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History Class with Cheta: Who is Herbert Macaulay

Too many people have forgotten about the one Naira coin, and the chap on that coin. This is a big disservice to Nigeria. Today’s History Class is going to be about that fellow, the one who has roads named after him in Lagos and Abuja, but who, sadly, is slipping away from our national consciousness.

Herbert Heelas Macaulay was born on 14 November 1864 in Lagos. He was the seventh child of his Sierra Leonean parents. His father, Tom Babington Macaulay, was the first principal of CMS Grammar School in Lagos. His mother’s father was Sam Ajayi Crowther.

Back then, Lagos was a segregated town. Europeans stayed in the best parts of town, migrants from Brazil and Sierra Leone stayed elsewhere, natives, elsewhere. Herb attended his father’s school, CMS, then Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He returned to Lagos in 1882 and got a job in the Department of Public Works. In July 1890, he left the Lagos Colony for Plymouth in England, to study Civil Engineering under G. D. Bellamy. He was there for three years.

When Macaulay returned to the Lagos Colony in 1893, he was appointed Surveyor of Crown Lands by the colonial government. However, he resigned five years later, because of what he termed “racial discrimination against indigenous civil servants by the European elite”. Following his 1898 resignation from the Department of Works, Herb Macaulay established his own private practice in Lagos. However, Macaulay’s venture was not a success, and faced with financial distress, he defrauded a family dependent, and was caught and sent to prison for two years. This prison stint, effectively barred him from ever running for public office under the colonial administration.

Upon his release from prison in 1908, Macaulay became more involved in the political arena, and began contributing a weekly column to the Lagos Daily Times. His articles were often critical of government policy, the liquor trade; the water-rate scheme; taxation; racial segregation; attempts to deny indigenous land ownership; and a free press.

In 1915, Macaulay led protests which became known as the water rate riots and also led agitation against colonial plans for land reform. His articles often skirted the edges of sedition, and finally, he crossed the line, giving the government the chance it needed to put him in prison again. This second visit to the jailers (for six months) involved the publication of a rumour concerning a plot to assassinate the exiled Eleko of Lagos.

After his release from prison, Macaulay took a somewhat more cautious line, but his writing remained highly critical. In 1921 he went to London with the Eleko of Lagos to act as his translator in the legal appeal of a local land tenure case. Macaulay proclaimed that the British colonial government was eroding the power and authority of the Eleko, who, he said, was recognized by all Nigerians as the rightful king of Lagos. This episode embarrassed the British and established Macaulay as a leading advocate of the rights of traditional leadership in Lagos.

A brief synopsis of the Oluwa Affair: the colonial authority had bought a large parcel of land(255 acres) from the Oluwa Family, and underpaid for it. Chief Oluwa sued for better compensation, and following that trip to London, on 14 June 1921, the Privy Council ruled in favour of Chief Oluwa. The Privy Council’s ruling said that communal land-ownership was legally recognized and that due compensation should be paid.

The Eleko Affair: Macaulay campaigned for the rights of traditional rulers within the colonial structure, and alleged that the colonists wanted to kill the Eleko. Again, the Privy Council, also on the same trip to London, ruled in favour of Macaulay’s side. These victories hardened political lines.

In 1922 a new Nigerian constitution was introduced providing for limited franchise elections in Lagos and Calabar. In 1923, he started the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), which contested the very limited elections of African members of the Legislative Council. The NNDP’s motto was “salus populi suprema lex”, “the safety of the people is the greatest law” and it called for universal compulsory education for Nigerians. NNDP candidates won all the elective seats in the Nigerian legislature between 1923 and 1938. But then in 1938, things changed.

The NNDP’s dominance was cut short in 1938 when the Nigerian Youth Movement beat them in the elections for the Lagos Town Council. Following that defeat, Macaulay, who up until the time was not too interested in politics outside of Lagos, adopted a more pan-Nigeria outlook. He saw prospects in Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NCNC’s struggle for independence for all of Nigeria, and by August 1944 had reached an agreement with Zik. Many of his own party members did not want to join forces with the NCNC, but he threatened to resign if they didn’t, so they played ball.

By the time Macaulay’s merger with Zik’s NCNC was complete in August 1944, Macaulay was already 80 years old and in failing health. In 1946, Macaulay suffered an acute attack of rheumatism during a tour of Kano, and was brought back to Lagos. Herbert Macaulay died, aged 82, on 7 May 1946.

Let us get one thing straight. Herbert Macaulay was no saint. He had an opportunistic streak. He was, in his time, certainly very controversial.

Obafemi Awolowo described him as “ultra-radical, intensely nationalistic and virulently anti-white”. Piers Brendon described Macaulay in later life as “an angry old man in a white suit and a white moustache that stuck out like cat’s whiskers”.

Fred Lugard, who was in many ways Macaulay’s greatest adversary consistently passed bitter comments about him and called him duplicitous. Macaulay was rumoured to have popped a bottle of champagne when he heard of Lugard’s passing in 1945.

Margery Perham, Lugard’s biographer, who visited Macaulay in 1931, described him as “one of the ablest Africans I have met, and at one both dangerous and pathetic”.

What is certain is that Herbert Macaulay was no saint. He did what had to be done, when it had to be done, and if needed, in a Machiavellian fashion. Macaulay once wrote a response to claims by the British that they were governing with “the true interests of the natives at heart”. Macaulay wrote: “The dimensions of “the true interests of the natives at heart” are algebraically equal to the length, breadth and depth of the white man’s pocket.”.

My thoughts: it is tragic that a lot of young people do not know about Herb Macaulay. He was the kind of leader that Nigeria needs today. Macaulay, like any other human, had his weaknesses. When faced with financial ruin, he moved towards the dark side, but he redeemed himself. He also recognised the value of education, unlike a lot of the excuses for leaders that we have parading around these days. He also showed that he was flexible. For much of his life, Macaulay was concerned with Lagos. But when the moment was right, he became national.

Most importantly, the recognised the value of the law, and used it against the colonists to devastating effect.

Adam Sandler’s “Africa” (late night TV talk shows can’t get enough of it)

Just based on the trailer alone, it was safe to predict that “Blended,” the comedy starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore about two single parents who after a dismal first date, magically end up on vacation at the same African resort, would scrape the bottom of the barrel. Dylan Valley said as much in a post here last December. The trailer, “… features some tired tropes: smiling singing Africans, generic wildlife, and adventuring in the bush. While the characters exclaim ‘we’re going to Africa!’, the only place they end up going to is Sun City, famously boycotted in South Africa’s bad old days by United Artists Against Apartheid.”

Here, one more time, is the trailer:

The film came out two weeks ago. Most critics, who normally cut Sandler and Barrymore slack, didn’t hold back. Here’s two of the more prominent examples.

Richard Brody in The New Yorker called the film “grotesquely offensive” and “… packaged with such a repellent batch of stereotypes and prejudices.” Brody was talking about the racial and gender stereotypes. Brody also wrote of the other characters, especially , who plays the leader of a singing group which pops up to serenade Sandler and Barrymore’s characters. Crews’s “… eye-rolling and glad-handing, his lubriciously insinuating and exaggeratedly jiving, all seem to be taken straight from a minstrel show.”

BTW, Crews thinks he was “showing another side of Africa” with his acting in the film; see this interview with BlackTree TV:

Back to Brody. He blamed the filmmakers, director Frank Coraci and the screenwriters Ivan Menchell and Clare Sera. We were surprised Brody didn’t also call out the African (mainly South Africa) members of the cast and crew who agreed to work on this nonsense. Some of them are credited as “Tribal Villager,” “African storyteller” and “African barber.”

Separately, A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote about the film’s “quasi-zoological depiction of Africans as servile, dancing, drum-playing simpletons.” 

You’d think Sandler would hide after all this. Of course not, he still has to promote the film. So, he went on television to promote the film and proceeded to tell unfunny jokes about “Africa.” Worse, his hosts David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel didn’t call him on it. But what do we expect. Watch below, first with Letterman.

And here is Sandler on Kimmel talking about “room service in Africa”

(Even Jon Stewart played along. He got to interview Drew Barrymore and asked her whether she needed injections for dengue fever to go to “Africa.” He kept up the “going to Africa” line of questioning for much of what followed. Watch here.)

There’s a black hole of these videos on Youtube. Just Google “Adam Sandler” or “Drew Barrymore” and “Blended” “Interview.” It’s all comedy apparently. And as we blogged a while back, the “Africa” joke is a standard among American comedians (there’s occasional smart takes on it, but they generally stink).

It’s like listening to a four year old repeatedly make poop jokes.

In the end it was fitting that Good Morning America had a group of kids ask Sandler questions about the film after they saw it:

The World Of Ridiculous Internet Videos: Who is Kwality?

I wasn’t sure of how to react when I opened the Youtube link to Kwality’s “Official Lion King.” video, first uploaded on May 17. What is this, and who is he, I wondered. While waiting for the video to buffer, I read the comments, nine in total at that time. (The video had 87 comments and 6,567 views by 10.30 this morning). “F*ck u dude!!” read the first one. “DAFUQ??!!!!” followed another later down in the comment thread.

Like myself, the people who left comments seemed to be in a predicament, uncertain of how to interpret this … this confusing visual concoction (though what he does reminds of IceJJFish; who later turned out to be part organic internet phenom and the product of some savvy marketing and production). If you can’t bear to watch and need a summary, here goes: an outside establishing shot is intercut with Kwality waking up from his bed to sit on its edge. It’s all very sudden; within the first ten seconds, we’ve heard the words “my lion king, my lion king” uttered repeatedly atop a beat whose direction I’m still trying to figure out. The irksome refrain is amplified by the equally-irritating (mis-)usage of auto-tune. What follows next you’ll have to see yourself.

Where is he from?

I was curious, so I reached out to the internet gods in an attempt to secure an interview with Kwality (he is on Twitter)–to hear, firstly, who he is. Most importantly, it was to acknowledge my own misgivings in judging him (, and to let him tell his story. I’m still waiting for the response. For now, enjoy the video.

* An earlier version of this post is crossposted on the African Hip Hop.

“Miners Shot Down;” a haunting and emotional documentary

When Mzoxolo Magidiwana, a miner from Marikana in South Africa’s Northwest Province, traces his family lineage of miners at Lonmin Mines, he invokes in me memories of how I narrowly escaped becoming a miner, breaking the lineage from my father. I spent my early twenties in Sasolburg, a small coal-mining town in the Northern Free State, where the air is murky, the soil is black and the smell of chemicals hangs in the air. The dust from the coal and the firms coats everything and deposits itself underneath fingernails. From the mine compound, where my father stayed, the Sasolburg town hid behind a mountain of coal and coal processing machinery. The road to the town is squeezed between a mountain of coal and firms that process the coal to make candles, oil, and other things. When the Marikana strike began in 2012 and ultimately culminating into the events of 16 August 2012, my father and other miners in Sasolburg were not merely empathising with the miners there but they were and still are in the same shoes. They drill coal in the depths of the earth to only emerge hours later, unrecognizable from the dust of coal, to earn peanuts. 

Miners Shot Down, the haunting documentary about the Marikana Massacre, has a horrifying stillness in its shots, the melancholic music seeps in and out of the narrative and it is because of these elements that it arrives at the viewer unhurried and sinks in. It shows police stalking the miners, trapping them in with barbed wire, provoking them with teargas and then gunning them down in cold blood.

“One thing was clear, I was dying but I was dying for nothing. I hadn’t even said goodbye to my family,” says Mzoxolo Magidiwana, strike leader at Marikana.

Overlaid over his interview is harrowing footage of him lying on the ground with his face down, on the threshold of death, after being gunned down by police. In the footage, he lifts his head up and stares at the heavily armed police officer that stands before him, not offering a hand to help him or the other men who were also gunned down. Another man in a red t-shirt, with a bloody mouth is violently turned over by police officers searching him. Minutes later his big body, riddled with bullets, wobbles, struggling to sit, life escaping him.

The fusillade from heavily armed police came to a halt when one policeman shouted, “Cease fire. Cease Fire. Cease Fire.” A voice of a policeman could be heard off screen make a callous statement to the miners, “I will shoot you.” When the dust settled, police stood in a line, holding their automatic weapons, taunting the miners lying on the ground and bleeding to death. None of the police officers bothered to call an ambulance, in fact, they did more than not call for it. They ordered the ambulance not to enter until after an hour of the shooting so that their path to being killers is not interfered with. In that hour police hunted other miners who ran up Small Koppie and shot them in cold blood.

In Miners Shot Down, the narrative that miners were charging towards police with weapons is not only proved to be a piece of fiction but also to be a cover up of a police force that probably received an order from the upper echelons of the justice system days before the events of 16 August 2012 to end the strike in whatever means necessary. Death was a plausible option, illustrated by the booking of four mortuary vans to be on standby on that day.

Rehad Desai, the director, says his sense is that justice had not been done for the miners, as a commission of inquiry into the incident drags on. This is why he made the documentary. “I couldn’t ignore it, it was much too big, much too dramatic and upsetting for me,” he said. “I had to do something for these miners. I just felt that I had to give them a voice. If authority strikes in such a brutal fashion, artists have to pick a side and indicate which side they’re on.”

The documentary chronicles the 6 days before the Marikana Massacre and juxtaposed those 6 days with interviews of the miners, politicians and lawyers and snippets from the Farlam Commission of Inquiry sessions. The 6 days of protests at Marikana were not without deaths and violence. At the core of it all is the refusal by the Lonmin management to negotiate with the rock drillers’ demands of R12,500 per month. The strike was termed by Lonmin director and now South Africa’s Deputy President, Cyril Ramaphosa (in an email), as a criminal act when no violence had had happened yet.

The documentary is convincing in that there is strong visual evidence to tell the story of the massacre. The footage shot by the police and mine security and other documentary evidence that has emerged during the still ongoing Farlam commission of inquiry tells one narrative. The police intentionally shot 34 miners in cold blood.

The documentary also reveals the turf war between the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and the once unrivalled National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). During the strike in 2012, NUM fell out of favour with the miners and AMCU became their only hope.

This haunting and emotional documentary is evidence of what unfolded in Marikana, unlike news reports, where one depends on the interpretation of someone else, the viewer watches the harrowing events unfold in front of their very own eyes.

* The film is screening at the Encounters International Documentary Film Festival in Cape Town and Johannesburg (5-15 June 2014). It is also opening tonight in Johannesburg. For a list of further screenings, see here. The image of director Rehad Desai courtesy of Miners Shot Down News.

What’s in the future for Lamu on Kenya’s Coast

Lamu Old Town is an ancient, bustling city of palm trees and artisans and stories, where trades and traditions are passed down from generation to generation largely unchanged. Acting as a trading hub for centuries, the archipelago’s food, architecture, religions, dress, music, and language are indicative of African, Arab, Persian, Indian, Asian and European influences, which together define the Swahili culture of Africa’s east coast.

Culturally and geographically separated from mainland Kenya, Lamu offers a rare window into the past, but is about to be launched into the woes and wonders of modern development. The archipelago is the proposed site of a 32-berth port that is meant to act as a key export corridor in a multi-billion dollar project to bring oil and other resources from East Africa to the world. Referred to as LAPSSET (Lamu Southern Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor), the project includes highways and pipelines across the region, much of which will lead to Lamu. In addition to the port, the archipelago is envisioned to host a large airport, oil pipeline, oil refinery, railway, and resort city.

The government promises that LAPSSET will bring much-needed jobs, services, and infrastructure. “The reality is that we have no good hospitals, we don’t have good schools, and we don’t infrastructure,” says Lamu County Commissioner Stephen Ikua. “When we bring the port, we are going to improve the health care, we are going to improve schools, and we are going to become competitive. Without that, over 75% of my community lives on a dollar a day.”

But many are worried that the port will degrade this age-old, tight-knit community—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—and the archipelago that hosts it, which is home to several endangered species, such as the green turtle and Ader’s duiker, and a healthy fish population, dolphins, elephants, a chatty birdlife, and a delicate corral reef. In order to make room for the deep-water port, the ocean strip between two islands will be dredged, and acres of mangroves will be cut. The community relies heavily on the fishing trade, and residents are concerned about their ability to fish – and their prey’s ability to survive – if they have to compete against massive oil tankers.

Humans living on the archipelago will also face change. According to a feasibility study, the population of Lamu District is expected to jump from 101,000 inhabitants to 1.25 million by 2050. The proposed resort could bolster tourism, but also poses a threat to small family-owned businesses. The majority of the Lamu community has limited education and job skills, and so residents say that while jobs may come to Lamu, others may reap the benefit. (The government has agreed to make scholarships available for young Lamu learners to go to university, but none have yet been offered.) Given that most Lamu residents don’t own title deeds, they are concerned that their homes, farms, and traditional fishing grounds will be taken for the project. Due to the impending port project, the Global Heritage Fund has listed Lamu Old Town as one of twelve sites “on the verge” of irreparable loss and damage.

Of immediate concern is the port administration building. While discussions between partner countries continue and full funding for the project remains illusive, the building is already being constructed just outside of Lamu Old Town, which residents’ point to in explaining their fears about LAPSSET as a whole: Dozens of farmers in the Kililana community just outside of Lamu Old Town have already had their land seized to make way for the building. Despite compensation being promised by the government, not a cent has been given. When Africa Is A Country visited the site in July 2013, all of the construction workers came from outside Lamu County, a fact many Lamu residents bemoan in claiming that they’ll be shut out of future opportunities. Critics contend that an environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) was not done before construction began, despite this being required by national law. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has also voiced concern regarding construction commencing before an ESIA was conducted, and without a Heritage Impact Assessment, as requested by the National Museums of Kenya.

While an ESIA has been conducted for the first three berths of the port (not yet constructed), it was flawed. Water samples were only offered for two out of six boreholes tested, the number of bird and fish species was under-estimated, and the impact on coral reef located directly under the three berths and in the shipping lanes and surrounding archipelago was not considered.

Given Lamu residents’ host of concerns about the project, multiple organizations have grouped together under the banner “Save Lamu” to discuss what the port means for the community, and how to engage with it. Although concerned about the project’s potential impact on the environment and Lamu residents, the group insists they are not anti-port, but simply want greater consultation with and transparency from the national and local government before the project continues. In lieu of information from the government, the community is acting in the dark. The full plan for the port and its surrounds was only unveiled to the Lamu community in July, 2013, months after construction began on the port administration building and decades after LAPSSET was conceptualized.

Save Lamu is fighting back where and how it can. The group attends as many so-called “public consultations” as possible, which are often invite-only and held in inaccessible locations. They have penned a petition calling for the halting of the port until more consultations are held (thousands have signed the petition), filed an as-yet-unheard petition with the Kenyan constitutional court arguing that the government has acted unconstitutionally in the port rollout, and host a Facebook page and community forums that see spirited discussions.

With access to little information and little means of redress, Save Lamu members spend most of their time doing what Lamu residents have always done: discussing, and building community. Walking the streets with Ernst is a test in patience, as she stops every few meters to greet people, with discussions of the port often arising. Other Save Lamu organizers face an equal onslaught of greeters. Walid Ahmed, a young man who joined Save Lamu through his work with Lamu Youth Alliance and recently—and unsuccessfully—ran for political office, also takes slow, meet-and-greet walks. He brings visitors and journalists to the new port site and meets with affected communities regularly.

Save Lamu is not without critics. Young men especially are hopeful that the project will bring more jobs, and think that Lamu’s slow pace of life needs a shake up in order to launch into the modern world. “There’s no jobs here,” says one, who sits on a wooden post along the Old Town’s main boardwalk, looking for fishing or tourism work. “Of course the port would be a good idea.”

People are discussing, as they’ve always done here. And whether LAPSSET is good or bad for the people of Lamu, and Kenya as a whole, is it up for the community and the country to decide. But If so many of its residents are so ambivalent about the project, shouldn’t that be something that the world listens to?

* The images are by photographer and filmmaker Philippa Ndisi-Hermann.  She is working on a documentary “The Donkey that Carried the Cloud on its Back,” which you can support here. Below is the trailer:

The story of a South African “tribe”

In October 2013, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, speaking at the Bethesda Methodist Church in the north of Johannesburg, warned us of a resurgence of tribalism in South Africa. In January of this year, Mbeki once again had the courage to speak out. Calling this the “homeboy phenomenon”, he explained that this process is engaged in consciously and deliberately, and feeds corruption on a massive scale. He explained further that tribalist politicians offer material benefits for support and votes, and that it often defines access to political power or state resources. Tenders and other business opportunities are given out on a tribal basis, leading to a politics constructed along tribal lines.

Yet this is not limited to the public sector. In the private sector, tribalism promotes the creation of self-sustaining and mutually supportive bubbles based on ethnicity. During the hiring process, tribalist bosses will preference people from their own social grouping for top jobs. In workplace disputes, they will not be impartial but will often favour their tribal comrade. During business deals, especially within corporates and multinationals, ethnic affiliation becomes a big factor in building trust between two parties and often in concluding mutually beneficial deals.

Yet no one really listened to Mbeki’s warnings. Well, some people might have, but no one really did anything about it. And as he predicted, tribalism has become worse – at least among one South African ethnic group.

Voting is probably the best indicator of tribalist allegiances, as evidenced by statistics from the 2014 national elections:

* 92.8% of voters from two related tribes voted for the same party.

* Most of the rest of that tribe, about 165 715 people, voted for another much smaller tribalist party.

* That leaves only a few percentage points from these tribes who voted for other political parties without any tribal affiliation.

This presents an increase of an already homogeneous voting bloc. In 2009, 83.9% of these same two groups voted for this very same political party. Which tribes are these, you may ask, and which party did they vote for?

Let’s not underestimate the importance of these statistics, which clearly show these two tribes are some of the most parochial and bigoted of any ethnic group in Africa. It’s shocking that in this day and age – in the so-called “new” South Africa – there are few public figures willing to call the actions and voting patterns of Afrikaans- and English-speaking white South Africans for what they are: narrow-minded tribalism.

Our collective racism as a country tends to label the wrong people (the amaZulu, baPedi, amaXhosa, etc) as tribalists, thereby reinforcing anti-black stereotypes. We are all guilty of such racist stereotypes, and I am sure that most readers were shocked to find out that I was not speaking about the so-called “Zulufication” of the ANC. The fact that most of us assume that words like “tribal” or “ethnic” are associated only with blacks lays bare our own racial prejudice.

The real tribalists (and racists) who Mbeki failed to mention are white South Africans, who effectively come together to vote as a bloc for only two political parties: the white-led Democratic Alliance and the smaller white nationalist Freedom Front Plus.

Essentially, in any DA-led municipality, it is white-dominated businesses that are most likely to get tenders, and it is these very same businesses that have the closest and most dubious relationship with politicians. And this does not take into account the tribalist hiring practices at Afrikaans and English firms, where the entire management – except for a few black faces – is white. In fact, whites hold 73% of top management and 62% of senior management jobs even though they represent only 9% of the total population.

Are white South Africans going to change their “homeboyism” anytime soon? Judging from the history of colonialism, apartheid and the façade of the rainbow nation post-1994, they probably will not. This is because they have the socioeconomic power to remain dominant and segregated in wealthy suburbs and on farms, and thereby are able to insulate themselves socially from the rest of society.

Without redistribution of land, economic power and the complete desegregation of our society on a democratic and socialist basis, tribalism among Afrikaans and English South Africans will continue to prevent the achievement of a truly nonracial and inclusive society.

* This piece first appeared on TheConMag.

Heart of a Lion

Cape Town singer Crosby is about to release his new album “Better Place.”  Since I was in Cape Town for a few months, he asked me to direct the music video for his single, “Heart of a Lion” off the new album.   “Heart of a Lion” has already made its way to many listeners in South Africa and abroad, so it was high time for some visuals to accompany the track. With the song Crosby addresses the social challenges faced by many living in the townships and encourages people to find the strength to withstand these. The video–shot in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha (two townships)–features a number of strong self-employed people who have taken matters into their own hands.

The album is going to be released on German Reggae Label Oneness Records who have been collaborating with Crosby for a while now. Many of his songs are produced by European producers that he met on his tours through the continent. As a producer himself, Crosby has collaborated with artists like Driemanskap.

When Maya Angelou lived in Egypt and Ghana

In 1961, Maya Angelou, already a civil rights worker, and her then partner Vusumzi Make, an exiled activist from South Africa (he was a leading Pan Africanist Congress member), moved to Cairo, Egypt, where she found work at a small radical newspaper. One year later, Angelou and Make broke up and she moved to Ghana with her son. There they joined a small, tight-knit expatriate African American community that included the great scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, the writer William Gardner Smith, lawyer Pauli Murray, journalist Julian Mayfield, and sociologist St. Clair Drake.  Angelou continued her work as a journalist and also worked as an administrator at the University of Ghana. Angelou made such an impression on her hosts honored her with a postal stamp. It was also during this time that Malcolm X visited Ghana; a meeting which prompted her move back to the US in 1965 to help Malcolm X build his Organization of Afro-American Unity. Shortly after her return, Malcolm X was assassinated.  On her time in Ghana, I’m reminded of an interview I did in 2006 with Kevin Gaines, historian and then-director of the University of Michigan’s  Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS), about his book American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). I was a faculty member of CAAS at the time.  Part of the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture, the book tells the story of Angelou’s cohort of African American expatriates in Ghana in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  The interview was first published at the time in the university’s Journal of International Institute. 

One of the main themes of the book is that of “transnational citizenship,” i.e. the attempts by this small group of expatriates to redefine their relationship to citizenship in the U.S. and globally. Can you say more about that?

The struggle for political citizenship was at the heart of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Transnational citizenship is based on the idea that the meaning and content of U.S. citizenship is subject to debate, and open to a range of possibilities for political behavior. It is fairly clear that the sociopolitical consciousness and activity of many Americans is based on affiliations that transcend U.S. geographical boundaries. While particular group affiliations may inform its manifestations, transnational citizenship is not necessarily circumscribed by “race,” religion, or national origin. In fact, civic engagement based on a global consciousness is possible for anyone, on such issues as global security, trade policy, international feminism, or environmental protection. One of the reasons I wrote the book was in response to criticism within the U.S. left of so-called black identity politics. I wanted to show that a politics rooted in black particularity and solidarity with Africa was not necessarily reductive or polarizing. In a way I was inspired by what the Negritude intellectuals accomplished.

Can you expand on this point about Negritude?



Negritude originated during the 1930s as a defiant affirmation of African cultural identity against an oppressive colonial culture by black and African Francophone writers and intellectuals. These writers believed that African and African-derived cultural and artistic innovation would make their mark on universal world culture. Later, Negritude was recast by pro-Western French African political leaders who wanted to privilege culture over politics. My argument is evocative of Negritude in the sense that black cultural and political expression can have a universal significance.

Transnational citizenship is at once celebratory and self-critical?



African American expatriates in Ghana were critical of the premises of the civil rights movement and U.S. foreign policy. They were trying to forge an independent black politics, resisting the Cold War. They, and their activist allies in the U.S., believed that the civil rights movement’s goals of civil and political equality wouldn’t address economic inequalities in urban ghettoes and the rest of American society. So this radical formation of black American activists was drawn to what they viewed as the revolutionary promise of Ghana. That country’s prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, declared his support for the struggles of other Africans still fighting to oust white minority rule and people of African descent fighting for full equality in the U.S.

Another important theme is the international dimension of the civil rights struggle itself. Is this a story that is becoming part of the broad historical understanding of the civil rights movement?



Seeing civil rights as an international issue rather than just an internal or domestic matter is an approach that has taken hold among U.S. historians over the last decade or so. There is a general acceptance that African Americans were implicated in U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. My book provides a new interpretation of the civil rights movement and U.S. liberalism by foregrounding Africa and the experiences of African Americans there. Many prominent African Americans and West Indians visited or lived in Ghana—Martin Luther King, C. L. R. James, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X and Maya Angelou, to name a few. The challenge for me as a U.S. historian is to help get the importance of the decolonization of Africa for events in the U.S. into our textbooks. The importance of that international dimension is ironically suggested by concerted attempts in U.S. mainstream media during the 1960s to suggest that African Americans and Africans have nothing in common politically. That view was belied by actual solidarities. For example, when Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was murdered in 1961, African Americans protested at the U.N. That and other protests by U.S. blacks caused anxiety in U.S. government circles. In 1963, the black expatriates in Ghana staged a demonstration at the U.S. Embassy in sympathy with the massive March on Washington. There were other such demonstrations all over the world, in Paris, Oslo, Munich, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere. But the one that garnered the most scrutiny by U.S. officials was the demonstration by the expatriates in Ghana.

I found Julian Mayfield’s life particularly interesting. A writer, actor, journalist, and activist from Harlem with roots in the South, he represents the dilemma of the expatriates. He opposed U.S. Cold War politics and wanted to both defend Nkrumah and criticize the creeping authoritarianism of the Ghanaian regime. Why do you think he is not better remembered?

Mayfield’s life symbolizes the unfulfilled promise of liberation struggles throughout the black world, far from popular “feel-good” narratives. He dramatizes a paradoxical moment in which Cold War political repression co-existed with the coming of formal equality in the U.S. He ran afoul of U.S. authorities and the FBI and went into exile in Ghana, where he struggled to maintain hope against cynicism. After Ghana he tried to achieve success in the U.S. as an actor and writer, much as his fellow expatriate Maya Angelou had done. When that failed, he chose exile for several years in the Caribbean nation of Guyana, chasing an illusion of revolution.

Was it all worth it for these expatriates? Would you say that Ghana was a place of refuge for them? Of growth? Of disillusionment? Something else?



It is difficult to generalize. Many were deeply invested in Ghana’s revolution and so were devastated after the coup that overthrew Nkrumah in 1966. For Mayfield and others, the assassination of Malcolm X, who had visited the expatriates in Ghana, and who could have been a powerful exponent of their politics, was perhaps more traumatic. St. Clair Drake remained preoccupied with the question of what went wrong in Ghana. For others, like Sylvia Boone, her time in Ghana was formative for her career as an art historian. My aim with the book was not to prove that there is necessarily an automatic solidarity between Africans and African Americans. However, I did want to show how liberal U.S. officials and journalists intervened against actual solidarities between Africans and African Americans during the 1960s as they related to African American citizenship and activism.

Is there any kind of parallel “site” for people—black people, leftists, progressives, what have you—today? Or has that moment passed?

Leftists and progressives are attracted to President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela because he is challenging U.S. hegemony and neo-liberalism. But Ghana was unique. The U.S. was in the grip of Cold War repression, and still a Jim Crow nation that had yet to make the transition to full political equality. With freedom and opportunity still in short supply in the U.S. for African Americans, Africa and Ghana were more desirable sites of belonging. While you still have some emigration to Africa—the most significant in recent times to South Africa by entrepreneurs—today it seems more likely for people to identify with a particular cause, whether promoting AIDS awareness, or mobilizing against genocide in Sudan. On the whole, the link is now more spiritual and cultural, but that can be a foundation for political solidarities and an exercise of transnational citizenship.

‘Aya of Yop City’: Graphic Novel to Film

“Aya of Yop City” is Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie’s first feature film and an adaptation of the couple’s best-selling graphic novel series of the same name. Like the graphic novels, the film tells the story of Aya, a 19-year-old woman who lives in Abidjan, in the neighborhood of Yopougon in the Ivory Coast of the 1970’s.

The animated film opens with a live commercial for a popular brand of beer in Abidjan, followed by a reverse shot showing people gathered around and staring at the TV, a familiar ritual in West African middle-class life. Following the introduction of each character by Aya’s voice-over, the film chronicles the lives of the inhabitants of the lively neighborhood of Yopougon, through the eyes of Aya (voiced by Aissa Maiga).

The importance of TV appears in this first scene and continues to influence the formal choices of the film. The movie is a succession of episodes or vignettes, and the central storyline (an affair of pregnancy and the search for the father) is that of a soap-opera, though with a comedic twist.

The title suggests that Aya is the main character, but it is surprising as little space is made for her. It is probably because Aya, as a serious young woman who wants to study medicine, isn’t the type of character to engage in adventurous or eventful plots. Instead, the authors focus on the characters that surround her, especially her two turbulent best friends Bintou and Adjoua. The two aren’t academically ambitious like Aya; they have a penchant for night-clubbing and flirting with boys. Aya is mainly, like us, a spectator of what happens around her.

We could regret that what happens around is not that eventful, but this depiction of the quotidian life of this neighborhood, the focus on the unremarkable and even the “déjà-vu” is what makes the film remarkable. Indeed, habitual depictions of Africa, whether in animation or not, are either in the genre of safari-adventure or the exploration of the myth of Africa (see “Kirikoo and the Sorceress,” for example). Here the genre is realism: Marguerite Abouet’s offers an intimate close-up of the place she grew up in.

Autobiography calls for specificity and invites a desire for authenticity. Both appear in the dialogues where we can see the result of the contact of the French language with the African imaginary. The characters talk like people talk in Abidjan, and the casting of voices should be noted. Not all the voice actors are Ivoirians, Aissa Maiga is Senegalese and Jacky Ido who voices Ignace (Aya’s father) is from Burkina Faso. This diversity of voices, that could have been chaotic, challenges the pervasive idea of a globalizing “African accent” and reinforces the realistic aspirations of the authors. And what a pleasure to hear this vernacular, these charming and inventive insults thrown here and there, most of the time revolving around animals. It is really the most fascinating part of a film that seems to forget to have a central and solid plot.

All the problems with the film, the lack of plot and lack of incarnation (dimension?) of the animation are possibly due to the difficult transition from graphic novel to film. A transition that Marjane Satrapi successfully achieved with “Persepolis,” but that the authors of Aya struggle with. Still the movie is funny and touching in his nostalgia, even more pronounced by the soundtrack, a mix of disco and afro-Cuban music.

The legalization of political repression in Ethiopia

It has been one month since the latest round of repression against government critics in Ethiopia began. Last weekend, the Zone9 bloggers and three journalists who were arrested in late April appeared in court. To date, very little information has been given about the crimes the bloggers and journalists are accused of committing or the reasons why they are being held practically incommunicado. Rather than indicting the prisoners during the recent court appearance, the presiding judge gave police an additional 28 days to investigate the case, sending the nine bloggers and journalists back to jail without officially charging them. It was the second time since their arrest that the court has delayed the process, and knowing Ethiopia’s dodgy laws around “crimes against the state,” it probably will not be the last time.

The tactic of detaining and delaying is not uncommon in Ethiopian political trials. The recent Anti-Terrorism Proclamation gives the court broad liberties on detention and remand, allowing the accused to be held up to a period of four months while investigations are underway. Four months without knowing what one is charged with, without the possibility of bail (as in this case) and without sufficient access to legal representation or time with family and friends. The longer the bloggers and journalists linger in jail, government may hope that media attention and the initial outcry against the crackdown will wane. But, the move is more than just a ploy to diffuse interest in the situation. More importantly, it buys time for the state to build a legal case against the accused because in Ethiopia the façade of legalism has become an indispensable gloss on political repression.

As ludicrous as the accusations of terrorism or subversion by bloggers and journalists is the ritual of political trials and court proceedings used to affirm such crimes. If a state seeks to silence criticism and repress freedom of expression, why go through the trouble of a trial? In the past, regimes that sought to clamp down on opposition did so more candidly, without any pretexts or deliberations. Yet, in recent years, few states—liberal or illiberal—have attached as much significance to legalism as the Ethiopian government when it comes to resolving political disputes.  On the surface, this is a welcomed change—since it would be foolish to argue that anyone would prefer the barrel of a gun to a trial—but the reliance on laws hides a deeper problem at the core of the political system in Ethiopia and other states that have adopted liberalism without fully buying into it.

Over the past two decades, Western countries have spent millions of development dollars on rule of law and judicial strengthening projects in transitioning countries like Ethiopia, with the aim of codifying the rights of citizens and the role of government inline with most established democracies. Much to the chagrin of Ethiopia’s Western donors and allies, though these efforts have yielded a proliferation of new laws, there has not been a commensurate increase in respect for human rights, provision of justice and restraint on government power. On the contrary, laws like the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (2009), the Charities and Societies’ Proclamation (2009), and the Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation (2008) have been used to close down the political space.  In essence, laws, trials and stronger courts are not the answer to an inherently undemocratic system; they have become part of the problem.

This has been Ethiopia’s tragic paradox in recent years—the perversion of law and the legalization of repression, which is far more difficult to challenge than open brutality because any act of repression can be legitimated. Hence, the inclination of the Ethiopian government in response to genuine concerns about democracy, human rights and freedom of speech is to switch the discourse to one on legality. We hear, for instance, statements such as this one to justify the arrest of journalists for crimes of terrorism:

The government has made it clear that it fully respects the rights of the media to work freely within the framework of its legal obligations and its attendant responsibilities. The law in Ethiopia could not be applied selectively to different professions. It should apply equally to all citizens and professions, including journalists.

But, let us not fail to see that, at the heart of the matter, the recent arrests, in addition to the unfair trials of dozens of other prisoners of conscious, is not a legal issue but a political one. It matters because how we define the discourse determines what is possible to bring up for debate. Shifting the focus to legalism usurps the ability to question the very legitimacy of a system that institutionalizes repression. The struggle that continues with the growing support for the Zone9 bloggers and journalists in prison is resistance to the notion that expressing criticism of government is a crime. No matter how intricate the case and sophisticated the legal arguments devised to criminalize the nine detained writers, they stand on the side of truth and justice.