With a hefty peace dividend to pay
Bill Clinton pledged the New Way
To not act as a dovish liberal may
Nor do what the conservatives say

Yet on Iraq as in many other tasks
He fumbled and adorned both masks

Savage sanctions in perpetuity
Weekly random bombings indefinitely
Fishy forages for WMD for eternity
A callous old bipartisan strategy

With robust rhetoric at his baptism
Tony Blair touted a Third Way--ism
Criticizing that capricious capitalism
And also assailing stagnant socialism

Yet on Iraq it is so apparent today
He bumbled and stumbled in every way

First he embraced Clinton avidly
To starve the children silently
Launch the missiles periodically
And denounce Saddam repeatedly

Then he hugged Bush tenaciously
Modulating his tune quite abruptly

Sanctions he declared sanctimoniously
Violated tenets of civilized morality
Other than a deadly colonizing foray
This paragon of ethics saw no other way

With the guts to set the globe aflame
George W. Bush plays a simple game

Limited intellect or limitless greed
Or an extreme ideology to heed
Whatever the root of that creed
The results are quite stark indeed

He envisions only one divine way
That, of course, is to go all the way
No matter the lives or price to pay
Even so, prepares for the next fray

Dispensing with the diplomatic way
The hardy guy favors action not play
His tough words mean what they say
A man of honor, in a cold imperial way

Like him or not, do at least daily pray
A WMD or Osama spin not makes him sway
Nor an oily mint persuades him to stray
Towards the tranquil realm where you stay

• Karim F. Hirji is a semi-retired academic and biostatistician. Copyright Karim Hirji, January 2007.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

'Is Violence Inevitable in Africa' offers a survey of perspectives on collective violence and conflict prevention and resolution in Africa. The volume covers many subjects, such as ethnic conflict, decentralization, power-sharing, and peacebuilding.

If human rights have come to assume such dominance in our society, why do we still witness oppression and intolerance? Does this necessarily reflect the inadequate human rights framework we have in place? Jody Kollapen writes that the main challenge to the human rights framework is how society makes a connection between social values and human rights.

There’s hardly a discussion that is not characterised by the language of human rights. It was central in the struggle for democracy in freeing our country, it was seen as a struggle issue in the struggle for human rights. It is in the architecture of our Constitution, the commitment for human rights.

And virtually anybody in society will not speak on any critical issue without using the language of human rights. It plays a central role in policy making processes, in legislation, in judicial pronouncements, so clearly on the face of it, it occupies a dominant role. And former Chief Justice Ismail Mohammed spoke to the human rights values in this context in the Makwanyane case5 and I’ll just quote briefly. He said:

“All constitutions seem to articulate with differing degrees of intensity in each level; the shared aspirations of a nation, the values which bind its people and which discipline its government and international institutions, the basic premises upon which judicial, legislative and executive power is to be wielded, the constitutional limits and the conditions upon which that power is to be exercised, the national ethos which defines and regulates that exercise, and the moral and ethical direction which the nation has identified for its future.”

Now if human rights have come to assume such dominance in our society then it must beg the question: why are they not embraced as dominantly in our society as one must assume that they play such a dominant role? The available evidence suggests that it is not being embraced as widely as expected. We still witness intolerance and see violence on a daily basis in our society.

Yesterday, the National Religious Leader’s Forum couldn’t reach agreement on a statement when they went to see the President with regard to the issue of HIV/AIDS. This suggests that as much as we want to say that there’s a glue that binds this nation, we must question what that glue is and indeed, how strong that glue is, because very often we seem to be falling apart.

There are two components of human rights, there’s the legal component. The legal component is relatively easy; it defines the parameters of the right, what will happen if the right is not observed.

But we assume that there’s also a value content to that right. For thousands of years communities have lived and identified who they are, have structured relationships in relation to their community, their government, in relation to value systems, shaped by culture, shaped by religion, shaped by their own experiences of those communities, and those value systems have existed, and continue to exist.

What you saw happening in the last 50 years, perhaps more pronounced is the development quite substantially over International Human Rights Framework, and there’s an assumption that the value systems that have developed now speak to the Human Rights Framework.

Do they speak to that framework in the value system? We think they do. And let’s examine that critically.

I have no doubt that there are lots of similarities in the value systems that different societies have developed. But there are also differences, and questions have been asked about whether human rights are universal or whether they’re relative, whether they’re Eurocentric. And we can answer those questions quite glibly by saying, surely they’re not, but we need to examine quite critically some of the issues that
have come up from this discourse.

Let me present an example of how the choice of value can determine the nature of the human rights framework, and I’ll give two examples. In the area of justice, there are various notions of justice and there are various values that shape how we see a justice system.

The Western notion is by and large a retributive notion of justice. The African notion is by and large a restorative restitutive notion of justice. Now depending on the choice you make, will determine the kind of system you put in place, the kind of rules and procedures, the kind of human rights guarantees that you put in place.

And thus we asked ourselves the question: does the human rights framework then that governs the justice system, the right to a fair trail is something we all agree to, but the rules currently of the right to a fair trial by and large imitate the objectives of an adversarial retributive system of justice?

I think it does. So the question then is: If our value system is one of restorative justice, and one that takes us away from the adversarial system, there’s an inconsistency with the system it put in place. That’s one example.

The second example which throws up this issue is around the issue of what you may call communalism versus individualism. Now many people will tell me that the kind of societies that existed in this geographical context and elsewhere, were characterised by the notion of communalism, a notion of sharing of resources and sharing of responsibility, the relationship of individuals to their communities, and the sense of duty to that community, and vice versa.

If you take that down to then how you construct your economic system, does your economic system then reflect the value of communalism or the value of individualism? If it does reflect the value of individualism then people are entitled to ask; does the system then speak to our values?

They’re not rejecting the system but they’re asking the fundamental question; and therein I’m hoping you can begin to see some of the fault lines between our values.

In the South African context, we speak of the founding values of the Constitution, equality, human dignity and the advancement of human rights, and we assume that we all understand it in the same way. We assume that we interpret it in the same way and that it’s manifested in the same way, and I’m not quite sure if that’s always the case.

Take the Christian Schools case, for instance, the Christian educators would say that the infliction of corporal punishment for us is a matter of affirming the dignity of the child because it informs respect, the structure of the family, etc. I don’t agree with it, but they would argue that perspective.

Others would say, to inflict a system of corporal punishment is a violation of the child’s dignity. Now they may use the language of rights but they come from a different value perspective, and I think that is what is emerging so often in our own society.

Referring to the concept of Ubuntu, Chief Justice Pius argues that: “The concept is of some relevance to the values we need to uphold. It is a culture, which places some emphasis on communality and on the interdependence of the members of the community. It recognises a person’s status as a human being entitled to unconditional respect and dignity, value and acceptance from the members of the community, if such person happens to be part of it.”

It also entails the converse, however. The person has a corresponding duty to give the same respect, dignity, value and acceptance to each member of that community. More importantly, it regulates the exercise of rights by the emphasis it lays on sharing and co-responsibility, and mutual enjoyment of rights by all.

So the sense again of communality, of sharing and co-responsibility. Now if we proudly proclaim Ubuntu as a foremost value of society, then we must ask the question: does that value reflect itself in the policy processes, in the legal processes in the jurisprudence that is being developed?

I’m not going to answer that question now, but there is genuine concern whether in fact it does, or whether it’s simply something that it sounds nice to say but hasn’t been imbibed and hasn’t been ingrained into the processes.

Rosalind English has also raised relevant questions regarding the concept of Ubuntu. She asked, cynically, whether it has suddenly become, and I quote: “A marketing device designed to put an African imprimatur on a set of civil liberties forged largely out of Western instruments.”

She further asks: “Is Ubuntu then a genuinely useful jurisprudential tool or does it simply mean all things to all men?”

I think we’ve come to the point where we must recognise that we don’t necessarily share the same value system and we must find the way in which we can put those differing interpretations on the table, debate it, synthesise it, if we are serious in going forward.

And without a doubt we speak of the human rights challenges that we need to escalate, but it’s clear to us that you can’t escalate it and you can’t give it a sense of impetus and momentum, unless we get this understanding of values right.

There’s also a real danger, people, that in looking at the different values and in constructing a society where we say we respect difference, and we create space for difference and we celebrate difference, that we actually are not sincere about it, that subconsciously we do it in a way that says, but we’ll celebrate difference, but sooner or later they will become like us, because that’s what we actually want them to be. And when I say “them” I don’t speak of women or black people or whatever, I speak
of “the other”.

In conclusion I think that the way in which we construct the human rights debate and the way in which we have placed it at the central place in the transformation of our country is critical that it cannot fail and it hasn’t failed. But I think it faces some considerable challenges at the current time in terms of how we make the connection between values and human rights, and we can’t make the connection simply on the assumption that there’s an obvious connection.

Why do you ask what’s the connection? It’s obvious, it speaks naturally. We must interrogate whether that connection is as obvious, and what prevents it. And that requires in a sense for each of us to look at our own values, to look at our own individual transformation and to ask, how did that transformation relate to what we want to see and achieve as a country.

• This paper was presented at a seminar on ‘Affirming A Culture Of Values In The South African Human Rights’, organized by the South African Human Rights Commission in April this year (2006). Jody Kollapen is with the SA Human Rights Commission.
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

This book is a compilation of articles on the experiences of lesbian women in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland. The stories were born out of the African Women's Life Story Project where researchers and activists from different parts of Africa came together to document the life stories of lesbian women in their respective countries.

Young people in the Nigerian state of Kano have been turning the region's big cities into what one resident has termed "Premiership football ghettos". Kano is densely populated and predominantly Muslim - and with its long standing history of conservative traditional values, some would think European football would be the last focus for young people.

The collection offers perhaps the most comprehensive analysis yet undertaken on how Africa has been studied in different disciplines (the major social science and humanities disciplines), interdisciplines (from gender studies, development studies, and art studies to religious studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, etc.), and in different world regions including Asia-Pacific (India, China, Japan and Australia), Europe (Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Russia), and the Americas (the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean).

"To endow African youth with material resources, skills, and international synergies which would enable them contribute maximally to the democratic, gender equal, peaceful and rights based development of Africa," is the vision statement of the Fifth African Development Forum (ADFV), which is drawing to a close its three-day meeting in Addis at the United Nations Conference Center under the theme "Youth and leadership in the 21st century."

Africa has been relegated to the background in the world affairs largely because of her low level of industrial and technological development, the Director General of African International Foundation for Science and Technology, Dr Yakubu Haruna Ugwolawo has said.

My beloved Congo,
The joke of the African continent
The world’s gold, diamond, and coltan mine
Rwanda’s concubine

This country of mine,
Poisoned with the swine that is Western policy
Westerners and Asians exploit the riches
But live behind gated communities
With underpaid Congolese security

So they’re closing the door
On fractured Congolese faces with one hand,
While robbing her of her resources with the other
And no province is safe
Because some of our own,
Corrupted Congolese leaders,
Are involved in this race

But even they can’t keep pace
In the face of our Rwandan aggressors,
Annexing our spirit
To their sickened, stricken, sinister soul
To such an extent that to now call eastern Congo,
You must dial Rwandan area codes
While they toy with the possibility
Of introducing Rwandan currency in the east

The United Nations talks of peace
Knowing full well
That peace can only be attained
Through violence

Jean Pierre Bemba
Becoming the Congolese Prime Minister
Can only happen through violence

Child soldiers
Fighting in fear
Of retribution on their families,
Join in the spread of violence

Raping my mother country
And spilling her black coltan blood
Only continues through VIOLENCE

But when I talk to you
About Congolese genocide
With Western compliance
Your response - silence!

I know
Because I used to be just like you,
Sittin’ there smilin’
While other folks lie dyin’
Even bought my wife-to-be a diamond
And probably spilled the blood
Of a distant cousin for it
And chose to ignore it

But now I’ve visited Congolese refugee camps
To find that
There’s not even any refuge for refugees
Abandoned Congolese mothers and children
Living in tents
Made out of empty rice bags
While lice drags through their hair

And their daughters
Living in despair,
Start having babies
At 12-years-old
With 50-year-old married men
With no humility
Who pay them $.25
For their virginity
And the possibility of exchange for AIDS
While the World Bank
Gives this absentee father of a government aid

But I’m searching for a cure for both diseases
Because 4,000,000 have died in 4 years
And too many orphans are shedding tears

As they start dying in the street
At 11 years old
Because even though it’s hot on the outside,
Their inner spirits are cold
From walking around starving in a capital city
That barely has paved roads

And eating ½ a meal a day
Can’t heal that
Living on less than $1 a month
Won’t heal that
And since you only see
Israel and Palestine on the news
Y’all can’t feel that

So I’m hoping that a thousand words
Can be worth a picture
Because this image of the Congo
May not fit your stomach
But it’ll fit your fingers with diamonds,
Your ears with gold,
Your cell phones with coltan,
While newly discovered Congolese oil
Heats your house when it’s cold

But y’all still don’t give a damn
Even when I talk to you
About Congolese with polio,
Walking as if their left knee
Was glued to their left hand

See there may be a cure for measles and malaria
But there’s no medicine for misery
In a country being steered
In the wrong direction
With children dying
From all types of infection
And 12-year-old girls condemned to death
Because rich married men,
Don’t use protection
And all of their relationships
End in rejection
It’s like the entire country’s suffering
From a lethal injection

A second genocide in less than 100 years
That’s gone without mention
Along with the fact that we’ve gone 12 years
Without an election
On the Congolese street
Called the “Avenue of the Future”,
…That’s where my father was tortured
And nearly died in detention
So you’ll have to forgive me
When I say that our future looks bent in
The eyes of the people

And I’m also pissed off because,
They say, “Long live an independent Congo”,
But I don’t remember when it ever was

The international community correctly condemns Congolese corruption
By questioning where the ministers bought their cars from
But the world’s ears become deaf
When I ask where our invaders got their arms from?

This is the Congo damn it!
And ain’t none of it funny
Americans who work here
Say it’s a great place to make money
Folks with connections from Bush to Bin Laden
Steady robbin’ this country of her resources
Through Lebanese liaisons
Living in the land of internationally sanctioned genocide
Where
Pathetic US
+ Putrid UN policies
= Pesticide

Claiming that they’ve finally brokered peace
But don’t let them fool ya
’Cause up ‘til today
We’re still diggin’ up body bags in Bunia

Because their role in the Congo
Supports nothing but violence
Our continual purchase of Congolese riches
That never benefit the masses—compliance
Possible experiments with untested AIDS drugs
On unsuspecting Congolese—in the name of science
Poems like this to try to wake us all up—a simple act of defiance
All I’m asking for my beloved Congolese people—self-reliance
But when I ask you to help me heal the hurting heart of Africa,
Your response—SILENCE!

(Written in Kinshasa, 2002)

• Urban Music Award winner Omékongo Dibinga, M.A., is a motivational speaker, rapper, and poet. He is the Founder & CEO of Free Your Mind Publishing. A first generation Congolese-American, Omékongo writes and performs in English, French, Swahili, and occasionally has used Wolof. He has released 4 CDs, 2 books, and 1 DVD. He is the host of “Flava,” an international satellite hip-hop radio show in Asia, Europe, and Africa. He has performed/lectured in the United States, South Africa, England, Congo-Kinshasa, Tanzania, France, Cuba, and Canada. His work has been televised in over 130 countries. For more information, please visit
• Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

South African environmentalists are frustrated by plans to update the Durban airport ahead of the 2010 soccer World Cup. The development is said to "threaten the winter roosting sites of three million barn swallows that journey there after spending breeding months in countries across Europe and other parts of the world.”

We are a developing country…You say?

That we need
Time to mature?
Unity to develop?
Discipline to compete?

Hmm…when we have
Time
Unity &
Discipline

And…before we
Mature
Develop
and
Compete

Can we
Dance?
Dream?
Struggle?

Can we resist your
folly?
With justice?

© akwasi aidoo

Renowned Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o talks to Robtel Pailey from Pambazuka News about the importance of language and culture.

The first Pan African Cultural Congress was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia this week (13 to 17 November 2006). The Congress was organised by the African Union (AU), and its purpose was to “review and assess the cultural sector in Africa, and consider challenges and opportunities in order to draw strategies and appropriate programmes,” according to the AU press statement.

To coincide with that conference, Pambazuka News publishes today a special issue on the theme of Culture and Social Justice. It is a ‘multimedia’ edition, with a series of audio-recordings accompanying the written word.

Culture is frequently seen as something that is either peripheral to the struggle for social justice, or as entertainment or fashion. In many cases it is seen as something embedded in history, immovable and sacrosanct, referring to some idealised vision of the past, confining creativity and limiting freedoms. The continued oppression of women, for example, is frequently justified on ‘cultural’ grounds. But culture is a living form: it is rooted in our histories, but constantly evolves. It reflects the deeper spirit of humans, but also serves as a tool for emancipation. As with all aspects of human existence, whether it is art, literature, music, economics, personal relationships, and science (yes even science), culture expresses the underlying social relationships: the ‘culture’ of those who sit comfortably in the back of the Mercedes is different from the culture of those over whose lives the wheels churn. Culture has many languages, even in a society that appears homogeneous.

In this collection of essays and poems, accompanied by a series of audio-recordings that we are distributing as ‘podcasts’, Pambazuka News celebrates the culture of resistance in Africa.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the renowned Kenyan writer and thinker, discusses in his recorded interview with Robtel Pailey the critical role of language and its potential both to free thought as well as imprison it, a theme that is developed further by Neville Alexander, interviewed by Mandisi Majavu, who cautions against using race discourse in our quest for social justice.

Wangui wa Goro argues that to talk of the African Renaissance when Africans go without food and die unnecessarily of curable diseases, when children have no access to clean water and basic education, compels us to ask ourselves who this renaissance is intended for. “… unless we can meet the fundamental needs of the majority of African people,” she argues, words like Renaissance (rebirth) in the face of death for many sound like a mockery.”

From the Harlem Renaissance, to the Negritude Movement, up to the present day African Renaissance, black people have always struggled to find ways to redefine themselves, while in the process creating sites of cultural resistance. From literature, to the movies, history, and to fine art black people have struggled to create spaces, “wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see.” (hooks,1992:116) The ‘gaze’, as bell hooks argues, is the actual site of resistance for culturally colonised black people globally.

Mphutlane Wa Bofelo points out that when it comes to poetry, one of the sites of resistance is the global slam poetry movement. However, Bofelo problematizes the issues by asking: “How do we relate the slam movement to our own history of using poetry in particular and literature and theatre in general to open the space of discourse and critical engagement with prevailing socio-economic, political and cultural conditions? Can we draw from the experiences of pre-colonial African oral traditions in developing an organically grown and contextualised slam poetry movement in [Africa]?”

It is in the same spirit of resistance that Milton Allimadi writes that the overall Western attitude towards Africa is that the continent is trapped in a tribal time warp. Allimadi states that the Western media plays a vital role in perpetuating this misconception. Western journalists and editors, writes Allimadi, still have the same colonial attitude towards Africans. “…Not much has changed since the earliest days when Western reporters first started to cover African countries on a widespread basis.”

In a podcast interview, emerging rapper PlanBe explores with Sokari Ekine violence and rape in South Africa and he performs his rap Stand Against. And in another podcast, Congolese poet Omékongo wa Dibinga shares three of his poems with us exploring the attitudes towards Africa, aid and development (the text of the latter is also reproduced here).

This issue was guest edited by Robtel Pailey, to whom we express our thanks.

How does a post-colonial state embrace diversity without risking perpetuating the racial categories of Apartheid South Africa? How does a post-colonial state undermine oppressive racial categories without unintentionally replacing diversity with homogeneity? Neville Alexander argues that it is not necessary to create racial categories, for ‘sub-national’ identities can be based on many different factors such as religion and linguistics.

Pambazuka News: In an essay you presented at the Human Science Research Council earlier this year, you postulate that language could be used to promote social justice. What do you mean?

Neville Alexander: What I mean is that rather than using race as a means of determining affirmative action, which translates to the danger of perpetuating racial identities, it is better to find other ways of using redress in an organic way. One of these is language.

In the South African context, language communities tend to coincide with those previously classified in certain racial categories. Most African language speaking communities have been disadvantage in one form or the other. And that means if one were to use language to promote social justice, one would give preference to those who can use an African language. That would be an organic way of promoting redress. It would also give market value to African languages and generally raise the status of these languages. In this way people would be rewarded for their linguistic skills.

Pambazuka News: In a country like South Africa, where English is practically the official language, do you think that’s a realistic view?

Neville Alexander: The point is that the political and cultural leadership must have the vision and the political will to make sure that English does not continue to operate as the de facto only official language. We have to begin to use other African languages in powerful ways. The reason for this is not just for some nationalistic nonsense, rather, the reason is that this is the only way we can guarantee and entrench a democratic dispensation. The masses of the people in South Africa are not English speaking, they are not comfortable speaking English.

Further, to promote African languages is not going to be costly at all. We have done research and costing on this, and our research shows that to promote African languages will not be costly at all, but, on the contrary, it would be better in terms of preventing waste through the use of English only or mainly.

Pambazuka News: Is it for this reason that you argue that Affirmative Action unintentionally perpetuates the racial categories of apartheid South Africa?

Neville Alexander: This is a very fundamental issue and it needs to be discussed very carefully so that people do not get the wrong impression. I am not opposed to affirmative action. My view is that affirmative action is essential in the absence of the social revolution.

If we had a social revolution we would not need affirmative action, we would simply expropriate the wealth and resources of the oppressors. However, in the absence of such a revolution affirmative action is essential.

The crucial question, however, is, does one implement affirmative action in a country like South Africa where the majority of the people are black, in the same way that affirmative action is implemented in the United States of America (USA)? To implement affirmative action on the basis of a minority paradigm is not necessary in South Africa. To implement affirmative action in such a way is negative, and it actually perpetuates the racial categories that one wants to undermine and weaken. The point is not to address race but to address social disadvantage, irrespective of colour. Given that the majority of disadvantaged people in this country are black people, we do not have to approach it the way the affirmative action is implemented in the USA, for that model is very negative, even for the USA it is a negative approach.

Further, affirmative action in this country applies only to a very few people. To be eligible for affirmative action one needs to have necessary qualifications and experiences. And so, because of apartheid and colonialism, very few black people have the necessary qualifications to benefit from affirmative action in this country.

Pambazuka News: By wanting to downplay racial and cultural difference are you not necessarily against diversity? There is a difference between cultural/racial differences and cultural/racial oppression. And the fact that there are cultural/racial differences does not necessarily mean that there is oppression going on. Don’t you think the ‘task is to remove oppression, not to obliterate difference’.

Neville Alexander : Firstly, you need to understand that racial identities are the reason we are where we are in this country. Secondly, in the very short term you can’t obliterate “racial” differences. Further, it is not necessary to create racial categories, nor does one have to perpetuate racial categories. Sub-national identities can be based on many different factors such as religion and linguistics.

Pambazuka News: What is the difference between racial and linguistic categories?

Neville Alexander : The difference is that in South African history, languages have not yet been abused in the same manner as “race” for purposes of oppression and social conflict, if one excepts the two critical historical events around the Milnerist suppression and the Verwoerdian imposition of Afrikaans. Secondly, linguistic categories are not permanent. One can get in and out of linguistic categories whereas one can’t do the same with racial categories.

Pambazuka News: One can argue that there is no reason that a society will not find it easy to linguistically oppress those who don’t sound like us, just like it was easy to oppress those who do not look like us.

Neville Alexander: That is why I do not insist on a standard isiXhosa or a standard English. If one is able to decipher a particular text at a certain level, then one should have the same opportunity just like everyone else. To use racial categories, one risks perpetuating the kind of oppression one witnessed in the past.

Pambazuka News: Don’t you think that given the South African social context, racial categories such as ‘Indian’, ‘White’, ‘Coloured’ and ‘Black’ are useful if we do not want to obscure the racial hierarchies and racial privileges that still exist in this country?

Neville Alexander: We can never obscure them for they are terribly obvious. However, what needs to be done is to address them openly, not by perpetuating these racial categories but by questioning racial categories.

Pambazuka News: What is the difference between ‘non-racialism’ and ‘anti-racism’?

Neville Alexander: In my view, ‘non-racialism’ means the non-existence of race as a biological entity to begin with, and the constructedness of race as a social category and therefore the potential to deconstruct race as a social category. Anti-racism is the struggle against racial hierarchies and against the use of racial ideology to exploit people’s labour power. I do not see the concepts as mutually exclusive in any way, but rather as concepts that complement each other.

• Interview conducted by Mandisi Majavu.
* Neville Alexander is the Director of the Project for The Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA). He has done much pioneering work in the field of language policy and planning in South Africa since the early 1980s via organisations such as the National Language Project, PRAESA, as well as the LANGTAG process. He has been influential in respect of language policy development with various government departments, including Education. His most recent work has focused on the tension between multilingualism and the hegemony of English in the public sphere.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Poetry is defined differently by different people. How do Africans define poetry? Is it possible to draw from the experiences of pre-colonial African oral traditions in developing an organically grown and contextualised slam poetry movement in South Africa? asks Mphutlane Wa Bofelo.

The emergence of Slam Poetry as a competitive, theatrical, participative and entertaining presentation of poetry and a social event involving a vibrant interaction between the poets is attributed to construction worker and poet, Mark Smith and the bunch of blue collar eccentric intellectuals who gathered at the Chicago Jazz Club, and the Get Me High Lounge for a series of poetry sessions in 1985. They continued the tradition under the framework of the Uptown Poetry Slam at another Chicago Jazz Club, the Green Mill from July 25,1986 to date. Looking for a way to breathe life into the open mic poetry format, construction worker and poet, Mark Smith (Slampapi) started a poetry reading series in 1985 at a Chicago jazz club, the Get Me High Lounge; which was owned by finger-popping’ hipster, Butchie (James Dukaris) who allowed anything to happen. The series' emphasis on performance laid the groundwork for a style poetry and performance which would eventually be spread across the world.

In 1986, Smith approached Dave Jemilo, the owner of the Green Mill (a Chicago jazz club and former haunt of Al Capone); with a plan to host a weekly poetry cabaret on the club’s slows Sunday nights. Jemilo welcomed him, and on July 25 that year, the Uptown Poetry Slam was born. Smith drew on baseball and bridge terminology for the name, and instituted the show’s basic structure of an open mic, guest performers, and a competition. The Green Mill evolved into the Mecca for performance poets, and the Uptown Poetry Slam still continues 18 years after its inception. Explaining the slam poetry craze and vibe at The Green Mill, the Idiot’s Guide to ? declares: “The experimenters in this new style of poetry presentation gyrated, rotated, spewed, and stepped their words along the bar top, dancing between the bottles, bellowing out the backdoor, standing on the street or on their stools, turning the west side of Chicago into a rainforest of dripping whispers or a blast furnace of fiery elongated syllables, phrases, snatches of scripts, and verse that electrified the night.”

Poetry in the Boxing ring

But in Chicago itself the idea of reading poetry in non-literary settings and in a theatrical and sporting and somewhat eccentric and experimental style often bothering on the break with conventions, could be traced to as early as the late1970s and early 1980s. Sometimes in 1978 (or 1979) Jerome Salla and Elaine Equi got for readings at Facets Multimedia. Elaine Equi recalls, “Jerome was getting bigger audiences, drawing from bars, the Art Institute scene, from clubs such as O'Banyon's, La Mer, artists, and publishers. The people around the Body Politic were one scene. But when Jerome and I would read, it was not really a literary crowd. By 1980 Salla constructed his own poetry competition based on a boxing match and the crowd was rowdy. Elaine Equi explains how this started "My husband was reading at some space in Chicago... His readings were always accompanied by a lot of audience participation. There was one particular musician, named Jimmy Desmond, who got irritated easily when he was drunk. He grabbed a chair and swung at Jerome. There was a fight, but it didn't actually come to blows." Jerome Salla continues, "A couple days later I got call from Al-Simmons. He was involved with the old poetry scene in New York’s lower east side, and in Chicago too, and hung with Ted Berrigan. He said, 'Jimmy Desmond would like to challenge you to a ten-round poetry fight to the death...” (Kurt Heintz, 1996)

Pioneer of the Slam Poetry scene in New York, Bob Holman recalls seeing Ted Berrigan and Ann Waldman in a poetry bout dressed in boxing gear, around 1979 but indicates that he didn't first communicate with Mark Smith until after he visited the Green Mill in person. Elaine Equi proposes that Simmons might have got the idea from professional wrestling, but also adds that Simmons told her that he saw a couple poets in a boxing ring in New York and would love to stage a poetry fight between her and Simmons. The first fight took place in 1980 at a fly-by-night club. Equi has very fresh memories of these ‘poetry fights’: “I read a poem called 'Give Piss a Chance' shortly after the death of John Lennon, and the crowd booed..!" They had a stage like a boxing ring and girls in bikinis, holding up cards for the number of the rounds. They also had and judges... each round Jerome and Jimmy reading one poem. Jerome won." It was not a fluke. They had a rematch and he won again. About two hundred people witnessed the second match. There match was at Tut's on Belmont at Sheffield, now The Avalon. I read in leather boxing shorts, had a robe that said Baby Jerome. Jimmy had a nickname too. We didn’t really hate each other. It was just a funny, kind of weird event we threw to make money," says Salla. "There was little story in the Trib. We were with the punk scene. A lot of forces were converging in Chicago at the same time. Suddenly there was an audience for poetry. There really isn't anything that close to the experience today except in rap music." (Kurt Heintz, 1996)

The philosophies of slam

Equi’s reference to rap in relation to the late 1970’s Chicago poetry phenomenon is interesting given the link that today’s slam poetry has with hip hop, of which rap is one of the components. It is noteworthy that Mark Smith took the name from the game of basketball which is also having some cordial relations with hip hop. Based on this information, one can say with Slam Poetry, Mark Smith and his crew of convention-busting poets and lovers of the spoken continued a tradition that -in Chicago-started in the late 70’s, and gave it a format and name in tune with the times.

Perhaps confirming the communal spirit of slam and the universal nature of its ideal of creating an open space for expression, Mark Smith declares on his website that Slam does not belong to him but to “the thousands of people who have dedicated their time, money, and energy to this Chicago-born, interactive format for presenting poetry to a public that has a zillion other barks and belches and flashes to hold its attention”. However he expresses his wish that the slam phenomenon should grow in accordance with the philosophies that have become what I consider to be the backbone of what we call the "Slam Family". These include:

- The purpose of poetry (and indeed all art) is not to glorify the poet but rather to celebrate the community to which the poet belongs. (This idea is paraphrased from the works of Wendell Berry)
- The performance of poetry is an art -- just as much an art as the art of writing it.
- The Slam should be open to all people and all forms of poetry.
- We must all remember that we are each tied in some way to someone else's efforts. Our individual achievements are only extensions of some previous accomplishment.
- Success for one should translate into success for all.
- The National Slam began as a gift from one city to another. It should remain a gift passed on freely to all newcomers.

Towards an organic South African Slam Movement

These are lofty communal and humanistic ideas that in the dog-eat-dog individualistic and materialistic society might be easily dismissed as too idealistic and utopian indeed! Mark Smith himself confesses that “the idealism and cooperative forces of the Slam are in constant conflict with the competitive and self-serving appetites of its ambitious nature”. He asserts that the struggle between the idealism of slam and its competitive spirit has taught the slam family much but also threatens to obliterate all that has grown to be. And unequivocally and unambiguously declares that he is “on the side of idealism and hope.”

How many of us who have latched on the slam poetry buzz share the idealism and pro-humanism spirit? And to what extent are we able to contextualise the slam movement within the tangible and concrete realities of Azania, and locate it within the particularities and peculiarities of the Azanian\South African situation? How do we relate the slam movement to our own history of using poetry in particular, and literature and theatre in general, to open the space of discourse and critical engagement with prevailing socio-economic, political and cultural conditions? Can we draw from the experiences of pre-colonial African oral traditions in developing an organically grown and contextualised slam poetry movement in South Africa\Azania?

In South Africa\Azania the idea of doing poetry in a non-literary setting and of moving away from eurocentric conventions in as far as the stylistic concerns of poetry and the manner in which poetry is delivered, is not a new phenomenon. As early as the 1970’s, groups like Dashiki fused poetry with jazz. The Allah Poets, Mihloti, Medupi Writers and others recited their poetry over the beat of the drum and sounds of horns. People like Muthobi Motloatse and Gamakhulu Diniso of Busang Thakaneng used the term Proemdra to refer to a fusion prose, poetry, music and drama, and promoted the notion of participatory theatre. Muthobi Motloatse’s theatre piece, ‘Nkosi –the Healing song’ is a typical example of the fusion of the language of story telling, music, dance and drama. Here the barriers between the audience and the performer were broken, and in the words of a character in ‘Nkosi- the Healing Song’, “myths, legends and facts are interwoven and the story can “begin in the ending and end in the middle.”

The concept of participatory theatre gained ground in the 70’s and 80’s. Participatory theatre was informed not only by ‘the anti-poetry theory’ of the of Bertold Brecht, Jerry Grotowsky’s ‘poor theatre’ and Augusto Boal’s “theatre of the oppressed”, but also by pre-colonial African of cultural and artistic forms of expression where there were no rigid borderlines between music, poetry, dance, etc. When groups like Ujamaa (in Sharpeville), Rakgalema Medupi Arts Commune and Arts in Motion (in Sebokeng), (Mafube in the East rand) and Makana Poets (in Zamdela) emerged in the 1980’s and 1990’s, they followed the same trend began by their predecessors. These groups performed poetry at political rallies and social events like wedding ceremonies and birthday parties, at schools, in churches, in beer-halls and in stadiums. Poetry was performed in prisons, hostels, squatter camps, refugee camps, and in the trenches and guerrilla training camps in exile. In the words of Muthobi Motlaotse, this kind of literature and theatre deliberately shit on conventional English-English literary forms.

It mixed languages and genres and knew no holy cows. In as far as its dare-devil, passionate and energetic, genre-crossing, convention-defying multi-media spirit and its efforts to open up the space for self-expression and dialogue between the writer and society are concerned, the slam poetry phenomenon shares stylistic and thematic concerns with the poetry, literary and theatre movement of the 1970’s up to the early 90’s in South Africa\Azania. The efforts of many slam poets\ hip hop activists in Azania today to attune their artistic expressions to the historical-material experiences, politico-economic conditions and the cultural and linguistic heritage of our country is in many ways a continuation of the tradition and legacy of the 1970’s generation that was in the main inspired by the philosophy of Black Consciousness.

Conclusion

What is missing is a conscious and well-coordinated programme to link up the present literary and cultural movement with the past and to educate the current crop of poets and cultural activists about their predecessors. The ignorance of the present-day generation of poets and spoken word activists about the contributions and achievements of their predecessors and ancestors in the literary world is reflected by the scant respect shown to the legendary Mafika Pascal Gwala during his recital at Poetry Africa. The impatient audience heckled when Gwala recited on the opening day of Poetry Africa. The presenter of the programme is to blame for not informing the audience that Gwala was entitled to recite for more than the four minutes allocated to other poets, as he was the featured poet of the day. He also introduced Gwala with just one sentence whereas he went on and on about the other poets. Given proper direction, the poetry movement and the cultural movement in South Africa have a lot to offer to this country. And acknowledging the struggles, contributions and efforts of the ancestors of South African literary and theatre movement and learning from them would be the first step in the right direction.

Names that come to mind are Mirriam Tladi, Fatima Dike, Fikile Magadlela, Nardine Gordimer; Richard Rive, James Mathews, the late Strini Moodley (who founded the first union of Black theatre and upon whose request Gwala wrote the classical piece, ‘The Children of Nonti’), Mafika Gwala, Mazisi Kunene, Farouk Asvat, Benjy Francis, Athol Fugard, John Kani, Lefifi Tladi, Lesego Rampolokeng. The list is endless. The passion of most of these individuals for literature and theatre was fanned by the desire to use the word as an instrument for transformation and social change. Their works were part of the quest for a South Africa and a world with a more humane face. It is this understanding that will motivate the present-day writer, poet and artist to use podiums like the slam poetry\spoken word scene as mediums of self-expression as well as a platform for social dialogue and an instrument for social change. When this happens, the word will not cower to the dictates of capital, but will place the collective dignity and collective interests and aspirations of the people before narrow materialistic individual gains.

• Mphutlane Wa Bofelo is a writer, activist, life-skills facilitator and performance poet who has been published in several journals, websites and anthologies and has performed at various events. He won the Slam Poetry Champion of Championship organized by the Slam Poetry Operation Team (SPOT) in 2003. He also published the booklet, ‘The Journey Within' with Yaseen Islamic Publishers. In 2005, he won the Durban Slamjam at the 9th Poetry Africa held at the BAT Center. In June 2006, Mphutlane performed at the first Cape Town International Bookfair. He co-founded the Makana Poets with Sello Hlasa in the late 80's and is currently a member of the Nowadays Poets, the Live Poets Society (LiPS), the Slam Poetry Operation Team (SPOT), and the Open Stage Society.
• Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Sources

1. on 13\11\06)
3.3. www.e-poets.net/library/slam/converge.html (accessed on 13\11\06)

Wangui wa Goro writes that to talk of the African Renaissance when Africans go without food and die unnecessarily of curable diseases, when children have no access to clean water and basic education, compels us to ask ourselves who is this renaissance intended for. “That unless we can meet the fundamental needs of the majority of African people, words like Renaissance (rebirth) in the face of death for many sound like a mockery.”

It is easy to forget that culture is ever evolving and we are what we are today. Some may want to hark back to a specific historical model of culture in the eighteenth or nineteenth century or some other period which appeals to their desires. Some may have profound knowledge of their desired historical culture, while others may just be armed with nostalgia which they acquired through a variety of ways. Neither is invalid, nor undesirable.

Recently, in an imaginary African country, some people in their mid forties and fifties have taken to occasionally donning an animal skin to show their ‘elder’ status. Some are probably four wheel driving drunkards, rapists, thieves or murderers living in secluded areas of the city in gated properties with little or no connection with their rural communities.

Others are steeped in religious or cultural sentimentality acquired dubiously for social mobility, acceptability or political or economic expediency. This is then promoted as “our way of life”, as if culture cannot be contested, as if the values of tradition and modernity cannot be put to the test to scrutinise who they serve; for what purpose and to which ends.

Most worryingly, is the fixing of tradition as something staid that will never change and which condemns the majority into servitude or slavery. For me, culture should answer the question whether it can promote and deliver democracy, equality and social justice for the majority. A pro-people culture would bode well for peace, justice and democracy in Africa; a culture that would enable a re-engagement with the self that has been lacking - a re-engagement with our neighbours and the world in ways that are powerful and which would yield tremendous wealth, enjoyment, creativity, learning and exchange.

Amnesia and denial

Instead, on the whole, we have been living with our heads in the sand like the ostrich. But the ostrich compensates for this behaviour in that it can run, and run very fast when it needs to. What has struck me as absurd is a wilful forgetfulness of what has happened to Africa in the recent and not so recent past such as the colonial era and its aftermath. We have forgotten our heroes and role models.

In Kenya for instance, years after independence, the question of freedom fighters sits uneasily with the nation as does its colonial and post colonial history. Practices which women and men have fought against such as female genital mutilation, and entrenched views about women’s roles in society, are yet again up for contestation. Coming from a former settler colony and having visited several countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, I am struck by how patriarchal and colonial our cultures still remain, from our means of production, our means of consumption and our participation in the production.

All of these are directed as they are at somebody else rather than ourselves.In another example in Kenya people have been forced to wear used underwear from second hand stocks in Europe! What happened to the thriving textile industry? It has been decimated by cheap second hand used imports and Kenyans are wrongly forced to wear used underwear.

What happens in the name of culture?

In most African countries and in the Diaspora, owing to the lack of attention paid to this significant field of African culture much is done quietly on the cultural scene through the efforts and sacrifice that individuals and small groups make. This is true of most art forms which are produced in private and painstaking ways, with little public support. Occasionally, interested private or foreign investors such as the British Council, the French Cultural Centre or the Goethe Institute (who see their linkages with Africa and promotion of African culture as integral to promoting their own cultures) enable us to catch a glimpse of what is possible! The gesture is not reciprocated! Imagine, African cultural institutes sponsored by African governments in every key capital of the world!

Here, in London, where you would expect to find thriving cultural institutions displaying the long links between Africa and the UK, you will be hard pressed if you can point to one. The only institution which is supposed to broadly represent Africans which has existed for a while, is one you will want to run a mile from. It is currently shamefully closed and dilapidated after several years of struggling to survive. Although it has played an important role in democratic struggles for Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora, its governance remains shrouded in mystery and secrecy and many people have gradually been put off from going there as they do not wish their culture to be promoted in this impoverished way. It sits there, right in the heart of the thriving Covent Garden, 200 yards from the UK’s prestigious multimillion Opera House. This sorry state of affairs is a travesty, to both British and African Heritage. It is a general measure of how we see ourselves at home and abroad and how we want to promote ourselves. It is also a measure of how we are seen by others, alienated. Changing this perception may be the way to that much-vaunted renaissance.

Elsewhere for instance in fashion, Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria continue to impress with a sense of dress all their own, and what is even more refreshing is that it is not for tourist appeal. Yet what is worrying for even these thriving economies, heritages and creativity, is their reliance on Brick Lane or Switzerland for lace and for designs (sold as African) but produced in India or somewhere further away, thus creating jobs for others elsewhere.

This is all well and good for south-south or any other collaboration. However, the question of how the relationships are defined, the moral, social, cultural and economic cost for Africa and the loss of the possibilities to replenish creativity is one we must be concerned about. As they say, practice makes perfect and we have been forever perfecting everybody else’s things which are then directed at us for consumption whether we like it or not. There is a subtle and not so subtle disparaging of anything home grown that does not pander to somebody else’s appeal or taste.

What is Kenyan? Is it the donning of animal skins and harking back to some golden era in the 19th Century before the Europeans came? And whom is this supposed to appeal to?

What is popularised and cheap is the man-eat-man culture of the bourgeoisie, both Western and African which is often crude and vulgar as it is dependent on making a mockery of the dignity of majority of the people and allowing them to forget that what is theirs is being siphoned off slowly and sold back to them repackaged (cheaply) at ten times the price. The mass media, often Hollywood oriented, continues to dominate the nations’ outlooks on themselves and it is rarely kind about who Africans are, or what our aspirations are.

African Cultural Production and alienation

But what is the real lived experience of cultural production in Africa? I work as a translator and challenge anyone reading this article, to name me ten African literary translators and the titles of their books. You will be hard pressed. This phenomenon is replicated across all cultural production, with perhaps the exception of music by the greats - Baaba Maal, Angelique Kidjo, Hugh Masekela, Fela Kuti, Miriam Makeba and others. Ask any African which 10 books by an African writer they have read outside academia, or who our ten leading painters, sculptors or film makers are and you will be faced with blank faces. I learnt this the hard way, through being a member of the jury of Africa’s 100 best books. The majority of the books that came through the list were foreign-published and in European languages. They were written mainly for academic purposes and for adult consumption.

Port Louis and the ideals of the Cultural Charter for Africa
Such moments make you realise that, as Africans, just how alienated from ourselves we are. This alienation makes one wonder what happened to the OAU’s Charter on Culture and the mandates, aspirations and ideals that brought independence to Africa.

The OAU had made a brave attempt in 1976 in St Louis in Mauritius to define a vision for an African Cultural Policy. The ideals then articulated still remain relevant today and it is pleasing that this debate is set to continue in Addis Ababa, and better still that we might live to implement it. For culture must belong to people and their governments, as government departments will not themselves produce culture, but facilitate it.

My hope is for the debate on national and regional policies to be a continuous one and the lessons that have been learned from festivals, exhibitions, competitions, creativity and interactions across the continent and the globe to be shared more widely. Wonderful initiatives and models exist but only linking them and the wider populace will make a difference. Engaging in the debate of what democratic culture is and what it can become and its links to schooling, arts, sport, entertainment, heritage, leisure and general socio-economic and political production in every arena, is crucial. It should engage the practitioners and policy makers but most of all, it should engage the consumers.

Arts, culture and heritage are seen as a luxury, as a world apart from the real. They are not seen as the pulse which can feed blood into the arteries of justice, peace, democracy and development. Talent and achievement can be nourished and nurtured through state support for arts, heritage and culture in meaningful ways. Young and old people should be allowed to discover their heritage, and here, I recall the work of a wonderful scholar George Senega Zake who spent most of his lifetime trying to retrieve the dying musical art forms of East Africa as well as educate new generations to appreciate their heritage through music. Like him, we should become not only curators and archaeologists, but take up our responsibility to make the past a thriving part of the present and the future.

It seems that the task of excavating must go hand in hand with the task of creating new and vibrant cultural industries which are pro people: sustainable and economically viable. Projects which engage the majority and contribute to national development and democracy, hold up a mirror to society, allowing us to see a true picture of ourselves. Instead, we have exiled, jailed, tortured and killed our artists by smashing the mirror into thousands of fragments because we do not like what we see. The freedom to culture is an important arm of the freedom of expression. It is a fundamental human right.

Elsewhere, culture is what makes the humanity pulsate. One of the things about Britain is the amount of thriving traditional and global cultures represented there. They do not threaten what the nation thinks of its own heritage. I am thinking here of the museums on slavery and colonialism in Liverpool and Bristol which tell unflinchingly (although sparsely) about those chapters of British history! Such institutions have come out of people’s struggles for these spaces, and so their story is told, and in that way, the story of Britain is holistically present. In similar ways, Africans must continue to strive for their ways of life, past and present, to not to be deleted off the page.

Vision

I do not ask for much as we look forward to the outcomes of the AU conference on culture in Addis Ababa. I hope that the conference yields deliverable outcomes that will engage the minds of the young and the old through modern and traditional means, through technology, through information, communication and through travel. We have a right to ask for as much as we wish, but equally, we must be willing to play our part in bringing it into fruition.

A first step in acknowledging our heritage is through its most important medium, our languages, whether, visual, oral, physical or musical. The AU has taken the bold step of adopting Kiswahili as the all African lingua franca.

But language, whether the mother tongue or nation tongue or neighbour tongue, must be a democratic tongue that allows people to express their aspirations and imaginings without demeaning others. What is important, is that these languages enable us to confidently excavate the past as well as yield new possibilities for today and tomorrow. For what then are we wearing borrowed clothing?

Culture is about dignity and self worth. It is about knowledge and confidence in knowing the good, the bad and the ugly. In Africa, as elsewhere, culture emerges through our understanding of this soil, its fauna and flora, through its numerous waters and skies, through unfurling the secrets that it harbours through our ancestors, and through us and our dreams for the future.

Culture is universally compelling in its call to a moral duty which can engage every human being. It is a fundamental human right and a very fulfilling one. Hear the songs, watch those films, go to those bookshops and readings. Go to those museums, produce those crafts, participate in the production of art, consume it or produce it. Marvel at how rich our heritages are. Marvel at the artefacts that were looted and are stashed in vaults across the world. Feel the desire to demand their retrieval, or share in the secrets which only a dying few can decipher. Engage them with trips to this heritage sites of looting, physically or through technology. Touch these totems. Let the totems or replicas be restored and returned. There is so much that we can do and that must be done.

Our attitudes towards education are as important as the paramount questions of justice and equality. In our own case, the question of restorative justice is one which we must pay close attention to so that the ghosts of those genocides, holocausts, dictatorships and theft do not visit us again. What upholds our dignity and our humanity today has to be central. It cannot be a case of “this is how our ancestors did it so we must do it in the same way” if this means violating women’s rights, children’s rights, the rights of one ethnicity or the privileging of one section of society over another. It should uplift us all into valuing each other for what we are and for what we can become.

African Renaissance

Measuring the African Renaissance is a perilous task. When people go without food and die unnecessarily of curable diseases; when children have no access to clean water and basic education, then we have cause to ask ourselves who and what this renaissance is intended for. Unless we can meet the fundamental needs of the majority of African people, words like Renaissance (rebirth) in the face of death for many, sound like a mockery.

Yet without being cynical, there are many promising initiatives such as the journal Kwani, the Paa ya Paa gallery in Kenya, Xarra, the only black bookshop in South Africa, the various Africa wide, book, cultural, music, film and theatre festivals and many other events that are good examples of initiatives trying to place a different kind of culture on the map.

For me, these institutions/events represent different ways to culture, and even then, I ask Kwani and Xarra: where are those African language narratives? What medium is best to disseminate these? Nollywood may hold an answer but even so, where are those technicians and publishers, like the Henry Chakavas, the Aseneth Odagas, the Aminatta Sow Falls, the Ayebia Clarkes and Kassahun Checoles who are brave to risk a different kind of economy by publishing Africa? Where are those film makers who are willing to bring the oral traditions on to our screens without apology while making films that feed contemporary culture and document our heritage? Where are those musicians and painters and sculptors? Where are the beautiful ones? The reception and funding of their work, and how governments, citizens and policy makers engage with them, will tell you even more about who we are.

The continuity of African Centred initiatives promise a re-awakening breed, a different breed trying to nurture out of the postcolonial vacuum, the kind of vision that Port Louis began as initiatives such as FESPACO and FESTAC. This vacuum was interrupted by the abyss of repressive regimes and apartheid on the continent. And although it is always easy to blame somebody else, those years were a product of global culture which was vehemently anti-African. Our governments aided and abetted the denigration of African humanity. The perilous work and courage of cultural activists was key to restoring some sense of normality to Africa today. So our task is to support these initiatives as a part of democratic norms.

Pan-African global heritage

The contribution and role that the traditional and new diasporic communities have played in contributing to continuity in the face of that vacuum cannot be underestimated in the economic and cultural value they have continued to offer. That is why we must embrace our multicultural global heritage instead of being myopic and ethnocentred. We must enjoy wider global Pan African heritage. In this way, everyone stands to gain, through sharing of skills, through trade, through promoting excellence, through dialogue, through linking the various trajectories of culture in their new locations whether on the continent or beyond.

But further, we must see our African culture as part of a thriving global heritage. Living internationally as I do, I have been privileged to dip into the numerous cultures of Africa, Asia, North or South America, Europe, Australia, the Atlantic, the Pacific and from the African Ocean and their collaborations. I readily eat my fufu, aloco, ‘chapoo’, couscous, tchiabu jdian, mukimo, attieke and rice and peas as if I have done so all my life.

Appreciating other cultures makes you appreciate what belongs to you and also allows you to enjoy the wealth and beauty of the human heritage of which we are a part. Global democratic culture should be encouraged as a wealth, as it gives new perspectives on others and on the self, but it should be done on terms which edify, not denigrate.

Our legislators must create a platform for our heritage for which they can be remembered. Our governments must contribute to it, embrace it and run with it. Most importantly, the everyday practitioners and artists have a moral obligation to safeguard, nurture and defend our cultural heritage for peace, justice and development as they have always done. For without them, there can be no culture to speak of.

• UK based Kenyan, Wangui wa Goro is a public intellectual, academic, writer, translator, and cultural promoter. She is currently the director of Amber Cultural Productions as well as the president of the African literary translators and subtitlers association (ALTRAS) and (TRACLA) Translations Caucus of the African Literature Association (ALA) [email][email protected]
• Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover
But it has become appallingly clear
That you can judge an entire continent
By its media coverage

You can color a whole continent dark
With the paint of poorly placed perception
When you rely on the media
To teach you your Africa lessons

Because I come from a continent,
That the world thinks is a country
And to put it bluntly,
We’re all HIV positive
Until proven negative
In the eyes of the media

It’s like Africa is either one big safari
Or Kalahari with seethin’ heathens
With no sense of religion
And home to animals and animism

Because TV renditions of African afflictions
Have created a depiction
Of a land of savages
Where the world’s most dreadful diseases
Exceed the law of averages
And since American TV
Only shows the ravages of a select few nations
Most Americans juxtapose the mother of civilization
With phrases like “damnation” and “starvation”

So if we don’t control our own images,
We can’t expect to see
A true representation of our beauty

Most non-Africans believe that the most
Africa has given to the world
Are phrases like “Hakuna mtata”
And “Asante sana squash banana”
Along with exotic vacations in remote locations
‘Cause I’ve never heard an American TV news station
Even say we’re made up of 54 nations

In the eyes of the media,
We’re just underdeveloped wannabe Caucasians
Still searching for civilization
If you buy the media’s interpretation
Of who we are
But am I taking this too far?

Because to me,
The real problem be the WB, ABC, & NBC
Which are the real WMD:
Weapons of Mind Destruction

Because too many people
Including many Africans
See what they see
Through the smart bombs they call TV
And it’s not just the newscasts,
It starts at age 3

Because I grew up
Watching images of Bugs Bunny
Dressed in grass skirts and black face
Speaking in “African dialects”
And every 10 years,
There’s a new version of Tarzan on the TV set

And I don’t know about y’all,
But I recall seeing gorillas pass for Africans
In those “Tin-Tin” cartoons
And if you remove
Marvin Martians’ helmet from Looney Tunes
He’s probably an African illegal alien
Or a fallen, faithless, famine-stricken African child
With his stomach protruded

And it’s these convoluted characterizations
That have helped in creating grown-up policy makers
Who partially base their opinions of our homeland
From films such as “Congo”,
“Gorillas in the Midst” and “The Air up There”
And we can’t forget “Tears of the Sun”
Which left too many tears on the sons and daughters of Africa,
Searching for a beautiful representation
Of our native land

But that won’t happen until we Africans
Take responsibility for our portrayal
Because the betrayal of our friends
From FOX, CBS, and CNN
Means we will never see-an-end
To caricatures of the continent of human creation
Which has been made to look
Like she’s on her deathbed
And ready for cremation

But we will show the world
That our Mother Africa is strong, vibrant and defiant
Because the pulse of nearly a billion people can never die
When WE control what the world sees,
So we must never comply
To pictures painted by pessimists on TV of our homeland
For we are the pulse of Africa
And we will now show the world
How proudly we will stand!

• Urban Music Award winner Omékongo Dibinga, M.A., is a motivational speaker, rapper, and poet. He is the Founder & CEO of Free Your Mind Publishing. A first generation Congolese-American, Omékongo writes and performs in English, French, Swahili, and occasionally has used Wolof. He has released 4 CDs, 2 books, and 1 DVD. He is the host of “Flava,” an international satellite hip-hop radio show in Asia, Europe, and Africa. He has performed/lectured in the United States, South Africa, England, Congo-Kinshasa, Tanzania, France, Cuba, and Canada. His work has been televised in over 130 countries. For more information, please visit
• Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

What makes the voters of one country, electing none other than those who govern them in a legally recognised political community, superior or inferior? Any normal person will ask why am I asking such a funny Question, the answer to which should be clear. I agree. But I am talking about two elections held in the same week. Many will know one of them: the US election in which Bush, to the relief of billions of people across the world, is finally being shown the door. The other election is the one in Nicaragua where the Sandanistas, who had liberated the country but were defeated in elections in 1989, were returned to power.

In spite of the suspense of the closely fought race for the US Senate. The mid-term elections in the US have returned control of the American legislature to the opposition Democrats. They now control both chambers for the first time since 1994. The voters have shown a red card to Bush and his lunatic neo-cons that enough is enough.

Much as it is claimed that all politics is local, this election was fought on Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The loss of credibility internationally is finally hitting home even in the heartlands of conservatism across America.

There is hope both in America and outside that the changing political landscape in America symbolized in this election may lead to a post Bush regime change that may have more positive impacts on the people of the world. Even orchestrating Saddam Hussein's guilt and death sentence during the campaign did not divert people's attention from the tragic mess long foretold but denied by Bush and his hawks.

One thing that is clear is that Americans are no longer willing to be prisoners of an administration that governs them with fear. They are willing to re-engage with other Americans and the rest of the world. Politically Americans are saying good bye to a one party government.

It is not only Americans who my be feeling a bit safer with a weakening Bush. Even the rest of the world should feel safer. Bush is finally suffering what his allies suffered at the hands of their electorate.

But US elections are not the only ones taking place. Another significant election was decided among one of its smaller and poorer neighbours this week. It may not have the same impact on the world but it is of no less significance both for Americans and the ret of us.

Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandanistas, was reelected President of Nicaragua more than 16 years after losing to a right wing coalition of parties funded and supported by successive US administrations. The Sandinistas remained the largest single party but others (mostly pro US politicians) conspire to keep it out of power. But it remained focused, renewing itself among the masses in elections and working on. Within Latin American politics Nicaraguans have shown again as we saw in Brazil and Venezuela that resurgent left parties and governments have the right to imagine a different world from that dictated by Washington.

What unites both elections for me is the right of people to choose those who govern them. All people have the right and duty to elect their own leaders without the interference of other governments. It is an insult to democracy that the Bush administration that is being chased out by its own electorate should be interfering in the electoral process of other countries. They made their preference clear in the Nicaragua vote and issued not so disguised threats to Nicaraguans not to vote for the Sandinistas.

Even as the results of the electoral meltdown of the Republicans in the Congress was being broadcast on CNN the Bush administration still had time to issue a statement on the Nicaraguan elections 'with cautious welcome'. Who do they think they are? If they need any caution it is to be applied to their own electorate which has punished them for their arrogance and irresponsible leadership of America. Incompetent at home and running wild abroad the Bush administration should just keep quiet about other peoples' elections and face the consequences of its own policies.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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