What do farm and transport animals, companion animals and wildlife have in common? The imagination of editor and animal welfare professional Dipesh Pabari who has, with writers from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, woven an insightful tapestry reflecting the relationship of sentient (and sapient) species with the human beings who share their African life space. The World Society For The Protection Of Animals (WSPA)Welfare book is an anthology of animal stories inspired by the African environment.

I found the book to be a refreshing, quirky and insightful read.
Readers who meet with the lives of creatures whose narratives are so carefully fashioned will be drawn into reflection, laughter, remembrance, and outrage. The reader may be compelled to note that the struggles, desires, and dreams of existence are not confined to the human species alone. The reader, after a few pages, may even be struck by the thought that dominance of the environment by human beings, the quest for happiness in the battle for rights cannot exclude the perception of the dignity of all creatures great and small, however inarticulate or vulnerable to the whim of human sensibility they are.

Obiero Ojwang’s Three Goats invites the reader to glimpse the knowledge of anguish in the stricken gaze of a goat. Gitonga the bully and Mwangi face off over a leg-saving donkey in Stanley Gazemba’s Unlikely Burden. Aluizah Amasaba Abdul-Yakeen and Karen Menczer’s poignant tribute to Accra’s bats, a grandmother’s prescience and a fight for the right of space reads like a thriller. Dawn James’ wily Cairo Cat who becomes Mish-Mish by dint of feline wiles is a story many readers--some of whom may have bewilderingly became cat owners overnight--will identify with. Irene Ekpeh and Kingsley Aigbona in The Owl ask “Just because something does not sound or look right to you, doesn’t mean it is unnatural. How do you think a goat must feel when it sees you laughing?”

The answer is in there. There are animal characters in the book destined to move out of the book’s pages and continue their lives in the imagination of those who will encounter them.

The book evokes memories of tall animal teaching tales told to children throughout the continent by assorted relatives. These sixteen short stories not only provide fascinating insights into human-animal relationships, but are also contemporary tributes to the lives of animals. The stories avoid the temptation to moralize and are told in eclectic literary styles that should appeal to readers of all ages and cultures.

The African ecological ‘heritage of splendor’ has either been decimated or lost in the murkiness of an appropriated past. The present is often characterized by lurid tales of human-animal conflict that then justify all manner of excesses inflicted on non-human creatures. Several African societies that at their core had incorporated a profound consciousness, knowledge and respect of life in all its forms have relegated the wisdom of trusteeship of a splendid natural heritage to outsiders, in this becoming alienated from that which was once theirs.

This little book is a small but important step in reclaiming the intrinsically African sense of inter-species tolerance and co-existence; a former deeply lived culture of conservation. In a perfect world there is plenty of room for all life’s creatures to forge their shared destinies. In the absence of such perfection, this book is a little dreaming room for the ‘what-ifs” of co-existence among species.

Read the book with your children!

The Unlikely Burden and other stories (Editors: Dipesh Pabari and Lila Luce) can be purchased in Africa through [email][email protected]

For international orders, visit: http://www.canapublishinguk.com/

• Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Improving Science and Technology Education policies and programmes and attracting young people - notably girls - to scientific studies: these are among the challenges discussed in an interview with Orlando Hall Rose, Chief of UNESCO’s Science and Technology Section.

The Ministry of Culture's review board has announced the censorship of playwright Jalila Baccar's new work, "Corps-otages" ("Captive Bodies"), directed by Fadhel Jaibi. After wavering for more than three months, the review board, which is responsible for reviewing all theatrical releases in the country, refused to issue the permit required for the play to open. The board is demanding that Jaibi bring the play in line with a list of 100 themes subject to censorship before it grants the opening permit.

Assuming there would be impunity for power abuse, would people from all cultures treat the opportunity equally? Well, a recent study found there is a "culture of corruption" in many countries, as there was a direct correlation between diplomats' abuse of impunity in New York and the level of corruption in their home countries. Most of them refused to pay their parking tickets. Among New York's top ten parking ticket violators are Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Mozambique, Angola and Senegal. But the study also discovered some honest African diplomats.

Eating disorders seem to be a rarity in the issues raised by contemporary African writers. That’s most likely why Tsitsi Dangarembga’s 1988 classic “Nervous Conditions” became an immediate modern African classic. It was a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about the affects of patriarchy and colonialism on a female protagonist, Tambudzai. Nyasha, Tambudzai’s cousin, suffers from an acute case of bulimia. In many respects, she attempts to regurgitate centuries of societal repression of African women’s bodies, livelihoods, and intellectual capacities.

Like Nyasha, Dangarembga has been regurgitating historical tyranny with creative genius. She is a Zimbabwean playwright, novelist, and filmmaker who tackles head-on the oppression wrought by patriarchy and colonialism on African women. Her most recent novel, “The Book of Not,” is a sequel to “Nervous Conditions.”

Dangarembga could be called a feminist, but she shies away from the loaded term, opting for something more holistic, humanist. The Informer interviewed Dangarembga recently about writing, African women’s empowerment, and continental development.

Robtel Neajai Pailey (RP): Your large body of work shows that in the grand scheme of things, gender matters to you. How did you become so interested in the convergence of gender, oppression, and Africa?

Tsitsi Dangarembga (TD): Gender matters to me because I am a woman and experience firsthand the oppressive consequences of gender discrimination. I spend a lot of my considerable energy fighting that, and I think, why do I have to waste so much on this fight? I am sure most women all over the world ask themselves that question daily. Think how much energy is dissipated in this useless manner. It is energy that could be harnessed for the good of all people in a world free of gender oppression. I experience similar oppression as an African person. Naturally, I see similarities, but then again, also differences in these two systems of oppression. I spend a lot more time and energy trying to tease out which oppression fits so I can combat it appropriately, win and move on. I think that kind of intellectual work can be a legacy for others, hopefully shortening and easing their struggles.

RP: “The condition of the native is a nervous condition” seems to be the hallmark of your 1988 novel, “Nervous Conditions.” Was this one line in “Nervous Conditions” some type of tribute to Frantz Fanon and his book “Wretched of the Earth?”

TD: It was not a tribute in the sense that I wanted to draw attention to the greatness of “Wretched of the Earth.” It is, however, a tribute in the sense that that quotation affirms the truth that Fanon wrote, whose essence was captured so aptly and so succinctly by [Jean-Paul] Sartre in his introduction to Fanon’s work.*

RP: How are African women and girls today still victims of White supremacy and patriarchy?

TD: My new novel “The Book of Not” deals with this theme. The relationships are too complex to reduce to a few sentences, I think. When we do that, we miss essentials that need to be looked at. So I have taken many years to work this out to my satisfaction and also depict it to my satisfaction in “The Book of Not.” Personally, I feel both systems still work to victimize me. I think it is not an accident at all that most strong African women find they can only move forward in the company of other strong African women. Thank goodness for the sisterhood! Having said that, of course I do not want to portray the rest of the world as a homogenous monstrous lot! Neither could I as an African woman manage without the support from allies who have institutional access to institutionalized power and resources. Such people have kept me and my work—both my personal work and the work that I do as part of the African women’s movement—alive.

RP: I understand that you studied medicine and psychology at Cambridge University in England. Can you describe the psychological manifestations of patriarchy and neo-colonialism on African women and girls (besides eating disorders)?

TD: Low self-esteem; under performance; anti-social behavior; role modeling on anti-social hitherto traditionally masculine behaviors; negative energy; learned helplessness; rage; addiction; alienation; psychological disturbances from neuroses to psychoses; lethargy; dysfunctional attitudes; suicide; self immolation…to name a few.

RP: You’ve become increasingly aware of the difficult conditions and oppressive attitudes endured by Black women in Zimbabwe. I dare say you’ve been increasingly aware of the difficulty endured by African women all over the continent. What are some of the contemporary challenges African women face? What do you believe are some solutions to these challenges?

TD: Economic conditions in our global capitalist world are the main challenge. This translates practically into challenges of food security, health, shelter, education…again, the list goes on. There is also the challenge of how to make sure your voice is heard to voice these issues, both by those who want to hear you and by those who do not. This also at the end of the day translates into a challenge of financial resources. Few African women have the financial security to write the novels they want to write, make the films they want to in order to be heard, make the radio programs they see as crucial to their development and well being. We do not have the resources to ensure that these programs are aired even if we are able to make them. We often do not have the time to write the newspaper article we want to because they often will not be published in our newspapers and so we will not be paid, or if the articles are published often again a male chauvinist spin is put on them. Nor do we have our own newspapers. Again, it is not a monolithic African woman-hating world out there, but the opportunities are too few to sustain us at the level we have reached, let alone sustain our continued well-being and development in the face of our challenges.

RP: Please comment on how the tenuous political and economic conditions in Zimbabwe have affected women in the country.

TD: The political situation has affected most women badly in every sense. As in all crises situations there are some who exploit the suffering of others to benefit from it, and some of these exploiters who benefit are women. However, on the whole, women have seen the gains they made since independence in 1980 whittled away over the last few years. There is less food security. Girl children are less likely to be educated. Shortages of basic commodities make a mother’s life a nightmare. Biologically, women are challenged again. How are women to afford to buy the sanitary wear they need to soak up menstrual blood? As men are affected by the difficult conditions, they take out their frustrations on the often physically weaker sex. Sexual crimes and other violent crimes against women and children are accelerating at an unspeakable rate. The HIV pandemic multiplies the horrific implications of this situation a million times. Because of international sanctions, amongst other things, there are no medicines, little food, and what is there is hardly healthy. Only vestigial sanitation in most areas, almost no clean water in others. Even the cities go for days without water, to say nothing of fuel. I do not understand the logic that believes Zimbabweans will suffer these deprivations and become better, more democratic peoples. In my reading of history, a democratic nation has never been a hungry, suffering nation. Democracy seems to me to have been positively correlated with comfort. I do not think I am the only person who has read history, and so I wonder about the diverse agendas that are destroying my country in the name of democracy and human rights. There may as well be other factors at play which are destroying Zimbabwe, such as avarice, corruption and lack of accountability, but I do not think we must study all the factors and their impacts if we truly desire a solution, and not be selective about which truths we will face and which we will not.

RP: Over 15 African countries have ratified the Protocol on the Rights of the African Woman, which stipulates a series of recommendations for women’s rights on the continent to be adopted by the African Union. Are you familiar with this Protocol? If not, what recommendations would you include?

TD: Over the years there have been so many protocols and statements on human rights and women’s rights that I have lost track. I have not seen that these do a great deal to benefit the lives of women and the people close to women on the ground, beyond the NGOs and others involved in the drafting, funding, and implementation. Again, that is not to say that these actions have achieved zero impact, but I do not think that isolating women’s rights without addressing the larger picture of Africa and globalization will yield positive results. At the end of the day, African women and men have to live together in peace and harmony. This will not be achieved by looking only at the needs of one group.

RP: What would you say are some of the major contributions women in the developing world have contributed? What have African women contributed?

TD: I think African women who have made their mark in the world have shown what degrees of human strength are possible. They have shown us how to persevere, never give up, and simply never ever take NO for an answer, if the answer should be YES.

RP: Perhaps African American women writers such as bell hooks, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston are your counterparts in terms of writing from a particular ethnic and gender lens. Have these women at all influenced your work?

TD: Absolutely! All of them have. I remember being so impressed by Angela Davis’ Afro and the fact that she had been in jail! I thought, how can a woman in America have to go to jail? Then I read and found out why. It was good to realize that what I was beginning to notice going on around me was not my own little secret shame because I was not good enough at a personal level. I love bell hooks for writing about the rage that makes you want to kill, but then having to not kill and do something else instead that is life affirming, and, I imagine, infinitely more rewarding even if it seems at first to be infinitely more difficult than murder! Zora Neale Hurston simply stunned me by saying out, just like that, what she had to say. As for Toni Morrison, she is my ultimate literary role model. I remember telling my publisher how at first I was perplexed that each of Morrison’s novels were in a different voice. As a reader who had enjoyed one of her works, I craved a continuation in the next one. But then as I continued to read, I found that that was one of the marks of genius.

RP: In tandem with African women writers such as Buchi Emecheta, Ama Atta Aidoo, and Mariama Ba, you’ve managed to reconstruct the experiences of African women through the literary medium. What do you see as the role of African women writers today?

TD: Well, I write to tell a story. I think people like stories because they serve such a variety of purposes ranging from entertainment to information, to role modeling to catharsis.

RP: What is your latest novel about? How has publishing abroad been a challenge and a boon simultaneously?

TD: “The Book of Not” continues the story of Tambudzai Siguake, the narrator of “Nervous Conditions,” and her quest towards becoming herself. This journey almost comes to a premature end at the Catholic Convent School she attends in Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe]. I like to think, however, that she survives. Publishing abroad is useful because you reach a wider audience. Books published first in Zimbabwe are not automatically picked up by international publishers. I am still looking for a Zimbabwean publisher, though. I love touching the people around me, and stirring them to something.

RP: What would you say are your greatest accomplishments?

TD: Staying alive, healthy and happy. Loving my family and finding compassion.

*The title of “Nervous Conditions” is borrowed from Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Franz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth.” The ‘nervous condition’ of the native is, according to Sartre, a function of mutually reinforcing attitudes between colonizer and colonized that condemn the colonized to what amounts to a psychological disorder.

•This article first appeared in The Washington Informer and is reproduced here with permission. Robtel Neajai Pailey is the Washington Informer Assistant Editor.
•Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The growing debate over what to do about climate change promises to heat up further with the publication of an exhaustively-documented new book that says that the dominant “carbon trading” approach to the problem followed by the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme is both ineffective and unjust.

Do you want to reach a whole new audience with your original music? Would you like us to help promote your music? We're looking for artists to share their work with Pambazuka News to use in our new Podcasts - and we'll credit your work. Your work will be exposed to the 100,000 people who read Pambazuka News every week... Whether you're an up and coming musicians or an established artist, get in touch with our multimedia coordinator Heidi Bachram at [email][email protected]

The Commission of the African Union (AU) presents its compliments to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs/External Relations and Permanent Missions of all Member States of the African Union, and has the honor to refer to the decision of the 1st Session of AU Conference of Ministers of Culture held in Nairobi, Kenya in December 2005 (and as adopted by the January 2006 Summit held in Khartoum, Sudan), to convene the 1st Pan African Cultural Congress during 2006.

Squatting in a maximum security prison cell in Kenya in the 1970’s, Kenyan essayist, activist, scholar and teacher Ngugi wa Thiong’o [pronounced Goo-gi-wa-Tion-go] penned his very first novel on toilet paper.

It was written in Gikuyu, a language he grew up seeing, tasting, feeling, and owning in the hills and valleys of his homeland. Standing no more than 5-foot-5, with graying wisps of hair at the crown of his head, Ngugi is a giant among giants. His frame doesn’t do justice to his larger-than-life iconic persona.

He is the African world’s gift to language legitimacy, and he’s not backing down on his insistence that African languages hold the same importance as European languages on the continent of Africa and beyond.

“African languages refused to die,” said Ngugi two decades ago in his seminal volume of essays entitled “Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.” He was defying the often unspoken sentiment that African languages are secondary, and therefore on the verge of annihilation.

During his whirlwind trip to Washington, D.C. last week—which included an exclusive interview with The Informer—Ngugi was adamant about why African languages should take center stage.

At a lecture sponsored by Howard University’s African Studies Department, Karibu Books, and TransAfrica Forum last Thursday, he said that Europe’s colonization of Africa was fueled by its attempt to “shred our base, while they secured theirs.” The apparent destruction of African languages and naming systems was the means of destabilizing the continent, said Ngugi. It has far-reaching implications even today.

Ngugi believes that when published materials from the continent are written in European languages, “you place it within a linguistic prison” in which the texts are not accessible to the people who matter most—Africans themselves.

To say that Ngugi’s insistence is revolutionary would be an understatement.

With the exception of Ethiopia, whose official language is Amharic, the official languages of most African countries are the vestiges of colonial rule—Portuguese in the former Portuguese colonies, French in the former French colonies, and English in the former English colonies.

Although some countries have attempted to reconcile this disparity by adopting African languages as national languages—Senegal has Wolof and Kenya has Swahili—European languages still seem to carry more influence. Ngugi insists that officially evoking European languages perpetuates a system of dependency already evident in the manner in which Africa engages with the West.

He is the only continental author to write exclusively in an African language, forcing publishing houses to figure out the logistics of translation. And they have. Ngugi’s books have been translated in over 30 other languages. “What Gikuyu can do, any other African language can do,” said Ngugi, inadvertently encouraging other African writers to follow his lead.

His belief is that texts should be written in the language in which they are conceived, developed, and rendered. European languages, he said, should be additions and not substitutes to the already large body of African linguistic diversity.

In 1969, Ngugi and other professors at the University of Nairobi in Kenya questioned the primacy of the English language and even called for a shut-down of the English Literature Department in favor of positioning Black Literature—and by extension African languages—at the center of intellectual thought.

Thus began his activism on behalf of the struggles of Kenyans, and his increased ostracism from the political machinery. Thirty years ago, he openly criticized African authoritarian rule and economic dependency on Europe and his reward was exile.

Even today, the writer makes a point to step away from the language issue to scrutinize what he feels is of paramount concern to the continent of Africa—engaging with the West on equal footing. Ngugi believes that the West positioned itself as a giver and Africa as a beggar. “We must reject that conclusion altogether…The real crime is to refuse to stand up, the real aesthetic of resistance is to stand up, rise, and rise again.”

He says that Africa should not be a beggar considering its vast economic resources. “People are respected because of their strengths, not because of their weaknesses…We [Africans] have got to put our house in order before we can expect anyone to take us seriously.” This can be done through intra-continental travel, trade, and communication. “There has to be a greater, freer movement of goods, services, and people across our borders,” Ngugi stated.

Ngugi tested this notion in 2004 when he returned home after decades in exile. A distinguished professor of English and Comparative Literature and director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California at Irvine, Ngugi and his wife, Njeeri, went back to Kenya amidst a welcome fit for a prodigal son.

“We are determined that we are not hounded by those who were so keen on keeping us out in the first place,” said Ngugi, alluding to the genesis of his forced migration from a homeland so prominent in the texts he weaves eloquently.

Reflecting on the African Union’s proposed adoption of Swahili as its official language, Ngugi said that it was a step in the right direction, but he drew a cautionary line. “We shouldn’t go from English mono-lingualism to African mono-lingualism.” In other words, adopting Swahili should not negate the legitimacy of other African languages.

Eschewing political correctness, Ngugi is an advocate of Ebonics, which, he believes, is evidence of African languages holding ground in the U.S.

In the tradition of James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, and others, Ngugi says that African Americans were able to maintain cultural traditions in language formulation. To even begin to understand African American English (Ebonics), he argues, one must first study its roots.

Those roots are planted firmly on African soil.

While it has become common to observe a wry smirk on the faces of those who deride Ebonics as “bad” or “deviant” English, it is exactly here they stumble, failing to realize the power dynamics that lie beneath the debate. It is precisely here that Ngugi has contributed the most insightful observations.

The relationship between power and language has undoubtedly been his strongest area of research. He stated emphatically, “As long as people persist in interpreting themselves through linguistic vehicles that are external to themselves, they are continuing in that ‘oppressive’ pattern.” To choose a language, he declares, is to choose a world.

This analysis also sheds light on how African Americans sought to own the English language. While they may have been forced to adopt the words of the English-speaking community, total acquiescence was impossible. They would borrow words, package their delivery defiantly in their own cadences and intonations, and completely transform the meanings of some, such as “cool.”

Ngugi sees this as a natural act of resistance by a human community. “The struggle of African people in the ‘New World’,” he said, “takes the form of creating new languages. [Their] conditions of life also mean a struggle to construct the world in their own terms.”

Indeed, Ebonics has played a strong role in American culture. While mainstream America has shunned incorporating it into the academy, they’ve embraced it culturally as evidenced in its boasted cultural forums like hip-hop. “Hip-hop,” Ngugi said to The Informer, “is a lyrical based extension of Ebonics.”

And the buck doesn’t stop there. “Ebonics has [also] had a major impact on the language of power [English],” he reminds us. According to Ngugi, American literary icons such as William Faulkner and Mark Twain generously used Ebonics in their texts. America’s denial of its impact and influence perhaps led Toni Morrison to charge it with “playing in the dark.”

Though a strong proponent of the new language African Americans created, Ngugi cautioned against embracing it exclusively. “Do not abandon Ebonics, but definitely learn the language of power,” he instructed. In a rapidly globalizing world, one must necessarily be multilingual.

Ngugi looks forward to a world in which the communication between African Americans and Africans are conducted directly, not through the medium of European languages.

He was pleasantly surprised to visit a community school in Michigan in which African Americans were speaking Ki-Swahili fluently with the same mannerisms of native Kenyans. “Black Americans should be learning African languages,” he stated resolutely in an interview with The Informer. “An African language of their choice would do more to integrate Diaspora Africans than anything else.”

A Ghanaian based in South Africa, Kwesi Kwaa Prah echoes this sentiment: "We need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that Africa is a Tower of Babel in which thousands of languages are spoken. The implication of the idea of Africa as a Tower of Babel is that there are too many languages for Africans to be able to work in their language, therefore they must work in colonial languages.”

Like Ngugi, Prah is an African languages enthusiast. He currently serves as director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) based in Cape Town, South Africa. According to Prah, the “Tower of Babel” myth preserves “the cultural and linguistic hegemony of colonially introduced languages in Africa.” The work Prah and his colleagues are doing at CASAS demystifies the notion that African languages are too innumerable to catalogue, study, and appreciate.

He lauds Ngugi for being a pioneer in the deconstruction of European language supremacy on the continent and within the Diaspora.

Referring to his latest novel, “Wizard of the Crow,” Ngugi firmly believes that it will find a home in the consciousness of Black people because “they will find my books illuminate their experiences today.”

In “Wizard,” Aburiria is a fictional nation and it becomes a dystopia representing the all-too-real problems that many contemporary African nations faced in their post-independence societies. Ngugi said “post independent states have been headed by the wrong heads.”

“Wizard” is also about love and the struggle between the material and spiritual as well. It illuminates the lives of average Africans attempting to control their destinies in the midst of dictatorships and neo-colonial deprivation. “The colonial experience is part of the experience of the modern world…It’s not a matter of sentiment, it’s historical fact,” said Ngugi, who believes that “Economic modernity is founded on what was taken from Africa” in the form of natural resources such as gold, timber, rubber, coltan, and cobalt.

Ngugi said in jest that “Wizard” has all the answers to the world’s existential questions. Perhaps it has hidden in its lyricism the answers to the African world’s most potent dilemmas. For example, one of the characters in “Wizard” is on a perpetual search around the world for the source of Black people’s power, and he finds eventually that it’s in unity. This is the key to moving forward for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic, asserted Ngugi.

“We have been strongest in our heightened unity and weakest in our heightened disunity,” he told The Informer.

Ngugi has a keen interest in consolidating the economic and political resources of “the two halves of Africa.” He says this can be achieved through African leaders extending dual citizenship to Africans of the Diaspora. “You want to create bridges to the continent of Africa for Diaspora Africans to invest and visit” without impediments. The first major tourist destination for African Americans should be the continent of Africa, said Ngugi.

A special bond links Africans and African Americans, and though it has been frayed and stretched, hacked at, and even denied by some, it persists.

Responding to a question by The Informer concerning African/African American solidarity, Ngugi answered with the quiet detachment of an elder who has witnessed that bond strengthened through the efforts and labor of many, least of all, himself. “We’ve got a lot to learn from each other,” he said emphatically.

* This article first appeared in The Washington Informer and is reproduced here with permission. The Informer's editorial for on the subject "Kudos to an African Icon" can be read at http://www.washingtoninformer.com/opinionseditorials.html Robtel Neajai Pailey is the Washington Informer Assistant Editor, and Melvin Kadiri Barrolle is the Washington Informer Contributing Writer.

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Two white Zimbabwean farmers are to be charged for refusing to vacate their land, ZimOnline reported. Another 50 white landowners across the country had meanwhile been ordered to surrender their properties, the Commercial Farmers Union said. Vice-president Trevor Gifford said the two farmers would appear in the magistrate's court in the farming town of Karoi in the Mashonaland West province.

In just over two years of DNA testing, I may have become the most genetically well-documented Black person to date. I have cajoled and convinced relatives to assist me in this quest by swabbing the inside of their cheeks in furtherance of the family good.

In the competitive but lucrative US market, African films are still on the margins. New York-based Kino International and California Newsreel in San Francisco are two rare American companies struggling to fill this gap by distributing African videos and DVDs in the US. Recently, Kino released three African films, YEELEN (1987), HYENAS (1992) and GENESIS (1999) on DVD as a part of the company's tradition of distributing classics and foreign language art films. (HYENAS was released in association with the California Newsreel's Library of African Cinema, the largest library of African films and videos in the country.)

As the three DVDs arrive in American video stores, one might be tempted to ask how well these DVDs will do with American audiences. Will they face the same difficulty other African films have had finding broader audiences in the US? And why are African videos and DVDs so absent from the American market? There are no quick or simple answers to these questions.

Nonetheless, we can say that the absence of African videos and DVDs in the US market is tied to the specific challenges facing African films throughout the international market. Film producers in Africa lack strong commercial organizations to help them distribute and exhibit their films, both in Africa and abroad. As a result, the distribution of African films is carried out individually by African filmmakers themselves, with the support of European and American companies, a situation which looks like that of independent filmmakers anywhere -- although the difficulties faced by independent filmmakers in more affluent countries pale in comparison to the ordeals experienced by African filmmakers.

Made by three major Francophone African directors, YEELEN, HYENAS and GENESIS have already gained unique significance in universities and risen to a special place in world cinema because of their highly stylized and metaphorical representations of contemporary Africa. All three films use allegory to tell their stories about Africa's descent into political chaos and economic poverty at the end of the 20th century. These fin de siècle fables describe the betrayal of the dreams of development and progress that followed an enthusiastic independence era in post-World-War II Africa.

YELEEN is the fourth feature by Malian Souleymane Cissé, a pioneer and leading figure of African cinema (along with Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène). In 1987, YEELEN won both the Grand Jury Prize of the International Film Festival at Cannes and the Golden Prize of the Pan-African Film Festival of Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso. Since then, the film has earned critical acclaim around the world.

Loosely based on the oral epic of ancient Mali, YEELEN is set in an unspecified time in a Bambara kingdom in pre-colonial West Africa. The film mixes legend and history to recount the struggle for power and knowledge between Nianankoro, a son with a Promethean complex, and his father Soma, who is a sorcerer and the high priest of a secret society known as the Komo. Nianankoro -- a newly initiated Bambara warrior with supernatural powers --wants to end the Bambara's abuse of power and secret knowledge. Considered a dangerous threat to the privileges of the Komo Order, he is banned and persecuted. The secret order mandates that one of its members - the warrior's father, Soma -- find and punish Nianankoro. This clash between Nianankoro and the members of the Komo order is seen in Africa as a metaphor for young people's rebellion against autocratic regimes in Mali and Africa during the 1980s.

HYENAS was the last feature by Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty, who died in Paris in July 1998. During a "career" that spanned almost three decades, Mambéty was a non-conformist who completed only two features and a few short films. His second feature HYENAS was made almost twenty years after his first feature, TOUKI BOUKI, or THE JOURNEY OF THE HYENA. The 1973 TOUKI BOUKI, considered a classic of African cinema, is an avant-garde film about disillusioned youth -- their existentialist search for meaning in independent 1960s Senegal, and their ironic fascination with France, the old colonial power. Like TOUKI BOUKI, HYENAS is a tour de force in symbolic storytelling and a centerpiece in Mambety's obsessive quest for an African style of cinema.

Based on Swiss playwright Frederich Dürrenmatt's "The Visit of the Old Woman" (which was made into a movie with Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn in 1964), HYENAS is a dark satire on human greed and a nightmarish tale of how things have gone astray in present-day Africa. Mambety's version of "The Visit" is set in contemporary Senegal. Linguère Ramatou, a rich old woman, returns to her native neighborhood of Colobane on the outskirt of Dakar to unleash bittersweet revenge against her former lover, Draman Drameh. Years before, Draman Drameh betrayed and abandoned Ramatou after she became pregnant to marry a wealthy woman. Driven out of Colobane, Ramatou was forced into prostitution, and miraculously, she became very rich. Now that she is "richer than the World Bank," according to the praise songs of musicians in Colobane, billionaire Ramatou promises her riches to the townspeople (and all the glitters of consumer society), but only if they will kill her former lover Draman Drameh.

The film provides a hypnotic and sarcastic account of this Faustian bargain between the desperate townspeople and the unforgiving Ramatou, offering a metaphor for the present-day impoverishment and plunder of Africa by corrupt local leaders and institutions like the Word Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Cheick Oumar Sissoko's GENESIS is another ambitious end-of-the-century allegory by a member of the second generation of African filmmakers. Written by French screenwriter Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux, the film is a revisionist adaptation of GENESIS, the biblical story about fratricidal strife in the house of Abraham, set now in a West African context. Drawing from the Old Testament, the film chronicles the internecine conflict among three clans: the hunter-gatherers led by Isaac's elder son Esau (played by famous Malian singer and pop star Salif Keïta), his younger brother Jacob's clan of monotheistic nomadic herdsmen, and their cousin Hamor's Canaanite clan of sedentary farmers who still practice polytheism.

The plot of GENESIS, which seems convoluted to many, is driven by a series of events that lead to a deadly conflict amongst the three clans. As Esau roams the mythic space of the story, he plots a merciless revenge against his younger brother Jacob, who has tricked him out of his birthright. Jacob, on the other hand, has become a recluse as symbolic self-punishment for his own actions that led to the selling into slavery of his favorite son Joseph by his own envious brothers. Harmor the Canaanite is drawn into the conflict when his son Sechem abducts Jacob's simple-minded daughter Dinah. The pacifist Hamor proposes intermarriage as a possible solution to their differences, and he even allows the two youngsters to marry, but not before he has been forced by Jacob's sons to accept a condition that all the Canaanite males must be circumcised. Following the circumcision, Jacob's clan led by his sons raids the compound of the Canaanites and slaughters all the males. Their deceitful act further propels the cycle of violence in this story of hatred and revenge.

Like his previous film GUIMBA, THE TYRANT, which is itself an allegory about dictatorship in contemporary Africa, Sissoko's GENESIS symbolically delves into the current drama of civil wars and conflicts in Africa and around the world. Sagot-Duvauroux and Sissoko's bold revision of this archetypal story of madness and vengeance not only gives the biblical story a genuine African perspective, it also infuses the historical experience of Africa with universal understanding.

From the early 1980s onward, allegory as a means of social criticism has become a widespread practice in African cinema, and has helped filmmakers develop an aesthetic of resistance in countries that have become increasingly totalitarian. Ultimately, all three of these films symbolically explore the fate of Africa, as the continent struggles with both real and imaginary forces: internal and external, economic and political, social and cultural.

* This article first appeared in “Really Good Films” online magazine, and it is republished here with a kind permission of the author. Hamidou Soumah is an independent film scholar who lives and teaches in Los Angeles.

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

Thirty poets from thirteen countries will descend on Johannesburg and Durban for a groundbreaking experience of words and rhythms at the 10th Poetry Africa international poetry festival in early October.The festival showcases a diversity of poetic styles that bring together the traditional and the cutting edge.

Agenda requests poetry contributions that explore the crime of human trafficking, especially affecting women and girl-children. Contributions will be considered for publication in issue 60, working title "Human Trafficking".

Zimbabwe's largest university will soon begin teaching Chinese, in the latest example of increased ties between the Beijing and Harare governments. Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper reports that Chinese and Zimbabwean officials signed a deal to introduce Chinese language and culture instruction at the University of Zimbabwe.

Film director Spike Lee's long-awaited four-hour documentary about Hurricane Katrina was due to receive its world premiere last night, watched by 16,000 people who lived through the tragedy. The first half of Lee's $2m (£1.05m) documentary, When the Levees Broke: a Requiem in Four Acts, was scheduled to be shown to a sell-out audience in the New Orleans Arena. The venue is next door to the Superdome, the sports complex where more than 15,000 people sought shelter during the hurricane last year.

Dramatic atrocities, extreme human suffering and the cruelties and psychosis of dirt poverty and slum life make for memorable documentaries, and the Sierra Leone civil war (1991-2002) combined all of these in excess. Man Den Nor Glady'O, a 57-minute documentary produced by charmingly named Rice N Peas, an alternative London-based production company, is the latest to relentlessly focus on these vulgar aspects of the country's recent and current condition.

Bi Kidude, virtuoso queen of Taraab and Unyago music from Zanzibar, continues to dazzle audiences at the age of 95-plus. Shailja Patel saw her live for the first time at the recently-ended ZIFF Festival of the Dhow Countries.

I.

The woman planted a drum on the grass before her
twisted a soft worn khanga round her hips.
As if she was going to wash clothes, chop vegetables,
hike a child to her back to go to market.
None of us really paid any attention.

The woman harnessed her hips to the drum.
Chest-high, foot-in-diameter uyagi drum.
Placed it aslant between her straddled legs,
settled into position.
Sunken chest erect
shoulders, neck, at the ready,
mouth set over gaping gums,
khanga hiked up skinny strong legs.
Feet placed in the earth
like it was time
to do business.
Like she was going
to work.

Suddenly, we are on
Planet Kidude.
Where men scurry across the mat
place mics, arrange wires, jostle for camera views.
Where she ignores them all
because she has done this for eight decades,
before there were cameras, mics;
decades she hoisted her drum
trudged rich dirt,
the length and breadth of Tanzania
to perform.
Decades she fought off
terror, insults, mockery,
the soul-destroying silence
only the strongest fire survives,
decades she travelled deep and deeper
to the heart of her own rhythm.

This is Bi Kidude.
Virtuoso of Taraab, Uyagi,
woman who at ninety-five, has walked more miles
than most of us have driven,
claimed a lineage
of music rooted
in the lives of the powerless,
stories unfurled in language of street and market,
poetry buried in the bodies of women.

II.

I have never seen a woman ride a drum before
like a goddess rides a tiger
like creation rides the cosmos,
I have never seen a woman ride a drum like this -
I have never seen an artist
male or female,
anywhere across the globe
own their instrument,
like it grew out of their belly
was welded to their thighs.

III.

Then, there were the dancers.

The dancers moved lazily
dropped their cellphones, shook out their khangas
gold at their ears, their necks, their wrists
gold gleamed in their mouths.

The dancers slipped into movement
as a bhajia slips into hot oil
rises to the surface
starts to sizzle.

Now the dancers shake their hips
with precision of balance, control
potency of strength, of muscle isolation
Olympic gymnasts would envy.

They shake their hips
for all of us
who have been taught, coerced
to disown our bodies,
for all women whose bodies
have been stolen from them.

They thrust their succulent buttocks out
with democratic largesse:
tease the old woman in the black buibui,
taunt the white-boy, dreadlocked tourist
who feigns coolness behind his wraparound sunglasses
while I watch his neck turn scarlet
drip with sweat.

The dancers shake their hips for the waitresses
at Africa House hotel, caged
in the most godawful
ugly, cheap, confining,
sweat-producing black skirts, white shirts
to serve drinks to tourists in shorts and bikinis.
Because heaven forbid those who serve
should ever feel breeze on their skins,
heaven forbid those who serve
should move their hips and torsos
freely in clothes that flow,
colours that hum,
we might forget they are servants
we might
see them.

The dancers shake their hips for the women
those waitresses serve. Waxy-pale bikini-clad tourists
at Serena's poolside.
Women who check their bodies daily
for forbidden fat,
outlawed abundance of flesh.
Women of the tragic sisterhood
of liposuction, surgical alteration,
silent epidemic – thirty-thousand anorexia deaths per year.
Women taught that beauty
equals self-annihilation.

These dancers shake their hips
for the six-thousand girl children who today
were held down, legs spread, hands tied, gagged, blindfolded
tortured beyond screaming,
violated beyond horror,
circumcised
for the crime
of a clitoris.

They shake their hips for every woman
infected with HIV
by a man who valued her life
less than his gratification.

These women who circle Bi Kidude
as planets orbit the sun,
circle like temple snakes
sinuous panthers
the source where sound begins,
they are shaking the bounty
of women's bodies
back into the world.

Their hips and butts are saying
YESS!!
YES - to largeness that does not apologise.
YES - to power, knowledge that do not disguise themselves.
YES -to pleasure, claimed and vested
in our mortal beautiful bodies.

III

I will never fear aging again
because now I have heard Bi Kidude
belt out, at ninety-five, without a mic
tobacco-stained waves of sound
sandpapered down to coconut fibre
stronger than cables of steel.

I will never fear aging again
because now I have seen Bi Kidude
whose face has never touched
an anti-wrinkle cream,
an age-defying glycolic acid enzyme peel,
who knocks back whisky, cigarettes
for every ounce of moisturizer I consume,
hypnotise a hundred cameras.

I have felt the power of this woman's neck
her shoulder muscles
surge thunder down arm
to hand to drum;
generate more electricity
than ten Madonnas,
a hundred Fela Kutis with sixteen-piece bands,
take us back to the center of fertile creation
where sound begins.

IV.

I believe in Bi Kidude
the way I don't believe in god.

But if god were a ninety-five-year old, ebony black
Swahili woman,
who claims to be one hundred and twenty,
with a mouth full of broken and missing teeth
hands veined like banyan trees
a drum between her legs,
a kijiti between her defiant, all-knowing lips
a shillingi-mia-kumi note flapping out of her neckline;

if god chanted wickedly satirical shairi
about the dangers of the very deathstick
she sucks on;

if god embraced irony, lust, contradiction
heartbreak, imperfection,
if god flaunted her struggles like a velvet cape,
rearranged the atoms of the world
with the rhythm of her gut

then maybe I would believe
in that god.
That god who is only a name
for the genius in all of us
that makes us our own imam and prophet
our own divinity.

I would call the faithful to prayer:
Bomba Kidude! Kidude Saafi!

And they would holler back: Saafi!
They would holler back: Saafi!
They would holler back: SAAFI!

And we would all be

god.

* Shailja Patel is a Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist. Visit her at

* Background on Bi Kidude (Courtesy of Busara Promotions)

She is about 93 or something like that, but still she is the undisputed queen of taarab and unyago traditional music. Bi Kidude is still alive and kicking, touring Europe as well as Africa spreading taarab music. You might wonder what keeps this legendary barefoot diva strong and active despite her age, but as she says herself "everytime I sing I feel like a 14-year old girl!”

Bi Kidude's exact date of birth is unknown, much of her life story is uncorroborated, giving her an almost mythical status. Kidude started out her musical career in the 1920s, and learnt many of her songs with Siti bint Saad. She has performed in countries all around Europe, Middle East and Japan and finally recorded her first solo album ("Zanzibar", Retroafric Recordings) only six years ago, while in her mid-eighties. Recently she released a second locally-produced album ("Machozi ya Huba", Heartbeat Records) with her traditional drums influencing the burgeoning Zenji Flava local hip-hop scene in one of the most remarkable juxtapositions of musical style in modern 'World Music'.

Since fleeing a forced marriage at the age of 13 and escaping her homeland of Zanzibar, Bi Kidude has led an extraordinary and varied career as a drummer, singer, henna artist and natural healer. Her first journey was to the mainland of Tanzania, where she walked the length and breadth of the country barefoot. Fleeing a second unhappy marriage, Bi Kidude boarded a dhow, the ancient sailing vessels of the Swahili coast and journeyed north to Egypt where she became a renowned singer in the foremost dance bands of 1930's Egypt.

With renewed confidence and a new attitude to tradition (by now Kidude had thrown off her veil and shaved her head!) she returned, slowly to Zanzibar where she acquired a small clay house in the 1940's and settled down to life grounded in the traditional roots of society. Her role was as part of the 'Unyago' movement, which prepares young Swahili women for their transition through puberty and she excelled at the art of henna designing for young brides, manufacturing her own 'wanja' application from age old recipes fit 'to make a rainbow shine'. To this day, Bi Kidude performs traditional unyago music and is still the island's leading exponent of this ancient dance ritual, performed exclusively for teenage girls, which uses traditional rhythms to teach women to pleasure their husbands, while lecturing against the dangers of sexual abuse and oppression.

Her many talents were acknowledged by Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) at the second Festival of the Dhow Countries in 1999, when she was awarded "Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to the Arts."

Bi Kidude's is a remarkable story, one which challenges our perception of age, and of the role of women in Islam. She has never conformed to the media stereotype of a Muslim woman ever since she removed her veil. To see a ninety-something year old Muslim woman drink, smoke, flirt, dance and drum is a unique experience. To witness the transformation as she reverses the ageing process and changes from a wrinkled granny into a vital shining star is nothing short of revelationary.

For the past three months Bi Kidude has been setting the festivals and concert venues of Europe ablaze, where she has been receiving rapturous reviews of her performances with Zanzibar's illustrious Culture Musical Club taarab orchestra. With her humble manner, incredible stage personality, voice and strength, Bi Kidude is favourite with audiences wherever the group performs.

Midway through this tour, the whole of Zanzibar was thrown into shock and disarray when a rumour spread fast through the island that Bi Kidude had died. From the narrow streets of Stone Town to the barazas of N'gambo and throughout the villages this was the only topic of conversation as the island rapidly acquired the atmosphere of mourning. This rumour continued to spread even long after the offices of Busara Promotions had disseminated confirmation from Bi Kidude's European promoters that on the contrary, she was alive and very well. She may have been surprised to hear that people in Zanzibar think that she has died:

"Sijafa bado. Labda sababu watu hawajaonana nami sasa karibu mwezi. Lakini bado tunaendelea na safari na bado safari ndefu ya miezi miwili. Lakini sijambo, sina wasiwasi miye. Kuimba naimba na nguvu zote ambazo ninazo ili watu wafurahi."

"I haven't died yet. Maybe people are saying that because they haven't seen me around for almost a month. But we are still continuing our tour which lasts for two more months. Me, I'm well, I have no problem. Me I sing with all my strength and continue to make people happy."

In September she will be packing her drums and travelling again, to perform a series of shows around KwaZulu Natal at the invitation of Awesome Africa Festival, culminating in a shared performance with South Africa's legendary Mahotella Queens.

Courtesy of Busara Promotions.

Today I feel no kinship with the human race.
I’m sorry,
but today I feel affinity with clotting blood
smeared on a pitted ghetto street,
beside the broken skull of an alien child,
barely ten winters old.
crushed by the triumphant indifference
of the ruling race

I’m sorry. For I know how infra dig this sounds,
especially when I estimate
the days and months of blinkless surveillance
you’ll now invest in me;
but up there in the cynic skies
I see your rockets’ frozen flatulence
and wonder what you sought,
so far above the earth,
when everywhere I turn
the cries of dying children fill my ears…

Today! I feel no kinship with the human race
for when his alien scream perjured the air
my heart confessed its truth!
That’s how I know I’m alien too,
like him, an outsider
There are many, many restless aliens
stalking all your streets

Tonight, when claret dams rupture,
don’t expect squeamishness from me,
when grey wakes end in the mist of flashing skies…
I know how terrorist this sounds!
coming from one so conformist!
…but I have seen polished members of the human race
dining with dismembered portions of the avian race.
I have seen courteous, lipsticked, napkined smiles,
pausing awhile to masticate
- and know that norms of decency
have no bearings beyond the pale of race…

Tonight! When I steer angers into crimson streams,
don’t expect decency when brooks begin to brim,
for your pacifists will turn their backs to the butchers,
only to belly up to the dinner
once the gory deed is done…

Tonight! I’ll feel no kinship with the wicked race
when judgement’s angel stalks,
but heed this warning; let every quickened man beware.
For every clotted drop will tell its tale to me,
‘and I’ll raise every sleeper of your race
to come account to Me.

Tonight’.

* From Chuma Nwokolo: ‘Memories of Stone’. Lagos: Villagerhouse 2006. Reproduce with the permission of the author.

* Chuma Nwokolo is a writer and advocate from Jos, Nigeria, and is writer-in-residence at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.

Polygamy is enshrined as a man's right in Swaziland's new constitution, but women led by King Mswati's eldest daughter are having none of it, taking on the traditionalists that run the country. "Polygamy brings all advantages in a relationship to men, and this to me is unfair and evil," Princess Sikhanyiso told the press this week in an ongoing debate that has stirred deep emotions.