Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 284

Flood the soundscape African

Image via Simon Berry Flickr.

Most of the Digital Archive features that have been posted so far offer some kind of option for users to contribute their own materials. For example, last week’s feature on HipHopAfrican included directions for submitting music to Msia Kibona Clark’s class. Nigerian Nostalgia and the Nsibidi Institute are other projects that have participatory options. If you have materials that fit within the aims of these sites, you can submit and become part of the experience. Though  not an intentional focus when this series began, over time I began to search out sites that would allow users to become part of the conversation. And why shouldn’t they? If the internet is the democratizing force that it is advertised to be, why shouldn’t you be able to contribute? This week takes that idea to the next level, with two projects that allow you to produce virtually unmediated content.

A few months ago, I saw an article on Wired about a project called Localingual. Built by David Ding, a former Microsoft software engineer, Localingual is an interactive map featuring recordings of voices from throughout the world. Launched in January this year, the site had logged 500,000 visits by the time the Wired piece was published online. Ding’s inspiration for Localingual came from his travels. When he was in Ukraine, he was struck by the possibilities of recording all of the different languages and dialects he was hearing and putting them online. Of course, he couldn’t possibly do all of this work on his own. Instead, the map does a lot of the work for him, allowing users to record their own voices in the language of their choices. There are obviously some short-comings with a process like this, such as users recording profanity or using fake accents, so Ding came up with a thumbs-up/thumbs-down system to help weed out the fakes. To add your own voice, open the map and click the country of your choice. (Just a heads up: the software only works on Android devices or desktops. The Apple iOS APIs prevent it from working on Apple devices.) A list of the languages recorded for that country thus far will load to the right of the map. Click through the thought bubbles to listen to all of the recordings that have been made thus far. If you want to add your own recording, click the microphone button, select the language the recording will be in and the gender of the speaker and choose whether the recording is of the name of a country, its capital or a phrase. Then write the phrase in the language you are speaking and its English equivalent and press record. It’s as simple as that.

Similar to Localingual, Soundcities is another interactive map presenting recordings of ambient sounds from cities around the globe. Originally, the map was home to sounds recorded by the artist Stanza, who would record sounds he encountered in cities he visited in his travels. Now it is a completely open platform, which means that anyone can submit sounds from their own cities. Unfortunately, there are only three African cities included in the project so far: Bamako, Cairo, and Dakar. But, like Localingual, you can change that! Below the list of sounds, click “add a new sound.” From there, you can create a username and add your city to the list of cities with sounds registered. A marker will be dropped onto the map that you drag to the location of your city. Click continue and then you can add your mp3 for the city of your choice, select the best mood/category for your sound click and submit.

So, post your content! Take your phones and record people’s voices, record the sounds you here. We have the ability to flood these sites with African content. Take the time and make the most of these resources. It’s your right and responsibility to do so.

‘Temple Run’ or stay?

Freetown, June 14, 2005. Inside the fence of Lamin’s garage. When you become an apprentice you will work without any real pay for years. Your bossman is responsible for feeding you and maybe pocket money once in a while. Often you will sleep in a car or somewhere on the premises to keep the area safe. Image credit Mats Utas (@matsutas on Instagram).

“Back then, when the boats came, people used to run. Now we’d get on gladly, at least it would mean work.” Junior’s bleak jokes are not making anyone laugh. He takes another sip of his Sprite and kicks up the dust on the street where we are sitting in Freetown, Sierra Leone. “That’s why everyone wants to go on a Temple Run”, he adds – this time everyone nods knowingly. In the addictive mega-hit mobile phone game, Temple Run, “you have to run for your life to escape the Evil Demon Monkeys nipping at your heels.” This involves jumping walls of fire, swimming through treacherous waters and flying across collapsing bridges. For young people in Freetown, Temple Run has become code for the perilous journey that an increasing number of young Sierra Leoneans are making to Europe via Libya.

It wasn’t always like this. The collective memory of the Atlantic slave trade off the shores of the Upper Guinea Coast to which Junior alluded when talking about boats, was once used to talk about rights. “We are Sierra Leoneans, not slaves!” young Freetonians shouted in 2013, when an urban beautification project threatened to shut down the informal livelihoods, such as commercial motorbike riding, that allow most young people to survive in the city. Through these slogans, and affirmations of citizenship, young people expressed their hopes and expectations of the government’s ability to deliver development after a 10-year civil war. The struggle was real, but hopes were high then. And then Ebola broke out in 2014. Junior and his friends kept hustling in Freetown, in the streets near Connaught Hospital, where at the height of the epidemic bodies were being dumped in the streets because there was no capacity to admit patients. Some volunteered to join the response as contact tracers and burial team members. Junior himself got sick. He collapsed in the streets and everyone ran away from him scared of contracting Ebola, leaving him alone to drag himself to the hospital and be put in isolation before his tests showed positive only for malaria. The economy crashed during the epidemic, and the post-war gains in economic growth all but disappeared.

So now the boats have a different meaning, they are not distant memories used to claim the rights of free citizens, but they are expressions of a loss of faith, for some, that things can change in Sierra Leone. They still serve as metaphors for how young men like Junior think about citizenship, but rather than asserting expectations, they speak of failures and disappointment. Many have begun to embark on the Temple Run, passing through Agadez in Niger headed towards Libya to board new boats towards Europe. In the busy streets where informal traders get together, daily discussions are dominated by stories of those who have called from refugee camps in Italy, those whose boats capsized, those who have never been heard from again. But Temple Run, for those who stay, is also a way to talk about their own country, to reflect on the feeling that nothing is moving and the loss of energy since the protests in 2013. It signals the possibility for adventure and change and new ways to imagine a future.

During the Ebola epidemic, the media and policy-makers focused on community resistance to public health measures, on grappling with why people escaped quarantined homes and seemingly did not believe that Ebola was real. They talked about a lack of trust in a ‘fragile’ state, and of reticent communities retreating, isolating themselves from the rest of the world. But that was too simple. It failed to consider how young people want to see themselves as Sierra Leoneans, and have expectations attached to these claims; how many of them volunteered during the outbreak and bought into the narrative of national struggle. It also hides from view the ways in which collective disillusionment in the aftermath of the epidemic is balanced by daily attempts to make life after crisis work.

Junior, for example, is working hard to change himself. He stopped drinking after alcohol got him into too many fights and, last time we spoke, he thought he might have been able to secure an apprenticeship through a local politician. It wouldn’t pay much, or last long, but it was something. It’s this imagination and ability to envisage possibilities that those working to rebuild Sierra Leone ought to capture in order to reframe a social contract after the devastation of the epidemic.

The danger of a single author

You might expect unbridled enthusiasm from literature professors for the “One Book, One New York” campaign, a project that claims to be “the largest community reading program in the country.” It champions literature, seeing it as uniquely positioned to bring people together; capable of building connections across difference in a world in which the arts hold an increasingly tenuous foothold. Given U.S. PresidentDonald Trump’s recent proposal to scrap both the National Endowments for the Humanities and the Arts, this is a particularly timely moment for such a project. And the election of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 novel, Americanah, by those New Yorkers who took time to vote for it, suggests a desire for books that reflect the city’s pro-immigrant, cosmopolitan tendencies, as do most of the other works in competition with Americanah. Yet a closer look at the winning choice points to some less than savory truths about the place of African fiction and African writers in the United States and the “Global North.”

The four other books nominated indicate a preference for books concerned with themes of racial, ethnic, and class diversity. Apart from the anomalous choice of the 1943 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, the three others (Junot Diaz’s 2007 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Ta Nahesi-Coates’ more recent Between the World and Me, and 2016’s Booker Prize winner The Sellout by Paul Beatty) suggest a preference for works with clear and current political and racial thematic emphases. This is New York, the subway ads seem to indicate, even while Trump’s photo-ops at the White House depict a more homogeneous United States.

The multiculturalism celebrated by New York City depends, regrettably, on well-worn forms of dispossession, re-entrenching global inequality even as its marketing campaign claims to resist it. Julie Menin, the Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, purportedly promoted the “One Book, One New York” program in order to enhance the stature and financial clout of NYC-based publishing houses. This is all very well for Penguin Random House, Americanah’s publisher, and “the world’s largest English-language general trade book publisher,” but what Menin and others ignore as they help fill corporate coffers, is how such behemoths destroy non-Western publishing houses, much as Amazon has destroyed small booksellers, making it impossible for them to compete either for the best African writers’ books, or for the wealth that works like Americanah produce.

In an important 2008 article in “The Chronic,” the cultural supplement to South African-based Chimurenga magazine, Jeremy Weate observes that African literature is often treated as yet another extractable source for the enrichment of Euro-American publishing. All of the wealth that novels such as Americanah produce is recouped in the West, echoing earlier imperial patterns of wealth accumulation, which, to use Ian Baucom’s pithy phrase, ensure that “expansion contracts.” Like oil, or “black gold,” extracted in Nigeria, but refined off-shore for re-import and resale to Nigerian consumers, African fiction, for Weate, “is simply another form of capital whose value is formed and transacted in London or New York (for the English-speaking world),” where the judges of literary prizes, and critics, and academics (like myself) confer value (or refuse it) on literary works.

That such processes of African literary canonization occur not on the continent itself, but via circuits through the West that mimic the flow of capital, is of course inextricably related. But there are certain African works and certain African writers that critics and academics in the Global North admire more than others. Adichie has been a darling of the West for some time now, since her oft-cited 2009 “TED talk” on “The Danger of a Single Story,” and more recently, since her collaboration with Beyoncé, the publication of her tepid defense of feminism, and her role as intellectual muse for a 2016 fashion show organized by Christian Dior. The infamous “Page Six” column in The New York Post reports, furthermore, that Americanah is being primed by Lupita Nyong’o for the screen. By picking an African author who has come to represent all African writers for U.S. audiences, the “One Book, One New York” project inadvertently defangs and corporatizes all the difference out of the program that seemed to want, admirably, to place works focused on people and places outside of the white mainstream at the center of a set of new literary canons.

Don’t get me wrong. I also love certain of Adichie’s works, particularly her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, a coming-of-age story about a timid young woman in Nigeria, growing up under the thumb of a tyrannical and abusive father. The short stories in That Thing Around Your Neck, too, include some stellar examples of how much a good writer can do with a short, tight, light touch, and when I teach these or her first novel, students are riveted. But Americanah is not nearly as good a book, so it’s a curious choice. Of course, its title, and its engagement with Americans means readers don’t have to work very hard, so any sense of unfamiliarity they might have with the narrator’s life in Nigeria before she moves to the East Coast of the U.S. is quickly replaced by recognizable characters and settings.

The choice of Americanah ultimately seems more symbolic than anything else. Much as that other famous Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, was repeatedly called upon, against his own wishes, to represent all African writers in the West, Adichie has had the misfortune of becoming the latest iteration of the West’s simplistic tokenistic relation to the African continent, a reductionism that obliterates the possibility of richer, more varied engagements with African writing and publishers. For of course there are myriad examples of new and interesting African writing that is largely ignored by Western audiences, especially when it is not an example of what Siyanda Mohutsiwa deems “immigrant literature” – those stories and novels that end with the main character leaving the African continent for places in North America or Europe – or when the work jettisons the documentary realism often expected from African fiction in favor of other formal and thematic emphases.

So while it seems admirable to get more people to read works that address cross-cultural experience all the while shoring up a dwindling book-publishing industry, as is so often the case with literary celebrity, the choice of Americanah may have less to do with aesthetic merit, in the end, than with the narrow geopolitical space allotted to African fiction in the West. This then swiftly undermines Adichie’s celebrated caveat about “The Danger of a Single Story.”

The podcast for African Hip Hop

Edem. Image via Hip Hop African.

Msia Kibona Clark is assistant professor of African Studies at Howard University. Her research focuses on in hip hop in Africa. Clark recently served as editor and contributor to Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati and has authored numerous articles on hip hop in Tanzania. At Howard, Clark teaches a course entitled “Hip Hop and Popular Culture in Africa,” in which students explore hip hop culture throughout Africa. For their research projects, students are charged with creating either an original art project or a podcast. Podcasts from past and current iterations of this course are now collected on the site, HipHopAfrican.

I reached out to Clark on Twitter to learn more about decision to integrate podcasting into her pedagogical style.

Where did you get the idea for HipHop African?

The idea for the website came from a need to have a platform for students doing research to post (archive) their findings. I listen to podcasts daily, and found that there were other faculty who had used them. They seemed to fit great with the theme of the course.

What are the pros/cons of using digital media as a pedagogical tool?

There are more pros than cons. Students get to engage with the music of artists they find and that inserts them into the online dialogues around those artists. That’s huge! The material we discuss in class suddenly has real world implications. Many of the students take their podcasts and blog posts very seriously, knowing that their professor isn’t the only person who will read it. The cons are getting students used to presenting their research in a different way. There are a lot of in-class demonstrations! But when they get the hang of it, it’s great!

What software do you use for the podcasts? Were your students already familiar with the technology or did you have to teach them those skills?

For the podcasts I record, I use the Yeti mic, and I record and edit on Adobe Audition. I use Audio Hijack to record Skype calls, and then import them into Audition. The students typically use their laptop microphones to record and Garage Band or Audacity to edit. I provide links to online tutorials, and we have applied for funding to purchase better recording equipment.

What are your favorite parts of the project?

The best part of the project is having a different method of assessment. Listening to their creativity is really exciting, and each semester I discover new artists through their projects.

In addition to finding new artists on the site (like Gigi Lamayne who I am currently obsessed with thanks to this project), these students’ podcast dig into important issues in African hip hop. A recurring theme in the episodes is feminism in African hip hop, with podcasts on women in African and American hip hop; female emcees in South Africa; and an episode on feminism in South Africa focused on Gigi Lamayne.

There are also a number of episodes comparing and contrasting American and African hip hop. You can check out the episode on black activism in the U.S. and South Africa, based on a panel on the same subject held at Howard in November 2016. Also, a comparison between American and South African hip hop, and an episode questioning the similarities of the two styles.

There are also some phenomenal episodes on hip hop culture in Senegal; hip hop and Pan-Africanism in Tanzania; and some really great episodes on hip hop scholarship.

You can follow Clark on Twitter @kibona for the latest on Hip Hop African. The podcasts are available on iTunes, as well as the website. If you have music that you would like to see featured on Hip Hop African, the site welcomes submissions of MP3s via email at feedback@hiphopafrican.com. More information available here.

Peter Kimani reflects on the work of historical fiction

Historical fiction has been having a bit of moment recently, especially among authors from the African continent and its diaspora. Authors imagine new possibilities out of old configurations; the past often proves as fecund as the futures that writers of speculative or science fiction might imagine. Recently novelists such Yaa Gyasi, Yvonne Owuor, Colson Whitehead, Chimamanda Adichie (in Half of a Yellow Sun) and others have availed themselves of the multiple opportunities that the past – whether well known or not – presents for creative narratives explorations. Earlier this year, the Kenyan journalist, poet and professor Peter Kimani joined their ranks. His Dance of the Jakaranda is an epic account of 20th century Kenya, narrating the East African colony’s history from the building of the Uganda Railway at the century’s open (and cosmopolitan world of its construction) to the politics and tensions of belonging that marked independent Kenya’s early days.

Dance of the Jakaranda is published by Akashic Books, an independent publishing house based in Brooklyn, devoted to publishing overlooked and/or politically defiant works of fiction. We are grateful to Akashic for bringing Kimani’s book to press, and to Peter Kimani for making the time to speak to AIAC.

Dance of the Jakaranda is a work of historical fiction, moving backwards and forwards in time between the turn of the 20th century and Kenya’s independence-era. What is the work of historical fiction? How does it differ from straight-forward history? What are the limits and possibilities of the genre? 

Historical fiction, first and foremost, serves to re-imagine what’s already documented. In the case of Africa and other colonized societies, historical fiction serves to reclaim a people’s history, or at least inject fresh perspectives to counter the dominant colonial views. In most instances, colonial histories are fraught with inaccuracies, distortions and simple falsifications. Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow’s book, The Africa That Never Was, is a valuable text chronicling Western myths about Africa. To paraphrase Chinua Achebe, one of the fathers of African fiction, his motivation for writing Things Fall Apart was to show the world that Africa’s traditional past was not “one long night of savagery.”

That’s the point of departure of Dance of the Jakaranda. It reassesses the establishment of the British colony in Kenya at the turn of the last century to illuminate on the so-called British enlightenment of the “Dark Continent.” It challenges the reader to reassess what history books say colonial Kenya. The metaphor of fact as fiction appears rather appropriate at this this point and time in America.

If I were to write a straightforward history, I wouldn’t enjoy similar latitude. Fiction has enormous power as it allows people to see their lives in terms different from those conferred on them by others. The colonizers understood this. As Ngugi wa Thiong’o often narrates, his foundational play, The Black Hermit, written during his student days at Uganda’s Makerere University, was initially frowned upon by the British colonial authorities because it had a scene showing a British man raping a local woman. British men were considered “civilized” and so were not expected to perform such base crimes, even in imagined narratives.

At the heart of the novel is the construction of the so-called Lunatic Express , the railway line that enabled white settlement and facilitated the interior’s economic exploitation. Yet you seem to think it’s more complicated than that. Why and how did the railway matter? 

Your assessment of the railway is accurate. It was the avenue through which the British accessed the Kenyan hinterland for its economic exploitation. But it is also a powerful force, disrupting local cultures and way of life, damaging the environment, etcetera. But it is also a transformational force, creating new townships where it courses through. Above all, the railway is a petri dish of sorts: its compartments are assigned according to racial hierarchy– with whites in First Class and Africans in Third Class –and becomes a metaphor of the segregated society that the colonialists build in Kenya.

In a certain sense, the railroad presages racial segregation as official policy in the colony. Different races lived separately, whether in urban or rural settlements. But the railroad also serves another important function. It starts by the ocean and ends at the headwaters of Lake Victoria, coursing through fertile territories. The Iron Snake, as locals call it, swallows all that the land can produce for shipping away to Europe. This finds traction with Walter Rodney’s seminal treatise, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa — the colonial architecture ensured Africa would continually feed European industries with raw materials to harness good that were resold to Africa at far steeper prices than original value. That way, Europe created its wealth while impeding African industrialization.

The novel is also the story of two Englishmen, one Punjabi, and their literal and figurative “seeds.” They and their descendants are the protagonists and narrators for most of the novel. Although there is a disembodied, recognizably “African” narrative voice that considers practices of storytelling, etcetera, there is no “African” main character, as predominates, for example the work of other Kenyan writers, most notably Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Why did you, a Kenyan writer, choose write Kenya’s history this way, in these voices?

Ngugi wa Thiong’o made a similar observation when he read an earlier draft of the novel. I should mention Ngugi has been very important in my development as a writer. He also sat on my doctoral committee. Ngugi said he found it “intriguing” that a novel by an African writer lacked a major character who is African. My response then, as now, is that this absence is deliberate and symbolic. Whether you are dealing with colonial history or even in contemporary writings about Africa, Africans are passive witnesses to their own history. Think about major novels on Africa by European authors: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, or Out of Africa by Karen Blixen. They do not have major African characters. Same with Ernest Hemingway. All African characters are peripheral. There is similar parallels in the way Western news networks report on the continent.  In humanitarian reports, it is always a white aid worker, so-called consultant and what have you, who narrate Africa to the world.

The inter-textual reference to Heart of Darkness, for instance, situates Dance of the Jakaranda as a response to the whitewashed elements of African history through Western fiction. I hope I won’t give away too much by revealing the novel’s controlling motifs are darkness and light. I am inviting the reader to consider what so-called European enlightenment brings to the Dark continent. My story of Africa without Africans is a way of highlighting that absurdity.

The only African character with a substantial role in the novel is Nyundo, the drummer. He serves as a folk historian. Through him, the novel questions the privileging of the written, over the spoken word. The written being the colonial and “official” version of our history, the spoken being the people’s memory of their past. Nyundo’s actions in the novel are both subversive and restorative. His life in the novel symbolizes burial and resurrection of African memory.

[Spoiler alert] This is obviously an apposite moment to consider questions of statelessness, forced and volitional migration and national identity, in Kenya, the United States and beyond. To my mind, the novel’s “hero” is the Punjabi technician, Babu Salim, whose only seed is sisal and whose grandson becomes a political sensation towards the novel’s end. By that time, with the Empire having fallen, Kenya having become independent and India and Pakistan partitioned, Babu and his descendants are effectively stateless. What is your response to the “Indian question?” How/do questions of race and belonging complicate our understanding of nationalism, in Africa and elsewhere? 

My novel teases out Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined communities and the limits of nationalism. A running theme in the novel is the question of identity and belonging. I seek to answer the question: what did it mean to be Kenyan in that moment of our history? To find an answer, I go back to the founding of the Kenya colony, then leap forward to the onset of independence, when Africans take charge. The characters in the novel review what’s lost, and gained, in the new dispensation.

The Indians of East Africa have a complex heritage. They were colonized in their homelands, but some were complicit in the establishment of the Kenya colony, and enjoyed more privileges in colonial Kenya. Yet others fought to end British colonization of Kenya. It is the latter group that my book seeks to acknowledge. The question of identity becomes a larger contemplation of what it means to be human in a prejudiced world. Just look at contemporary US, UK, Germany, France, etc. There seems to be a competition to prove who is a more authentic American, British, German and French than others.

For a novel that stretches across the Indian Ocean and beyond, Dance of the Jakaranda also has a distinct sense of place. Why Nakuru? 

I struggled with the question of the novel’s locale for a while. Initially, I was tempted to set the novel in some unnamed place on the continent. I personally have problems reading such novels because I feel unmoored. In any case, such a device is useful in times of political repression. The Malawian poet, Jack Mapanje, for instance, had to device codes to describe his homeland without invoking its name. The departed Kenyan playwright, Wahome Mutahi, used a similar device in his political plays at a time of political repression. The trick was for the place to remain some “imaginary” country somewhere in Africa.

But I was writing in a different time when we have a fair amount of freedom, so it was unnecessary to disguise my locale. I thought about the place that reflected the spirit of a multiracial and multicultural community, and I found Nakuru came closest to that. I researched on its history to recreate an authentic atmosphere of the time.

Challenging the patriarchy, one hip hop cypher at a time

Images via author.

“Women, for long you’ve been preached over; preserved for one purpose of giving birth,” is a line from Sistah Anela’s song “Zivume” on the compilation, Words of a Rebel Sistah. It supports her stance on the oppression of women: if something isn’t accommodating, it needs to be challenged.

Words of a Rebel Sistah was an initiative by South African anti-capitalist hip hop collective Soundz of the South (SOS) to record a CD focusing on women’s struggles and a prelude to The Rebel Sistah Cypha; a monthly, females-only platform for conscious spoken word, hip hop and live music. It started off at Moholo Live House in Khayelitsha, but now takes place at the Community House in Salt River, a suburb close to Cape Town’s city centre. The goal is to create a counter-culture; one that exemplifies a society in which women are liberated and all forms of oppression are eradicated.

Given the current political climate, this is a challenging task. In South Africa current President Jacob Zuma’s rape trial, the murder of Reeva Steenkamp (by her boyfriend Olympian Oscar Pistorius), the conviction of celebrated artist Zwelethu Mthethwa for kicking a sex worker to death or uKhozi FM radio presenter Khathide Ngobe’s recent comments insinuating that scantily-clad women are asking to be raped, are just a few incidents that speak to the state of women’s rights. Globally, US President Donald Trump’s confident misogyny doesn’t help either.

When I talked to Sounds of the South members Anela, Tsidi and Millz, who are resident MCs at the cypher, I asked if one could say they’re a feminist collective.

Anela.

“We wouldn’t box ourselves,” says Anela, “but we are a pro-feminist organization. Even our SOS brothers call themselves feminists because they believe in the liberation of women.” As opposed to organizations who think that feminism is the ultimate tool for the liberation of the people, they believe that there’s more to it. “Doing away with capitalism and all forms of oppression is what will lead us forward.”

Unfortunately, one of the challenges they face in South Africa is that women often don’t realize they’re oppressed. Anela believes harmful ideals are so entrenched in everyday life, that some men think authority is a natural entitlement. The culprit? The capitalist state and its helpers: media and tradition. Because black South Africans are better off now than during Apartheid, some accuse the Rebel Sistahs of causing unnecessary trouble. With fairy-tale stories, such as Trevor Noah making it big in America, the media helps to spread the message that South Africa is doing fine; anything is possible, if only one works hard enough. Tsidi mentions the banning of protest footage on public television news as an example. “Nothing thought-provoking can be shown because there’s bound to be an outbreak.”

Entertainment channels are, however, not shy to give airtime to American agents of “bling-bling-and-bitches”, like Lil Wayne or Jay-Z. South African MCs such as AKA and Casper Nyovest are proudly following their counterparts’ lead. The Rebel Sistahs witness their impact first-hand at open mic sessions they organize in Makhaza Wetlands Park in Khayelitsha, about 30 minutes outside the city center. Tsidi remembers how they had to turn off the music because a five-year-old child was cursing and often children just head to another open mic session to avoid being censored. Anela says there was a time of hope, when kids in their community actually understood their work. “They were engaging in the topics, and you could see their style of writing was changing. It was starting to speak to the struggles they face. But two, three years later with the introduction of Nyovests and AKAs every kid wants to be like them.”

African grassroots hip hop has been hijacked, and Millz attributes this to an active decision to defuse the threat. “In our communities, your parents think you’re a gangster if you’re doing hip hop. But when hip hop originated, it had a strong purpose, to free the black child. Now the system realised it’s actually working and the only way to discredit it, is to groom those weapons and make sure they mean nothing. Because the kids are going to look up to Lil Wayne and Jay-Z.”

Millz.

The Sistahs agree that idolizing mainstream hip hop culture and its normalization of misogyny is highly toxic, because it strengthens patriarchal traditions, which according to Tsidi, are internalized from a young age. Boys are given toy guns to play with and girls are taught to cook. “Therefore boys grow up with that mentality, thinking they’re superior because they can handle a big machine.” Anela adds that her mother, for instance, can’t get an inheritance. “She built our houses in the Eastern Cape with her bare hands, and the guys didn’t even know how the house came about. But because she’s a woman and can marry into another family, she can’t have the house. But what does it actually mean to get married? What if I don’t want to get married?”

Trying to challenge this internalized authority, explains Anela, becomes very hard because men say their “culture” is insulted. “Let us understand that as much as we are oppressed, men are oppressed into thinking their authority is something they are born with. How do we differentiate from what is natural and unnatural? If it was nature that men are above us, why are we challenging it? Why are our inner selves telling us that we need to challenge this? It’s not accommodating to us, so we need to challenge it.”

Tsidi.

And that’s what the cypher is about; showing that patriarchy isn’t as unequivocally normal as society makes it out to be. By respecting each other and discussing problems in words and song, the Rebel Sistahs express the vision of the future they’d like their children to embody. Although the culture they’re surrounded by is tough to counteract, Anela remains positive about providing an alternative.

“It’s still a long way before they implement changes that would be so tight-screwed that even a screw driver can’t move them. But we have a lot of work to do. Because change is something that comes in bits and bits and bits and pieces. Ultimately there will be total change.”

All your faves are problematic: A brief history of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, stanning and the trap of #blackgirlmagic

[image error]Adiche. Image via Howard County Library Flickr.

In my late twenties, I fell in love with Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s words. In part it was because I understood the world she was describing. I had not yet been to Nigeria, and knew nothing of Nsukka – the university town that features so prominently in so many of her books and stories. Still, that didn’t matter. I knew the striving and the drive; the piety and the pride that drove her characters because I had seen them in the household in which I grew up. I recognized my people and their ambitions and so Purple Hibiscus became mine.

I love books for different reasons. I loved Alice in Wonderland because it mapped out an imaginary world I would never have ventured into on my own. I loved Oliver Twist because I understood the longing Dickens so painstakingly described.

There are some books that you love because reading them is a struggle: Albert Camus’ L’etranger has a special place in my heart because I read it in French when I was in high school. It was hard work grappling with existentialism in a language I had only heard in school. Yet Camus was preoccupied with making sense of a society built on the same sorts of inequalities and corruptions I knew so well.  The complications and difficulties of that book are etched in my heart. In other words, most books matter because of who you are at the time you are reading them. This is precisely why Adichie meant so much to me.

I was not alone. Adichie’s arrival on the literary scene was heralded with much excitement because she was precisely the sort of writer many women of my generation needed, and ours was a powerful and unique generation. Born after colonialism had ended we were free and the continent in which we grew up was still gleaming with possibilities. Although by the time I was thirty, Africa was seen as a “basket-case,” the Africa of my childhood was not yet a failure. Adichie found a way to articulate that. She was writing the kind of books many of us had been wanting to read. She represented the future so many of us had known as children.

I had not yet thought I might pursue writing in any serious way, but I saw myself as the sort of confident young woman whose ideas might matter and be taken seriously. Before her, I had devoured the books of Miriama Ba and Tsitsi Dangaremba and Sindiwe Magona and a host of African women whose writing had been crucial to my intellectual formation. Yet none of them were my contemporaries. None had come of age alongside me in the way Adichie was doing. I saw myself in the worlds she created, but I also saw myself as a fellow traveller, as someone who was striking out a new path in her field. I was doing what she was doing in a sense, just in my own small professional patch.

In many ways then Adichie occupied a unique place in contemporary black women’s thought and literature for at least a decade before the phrase black girl magic was coined as a hashtag, and as the motto for a new generation’s struggle for recognition and self-love.

Adichie is African of course, but because she began writing in a world that was more global than it had ever been, because she traveled so frequently between Nigeria and America, she was easily claimed as a member of a much larger global African diaspora. She may technically belong to two countries, but she is collectively seen as a daughter or a sister to black people in a broader sense.

In other words, Adichie has become a signifier for something larger than herself. In some ways, she has marked the rise of what Taiye Selassie calls, “the Afropolitan.” The phrase is problematic, and I use it fully aware of its complications. Still, part of the Adichie phenomenon has been the sense for many Africans who are similarly located as citizens of Africa as a concept, that if success was possible for her in the world of arts and letters, then surely, we might all succeed in the various new terrains we sought to master – from engineering to cosmetic surgery to venture capital.

And it was when we began to project our dreams onto her that loving Adichie the symbol – rather than her books – became murky. This is not unique to Adichie, but it provides a stark example of the limits of black girl magic. It plays in the dangerous terrain in which we accept that, “there is some sort of inherent connection between all brown-skinned persons. We know something. We necessarily connect…[A]ll group identities are constructed. However, some group identities run away with us. Some become harmful, or even work against the purpose they were created to defeat…[T]he “Afropolitan” is just such a group identity. It is exclusive, elitist and self-aggrandizing.”

By the time Adichie’s “Danger of a single story” TED talk was released, she was already flirting with fame. The talk has been viewed millions of times and it helped her to take the first serious steps towards genuine fame. It became a manifesto, a sort of treatise for a new generation of feminists of all races but of a very particular class background, who were looking for more complicated ways of understanding the world than their mothers had been able to provide.

Both in its substance and in its form, the talk laid the foundation for the sort of hero Adichie would be. She was at once acceptable – pretty and made up but not too much – and rebellious. She broke the rules by not memorizing the talk. She read her talk because she was not the sort who would be pushed to adhere to silly rules about how to give good TED talks. She stood in jeans and a head-wrap and read her comments. The ease of her words, and the commonsense style of her delivery were at once charming and intimidating. Adichie was haughty and no nonsense and infinitely poised in a way that was instantly recognizable to me as a middle class African woman who had met many women raised in Adichie’s mold. She was not a new phenomenon to me, she was simply a newly celebrated phenom, and I allowed myself the indulgence of enjoying the moment as though it were my own.

The talk cemented her status as the sort of intellectual rock star, the kind of literary and cultural maven many of us had been looking for. Even in her form, she was supremely of the moment. Giving a record-breaking TED Talk was a supremely contemporary way to get famous, and it mapped onto the ways in which a new generation of diligent and prodigious middle class Africans hoped to make their mark. As the “Africa rising” narrative swept across the pages of The Economist and The Financial Times, Adichie’s star rose higher and higher.

While her book sales were significant and her name was on the lips of more people than ever, it was her next talk titled “Why we should all be feminists,” that sealed her place in the firmament of literary and popular culture. She had tapped into an important conversation – albeit one that had been happening around her with far more complexity and rigor, for many generations.

She was both able to speak to a mainstream audience, and signal to a core constituency of imagined and imaginary black women who were as Selassie might say, “nodding with recognition” at her words. She explained feminism so well that Beyonce – a pop icon who is similarly able to signify to an imagined audience of black folks while speaking in a language the master understands and can commodify – included the talk in her song “Flawless.”

Since the release of “Flawless,” Adichie has increasingly been used as an expert on non-fiction matters relating to race, gender and African politics. Beyond her books, she has come to be recognized as a spokesperson in the West.

There are traps of course for any literary celebrity, and certainly for one who hails from Africa. As Professor Simon Gikandi points out, “… globalization creates all of these opportunities for novelists and writers; but at the same time, of course, again the more complex issue revolves around the terms of that globalization. Some people could argue… that in order for these fictions to become global, they have had to be involved in a fascinating and sometimes disturbing act of cultural translation because their audiences are no longer located in their sites of referent. Let me put it this way: there is a split between the object of representation, and the people who read it… [W]orks are set in East Africa but… readers are North American, and in that sense it would be interesting to ask what kinds of transactions have taken place so that these African fictions can succeed in a global scene. So the global scene, and globalization in general, are transforming the terms of cultural contact, but also transforming the forms of fiction.”

Adichie has no control over this of course. These are forces far larger than she. At the same time, because she has walked so confidently into the realm of non-fiction, and has agreed on multiple occasions, to take up the mantle of “spokesperson,” there is an increasing expectation that she is up to the task; that she can in fact authentically speak on behalf of the fans who adore her. Over time those fans have included young women enthralled by her popularization of existing mainstream feminist ideas and LGBTI communities across the diaspora and in urban European, American and African contexts.

Recently, Adichie made comments about trans-women that indicated that she was more conservative in her feminism and her understanding of matters of sexuality and gender than many of her fans had assumed. And finally, it seems the sparkle has worn off Adichie.

Both her comments and her clarifications were offensive. Yet “celebrities” wander into territory they aren’t equipped to navigate all the time, and in so doing they grossly oversimplify and flatten and demean the experiences of the people on whose behalf they claim to speak. So, in a sense, one might suggest her misstep was not such a big deal.

The difference is of course that Adichie is not Angelina Jolie. She has staked her reputation on substance and heft and thoughtfulness. Yet the disappointment amongst members of LGBTI and feminist communities I spoke with after Adichie’s comments were published, went deeper than that and it is important to examine that disappointment and what it speaks to.

In part, Adichie’s over-reach is again bigger than her. It is a consequence of a growing culture of stanning. Adichie has been steeped in a celebrity culture that has created the Beyhive – which functions as an emotional bodyguard for the singer; and she has been embraced and championed by the black girl magic movement. Stanning is not merely being a fan, it often involves taking on an active and confrontational stance in relation to defending one’s celebrity. The celebrity becomes an extension of the fan – a persona who stands in for the identities of those who love him or her. I understand the power of this feeling, and it is clear why Adichie has become as much of a celebrity as an African literary author can be, in the midst of this climate.

There is a politics to the adoration of course. Beyonce’s fans are not unthinking robots. As Fezokuhle Mthonti notes, in an essay in The Con, those who stan for Beyonce are “a complex set of people who traverse space and place in multiple and complicated ways.” Mthonti decries “the assumption that we are a homogenous set of automatons who have no agency, no capacity for critical thought.” Similarly, there is a politics that propels those who continue to admire Adichie even in the face of her transphobia. It is a politics similar to that which keeps her fans publicly quiet, even as they wonder about her decision to agree to promote Boots No. 7 by suggesting in a glamorous and expensive-looking ad, “the truth is, make up doesn’t actually mean anything, its simply make up.” Make up is a choice of course, and the conversation about its role and place in the lives of women and men is an important one. To have that discussion in service of selling make up is at best disingenuous, and at worst, patently self-serving. Still, the very fact of Adichie being chosen to represent a major fashion brand at all is seen as an affirmation – something not to be criticized but to be praised. The disquiet is quelled by the sense of being under siege, of being always scrutinized by the forces of racism and sexism. In this environment, raising questions – especially publicly –  is seen as an attack.

It is clear then that the relative silence in relation to the commodification of Adichie’s messages — particularly her feminism — is a testament to the fact that black girl magic has reached the limits of its usefulness.

***

When CeShawn Thompson created the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic in 2013, she was giving contemporary voice to a long-practiced strategy for coping amongst marginalized and excluded. The hashtag sought to push back against mainstream narratives about black women. The idea was simple. As a piece in the Huffington Post noted: “Black Girl Magic was used to illustrate the universal awesomeness of black women. It’s about celebrating anything we deem particularly dope, inspiring, or mind-blowing about ourselves.”

It caught on. It has provided a quick and easy retort to those who have felt it necessary to deride Venus and Serena Williams. It helped to push back against those who suggested Viola Davis was not “classically beautiful.” It shone a spotlight on the achievements of Misty Copeland, Simone Biles, Michelle Obama, and a host of other African-American women who were in the public eye, but risked backlash. #BlackGirlMagic enveloped them in a protective blanket. As they soared, they were kept on course by a brigade of young black women wearing capes making the air around them shimmer with beautiful arrogance.

As is almost always the case with pop culture, what began as a subaltern articulation with particular resonance amongst an internally cohesive group, managed to spread. The phrase was a push-back, a statement about the virtual impossibility of continuing to exist in the face of daily threats to life and limb – especially in Europe and Australia, where black women were visible minorities, or in places like Brazil and South Africa where blacks are the demographic majority but come up hard against the reality that the architecture of racism has resisted dismantling. The phrase acknowledges – in a subtext that is easy for black women to understand – the idea that black women pulled rabbits out of hats, made food appear where there was no money, provided us with educations. The phrase captures the sense when black women are able to succeed in systems that were never meant to accommodate them, it takes supernatural strength.

While the genesis of the phrase was political in ways that matter, it was also always teetering on the ledge of the sort of feel-good feminism that can be essentialist and counter-productive. Over time, black girl magic has run into tricky terrain. It has been gobbled up by the mainstream and has begun to privilege mainstream black women. In addition, inevitably, the advertising industry has been only to happy to capitalize on the trendiness of certain kinds of black women in ways that operate to depoliticize and deracinate what is worth saving in the idea of black girl magic.

And so we find ourselves in a moment in which the sort of black girl magic that is visible in popular culture is no longer subversive. Instead, the catch phrase too often celebrates only certain kinds of black women, and in so doing essentializes what it means to be a black girl, and what magic ought to look like. Rather than the emancipatory arrogance that has helped oppressed people survive exploitation, black girl magic offers a smug and increasingly narrow celebration of black womanhood.

And so, for many who remain on the fringes of even black womanhood itself – fat black women, trans women, disabled black women, dark skinned black women, poor black women, queer black women, sex workers who are black women – the notion of magic simply doesn’t apply.

It is virtually impossible to be magical while navigating systems of power that are genuinely hostile to those who seek to resist them. So for example, it is not evident in the hashtag movement, whether or not the struggles of black women who survive welfare and criminal justice systems — and do not tweet about their troubles — qualify as black girl magic. Do those who survive physical abuse and continue to go to school but are not straight A students make it onto the list of woman crushes?

Indeed, even for those who are included, those who are toasted for their magic, those – like Adichie and Beyonce and actress Taraji B. Henson – who have legions of fans who sprinkle them with fairy dust, the idea of being magical has its burdens.

Many of the women who occupy the black girl magic spotlight have support systems. Women like Michelle Obama, Serena Williams and Henson – the faves of the black girl magic movement – are wealthy. They are public figures for whom having fans is a part of life. Still, because the rise of black girl magic has coincided with an explosion in celebrity culture, and an intensification of the stan, these women find themselves in untenable positions – having to make choices and speak on behalf of people whose desires and dreams they will never know. This is at once the privilege and the quandary of being high profile. In addition, when the stumble – as Adichie has in a number of ways of late – the condemnation is harsh and swift. The fury aimed at black women is almost always disproportionate to the offense. Ironically, this paradox is precisely why stanning has become such an important – albeit double-edged – act of solidarity.

In “Why we should all be feminists,” Adichie argues: “Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.” She is right of course. It is also evident that black girl magic has come to function, if not as a cage, then certainly as a cave. Like cages, caves have their merits. They provide shelter from the elements and can offer privacy and spaces from which to recuperate. Still, caves can be dark dank places because they seldom let in enough light.

We are living through a difficult global moment. There are many forces arrayed against the very people black girl magic was conjured to protect and defend. Perhaps then, it is time to accept that creating new possibilities doesn’t happen magically. The work of imaging new futures and shaping alternate trajectories does not belong to a few glammed up spokespersons. Maybe we need to accept that it is the stans who will change their own world – through their solidarity and organizing and their critical intellect. This – much more than magic – will push our faves to be better.

Fearless in Nigeria

For this weekend’s music interlude, we return with our Liner Notes series, which is simply, musicians writing about making music. This time around we have VILLY from VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes talking a bit about the politics behind their Humanimals EP.

The term Humanimals refers to the general inhuman thoughts and actions of human beings towards the planet, nature and fellow humans. Corruption falls under this umbrella and is a global problem, not just on the African continent.

From where we stand in West Africa we share our views on these issues and how it affects us directly and indirectly, how policies and laws, democracy and military rule have jeopardized hope, and also the role this plays in the lives of the people of this continent. People like myself, my band, neighbors, friends, colleagues, people that have no idea where their next meal is coming from.

I’m lucky enough to have management and indie label Blank Creation Entertainment, which has made it possible for me to not worry about being commercial. I have the space to fully express myself the way I see fit. The struggles in the music industry that artists confront take their toll on the creative aspect. This is one reason why it is difficult to find fearless musicians in Nigeria – they are all trying to make money. Our label partnership takes away the burden from me and I can just focus on being a musician.

The journey from 2012 to today began in Lagos, Nigeria just after the fuel subsidy crisis that paralyzed the country for weeks. We did our best to support the struggle but there was one big vacuum, the people wanted songs that could inspire them but the music industry failed. Every platform had to go back to Fela or Femi Kuti for songs.

We realized that the masses will always need a fearless mouthpiece and from then our journey was officially birthed. We were focused on creating music to further expose the decay in the African system. Our music is made to confront leaders and show the people that leaders can be criticized for their actions and be held accountable. We hope to inspire the people to fearlessly protest against bad leadership. The goal is to achieve bigger and stronger platforms to tell the stories freely.

Since 2012 we have seen that dream grow larger locally and receive more attention internationally. We’ve also worked hard on creating a sound that will serve as a unique and strong vessel to carry our messages. That’s how we got into experimenting, fusing sounds till we were comfortable to produce this EP. But we are not stopping with the experiment – it is a life-time experience. Over the years our lifestyle and music became one. I, VILLY, cannot be detached from this music. My actions match my words; this is beyond my control, the idea behind this unplanned connection is using the creators of this music as a whole as an example to the world, offered to those that this sound and these stories will inspire.

It has not been an easy journey, we knew from day one it was never going to be easy. We’ve had so many challenges, financially and otherwise, challenges like: leaving our home Nigeria and moving to Ghana to be able to shutdown the distractions of Lagos and create for three years in Accra; settling and finding our feet; constant studio rehearsals; building the group with exceptional musicians, always in search of quality. Even if we can afford it or not, Omonblanks finds a way to make things happen. The music has shaped our minds, making quality sounds with professionals who buy in to the general idea of VILLY and the Xtreme Volumes.

The songs on Humanimals were sparked mostly by my experience, the people around me and the policies, laws, boundaries, corruption and so on. They were carefully selected,  and the goal was to keep everything simple, from sound to lyrics so everyone can grasp the message. This is just the beginning, we are still working on the album and another EP.

As expensive as the process of making these projects is, we have decided to give out our music completely free, so the music will travel as far as it can. Free music means more listeners and more listeners means that very soon we shall have a mental revolution of the people.

How the Congo crisis reshaped international relations

Image via Wikimedia.

In July 1960, within a week of achieving independence from Belgium, the Congo (later renamed Zaire and now known as the DRC) was plunged into a civil conflict that soon turned into a political and constitutional crisis that besieged the country for almost five years. The Congo crisis challenged how the superpowers and the United Nations managed the process of decolonization and fundamentally impacted the relationship between the West and the post-colonial world.

The introduction of a UN peace-keeping force to safeguard the sovereignty of the Congo following the intervention of Belgian troops to protect European lives and interests, immediately had the effect of internationalizing the crisis. Never before had the UN intervened to protect the sovereignty of a country, and certainly not from incursion by a Western power. This action set the stage for a contentious debate about the relationship of Belgium, Britain and the United States with the newly-independent Congo and raised questions about the role of the UN in managing the process of decolonization.

The events also had wider and deeper implications as newly independent countries positioned the Congo crisis as a means to challenge the manifestations of all forms of imperialism and imperialist internationalism across Africa. Policymakers in London and Washington DC were quickly confronted with a conflict that combined the problems of decolonization with mounting Cold War tensions, but also the realization that the UN was increasingly susceptible to African and Asian influence.

When UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld invoked his power under Article 99 of the UN Charter and elected to bring “the Congo question” (as the crisis became known) before the Security Council immediately in July 1960, he established a precedent. The subsequent Security Council and General Assembly resolutions that mandated the UN peacekeeping mission, known as Opération des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) served to create the largest and most complex UN mission ever undertaken up to that point. In many cases, these resolutions were negotiated and tabled by members of the Afro-Asian bloc in the General Assembly.

From the beginning therefore, the UN intervention was innovative in many respects. ONUC was manned primarily by troops from neutral countries, such as Ireland and Sweden, but also relied heavily on contributions from non-aligned, anti-colonial African and Asian states, such as Ghana and India. This meant that as the crisis progressed, African and Asian representatives came to the fore in formulating and executing UN policy and enjoyed a close relationship with Hammarskjöld and his deputies. As the crisis progressed, Britain and the US gradually discovered that the nature of the UN had changed both in terms of the tenor of the environment in New York and through this more activist role of the organization in Africa. Over time, Britain in particular experienced a diminishing influence over the direction of UN Congo policy, as initiatives were spearheaded by the anti-colonial voices of the General Assembly.

The situation in the Congo deteriorated rapidly on July 7 1960 when separatist leader Moise Tshombe declared the secession of the south-eastern province of Katanga. In 1960, almost 70% of the world’s industrial diamond supply and almost 50% of global cobalt was mined in Katanga. The secession threw the central government in the capital Leopoldville (Kinshasa) into chaos, eventually resulting in a constitutional breakdown and the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in January 1961. In view of the escalating conflict, the US increasingly regarded the Congo as a precarious Cold War “hot spot.” While the State Department was simultaneously engaged in the war in Vietnam, policy-makers sought to balance relations with European former colonial powers, especially Britain and Belgium, against the objective of stemming the perceived spread of Soviet influence throughout the country. This was in fact substantially over-estimated by the State Department and research has shown that Soviet influence among Congolese people and politicians was actually quite limited. Violent attacks on Hammarskjöld and the mission in the Congo by the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev served to magnify, in American eyes, the Cold War dimensions of what was viewed by European and African states as a decolonization conflict.

In the British view, the unstable Congo posed a threat to neighboring British colonies in Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Tanzania and Uganda. In a similar vein to Belgium, the British approach towards the Congo had at its core, the preservation of European networks of influence, especially private companies such as the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK). Financed by an umbrella group called Tanganyika Concessions, the UMHK processed the vast resources of Katanga, creating large profits for British shareholders. The central point of contention, which quickly emerged between Britain and the US, was whether or not the UN should use force to end the secession and thereby restore territorial sovereignty to the Congo. Crucially, doing so involved redirecting the revenue of UMHK and other firms from financial groups in Brussels and London to the central government in Leopoldville.

In February 1961, in keeping with the precedent-setting nature of the mission, UN troops were authorized for the first time to use force in self-defense. Peacekeepers had been engaged in a standoff against Katangan mercenaries and had also been involved in skirmishes with the Congolese army, which sought to re-establish the authority of the central government through its own military campaign against the province. The Security Council extended the mandate of the force in 1961 in order to enable the peacekeepers to gradually and peacefully dismantle Tshombe’s regime. However, his well-armed mercenary forces retained the upper hand through the use of aircraft and by destroying key infrastructure, thereby hindering the movements of the peacekeeping force. In response, the US sought to enable the UN to enforce its mandate more effectively and supported a series of military campaigns against Katanga in September 1961, aimed at ending the secession. Britain however, remained resolutely opposed to the use of force and even supplied tacit and indirect assistance to Tshombe. By 1962, the situation was becoming untenable. Clashes between Tshombe’s forces and UN peacekeepers alongside widespread civil unrest led to calls from African and Asian countries to accelerate the military campaign to definitively quash the Katangan regime. Britain continued to play a problematic role by refusing to sanction the use of force against Tshombe in negotiations at the UN while the US, frustrated with British intransigence, granted political and financial support for the operation.

On December 24 1962, Operation UNOKAT was launched and UN troops seized control of the provincial capital Elisabethville (Lubumbashi). Tshombe fled to Northern Rhodesia and the “independent” state of Katanga ceased to exist. For Britain, the UN action was a humiliating revelation of the lack of British influence in restraining the organization, and also directly threatened the maintenance of British economic and political influence in Central Africa. Moreover, the ending of the secession in this way represented a defeat of one of the central features of British imperial internationalism; the quest to maintain a world role, even as a declining imperial power.

For the US, different views of how the Congo operation should proceed pointed to deeper disagreements with Britain about the preservation of colonial networks and interests in post-colonial African states. The quick dissolution of Western unity on the Congo had highlighted to American officials the difficulty of balancing Cold War objectives with support for European policies that were perceived as neo-colonial by African and Asian states. The Congo question had also forced the US to confront the challenges of implementing an anti-colonial position at the UN, as for the first time during the crisis the State Department abandoned the policy of automatically abstaining on colonial questions, leading to a public split with Britain and Belgium at several key moments.

At the center of this divergence of views were also different visions of the UN and its potential and utility in managing the process of decolonization. The ending of the secession by UN forces in 1962 reflected that African and Asian countries could implement anti-colonial policies through the UN, even when this was contrary to the interests of European colonial powers. By destroying Western consensus, highlighting the agency of anti-colonial actors and demolishing the last vestiges of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo, the UN action thereby represented the first important defeat of imperialist internationalism in Central Africa.

South Africa needs a new public debate

Economic and political crises typically encourage new avenues for conceptualizing a reordering of society. This is because they open up spaces in the realm of discourse due to the discrediting of traditional narratives and systems of thought. If that is generally the case, it is interesting to note that one could hear a pin drop in the mainstream forums for discussing South Africa’s political and economic system, in spite of the heightened sense of crisis that pervades since President Jacob Zuma appointed his fourth minister of finance in two years, and ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s credit rating to “junk” status. (Basically, “…the financial downgrading is likely to make it more expensive for South Africa to borrow on the international markets, as lending to the country would be seen as riskier.”)

Elsewhere in the world (particularly in advanced countries – the United States, Britain, Greece, France) we see significant reconfiguration of the political landscape with left and right populists leading wave after wave of attack on the political center, given the latter’s complicity in failing to resolve a series of social crises. Some of the most pertinent dimensions of these crises are economic. The crisis has been particularly pronounced for parties to the left of center that have over the course of much of the last three decades fallen prey to the hegemony of neoliberal ideology.

What is interesting about South Africa, in terms of these dynamics, is that unlike the center-left in the aforementioned advanced countries, much of the current noise about neoliberalism is coming from the dominant faction of the center-left party that is trying to hold onto power. In spite of the fact that the Zuma faction has been comfortable with a neoliberal orthodoxy for almost two terms, it now realizes the political value of populist left rhetoric. This might not be such an issue were it not the case that the Zuma faction is basically the only contributor to a discursive critique of neoliberalism at the moment.

It is true that there have been one or two other spaces where such critique has cropped up in recent times. For example, Joel Netshitenzhe, who served as advisor to Zuma’s predecessor Thabo Mbeki, wrote a piece in the country’s leading business daily on the need for a non-financialized black capitalist class. Another was former Deputy Finance Mcebisi Jonas’ recent piece, in Sunday paper City Press, showcasing his awareness of the radical analysis of the “secular stagnation” debate, via reference to financialization (the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies) and underconsumption (the idea of inadequate consumer demand, arising for reasons including high inequality and systematic depressing of wage income, can constrain growth).

Until Zuma fired him last week (along with his Minister Pravin Gordhan), Jonas was the second most senior politician in the Treasury, and yet we have no indication that his analysis fed into Treasury action in a way that is distinct from the decades of orthodoxy that have left South Africa mired precisely in stagnation and decay. (Netshitenzhe also fails to relate his criticism to his time in government). It may or may not be unfair to provide a critical line on Treasury orthodoxy amidst the hostile political situation (from an intellectually and morally bankrupt Zuma regime) and potentially binding global constraints, but at the very least given the state of crisis more could be done to bring about a more vibrant public discourse about the restructuring that is clearly needed.

Moreover, as a point of significance to those who seek to mobilize against the Zuma faction at present (those associated with the Save South Africa campaign, for example), and who seemingly do not have a critique of neoliberalism, the extent to which a technocratic and constitutionalist discourse around preserving state institutions serves as a useful basis for organizing opposition to the Zuma faction seems limited. So far, it seems to have been most successful in mobilizing a smattering of, particularly white, middle and upper class South Africans to public protests. This is clearly a problem that must be seriously engaged with.

Some questions that would be worthwhile engaging on in mainstream publications for progressives aiming to break with the current political moment: Around what program should opposition to the Zuma faction cohere around? Will a program centered around “good governance” and anti-corruption be sufficient to successfully rival the Zuma faction and achieve mass support? What role has the post-apartheid economic program and structure played in leading the country to this current conjuncture? Do we want to center our opposition to the Zuma faction in terms of a defense of a fiscally conservative Treasury? What would a genuine program of “radical economic transformation” (the slogan used by Zuma and his acolytes) currently look like and how can we push for it? In a global and country context where the capitalist class shows diminished interest in investing, what role should they play in our society? What role should a predatory, collusive and parasitic financial sector, that restricts industrial development, play in our society?

I think these are all highly relevant questions for the current moment and it is clear to me that the narrow and cynical harping on about the admittedly bad state of government corruption does little to answer them. All it does is undermine the potential for a vibrant public debate and function as rhetorical cover for efforts at erosion of state intervention as a means of correcting the depravities of the market. Responding to this, it is easy for those in the Zuma faction to make cynical bastardized critiques of the current economic order through shallow reference to “radical economic transformation” and “white monopoly capital.” In other words our public debate around political economy is not a meaningful one – it currently only functions to wage factional battles. If we are to move beyond this, and counter the Zuma faction’s kleptocratic politics, the country desperately needs an open and honest exchange of ideas between a new generation of discussants versed in radical political economy and its older generation. Without this, opponents of Zuma and his cronies give all the rhetorical space to the Zuma faction to make cynical and successful use of radical discourse to maintain power.