Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 374

Angola’s Flash Mob Protests

There has been an increase in protest activity across sub-Saharan Africa recently: Burkina Faso’s citizen uprising dominated Africa-focused news outlets and twitter feeds as the president of the country resigned and the military took control of the state; protests also erupted in Togo with citizen calls for constitutional changes in order to bar President Faure Gnassingbe from seeking a third term; and citizens have also taken to the streets in Burundi to voice concerns over the shrinking political space and in DRC to reject any constitutional changes to remove presidential terms. While these countries draw hundreds and thousands of protestors to the streets, a small group of pro-democracy activists in Angola mark the success of their movement through a series of five minute protests.

During the past few months, youth activists have been organizing flash mob protests in front of government buildings around Angola’s capital city of Luanda. Like many other countries, Angolan law requires demonstrators obtain a permit. Activists argue that the information is used to arrest them as soon as they arrive at the protest location. Angolan youth have not been deterred however. Instead they came up with the idea of flash mob protests, organized via text message, to draw even just a few moments of attention for their cause before they are arrested beaten and dragged away by police. In a brief interview early Saturday morning, rapper-activist Luaty da Silva Beirão explained, “If our protests were going to be interrupted after just five minutes, why should we comply strictly with permit laws? It is clear that the police use the information about our location to stop us. This is why we decided to use the element of surprise.”

The activists are from a small-scale youth movement, named Central Angola 7311 after the day of the first protest of 2011. An anonymous call for a mass protest on March 7, 2011, at the Independence Square in Angola’s capital city, Luanda, went viral via the Internet and text message. On the day of the rally, police briefly detained all in attendance, including 17 rappers and three journalists of the private weekly newspaper Novo Jornal, who were there to cover the demonstration. The organizers include rappers, intellectuals, and journalists who call for access to higher education and employment, better housing conditions, improved service delivery of water and electricity, and improved democratic institutions. The youth movement has also called for the resignation of President Eduardo do Santos who has been in office for 33 years.

For these activists, each brief protest serves to “erode the machine of the Angolan state.” 71 year old José Eduardo dos Santos has been president since 1979. He remains in office after the country’s 27 year-long civil war. The war began in 1975, immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal. In 2010 dos Santos strengthened his grip on power with a new constitution that ended the need for a direct presidential ballot— the head of the party that wins in parliamentary elections now automatically becomes president.

In the lead up to the 2012 elections, dos Santos faced increasing opposition as youth groups stepped up anti-government protests. The ruling MPLA prevailed in the polls, maintaining a majority in parliament and securing another term in office for dos Santos. Although a limit of two five-year presidential terms has been set in the country, this does not apply retroactively, meaning that dos Santos could remain in the post until 2022.

While the protests remain small and youth activists say, “sometimes we laugh at ourselves and what we call progress,” they know they have made small gains. Since 2011 when youth first started protesting, there has been an increase in smaller, low-level protests throughout the country including civil service workers demanding better pay and working conditions. Most recently, residents of the Lamarão neighborhood in Aracaju, held a protest after a power cut. This view is echoed by Tiseke Kasambala, Southern Africa Director of Human Rights Watch, who states, “What we’ve seen is an intensification in the number of peaceful protests in Angola, as a result of poor governance issues and the poor economic situation and the gross inequalities that exist in the country.” Given Angola’s culture of fear and intimidation, these protests suggest that various sectors among the population are no longer afraid of the regime the way they once were.

Well-known journalist Rafael Marques de Morais notes that the fear is very real, because journalists and youth activists are routinely arrested and tortured—including him. Amnesty International has also accused the Angolan state of torturing and killing opponents and using violence and excessive force to suppress dissent against the government.

Interviews conducted in Luanda in 2013 with 35 activists indicated that youth were in the process of rethinking strategies. One of the primary youth leaders explained, “We learned that we could attract more attention by marching instead of staying in one place. This helped because we were not large in number so we got attention but we also made the population aware of the protest because you know, we’re never on the news.”

These flash mob protests are the latest tool in their arsenal of strategies. Protesters also utilize a network of citizen journalists to document demonstrations and the violent police response in the moments before they are shut down. Beirão explains that the goal of these flash mob protests is break the barrier of fear, inspire others to feel free to protest, and to create spaces for discussion.

Demonstrations in Angola illustrate the importance of considering the social and political context in which activists must struggle to achieve their goals. In Burkina Faso the situation unfolded quickly as thousands of people took to the streets, demanded that Blaise Campaore who was in power for 27 years step down, and within days the situation shifted as the president resigned and the military took control of the state. The protests in Togo are still playing out with citizens and opposition groups calling for a change in the constitution to limit a third run for a man whose family has been in control of the state since for nearly 50 years. The opposition and youth activists in Angola have not been able to gather the masses or topple the MPLA regime; does this mean that the nascent youth-driven protest movement has been a failure? Is there a clear way to determine the success or failure of citizen uprisings?

Angolan anti-corruption journalist Rafael Marques de Morais recently asserted that the Angolan government is tightening the noose around free expression. Given that collective citizen action in Angola is rare and the majority of the population believes they are under government surveillance, these protests can be viewed not only as a success but as the seeds of change in a country that rarely experienced demonstrations before 2011. Protestors are developing the building blocks needed to sustain a citizen uprising: they have a structure and are developing strategies to continue getting the message out and keeping the pressure on even in their current socio-political environment. Should the tipping point arrive in Angola, there are some activists ready to hit the ground, running.

The Malian Crisis and the Disproportionate Focus on Manuscripts

Years of humanitarian and political emergencies in the Western Sahel—including ongoing food and water shortages, secessionist movements, terrorism and outbreaks of disease—continue to go under the radar of most mainstream western media outlets. Even the coup d’état that overthrew Malian President Touré just weeks before elections, the occupation of northern Mali and the subsequent exodus of the region’s residents were relegated to limited paragraphs on the back pages of most newspapers.

Indeed, I was in the United States when the Malian crisis climaxed. I followed the situation as best as I could. However, aside from CNN, the American press left me frustrated with their lack of coverage, and I frequently had to turn to alternative sources. My family and friends expressed similar frustration when they attempted to follow events in Mali throughout 2013, while I was in West Africa. Most talk of actual people—refugees, soldiers, internally displaced persons, terrorists, secessionists, humanitarian workers, government officials, students, activists, and so on—either remained underreported, or left the readers disengaged. What ultimately grabbed the world’s attention was when al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists burned scores of manuscripts housed in Timbuktu’s famous libraries.

Headlines included: “Mali’s Cultural Legacy Threatened”, “Mali Rebels Torched Library of Historic Manuscripts”, and so on. Readers and commentators seemed equally incredulous: How could anyone destroy such artifacts, and why? Many (correctly) articulated that the manuscripts are not only Timbuktian history, but part of world history as well. As such, the wound seemed all the more egregious. And, in response, the international and academic communities began to mobilize in an effort to save the remaining documents.

Later, the rumor mill began producing a new headline: “Timbuktu Manuscripts ‘Have Not Been Destroyed’”. Some papers suggested that as much as 90% of the documents had been salvaged, though such claims remain unsubstantiated. Nonetheless, journalists have been and continue to feature the saviors of the manuscripts, those who defied the “Islamic” government of Timbuktu by sneaking documents south to secret locations in Bamako. When word of that got out, a new conversation began around the question of preservation. How to safeguard the manuscripts so that more are not lost? Furthermore, how to return the manuscripts to their rightful home in Timbuktu?

I do not wish to criticize or undermine the heroic actions—and risks—that certain librarians and archivists took in order to protect some of the Timbuktu manuscripts. Nor do I wish to criticize the press that the manuscripts received per se. What I do wish to criticize, however, is the manner in which the discussion has unfolded and the dramatic lack of analysis outside the context of Timbuktian material culture.

Timbuktu has long been characterized as “ancient”. Indeed, the vast majority of publications—past and present—continue to describe the town as “fabled” and focus on its history. If the town lives at all (in popular, western imagination, that is) it is “endangered”, as “traditional” salt caravans, blacksmiths and calligraphers “fade into the sands of time”. Further, the Timbuktian manuscripts—much like most Timbuktians themselves—are largely treated as artifacts, not as real sources and expressions of Islamic knowledge. Few Americans, in my experience at least, even seem to realize that Timbuktu is real, equating it instead with a mythical, unreachable, faraway place. And, the journalistic emphasis on historical objects, without addressing populations or individuals, reinforces the popular notion that Timbuktu is a medieval, not contemporary, town.

The issue is narrowly—and stagnantly—defining a city, region or culture by something that the western audience consumes. This is the case of Timbuktu, as well as other West African and Saharan towns, from Oualata to Djenne to Gao. And, we see this in other parts of the continent, too, where conflict is met not with outrage over violence and loss of life, but instead with anguish over the loss of monuments, music, and so on. Such anguish parallels the patronizing anxiety that many westerners express vis-à-vis African urbanization and the “loss” of “traditional” rituals and indigenous languages. So often placed in the passive voice, such concerns overlook African peoples in favor of the objects they produce.

Focusing the examination of the Malian crisis on manuscripts narrows and simplifies the conflict. Instead of developing a more informed western audience, such analyses risk reinforcing the colonialist and orientalist notion that Africa exists as a source of western consumption, not as a place of diverse, contemporary and creative individuals with whom one should dialog. The manuscripts should interest us not because they are old but because they contain valuable insight. As such, we must stop treating them purely as artifacts. Similarly, mainstream journalism must stop treating Timbuktu and Timbuktians as artifacts, considering northern Mali—both within the context of crisis and without—as a complex and contemporary place with complex and contemporary individuals.

Cape Town, Segregation, & Hip Hop

For a city that is largely thought of as the birthplace of South African hip hop, Cape Town could be further than it currently is in terms of the culture’s ability to support the lifestyles of its practitioners. From the outside looking in, the city is a hip hop haven: home to one of the first South African hip hop crews, Prophets of the City; home to the b-boy and the b-girl; and the home of graffiti. It’s where deejays still carry vinyl and turntables instead of just Macbooks and hard drives; where only your skill will earn you respect!

Alas, being here is a slightly different experience.

The Cape Town hip hop scene remains exactly that: a scene as opposed to an industry where substantial amounts of money are exchanged within – and between – artists and big-name brands. In an interview he did with Cape Town hip hop site Heavywordz earlier this year, producer Hipe said: “I’ve experienced the Jo’burg scene. They are very business-oriented. They work. They have offices set up in buildings. Back here in Cape Town, we chill in our rooms. Finance is not that big in Cape Town. There’s no market for us to get our shit to TV where the money is.”

The liaison of brands and artists – which has proven to be the only way to earn decent income in SA hip hop – could be better (or at least present). Cape Town artists could be more visible nationally than they currently are.

“When we were starting [out] as Ill Skillz and Driemanskap, we were a force in the SA hip hop industry as a whole,” said Uno July of the duo Ill Skillz during an open discussion at the Red Bull Studios in Cape Town. “But now all you see is Jo’burg artists on TV and it just goes to show that as Cape Town artists, the problem is within ourselves as well,” he continued. One may argue that except the likes of Ill Skillz, Kanyi, Jitsvinger, Jack Parow (and recently PHFAT and Christian Tiger School), Cape Town hip hop doesn’t travel beyond the borders of The Mother City.

This was once reiterated by Rashid Kay, a Johannesburg-based hip hop activist who is also part of the organising team behind the Back to the City street culture festival, and the South African Hip Hop Awards. “In Jo’burg, the only Cape Town hip hop we know is Driemanskap, Kanyi and Ill Skillz,” he said. The merits of the statement are debatable, but he had a point.

Afternoon park jams are one of the biggest avenues hip hop exists in, in Cape Town. Hip hop heads will never run out of places to go to in order to experience the culture in its rawest form: beats, rhymes, and the omnipresent rap cipher.

Boom bap beats and honest, raw lyricism remain the core focus of Cape Town emcees and producers. The likes of Ill Skillz, Driemanskap, Kanyi, Jitsvinger, DNA (Deurie Naai Alliance, producer Arsenic & rapper Youngsta) among others are examples that come to mind. Fonzo, EJay, BoolZ and a few others level things off with their 808-heavy, trap-influenced production choice while PHFAT and DOOKOOM pimp their soundscape with electronic elements.

“Real” hip hop heads have a condescending attitude towards, as they call it, “commercial” hip hop. The converse is true, and it’s not unique to Cape Town.

Racial segregation owes to South Africa’s Apartheid past which keeps rearing its grey moustache-covered face. As a result of apartheid, black and brown people – the latter group referred to, colloquially, as ‘coloureds’ –found themselves in different locations and seem to have accepted that they are indeed different. They could be. I don’t know.

When done right, hip hop reflects the reality of its demographic. I expect to find a majority of black hip hop heads when I go to a hip hop session in Khayelitsha and a majority of coloured heads when I go to one in Mitchell’s Plain, because that is where the apartheid government strategically placed blacks and coloureds.

I have experienced the issue of race through Bush Radio’s late-night hip hop show Headwarmaz which I co-host with Andiswa Mkosi and Macingo Dyofile. We have failed to completely please any one race ever since taking over the reins. My co-hosts and I have had complaints about how the show has changed. One particular caller sometime last year complained that there was too much Xhosa hip hop on Headwarmaz these days. “How come I don’t hear the likes of Hemel Bessem anymore?” he asked. Judging from his accent, he was coloured, and strangely enough, Hemel Bessem had been one of the artists who frequented (and still frequents) our playlist.

On the other hand, the typical Headwarmaz listener – who is stereotypically black – shows no interest to Afrikaans hip hop. This may be a finicky observation, but the tweets and the Facebook posts are usually scarce when we are hosting an Afrikaans artist or playing an Afrikaans song, unless of course that artist is DOOKOOM because seriously: who the fuck can ignore Isaac Mutant’s vulgar and straight-to-your-face lyricism supported by Human Waste’s painful synths?!

While still known as The Show in the 90s, it “mainly focused on music and light-hearted topics to entertain the mostly youthful and Afrikaans-speaking audience,” says one-time host Wanda “1Kind” Mxosana in an interview I did with him early this year. He elaborates:  “In 2007, after a range of criticism, the show had to adopt a new mandate. The Xhosa-speaking hip hop community felt neglected by the radio as there was no show where they could showcase their music.”

Respected  selectah DJ  Big Dre who used to host Headwarmaz at one point agrees that racial segregation exists but points out that it’s not hatred. “It’s [just] that each sees their form or style of hip hop as the overlooked and underrated.” Commenting on how the show ran during his time, the DJ who was also part of the iconic rap Cape Town outfit Writers Block says they didn’t play the racial game. “Anything that was of a good standard got played because we were building the movement,” he said.

My personal analysis is that it’s very difficult for Spaza (hip hop done mostly in Xhosa) and Afrikaans hip hop to organically co-exist.

Since being put in charge of hosting Headwarmaz in 2013, our goal has been for the show to be representative of Cape Town hip hop by trying to play and promote a bit of everything, from Spaza to Afrikaans hip hop, to electronic, to “commercial”, to boom bap and everything in-between. I can safely say we are the only hip hop radio show where you’ll hear Driemanskap, Hemel Bessem, PHFat, AKA, Hymphatic Thabs, Drake and Immortal technique back to back because we don’t believe one sub genre of hip hop is better than the next, our personal tastes aside.

However, the blatant bias of our listeners has made it hard to gauge our success in achieving that objective as we are also aware it’s not an easy feat to achieve.

* This article is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here. For the interactive version of this story, go here.

Liner Notes, No.6: Villy & The Xtreme Volumes

African music icons of previous generations, such as Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba, were and are well known for their ability to speak truth through music. Such legends have inspired many across the world by revealing political realities in Africa through their art and in their lives. Today however, the various national scenes enjoying a boom across the continent tend to accommodate musicians with a pop shine and carefree hooks in order to survive in a global commercial industry. This has created a vacuum in the pop space for socially-aware musicians. Enter Nigerian band VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes, a group who strives to open the world’s eyes to the political and social realities of the continent through a catchy and danceable repertoire.

From their EP Let’s Play released in August comes ‘E Dey Pain Me’ an Afrobeat track with soulful melodies. VILLY cries ‘How you go chop and clean mouth and talk say it good, how you go treat your people like say we b fools’, questioning corrupt systems in Africa. ‘Mama’ covers stories of insecurities and jungle justice that takes place in Nigeria. In this song VILLY talks about rape, attacks on students in reference to Boko Haram, theft by government officials. The message of Gbolaka (gunshot) is clear, “it’s time we start fighting and it’s time we start demanding for our rights.” VILLY suggests that a corrupt act by government is a gunshot at the people and that it’s time the people reclaim power from corrupt leaders. ‘Make Me Mad’, takes people on a frenzy whenever the song is performed. The song is fast becoming the group’s signature revolution song and was recently featured on BBC World News.

In their live performances, such as the one above, VILLY name drops leaders and officials who are thought to have acted or are continuing to act counterproductively toward the betterment of their nations. VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes are on a crusade to champion their cause and are taking the message straight to the people. They might just be that spark that is needed for African Pop to reawaken its political roots.

Tony Blair Saves The Children of Africa

Interventionists across the political class in Europe and North America have comprehensively militarized the humanitarian enterprise in recent years. So there was much more dismay than surprise when Save the Children awarded Tony Blair a Global Legacy Award recently. Yes, the same Tony Blair reportedly now worth £10 million who takes Henry Kissinger as his role model.

Ordinary Save the Children staff explained to bosses, in a letter signed by more than two hundred employees, just how damaging this bizarre award is to the organization’s credibility. Critics pointed out that Blair has strong connections with higher-ups at Save the Children, including two former advisers, Justin Forsyth and Jonathan Powell.

A third Blair apparatchik, his former director of political operations John McTernan, put forward the most robust defence of Blair’s humanitarian merits with an argument that turns on a particular idea of Africa’s recent history. In 2001, Blair claimed Africa was “a scar on the conscience of the world,” and his supporters are now pointing to the continent as the last hope for the dogged (and doomed) PR effort to canonize Blair as a saintly humanitarian. “What, precisely,” asked McTernan, “is shameful about Blair’s record in Africa? Absolutely nothing.” The Iraq war, he insisted, is “a legitimate area of disagreement, but one that has no relevance to the Blair legacy in Africa.”

This is simply nonsense. It is dangerous thinking that repeats the old idea that Africa is somehow exceptional or outside of world affairs, and that its only “issue” is poverty. As with the Cold War and the two World Wars before that, Africa is no less subject to global conflict than any other continent.

Blair has no more credibility in Africa than he has anywhere else in the world.

The so-called “War on Terror,” spearheaded by Blair with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, has had dire ramifications across the African continent. The emergence of Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram in the mid-2000s opened the way for the current crises in East Africa and the Sahel, including the attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi and incessant attacks in Northern Nigeria, most notably the kidnapping of hundreds of girls from the village of Chibok.

Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram’s rise has been complemented by the establishment of the US Africa Command (Africom), a US military presence in Africa of unprecedented scale, and one that is increasingly significant in national and regional politics. Last year, investigative reporter Nick Turse exhaustively documented the range of US military operations across Africa, which include a permanent military base in Djibouti, and drone bases in Burkina Faso, Morocco, Uganda and Ethiopia.

The “War on Terror” has also seen a sizable diplomatic realignment, with many African governments forging much closer ties to Israel and the US in order to receive “support” in combating terrorism. It’s also worth noting the thousands of Ugandan military personnel working as private contractors for the US government and US multinationals in Iraq — a large segment of the de facto occupying force over the past few years have been Africans.

There’s also the question of Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) and what exactly it has accomplished. It’s noticeable that take-up on Blair’s services has been distinctly thin on the ground — AGI work in only Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Rwanda. They don’t work in Malawi any more, withdrawing after the government they were advising (Joyce Banda’s) was submerged in a massive corruption scandal. Recently another client (Liberia) has seriously struggled to deal with the Ebola outbreak, for all the talk of Blair’s expertise in “capacity-building”.

By contrast with other global advisers, such as the economist Joseph Stiglitz who works on tailoring resource contracts to prevent poor nations being ripped off by predatory investors, AGI’s exact function is opaque. The neoliberal rhetoric of “good governance” and “leadership” changes very little — where we’ve seen major social-democratic movements gaining traction in recent years (such as Burkina Faso last month, Occupy Nigeria or the 2011 Egyptian revolution), Blair’s initiative has been nowhere to be found.  In February 2011, Blair defended Hosni Mubarak as “immensely courageous and a force for good.” Just a week later, Mubarak was forced to step down.

In Rwanda, AGI is supporting Paul Kagame at a time when the notion of the Rwandan president as a progressive “reformer” seems more and more implausible in light of his autocratic style  and his destructive role in DR Congo. Blair appears to be committed to the failed idea that Africa should be “saved” by a combination of foreign investment and international development agencies — a model that will continue to fail ordinary people.

Save the Children now have a major opportunity: they should revoke the award and explain why. Desmond Tutu says Blair should be charged for war crimes at the Hague. A politician who has done as much harm as Tony Blair should not be allowed to play on Western ignorance of Africa in order to launder his reputation.

The BBC gets Rwanda wrong

Rwanda isn’t simple. Recently, the BBC’s This World documentary series broadcasted what they call Rwanda’s “Untold” Story. The film attempts to rewrite Rwanda’s genocide narrative and calls into question the events leading up to and following those 100 days. The filmmakers question the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front’s part in the downing of former president Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane and in ending the genocide. The films go so far as to challenge the conventional death toll estimates and suggest that President Paul Kagame’s forces played a minimal role in ending the genocide. They interview researchers and exiled former members of the RPF to cast doubt on both Kagame’s past and his legitimacy today.

Unsurprisingly, the Rwandan government, along with Ibuka, a genocide survivor’s organization, denounced the film, leading to the suspension of BBC Kinyarwanda broadcasts in the country. The country’s parliament also charged the filmmakers with genocide denial; one of many vague sentiments criminalized in a series of purposefully murky laws used to quell any dissent, political or otherwise.

In rather dramatic fashion, complete with a distractingly cheesy soundtrack more appropriate for a thrasher film than a historical inquiry, the documentary attempts to expose ‘the truth’ of Rwanda’s recent history, as if there is only one truth. The irony is that the film tells us very little of what is in fact unknown. Rather than acknowledge the existence of many co-existing narratives by giving a voice to the voiceless, the filmmakers cherry pick interviews and give haphazard coverage of the events of the genocide, alienating a large swath of Rwandans and creating a film that often frustrates rather than enlightens.

Don’t get me wrong; the film had good intentions and the potential to be something much greater. It pushes us to question Rwanda’s positive development narrative by highlighting the dark sides of the regime and speak up for those thousands of Rwandans—both Hutu and Tutsi—who have indeed suffered at the hands of the ruling regime.

The film questions the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s account of the genocide and Kagame’s role in ending it. But the glib treatment of Rwandan history and the genocide distracts from the validity and severity of the film’s more valid claims. Within the first 10 minutes I was already turned off. The host explains Rwanda’s entire pre-colonial and colonial history in just two sentences (at 6:28), speaking as if ethnic identities were already solidified by the arrival of the Belgian colonialist. Let’s be clear. Ethnic divisions were neither invented by the Belgian colonial administration nor a source of pre-colonial so-called tribal warfare. Rwanda was a changing and complex state, where social relationships and the salience of ethnicity morphed over time and with the help of ruling elites. Ethnicity in Rwanda is difficult to define and cannot be determined by looking at differences in culture, religion, history, or language.*

The film tells the story of the 1994 genocide as if the Hutu Power movement was justified because of a pervasive fear of Tutsi incursions into Rwanda from southern Uganda. The film’s simplistic version of history makes it seem as if the genocidaires were forced to retaliate against Tutsi, coming across as borderline apologist for the perpetrators. The film forgets to mention the hateful and pervasive anti-Tutsi propaganda that payed a critical part is stirring up hatred. It mischaracterizes the RPF as a power hungry movement in yet another baseless ethnic conflict. In reality, the RPF was founded many years before the genocide in response to Tutsi persecution and well-documented waves of violence, starting in 1959. The launch of the civil war was about the right to return home for hundreds of thousands of stateless Rwandans – refugees living in Uganda, DRC, Tanzania, and Burundi. In his book, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Mahmood Mamdani refers to the incursion not as an invasion but as an “armed repatriation” (p160).

The worst problem with this lack of contextual explanation is that it gives too much weight to the idea that the genocide was a spontaneous event caused by the downing of former president Habyarimana’s plane. The film even suggests Kagame should bear responsibility for the genocide if the RPF was indeed responsible for the crash. What they fail to explain is that who shot the plane down – while a point of wild contention, with proclamations and investigations bolstering both sides – is somewhat of a moot point. The downing of the plane set off the genocide, but it did not cause it. Scholars agree that the genocide was a highly centralized and planned event. The plans were laid before Habyarimana was killed. Even more disturbing is the film’s failure to mention that the United Nations was aware of the planned violence, including the location of stockpiled and imported machetes, grenades, and guns. This is omitted despite the choice to interview the former head of UNAMIR, Luc Marchal. Painting Rwanda as an ethnic powder keg plays into the Western imagination of tribal warfare and conflict for the sake of conflict.

The only real new information about the downing of the plane is from General Kayumba Nyamwasa, a former RPF official who has since survived several assassination attempts. His interview is important and his story is believable. Yet, all he offers as evidence is that he “was in the position to know” and was in meetings with Kagame when the plans were formulated. This isn’t the first time General Nyamwasa has made these claims and though this scenario is plausible, it is still possible that Hutu extremists could have downed the plane and the film does not make this clear. The fact that radical elements of the Hutu administration saw Habyarimana’s acquiescence – the signing of the Arusha Accords in 1993 – as treason goes unstated.

The most important parts of the film, like the rare interview with Nyamwasa and the footage of the Kibeho massacre, get lost amongst the unsubstantiated claims by researchers with dubious data. Alan Stam and Christian Davenport, two researchers from American universities, make the controversial claim that most of those killed during the genocide were in fact Hutu. They claim that just 200,000 Tutsi were killed, a number far below even the lower limits of most agreed upon estimates. Filip Reyntjens, another Rwanda scholar from the University of Antwerp also interviewed in the film, published a critique calling Stam and Davenport’s data collection methods “insufficient”. An even more thorough rebuttal by Marijke Verpoorten easily explains why their numbers are sketchy. Yet, the film offers no counter to these numbers, despite their controversial nature and the existence of a large pool of well-founded, balanced critiques of Rwanda by researchers as equally disliked by the government (i.e. Alison des Forges, Susan Thomson, Scott Straus, Lars Waldorf, Gérard Prunier, Philip Gorevitch, Mahmood Mamdani, to name a few). The BBC’s failure to interview a well-rounded selection of researchers falls far below the journalistic standards it should live up to. Even worse, the use of only Davenport and Stam’s claims certainly gives credence to the RPF’s nebulous policies criminalizing genocide ideology or denial, ultimately strengthening the government’s strict laws and giving the RPF a scapegoat to crack down.

A better version of this film would have taken a critical look at the delicate and contested balance between security and economic and social progress. It would have challenged the prevailing perspective that Kagame’s human rights abuses are justified by stability and peace in the country in a more forceful and balance way. It would have given a voice to a wider range of political dissidents and highlighted the lack of freedom of the press. It would have examined a government campaign of ‘oneness’ with little choice but to opt-in. It would have interviewed critics who are harassed on Twitter by Rwandan government trolls and followed the blogs dedicated to blasting Rwanda researchers. It would have mentioned imprisoned, tortured, assassinated, and disappeared journalists, teachers, human rights advocates, researchers, political opponents, and government critics. It would have mentioned the 40 bodies found in Lake Rweru earlier this year, and claims that none are Rwandan. It would have discussed about the secretive and sudden cabinet reshuffle and dismissal of the prime minister earlier this year. Rather than challenging statistics and events of the genocide with very little new and poorly documented information, it would have focused on the massacres and meddling by Rwandan troops both in Rwanda and in Eastern Congo through late 2013. The complexity and tragedy of this war is enough to fill a documentary 10 times over.

There are many sides to Rwanda’s story. It is an eco-friendly place of hope, innovation, available healthcare, and economic progress, but it is also a place whose government refuses to allow political identities to reflect the diversity of beliefs in Rwandaness. It is a lot to ask the world to accept the multiple truths of Rwanda – including the fact that many people love Kagame just as others fear him – and it was too much for the film to explain this picture in all of its complicated nuance and actually share with us what remains untold about Rwanda’s story.

* The formation of the Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa labels began to take shape during the rule of the Tutsi monarch Kigeli Rwabugiri (1860 – 1895). By the end of his rule he had solidified control over almost the entirety of modern day Rwanda. He ruled through a system of forced labor, slowly defining ‘ethnicity’ by political class and economic differences. These differences centered on the Tutsi cattle-owning ‘elite’ and the majority Hutu peasantry. However, ethnic identities did not fully crystallize until Belgian colonial rule, beginning in 1912. The Belgians systematically privileged Tutsi in leadership roles and the education system, entrenching the separateness of ethnic identity. With the use of identification cards starting in 1935, race overtook class as the social marker and conflict between Tutsi and Hutu increased.

+ Image Credit: Veni Markovski (Creative Commons, Flickr)

Book review and interview with Diriye Osman (winner of @PolariPrize); bonus: video of Osman and Binyavanga Wainaina

Every displaced person who’s ever transgressed against the strictures of the culture from which they originated will tell you about that feeling of free-floatingness: others see you as uninhibited, but you know that you have nothing to hold you. You know that some tethers are welcome, and can give comfort; yet, you also know that they are too expensive on the bank account of the soul to afford. So you look at them in the shop windows – other’ lives that seem impossibly out of reach – as you float by. Always, you are mindful of the day on which the raucous laughter, the drugs, the sex, the alcohol, the lovers, the witty wordplay, the dancing, the performance, the ambition to keep moving will not serve to keep you buoyant.

Diriye Osman’s collection of short stories, Fairytales for Lost Children, is an exploration of how those who are multiply displaced create family, stability, love, and home; it is also an exposition of pain, and the escapes one might seek – through fairytale and fantasy – in order to live with that unbearable understanding: what’s easily available to others is not there for you, but you must make your way, even without. Osman says, to the BBC, that the “the crux of the book is about sexual identity, within the context of being gay, Muslim, African. It is fundamentally a book about freedom”. Each of Osman’s key characters is Somali, living a precarious life in Kenya or England (only the characters in the opening story, “Watering the Imagination,” are still in Somalia), and each of them is gay. None are fully accepted by their blood relatives. They know that family can give one a home, even when one’s country will not; even when one’s nation state disintegrates and ejects, those with whom one escaped can become a nation with borders that re-collect you in the enormity of loss. But what do you do when first, the nation, then one’s family reject you?

We learn about how Diasporic people keep their silences well guarded. And that these silences and repressions are expected – they are part of the bargain one makes in order to recreate a wholeness when one’s family has already lost everything. In most of Osman’s stories, silence is a demand, a tithe too impossible to bear, yet people stay together, “bound by blood and bad history”. In rare instances, however, these silences are about acceptance, about allowing a child freedom to love someone, and experience life in a way that would have been impossible in one’s own generation: in “Watering the Imagination”, the mother of a Somali girl – one who has lived her whole life “near the coast of Bosaaso, Somalia,” and remains steadfast in her loyalty to this strip of liminality between water and land whist others who “are hungry for new homes in places like London or Luxembourg risk their lives on cargo ships” – does not ask where her daughter goes at night, and does not force her to accept the many marriage proposals that come her way. “I respect her privacy, and I allow her to live,” she says. In a way, the silence between them is as lovely as this girl, who comes home night after night, “smelling of sea and salt and perfume,” wrapping her beauty – and her secrets – “around herself like a shawl of stars”.

Not surprisingly, many of Osman’s stories centre around a character who has lost her or his mind. They live in London, so their disintegration is medicalised. They are diagnosed as schizophrenics, given tablets, and provided counselling. But as one character says, the root of their unravelling is post-traumatic disorder, displacement, the shock of arrival in countries that provide little space for them to be, whilst – ironically – giving them a space to become. Kenya is the location that Osman’s characters meet corrupt cops who exact bribes from Somalis, murder Somalis in cold blood, and keep them in a panicked, watchful frenzy (“Shoga”). England, too, is a location of terror, but not because of the fear of literal death. The cities of England, and their immigrant enclaves, are the sites of social death: here, young second-generation women and men come out – albeit tentatively to a trusted sister, a much beloved mother – only to face rejection, and even threats to their lives.

In several stories (“Your Silence Will Not Protect You”, for instance), there’s a lot of talk about the son who is now engaged in a practice that is “haram”, something that is against “our customs” despite there being, of course, Somali words for gay men and women (derogatively used). Creatures raised in the den of immigrant and refugee families – who throng together closer for warmth, even as they are physically removed from the location of their nation-ness – suddenly find themselves with no one. In “Earthling”, a woman decides to marry a “traditional” Somali-British man who will provide her the life she belonging she craves, but this new life has no place for her gay sibling. Her decision comes at the cost of cutting off contact with the one person with whom she shares a lifetime of memories: a childhood of waterpark slides, innocent childhood transgressions (peeing in swimming pools), and of surviving a father’s violent death, and the subsequent loss of their mother to cancer. Though the stories are full of near-saintly lovers who stay steadfast through each respective protagonist’s wrenching breaks with sanity, what all-giving, generous lover (or husband, who might give one the solidity of tradition, custom, and continuity) could replace that magical rope of shared experiences, only available to family? No wonder, then, the madness, the voices telling them that they are trash, the starlings and the inanimate objects who hurl slurs at them.

Osman is the first African author to win the Polari First Book Prize, for a first (UK-published) book that explores the LGBT experience. Binyavanga Wainaina calls Osman the James Badwin of our times: expatriated, diffident, beautiful, full of longing for home, and yet hopeful that home will one day make a place for those it rejects, realising that it itself is unhomed – estranged from itself – if it has no place for those like him. In the meanwhile, whist waiting for that miracle, I’m humbled and inspired by Osman’s flight of words and fancy.

Africa’s a Country asked him for some insights:

Neelika Jayawardane: Often, it feels like your characters are always hungry, and begging unseen masters for a little more; one of his characters, in “If I Were a Dance”, jokes, sarcastically, “Do I look like Oliver Twist’s Angolan brother?” when he’s told that they must work at below scale pay. Can you tell us a little about where that hunger comes from?

Diriye Osman: There are many different types of hunger explored in the book. There is the hunger for new homes, which every Somali is familiar with. There is the hunger that stems from unfiltered sexual desire, as is the case with the title character in the story, “Ndambi”, whose need for comfort and sexual satisfaction is so palpable that it threatens to swallow her whole. I like men and women who fizz and crackle with curiosity, a thrilling and edacious appetite for knowledge and ideas. Because my characters are young and alive, they are constantly courting sparks. They’re constantly trying to maintain a sense of hope and possibility. Also, there is a context for what you refer to as the begging of “unseen masters for a little more”, something which is not explored fully in the book. The mental health system, as it stands in the UK, is an extremely volatile and morbid structure. I don’t write fully about the actual business of being inside a high security mental hospital. Oftentimes, the mentally ill are left to their own devices, are even actively shunned, until they have a full-blown episode. Only then will the system intervene. But what the mental health industrial complex offers is not care. It’s a systemic imprisonment and degradation of people who are too vulnerable to know better. Your family can try to intervene but once you’re in the system, you’re in the system. You’re literally yanked out of your home by police officers and carted off to the hospital like a prisoner. This is not the way to treat someone who is sick. Once you’re inside, the situation quickly devolves into a cat-and-mouse game between personnel and patients where the stakes are, ultimately, the patients’ humanity and dignity. I’ve been in mental hospitals twice in my life and I was effectively a prisoner during both occasions. I was held for six months during both periods and I was legally trapped there – sectioned – even though I posed no threat to myself or to others. In the end, the distasteful joke of it all was that I was ultimately released on the flimsiest technicality: the hospital needed more beds and they no longer had one for me.

This is an environment where grown men and women are stripped and injected with tranquilizers in the ass in front of their families – their parents, their wives and husbands, their children. This is an environment where you’re denied access to basics and you have to rely on family and friends to bring you things like snacks and soap. It’s a repulsive system that’s not going anywhere unless we repeatedly challenge it and fight for reform. To me, it felt like my fellow patients and I were brought to our knees. It’s impossible for such an experience not to leave a haunting impression. The cruellest thing a human being can do to his fellow man is strip him of his dignity. With Fairytales For Lost Children, I was writing my way out of that toxic history. 

NJ: As an immigrant in America, I know what it is like when one’s modest success means that one’s nation-of-origin and family suddenly wants to re-claim you – but only if one plays the right games the “correct” way. For those who’ve already paid too high a cost for freedom, compromising and accepting this poorer form of love is hardly a good bargain. I wonder if you have experienced some of these compromised offers, and how you deal with what often feels to me like a dishonest acceptance…an acceptance that is very attractive in certain ways, but not so much in others? 

DO: I lead a very lucky life. I’m independent, my work is satisfying and my days are full. The people who approach me do so with a sense of respect and I appreciate that. I have found my people and these people hail from all the over the world. And that’s what we have to do. We all have to go out into the world and find our people.

Coming back to that concept of cultural acceptance, again, I’ve been very fortunate. I have met countless Somalis – LGBT and straight – who have been nothing but nurturing and welcoming towards me. I have always loved my culture because it’s an endlessly fascinating culture with a rich seam of history. I sometimes joke that Somalis – rich or poor, young or old – walk around like their shit don’t stink and that’s dope to me. I come from a very confident and beautifully bat-shit crazy community.

NJ: There’s a few instances in which your characters allude to the importance of what Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt calls “self-fashioning” – the ability to shape and re-create oneself according to the signals that one carefully collects from one’s social milieu. But being gay is also about transgressing against – or even being playful with – social norms. Of course, it’s impossible to ignore that you yourself are a self-fashioner extraordinaire. I’ve seen you read to audiences wearing a hoodie (one that’s a beautiful shade of purple, though), but you are known for your signature play with Elizabethan dress, face paint, and jewellery: this is a performative present that calls on the past, whist imagining a different future. Will you tell us a bit about the significance of self-fashioning, costuming, and transformation for you?

DO: I’m a strong believer in self-creation. I’m fascinated by individuals who fashion their own identities out of makeshift materials, who improvise with what’s to hand. I come from a large family filled with fully realized individuals. However, everybody has their own role and everybody fits into the mosaic. I always felt out of place within the context of that mosaic, that predetermined pattern. This is a feeling I carried with me from a very young age: the sense that I did not fit. I tried very hard to fit. But I felt adrift at home, at school and beyond those spaces. I remember my sister once telling me, “You do not belong to this world.” She meant it as a compliment flecked with religiosity. I don’t buy into that concept because it’s a way of denying me my humanness. We all belong to this world. We either have to find spaces where we fit or create spaces from scratch. That’s why websites like ‘Meetup’ are so popular. They tap into the basic human need for connection. If we are othered, we want to find people who are othered in similar ways. That’s why the slogan for ‘Meetup’ is so effective. “Find your people.” Self-creation stems from disorder, damage even. I am a product of self-creation.

With regards to the elaborate costuming and makeup that you see in the photos, they symbolize rigid self-control. I wear makeup and I don dramatic attire because I like control. I’m not interested in controlling others but I’m invested in strict self-governance. This is why I don’t do many face-to-face interviews. I don’t like being caught off-guard. It all goes back to that attempt to create order amidst disorder. One of the most frightening things about losing your mind is that you feel like your body, your brain, every part of your essence is being invaded. There is such a palpable helplessness to that narrative and I hate the sense of victimhood that it implies. Certainly, this is how I felt during my moments of psychological disquiet. I felt like my personhood was under attack. Performativity is important to me because I’m the teller of my own stories. I have been performing these multiple roles for so long that they have bled into my identity. I have become the man that I always wanted to be.

NJ: In a “Letter to [Your] 13-Year-Old Self”, you wrote, “You will wear your awkwardness, your aloneness and your alienness in your hair like gold thread”; and “Someday you will create your own family”. The second blessing – the importance of creating a family of one’s own making – is something that one of your characters repeats to himself, remembering his blood-family’s rejection. For many immigrants, refugees, and displaced people, much like many gay people, recognising that one’s “alienness” is “like a gold thread” and that process towards self-acceptance is part of how they’ve created commonality with others who similarly struggled. It is doubly hard for someone who is both gay, and nationally displaced – one does not have the safety net of family nor geography. Will you speak a little about the challenges and alienation that being thus doubly (or multiply) displaced creates? And how does the family you’ve chosen – and your own aesthetic, intellectual, moral, psychological and political choices – “home” you?

My interior life has changed radically since I wrote Fairytales For Lost Children. When I was writing the book, I was engaged in the kind of magical thinking that arises out of trauma and dislocation. I was essentially trying to create a new language for myself out of the detritus of soul-destroying elements. I had been told my whole life that I had a weak character so I was writing in reaction to that false assessment. In many regards, Fairytales For Lost Children is an origin story that charts the development of characters who are initially meek and eventually tap into their power. Ultimately, I realized that I am my own home. If you see my physical home, it’s nice but very spare. There are no paintings on the wall (even though I’m a painter), there are no photographs or personal mementos that are meaningful. Everything is minimalist and basic because I’m satisfied with the fact that I’m “homed” within my own body. That’s the ultimate gift. I have found the freedom to be comfortable within myself.

In terms of family, I’m really happy. I’m surrounded by people who genuinely respect and value me. This is not accidental. We can’t choose the families we’re born into but we can choose the families we decide to make our own. Mine is the kind of alternative family that Alison Bechdel described so wonderfully in her seminal comic strip, Dykes To Watch Out For. They’re incredibly fun, politically and artistically engaged folks with a sense of joie de vivre. I fit well into this mosaic. I have found my people.

NJ: What’s next for you? What will you be letting us read next?

DO: I’m currently working on a novel that I hope you will like once it’s finished. It grew out of a short story that refused to be contained within the form. It’s challenging but it’s also enormous fun. I’m not going to reveal the particulars of the plot because it’s too far off from completion but I can reveal the themes. It’s a novel about ambition (particularly artistic ambition), class, love, family and how far we are willing to go in order to preserve ourselves. These characters don’t have the issues of balancing out their cultural identities in the way that the characters from Fairytales For Lost Children did. In fact, their identities, which are very complex and interesting, are the least of their worries. It’s a book that’s in conversation with my debut. Fairytales For Lost Children concerned itself with, amongst other things, the pursuit of freedom. The new novel is about what happens when one finds freedom. After all, freedom isn’t freedom unless you do something with it.

Bonus: Video of Diriye Osman in conversation with Binyavanga Wainaina, ‘The London Session':

* Image Credit: Bahareh Hosseini.

Sweden’s love affair with Pippi Longstocking and “definitions” of racism

Recently The New York Times picked up on one of Sweden’s latest “race controversies”: The Swedish national broadcaster announced it would broadcast an edited version of a 1969 Pippi Longstocking TV-series. The edited version excludes a scene where Pippi plays Chinese by slanting her eyes and Pippi’s mainly absent dad is just a king instead of a ‘negro-king’.

Despite Pippi’s creator, Astrid Lindgren, confessing in a 1970 interview that she should have called Ephraim Longstocking (who, unable to carve out an existence for himself in Sweden, ventured to the Pacific’s, where he immediately became the ruler of a silly-named island populated by brown people) something else, the intervention caused a backlash among Swedes. Many felt their human rights had been trampled on. The word ‘censorship’ was mentioned, and many swore they would never watch the Pippi-series again. Others vowed to only show their children the original version of the series.

A couple of years ago, the move of offensive Tintin-comic books from the youth and children’s section in a public library caused similar reactions and evoked references to book burnings.

The people with the strongest reactions to both events are neither neo-Nazis nor members of obscure racist movements. They are ordinary white folks who ignore the link between dehumanization and killing in cold blood. It is ordinary people then who when their right to define racism is contested, start foaming at the mouth.

The closer to home – literally and metaphorically – the racism that is being addressed occurs, the more elaborate the strategies for deflection and derailment. Dismissing the concept of race as a construct (which is true but irrelevant) and claiming colour blindness is one. Referring to good intentions (claiming that engaging in blackface every November is not a substitute for cross-burning) is another. Yet others are bringing up reverse racism (as if there were such a thing) and telling people to focus on ‘real racism’ (whatever that is). For example, in defence of white South African artist Brett Bailey’s exhibition Exhibit B, in which black bodies are used to put the spotlight on the exploitation of black bodies, mainly white people have accused mainly black objectors to the oeuvre of mob hysteria.

In recent times, a recurring theme has been good white people telling good black people what is racism and what is not. Good white people rarely said ‘You’re right, let’s change that’ or ‘Let’s stop that’; instead they told black people calling out racism to sit down.

If there’s anything these last years have taught us, it is that smoking weed in public like the Dutch or being sexually super-liberated as the rumour has it that the Swedes are, doesn’t automatically make you cool, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we can trust your morals.

Weekend Special No. 2696

* Weekend Special is all that stuff we wanted to, but did not get around to writing about but shared on social media or things we feel bear repeating. First up, is the impunity of the police in the United States. The last few days here in New York City (and around the country and the world) have been characterized by spontaneous protests (the image, by a neighbor Michael Skolnik, was taken at Grand Central Station last night) against police violence. Here at Africa is a Country we published two pieces on the subject–the first by T.O. Molefe and the second by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza–while I was interviewed by PRI’s The World on comparisons with South Africa. Here’s an excerpt: “At one level, it’s not very different from what many poor black people in South Africa are going through right now. You have the [South African government] acting violently through the police against people protesting about the conditions under which they have to live … There was all this optimism built on a false consensus of a rainbow nation in which somehow just good feelings and good intentions would get South Africa away from the structural apartheid it inherited and they’d create a new society. But I think, in South Africa, there’s a sense that it didn’t work.”

* This week was also the first anniversary of the passing of Nelson Mandela, a man who since he emerged from prison in 1990 have been reduced to a one-dimensional figure separate from the history of the African National Congress. Mandela is now celebrated and co-opted by all sorts of political causes and personalities whose politics he would have opposed while alive, but who now claimed him as one of their own (here’s looking at you Helen Zille). In any case, our Archive is a good place to rid yourselves of such propaganda.

* December 5th was also the anniversary of the birth of another famed South African freedom fighter, Robert Sobukwe. He would have been 90 years old this month. Study up here, here and here.

* For all the hype about Western assistance, “most of the work of tracking, isolating and treating (Ebola) patients, burying the dead and raising awareness to minimize contagion had fallen to the three poor countries at the heart of the outbreak: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone,” reports The New York Times. So it is only proper that @YayaToure, @IdrisElba, @OfficialVieira et al got together to shoot the #WeveGotYourBack tribute to health workers in Sierra Leone fighting the Ebola Virus Disease.

Then the health workers in Freetown got to see themselves on film:

* This comment by former Ghana President Jerry Rawlings on the latest piece of news of some “pastor” in Ghana who kicked and stepped on the stomach of a pregnant woman): “Many too often as we watch our TVs, I don’t think we are putting enough efforts into showcasing some of these cultural traditional festivals – the activities that are going on around the countryside – and yet so much time is spent giving airtime, precious airtime to people like these two prophets I’ve been talking about of late: the one in Tema, called Obinim and the other one called Kumchacha … “

And yes, if you’re wondering, T.B. Joshua has still not produced any evidence of a mystery aircraft attacking his church building where 116 people died.

* Then there’s the liberal use of “Africa” in this TMZ story: “an African Thing,” “his native Africa.” Then there’s the reader comments. That must also be the first time we’ve read that being an African is a valid excuse to stalk someone. Anyway it is a TMZ story.

* Who said derivative pop can’t have pan-Africanist (well, as far as crossing over to capture audiences) ambitions.

* There’s also Iyadede’s new music:

* We don’t care much for the whole TED franchise, but news that legendary Nigerian footballer Sunday Oliseh had given a TEDx (that’s the version where anyone just organize their own TED) lecture in London, make us sit up. Till the video goes up, just watch this and you’ll know why we care:

* British Nigerian writer Ben Okri (winner, Man Booker Prize for “The Farmished Road” in 19991) was awarded the “Bad Sex” award for this love scene:

“When his hand brushed her nipple it tripped a switch and she came alight. He touched her belly and his hand seemed to burn through her. He lavished on her body indirect touches and bitter-sweet sensations flooded her brain. She became aware of places in her that could only have been concealed there by a god with a sense of humour. Adrift on warm currents, no longer of this world, she became aware of him gliding into her. He loved her with gentleness and strength, stroking her neck, praising her face with his hands, till she was broken up and began a low rhythmic wail … The universe was in her and with each movement it unfolded to her. Somewhere in the night a stray rocket went off.”

Okri issued, according to The Guardian, this humorless statement: “A writer writes what they write and that’s all there is to it.”

* Finally, here’s what we think is the Vine of the Week: “Coming home to jollof rice and then you’re told they fried dodo too”

* Acknowledgements to Elliot Ross for suggestions.

Remembering Slavery in South Africa

“I recognized Cape Town the first time I saw it,” Deborah Thomas revealed at a lecture she gave in the city in July 2014. A sociologist who works in Jamaica, she knew instantly that she was looking at a place shaped by slavery.

What do you see when you recognize slavery?

December 1st, 2014 marked 180 years since the abolition of slavery in South Africa. Few remember that apartheid was built on the systemic violence, displacement, racial formation and institutions of social control that marked slavery in the South African colonies from 1658 to 1834.

In fact, for 176 years, slavery was the central form of social and economic organization in the territories that would form South Africa. People were captured in Mozambique, Madagascar, India and South-East Asia to be brought as slaves to the Cape, the first and largest of the colonies that would form South Africa. Though the Dutch East India Company was forbidden from enslaving indigenous people at the Cape, the latter were subjected to genocide and conditions as brutal as slavery. Over the course of almost two centuries of slave-holding, enslaved people came to constitute the majority of the population of the Cape Colony, numbering more than 60,000 people (Ross, 1999, 6).

Slavery generated foundational notions of race and sex in South Africa, yet we have largely forgotten its role in our history. Our forgetting has now lasted longer than slavery itself.

When will we remember? And what does it mean to remember 176 years of pain and survival.

Forgetting is common even among those people who are descended from slaves, like me. As the writer and literary scholar Zoë Wicomb has argued, this is the effect of the deep psychic costs of almost two centuries of extreme violence, and the further violence of being blamed for inviting that brutality. This has resulted in a phenomenon she unforgettably called a “folk amnesia” born of “shame” (1998, 100).

But it is also the consequence of a sustained system of propaganda that has diminished the meaning of slavery. Studies of South African history written before 1980 portrayed the role of slavery in the Cape as minor and its character “mild” (Keegan 1996, 16), a benign view also reflected in popular culture through texts such as cookbooks, cartoons and landscape paintings. It was only in the 1980s that significant new scholarship demonstrated that slavery shaped all aspects of life at the Cape and its hinterland (Worden, 1985), and slave labor was in fact central to the economy and the culture of the Colony.

The legacy of slavery still permeates South Africa today. Pumla Gqola’s superb and ground-breaking study What Is Slavery To Me? Postcolonial/Slave Memory in Post-apartheid South Africa (Wits, 2010) takes up the challenge of articulating the pertinence of this period for the present.  My book, Regarding Muslims: from Slavery to Post-apartheid (Wits, 2014), examines the place of Muslims in the confluence of slavery and the making of race and sex in South Africa.

Once you look closely at the landscape of the country and listen to the people who live there, you see the inward and outward signs of slavery’s legacy everywhere – in ideas about race and sex, in language, even in curses. Terms of abuse like “kaffir” (a racial epithet used to license violence against Black people during apartheid but that actually dates from the colonial period) and “poes” (Afrikaans for “vagina”) form an intimate catalogue of memory of 176 years in which people were property and their lives were marked by brutality. Extreme violence, including systemic sexual violence, became the norm under slavery. Enslaved women were subjected to forced prostitution, and the Slave Lodge, which housed enslaved people owned by the Dutch East India Company, was also the “main brothel” of Cape Town (Keegan, 1996, 20). Today, the Slave Lodge is the national museum for memorializing slavery.

Seen in this light, the slave-holding period is the primal scene for understanding racial and sexual codes in South Africa, and our lack of attention to slavery prevents us from understanding a foundational time in our history. What do we miss by doing so?  The historian Robert Ross writes that “throughout the 180 years of slavery at the Cape, not a single man, slave or free, was convicted for raping a slave woman.” The scale of such sexual violence is part of the reason that South Africa continues to experience epidemic levels of sexual violence today. Because of the high proportion of male slaves to male colonists, colonial society at the Cape had an intense fear of slave resistance and consequently slaves were disciplined through “the massive use of judicial force” (Ross, 1983, 2) and “violent and extreme” punishment (Worden, 1985, 4). It is striking that a system characterized by such brutal control was portrayed as mild and picturesque.

The imprint of slavery is evident today in forms of labor that are crucial yet continue to be undervalued, underpaid and characterized by systemic violence, such as farm labor and domestic labor. After all, as a pattern of appropriation of people’s bodies and labor, control over their movement and constraint over their access to economic independence, slavery was replaced by other forms of exclusion after emancipation.

Wicomb’s notion of shame shows how powerfully emotion causes us to veer away from grappling with slavery’s impact. Yet artists have gone into the spaces fenced off by contempt and the propaganda of the picturesque to recover memories of slavery, for instance, in the visual art of Berni Searle, the novels The Slave Book by Rayda Jacobs and Unconfessed by Yvette Christiansë, and the play “Reclaiming the P…Word,” produced by students and faculty at the University of the Western Cape. The protagonist in Unconfessed, the novel about an enslaved Mozambican woman at the Cape, testifies that through slavery, Black women became “poese up to our chins” (2007, 320). In the present, the word “poes” is a ubiquitous swear word, “scrawled on toilet doors, station walls and schoolboys’ desks,” as a character in “Reclaiming the P…Word” asserts, marking the subsumed trace of the sexual violence of slavery that cannot be spoken of otherwise. To recall slavery beyond the veil of “shame” would allow us to understand the continuing prevalence of sexual violence against Black women, and the meaninglessness that is ascribed to Black suffering generally – the ground on which apartheid was built – as we contemplate the global resonance of the events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York.

And yet of course to remember slavery is not only to remember pain, but also enslaved people’s “modernity” (C. L. R. James, 1962) – their creation of new cultures, their evasion of official strictures and categories, their remaking of received practices, and their splicing of language, food, music and beliefs in ways that would eventually come to shape national culture as a whole. It is necessary to remember slavery to be able to attend to the forms of survival, inventiveness, and flourishing among the descendants of slavery. Yet it remains important to attend to the inter-generational effects of systemic violence and the interior and external signs of pain that it produces. As in other parts of the world, South Africa’s history of slavery continues to shape the present in profound ways.

How will we remember its legacy this month?

Image: Hex River Valley, Western Cape of South African Tourism on Flickr.