Abstract from our Paper for Afrocolloquim on the African Imagination
The African imagination needs Keanu Reeves. With his well of experience saving all kinds of vehicles from hijacking (go watch Speed and catch up) maybe it is he who can rescue the vehicle of our culture from the soiled hands of the Colony. This colony of colonial isms that comes into a land filled with people, steals every thing including men, women and children. Oh! Lest we forget the tomes, statues, silver, gold, oil and dreams.
For the sake of finding our voice in a noisy world. For the sheer joy of travelling the realms of the imagination through the African view. For the colour and splendour that comes from seeing one’s world through a lens closer to home. For these reasons and many others, this Writer has cried for a repositioning of Africa in the realms of Science and Science Fiction.
The difficult thing is to talk of Africa and not talk about its history. It always feels like a sip of bitter medicine, or rescuing someone from cold waters. Necessary but not fun. We will not do this. Instead, we will do our level best to fuse the history of Africa with what we imagine Africa can and maybe should be.
I am surrounded by Fine Artists. Producers from the imagination. We do a lot of dreaming together. We ask our selves questions. Questions like, what should our reality look like? What does it look like when we translate reality from what we experience into an artistic language. The languages are many. There is the language of literature like books, graphic novels and press. There is the language of paintings, sculpture and pottery. There is the language of the performing arts, like dance, music and theater. Of course, once we are done dreaming, for dreams apparently end, we do the Art. We produce from the dreams experienced and questions asked. We then ask others to experience our dream product.
The depth within this dialectic that occurs between artist and consumer of art is so important, that it often shapes perceptions of reality.
“I read that Africa is like this...” someone will start. Or “I read that in Zimbabwe they do things this way...” they might say. All due to a book thy read, or a movie they saw. The frightening thing is, to this day, people are still surprised to find an African online playing an online RPG. “You people have electricity in your village?’ “Are you Black?” “Wow, Africa, hey?” Perceptions of Africa as backward, lacking and poor are still strong out there. But how come?
Indeed the question stands. I point the reader’s attention to The British Museum. Apparently it is a British museum. Surprising since they have millions, if not billions of dollars worth of art and artefacts from Africa in there. I mention this because the West seems to love African history, but not love Africa. Africans have more difficulty than most when it comes to gtting residency i Europe or the United States of America. Yet Americans and Europeans can pretty much go where they please. It is often alright to speak in French, Portuguese or English, but speak Kirundi in a London Pub and you will see the difference. There is a difference. We do not treat the African voice with equality with the colonial languages. I pull us back to the word ‘imagination.’ Whose language do we imagine in? Through what filter do our dreams go through so we may share them? Whose images do we use when comparing things?
In the SciFi novella, Mashu oMusha, Sapien puts it this way:
“When we get arrested, we get judged by their language, their laws, their jurisprudence. Through their rationale and paradigms. It makes me sick, Fred. And you know what else makes me wanna puke a furball? Using Lenin, Hegel and Marx's words all the time. What do Russians and Germans know about Afrika, anyway? Who the fuck is Trotsky, man? But it’s their systems that penetrated our lives, usurped our ways. Sithini, Fred? And how are we to say it? Who's language? Who's filter?”
There is a direct damage to imagination that comes from being colonized. Because the colony seeks to enforce its will and dominion, languages are destroyed, ways of life are disturbed and ancient arts trampled. The Physical Sciences, Linguistics, Esoteric and other traditions are damaged and at best (for the colony) wiped out. I do not need to go into details about the legacy of colonialism in Africa. But I will talk about our African imagination. Recently, Lionsgate released a movie called Gods of Egypt. This film had an all White cast. It stars Gerard Butler and others. Yet this movie is about African history, myths and legends. It was done entirely for the American. The American Black population was entirely appalled, as were others around the world. It is no surprise to see a White American spray-tanned to play a Native American. The terrorism enacted on the native peoples of America deserves an entire museum to even begin to express, but the insult to the injury is when the same person who destroyed your way of life now begins aping it in their art. Picasso’s sheer appropriation of African mask-making and painting techniques was just that, sheer, stark. He couldn’t deny it. Yet it is Picasso who is remembered, not the African forms.
Back to the British Museum. If we look at the collections from Benin, we will find that the British Museum anthropologists openly admit to what they call “Divine Kingship in Africa” they point to Benin when they speak of this kingship. Yet what happened to Benin/ how is Benin now, after they came there, looted, plundered and destroyed? Does the Beninian make Science Fiction about the divine kingship of the 80s? Not likely, because they were too busy suffering under the post-colonial boot. Fela Kuti could have made Science Fiction music, like Roger Waters. But he wasn’t English. He was in Nigeria, suffering under the post-colonial boot, speaking about te realities around him. What can we dream while our Writers are being killed, banned, exiled and maligned? How does the African get fame when they come here, record our music and then copyright it to Universal Records?
But this is 2017. We have seen history and now we are here. What does Africa dream? Where is our hadron collider, or our African space program? How are we to dream science fiction if the science fact does not live around us? The most salesworthy African literary export is the genre of ‘magical realities.’ Maybe because it is far easier to sell mysticism from Africa than science. The mass media is as guilty as the individual when it comes to consuming and providing (for) non-African imagination. We easily spend our money on American film and music when we could support local arts. We will quicker click on a link about Donald Trump before we click on one about Thomas Sankara. And it is in daily behaviour that we crucify our African imagination.
Let us look, for a while, at the institutions that we build. The Apartheid Museum is one of our most famous national heritage sites. Yes, Apartheid is our heritage. While Korea are building IT Colleges and universities of Gaming, here we are spending millions for the damage done to us. This is not a mistake, in one respect. Future generations must not forget our history. They do, however, need spaces for alternatives. These are short. It is all good and well to give bursaries and scholarships, but how will that work when children are incentivised to aim low? Science textbooks are scarce in our high schools and get scarcer. How then will we get African greatness if not from our children?
Institutions of greatness. A large scale township robotics schools project. Where kids can learn about light current electricity and the magic of wires and buttons. Or star-gazing projects to give our youth something to look up to. The Chokwe are adept at Stargazing, and we do not need to only teach the Eurocentric perspective of the Cosmos.
A brief break her to show you what we mean by African (not just Egyptian) cosmology, a look at some Chokwe examples.
So do not be fooled into thinking that the African was a savage and uneducated. Our circumcision rituals were as developed and as cosmological as any Jewish one. From the Congo all the way down to the Transkei, the African has been practising cosmological inquiry and study.
So let us then return to institution building. It has been easy to build English institutions all over South Africa, but where is our university campus in Soweto? Where is UKZN campus in Kwa Mashu? We need institutions in our neighbourhoods, not more police stations.
TBC
For the sake of finding our voice in a noisy world. For the sheer joy of travelling the realms of the imagination through the African view. For the colour and splendour that comes from seeing one’s world through a lens closer to home. For these reasons and many others, this Writer has cried for a repositioning of Africa in the realms of Science and Science Fiction.
The difficult thing is to talk of Africa and not talk about its history. It always feels like a sip of bitter medicine, or rescuing someone from cold waters. Necessary but not fun. We will not do this. Instead, we will do our level best to fuse the history of Africa with what we imagine Africa can and maybe should be.
I am surrounded by Fine Artists. Producers from the imagination. We do a lot of dreaming together. We ask our selves questions. Questions like, what should our reality look like? What does it look like when we translate reality from what we experience into an artistic language. The languages are many. There is the language of literature like books, graphic novels and press. There is the language of paintings, sculpture and pottery. There is the language of the performing arts, like dance, music and theater. Of course, once we are done dreaming, for dreams apparently end, we do the Art. We produce from the dreams experienced and questions asked. We then ask others to experience our dream product.
The depth within this dialectic that occurs between artist and consumer of art is so important, that it often shapes perceptions of reality.
“I read that Africa is like this...” someone will start. Or “I read that in Zimbabwe they do things this way...” they might say. All due to a book thy read, or a movie they saw. The frightening thing is, to this day, people are still surprised to find an African online playing an online RPG. “You people have electricity in your village?’ “Are you Black?” “Wow, Africa, hey?” Perceptions of Africa as backward, lacking and poor are still strong out there. But how come?
Indeed the question stands. I point the reader’s attention to The British Museum. Apparently it is a British museum. Surprising since they have millions, if not billions of dollars worth of art and artefacts from Africa in there. I mention this because the West seems to love African history, but not love Africa. Africans have more difficulty than most when it comes to gtting residency i Europe or the United States of America. Yet Americans and Europeans can pretty much go where they please. It is often alright to speak in French, Portuguese or English, but speak Kirundi in a London Pub and you will see the difference. There is a difference. We do not treat the African voice with equality with the colonial languages. I pull us back to the word ‘imagination.’ Whose language do we imagine in? Through what filter do our dreams go through so we may share them? Whose images do we use when comparing things?
In the SciFi novella, Mashu oMusha, Sapien puts it this way:
“When we get arrested, we get judged by their language, their laws, their jurisprudence. Through their rationale and paradigms. It makes me sick, Fred. And you know what else makes me wanna puke a furball? Using Lenin, Hegel and Marx's words all the time. What do Russians and Germans know about Afrika, anyway? Who the fuck is Trotsky, man? But it’s their systems that penetrated our lives, usurped our ways. Sithini, Fred? And how are we to say it? Who's language? Who's filter?”
There is a direct damage to imagination that comes from being colonized. Because the colony seeks to enforce its will and dominion, languages are destroyed, ways of life are disturbed and ancient arts trampled. The Physical Sciences, Linguistics, Esoteric and other traditions are damaged and at best (for the colony) wiped out. I do not need to go into details about the legacy of colonialism in Africa. But I will talk about our African imagination. Recently, Lionsgate released a movie called Gods of Egypt. This film had an all White cast. It stars Gerard Butler and others. Yet this movie is about African history, myths and legends. It was done entirely for the American. The American Black population was entirely appalled, as were others around the world. It is no surprise to see a White American spray-tanned to play a Native American. The terrorism enacted on the native peoples of America deserves an entire museum to even begin to express, but the insult to the injury is when the same person who destroyed your way of life now begins aping it in their art. Picasso’s sheer appropriation of African mask-making and painting techniques was just that, sheer, stark. He couldn’t deny it. Yet it is Picasso who is remembered, not the African forms.
Back to the British Museum. If we look at the collections from Benin, we will find that the British Museum anthropologists openly admit to what they call “Divine Kingship in Africa” they point to Benin when they speak of this kingship. Yet what happened to Benin/ how is Benin now, after they came there, looted, plundered and destroyed? Does the Beninian make Science Fiction about the divine kingship of the 80s? Not likely, because they were too busy suffering under the post-colonial boot. Fela Kuti could have made Science Fiction music, like Roger Waters. But he wasn’t English. He was in Nigeria, suffering under the post-colonial boot, speaking about te realities around him. What can we dream while our Writers are being killed, banned, exiled and maligned? How does the African get fame when they come here, record our music and then copyright it to Universal Records?
But this is 2017. We have seen history and now we are here. What does Africa dream? Where is our hadron collider, or our African space program? How are we to dream science fiction if the science fact does not live around us? The most salesworthy African literary export is the genre of ‘magical realities.’ Maybe because it is far easier to sell mysticism from Africa than science. The mass media is as guilty as the individual when it comes to consuming and providing (for) non-African imagination. We easily spend our money on American film and music when we could support local arts. We will quicker click on a link about Donald Trump before we click on one about Thomas Sankara. And it is in daily behaviour that we crucify our African imagination.
Let us look, for a while, at the institutions that we build. The Apartheid Museum is one of our most famous national heritage sites. Yes, Apartheid is our heritage. While Korea are building IT Colleges and universities of Gaming, here we are spending millions for the damage done to us. This is not a mistake, in one respect. Future generations must not forget our history. They do, however, need spaces for alternatives. These are short. It is all good and well to give bursaries and scholarships, but how will that work when children are incentivised to aim low? Science textbooks are scarce in our high schools and get scarcer. How then will we get African greatness if not from our children?
Institutions of greatness. A large scale township robotics schools project. Where kids can learn about light current electricity and the magic of wires and buttons. Or star-gazing projects to give our youth something to look up to. The Chokwe are adept at Stargazing, and we do not need to only teach the Eurocentric perspective of the Cosmos.
A brief break her to show you what we mean by African (not just Egyptian) cosmology, a look at some Chokwe examples.
So do not be fooled into thinking that the African was a savage and uneducated. Our circumcision rituals were as developed and as cosmological as any Jewish one. From the Congo all the way down to the Transkei, the African has been practising cosmological inquiry and study.
So let us then return to institution building. It has been easy to build English institutions all over South Africa, but where is our university campus in Soweto? Where is UKZN campus in Kwa Mashu? We need institutions in our neighbourhoods, not more police stations.
TBC
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