orbituary -

The three young men [Césaire, Damas and Senghor] drew inspiration from the Harlem Renaissance’s efforts to promote the richness of African cultural identity and particularly opposed French assimilationist policies.
During these years Césaire began to develop the ideas for his most famous poem, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939; translated as Return to My Native Land, 1969), the work in which he coined the term “négritude”. The surrealist André Breton, who became a good friend of Césaire’s after a 1942 visit to Martinique and who helped to introduce his work to Parisian literary circles, called the Cahier “the greatest lyric monument of this time”.

Drawing on surrealist techniques, the poem took its inspiration from the Martinican landscape and Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the first phase of the Haitian Revolution, whose biography Césaire would later write (Toussaint Louverture: la révolution française et le problème colonial, published 1960). It asserted a claim to Afro-Caribbean ownership of the archipelago, “which is one of the two sides of the incandescence through which the equator walks its tightrope to Africa”.

The poem explores the distinctiveness of black cultural identity in a historically grounded manner that prefigures the black consciousness movements of the 1960s, the decade when it became popular in the English-speaking world, thanks to a Penguin translation. Stylistically varied, it moves between impassioned prose outbursts against injustice and a more lyrical mode that celebrates black ancestry.

A noteworthy article on Césaire, his life and his works is published in LIP magazine. Other tributes but to name a few, include Antilles and Global Voices.

Photos published in Le Figaro (via Antilles)

Perhaps the most disconcerting thought upon reflecting on Césaire’s works is how relevant they remain today in a post-colonial world.

- Repos dans la paix -

The New Oxford English Dictionary’s (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998) definition of TRIBE is as follows:

Noun 1 a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognised leader: indigenous Indian tribes.

Derogatory a distinctive close-knit social or political group
Derogatory a group or class of people or things
Informal Large numbers of people

A boxed statement headlined “usage” subsequently states:
In historical contexts, the word tribe is broadly accepted. However, in contemporary contexts, used to refer to a community living within a traditional society today, the word is problematic. It is strongly associated with past attitudes of so-called primitive or uncivilised peoples living in remote undeveloped places. For this reason, it is generally preferable to use alternative terms such as community or people.

The word tribe and its derivatives have progressively provoked a bone of contention. My heightened sensitivity to the use of this word incessantly drives me to ponder on its apparently comfortable place in our vocabulary in sub-Saharan Africa. What is the appropriate term to define the gargantuan variety of languages, cultures and traditions that traverse the entirety of the African continent and beyond? I tend to disdain from its use and refer to the debatable terms “ethnic groups” or “communities” when making an observation that demands a distinction between Kenya’s 50-odd tongues. Curiously, of the three East-African languages that I speak, only Kiswahili easily translates into kabila.

What tribe are you? – The fleeting use of this phrase, without the close inspection and analysis of a cognitively composed question has developed into a habit. It implicitly infers a label that may be stuck onto someone and used to define them by a string of regrettably familiar stereotypes; as opposed to belonging to a community that share the same language, culture and to an extent values. Although admittedly, the advancement of rural to urban migration renders the latter invalid in some cases. Perhaps the ease displayed in the use of the word tribe is attributed to our apparent innocence (or debatably ignorance) that the word tribe carries with it a heavy load of negative preconceptions, insinuations, connotations and assumptions. To my ear, and admittedly more-so when voiced by Euro-Americans, the word tribe subtly and quietly carries the undertones of an imprisonment to a Conradian perspective; one that locks Africans into a primitive, uncivilised and barbaric predisposition. An uninstructed people, who, perpetually oblivious to the external world around them, herd animals and flimsily drape miniscule pieces of animal hides or processed tree barks that functionally obscure strategic parts of their dark chocolate sun-torched, well-defined bodies. In an attempt to rationally examine this sentiment, it is clear that the root of my strongly formed opinion emanates from colonialism.

The divide and conquer tactics that the Europeans cunningly applied to their great advantage and success, after their task of studying and grouping the variety of cultural practices and languages into tribes was, I suspect, the dawning of so-called tribal politics in a number of African countries, such as Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The infamous word tribal hit the media houses in the West as a result of the violence that engulfed Kenya after the recently contested 2007 general elections, simplifying an intricately complex reality that culminated in the spate of violence that has taken away over 500 lives and destroyed an incalculable number, estimated at over quarter of a million. Hmm, those tribal Africans are at it again.

An elaborate discourse on the meaning and use of the word tribe that I highly recommend is eloquently articulated in a report by Africa Action, which was recently published by Africa Focus Bulletin dated 8th January 2008. Notably, its relevance despite the fact that it was written just over 10 years ago was readily highlighted. Talking about “Tribe” – Moving from Stereotypes to Analysis gives a balanced analysis of the rationale behind both the use or disuse of the word tribe and concludes with relevant case studies across Africa.

In a uniquely pitched piece, Paul Goldsmith’s “The Return of the Tribe”, recently published in Kwani? 4 (2007), Kenya’s cutting-edge literary journal which unapologetically cuts into socio-political issues presents the evolution of the word tribe as a specific form of organisation, which he explores within but not confined to fourth generation warfare, as he also cleverly intertwines his discourse with tribal politics in Africa. Goldsmith lists a sample of titles and corresponding authors who have given an in-depth analysis, far beyond what I ever could, on the concept of tribes and tribalism in Africa. In good faith, I hope Dr Goldsmith won’t mind me plagiarising:
The Illusion of Tribe – Aiden Southall
The Ideology of Tribalism – Archie Mafeje
Tribal Survival in Modern African Political Systems – Colin Legum
The Tribe as Fact and Fiction in an East African City – David Parkin
The Social Organisation of Cultural Differences – Frederick Barth
The Politics of Cultural Pluralism – Crawford Young

What persistently captures my attention and imagination is Mwalimu Nyerere’s vision for Tanzania (Ujamaa); one that has since united a people with the ubiquitous use of the Kiswahili language. It is evident that a nation is so much more than the artificial, colonially-imposed physical boundaries of a country; it is simply a people. Together as one despite their multiple identities.

In any struggle against oppression, the arts express the irrepressible core of who we fundamentally are. The arts provide a tenacious platform that reinforces identity and propagates a message that permeates beyond physical or tacit borders. The arts convey the feelings that arise from the depths of our very being and converts them into a visual or auditory illustration, that allows others to experience them. By seeing and /or hearing the expression of self, we momentarily grasp a fragment of another’s soul. In other words, the arts foster the human connection. Although artists express their pain and their joy from their individual perspectives, in an oppresive environment they concurrently create a focal point that breeds unity and determination amongst the oppressed and are knowingly or unknowingly the voice of a community and even a nation to the outside world. Consequently, the power that an artist potentially has within their reach can be viewed as a threatening force to any oppressor.

In my childhood, I vividly recall the late 70′s / early 80′s government-imposed detention without trial and banning of books by the renowned Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who later went into exile in the UK and the United States. At that age, I could not comprehend why writing stories about Kenyans and more so in a Kenyan tongue, should be regarded as a political weapon that could instil fear in the then President Moi. Artists present the truth – their truth to the masses in a language that captures our attention and imagination, by speaking to us at a level that is beyond cerebral comprehension and assimilation. Ngugi has been an adamant and much acclaimed voice in the face of neo-colonialism and an avid campaigner of the use of African languages.

Colonialisation, however, has not yet been put to bed and Western Sahara has been fittingly coined Africa’s last colony. With a similar thread to the occupation of Tibet by her neighbour China, Western Sahara has been occupied by the Kingdom of Morocco since the Spanish withdrawal and handover to Morocco and Mauritania in 1975. The UN has its hands tied due to vetoes by France and USA in the UN Security Council, whose support for Morocco is supposedly intended to combat Islamist extremism. And that is only part of the story of the chronology of the Saharawi struggle… As a consequence, multitudes of Saharawi refugees live in camps in the Algerian desert and Morocco continues to have authority over the Saharawi people. Sandblast, a London-based charity, has organised the Sandblast Festival 2007 that will stage Saharawi artists in order to create global awareness of the plight of the Saharawi. They seek justice. Will you listen?