Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 107
February 9, 2022
Pio Pinto���s legacy and the Kenyan left
Pio Gama Pinto, right, in 1964 with members of Nairobi's Goan community. (Image from the collection of Luis Assis Correia, via Frederck Noronha and Flickr CC). Pio Gama Pinto was a Kenyan socialist activist and intellectual who was assassinated in 1965, shortly after Kenya won independence two years prior. Who was he, why was he feared, and why was his legacy erased?
This week, Will chats with Lena Anyuolo and Nicholas Mwangi, two members of the Organic Intellectuals Network in Kenya that have put together a volume of reflections on Pinto and his legacy called Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Reflect on the Legacy of Pio Gama Pinto (Daraja Press, 2021). Along the way, they also address the state of Kenya���s left, the prospects left unity and how it is approaching the upcoming general election in August.
Listen to the show below, and subscribe via your favorite platform.
https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/76b95eec-63bc-4115-9e48-1e57b1f25295/pio-pinto-s-legacy-and-prospects-for-the-kenyan-left.mp3
Pio Pinto���s legacy and prospects for the Kenyan left
Pio Gama Pinto was a Kenyan socialist activist and intellectual who was assassinated in 1965, shortly after Kenya won independence two years prior. Who was he, why was he feared, and why was his legacy erased?
This week, Will chats with Lena Anyuolo and Nicholas Mwangi, two members of the Organic Intellectuals Network in Kenya that have put together a volume of reflections on Pinto and his legacy called Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Reflect on the Legacy of Pio Gama Pinto (Daraja Press, 2021). Along the way, they also address the state of Kenya���s left, the prospects left unity and how it is approaching the upcoming general election in August.
Listen to the show below, and subscribe via your favorite platform.
https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/76b95eec-63bc-4115-9e48-1e57b1f25295/pio-pinto-s-legacy-and-prospects-for-the-kenyan-left.mp3February 8, 2022
This is a sensorial feast, not a burial
Still from This Is Not A Burial, It���s A Resurrection. The film, This Is Not A Burial, It���s A Resurrection, threads the African deathworld through a sensorial feast of devastating sound, dazzling color, and mournful affects that sear the soul. The opening scene begins with a Zim Ngqawana-esque horn flute, its music composed by Yu Miyashita, that transports viewers to the ancestral underworld. This is a film about the devastation wrought by development on rural communities. The state seeks to remove communities to make way for a dam. While the viewer never actually sees the threatening dam water, from the very beginning, the haunting music submerges us under water. We assemble before our screens to watch a burial that is actually a resurrection, because in African cosmology, death and renewal are a cycle of continuity.
Jerry Mofokeng voices the narrative through music and story, and his somber tones match the lightning and mourning that shoot through this beautifully textured film. In his mouth, Sesotho becomes a haunted language. It is a story told through the furrowed eyes of Mary Twala Mhlongo, an old woman who hovers close to the grave. She seeks death while refusing to be submerged under the metaphors of development and advancement. From the periphery of her community, she holds back the dam waters that would sooner drown them than honor their dead. Through her kinship with the dead, she resurrects her village���s rights to its land. While she cannot stop the capitalist state, she inspires an unruly spirit of defiance against racial capitalism.
The film���s creator, Lebohang Jeremiah Mosese, immerses viewers in rural scenes of the Nazaretha village along the Senqu river in the mountain plains of Lesotho. The landlocked country is inextricably tied to its location���it is surrounded by South Africa���and we see strains of this through the deathworld of the latter country���s mines, where men have labored and died for generations. The death of Mhlongo���s son reminds us that even in this season of xenophobia, South Africa���s neighbors lie buried in the pits of the mines to which black life has been tethered for decades.
This film illuminates a black sociality that revolves around the deathworld and African death practices. Death is writ large in the mountainous landscape. The film summons us to the shadows of the diminishing sun, to sit with the old woman in the soundscape of radio static, and together, we listen to death notices waiting to recognize names of recently dead kin. We assemble in a mournful affect and listen to death on the sound waves. We are beckoned by the widow���s keening in the mountain wind. To live in wait of death is to live with death. It is a refusal to separate the living from their dead. We recharge radio batteries in the sun���s rays to capture the frequencies of the deathworld. Mary Twala Mhlongo is an old widow who refuses to remove her mourning garb. We are transported to director Ramadan Suleman and screenwriter Bhekisizwe Peterson���s Zulu Love Letter, where wondering widows refused to lose the memories of their murdered kin. Grief and mourning are states of repeated dying, all the days of our lives. Our dead are never still. They push against the living, imploring us to tend to them.
Still from This Is Not A Burial, It���s A Resurrection.In the film, Twala Mhlongo reminds a counselor that ���the cemetery is the village��� and that we dare not turn our backs on the dead in the name of development. Another character poignantly tells viewers that progress is when ���men point their damning finger at nature and proclaim conquest over it.��� And nature is this film���s antidote to the stranglehold of death. The natural world lends beauty through the bright fields of flowers, majestic mountains, green fields, red soil of the graves, and splashes of light. The director is adept at the use of color. The costumes sear the screen. Mary Twala Mhlongo���s mourning garb absorbs and refracts color. It is starched black, but it glistens; it is matte; it glows blackish blue; it bounces against the Mosotho blue patterned blanket, lace curtains billowing in the wind, and colorful clothing hanging off walls and clotheslines.
The film is not one of high drama, suspense, thrills, and intense action. It is a slow dance with the dead. Action occurs in the shrill ululation that shreds the quiet and upends the silence that pervades the hills. A horse dashing through the tall grass. There is the thrill and vitality of cattle drawn plows cutting red furrows into the fields. There is joy in the celebration of the harvest, and we are told that this community has all it needs���no one goes to bed hungry. The narrative thread is carried in a terrible sob that shakes the entire mountain kingdom. A mournful soprano pulling a funeral choir along while imploring Maria to intercede on behalf of the dead. A series of breathtaking scenes sewn up together by the director���s invisible yarn.
This story remains firmly moored in place, but it is a story of Third World struggles against racial capitalism. In South Africa, it resonates with the struggles of the Amadiba Crisis Committee and the Mpondo people, who have been embroiled in a protracted fight against governments that are in bed with global mining companies. These communities refuse to leave their dead and to make way for mining. The film honors people like murdered activist and grandmother Fikile Ntshangase���s fight against coal mining in her community in KwaZulu Natal. This is Not A Burial recalls Arundhatu Roy���s activism against dams in India���s river basins, which she chronicles in a volume of essays titled, The Cost of Living. To live on the world���s margins is to be damned to development at the cost of our lives, our dead, and our livelihoods. And yet, as Lebohang Jeremiah Mosese insists in this film, our love for our dead makes us care for the living. The outrage for the death-bound old woman protagonist is a galvanizing rage for those who live to see the atrocities of African nation-states in the stranglehold of late capitalism, with its corrupting influences that poison our air, waterways, land, cosmologies, and our very souls. The depths of our dams in Southern Africa hide a story we do not like to hear. Small states like Lesotho and Mozambique are the lifeblood of the region���s urban water and energy needs. Lesotho���s Katse Dam and its Highlands Water Project is Africa���s largest water transfer program, feeding both that country and South Africa. Similarly, Mozambique���s Cahora Bassa Dam has displaced rural communities. It is now used to convert the Zambezi River water into turbine power, which electrifies Mozambique, parts of Zimbabwe, and South Africa. This is a different narrative to popular discourses of South African largesse in the region. We know little of the graves and communities that were submerged to enable the bounty of these dams. This Is Not A Burial allows us to imagine the screams of rural communities and the keening of their mourning.
In this film that indexes our inexorable march to the grave, Mary Twala Mhlongo gives a majestic performance. She too has since died, but this film will remain an ode to her imprint on Southern African film. Jerry Mofokeng wa Makhetha is an erudite narrator whose haunting tones linger with the viewer long after the film���s end. Makhaola Ndebele���s brooding presence in black priestly garb is a fine match for Twala Mhlongo���s resolutely mournful and inspired act. Lebohang Jeremiah Mosese is a remarkable director whose artistry is a credit to Lesotho and African filmmaking. This Is Not A Burial will not see scores of people watching the film, because it shows a commitment to form and artistry rather than boisterous storytelling. It will, however, leave a mark as an instant classic in the director���s oeuvre. It is a landmark film that is dedicated to beauty and the slow art of fine narration. While the major film awards have snubbed this film, viewers seeking beauty and African artistry can catch it on streaming services like Showmax.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere
Photo by Ewien van Bergeijk - Kwant on Unsplash There is a metaphor somewhere in Senegal���s first African Cup of Nations (Afcon) championship in its history. The 2021 Afcon, played this month because of a postponement from last summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ended Sunday with Sadio Mane, the Liverpool star, scoring the decisive penalty in the final. With that, and everything else that surrounded it came to an end. Most of the players now return to their clubs, where some of them are stars, mostly in Europe. There���s .
The final itself was a contrast in style: Overall, it was not a spectacle. Very few finals are. This is not unusual. As for the metaphor, it was a contrast in styles that said a lot: Senegal���s relentless attacking versus Egypt playing spoilsport. The latter���s negative tactics and gamesmanship (stalling, over 50 fouls in the game, arguing with the referee, etcetera) began to reflect the tactics of Egypt���s regime; a military junta that incidentally uses football to slow down democracy. Of course, these tactics worked for Egypt in the past���they have seven Afcon trophies, including three in a row in the late 2000s. So this usually works for them, but not Sunday night.
Egypt���s national coach was also a throwback: African countries who trust European ���expertise��� over everything else. And if Egypt won, the military junta that���s been governing it since the mid-1950s���save for one year of democracy���would take credit. As for Senegal, it represented something else; its manager, Aliou Cisse, is African. And, unlike most other national teams that are subject to chop and changing and the hiring of mercenary European coaches that no one has heard of before (put the name of any African national team here, though this Afcon was different: 15 of 24 coaches are African), Cisse is a product of the country���s national association. He also played on Senegal���s national team (Afcon 2002 and the 2002 World Cup) and has been at the coaching helm for 10 years already. (Incidentally, Cisse missed the decisive penalty in the 2002 final against Cameroon that was hosted in Mali. This added to the drama of the final. At the end of Sunday���s game he collapsed on the field, sobbing.)
The tournament also showed glimpses of the Africa we are trying to leave behind, events which provided color for the usual Western media headlines. We saw the unnecessary deaths of eight, mostly Cameroonian, fans during a stampede at one of the games, and the shameless genuflecting to Cameroon���s dictator Paul Biya, including the spectacle after the final when a tired Kalidou Koulibaly, the Senegalese captain, was forced to walk up into the stands to go shake his hand. Add the CAF’s (the continental football body) incompetence on top of that���they blamed fans and a gate agent for the stadium deaths, and they mishandled the effects of COVID-19 wreaking havoc on teams’ player selection. In one infamous instance, CAF fined Comoros (one of the revelations of the tournament) for taping the number on the back of the replacement goalkeeper���s jersey in its Round of 16 match with Cameroon.
I���ve elsewhere about how for regular Africans, the tournament is an avatar of sorts; of Kwame Nkrumah���s dream of a United States of Africa and for a new kind of African ethos. This is why the last word goes to Sadio Mane, the Senegalese playmaker who ended the tournament going to bed with the cup before traveling to Dakar to meet with rapturous crowds. Before the tournament, Mane, who plays at Liverpool (his striking partner at the club, Mohamed Salah, arguably the world���s best player now, captained Egypt in the final), was quoted as saying: ���Why would I want ten Ferraris, 20 diamond watches and two jet planes? What would that do for the world? Now I can help people. I prefer to build schools and give poor people food or clothing ��� I give 70 euros per month to all people from a very poor Senegalese region to contribute to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips, and even planes. I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me.��� It���s that spirit of the Afcon that we want to carry forward off the football field onto our politics.
February 7, 2022
Who was Huda Shaarawi?
Striking garment factory worker in the town of Talkha in the Daqahliya province of Egypt. Image credit Hossam el-Hamalawy via Flickr CC BY 2.0 It is a widespread practice in the Global North to paint a picture of women in the Arab world as silent, confined in the home, and obedient to patriarchal Muslim authorities. Of course, this is the experience of some women, but the reality is far more complex. We saw this not least during what was termed the Arab Spring in 2011, which should rather be called the North African Spring. Through both the press and social media, we saw that men were far from alone in Tahrir Square during the landmark January days of 2011. They shared the spotlight with tens of thousands of Egyptian women who stood up to Hosni Mubarak���s dictatorial regime. The trade union movement also played an important role through strikes and open opposition, and many of the activists had backgrounds in textile factories and other women-dominated workplaces.
The Egyptian Spring did not provide the thaw that many had hoped for, and it seriously turned into a winter under the harsh rule of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who took power in 2014 and has not yet given it up. But even with so many odds against them, activists fighting for women���s rights have never allowed themselves to be gagged. Their activism sometimes happens spontaneously, through demonstrations and open protests, but there is also a range of long-term and purposeful women���s organizing within a wide range of movements and pressure groups. In addition, there is a network of women who offer legal advice or crisis assistance.
I hear the skeptics saying: but does any of this help? The answer is yes, although there have been no dramatic leaps. During the last year, there has undoubtedly been a breakthrough in two areas that are of great importance, particularly in Egypt. The first concerns the fight against unwanted sexual attention, harassment, and violence. According to international studies, this is something practically all women have been exposed to during their lifetime. From the same sources, we know that almost half of Egyptian men justify harassment with reference to tight clothing worn by women. In the latest UN ranking of countries by�� gender-based gaps in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment, Egypt is number 129 out of 156.
In response, the so-called ���Egyptian #MeToo movement��� took off last summer. An anonymous Instagram account named an Egyptian man, an upper-class student, and accused him of harassment or violence against several women, including girls under the age of 13. To avoid confusion about the man���s identity, the post also came with a portrait of him. The post exploded, and the account was soon filled with similar stories, some about the same man, who was subsequently arrested and recently sentenced to three years in prison. The account itself is run by Nadeen Ashraf, who was only 22 when it started.
Another result of this movement has been changing the law so that women���both as victims of and witnesses to gender-based violence���can report and testify anonymously. This is of great importance, especially in situations where they have reason to fear reprisals. The campaign has also received support from one of Cairo���s most important religious institutions: the Al-Ashraf Mosque.
The second area where prolonged pressure from below has already produced results is female genital mutilation. For decades, this has been one of the most important battles for Nawal El Saadawi, a doctor, feminist, and world-renowned author of books in multiple genres. Her work has documented how women not only have their genitals destroyed, they also struggle with serious injuries for the rest of their lives, some life-threatening. Her sharp voice has long criticized shifting Egyptian regimes while also expressing resistance to all forms of imperialism and militarism.
Nawal El Saadawi died on March 21st, 2021, and was celebrated as a role model for women���s and democracy movements across the world. As a result of her work, there has been a ban on female genital mutilation since 2008, and the proportion of women affected is smaller every year. Nevertheless, in practice, little has been done to punish those who break this law. As of just days before El Saadawi���s death, this will no longer be the case. After changes in the penal code by the Egyptian parliament, those who harm women in this way now face from five to ten years in prison. Moreover, the penalty is much higher for health personnel who perform genital mutilation procedures.
The Egyptian women���s struggle today stands on the shoulders of many historical role models. Most famous is undoubtedly Huda Sharaawi, whose name is most often cited as a source of inspiration and as a pioneer. To understand why, we need to go back to the time of confrontation between imperial powers during the First World War (1914���1918). During the war, Germany, France, and Britain used troops from the colonies on the western front in the Middle East and Asia. They gave many of these soldiers hopes for a reward���not only a monetary reward, but one in the form of reform or self-government after the end of the war.
At the time, large parts of the Arab world were still under the Ottoman Empire, which, by then severely weakened, had joined the German side early in the war. The British promised sheiks and sultans both freedom and Arab unity if they joined the Allies. Instead, after the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Britain and France divided this part of the world among themselves. At the same time, they granted themselves power over the German colonies in Africa and Asia.
Even though Egypt was formally under Ottoman rule, in practice Britain had ruled the country both politically and economically since 1882. Both access to the Suez Canal and control of the Nile were at stake, and to safeguard this, the British had made the country a regular colony midway through the war. Thus, Egypt became an important node in the fight against both Germany and what was left of the Ottoman Empire.
The increasingly strong dominance of the British in Egypt led���unsurprisingly���to the surfacing of both nationalist and anti-colonialist currents toward the end of the war. When the victors called for peace talks in Paris in 1919, Egyptian nationalist leaders wanted to send a separate delegation to demand full independence.
The British brusquely rejected the demand. Both Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the Minister of Munitions, Winston Churchill, believed that the colonies would be more useful after the war than ever before. Following this, the Egyptian nationalist leaders formed a separate party. It was named Wafd, which simply means delegation, with Saad Zaghlul as the party���s undisputed leading figure and Ali Shaarawi as his deputy. Since the latter was Huda���s husband, she was always well-informed and able to advise on current events.
The deep disappointment that resulted from the great powers��� opposition to Egyptian independence gave rise to a wave of unrest and revolt. For the first time, the nationalist cause included all sections of the people, from the educated elite and landowners to workers and peasants. The uprising that followed, consisting of violent clashes in which more than two thousand Egyptians were killed or wounded, was named the ���1919 revolution.���
The events of 1919 also have a place in history because so many women took to the streets and entered the public arena, with Huda Shaarawi taking the lead. She initiated a separate, women-specific demonstration, where 300 women carried posters with slogans such as ���Down with the occupation��� and ���Long live Egypt���s freedom.��� After crossing Tahrir Square, they stopped at the home of Saad Zaghlul. There, well-armed police made sure they had to withdraw.
The story of Huda Shaarawi did not start in 1919, when she was already 40 years old. She was born in 1879 into a wealthy and influential Egyptian family, and, like most girls in the upper classes, she was kept within the house as a child (this part of the house was known as the harem, hence the title of her memoir). Her father, Muhammed Sultan Pasha, held a high position in government and valued knowledge and education. This mostly benefited his son, but Huda also got to learn much more than most girls. She received early instruction not only in Arabic, French, and Islam but also in poetry, music, calligraphy, and painting.
However, her family was also bound by tradition, and like so many of her fellow sisters, Huda was married to a much older cousin when she was only 13 years old. She resisted for a long time, but there was no way out. This would be the beginning of her lifelong opposition to a society that was both patriarchal and conservative. But Huda���s marriage was rare in that her husband, Ali Shaarawi, lived separately from her for six or seven years after they got married. As a result, Huda was able to develop a significant degree of personal freedom, and she was 20 years old before they moved in together and Ali agreed to remain monogamous. As noted above, their relationship was also marked by the fact that her husband was one of the leading figures in a nationalist movement that grew stronger after the turn of the century.
As befitting better-off women, Huda Shaarawi was early on engaged in philanthropy. This included not only social assistance for vulnerable women and children but also initiatives that provided income opportunities and financial independence. Ever since 1909, she also taught, and her curricula featured more than just the traditional ���women���s subjects.��� Her salon in a spacious house in one of Cairo���s affluent districts also became a meeting place for women who wanted to converse on literature, Egyptian politics, and world events. As we have seen, Huda Shaarawi was increasingly drawn into anti-colonial activities during World War I. In the wake of the ���July Revolution��� of 1919, therefore, it was natural to start a women’s association, which she led until she died in 1947.
The Egyptian Feminist League quickly became known far beyond the country���s borders, not least through a French magazine that was later published in Arabic. Since Shaarawi additionally mastered English and Farsi, she quickly became one of the leading figures in an international network. In addition to fighting for the right to vote, education, new family legislation, and a ban on child marriage, she took an active part in international peace activism. After a conference in Rome in 1923, at the train station in Cairo, she greeted those present by casting off both her veil and headwear. It was an iconic moment in the history of Arab feminism, but she writes in her memoirs that it was only a modest element in the painstaking work of both women���s liberation and colonial liberation.
Political activism forced the British to make several concessions toward Egyptian self-government in 1922. But they did not want to give up their military bases, control of the Suez Canal, rule over Sudan, or the right to intervene on behalf of Egypt���s Christian and Jewish minorities. Saad Zaghlul, then a leader in the cause for independence, was brought back from forced exile, and in 1924 he became prime minister on behalf of the party that had led the call for independence. Although the rights of the national assembly over which he presided were severely curtailed, this step still served as an inspiration for further struggles for full independence. Shaarawi was the natural choice as leader of the women���s union of the Wafd Party, but she resigned a few years later as she thought that Zaghlul was too lenient and friendly to the British.
At the same time as Huda Shaarawi put in work in her home country, where she could at least enjoy better opportunities for education for women, her efforts in the international arena took more and more of her time. For one, she wanted to build bridges between Western and Arab feminisms. She saw it as her task to convince European women���s organizations that support for independence in the colonies was an important step towards equality. Without a thought for her ailing health, she was constantly on the move for conferences, interviews, and lectures in numerous countries, including Denmark. She was a sought-after writer and speaker in Arabic, French, and English. During a meeting in Istanbul in 1935, she surprised everyone by giving a spontaneous speech in honor of Kemal Atat��rk���in Turkish.
From the end of the 1930s, the struggle for Palestinian rights took an increasing share of Huda Shaarawi���s attention. After the First World War, Palestine became a British ���mandate,��� which in practice made it a colony. However, Palestine was set apart from other colonies in that the British opened it up for increasing Jewish immigration, and in principle agreed with the Zionist movement���s goal of making the whole area a ���Jewish homeland.��� After a visit to Palestine, Shaarawi became convinced that other Arab countries had to stand together to support Palestinian uprisings against colonial rule and the right to an independent state. Palestine activism once again made Huda Shaarawi a vocal opponent of British imperialism, and officials from London protested when King Faruk granted her a high Egyptian Order in 1942.
Huda Shaarawi���s heart had long been exposed to an inhuman level of strain, and in 1947, her life ebbed away. She died in the same year that the great powers in the UN established the state of Israel on Palestinian land. In line with historical studies that are no longer only interested in ���great men,��� there have been several books and dozens of journal articles about her life in recent times. Her memoirs have also been translated and published in English, and a close and informative portrayal of her has been given by one of her grandchildren.
February 3, 2022
Ted Lasso and the Afropolitan
Still from Ted Lasso. This article contains show spoilers, so bookmark this page if you want to watch the show first and come back to read later.
If you���re not watching ���Ted Lasso��� yet, you should jump on the bandwagon, even if you do not consider yourself a football (read: soccer) fan. The series follows the lives of a diverse cast of characters brought together through the elite world of professional football and one woman���s plot for revenge against her philandering ex-husband.
Through her divorce settlement, Rebecca Welton (played by Hannah Waddingham) acquires AFC Richmond, a fictional English Premier League club on the verge of relegation. Plotting to ruin her ex���s beloved club, in her first major decision as the new owner, Rebecca hires American college football coach Ted Lasso (played by Jason Sudekis) as the club���s new head coach. Players and fans at first rebuke Rebecca���s choice given that Ted had zero experience on the football pitch. But Ted���s magnetism and vision for a kinder sort of sportsmanship enable players and audiences to imagine new forms of success for the team of young men from around the globe, and for the women who enable their victories.
The show offers a fresh and sometimes raw examination of male friendship, masculinity, mental health, and women���s empowerment through the lens of professional football. It has produced much fanfare and recognition, winning several Emmys and prompting various written perspectives on Ted���s kind, empathetic, and complex optimism in a world of competition and toxic masculinity. However, very little has been written about one of the African and Black characters, rising Nigerian footballer Sam Obisanya (played by Toheeb Jimoh, a British actor and the son of immigrant parents from Nigeria). Some of the online takes on his character have focused on his romantic entanglement with Richmond club owner Rebecca (including some criticism). With the heating up (before the tournament, Liverpool head coach Jurgen Klopp reminded fans of ), now is a good time to consider what Sam Obisanya does to elevate Africa���s contested place in the world of (fictional) professional football.
Sam is a newcomer to Richmond in season one, hailing from a club in the Nigerian Football League. Though his role is minor in season one, his character is an important foil to the emotionally immature and egotistical striker, Jaime Tartt. But after Richmond is relegated from the EPL at the end of season one, forcing the club to reexamine their strategies in the show���s second season, Sam begins to rise both on and off the pitch, buoyed by Coach Lasso���s constant encouragement and keen awareness of Sam���s bouts of homesickness. At just 21 years old, Sam is mature beyond his years. He is worldly, genuine in his kindness, and as Coach Lasso helps him redefine his role on the pitch from defender to midfielder, Sam emerges as a role model to aspiring young footballers across racial divides who proudly wear the Obisanya jersey.
Sam is an Afropolitan.
The term ���Afropolitan��� has sparked intense debate here and elsewhere. The social theorist Achille Mbembe says Afropolitanism is a philosophical concept merging ���African��� and ���cosmopolitan��� to explore ���the many ways��� that ���Africans, or people of African origin, understand themselves as being part of the world rather than being apart.��� As a Nigerian footballer aspiring to belong in England, Sam rejects the exclusivity, elitism, and ���self-aggrandizing��� behaviors that mark well-founded critiques of the way some have commercialized the term coined by Taiye Selasi in her 2005 essay.
As Sam���s star rises on the pitch in season two, he confronts new questions about his identity and the responsibility that comes with his growing success. For example, Sam is elated to receive an offer to be the face of a new ad campaign for the club���s sponsor Dubai Air, a subsidiary of Cerithium Oil. But upon learning from his father that Cerithium Oil was responsible for repeated oil spills in Nigeria while refusing to clean them up���and experiencing the discomfort of his father���s disappointment���Sam decides not to go through with the ad campaign. Club owner Rebecca supports his decision. But Sam���s political activism doesn���t stop there. Before Richmond���s match against Coventry City, Sam covers the Dubai Air logo across his chest with black tape to take his protest public. His Nigerian football mates join him, and the rest of the team follows.
In a post-match press conference, Sam publicly accuses the Nigerian government of corruption for its destructive dealings with Cerithium Oil. (It���s no secret, of course, that there is a long history of corporate and government corruption surrounding regular oil spills in the region.) Sam���s public protest ultimately leads to the dissolution of the sponsorship, quickly replaced by the team���s PR mastermind, Keeley Jones, with a sponsorship from a progressive new dating app, Bantr, that does not allow users to post photographs of themselves. The sponsorship change is hardly a rejection of the capitalist regime that funds elite football clubs around the world. It nonetheless presents a bold scenario in which an elite football club eschews the logos of corrupt corporations and governments that are hurting the people and communities they claim to serve, where real life teams have failed to do so.
Still from Ted Lasso.In a recent interview, Toheeb Jimoh explained that his character���s closeness to his father mirrors his own relationship with his parents, who Jimoh feels a great debt to for their sacrifices to provide him with a good life. Sam���s activism gives viewers a glimpse of the rising footballer���s emerging political consciousness rooted in the responsibility he feels to do right by his family and home country.
The show carries this theme forward with the introduction of a new character in the final two episodes of season two, Edwin Akufo. Played by Sam Richardson, an American actor who grew up in the US and Ghana, Edwin is a Ghanaian billionaire looking to recruit top African talent to field the club he just bought, Raja Casablanca (an actual top club in the Moroccan professional league, Botola Pro). Edwin appears to have noble intentions in his quest to recruit Sam for his all-star, all-African football club. (In a real-life parallel, the black South African coach of the Egyptian club, Al Ahly, current African Champions League and Super Cup champions, recruited Percy Tau, a forward with EPL club, Brighton Hove and Albion to leave the UK and play on the continent again.) A new conflict emerges for the young footballer who seems to finally be feeling at home with Richmond, but who is also intrigued by Edwin���s Afrocentric vision to bring Africa���s top football talent back to Africa.
To Edwin���s surprise, following AFC Richmond���s win promoting them back to the Premier League in the season two finale, Sam tells Edwin that he is going to stay with Richmond: ���I don���t believe my time here at Richmond is over, and for that reason I have to stay. I hope you can understand.��� Edwin���s expression sinks, and in a fit of rage, calls Sam a ���Nigerian motherfucker��� and ���Yoruba trash,��� and vows to ���dedicate my life to destroying you ��� you will never play on the Nigerian national team.��� Sam takes the high road, and simply responds: ���OK,��� with a smirk. As Edwin exits the Richmond locker room, he continues to hurl ethnic slurs and threats of violence at Sam in an over-the-top tantrum.
Edwin���s insults are intended to threaten Sam���s sense of self and identity, as a Nigerian and as an African. But as Edwin accuses Sam of betraying his Nigerian home and African heritage in a fit that erodes Edwin���s credibility as anything more than an entitled billionaire who inherited his wealth from his father, Sam is sure of himself and his decision. The dynamic between Edwin and Sam thrust viewers into longstanding debates over ���who is African and who is not?��� in a rather decisive way. Sam, of course, rejects Edwin���s insults that Sam is not African enough, or not doing his part as an African, for Africa.
It is exciting and refreshing to see this subject take center stage in a show as popular as ���Ted Lasso.��� Some critics say the show sidesteps the pervasive racism that Black footballers endure in the world of elite European football. Indeed, the lives of African footballers in Europe have been historically difficult to navigate amid persistent forms of discrimination. Recent research shows that about 30% of all players in European leagues hail from the continent of Africa, but only 1% go on to coaching and managerial careers in Europe. Historically, the pay that African footballers receive is far below their white counterparts, to the extent that researchers have found African footballers still tend to struggle to find solid financial footing as they work to establish their professional careers in Europe.
But Sam���s character development and the conflicts he navigates in season two do shine a light on the challenge African footballers���and people living in the diaspora more broadly���face when trying to find a sense of belonging in their new homes. And true to his character development so far, Sam���s confidence in his decision to stay with Richmond is a testament to his self-affirmation as an African who desires to belong beyond Africa���s borders. Season two closes with Sam opening a Nigerian restaurant in London, an indication of his determination to put down roots in his new home.
Some viewers may not like how the show navigates this question of ���who is African and who is not?��� That scholars still seem to be engaging in this debate indicates that the stakes remain high for some. What is exciting about how the show imperfectly enters this debate is that it fits with wider, and growing calls for more inclusive ways of thinking about belonging in European football and society. As the growing field of Black European Studies evidences, there are many more stories that mirror Sam���s desire to feel at home in England. Reading Bernardine Evaristo���s new memoir, Manifesto, is a difficult but hopeful exploration of her affirmations of belonging as a Black British woman and award-winning author.
Sam���s self-affirmation as a Nigerian footballer living in Britain may be a fiction. But the present reality demands that we imagine such a world of acceptance of our common humanity and shared belonging. Because if we cannot imagine it, we certainly won���t ever achieve it. The African Studies scholar, Wendell Hassan Marsh, recently argued that ���African epistemic self-affirmation is the ultimate end of decolonization.��� Sam Obisanya���s particular brand of Afropolitanism gives us a glimpse of what that might look like.
Ted Lasso airs on Apple TV +
February 2, 2022
A black sound
Image credit South Africa Tourism on Flickr CC BY 2.0. Africa Is a Country Radio continues its literary theme for its third season on Worldwide FM. This month we have a very special guest mix from Folarin Ajibade aka folarinistired, a Lagos-bred DJ, academic, and radio show host based in Brooklyn, NY.
Folarin presents a mix of classic kwaito from South Africa inspired by the book Kwaito Bodies by Xavier Livermon. Since it kept with our theme of music inspired by literature inspired by music, we decided to have our first guest mix on the show. Folarin’s description:
This mix is heavily inspired by Xavier Livermon’s Kwaito Bodies, an extensive ethnography of kwaito music and the larger sociocultural ecosystem of performance, politics and pleasure that it has fostered in urban South Africa. My own introduction to kwaito was through the group, Boom Shaka, whose musical stylings and aesthetics Livermon’s work helped me contextualize. They feature in this mix along with other pioneers of the genre like Doc Shebeleza, Trompies, and M’du. Also included are songs by Penny Penny (Papa Penny) and Nozinja, innovators of Shangaan Disco and Shangaan Electro, two of the multiple genres that have originated from kwaito. My choice to close out with an edit of “Ngunyuta Dance” by the Detroit legend, Anthony Shake Shakir, is a nod to Livermon’s conception of the “re-mastered” afrodisaporic nature of kwaito. Here we hear a Black American rework a Shangaan Electro tune inspired by South African Kwaito, a hybrid genre which was itself conceived from the interaction between house, hip-hop, r&b, dub, marabi, imibongo, kwela, and bubblegum music. For me, this recording embodies what I find most captivating about the genre���its capacity (like many other forms of Black music) to hold seemingly disparate sounds in a harmonious embrace.
Listen in to hear Folarin���s mix and a discussion about his journey as a DJ and academic. We kick off the show with a short exploration of the latest musical craze to come out of South Africa, amapiano.
Listen below, get the tracklist on Worldwide FM and follow us on Mixcloud.
A man of the people
Albert Luthuli. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Chinua Achebe���s fourth novel, A Man of the People (1966), concerns the political fortunes of a character named Chief MA Nanga, a government minister in a fictionalized version of Nigeria, and those of the novel���s narrator, Odili Samalu, a teacher and former student of Nanga. The two become rivals as Achebe���s plot unfolds, with their relationship capturing the thorniness of intergenerational change and competition. Among many issues raised are the sources of political capital and how grassroots support can be difficult to tap and, once earned, also easy to lose. The wellspring of power, even postcolonial power, is ultimately local and interpersonal���as Achebe relays early on, ���it didn���t matter what you knew but who you knew������and the book���s title, while initially applied to Nanga, soon encompasses Samalu as well.
Achebe���s notion of ���a man of the people��� is not, of course, limited to Nigeria. Similar fictionalized accounts of the populist origins of political authority can be found in such novels as The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) by Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez and Wizard of the Crow (2006) by Ng��g�� wa Thiong���o. Akin to these later works, what is unsettling in Achebe���s satire is not simply that good leaders can be corrupted, but how corruption itself as a seemingly anti-humanist phenomenon can encroach and be reproduced so effortlessly���the temerity of personal character remains the final bulwark against the seductions of material and egotistical aggrandizement. But is that enough under systemic conditions of political antagonism, wealth inequality, and moral relativism?
The present-day relevance of this question needs little elaboration. However, this question also rests at the heart of Robert Trent Vinson���s new biography Albert Luthuli (2018), among the latest contributions to the Short Histories of Africa series published by Ohio University Press. As recounted by Vinson, Luthuli was a morally steadfast person, who kept a firm hand as president of the African National Congress during a turbulent time in South Africa���s history, with apparently little concern for personal gain. In short, he represents a form of incorruptible leadership that has disappeared from the upper ranks of the ANC for sure, but equally in other parts of the world. In the voice of one observer during Luthuli���s lifetime, Luthuli was ���[a] man of the people [who] had a very strong influence over the community. He was a people���s chief.��� Luthuli was characteristically unlike Nanga���if not entirely in spirit, then at least in consequence.
Yet, despite his political accomplishments, Luthuli retains something of a middle-range status, if not obscurity, in popular memory, whether in South Africa or the broader pan-African networks of the Black Atlantic. He has been overshadowed by Nelson Mandela and other vital members of the ANC Youth League���a point to be returned to���but, dwelling on the broader context, further contrasts of historical comparison might be drawn to explain this predicament. Luthuli did not spend a formative period overseas like some leaders, such as Leopold Senghor or Agostinho Neto. He did not depart the country of his birth to fight a struggle elsewhere like Frantz Fanon. Nor did he die tragically young like Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, or Steve Biko. In comparison to other anti-apartheid leaders, he never suffered long-term imprisonment in the same way that Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, and others did, even though he did experience incarceration during the Treason Trial and was subjected to extended periods of house arrest. The great misfortune he ultimately lived through, as with others of his generation, was being unable to witness non-racial democracy being achieved in South Africa.
Luthuli consequently poses a particular set of tests and criteria for the postcolonial biographer. The events in Luthuli���s life do not approximate the hero���s journey of early calamity, a period of exile, and a redemptive return as in the case of a number of the aforementioned leaders. Nor was his life struck down in youth���a case of political martyrdom. The innocence had long been lost by the time of his death in 1967. The inventive biographer, as Vinson indicates, must instead look elsewhere to locate the tensions and conflict that explain a person���s character and the lessons that can be imparted. Though Luthuli passed away decades before the end of apartheid, he succeeded in many ways, not least by being the recipient of the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize���the first from Africa���for his guidance of the ANC during the tumultuous decade of the 1950s. He had become an icon of civil disobedience, a proponent of non-violence, and an organizer of a multiracial nationalism through the Congress Alliance that flew in the face of the apartheid government���s divide and rule strategy. The path to this point was not easy.
Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli was born in Zimbabwe, then Southern Rhodesia, at a Seventh Day Adventist mission in Bulawayo. The year of his birth remains unconfirmed, though it is generally accepted to be 1898. One of three children, his father, John, who was originally from Natal, held various jobs as an evangelist, interpreter, and transporter for the British South Africa Company of Cecil John Rhodes, while his mother, Nozililo Mtonya, had once been a member of the court of the Zulu king Cetewayo. The timing of Luthuli���s birth coincided with a period of conflict and uncertainty���a premonition for his future political life. The first Chimurenga was then unfolding against the combined British-South African invasion supported by Cecil Rhodes, a settler-colonial encroachment that Luthuli���s parents were chance accessories.
Against this backdrop, his father died when Luthuli was only six months old���this following the death of one of Luthuli���s siblings at birth���though the family stayed in Southern Rhodesia until 1908, when they returned to Natal. Luthuli came under the guardianship of an uncle, Martin Luthuli, who had been a secretary to the Zulu king Dinizulu, as well as being a co-founder of the Natal Native Congress in 1900 and the South African Native National Congress (later the African National Congress) in 1912. He was also deeply Christian. The younger Luthuli consequently fell under the tutelage of a politically active father figure, which required that he navigate these overlapping worlds of tradition, faith, and politics at an early age. This heritage and received sensibility in turn would forge an ethical vision of justice and injustice that Luthuli would later apply to South Africa���s apartheid order���an instance of ethics preceding politics.
Luthuli was not alone, of course, in confronting these disparate, yet congruent, domains of Black South African life. Like many of his generation and gender, he made his way through a patchwork of schools���an American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions school, Ohlange Institute (founded by John Dube, the ANC���s first president), and Edendale, where he received a teaching certificate in 1917. Embarking on a career in education, he went on to serve as a school principal, train as a lay minister, and eventually head teacher training at Adams College, the famed secondary school that counts Dube, Pixley Seme, Anton Lembede, and Ellen Kuzwayo among its alumni. As one of the school���s first Black teachers, Luthuli embraced all aspects of school life���instructing classes, delivering Sunday sermons, conducting choirs, coaching soccer���and he married a fellow teacher, Nokukhanya ka Maphita ka Bhengu Ndlokolo. Their family life would be located away from Adams in Luthuli���s childhood home of Groutville, due to the restriction that women teachers could not be married. Nonetheless, it was a thriving family life, despite periods of being apart, with seven children.
As recounted by Vinson, Luthuli began his political career in earnest when he was democratically elected the residential chief for Groutville in December 1935. Though his uncle, Martin, had held this position until 1921, running for this office was not an obvious choice. The traditional nature of the role posed a conflict with Luthuli���s education and modern sensibility. His vocation as a teacher provided an arguably higher status. It definitely provided better pay. Furthermore, serving as chief meant walking a tightrope between representing the interests of the local community while also adhering to and promulgating the policies of the white South African state. Rather than placing him in a Christian mold as other scholars have done, Vinson argues that Luthuli met these challenges through an approach of Ubuntu (���a concept that recognized the humanity and interdependence of all people���) that in turn enabled him to govern with ���an inclusive democratic spirit, personal warmth, integrity, empathy, and judicious wisdom.��� In short, this position, if reluctantly pursued at first, not only marked his political rise, but proved to be the crucible through which he began to cultivate the skills he became known for. Moreover, though this type of grassroots path is unremarkable in many political careers, it is noteworthy in the history of the ANC���s leadership. Luthuli was the last ANC president to have emerged from local political circumstances of this kind���a point that will be returned to.
Luthuli���s membership in the ANC began in 1944. It was an opportune moment given the establishment of the ANC���s Women���s League in 1943 and the ANC Youth League in 1944���the revival of the ANC under the leadership of Alfred Xuma during the 1930s was continuing apace. Furthermore, the political imagination of many activists was shifting to embrace a global perspective. The effects of the Second World War, the founding of the United Nations, and the beginning of the National Party���s apartheid policy in 1948 encouraged this wider horizon to situate the ANC���s activism. Luthuli himself traveled to the US in June 1948 for a period of seven months, during which he experienced Jim Crow policies while touring the American South and visiting historically Black universities like Howard and Tuskegee. Vinson writes that the trip allowed Luthuli to see the transnational scope of white supremacy with clarity and a consequent sense of purpose. Upon his return, he became active in promoting the Programme of Action, formulated by members of the Youth League including Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu, which supported civil disobedience as a new tactical approach against the apartheid regime. This decision put him in conflict with the Natal ANC leadership. Undeterred, Luthuli participated in provincial events involving the South African Indian Congress (SAIC) and eventually became president of the Natal ANC in May 1951.
The 1952 Defiance Campaign, which built upon the energies of the Programme of Action, finally launched Luthuli onto the national stage. The campaign and Luthuli himself embraced Mohandas Gandhi���s strategy of satyagraha (���truth force���), which named the type of non-violent, though not passive, civil disobedience undertaken that had seen success with the recent independence of India in 1947. Satyagraha also signaled how the appropriation and application of political strategies found elsewhere in the world had become a common feature of the long South African struggle and its global sense of attention���whether the ideology in question was Marxism-Leninism, Garveyism, or pan-Africanism, to name several vital influences.
Still, Gandhi had started his political career in South Africa, and a key part of the innovation that Luthuli pursued was to coalesce the tactic of satyagraha around local circumstances of tension and opportunity between Indian and Black South Africans. Natal had witnessed an explosion of anti-Indian violence in January 1949, despite the ���Doctors��� Pact��� signed in March 1947 that affirmed cooperation between the ANC and SAIC. Vinson attributes Luthuli���s growing political acumen to his ability to seize opportunity by looking beyond surface differences, glancing the other way when past experience posed obstacles, and always keeping parochialism���whether geographic, ideological, or cultural���at bay.
The Defiance Campaign, if ultimately limited in its ability to undermine apartheid measures, generated a burst of membership enrollment in the ANC from approximately 25,000 on the eve of the campaign to 100,000 members by its finish. Luthuli himself resigned from his chieftaincy due to government criticism of his activism and his belief that he could better serve his community through the ANC. By December 1952, he was formally elected president of the party. At this point, he translated his lessons in organizing from Natal to help forge the Congress Alliance���a multiracial coalition that brought together the ANC, SAIC, the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), the South African Coloured People���s Organization (SACPO), and the Congress of Democrats.
The pinnacle moment for the alliance would be the 1955 Congress of the People held in Kliptown, Soweto, though the buildup to the event involved extensive grassroots outreach to local communities to gather opinion as to what the meeting���s proposed Freedom Charter should contain. Luthuli called upon ���freedom volunteers��� to collect such populist views, since he saw the UN-inspired Freedom Charter to be ���a South African Declaration of Human Rights.��� When the Congress was finally held, Luthuli was unable to attend due to both a serious heart attack and a banning order that restricted him to Groutville. A speech recorded from his bedside was played on his behalf.
Yet, despite the success of the Congress of the People, the Freedom Charter, and the momentum established by the Congress Alliance, Luthuli and the ANC faced internal and external tensions that began to erode what had been accomplished. As Vinson writes, Luthuli viewed the alliance as ���part of a global anticolonial, anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacy coalition in the spirit of the recent Afro-Asian solidarity campaign in Bandung, Indonesia.��� However, this spirit of interracial solidarity faced challenges from the Africanist bloc within the ANC, which criticized multiracialism as betraying Black South African interests. A parallel set of ideological pressures came from the communist faction within the ANC, comprised of members of the South African Communist Party (SACP), which had reformed underground in 1953 following the banning of Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1950. Luthuli eventually developed a close relationship with Moses Kotane, the SACP���s general secretary.
Outside the party, the apartheid government responded to the Congress of the People with arrests in December 1956 resulting in the infamous Treason Trial, involving 156 activists, who were accused of seeking to overthrow the state. Luthuli was among those arrested. Indeed, Vinson discusses how Luthuli set an example of prison leadership by hosting political discussions and other activities to maintain morale and discipline that Mandela would later emulate on Robben Island. Luthuli���s wife, Nokukhanya, helped to buffer some of these difficulties through her leadership in the ANC Women���s League and, more crucially, her bearing the task as the family���s breadwinner (the presidency of the ANC was an unpaid position).
After Luthuli���s release in December 1957, the unavoidable question became whether the ANC would turn to armed struggle, thus abandoning the principle of non-violence that Luthuli had long espoused, especially as a man of Christian faith. This turning point was the result of a number of steps, and it forms the crux of Vinson���s biography. Luthuli himself promoted the idea of racial reconciliation through two national tours in 1958 and 1959, ending with his receipt of a five-year banning order which placed him under house arrest in May 1959. However, this approach of favoring conciliation over conflict was wearing thin, especially among younger activists. Only a month prior, Robert Sobukwe broke away from the ANC with others in the Africanist section to establish the more militant Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) that foregrounded Black nationalism. Restrained and facing an unraveling alliance, the Sharpeville Massacre in March 1960 brought violent clarity to what was at stake for Luthuli���s ANC. On March 21, police killed 69 unarmed protestors at a PAC rally in Sharpeville, with 186 injured. Police violence exploded again in Cape Town on March 30 during the PAC-sponsored Langa March, involving an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 protestors who walked from the Langa and Nyanga townships to Cape Town���s city center. The apartheid government declared a state of emergency with the PAC and the ANC banned, in addition to over 25,000 detained. Though not directly involved with these twin protests, Luthuli was imprisoned for five months, where guards physically assaulted him despite his ill health.
By December 1960, agreement was reached among a younger cohort of ANC and SACP activists���including Mandela, Sisulu, Kotane, and Govan Mbeki���that the strategy of non-violence had become ineffective, with armed struggle remaining the only option. Their arrival at this decision, in retrospect, is unsurprising given the significance and success of such tactics in Algeria, Indochina, Cuba, Kenya, and elsewhere. Yet, as detailed by Vinson, it required a certain set of diplomatic moves within the ANC between Luthuli and Mandela, who spearheaded this new plan. Luthuli conceded that reconsideration was needed, though he was reluctant to abandon the principled stand of non-violence that had provided a sharp moral contrast to the apartheid regime���s brutality. This principle had sustained the movement throughout the 1950s and had provided a key defense during the Treason Trial, which eventually failed to prosecute any of the accused.
Luthuli approached the question from all sides, while Mandela kept patient with the aim of receiving Luthuli���s blessing. Ultimately, a ���dual resolution��� was reached, largely credited to Kotane as depicted by Vinson, which allowed the ANC ���to uphold nonviolence while sanctioning the establishment of an affiliated sabotage wing.��� Effectively, a bylaw technicality came into play: ANC delegates could not vote to formalize armed struggle as official policy due to the organization���s banning, thereby leaving the decision to approve the formation of such a wing at Luthuli���s discretion. He consequently approved the founding of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), albeit as ���supplemental to ongoing political action.��� Non-violence remained the official policy of the ANC.
In December 1961, Luthuli went to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which he had been awarded for 1960. During the same month, MK began its operations of sabotage in earnest. Luthuli remained vocal in his criticism of the apartheid government and in his commitment to nonviolence during his moment in the global spotlight. But the ground had already shifted. Luthuli returned to Groutville where his influence and life became increasingly isolated, while the operations of MK and the ANC���s ���external mission��� in exile escalated in activity. Mandela continued to meet with Luthuli, though it became clear that such exchanges were matters of respect and consultation rather than the elder leader dictating to the younger one. At the end of the Rivonia Trial in June 1964, when Mandela and seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment, Luthuli issued a statement declaring the ANC���s longstanding pursuit of ���a militant, nonviolent struggle��� yet with the concession that ���no one can blame brave just men for seeking justice by the use of violent methods; nor could they be blamed if they tried to create an organized force in order to ultimately establish peace and racial harmony.��� Though he continued to retain his stature through correspondence with Martin Luther King, Jr., and visiting with Robert F. Kennedy when he toured South Africa, Luthuli would die only a few years later in July 1967 under enigmatic circumstances���struck by a train, the state���s inquest suggested that Luthuli���s death was due to his failing sight and hearing, a conclusion disputed by Nokukhanya.
Vinson���s biography also concludes to confront the enigma as to why Luthuli isn���t more prominent on the Heroes Acre of pan-African leaders. The conspicuous answer is Mandela and the spectacle he has garnered across most ANC narratives. Historians have recently been making efforts to diminish Mandela���s luster, and Vinson���s book embraces this agenda, though with a light touch. Drawing on previously inaccessible papers by Luthuli housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, Vinson���s work is aimed at not only restoring Luthuli to the stature he once had, but also reversing a predominant ANC narrative to demonstrate how Mandela and others appealed for his attention and respected his decisions, even when these decisions went against the more radical temperament of younger activists.
When Mandela was released in 1990, he effectively emulated his deceased predecessor once more in terms of temperament, principle, and strategy. Luthuli had guided the ANC during one of its most challenging and auspicious chapters, shortly after the National Party came to power and activists had to sort out a means to best respond to a new era of suppression. The multiracial Congress Alliance that laid the groundwork for a new South African nationhood was Luthuli���s signal achievement. Mandela essentially believed that the same strategy for fighting apartheid could also deconstruct it. The lessons of the 1950s formed an undercurrent to the politics of the 1990s.
Beyond this reappraisal, a deeper question might be raised. To what end are liberation narratives still useful? This book largely avoids exchanging one myth about non-violence, as embodied by Luthuli, for another myth about violence, which has been increasingly attached to Mandela as one means of refocusing his life. By tracking the archival record, Vinson underscores how beliefs and strategies of violence and non-violence could co-exist at once, and at times within the thinking of the same individual. To periodize a liberation struggle through the notion of a ���turn��� between these two options risks overdetermination, especially given the inchoate nature and flexibility of the term ���violence��� as a concept. Furthermore, the cohesiveness of such turns can privilege elite decision-making on such matters���remember the Pondoland Revolt (1950-1961), remember the Soweto Uprising (1976), which had less regard for the dictates of leaders and their executive decisions. They foreground instead the important role of spontaneity in revolutionary struggle, particularly at the grassroots level. This leads to a final point.
Returning to Achebe, A Man of the People underscores how the enemy may not be external, but instead residing, even actively cultivated, from within. Luthuli���s origins in local grassroots politics are suggestive not only of how he developed a populist sensibility, but also how his career might be differentiated from later ANC leaders and, especially, the culture of corruption that has engulfed the organization in recent years. It would be easy and an overgeneralization to argue that the roots of this culture originated in exile. And yet the politics of exile, due to its deterritorialization, often consists of a politics of patronage and loyalty���connections, whether with states or leaders, can matter more to advancement than having that common people���s touch.
Approached differently, liberation movements encompass much more than heroic leaders or the decision of confronting an enemy with violence or non-violence, whether that enemy be the apartheid government, another white minority regime, or colonialism writ large. Liberation movements are equally about building governing structures and establishing political cultures through chains of command, party routines, and transactional expectations.
The ANC since the end of apartheid, whether under presidents Jacob Zuma or Cyril Ramaphosa, has handled elections by relying on struggle credentials, rather than shifting to the consistent hard work of garnering popular support. We need liberation histories that get beyond the moralizing of violence versus non-violence, the righteous versus the damned, in order to better grasp, from an analytic standpoint, the connections and discontinuities between the ethics of struggle and the rules of governance. Personal character, whether in the guise of Luthuli or Samalu, should not be the exclusive source for political understanding. Such an agenda is beyond the capacity of any single book, though Vinson���s biography points in this direction, hinting at how liberation histories might be reframed to better address the problems of the present.
The moral question of armed struggle is of little importance today. Assigning blame to the legacies of apartheid for South Africa���s current social ills has increasingly become a routine alibi for self-interested leaders in the ANC and other parties. Vinson takes us back. In revisiting Luthuli, the reader is reminded of Du Bois���s passing remark in The Souls of Black Folk, ���Throughout history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.���
February 1, 2022
Coup in Burkina
In the last year and a half, military takeovers have occurred in Chad, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, and last week, in Burkina Faso. It happens that all of these countries belong to a region below the Sahara known as the Sahel, stretching from Senegal to Sudan, and comprising Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, northern Nigeria, southern Algeria, Eritrea, and northern Ethiopia. The reason for ex-Burkinab�� president Roch Kabor�����s overthrow is widely attributed to his inability to manage the destabilizing conflict in the central Sahel that Burkina was dragged into in 2015. For now, the coup has popular support���but where next for the country, and its democracy?
Returning to AIAC Talk is Dr. Lassane Ouedraogo, an analyst of political governance, media, and conflict in Sahelian West Africa, a 2020 AIAC inaugural fellow and an adjunct lecturer at Universit�� Joseph Ki Zerbo in Ouagadougou. Although the coup���s proximate cause is Burkina���s deteriorating security situation, has the country become caught up in a cycle of military insurgency that even revolutionaries, like Thomas Sankara, are partly responsible for? Does this doom liberal democracy in Burkina, or was it ill-suited to begin with?
Listen to the show below, and subscribe via your favorite platform.
https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/6a4bb18d-de7e-4f26-8053-8c701358e66f/aiac-talk-coup-in-burkina.mp3A coup in Burkina
In the last year and a half, military takeovers have occurred in Chad, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, and last week, in Burkina Faso. It happens that all of these countries belong to a region below the Sahara known as the Sahel, stretching from Senegal to Sudan, and comprising Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, northern Nigeria, southern Algeria, Eritrea, and northern Ethiopia. The reason for ex-Burkinab�� president Roch Kabor�����s overthrow is widely attributed to his inability to manage the destabilizing conflict in the central Sahel that Burkina was dragged into in 2015. For now, the coup has popular support���but where next for the country, and its democracy?
Returning to AIAC Talk is Dr. Lassane Ouedraogo, an analyst of political governance, media, and conflict in Sahelian West Africa, a 2020 AIAC inaugural fellow and an adjunct lecturer at Universit�� Joseph Ki Zerbo in Ouagadougou. Although the coup���s proximate cause is Burkina���s deteriorating security situation, has the country become caught up in a cycle of military insurgency that even revolutionaries, like Thomas Sankara, are partly responsible for? Does this doom liberal democracy in Burkina, or was it ill-suited to begin with?
https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/6a4bb18d-de7e-4f26-8053-8c701358e66f/aiac-talk-coup-in-burkina.mp3Sean Jacobs's Blog
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