tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/post-colonialism-29418/articlesPost-colonialism – The Conversation2023-10-30T16:14:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165992023-10-30T16:14:06Z2023-10-30T16:14:06ZKing Charles in Kenya: despite past tensions, the visit is a sign of a strong relationship with Britain<p>King Charles’ <a href="https://www.royal.uk/Kenya-announcement">visit to Kenya this week</a> is the British monarch’s first to a <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/about-us">Commonwealth nation</a> since his coronation in September 2022. The visit comes during the country’s 60th anniversary of <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kenya-declares-independence-from-britain">independence from Britain</a>.</p>
<p>By choosing Kenya, the British government and monarchy seek to highlight the importance they attribute to the east African nation. It also shows other Commonwealth members that it’s possible for a republic to have a positive relationship with Britain. Some Commonwealth states like <a href="https://constitutionnet.org/news/jamaicas-transition-republic-process-matters">Jamaica</a> are contemplating removing the king as head of state.</p>
<p>King Charles’ visit is meant to celebrate <a href="https://www.royal.uk/Kenya-announcement">the warm relationship</a> between the two countries. It will also <a href="https://www.royal.uk/Kenya-announcement">acknowledge the more painful aspects</a> of the UK and Kenya’s shared history. </p>
<p>The relationship with Kenya remains one of Britain’s more positive post-colonial relationships. However, there have been <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/calls-for-king-charles-to-apologise-for-colonial-era-atrocities-on-kenya-visit-4398116">calls for Britain to apologise and make reparations</a> for its brutal suppression of freedom fighters. People in Kenya, Britain and other former colonies will be watching closely to see what the king has to say.</p>
<p>I’m a historian who has <a href="https://www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/staff/poppy-cullen/#tab2">studied and written</a> about the political relationship between Britain and Kenya in the decades after independence. In my view, the relationship has taken a positive tilt since independence for three reasons. These are: the choices of Kenya’s first independent president; diplomatic, economic and ideological alignments; and military ties. </p>
<h2>Kenya and Britain’s history</h2>
<p>Kenya became a British colony in the late 19th century. A small minority of white British settlers held almost all of the <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-56276-6">political and economic power</a>. The British government planned to make Kenya a “multi-racial” state. The small white European and Asian populations of 55,700 and 176,600 people, respectively, would have equal or more power than the black majority of 8.3 million. Only in 1960 did the British government accept that Kenya should have majority rule and independence. </p>
<p>Independence celebrations in 1963 were preceded by a difficult period of negotiation and violence. A state of emergency was declared in 1952 in response to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mau-Mau">Mau Mau uprising</a>. This was an armed rebellion among one of Kenya’s major tribes, the Kikuyu, fighting for land and freedom. </p>
<p>The emergency lasted until 1960. Over this period, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau">thousands of Kenyans were killed</a>, and tens of thousands were detained in camps without trial. The camps became sites of violence and abuse. </p>
<p>With this past, a close post-colonial relationship between Kenya and Britain can appear surprising. It was expected that Kenya would turn away from Britain and towards other international partners, such as the US or the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Soviet-Union">Soviet Union</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, the relationship has largely been close and friendly, with trade benefits, alignment on significant issues and strong military ties.</p>
<h2>Positive relations</h2>
<p>Kenya’s first president, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jomo-Kenyatta/Return-to-Kenya">Jomo Kenyatta</a>, had been imprisoned by Britain as a leader of the Mau Mau. But once he took leadership, he opted to work primarily with Britain. </p>
<p>Kenyatta saw the benefits he could get from this relationship. These included financial and military backing during the Cold War, and personal backing. In 1965, Britain made plans to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2016.1261917">protect</a> Kenyatta if a coup was attempted.</p>
<p>British officials were surprised but pleased by Kenyatta’s position. They had many interests in Kenya, ranging from trade to diplomacy. One key interest was Kenya’s white European and Asian populations who held British passports. To help achieve their security, the British government financed the purchase of their land, which could then be sold to Kenyans. Before independence, many in Kenya had hoped for land redistribution. Instead, European settlers got financial benefits.</p>
<p>For decades after independence, Britain was Kenya’s primary economic partner. Currently, Britain is the <a href="https://www.kenyahighcom.org.uk/kenya-uk-relations">largest European investor in Kenya and Kenya’s second-largest export destination</a>. There are <a href="https://www.britishchambers.org.uk/locations/british-chamber-of-commerce-kenya/#:%7E:text=As%20it%20stands%2C%20there%20are,139%20billion%20in%20value.">more than 200</a> British businesses operating in Kenya. </p>
<p>The British and Kenyan governments have <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-kenya-strategic-partnership-2020-2025">broadly aligned on international diplomatic issues</a> like the Cold War, and later the “war on terror”. There were some exceptions, and the Kenyan government did criticise British policies towards white rule in Rhodesia and apartheid in South Africa. But in private the relationship remained cordial. </p>
<h2>Military connections</h2>
<p>Military ties have been especially close. Britain remains a training partner. The royal visit includes <a href="https://www.royal.uk/Kenya-announcement">meeting Kenyan marines trained by British marines</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2016.1261917">Britain has also sold arms to Kenya</a> and provided support to set up a navy and air force after independence. </p>
<p>After independence, many African countries expelled their British military commanders to replace them with Africans. Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta chose to keep British commanders. The Kenyan army was led by a British officer until 1966, the navy until 1972 and the air force until 1973. </p>
<p>Most important for Britain is that its military is allowed to <a href="https://www.army.mod.uk/deployments/africa/">train in Kenya</a>. This allows them to practise in different and difficult terrains.</p>
<h2>Closeness despite challenges</h2>
<p>The relationship between the two nations since independence has not always been smooth, however. </p>
<p>In 1967-68, Kenya increased policies that <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/4/newsid_2738000/2738629.stm">discriminated against Kenyan Asians</a>. The 1967 Immigration Act and 1968 Trade Licensing Act, for instance, meant non-citizens (including many Asians) needed work permits. This led to the immigration to Britain of <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1968-02-15/debates/e5e33ebe-b72f-4bae-82b4-1125bab0f265/AsianImmigrantsFromKenya">13,600 east African Asians</a> in 1967.</p>
<p>The British government then <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/9/pdfs/ukpga_19680009_en.pdf#page=4">passed legislation</a> to limit their right to enter the UK despite their holding British passports. </p>
<p>After Ugandan president Idi Amin <a href="https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/ugandan-asians-50-years-since-their-expulsion-from-uganda/">expelled the Asian population</a> in 1972 – about 40,000 Asian Ugandans moved to the UK – Britain offered aid to Kenya to ensure it didn’t follow a similar policy. </p>
<p>In 1982, after the Kenya Air Force <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/08/09/how-kenyas-rebels-botched-their-coup/ca1fdf2f-3961-476f-a682-45be109e583f/">attempted a coup</a>, many in Kenya’s elite became suspicious of Britain’s aims in the country. </p>
<p>Since independence, some in Kenya have <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/calls-for-king-charles-to-apologise-for-colonial-era-atrocities-on-kenya-visit-4398116">questioned</a> why British troops still train in the country. The killing in 2012 of a Kenyan woman, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10931549/British-soldier-accused-fatally-stabbing-Kenyan-prostitute-Agnes-Wanjiru-21-England.html">Agnes Wanjiru</a>, seemingly by British soldiers, exacerbated these grumblings.</p>
<p>The issue of the Mau Mau has also been a source of recent tension. </p>
<p>Kenya has repeatedly asked for archive files related to the Mau Mau, which the British government denied having. These files were only <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a824499e5274a2e87dc2089/cary-report-release-colonial-administration-files.pdf">acknowledged and released after 2011</a>. </p>
<p>In 2013, the British government finally acknowledged that the government had known about and been complicit in torture and violence during the emergency, and victims would be paid compensation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/uk-compensate-kenya-mau-mau-torture">£19.9 million</a>. The then foreign secretary William Hague <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-to-parliament-on-settlement-of-mau-mau-claims">stated</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The British government sincerely regrets that these abuses took place. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Pushing forward</h2>
<p>Despite moments of tension, the two governments have always sought to dispel difficulties. The king’s visit, for instance, is on the invitation of Kenya’s president William Ruto. Ruto made his first overseas visit as president to the UK for <a href="https://www.pd.co.ke/news/ruto-attention-british-monarchs-funeral-150476/">Queen Elizabeth’s funeral</a> in September 2022. </p>
<p>Over six decades, the challenges that have arisen have not been enough to derail the relationship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Poppy Cullen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The visit will acknowledge the more painful aspects of the UK and Kenya’s colonial history.Poppy Cullen, Lecturer in International History, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2151252023-10-19T15:29:22Z2023-10-19T15:29:22ZPlan to ‘retain and explain’ controversial statues is flawed – why we should always question our monuments<p>The long-awaited <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-for-custodians-on-how-to-deal-with-commemorative-heritage-assets-that-have-become-contested/guidance-for-custodians-on-how-to-deal-with-commemorative-heritage-assets-that-have-become-contested">government guidance</a> on the official “<a href="https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2023/10/government-finally-publishes-retain-and-explain-guidance/">retain and explain</a>” policy suggests the UK’s contested statues and monuments be retained as long as additional context is provided. But given their controversial past, how do we go about that? </p>
<p>Done properly and creatively, with adequate funding and accurate, innovative storytelling, this could throw light on the different ways in which we might understand Britain’s past. </p>
<p>The guidance has been several years in the making. The 2020 toppling of the Bristol statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston led to contentious debate. A trial for criminal damage ensued but the “Colston Four” were cleared, their defence arguing that the act was “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/05/four-cleared-of-toppling-edward-colston-statute">on the right side of history</a>”. </p>
<p>Dented and defaced, the statue was later <a href="https://exhibitions.bristolmuseums.org.uk/the-colston-statue/">put on display</a> in Bristol, where thousands flocked to see it. The monument was <a href="https://theconversation.com/public-sculpture-expert-why-i-welcome-the-decision-to-throw-bristols-edward-colston-statue-in-the-river-140285">alive and relevant</a> as never before – a good example of how seeing statues afresh can help to unlock a fuller understanding of our past, and the forces that shaped it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crowd cheers as a statue of a slave trader is brought down in Bristol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554782/original/file-20231019-27-c6blch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554782/original/file-20231019-27-c6blch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554782/original/file-20231019-27-c6blch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554782/original/file-20231019-27-c6blch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554782/original/file-20231019-27-c6blch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554782/original/file-20231019-27-c6blch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554782/original/file-20231019-27-c6blch.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colston’s statue is brought down by activists in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Edward_Colston#/media/File:Toppling_of_Colston_Statue.jpg">Greenhill 22 / Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Historian David Olusoga has responded to the retain and explain policy by <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12596597/Statues-NOT-history-silent-victims-David-Olusoga-says.html">pointing out</a> its crucial flaws, arguing that statues were “validation and memorialisation” rather than history, and that they represented the interests and values of elite white men rather than wider society.</p>
<p>Olusoga’s point is valid. In the majority of cases, statues and monuments were raised by those who could afford to pay for them and who wished to promote their own interests. We see this when we look at any type of monument, even in iconic national spaces like <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/history/explore-our-history/poets-corner">Poets’ Corner</a> in Westminster Abbey.</p>
<h2>The case of William Benson</h2>
<p>A good example is the monument to the poet <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/john-milton">John Milton</a>, celebrated author of <a href="https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/philip-pullmans-introduction-to-paradise-lost">Paradise Lost</a>. It’s hard to dispute that Milton merits a memorial, given the enormous cultural influence and poetic achievement of his work. </p>
<p>But the poet’s expensive monument is not really about him at all. As the abbey’s website <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/john-milton">openly concedes</a>, the inscription on the plinth says far “more about the donor than the poet”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… This bust of the author of Paradise Lost was placed here by William Benson Esquire, one of the two Auditors of the Imprests to his Majesty King George the second, formerly Surveyor General of the Works to his Majesty King George the first.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, Milton’s prominent monument in Poets’ Corner, viewed by thousands every year, celebrates Benson as a sort of posthumous patron and protector of our nation’s literary culture.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554783/original/file-20231019-30-trwjjo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A plinth and bust of the poet Milton at Westminster Abbey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554783/original/file-20231019-30-trwjjo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554783/original/file-20231019-30-trwjjo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554783/original/file-20231019-30-trwjjo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554783/original/file-20231019-30-trwjjo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554783/original/file-20231019-30-trwjjo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554783/original/file-20231019-30-trwjjo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554783/original/file-20231019-30-trwjjo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The monument to Milton, raised by William Benson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monument_to_John_Milton,_Westminster_Abbey_01.jpg">GTR/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, more <a href="https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/member/benson-william-1682-1754">official accounts</a> portray Benson very differently. During his brief tenure as surveyor to the king – a role celebrated on Milton’s monument – he oversaw what contemporaries <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/john-milton">called</a> “the most disastrous episode in the whole history of the royal works”.</p>
<p>Benson managed to get himself sacked from this role and narrowly avoided prosecution when he lied to the House of Lords that their chamber was in imminent danger of collapse. He then proceeded to undertake structural investigations which caused damage to what had been a perfectly safe space. As <a href="https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/member/benson-william-1682-1754">contemporaries noted</a>, his claims were found to be “false and groundless and occasioned a long interruption and delay of the public business in Parliament and much expense to His Majesty.”</p>
<p>Further inglorious behaviour followed. Less than a decade after his sacking, Benson stood to be MP for Shaftesbury, a seat he had held twice before. He received just four votes. Enraged, he <a href="https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/member/benson-william-1682-1754">turned off the water supply</a> to the town.</p>
<p>This, then, is the man who managed to have himself commemorated in the most revered of our national spaces. What, we should ask, made that act possible? The answer, as one <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/john-milton">contemporary historian of the Abbey </a>pointed out, was Benson’s own wealth and vanity.</p>
<h2>What does ‘explaining’ mean?</h2>
<p>The problem with monuments and statues goes far beyond the issue of the legacies of slavery, important as that issue is. We need to learn to question all monuments rather than read them as factual documents of the past.</p>
<p>Monuments cost huge amounts of money, and it takes influence to get them erected. We must always keep this in mind when we look at them, and question the message they seek to promote. As cultural artefacts, monuments can be a useful tool to help us understand history. But Olusoga is right to state that they are not history itself. As the case of Benson shows, we simply cannot take them at face value.</p>
<p>There are, though, exciting ways that monuments could be used to throw light on the events of the past. They hold the possibility of being key objects for understanding the writing of history itself, and of how biased and complex that act can be.</p>
<p>The pressing question now is how we might begin to undertake that work. To date, the most useful attempts to explain have been through acts deemed as criminal vandalism, such as the toppling of Bristol’s <a href="https://exhibitions.bristolmuseums.org.uk/the-colston-statue/">Colston statue</a>.</p>
<p>What, then, does the “explain” part of the government’s policy actually entail? Who will be tasked with deciding how that explaining works in non-criminal ways? And what financial investment will go into it?</p>
<p>The answers, as <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-for-custodians-on-how-to-deal-with-commemorative-heritage-assets-that-have-become-contested/guidance-for-custodians-on-how-to-deal-with-commemorative-heritage-assets-that-have-become-contested#parttwo">the official guidance suggests</a>, seem to lie with the custodians of these works:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If custodians decide that an explanation is needed, it does not have to be a plaque or textual, and a range of approaches can be considered … There are many ways to explain, and the policy encourages innovation in alternative media, including creative ways to explain and contextualise the story of the person or event that is commemorated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/planning/contested-heritage/reinterpreting-heritage/">Examples of best practice</a> are provided. But as laudable as these interventions may be, many of them – such as temporary exhibitions or small plaques – may easily escape notice and have little impact or legacy. Ultimately, the policy advocates the retention of all contested monuments, even allowing the custodian to decide that no action in explaining is needed. </p>
<p>It is hard to judge, then, how effective this new government policy will prove. Retaining a statue or monument takes very little work; explaining it is a mammoth and contested task. We can only hope that the custodians of our heritage have the necessary resources and support to take it on.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215125/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudine van Hensbergen has received funding from: Arts Council England; Arts and Humanities Research Council; The British Academy; Chawton House Library; School of Advanced Study; University of Oxford. She is affiliated with the Higher Education Academy, the University and College Union and the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society.
</span></em></p>Retaining a statue or monument takes very little work – explaining it is a mammoth and contested task.Claudine van Hensbergen, Associate Professor, Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2083272023-07-04T13:26:56Z2023-07-04T13:26:56ZBelgium’s AfricaMuseum has a dark colonial past – it’s making slow progress in confronting this history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533840/original/file-20230624-80593-c4qk77.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DRC Prime Minister Jean-Michel Lukonde (L) at Belgium's AfricaMuseum in 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jasper Jacobs via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/belgiums-africamuseum-has-a-dark-colonial-past-its-making-slow-progress-in-confronting-this-history-208327&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>Racist displays and stories remain on display in several western European museums. They include grotesque objects depicting African people as “savage” and “wild”. Narratives of a “continent without history” and fantasies of European superiority are still told in ethnographic museums, like the <a href="https://www.humboldtforum.org/en/">Humboldt Forum in Berlin</a> and the <a href="https://www.quaibranly.fr/en/">Musée du quai Branly in Paris</a>.</p>
<p>These museums have been criticised by scholars and activists since the 1970s. Their handling of objects looted during the colonial period, especially from Africa, is seen as an indicator of the political relations between Europe and African nations. </p>
<p>Criticism ranges from the illegitimate acquisition of the objects to the often-racist representation of the African continent and its inhabitants. It also includes the lack of participation by African and diasporic actors.</p>
<p>After initial hesitation, Belgium, a former colonial power, <a href="https://theconversation.com/retracing-belgiums-dark-past-in-the-congo-and-attempts-to-forge-deeper-ties-184903">opened itself</a> to debate about reparations, justice and a common future with its African partners in the late 1990s. </p>
<p>This change in attitude was accelerated by mounting pressure from the <a href="https://www.rosalux.eu/en/article/1796.black-lives-matter-in-belgium-june-july-2020.html">Black Lives Matter movement in Belgium</a>. International advances by other former colonial powers like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-reparations.html">France, Germany and Great Britain</a> in the restitution debate also created impetus. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/en/discover/history">AfricaMuseum</a> in the Tervuren suburb is at the centre of these debates in Belgium. It’s an institution in the process of repairing its troubled history. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An long shot of a beige building with its reflection showing in a pool of water" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The main building of the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren built in the 1900s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a white and privileged researcher who focuses on colonial memory, racism and anti-colonial movements in Europe, my perspective on the AfricaMuseum is divided. For more than 10 years, the museum has been part of <a href="http://iwk-jena.uni-jena.de/julien-bobineau/">my cultural studies research</a>. In my view, the museum is marked by a dusty past and has shown little evidence of post-colonial self-reflection. On the other hand, there are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65827002">serious efforts</a> to change. </p>
<h2>Colonial looting</h2>
<p>The AfricaMuseum’s forerunner was initiated in 1897 by the Belgian king <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-II-king-of-Belgium">Leopold II</a> (1835-1909). It was a colonial human zoo within the Brussels World’s Fair. A Congolese village was recreated in Tervuren “exhibiting” 60 Congolese residents. Seven of them didn’t survive the exhibition, which lasted several months. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sculpture of a man drumming while another one holds up a spear ready to attack another man who is lying on the ground. They are in the centre of a room that has knives and swords on display on the walls" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Racist depictions of Africans in the museum in the 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1910, the space opened as the Museum of the Belgian Congo and presented ethnographic collections. The colonial institution initially served the purpose of legitimising the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/1447211359">brutal colonial rule</a> in the Congo Basin. It promoted the so-called “civilising mission” in Africa among the Belgian population. </p>
<p>It presented an alleged European superiority, underlined with pseudo-scientific methods and a racist representation of African cultures. </p>
<p>The exhibited objects were mostly looted from colonised territories by Belgian officials, the military and private persons. </p>
<p>There was <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/39892/pdf">little awareness</a> of these material and immaterial injustices in Belgium until the late 1990s. To this day, some <a href="https://www.memoiresducongo.be/en/">conservative positions</a> glorify the Belgian colonial period as a justified and philanthropic undertaking. </p>
<p>Even after the Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence on 30 June 1960, the museum retained its original concept under the name Royal Museum for Central Africa. It exuded a peculiar kind of colonial “nostalgia”. As late as 2001, the US anthropologist Jean Muteba Rahier described the museum as <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/39892/summary">a colonial place frozen in time</a>. </p>
<p>In 2013, the museum was <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/en/discover/renovation">closed for extensive renovations</a>. It reopened as the AfricaMuseum in December 2018, with the then director Guido Gryseels <a href="https://www.exhibitionsinternational.be/documents/catalog/objects/PDF/9789085867814_01.pdf#page=4">saying</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the museum has distanced itself from colonialism as a form of government and accepts responsibility for the part it played in the past in disseminating stereotypes about Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today, the AfricaMuseum holds over 125,000 ethnographic objects. It has 300,000 geological specimens, 8,000 musical instruments and nearly 10 million biological exhibits. It also holds sound and film recordings. A few human remains are among the museum’s collections. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Wooden sculptures on display behind a glass case." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Congolese sculptures on display at the AfricaMuseum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julien Bobineau</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The origin and exact circumstances of the acquisition of these objects remain largely unexplained. It can be assumed that most of the collection was illegally looted during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Belgian-Congo">colonial period</a>. </p>
<h2>Recognising African heritage</h2>
<p>Closely related to the question of restitution is a revision of the way Africa and Africans are represented in ethnographic museums. The AfricaMuseum attempted to address this in its 2013-2018 renovation. </p>
<p>Yet, some objects remain placed in a context that allows for a pejorative view of Africa. This is evidenced by the combination of the depiction of Congolese culture and the natural history of humankind in one space.</p>
<p>After <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/arts/emmanuel-macron-africa.html">French president Emmanuel Macron</a> triggered more debate over restitution while in Burkina Faso in 2017, the AfricaMuseum focused on addressing the origin of its objects. Reparation and representation of African and diasporic voices became a priority. </p>
<p>This was supported by <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/117289/parliament-approves-commission-on-belgiums-colonial-past">political debates</a> in the Belgian parliament in 2021 and 2022. They led to the formulation of <a href="https://restitutionbelgium.be/">ethical principles for restitution</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/en/about_us/restitution">A new law was passed</a> that provides a framework for the return of looted objects. This is a starting point for a redefinition of Belgian-Congolese relations. </p>
<h2>Early results</h2>
<p>Belgium has since sent the Democratic Republic of Congo a <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/de/about_us/restitution">draft bilateral restitution treaty</a>. It proposes, for example, a joint commission to coordinate scientific investigations into the origin of objects in Belgium’s possession. </p>
<p>In June 2021, the ownership rights of almost <a href="https://heritagetribune.eu/belgium/africa-museum-set-to-start-gradual-return-of-looted-artefacts-to-congo/">800 looted objects</a> from the AfricaMuseum were transferred to the Congolese state – though they still haven’t fully returned to Kinshasa. </p>
<p>In February 2022, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo presented Congolese prime minister Jean-Michel Lukonde with a list of more than <a href="https://observer.com/2022/03/restitution-ceremony-at-belgiums-africamuseum-precedes-eu-au-summit/">84,000 artefacts</a> from the Congo. Those artefacts have been in Belgium’s possession since colonisation and are now to be examined with a view to possible restitution.</p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>The restitution of looted objects from former colonies in Africa is an essential component of a post-colonial reparation. </p>
<p>Some European politicians, museum directors and scholars have pointed to an alleged lack of storage facilities in Africa. This argument shouldn’t count. </p>
<p>The vast majority of artefacts were seized from their original context and only transformed into “art objects” in European museums. In Germany, for example, debate flared up this year as to whether restituted Benin bronzes should become the private property of the royal family of Benin – the legitimate owners – <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-19/legitimate-concerns-or-neocolonialism-germany-expresses-worry-about-the-fate-of-the-benin-bronzes-following-their-restitution-to-nigeria.html">or be exhibited in Nigerian museums</a>. This shouldn’t be Germany’s concern.</p>
<p>To put restitution into practice, four things are needed now:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>humility on the European side</p></li>
<li><p>a deeper willingness for cooperation</p></li>
<li><p>funds</p></li>
<li><p>transparent and open dialogue. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The new Belgian path shows that this seems possible, though there’s still a long way to go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julien Bobineau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The restitution of looted objects from former colonies in Africa is an essential component of post-colonial reparation.Julien Bobineau, Assistant Professor, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität JenaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2069782023-06-30T12:38:23Z2023-06-30T12:38:23ZInside the grogue wars of Cabo Verde<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534404/original/file-20230627-18-7g0oll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C5084%2C3809&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grogue, the national drink of Cabo Verde, is a spirit distilled from sugar cane.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/distillery-for-grogue-the-local-and-iconic-liquor-produced-news-photo/1265225678?adppopup=true">Martin Zwick/REDA&CO/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At what point does a craft spirit no longer qualify as craft? </p>
<p>For centuries on the archipelago nation Cabo Verde off Africa’s west coast, farmers have produced <a href="https://bookline.hu/product/home.action?_v=Gilabert_Philippe_Grogue_From_Sugar_&type=200&id=6141857">a sugar cane-based craft spirit</a> known as “grogue.” The liquor – an effervescent spirit with light grassy notes – has a rich cultural legacy and has historically been made in limited quantities by skilled workers using traditional distilling methods. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2243434&HistoricalAwards=false">We’ve been studying</a> tensions between some traditional producers and the government, which seeks to more strictly regulate the production of the spirit to popularize it in international markets.</p>
<p>The industrialization of this drink could be a boon for a struggling rural economy. However, some small-scale producers are being forced to <a href="https://www.asemana.publ.cv/?Reportagem-Santo-Antao-Produtores-do-grogue-encaram-constrangimentos-na&ak=1">close shop</a>, unable to meet new regulatory demands.</p>
<h2>A brief history of grogue</h2>
<p>The history of grogue reflects the story of the islands themselves.</p>
<p>After the archipelago was <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1310/">discovered by European mariners</a> between 1455 and 1461, the islands became a stopover along Atlantic trade routes, a place for ships to resupply and their new crews to embark. By 1490, Portuguese merchants brought enslaved peoples from the African mainland to grow crops, particularly <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/322123/sweetness-and-power-by-sidney-w-mintz/">plantation sugar cane</a>, which largely failed due to degraded soil and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2acjCugg7FoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">lack of consistent rain</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534450/original/file-20230627-23-j8a7ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map of Africa with a zoomed-in section featuring the 10 islands of Cabo Verde." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534450/original/file-20230627-23-j8a7ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534450/original/file-20230627-23-j8a7ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534450/original/file-20230627-23-j8a7ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534450/original/file-20230627-23-j8a7ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534450/original/file-20230627-23-j8a7ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534450/original/file-20230627-23-j8a7ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534450/original/file-20230627-23-j8a7ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The vast majority of Cabo Verde’s sugar cane is grown on the island of Santo Antão.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://southafrica-info.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/cabo_verde_map.jpg">South Africa Gateway</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, 82% of the arable land in <a href="https://www.asemana.publ.cv/?Reportagem-Santo-Antao-Produtores-do-grogue-encaram-constrangimentos-na&ak=1">Santo Antão</a>, the country’s second biggest island, is still planted with sugar cane, which represents about 30% of the island’s GDP. Grogue, which uses sugar cane as its base, doesn’t rot and can be kept for years, which makes it an attractive export.</p>
<p>On July 5, 1975, Cabo Verde became one of the last African colonies to achieve <a href="https://africaworldpressbooks.com/amilcar-cabral-revolutionary-leadership-and-people-s-war-by-patrick-chabal/">independence</a>. The nation’s newly <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Cape-Verde-Crioulo-Colony-To-Independent-Nation/Lobban/p/book/9780813335629">independent government</a> quickly moved to promote domestic agriculture through subsidies and investment, with unanticipated consequences on the grogue economy. </p>
<p>The decision to subsidize desired staples throughout the islands, such as refined sugar in 1993, resulted in an increase in grogue production – not from freshly pressed sugar cane, but from imported sugar. The glut of industrial sugar impaired the quality and value of grogue and became known colloquially as “merdon” or the “grogue of democracy.”</p>
<p>In 2008, the <a href="https://www.asemana.publ.cv/?Confraria-do-Grog">Confrérie du Grogue de Santo Antão</a>, a guild of grogue producers, claimed grogue was being threatened by quality control issues and subsidized imported sugar. The guild lobbied for stricter government regulation to protect grogue’s legacy and cultural importance.</p>
<h2>Regulating grogue</h2>
<p>As a result of this lobbying, the government passed laws <a href="https://leap.unep.org/countries/cv/national-legislation/decree-law-no-112015-establishing-legal-regime-production-sugar">in 2015</a> <a href="https://kiosk.incv.cv/V/2018/8/22/1.1.56.2567/p1430">and 2018</a> to establish rules governing the production of grogue, such as the banning of the use of refined sugar. The regulations considered national and international food standards, environmental protection, public health, and consumer and producer rights.</p>
<p>The law strictly defined grogue as a sugar cane spirit produced in Cabo Verde, specifically from the distillation of naturally fermented syrup that was directly pressed from Cabo Verdean sugar cane.</p>
<p>Once the regulatory apparatus was established after the COVID-19 pandemic, however, many small distilleries were forced to <a href="https://www.asemana.publ.cv/?Reportagem-Santo-Antao-Produtores-do-grogue-encaram-constrangimentos-na&ak=1">stop production</a> because they couldn’t meet the new fermentation, storage and labeling standards.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A metal machine with toothed gears crushes stalks of sugar cane on a floor covered with sugar cane detritus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534402/original/file-20230627-25-gst25p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534402/original/file-20230627-25-gst25p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534402/original/file-20230627-25-gst25p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534402/original/file-20230627-25-gst25p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534402/original/file-20230627-25-gst25p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534402/original/file-20230627-25-gst25p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534402/original/file-20230627-25-gst25p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A machine for crushing sugar cane to make grogue on Santo Antão, the second-largest of Cabo Verde’s 10 islands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/machine-for-crushing-sugar-cane-to-extract-the-sugar-for-news-photo/872096810?adppopup=true">Jon G. Fuller/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, these farmers sent their relatively meager sugar cane harvests to larger processors, since it was no longer cost effective to produce grogue in small batches, or they left the enterprise entirely.</p>
<p>The new regulations primarily affected artisanal distillers throughout the main island of Santiago, which has more small-scale production sites. Most of the larger producers are in Santo Antão, where 80% of the country’s grogue is made.</p>
<h2>Be careful what you wish for</h2>
<p>In some contexts, small-batch production represents high quality and care – French cheeses, Italian olive oil and Kentucky bourbon, for example. In others, it signifies cheapness and inferior quality.</p>
<p>Cabo Verdean grogue can possess both elements, leading to highly charged debates over its value. </p>
<p>Almost 35% of Cabo Verde’s population participates in agriculture, and a deep and complex <a href="https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.47.2.37240k86j655hj46">agricultural ethos</a> has been cultivated over the centuries in what scholars Aminah Fernandes Pilgrim and João Resende-Santos describe as a “<a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793653833/Economic-Growth-and-Democracy-in-Post-Colonial-Africa-Cabo-Verde-Small-States-and-the-World-Economy">fading and failing rural economy</a>.” </p>
<p>Does scaling up to meet industrial standards hold the key to rural renewal? Or will it create insurmountable barriers for small-scale producers, closing one more path out of poverty? </p>
<p>That is the current conundrum facing Cabo Verde, which has implications for other places where craft spirit production is highly valued as a cultural asset and is scaling up.</p>
<p>Cabo Verde and grogue go hand in hand, and locals, <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/35270/340060.pdf?sequence=1#page=14">diasporas</a> and <a href="https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/cabo-verde-tourism#:%7E:text=In%202019%2C%20Cabo%20Verde%20welcomed,pre%2Dpandemic%20levels%20by%202023.">tourists</a> seem to broadly support the <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/caravelle/2481?lang=en">expansion of sugar cane cultivation and grogue distillation</a>. Many local consumers see grogue as a quality drink that’s better than <a href="https://www.asemana.publ.cv/?IGAE-e-PN-aprendem-104-litros-de-bebida-alcoolica-de-ma-qualidade-no-Tarrafal&ak=1">cheaper, imported alternatives</a>. It represents a piece of <a href="https://www.asemana.publ.cv/?Santo-Antao-IGAE-desmantela-e-apreende-14-000-litros-de-calda-ilegal-na-semana&ak=1">cultural heritage</a> and is key to rural economic development. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hand of man holding cup over metal contraption made up of tubes and funnels." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534406/original/file-20230627-23-gqsrrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534406/original/file-20230627-23-gqsrrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534406/original/file-20230627-23-gqsrrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534406/original/file-20230627-23-gqsrrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534406/original/file-20230627-23-gqsrrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534406/original/file-20230627-23-gqsrrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534406/original/file-20230627-23-gqsrrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man distills grogue at a small distillery on Santo Antão.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-distills-grogue-a-local-alcoholic-liquor-from-crushed-news-photo/872096820?adppopup=true">Jon G. Fuller/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, our analysis shows that the shift toward industrialization has deep implications <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture10060216">for food security and public health</a>. </p>
<p>Farmers producing grogue can use money they earn from grogue to pay school fees and achieve some financial stability. </p>
<p>Yet regulatory efforts to improve quality and consistency of grogue may have inadvertently and negatively affected small producers.</p>
<p>Improperly or illegally made grogue is now being confiscated and destroyed, pushing clandestine producers back underground. <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/country/CV">Agricultural figures from the World Bank</a> suggest that there may be more grogue being made than available sugar cane to produce it, which indicates that refined sugar is still being used to make poor-quality merdon.</p>
<p>Of course, improperly produced grogue could get people sick. And it goes without saying that any alcohol consumed – regardless of how it is produced – can lead to <a href="https://www.asemana.publ.cv/?Santo-Antao-Clinico-alerta-que-10-dos-7-mil-internados-no-hospital-Joao-Morais&ak=1">alcoholism</a>, <a href="https://www.asemana.publ.cv/?Santo-Antao-IGAE-desmantela-e-apreende-14-000-litros-de-calda-ilegal-na-semana&ak=1">violence</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.2559">drunken driving</a>.</p>
<p>It’s somewhat ironic that a local grogue guild of artisanal producers lobbied for new legislation to enhance the quality and highlight the cultural significance of their product. These efforts, however, have ended up pushing the smaller outfits – the kind most likely to use traditional methods – out of business, into cooperative arrangements or underground.</p>
<p>On Cabo Verde, all of the elements of craft spirits that make grogue special – a connection to people and place, a unique taste and a symbol of local celebration and identity – are in danger of being lost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brandon D. Lundy receives funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Patterson receives funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Swahn receives funding from The National Science Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy Hoalst-Pullen receives funding from The National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>The government and some producers are pushing to industrialize the sugar cane-based spirit to boost its popularity around the world, while small farmers fear losing their livelihoods.Brandon D. Lundy, Professor of Anthropology, Kennesaw State UniversityMark Patterson, Professor of Geography and Geospatial Sciences, Kennesaw State UniversityMonica Swahn, Dean of the Wellstar College of Health and Human Services, Kennesaw State UniversityNancy Hoalst-Pullen, Professor of Geography, Kennesaw State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2081332023-06-22T19:00:18Z2023-06-22T19:00:18ZDehumanisation, animalisation: inside the terrible world of Swiss human zoos<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533508/original/file-20230622-27-5pjfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C2000%2C1332&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Genève, exposition Nationale, le "Village Noir" dans le parc de Plaisance </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://blog.bge-geneve.ch/le-village-noir-de-lexposition-nationale-de-1896/">Antoine Elie Chevalley, photographe</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After a stay in Leukerbad, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/643832/notes-of-a-native-son-by-james-baldwin/">James Baldwin affirmed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“From all available evidence, no black man had ever set foot in this tiny Swiss village before I came. I was told before arriving that I would probably be a ‘sight’ for the village; I took this to mean that people of my complexion were rarely seen in Switzerland and also that city people are always something of a ‘sight’ outside of the city. It did not occur to me – possibly because I am an American – that there could be people anywhere who had never seen a N___o.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Baldwin’s odd realisation does not hold the historical evidence, though. Fifty years before the American writer set foot in the Alps, about <a href="https://libreo.ch/revues/didactica-historica/2018/didactica-historica-4-2018/c-est-la-fete-au-village-!-les-exhibitions-de-l-exposition-nationale-suisse-de-geneve-en-1896">two third of the Swiss population</a> visited the “Village noir” in Geneva. How is it possible that, half a century later, the exhibition of 200 African people that two million people visited has fallen into oblivion? How likely is it that none of them came from the region of Leukerbad? But most importantly, what was this “Village noir”?</p>
<h2>A “Black village” in the heart of the Alps</h2>
<p>Today, Geneva is considered one of the capitals of human rights. Back in 1896, during the Swiss Second National Exhibition, it hosted a human zoo. There are very few visible references to it, except for one street called after its corresponding “white” exhibition, the <a href="https://www.geneve.ch/sites/default/files/2022-03/monuments-heritage-raciste-colonial-espace-public-etude-2022-ville-geneve.pdf">“Village Suisse”</a>. However, several researchers’ archival work helped unearth the history of the first Swiss “Village noir”.</p>
<p>Inhabited by more than 200 individuals from Senegal, the village was situated a few streets from the city’s central square, the Plaine de Plainpalais. For six months, paying visitors observed these “actors” living their lives. Their religious ceremonies were advertised as public events. Tourists could take pictures with the African troupe and walk around their dwellings.</p>
<p>These encounters were far from being a sideshow, triggering multiple opinions. On the one hand, critical voices emerged in the press. This “missionary” point of view <a href="https://www.peterlang.com/document/1052283">asked</a> for respect for the “native” people and their dignity while attacking the behaviours of the allegedly civilised visitors. As Davide Rodogno of the Geneva Graduate Institute <a href="https://www.chahut.ch/decoloniserlaville/episode/7c593b9f/2-inventer-le-sauvage">stated</a>, the general system of human zoos was not questioned, and the racial hierarchy was accepted as truth.</p>
<p>On the other hand, racist groups were vociferous. According to them, Senegalese individuals had “free time” to move around the city. This triggered their fear of a “Black invasion”. Does it ring a bell to today’s Swiss political campaigns? Indeed, the racist discourse that spread from the Parc de Plaisance is still largely among us. Why? The answer lies in the country’s past.</p>
<h2>From freak shows to human zoos</h2>
<p>Far from being a Swiss peculiarity, human zoos were spread around the West. Human exhibitions were a form of entertainment invented in the early 19th century in Great Britain. Turned into a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-D8N5uaePw">film</a> in 2010, one of the most famous shows was Sara Baartman, the “Hottenton Venus”. Because of her unconventional body shape, she was brought to Europe from South Africa to participate in an exhibition. Such <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/freak-shows-podcast-general-tom-thumb-pt-barnum-john-woolf/">“freak shows”</a> spread around Europe and North America, and included people considered different because of their unusual physical appearance, including dwarfism and albinism.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1-D8N5uaePw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>Black Venus</em> by Abdellatif Kechiche.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Things changed in the late 19th century, when shows became part of national and colonial exhibitions. The first ethnic exhibition of Nubians occurred in 1877 in Paris, when the term <em>human zoo</em> appears to have been used for the first time. The concept seems an oxymoron, though it reveals the violence of these exhibitions. Geneva Graduate Institute’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/debate-welcome-to-the-new-old-global-age-of-weaponised-racism-126852">Mohamed Mahmoud Mohamedou</a> suggests that human zoos were common entertainment in the second half of the 19th century. For the ticket-buying public, the experience was comparable to a visit to a regular zoo; it was about observing “exotic animals”. As it often happens with animals, organisers re-created the subjects’ “natural habitat” with mud huts, typical clothes, and rituals.</p>
<p>The setting was constructed to perform authenticity. On the one hand, the civilisational discourse justifying colonial expansion and domination exaggerated the living representation and exhibition of the “savage” in need of enlightenment. On the other hand, the alleged brutality of the “native” was displayed through the <em>mise-en-scène</em> of their “primitive life”. These exhibitions did not present savagery; they <a href="https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_904393">invented a specific kind</a>, which prepared the ground and fuelled further expansions and the ruling of “barbarian” and “uncivilised” societies.</p>
<p>Without minimising the system’s inherent violence, but to prove its performativity, <a href="https://www.letemps.ch/opinions/suisse-exhibait-sauvages-geneve">Lionel Gauthier</a> explains that the “natives” were paid “actors”. They staged various ceremonies and activities to entertain Western visitors. All activities were meant to nourish Westerners’ enthusiasm for the exotic: they eroticised Black women’s bodies, dehumanised Black men, and “proved” their animalistic strength, for instance, by organising boxing matches between Western champions and African hosts.</p>
<h2>Two faces of the same racist coin</h2>
<p>It was at this time that racism entered the game. The turn of the century was among the highest points of scientific racism. This was when the pseudo-scientific attempts to create a superior race thrived within Western anthropology and biology academic departments. For eugenicists, human zoos provided ‘samples’ for racist theories. During the Geneva National Exposition of 1896, Emile Yung gave a <a href="https://www.geneve.ch/sites/default/files/2022-03/monuments-heritage-raciste-colonial-espace-public-etude-2022-ville-geneve.pdf">conference</a> where he presented 15 people from the “Village noir”. He compared their skin colour and skull size to those of a Genevan. This process aimed to demonstrate how the size of the skull affected the level of civilisation and mental capacities. These ideas were <a href="https://www.letemps.ch/suisse/emile-yung-village-noir-deferlement-theories-racialistes">spread among schoolteachers</a> and helped crystallise and expand racist stereotypes.</p>
<p>Indeed, human zoos were breeding grounds for racist stereotypes. Visitors were presented with an invented representation of Africa that deliberately debased and denigrated Africans. Moreover, as Patricia Purtschert of the University of Bern <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2014.944183">suggests</a>, evolutionism and racist human-development theories at the core of the exhibitions had clear educational goals. Thus, scientific racism developed within academia went hand in hand with popular racism: human zoos were places where these two faces of the same coin met.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dxfbpnjUgUE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A long view into the sinister history of human zoos in the West, from 1810 to 1940.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tackling the legacies of human zoos</h2>
<p>Human exhibitions were the result of Western colonial thinking – says Patrick Minder – in which the Genevan’ “Village noir” fits perfectly. Hence, note <a href="https://www.geneve.ch/sites/default/files/2022-03/monuments-heritage-raciste-colonial-espace-public-etude-2022-ville-geneve.pdf">Mohamedou and Rodogno</a>, the Swiss Confederation has never been immune to colonialism and racism. The setting up of a human zoo at the centre of Geneva served to spread and reinforce the superiority of the West, the right to expand and dominate, and racism, which many among Swiss cultural, political, economic, and academic elites shared. Indeed, Swiss scientists were <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137442741_3">active in shaping colonial mentalities</a>. Despite not possessing colonies, the country was in fact as involved in colonialism and racism as the rest of the West.</p>
<p>Unlike other countries, Switzerland did not stop its human exhibitions during the interwar period. Until the 1960s, the national circus Knie presented the <a href="https://www.orellfuessli.ch/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1030462950?ProvID=10917751&gclid=Cj0KCQiAlKmeBhCkARIsAHy7WVt8zV9ADHtR7dqc3Zuhf0q2vx95ntE9mlpeIAa6YYCevT3Vf09eizkaAq0BEALw_wcB">“Völkerschauen”</a>. It included the display of Eskimos, Catholic Indians, “mysterious Egyptians” or people with albinism. According to Purtschert, this is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2014.944183">symptomatic of the lack of a decolonisation process in Switzerland</a>. By self-representing itself as a colonial outsider, Switzerland has never come to terms with its colonial mentality, racist representations and discourses.</p>
<p>Against this backdrop, talking about human zoos in Switzerland should not only be of interest to historians. It is a crucial step to allow Swiss society to become aware of its past. Most importantly, it engenders a broader reflection on the legacies of colonialism today. If we keep silent on human zoos, we cannot see <a href="https://www.letemps.ch/opinions/suisse-exhibait-sauvages-geneve">how visiting a “typical” Maasai village echoes the old colonial habits of the <em>mise en scène</em> of rural, primitive life</a>.</p>
<p>The inability to face part of the past also perpetuates racist patterns. Only by acknowledging a shared European colonial history, ruled by the dictum of Whiteness, will Switzerland be ready to face its still-too-present, yet slightly invisible, issues of racism. Otherwise, the absence of such a reflection will continue, recalling Baldwin’s words, the self-entitled Swiss’s “luxury of looking on me as a stranger”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Letizia Gaja Pinoja ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>On paper, the lush and wealthy city of Geneva is one of the capitals of human rights. Yet, one historian’s work points to a darker history few one want to see.Letizia Gaja Pinoja, PhD Candidate, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2052462023-05-16T14:41:02Z2023-05-16T14:41:02ZNational anthems: how composers in South Africa and India are reimagining them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525396/original/file-20230510-21-35fnr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hamilton Dhlamini in The Head & The Load, a production in which composer Philip Miller reworks the British national anthem.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Olivier/The Head & The Load</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rousing notes of the British national anthem <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/God-Save-the-Queen-British-national-anthem">God Save The King</a> rang loudly in London’s Westminster Abbey when King Charles III was crowned – and in official and informal celebrations in many other places, though <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2023/may/06/liverpool-fans-boo-national-anthem-king-charles-iii-coronation-video">not always</a> to an enthusiastic reception. The song is still sung in many Commonwealth countries. But its place and the oppressive <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/British-Empire">imperial legacy</a> trailing it are increasingly questioned.</p>
<p>That debate can be extended beyond one song. What baggage does any music acquire when it shifts from being – in South African literature scholar Zoë Wicomb’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7cjw60">phrase</a> – “national culture to official culture”? </p>
<p>As a researcher into South African music, I’m often struck by how dominant the past is in my interviews about the present, particularly in relation to the current anthem. South Africa’s national anthem is a <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-sa/national-symbols/national-anthem">composite</a> of the African liberation hymn Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika and the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>-era Afrikaans hymn Die Stem (The Call of South Africa). Does a similar burden of history weigh down other national anthems and perhaps prevent us from hearing them simply as music?</p>
<p>In recent work, two prominent contemporary composers, <a href="https://www.philipmiller.co.za">Philip Miller</a> in South Africa and <a href="https://amitchaudhuri.com/music/">Amit Chaudhuri</a> in India, have explored fresh ways of interpreting national anthems. Their projects suggest that anthems can be freed from historical baggage to reflect contemporary realities.</p>
<h2>Phillip Miller</h2>
<p>Miller grew up during apartheid with the enforced singing of Die Stem at school. In an interview with me he recalls:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Coming from a very liberal home instilled almost a horror of national anthems in me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet Nkosi Sikelele doesn’t stir similar feelings, because “it’s a really beautiful song” that “has a historical genesis in African liberation, so the meanings it carries are very different”.</p>
<p>Miller and co-composer <a href="https://www.theheadandtheload.com/ts-bio">Thuthuka Sibisi</a> had explored the meaning of singing South Africa’s former colonial anthem, God Save the King, for Victorian-era African choristers in an <a href="https://www.philipmiller.co.za/the-african-choir-1891-re-imagined">earlier project</a>. That work formed the foundation for the version of the anthem in their score for the stage production <a href="https://theconversation.com/africans-in-world-war-1-artist-william-kentridges-epic-theatre-production-restores-forgotten-histories-203596">The Head & The Load</a>, about the unacknowledged role of African labour in the colonial armies of the first world war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525649/original/file-20230511-941-a7f2c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man sits on a chair reading from papers on a music stand, music equipment all around him in a wooden-floored studio." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525649/original/file-20230511-941-a7f2c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525649/original/file-20230511-941-a7f2c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525649/original/file-20230511-941-a7f2c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525649/original/file-20230511-941-a7f2c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525649/original/file-20230511-941-a7f2c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525649/original/file-20230511-941-a7f2c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525649/original/file-20230511-941-a7f2c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">South African composer Philip Miller.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Madelene Cronje</span></span>
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<p>Their arrangement, he explains, allowed singers to add complexity to God Save the King “with varied rhythms, drones, fragments and layers, building to a moment of almost <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/isicathamiya">isicathimiya</a> (traditional Zulu song) harmony”. As God Save the King breaks apart on stage, the song is passed from singer to singer “almost as if it’s too painful for anybody to sing it for too long”.</p>
<p>Some triumphalist, violent verses of God Save the King are no longer sung even in the UK – <a href="https://www.thenational.scot/politics/19831872.coronation-crushing-rebellious-scots-national-anthem/">in particular</a> those written during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jacobite-British-history">1745 Jacobite rebellion</a> imploring God’s help to “like a torrent crush” the “rebellious Scots”. At the coronation, the imperial music of the ceremony’s traditions was balanced with 12 new commissions from contemporary British composers.</p>
<p>And even the postcolonial South African anthem Miller finds so beautiful can jar with some. He concedes that:</p>
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<p>When political regimes sour, even beautiful anthems can lose their beauty, and we can start feeling alienation instead.</p>
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<p>University students during South Africa’s <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/south-africa-student-protests-explained/">Fees Must Fall</a> protests <a href="https://www.702.co.za/articles/191693/watch-new-adapted-national-anthem-by-students">created</a> what they christened a “decolonised” national anthem. They retained Nkosi Sikelele’s opening verse but set it to a new melody. New lyrics highlighted “hard times … when we are painfully abused”.</p>
<h2>Amit Chaudhuri</h2>
<p>Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika is not the only contemporary national anthem with roots in early anticolonial struggles. India’s national anthem is <a href="https://www.culturalindia.net/national-symbols/anthem.html">Jana Gana Mana</a>. It was composed by poet, artist and thinker <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1913/tagore/biographical/">Rabindranath Tagore</a> in 1911. Its Bengali lyrics invoke a spirit of unity in diversity. </p>
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<span class="caption">Amit Chaudhuri, Indian musician and author.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Indranil Bhoumik/Mint via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>Chaudhuri, a novelist, critic and classically trained Hindustani singer, reimagines Jana Gana Mana on his most recent <a href="https://music.apple.com/za/album/across-the-universe/1669288079?i=1669288081">album</a>, Across the Universe. Chaudhuri’s project explores what he calls musical “convergences”: music grounded in the sonic contact he hears between compositions from diverse traditions. </p>
<p>His version of Jana Gana Mana is released from its former strict, anthemic marching rhythm into free time. It flowers out of a composition by Austrian keyboardist <a href="https://www.joezawinul.com">Joe Zawinul</a> of the jazz fusion group Weather Report. The way the sound develops is paralleled on the accompanying <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL6uhjEcHIQ">video</a>, where an image of the Indian flag flowers from shadowed and superimposed partial views. </p>
<p>Chaudhuri told me in email correspondence he is treating Tagore’s composition as a piece of music. He views it not as a nationalistic commodity but as an aesthetic creation by “the greatest songwriter of our time”, rich with possibilities. The originality of Tagore’s own musical approach – “always gathering and repositioning the material he was collecting from every source in his songs” – encouraged Chaudhuri to create an open-ended “sense of estrangement, surprise, and unexpectedness that situates the anthem in history, but not in the history that we are told, one way or another, about ourselves or our country through books and historiography”.</p>
<h2>Burden of history</h2>
<p>Miller isn’t sure it’s possible to shear away the baggage from music, however beautiful, once it’s been appropriated to power. He points out that before Nkosi Sikelele was adopted, the ANC anthem was South African composer <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-05-so-youve-never-heard-of-reuben-t-caluza-that-needs-to-change/">Reuben Caluza</a>’s iLand Act. This was a far more strident anti-colonial protest song. Miller <a href="https://www.philipmiller.co.za/projects/iland-act-1913">recorded</a> it with a choral collective in 2020, “at the very moment when the City of Cape Town was evicting informal settlers – including <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/man-who-was-dragged-naked-from-his-shack-during-lockdown-to-sue-city-of-cape-town-20230202">dragging</a> a man naked out of his home. That was ironic – who’s to say what South Africa’s people’s anthem really is?”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/africans-in-world-war-1-artist-william-kentridges-epic-theatre-production-restores-forgotten-histories-203596">Africans in World War 1: artist William Kentridge's epic theatre production restores forgotten histories</a>
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<p>Many Britons, equally, view God Save the King as contested territory. Some urge a <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-national-anthem-changed-replaced-god-save-king-2023-hqb6x78pw">replacement</a>. They cite British poet William Blake’s Jerusalem (invoking reform of industry’s “dark satanic mills”), Land of Hope and Glory – or the even more bloodthirsty Rule Britannia. </p>
<p>And while Miller hears “the beauty start to fray” under the pressure of political appropriation of songs, Chaudhuri suggests that “beauty has to be ‘frayed’; that’s what one is aiming for” to move away from restrictive visions. Anthems, it seems, are what a country’s rulers, peoples – and artists – make them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205246/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Philip Miller and Amit Chaudhuri have reworked national anthems to reflect the impact of history on official music.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2021372023-04-10T20:02:42Z2023-04-10T20:02:42ZFirst Nations people have made a plea for ‘truth-telling’. By reckoning with its past, Australia can finally help improve our future<p><em>This is the third article in our series explaining Voice, Treaty and Truth. Read the other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/voice-treaty-truth-explainers-134797">here</a>.</em> </p>
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<p>Australia has never been good at listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Despite the truths that have already been told in processes like the <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/first-australians/royal-commission-aboriginal-deaths-custody">Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody</a> or the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-report-1997">Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families</a>, time and again governments have ignored recommendations designed to address the impacts of Australia’s settler-colonial past and present.</p>
<p>State refusals to respond to truth have led to renewed calls for processes that will detail the impacts of colonisation in the everyday lives of Indigenous people. These calls were an important part of the <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>, which sought “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”, complimented by “a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”. </p>
<p>As legal scholars Gabrielle Appleby and Megan Davis have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1031461X.2018.1523838?journalCode=rahs20">commented</a>, the call for truth-telling in the Uluru Statement is just one part of a wider call for structural reform intended to ensure improvement in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-actually-is-a-treaty-what-could-it-mean-for-indigenous-people-200261">What actually is a treaty? What could it mean for Indigenous people?</a>
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<h2>Why truth?</h2>
<p>Beginning in the 1980s, formal truth-telling processes (usually called truth commissions) emerged as a method of reckoning with the past in deeply divided societies around the world. Perhaps the most famous example is the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>, which aimed to address the gross violations of human rights that happened under apartheid. </p>
<p>Truth commissions like this are generally temporary, state-sanctioned inquiries that typically last from one to five years, with a remit to investigate particular events and examine specific violations over a defined period of time. This typically involves collecting testimony from victims and (sometimes) perpetrators. </p>
<p>It is only relatively recently that truth-telling processes have been used as a response to settler colonial violence, most notably via Canada’s <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>, which arose after a class action lawsuit on behalf of the roughly 150,000 First Nations children taken from their familes and placed in residential schools. </p>
<p>The Uluru Statement isn’t the first time First Nations on this continent have called for truth-telling. Since colonisation, Indigenous peoples have insisted that Australia must not look away from their experiences of dispossession and survival. </p>
<p>When these truths have been told, however, they have all too often been met with denial, defensiveness or even aggression. For example, when the Stolen Generations inquiry pointed to evidence of the forcible removal of Indigenous children that, it charged, constituted a breach of the UN Convention on Genocide, there was an immediate conservative backlash. The Howard government rejected the findings of the inquiry in one of the earliest salvos against what conservatives have termed a <a href="https://api-network.com/main/pdf/scholars/jas75_clark.pdf">“black armband” view of Australian history</a>.</p>
<p>There is a reason settler governments have been reluctant to engage in truth-telling. First Nations often seek truth as a means of changing an untenable status quo, reshaping society’s attitudes so as to improve their own future prospects and reaffirm their distinct sovereignties and their right to self-determination. </p>
<p>As the non-Indigenous Canadian political scientist Courtney Jung has <a href="https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/aprci/295/">argued</a>, while settler governments may try to use the conclusion of a truth commission to “draw a line through history”, First Nations seek to build “not a wall but a bridge”, using truth-telling to “draw history into the present, and to draw connections between past policy, present policy, and present injustices”. </p>
<h2>Whose truths? What truths?</h2>
<p>Broadly speaking, First Nations peoples seek truths that address three key themes: narrative and memory; trauma and healing; and responsibility and justice. </p>
<p>We have <a href="https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/6491">described</a> this potential as “the promise of truth”, in which truth-telling leads to a kind of agreement between Indigenous and settler peoples, rather than being a process centred on the state and its violence. </p>
<p>The promise of truth is that it will change national narratives and produce a new, shared collective memory that acknowledges crimes of the past; it will contribute to the healing and recovery of Indigenous people who have been harmed by colonisation and dispossession; and it will compel settlers and their institutions to take responsibility for the harms of colonisation.</p>
<p>This approach stands in contrast to what we have called the “colonisation of truth”, through which truth-telling is seen primarily as rehabilitative of the settler colonial state while obscuring ongoing injustices. When truth is colonised, it may reproduce narratives that restore aspects of settler legitimacy and treat injustices as being solely in the past. Alternatively, this version of truth may treat First Nations people merely as victims, telling stories of harm and trauma without delivering reparation. Or it may suggest that the demand for responsibility and justice has been fulfilled simply by engaging in the truth-telling process, rather than treating the telling of truth as a starting point for a fairer future. </p>
<p>Truth, then, is complex, and what it may achieve in the Australian context is not yet clear. As treaty processes progress in several Australian jurisdictions, the commitment to truth-telling seems likely to be a part of future negotiations. This close connection between treaty and truth is unique to the Australian case and confirms the strongly held belief that truth has transformative potential. We do not yet know whether the linking of truth and treaty will produce the transformation in relationships that is so urgently needed.</p>
<p>Victoria, which announced a commitment to treaty in 2016, is the jurisdiction most advanced in testing this proposition. In 2022, Victoria established the <a href="https://yoorrookjusticecommission.org.au/">Yoorrook Truth and Justice Commission</a> (Yoorrok is a Wemba Wemba word meaning “truth”), marking a new era in Australian truth-telling focused on the history of invasion and colonisation of First Nations’ territories. Until the creation of Yoorrook, no previous commission, royal commission or inquiry into colonisation in Australia has included the word “truth” in its official title.</p>
<p>Yet still, truth is not a straightforward proposition. “Truth burns,” as Indigenous academic Marcia Langton <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2023/mar/23/truth-burns-marcia-langton-warns-media-against-parroting-scare-campaigns-video">recently put it</a>. Sometimes, truth-telling is painful and connects directly to harm and injustice. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-voice-what-is-it-where-did-it-come-from-and-what-can-it-achieve-202138">The Voice: what is it, where did it come from, and what can it achieve?</a>
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<p>Truth is tricky. It can appear to open spaces for new understandings, while simultaneously shutting these spaces down and reinforcing the colonial status quo. </p>
<p>Ultimately, truth-telling is uncomfortable but necessary, as change in any relationship inevitably is. But this is where the possibility lives. As new truth-telling takes place across this continent we have an opportunity to imagine what it might mean to be in a relationship that does not deny the truth of First Nations’ lives, or the truth of how Australia has come to be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for truth-telling as a crucial step towards reconciliation. What does this process involve, and what are the potential promises and pitfalls?Julia Hurst, Faculty of Arts Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow, Indigenous and Settler Relations Collaboration, The University of MelbourneSarah Maddison, Professor, School of Social and Political Sciences, Director, The (so-called) Australian Centre, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2008512023-03-15T13:37:56Z2023-03-15T13:37:56ZToyin Falola: 3 recent books that explain the work of Nigeria’s famous decolonial scholar<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514433/original/file-20230309-28-bgy994.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Toyin Falola has turned 70.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy Olusegun Olopade</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://notevenpast.org/professor-toyin-falola-living-and-globalizing-the-humanities/">Toyin Falola</a>, distinguished <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/falolaoo">professor of history</a>, is one of Africa’s most accomplished intellectuals. Born Oloruntoyin Falola in 1953 in the Nigerian city of Ibadan, he grew up in a sprawling, polygamous household that practised Islam, Christianity and ancient Yoruba spirituality. </p>
<p>This confluence of multiple worldviews and religions reflects in his thinking and in his massive academic output. Falola has produced something like 200 books in all areas of the human and social sciences, and travels widely to deliver lectures at conferences and public events.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerian-historian-and-thinker-toyin-falola-on-decolonising-the-academy-in-africa-184188">Nigerian historian and thinker Toyin Falola on decolonising the academy in Africa</a>
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<p>Africa and its diasporas (including Africans in the US, Brazil, Cuba and the Caribbean) are his overriding concern and sites of study. In Falola’s handling, Africa is endlessly fascinating and resourceful, both culturally and intellectually. </p>
<p>Since he is so productive, it’s difficult to offer a cohesive account of his multifaceted work. In the process of working on a book about Falola, I think perhaps the best way to understand his impact is to identify his core values and philosophies and how they recur across his recent output.</p>
<p>His 70th birthday has been celebrated with a renewed flurry of books. I’ll focus on just three of them here.</p>
<h2>1. African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems</h2>
<p>Published in 2022, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/african-spirituality-politics-and-knowledge-systems-9781350271944/">African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems</a>: Sacred Words and Holy Realms was in part inspired by Falola’s interactions with a Nigerian political scientist, <a href="https://carleton.ca/africanstudies/people/samuel-ojo-oloruntoba/">Samuel Oloruntoba</a>. Falola used Oloruntoba, who engages in intense late night prayer sessions, as a sounding board in writing the book.</p>
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<p>Here, Falola is interested in the spiritual power of the spoken word, a concept not only familiar to Christianity and other religions, but also to Nigeria’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yoruba">Yoruba</a> <a href="https://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/supdt99.htm">spirituality</a> – in this case ogede, a ritual form of incantation. The spoken word is seen as being imbued with life and power and therefore has the ability to transform lives.</p>
<p>While Falola explores African spiritual formations, in the book he also seeks links to global cultural practices. In the process he affirms our common humanity and the continuities across cultures. He draws links between Christian worship and Orisa spirituality, a religion that is polytheistic (worshipping many gods) and is practised in south-west Nigeria, parts of Benin and Togo. It was also spread across the world through the transatlantic slave trade.</p>
<p>In this book, Falola is refocusing our attention on the primal power of the spoken word as an agent of consciousness and transformation.</p>
<h2>2. Decolonizing African Studies</h2>
<p>Also in 2022, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/decolonizing-african-knowledge/1296996BE948B52843872FAA948447BE">Decolonizing African Studies</a> was released. This book is particularly relevant for the South African context. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/feesmustfall-the-poster-child-for-new-forms-of-struggle-in-south-africa-68773">#FeesMustFall</a> student protest movement that grew out of the University of Cape Town as part of an attack on the legacy of the arch-colonialist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a> became a nation-wide campaign. It sparked fervent debates on <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455">decolonisation</a> and the institutional legacies of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid’s</a> white minority rule.</p>
<p>European colonialism had a <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/how-africas-colonial-history-affects-its-development/">devastating impact</a> on the African continent. Slavery, colonial rule and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/neocolonialism">neocolonialism</a>, which is a covert and often non-violent form of ongoing colonialism, had a similar impact on all African communities.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration of a human profile made up of symbols and squiggles." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Boydell & Brewer</span></span>
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<p>Indeed what these harmful encounters did to the African self was to effect a schism or disconnect within it, which has resulted in many forms of identity crisis – what the US sociologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois">W.E.B. Dubois</a> called “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/">double consciousness</a>” and other thinkers have called a form of alienation. Simply put, colonial belief systems, morals and culture were imposed on traditional African belief systems, causing this tension. </p>
<p>In this book, Falola attempts to heal the broken African self by bypassing colonial archival sources. Instead, he undertakes a form of intellectual therapy by engaging with “alternative archives created by memory, spoken words, images and photographs”, as the blurb of the British edition puts it. A key component is the use of autoethnography (ethnographic research drawing on the researcher’s own life story) for recovering traces of African memory lost in the colonial haze. In this book, oral narratives and personal viewpoints merge in creating an authentic African knowledge system.</p>
<h2>3. African Memoirs and Cultural Representations</h2>
<p>The most recent major book by Falola is <a href="https://anthempress.com/african-memoirs-and-cultural-representations-hb">African Memoirs and Cultural Representations</a>, released in 2023. In this work, Falola analyses the memoirs of grossly under-studied west African writers who worked largely in the traditional vein – that is, within the perspectives of precolonial west African thinking. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover showing a photograph of a man in traditional African attire sitting and reading into a microphone from a large book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthem Press</span></span>
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<p>In this manner, African perspectives, beliefs and norms are recuperated as a way of furthering a decolonial project. In addition, the book highlights the nature and purity of the African voice beyond the colonial framework. In other words, what it means to hear African voices outside the strictures or filters of colonial thought systems.</p>
<p>What these three books do is to outline Falola’s positions on a global decolonial project. He has also recently co-edited the <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-45759-4">Palgrave Handbook on Islam in Africa</a> and a multi-volume <a href="https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-030-28099-4">book project</a> on women’s studies and female agency in Africa. Such is the scope of this African scholar.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455">Explainer: what is decolonisation?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Falola’s copious research outputs debunk the fallacy that Africa was without history, consciousness or mind. Such myths were promoted in the grand narratives of colonialism and the European imperial project. And more importantly, Falola’s work serves as a powerful antidote to the constant onslaughts of <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/afropessimism">afropessimism</a> and probably by extension, <a href="https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/courses/new-york/what-is-afropessimism-politics-society-and-anti-blackness/">anti-blackness</a> in the contemporary age.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200851/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha receives funding from the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation but writes in his personal capacity.</span></em></p>With over 200 publications to his name, his three most recent books give a sense of why he is so famous as a historian.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1974292023-02-12T19:09:09Z2023-02-12T19:09:09ZOrientalism: Edward Said’s groundbreaking book explained<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508527/original/file-20230207-17-affvx0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C11%2C1911%2C1287&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The original cover art of Edward Said's book was this Orientalist painting by Jean Leon Gerome: Le charmeur de serpents</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whether you’re conscious of it or not, you likely have a vivid mental image of what the Middle East looks and sounds like. You might envision a sparse landscape, the air warped by heat and yellowed with flurries of sand. You might hear the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osf1gckzf70&themeRefresh=1">plucking of an oud</a>, or a haunting voice singing in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faOWttnSx3A">double harmonic scale</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@rudyayoub/video/7138072436649774382">This viral TikTok video</a> captures just how salient these tropes are in our collective awareness and in popular media. Here, TikTokers collaboratively satirise features commonly found in Hollywood films about the Middle East, such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4669264/">Beirut</a> (2018), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/">American Sniper</a> (2014), and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024648/">Argo</a> (2012). </p>
<p>The video spoofs “the yellow filter”, a colour-grading style used when depicting places perceived as impoverished or rife with conflict. We also hear a crude rendition of “Arabic” music, and someone poses as a “lady in lots of fabric staring at the camera”, parodying the unsettling mystique attributed to Middle Eastern women. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shantaram-the-black-white-mans-burden-132173">Shantaram – the Black white man's burden</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507795/original/file-20230202-15-g7bczh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507795/original/file-20230202-15-g7bczh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507795/original/file-20230202-15-g7bczh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507795/original/file-20230202-15-g7bczh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507795/original/file-20230202-15-g7bczh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507795/original/file-20230202-15-g7bczh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507795/original/file-20230202-15-g7bczh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507795/original/file-20230202-15-g7bczh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>These tropes form a part of what Palestinian-American intellectual and activist Edward Said called <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/orientalism-9780141187426">Orientalism</a>. His seminal 1978 book of the same name explores the ways Western experts, or “Orientalists”, have come to understand and represent the Middle East. </p>
<p>Said analyses a vast, organised body of knowledge on the Middle East, starting with <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-the-Pyramids-Egyptian-history">Napoléon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt</a>, for which a legion of scholars, writers and scientists were enlisted to collect as much information about Egypt as they could. Orientalism peels back the supposedly neutral veneer of scientific interest and discovery attached to such projects.</p>
<p>Said shows how Orientalist writings and ideologies actively shape the world they describe, and how they perpetuate views of Middle Eastern people as inferior, subservient, and in need of saving. As a result, these often racist or romanticised stereotypes create a worldview that justifies Western colonialism and imperialism. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508523/original/file-20230207-27-xkbhtk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man reads a book in front of bookshelves" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508523/original/file-20230207-27-xkbhtk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508523/original/file-20230207-27-xkbhtk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508523/original/file-20230207-27-xkbhtk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508523/original/file-20230207-27-xkbhtk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508523/original/file-20230207-27-xkbhtk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508523/original/file-20230207-27-xkbhtk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508523/original/file-20230207-27-xkbhtk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Said shows how Orientalist writings and ideologies perpetuate views of Middle Eastern people as inferior, subservient, and in need of saving.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Barenboim-Said Foundation (USA)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is “the Orient”?</h2>
<p>According to Said, the Orient is a “semi-mythical construct” imposed on a set of countries east of Europe. While the term has been used to describe countries in East and South Asia, Said mainly focuses on how it’s used in relation to <a href="https://aapirc.ucsc.edu/swana/what-is-swana.html">Southwest Asia and North Africa</a>, or the Middle East. </p>
<p>Indeed, the Orient doesn’t have a stable set of geographical bounds. Orientalists might write about countries as varied as Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq with little distinction. Consequently, the geographical vagueness of “the Orient” works to conflate a vast and diverse array of landscapes, peoples and cultures into a single, unchanging unit. </p>
<p>Orientalists often describe parts of Southwest Asia and North Africa with the intention of representing the <em>entire</em> Orient, and a wide range of moral attitudes, religions, languages, cultures and political structures are folded into one. </p>
<p>As such, the idea of the Orient functions more as an abstract antithesis the West defines itself against than as an accurate descriptor of a region. </p>
<h2>Who are “the Orientals”?</h2>
<p>The term “Oriental” was often used to describe any person or group of people east of Europe, usually from Arab and/or Islamic countries. Like “the Orient”, this term reduces a variety of peoples to a discrete set of traits and temperaments. </p>
<p>In his book, Said observes a spate of harmful and sometimes contradictory stereotypes of so-called Oriental peoples, who are described as lazy, suspicious, gullible, mysterious or untruthful. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508521/original/file-20230207-17-cs6xad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508521/original/file-20230207-17-cs6xad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508521/original/file-20230207-17-cs6xad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508521/original/file-20230207-17-cs6xad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508521/original/file-20230207-17-cs6xad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508521/original/file-20230207-17-cs6xad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508521/original/file-20230207-17-cs6xad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508521/original/file-20230207-17-cs6xad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 2018 film Beirut was shot mostly in Tangier in Morocco: part of the reason it received backlash for its inaccurate, Orientalist depiction of the Lebanese Civil War and 1982 Israeli invasion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Said argues that by minimising the rich diversity of Southwest Asian and North African peoples, Orientalists turn them into a “contrasting image” against which the West seems culturally superior. </p>
<p>The peoples of the Middle East are often portrayed as weak, barbaric and irrational. Westerners, in comparison, are made to seem strong, progressive and rational. This style of thinking, in which East and West, or Orient and Occident, are placed into a mutually exclusive binary, is central to Orientalist thought.</p>
<h2>What is an “Orientalist”?</h2>
<p>Said mounts much of his study of Orientalism on analyses of academic research. In his book, Said mainly focuses on academics working in philology and anthropology: those who wrote about the languages and cultures of Southwest Asia and North Africa. </p>
<p>He shows how these researchers fashioned their highly selective, biased observations into supposedly “scientific” findings, thus positioning themselves as objective authorities on Southwest Asia and North Africa.</p>
<p>But Orientalists aren’t exclusively tucked away in ivory towers. Said also explores the work of authors, poets, painters, philosophers and politicians, citing figures as varied as Arthur Balfour, Victor Hugo and Eugène Delacroix.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fVC8EYd_Z_g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Edward Said on Orientalism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>More than “a mere collection of lies”</h2>
<p>It’s important to note that, for Said, Orientalism isn’t just a set of myths. He understood it as an <em>interconnected system</em> of institutions, policies, narratives and ideas. </p>
<p>Said referred to this as the interaction between “latent Orientalism” (the system of implicit ideas and beliefs about Southwest Asia and North Africa) and “manifest Orientalism” (explicit policies and ideologies acted upon by institutions). </p>
<p>What keeps Orientalism flourishing and relevant is its consistent and active traffic between a variety of fields. Findings in academia inform foreign and domestic policies. Portrayals in popular culture influence the framing of news about Southwest Asia and North Africa, and vice versa. Seeing the links between culture, knowledge and power is fundamental to understanding the reach of Orientalism.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-5-museum-objects-that-tell-a-story-of-colonialism-and-its-legacy-150642">Friday essay: 5 museum objects that tell a story of colonialism and its legacy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>What does Orientalism do?</h2>
<p>Orientalism served as an ideological basis for French and British colonial rule. But Orientalist perceptions didn’t simply disappear after the colonial period. In fact, they continue to be used as justification for contemporary foreign and domestic policies. </p>
<p>And this, Said stresses, is how Orientalism sustains its power: through repetition. Orientalist ideas, stereotypes and approaches have been renewed and reiterated over the past two centuries, and we can still see them in circulation today. </p>
<p>For instance, we can see them at work in the ways the United States and European Union have endowed themselves with the authority to impose what a <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/11/1130427">2022 UN report</a> called “suffocating” economic sanctions against Syria. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507796/original/file-20230202-20-760nn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507796/original/file-20230202-20-760nn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507796/original/file-20230202-20-760nn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507796/original/file-20230202-20-760nn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507796/original/file-20230202-20-760nn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507796/original/file-20230202-20-760nn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507796/original/file-20230202-20-760nn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Justifications for sanctions in Syria (pictured, 2019) have roots in Orientalist ideas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hassan Ammar/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the US Department of State <a href="https://www.state.gov/syria-sanctions/">has justified</a> the unilateral sanctions as a means to “deprive [Bashar al-Assad’s] regime of the resources it needs to continue violence against civilians”, the sanctions have <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/09/28/u-s-sanctions-are-punishing-ordinary-syrians-and-crippling-aid-work-u-n-report-reveals/">disproportionately affected</a> the civilian population in Syria.</p>
<p>What’s more, these justifications contain the central assumption Said critiques in his book: that Southwest Asian and North African peoples need to be saved from themselves. The price of this so-called salvation is the agency and self-determination of these populations.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-the-west-betrayed-syria-194245">Friday essay: how the West betrayed Syria</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A note on context</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507797/original/file-20230202-16-ry9pr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507797/original/file-20230202-16-ry9pr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507797/original/file-20230202-16-ry9pr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507797/original/file-20230202-16-ry9pr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507797/original/file-20230202-16-ry9pr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507797/original/file-20230202-16-ry9pr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1394&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507797/original/file-20230202-16-ry9pr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507797/original/file-20230202-16-ry9pr5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1394&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Said and his sister.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many scholars note that Said’s lived experience offered him a unique perspective in writing “Orientalism”. Said himself acknowledged this. In his 2003 preface, he wrote, “much of the personal investment in this study derives from my awareness of being an ‘Oriental’ as a child growing up in two British colonies”. </p>
<p>His family was exiled from Mandate Palestine during <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/what-is-nakba-palestine-israel-conflict-explained-1948">the 1948 Nakba</a>, and he went on to live in Lebanon, Egypt and the United States. Educated in British colonial schools and elite US universities, Said linked the experience of being at once an insider and an outsider to the disparity he felt between his own identity as a Palestinian Arab and how Arabs are represented by the West.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-whitewash-is-a-scathing-hilarious-satire-of-asian-misrepresentation-in-hollywood-188466">The Whitewash is a scathing, hilarious satire of Asian misrepresentation in Hollywood</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Why is Orientalism important?</h2>
<p>The impact of “Orientalism” is monumental. Said is <a href="https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/about-postcolonial-studies/">often credited</a> with founding the field known as postcolonial studies, and his work has significantly influenced fields across the humanities: including cultural studies, anthropology, comparative literature and political science. </p>
<p>We can also attribute the growing awareness of Orientalist tropes to his book’s vast popularity. “Orientalism” has been translated into 36 languages (as of 2003) and remains a classic available in most bookstores. </p>
<p>While media literacy about Orientalism is increasing, these tropes remain as relevant as ever in the Western popular imagination. We should continue to challenge the ways Orientalism shapes our perception of Southwest Asia and North Africa countries and peoples.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cyma Hibri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Edward Said’s seminal 1978 book, Orientalism, explores how often racist or romanticised stereotypes create a worldview that justifies Western colonialism and imperialism.Cyma Hibri, PhD, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1976412023-01-24T14:34:50Z2023-01-24T14:34:50ZFootball and politics in Kinshasa: how DRC’s elite use sport to build their reputations and hold on to power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504456/original/file-20230113-26-o6a4dx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young people play football on a street in Goma, eastern DRC. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Guerchom Ndebo/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Football in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – as in much of the world – is intertwined with politics. </p>
<p>In the central African country, football clubs have long been a way for the regime in power to build political capital. Many politicians involve themselves with clubs to bolster their image. On the other hand, football is also a space for political opposition. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/files/8518/fa1af368-d443-41cc-88b9-38bcdcb90449.pdf">our recent paper</a>, we show how politics and football come together in a number of ways in Kinshasa, the country’s capital city. </p>
<p>Football was particularly important for Joseph Kabila’s regime, from 2001 to 2019. His was a <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2018/01/kabila-must-go-the-congolese-see-this-why-cant-the-west/">contested and repressive regime</a>. Throughout his tenure as president, Kabila and his party members looked for ways to improve their reputation to gain votes. One way was by financially supporting football clubs. This worked because these clubs don’t have structural or sufficient commercial or state support. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/files/8518/fa1af368-d443-41cc-88b9-38bcdcb90449.pdf">our study finds</a> that football politics can also work against a regime. During the Kabila years, football stadiums and supporter crowds offered a relatively safe place to protest the repressive regime. Anti-Kabila songs, for example, were often heard at matches. </p>
<h2>Football and power</h2>
<p>Our interviews with supporters, regime figures and others found that during the Kabila years, supporters and club officials made a distinction between regime figures supporting the club, and the regime. A common statement we heard was: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>supporters still appreciated Kabila-associated politicians as long as they were able to provide financial support.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gabriel Amisi (commonly known as Tango Four), for example, was a close ally of Kabila’s and currently serves as an <a href="https://www.jeuneafrique.com/1016772/politique/rdc-sous-pression-des-usa-felix-tshisekedi-procede-a-un-prudent-remaniement-dans-larmee/">army general and inspector general of the Congolese army</a>. Amisi has been accused of a wide range of human rights abuses during his time as a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/20/congo-war-crimes-kisangani">rebel commander</a> and an <a href="https://www.radiookapi.net/actualite/2012/11/22/rdc-le-president-kabila-suspend-le-general-major-amisi-le-chef-de-forces-terrestres">army commander</a>. One press article describes him as “<a href="https://afridesk.org/whos-who-le-general-amisi-tango-four-le-boucher-du-kivu-jj-wondo/">the butcher of Eastern Congo</a>”. </p>
<p>Between 2007 and 2020, Amisi was president of the AS Vita Club, one of the biggest clubs in Kinshasa. Before 2007, the team was performing poorly. Under Amisi’s leadership, the team won three national titles and excelled internationally. Players remember his leadership as providing financial stability, with regular and good salaries, and material supplies. </p>
<p>This made him very popular. When Amisi tried to resign in 2012 after AS Vita Club’s elimination from the national league, the team’s management and club supporters didn’t accept his submission. When protests began against the Kabila regime in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-congo-politics-idUSKBN14800C">2016</a> in Kinshasa, AS Vita supporters protected Amisi’s house. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/16/dr-congo-profiles-individuals-sanctioned-eu-and-us">Human Rights Watch</a> has documented how Amisi (and other elite figures) used youth league members of football clubs to infiltrate protests against the Kabila regime “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/16/dr-congo-profiles-individuals-sanctioned-eu-and-us">and incite protesters to loot and commit violence</a>”. </p>
<p>An association with regime figures gives football clubs advantages, such as protection from prosecution if supporters are caught up in stadium violence. This makes it unattractive for clubs to associate with opposition figures, who generally have less money to invest and less political power. </p>
<p>In this way, Congolese football isn’t very different from football elsewhere in the world. It has been shown how <a href="https://books.google.be/books?id=VIlcDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA463&lpg=PA463&dq=Armstrong,+G.,+%26+Mitchell,+J.+P.+(2001).+%E2%80%9CPlayers,+patrons,+and+politicians:+oppositional+cultures+in+Maltese+football.%E2%80%9D+Fear+and+loathing+in+world+football,+137-158.&source=bl&ots=6GcJZyJ7BE&sig=ACfU3U3YaJGbpHXEt6nnlRXMeLAYfrrpVw&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiorpSsspz8AhUROewKHQ0BDxAQ6AF6BAgHEAM#v=onepage&q&f=false">worldwide</a> – not only on the <a href="https://polaf.hypotheses.org/5030">African continent</a>, but in a variety of places such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14660970.2013.792482">Turkey, Indonesia</a> and <a href="http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/10117/">Malta</a> – football helps regimes to reproduce their hegemony, particularly by creating political capital. </p>
<h2>Football and protest</h2>
<p>But the opposite has also been shown. Football has played an important role in contesting power. It has, for example, played a role in decolonising struggles in <a href="https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/visualizing-politics-in-african-sport-political-and-cultural-cons">Zimbabwe</a>, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa/article/abs/kickin-it-leisure-politics-and-football-in-colonial-zanzibar-1900s1950s/A97494FF2D4FEB7BFA1252B4A11A6309">Zanzibar</a> and <a href="https://books.google.be/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=N65pbr2hC4wC&oi=fnd&pg=PP12&dq=Martin,+P.+(2002).+%E2%80%9CLeisure+and+society+in+colonial+Brazzaville.%E2%80%9D+Cambridge+University+Pr&ots=2MF69toPoN&sig=6yK6P7RbPAWkvnTOo0XuYu3Tp6U#v=onepage&q=Martin%2C%20P.%20(2002).%20%E2%80%9CLeisure%20and%20society%20in%20colonial%20Brazzaville.%E2%80%9D%20Cambridge%20University%20Pr&f=false">Congo-Brazzaville</a>; and in the <a href="https://www.eurasiareview.com/24122012-pitched-battles-the-role-of-ultra-soccer-fans-in-the-arab-spring-analysis-2/">Arab spring</a> in the 2010s. </p>
<p>These dynamics also played out in Kinshasa, where football supporters participated in decolonisation struggles. On <a href="https://dialectik-football.info/16-juin-1957-lunion-saint-gilloise-au-congo-et-la-premiere-emeute-anti-coloniale/">16 June 1957</a>, a match between Kinshasa’s FC Leopoldville and Belgium’s Union Saint Gilloise de Bruxelles led to the first riots leading up to independence. A year and a half later, AS Vita Club supporters played <a href="https://books.google.be/books?id=bF5Vx8cCnrMC&printsec=frontcover&hl=nl&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">an important role</a> in decisive riots against colonial authorities. In 1960, the DRC got its independence from Belgium. </p>
<p>In the postcolonial period, football has also played a role in challenging power. During the Kabila regime, as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/29/dr-congo-repression-persists-election-deadline-nears">political repression escalated</a> in almost every other space, the football stadium became an important venue for political protest. </p>
<p>In the words of a soccer fan in <a href="https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/files/8518/fa1af368-d443-41cc-88b9-38bcdcb90449.pdf">our study</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Since we’re in the stadium, we won’t be arrested. The police knows this: they won’t try anything because we’re way more numerous than them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lyrics of protest songs and slogans – referred to as “hymns of the oppressed” – included: “God is doing everything so that Kabila dies!” and “Eeeh, we refuse (to be) the voting machine”. </p>
<p>During <a href="https://qz.com/africa/569612/dr-congos-joseph-kabila-is-taking-a-slippery-path-to-a-third-term">the “slippage” period</a> from 2015 onwards – when Kabila went beyond the formal limits of his mandate – anti-Kabila slogans became even more popular. </p>
<p>The engagement of regime figures with soccer clubs didn’t overcome hostile feelings about the regime. </p>
<h2>Regime controls</h2>
<p>The impact of these confrontations of regime power was limited, though. </p>
<p>For example, during the Kabila regime, radio and TV stations would cut their broadcasting when political songs were sung during games involving the national team. And in late 2016, the minister of sports <a href="https://www.radiookapi.net/2016/12/14/actualite/sport/rdc-le-ministre-des-sports-suspend-le-championnat-national-de-foot">temporarily suspended</a> the national football competition. The official reason for this was “<a href="https://www.radiookapi.net/2016/12/14/actualite/sport/rdc-le-ministre-des-sports-suspend-le-championnat-national-de-foot">excessive violence in the stadiums</a>”. But it was widely understood as a political measure by the regime, fearing protests by supporters in reaction to the end of Kabila’s official mandate during this period. The former minister confirmed this to us during interviews. </p>
<p>In sum, football in Kinshasa is politics – but primarily regime politics. Even though political opposition can be expressed through football, it is questionable how much potential for change this carries. </p>
<p>During the authoritarian Kabila regime, the protest role of football was confined. It’s similar under the current Felix Tshisekedi regime, which uses football as a political tool. Kinshasa’s main clubs (Daring Club Motema Pembe and AS Vita), for example, have club presidents who are close allies of Tshisekedi.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197641/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Football provides a way for unpopular elites to build political capital – but also creates space for citizens to voice dissent.Kristof Titeca, Professor in International Development, University of AntwerpAlbert Malukisa Nkuku, Associate researcher, University of AntwerpLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1903392022-09-12T12:14:58Z2022-09-12T12:14:58ZCharles III faces challenges at home, abroad – and even in defining what it means to be king<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483827/original/file-20220910-7504-rh8iva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C0%2C4448%2C2523&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Long to reign over whom and how?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/king-charles-iii-meets-well-wishers-as-he-returns-to-news-photo/1243103398?adppopup=true">Jonathan Brady/WPA Pool/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Charles III <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/uk-king-charles-iii-what-to-know/">became the King of the United Kingdom</a> on Sept. 8, 2022, having spent almost all of his 73 years preparing for this role, watching the <a href="https://theconversation.com/queen-elizabeth-ii-a-moderniser-who-steered-the-british-monarchy-into-the-21st-century-159485">example of his mother, Elizabeth II</a>. Yet, he faces an uncertain course as monarch.</p>
<p>The legacy of Charles’ mother <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/queen-elizabeths-death-revives-criticism-britains-legacy-colonialism-rcna46942">is complex</a>. While her presence was a source of stability, the societies over which the British monarchy rules – both in the U.K.’s four home nations and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/due-to-british-colonialism-king-charles-is-now-the-monarch-of-14-countries-in-addition-to-the-uk-following-queen-elizabeths-death/articleshow/94084900.cms">14 additional countries in the Commonwealth</a> – changed much over the 70 years of her reign.</p>
<p>Charles will have to make new choices about what it means to be a modern monarch, just as his mother <a href="https://theconversation.com/queen-elizabeth-ii-a-moderniser-who-steered-the-british-monarchy-into-the-21st-century-159485">adapted to the rapidly changing circumstances</a> of the post-World War II years. His tenure on the throne will be defined by how he responds to new tensions in the relationship between sovereign, nations and people.</p>
<h2>Challenge I: A global king?</h2>
<p>Elizabeth was not just the queen of the United Kingdom. She <a href="https://www.royal.uk/commonwealth-and-overseas">was also the queen</a> of Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Canada, Tuvalu, <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-has-a-new-head-of-state-what-will-charles-be-like-as-king-176878">Australia</a> and more than half a dozen other countries. Combined, more people live in these nations than in the U.K. All are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/due-to-british-colonialism-king-charles-is-now-the-monarch-of-14-countries-in-addition-to-the-uk-following-queen-elizabeths-death/articleshow/94084900.cms">now subjects of the new king</a>. </p>
<p>Whether all these countries accept the new king in the same manner in which they accepted his mother remains to be seen. Many became independent nations near the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign during an era of <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/asia-and-africa">rapid decolonization</a> in the 1950s and 1960s. A majority of Britain’s former colonies, including India, Pakistan and all Britain’s African colonies, became republics right before Elizabeth took the throne or in the early years of her reign. In many of these places, the British monarchy was associated with the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/world/africa/queen-africa-british-empire.html">worst inequities of the empire</a>. For example, the British Empire in India <a href="https://indianculture.gov.in/stories/delhi-durbars">drew heavily on the symbolism of the British monarch as a paternalistic empress or emperor</a> at the top of a power hierarchy that left no room for Indian sovereignty or political agency.</p>
<p>The post-colonial states that retained the monarchy did so for a number of reasons. It gave new governments a borrowed sense of legitimacy and constitutional flexibility because they could use ambiguity about the power of the queen’s representative, the governor general, a role that can potentially <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2020/November/The_dismissal">wield</a> more <a href="https://vancouversun.com/news/national/stephen-harper-to-prorogue-parliament-until-october?r">power</a> than the monarch can in Britain. In the former settler colonies – <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliament-and-empire/parliament-and-the-american-colonies-before-1765/the-settler-colonies-australia/#:%7E:text=After%20the%20first%20vessels%20carrying,throughout%20the%20early%2019th%20century.">Australia</a>, <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliament-and-empire/parliament-and-the-american-colonies-before-1765/the-settler-colonies-new-zealand/">New Zealand</a> and <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliament-and-empire/parliament-and-the-american-colonies-before-1765/the-settler-colonies-canada/">Canada</a> – many citizens still spoke of Britain as “home” in the 1950s. This sentiment faded in subsequent decades, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44210833">although it never entirely disappeared</a>. </p>
<p>The tie to the monarchy also held the promise of promoting ongoing economic and political ties with the U.K. This promise was usually illusory: Elizabeth being Grenada’s queen did nothing to stop the <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/military-history/2018/10/25/how-the-invasion-of-grenada-was-planned-with-a-tourist-map-and-a-copy-of-the-economist/">United States from invading it in 1983</a>. </p>
<p>Toward the end of Elizabeth’s reign, countries in the Caribbean in particular were beginning to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/world/americas/queen-elizabeth-jubilee-caribbean.html">reassess their relationship to the British crown</a>. In late 2021, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/barbados-queen-republic-ceremony-prince-charles-rcna6901">Barbados removed Elizabeth as queen</a> and become a republic. In early 2022, Prince William and Kate Middleton were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/25/william-and-kate-caribbean-tour-slavery-reparations-royals">met with protesters</a> when they visited the Caribbean, calling for reparations from the U.K. over its role in the transatlantic slave trade. Elizabeth’s death may serve as an opportunity for other nations to reexamine their relationship with the British monarchy and follow the Barbadian example, once the mourning period ends. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman in a gaggle of protesters holds a sign that reads 'Reparations Now.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483828/original/file-20220910-7447-t9g2g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483828/original/file-20220910-7447-t9g2g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483828/original/file-20220910-7447-t9g2g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483828/original/file-20220910-7447-t9g2g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483828/original/file-20220910-7447-t9g2g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483828/original/file-20220910-7447-t9g2g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483828/original/file-20220910-7447-t9g2g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests greeted Prince William when he visited the Caribbean in 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-holds-a-sign-in-protest-as-she-waits-for-the-arrival-news-photo/1239496828?adppopup=true">Toby Melville/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The head of the monarchy resides in Britain, <a href="https://www.royal.uk/charities-and-patronages-1">supports primarily British charities</a> and sits at the top of British society. Royal members seemingly enjoy visiting their other realms, and many in those nations – especially traditional elites – enjoy the <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/royal-family/page-2">visits</a>. But what these relationships mean is increasingly <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/royal-family/page-4">unclear</a>, especially at a time when many countries are reevaluating their colonial pasts.</p>
<h2>Challenge II: A British king?</h2>
<p>It isn’t just the relationship with countries of the former British empire that has changed over the seven decades of Elizabeth’s rule. The monarchy under Charles will need to adapt to social, political and generational upheaval in Britain itself. The U.K. is made up of almost 70 million people in four <a href="https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/profound-divisions-brexit/">deeply divided nations</a>. They are divided by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160406-how-much-does-social-class-matter-in-britain-today">class</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/10/britain-generational-divide-headache-left-meghan-monarchy">generation</a>, <a href="https://geographical.co.uk/culture/a-country-divided-why-englands-north-south-divide-is-getting-worse">geography</a> and <a href="https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk#:%7E:text=Wealth%20in%20Great%20Britain%20is,contrast%2C%20own%20just%209%25.">economics</a>.</p>
<p>The British political system generally hides these divides more than it reflects them – it is centered in London, with a parliament representing the people of the four home nations: Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>Brexit <a href="http://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Public-Opinion.pdf">exposed many of these fractures</a>, renewing the separatist aspirations of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/03/brexit-changed-everything-revisiting-the-case-for-scottish-independence">Scottish nationalists</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/06/brexit-is-a-huge-help-to-irish-republicanism-says-dissident-leader">republicans in Northern Ireland</a>. </p>
<p>The royal family loves Scotland. Their estate at <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a41118691/what-is-balmoral-castle/">Balmoral, Scotland</a> – where Elizabeth died – is their retreat from affairs of state. But it’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/15/scottish-support-for-monarchy-falls-to-45-poll-reveals">not clear that Scotland loves Charles back</a>.</p>
<p>Many critics believe that Charles <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/10/where-prince-charles-went-wrong">lacks the qualities</a> that endeared Elizabeth to Britons of all social classes. People who met Elizabeth when receiving honors or at Royal Garden Parties projected themselves onto her. Stories in memoirs, articles and autobiographies about meeting her often described her as simultaneously special, but also “<a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/queen-elizabeth-ii-just-like-us/">like us</a>.” Under Elizabeth, the royal family pushed a public narrative that they are inclusive of all people in their realms.</p>
<p>This image of a royal family for all Britons also took a hit with the departure and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/meghan-tabloids-harry-racist-/2021/03/10/a8777384-818d-11eb-be22-32d331d87530_story.html">ferocious press attacks</a> on Prince Harry and his American wife, Meghan Markle. Reports of <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/08/meghan-markle-prince-harry-oprah-interview-revealed-royal-made-racist-remark-about-archie-skin-tone">racially insensitive comments</a> by a senior royal suggested that the U.K.’s pervasive <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/01/business/uk-workplace-racism/index.html">culture of passive-aggressive racism</a> goes all the way to the top.</p>
<p>Charles now faces the difficult task, if he wants it, of presenting himself as a monarch for all Britons, regardless of race, social class and nationality.</p>
<h2>Challenge III: A neutral king?</h2>
<p>Finally, Charles faces <a href="https://nation.cymru/opinion/will-king-charles-iii-remain-politically-neutral/">questions about his political neutrality</a>. Elizabeth was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/09/europe/royal-brexit-neutrality">careful not to reveal her political beliefs</a> or personal feelings. She was simultaneously the most public and most private of individuals in Britain during her reign. Her known enthusiasms – her <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/how-queen-elizabeth-ii-lived-out-her-oath-defender-faith-n1298817">piety</a>, patronage of various charities, corgis and horse racing – were seldom controversial or politicized. </p>
<p>Charles has a different public reputation. He has been outspoken in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-09/king-charles-iii-was-once-a-prince-with-a-passion-for-urban-planning">controversies about architecture</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/23/prince-charles-small-scale-family-farms-must-be-at-heart-of-sustainable-future">farming</a>, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/writing-integrity/202202/prince-charles-s-love-affair-alternative-medicine">health</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/10/will-charles-iii-green-king-prince-climate-crisis">the environment</a> – some of which connect to ongoing political and cultural debates. In 2015, the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/13/prince-charles-black-spider-memos-lobbying-ministers-tony-blair">published letters showing that Charles had lobbied</a> Tony Blair’s government directly over issues of personal interest to him, including his enthusiasm for alternative medicine. </p>
<p>In being less discreet than his mother about his political views, Charles risks <a href="https://www.royal.uk/queen-and-government">compromising his constitutional role</a> as a monarch who reigns but doesn’t rule. Under Elizabeth, the monarchy was flexible and fluid: becoming or appearing to become what British politicians, traditional elites and its many other publics wanted it to be. If Charles tries to be more proactive than his mother in the political sphere, he will likely alienate people.</p>
<h2>A poisoned chalice?</h2>
<p>If being king in 2022 sounds tricky, it’s because it is. Charles will struggle to serve all his constituencies well. There are many ways he can fail. It’s not even clear what “success” means for a British monarch in the 21st century. Is it influence? Harmony? Reflecting society? Setting a good example? Survival?</p>
<p>For King Charles III, the most meaningful choices may be about letting go as much as holding on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tobias Harper does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The world changed a great deal in the 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. Her son’s legacy may be determined by how he adapts to new dynamics within the UK and across the Commonwealth.Tobias Harper, Assistant Professor of History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1838502022-05-30T14:13:26Z2022-05-30T14:13:26ZKenya’s ‘patriotic’ choral music has been used to embed a skewed version of history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465751/original/file-20220527-23-mveqt7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A choir performs during independence day celebrations in Kenya.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Choral music – patriotic choral music in particular – is a significant genre in Kenya’s political history. </p>
<p>Patriotic music is defined by how it engages citizen to praise and express sentiments of national affiliation. In the Kenyan context patriotic choral music has been used to influence behaviour and the forming of a national identity. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/epdf/10.10520/EJC-f184b6256">traced the history</a> of the music to explore how it has been used in this way in the country. We found that songs that were composed and performed in the immediate aftermath of Kenya’s struggle for independence urged the public to forget colonial injustices to build the new country. </p>
<p>This music was used to create political heroes out of individuals at the expense of the hosts of people who contributed to the country’s independence. It continues to be used as a political tool. This is primarily done through a distribution network that involves airplay on both private and state broadcasters, and during national holidays. </p>
<h2>A long tradition</h2>
<p>Choral music was used to amplify former President Jomo Kenyatta’s widely publicised rhetoric of “forgive and forget”. </p>
<p>Kenya’s first president introduced the idea in his speech to the nation at the first celebration of Kenyatta Day – later renamed Mashujaa (Heroes) Day – on 20 October 1964. He <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279155301_Jomo_Kenyatta's_Speeches_and_the_Construction_of_the_Identities_of_a_Nationalist_Leader_in_Kenya">proclaimed that</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the foundation of our future must lie in the theme: forgive and forget.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It would later become a motto closely linked to his presidency. His policies inaugurated a national culture of selective socio-political amnesia.</p>
<p>This persists in contemporary Kenya. </p>
<p>Most of the choral music composed and performed in Kenya as ‘patriotic music’ has been embraced and influenced by the government through the Permanent Presidential Music Commission (PPMC). </p>
<p>The commission was established in 1988 under President Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s second president. The government agency deals with the entertainment functions of the state, among others. </p>
<p>Music researchers <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40319249">Hellen Agak and Kakston Mindoti</a> observe that the commission scrutinises all Kenyan patriotic choral music to ensure that it conforms to the social and political ideals of the government. The commission also examines the quality of music and messages communicated.</p>
<p>Over different government regimes, patriotic choral music has been presented to the public through the national broadcaster and during state celebrations of national days. The music presented is curated through the commission. </p>
<p>During these celebrations, a few selected canonical choral pieces have continued to dominate through different governments and political regimes. </p>
<h2>The telling of history</h2>
<p>Our research focused mainly on the music of Enock Ondego, one of Kenya’s pioneer composers. Ondego’s ‘Huu ni Wimbo wa Historia’ (This is a Song of History) is perhaps the main choral composition that has persisted through different regimes.</p>
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<p>‘Huu ni Wimbo wa Historia’ was composed in May 1964. It was <a href="https://www.kwani.org/publication/kwanini-series/7/the_life_of_mzee_ondego.html">first performed</a> before President Kenyatta by the children of Samburu Primary School. </p>
<p>The song foregrounds the importance of the anti-colonial struggle in Kenya’s history. It opens with a plea to the audience to pay attention to the message. </p>
<p>It is a narrative of the experiences of different victims during the <a href="https://uca.edu/politicalscience/dadm-project/sub-saharan-africa-region/british-kenya-1920-1963/#:%7E:text=British%20Government%20Evelyn%20Baring%20declared,militants%20on%20October%2022%2C%201952.">1952 emergency period</a>. The lyrics suggest that the struggle for Kenya’s independence was a collective moral phenomenon. Lines 7 and 8 – “there was sorrow in the country Kenya” and “all the people were very sad” – capture this reality. </p>
<p>In lines 14 and 15, the song further explains that there was “matata” (trouble) and that “many people died because of freedom”. </p>
<p>Yet, the history documented in the choral song is a selective one.</p>
<p>Despite the promise of its title, ‘Huu ni Wimbo wa Historia’ foregrounds only Kenyatta’s involvement in the freedom struggle. It does this by focusing on the supposed physical and emotional violence he faced as an individual. This erases the contribution of everyone else in the country’s struggle for independence. </p>
<p>The song initially mentions that Kenyatta was arrested together with other freedom fighters. But the others remain unnamed and unacknowledged (lines 4, 5 and 6). </p>
<p>Lines 20, 21, 22 and 23 invoke the memory of how Kenyatta and other representatives travelled to Britain to negotiate for Kenya’s constitution. Again, the lyrics foreground Kenyatta only. The promise of a collective identified by the idea of ‘representatives’ suddenly collapses into the singular. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When he reached there … he was beaten with rotten eggs … The father of the nation did not mind … he won and came back with a constitution for our country, Kenya. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rather than recognising that Kenya’s constitutional victory was the result of collective endeavour, the song suggests that it was produced by the individual efforts of Kenyatta. </p>
<p>This silencing takes on added significance when considering the original naming of the commemorative day upon which this song reflects: Kenyatta Day. </p>
<p>The individuality cult of Kenyatta is central in understanding how music became a site where heroes were purged from Kenyan history, or where their role in the making of the nation was undermined. </p>
<p>Such narratives risk promoting socio-political, historical and even economic exclusion in the process of nation formation. </p>
<p>To echo literary professor Pumla Dineo Gqola’s work on <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/what-is-slavery-to-me/">postcolonial slave memory in South Africa</a>, forgetting and remembering are framed within power hierarchies, where “unremembering is a calculated act of exclusion and erasure”. </p>
<p>In the current government, songs such as ‘Huu ni Wimbo wa Historia’ continue to get significant airplay, especially on national holidays. </p>
<h2>Influencing memory and history</h2>
<p>By relying on such music for entertainment during state commemorative events, the presidential music commission plays a crucial function in statecraft, especially in the context of influencing memory and history. </p>
<p>But the musical and performance component of the songs also reveals that it is multi-layered. </p>
<p>The emotive tone and mood of ‘Huu ni Wimbo wa Historia’ demonstrate the immensity of the pain endured in the anti-colonial struggle. Feelings of despair and sorrow are painted through repetition and by onomatopoeic sounds, such as ‘woooi woooi’ (line 11). </p>
<p>Such sounds capture the general mourning response of the public not only to Kenyatta’s arrest, but also to the deaths and torture witnessed after the state of emergency was declared. </p>
<p>Hence, the song’s text seems to call for a celebratory turn towards the future, while simultaneously ruminating in the pain of the past through non-linguistic verbal signifiers that reach their full effect only in performance. </p>
<p>This shows that patriotic choral music in Kenya, although repeatedly used as a political tool, also shares the potential for contesting meaning and drawing listeners’ attention to different layers of significance embedded in musical texts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Music has often been used as a political tool to urge Kenyans to forget the sins of colonial and post-colonial regimes.Doseline Kiguru, Research associate, University of BristolPatrick Ernest Monte, Lecturer of Music, Kabarak UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1737322022-01-11T01:36:45Z2022-01-11T01:36:45ZHow the kidnapping of a First Nations man on New Year’s Eve in 1788 may have led to a smallpox epidemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439958/original/file-20220110-25-oa7qh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">R. Cleveley. View in Port Jackson.
Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=FL634951&embedded=true&toolbar=false">Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>First Nations people please be advised this article speaks of racially discriminating moments in history, including the distress and death of First Nations people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Research continues to show that First Nations people’s burden of disease is more than double that of non-Indigenous Australians. This is despite widespread awareness of health inequalities experienced by First Nations people and successive governments’ efforts to “<a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/closing-gap-national-indigenous-health-equality-targets-2008">Close the Gap</a>.”</p>
<p>Strengthening our awareness of history can help us understand how historical trauma contributes to the poor health of First Nations people today.</p>
<p>This New Year’s Eve, Sydney once again hosted an extraordinary party with a fantastic display of light and colour. However, many Australians were probably unaware that New Year’s Eve also marks the anniversary of the British invaders’ first capture of a First Nations person in Australia in the 1700s. </p>
<p>This kidnapping preceded a smallpox epidemic that killed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14443058.2013.849750?casa_token=uUqdlbvy2rAAAAAA:oedOHeGJbZO1uGDQS5EwmyO-TVzFLbulWo7pLdj81y8pZ6zsOVJArS0STrQW_p1b2mvh4YA-b25mIEY">more than 50% of the Aboriginal people</a> in the Sydney Basin, along with large numbers further inland.</p>
<p>In our new research published in the international journal <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957154X211053208">History of Psychiatry</a>, we describe evidence supporting the theory that smallpox was deliberately unleashed by the British invaders. </p>
<p>We also introduce a new theory that ground zero for the smallpox epidemic of 1789 began during the kidnapping of Aboriginal man Arabanoo on New Year’s Eve in 1788.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-its-time-for-a-new-museum-dedicated-to-the-fighters-of-the-frontier-wars-155299">Friday essay: it's time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Deception leading to kidnapping and death</h2>
<p>When the British invaded in early 1788, they struggled to survive. As they were establishing their colony, British convicts stole fishing nets and canoes from local Aboriginal people of the Eora nation, causing minor altercations. </p>
<p>The colonists were concerned about future quarrels with Aboriginal people when their early expeditions indicated much <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-472896848/view?partId=nla.obj-473155577#page/n87/mode/1up/search/numerous">higher numbers of Aboriginal people</a> inhabiting the Sydney Basin than they had anticipated.</p>
<p>As 1788 drew to a close, British food supplies were dwindling and, although land-clearing had begun at Parramatta in November, the colonists were unsure if they would be able to cultivate crops. By December, it had been several months since any Aboriginal people had come near the colonists’ camp, and Governor Arthur Phillip became anxious they might attack his fledgling colony. </p>
<p>So, on New Year’s Eve he decided to go on the offensive, sending a group of soldiers to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957154X211053208">take Aboriginal people as prisoners in order to gain information</a>.</p>
<p>Led by lieutenants Henry Ball and George Johnston, a squadron of British marines rowed to Manly Beach, where they began handing out gifts to a group of Aboriginal people gathered on the shore. Using the gifts as a distraction, the soldiers captured a young Aboriginal man named Arabanoo.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Captain Arthur Phillip Fountain, Sydney." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437975/original/file-20211216-13-5qd2ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437975/original/file-20211216-13-5qd2ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437975/original/file-20211216-13-5qd2ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437975/original/file-20211216-13-5qd2ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437975/original/file-20211216-13-5qd2ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437975/original/file-20211216-13-5qd2ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437975/original/file-20211216-13-5qd2ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Captain Arthur Phillip Fountain, Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/captain-arthur-phillip-fountain-sydney-australia-541720621">shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When word spread about the deceptive kidnapping of Arabanoo, animosity towards the British increased. Then, a few weeks after receiving the gifts at Manly, fear broke out when several Aboriginal people fell ill with smallpox.</p>
<p>Referred to by the Eora as “galgalla”, smallpox was well known by the British, who used a process called <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44448714.pdf?casa_token=QtkahCeRM58AAAAA:bB8RplxDMPEHqEBh0oln2Jrgg3UxH197FHZnVAL17XU3e-KYzt0MNbhnZ08QY5zhlm2tNfXoP79IoAIaCuRiPIU3OtmCD3Cvh_PSGR9wSjnADVDIw_4HaQ">variolation for immunisation</a>. The treatment involved either sniffing smallpox scabs into the nose, or inserting scabs under a small cut in a person’s skin in order to contract a mild form of the disease and trigger the immune system. </p>
<p>There was no record of anyone suffering smallpox during the voyage of the First Fleet. However, as a precautionary measure, British surgeons on the First Fleet <a href="https://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00044.pdf">carried jars of smallpox flakes</a> in their medical cases. </p>
<p>When the colonists received news smallpox had broken out among the Eora, Judge Advocate David Collins took a surgeon and Arabanoo to inspect the effects of the disease around Port Jackson. <a href="https://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/data-2/colacc1.pdf">Collins described</a> Arabanoo’s reaction as an expression of agony impossible to forget.</p>
<p>The expedition looked anxiously for survivors, but found nothing besides rotting corpses of people who had fallen victim to smallpox all around the harbour. When the colonists ventured north and south of Manly over the coming months, they continued to find dead bodies. </p>
<p>It remains unclear whether the British deliberately infected the First Nations people they encountered. Historians have posited a range of <a href="https://www.news.uwa.edu.au/archive/2020061712162/covid-19/covid-19-what-can-we-learn-first-smallpox-epidemic-and-its-impact-aboriginal-/">theories</a> about what caused the outbreak.</p>
<p>Following exposure to the smallpox virus, it takes one to two weeks for symptoms to appear. Our theory is the epidemic had been spreading for several weeks before the British became aware of it, and it may have originated from the gifts handed out when Arabanoo was kidnapped about 12–13 weeks earlier.</p>
<p>This theory is supported by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957154X211053208">Aboriginal oral history</a> from the Manly area. According to other research, several British marines had also previously fought battles in North America, where they may have heard stories about spreading smallpox as a strategy <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2567577.pdf?casa_token=Ij445zwD_wQAAAAA:FrjvkO8s2T4EjsS4JahrKEUm-WIZNtGadpx7ts5pP8ZBM88rb_EzliFt-CSw6bkMFEmSoiXGpqFpVbBsiwSTt1bygbBCBSI13sOVTDsRvB05jrW7pGNVYg">against</a> First Nations people there. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/oral-testimony-of-an-aboriginal-massacre-now-supported-by-scientific-evidence-85526">Oral testimony of an Aboriginal massacre now supported by scientific evidence</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>The death of Arabanoo</h2>
<p>As April passed, a hut near the British tent hospital was used to accommodate two Aboriginal men and two children suffering from smallpox. The men died, but with Arabanoo’s care, a young girl named Abaroo (also known as Boorong), and little boy named Nanbaree, managed to recover. Sadly, in the process of nursing them, Arabanoo contracted smallpox himself and subsequently died on May 18.</p>
<p>It is important for us to remember that First Nations people’s earliest interactions with British health care did not occur in response to injury, accident or natural disaster. Instead, it occurred because of deception, kidnapping and disease in the context of invasion by the British. </p>
<p>First Nations people’s relationship with white health care has been haunted by this and continuing <a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-we-need-to-close-the-gap-on-health-but-many-patients-wont-tell-hospitals-theyre-indigenous-for-fear-of-poorer-care-14367">malpractices</a> ever since.</p>
<p>Remembering Arabanoo each New Year’s Eve may assist Australians to better understand our nation’s traumatic history and the intergenerational effects of colonisation. </p>
<p>Improving our understanding of history also has potential to create better communication with First Nations people. It makes us more ready to listen when Aboriginal people tell us what they need to close the gap in health care, and when they tell us how we can build better relationships through messages such as the <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173732/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aunty Kerrie Doyle receives funding from the Commonwealth Government for her research. Aunty Kerrie is also a board member for Ngarra Mura Indigenous Corporation, CASTINaM and AIATSIS.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Saunders and Toby Raeburn do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New Year’s Eve is the anniversary of the British invaders’ first kidnapping of a First Nations person in Australia. This kidnapping led to a devastating smallpox outbreak.Toby Raeburn, Associate Professor in Nursing (mental health), University of Notre Dame AustraliaKerrie Doyle, Professor, Indigenous Health, School of Medicine, Western Sydney UniversityPaul Saunders, Research fellow, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1740332022-01-09T13:14:41Z2022-01-09T13:14:41ZThe U.S. failed in Afghanistan by trying to moralize with bullets and bombs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439200/original/file-20220103-58867-171en51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C57%2C4793%2C3099&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The acting foreign minister in Afghanistan's Taliban-run cabinet, Amir Khan Muttaqi attends a session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Council of Foreign Ministers, in Islamabad, Pakistan, in December 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last August, the world watched the chaotic and painful <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/rocket-attack-kabul-1.6157938">American departure from Afghanistan</a>. It led to a profound reckoning: how could two decades of war end in such humiliating defeat at the hands of Taliban militants?</p>
<p>In Afghanistan, the list of imperial powers that have tried and failed to exercise control includes the <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-marks-98-years-independence/28685763.html">British in the 19th century</a>, the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-soviet-war-in-afghanistan-1979-1989/100786/">Soviets in the 20th century</a> — and now the Americans in the 21st century. </p>
<p>Afghanistan’s history of occupation suggests a deviation from the standard colonial playbook of using military control to extract wealth elsewhere in the Global South. All this has given rise to the erroneous trope that Afghanistan is a “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/28/afghanistan-graveyard-britain-us-russia-506990">graveyard of empires</a>.”</p>
<h2>Complex legacy of colonialism</h2>
<p>The reality is more complex. Global South nations struggling with the effects of colonialism are ticking time bombs. Global North control creates simmering resentments and resistance.</p>
<p>My research into entrepreneurship amid post-colonial upheaval finds that colonial interference <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/cpoib-03-2020-0016">alters the natural progress of development</a> for these occupied countries. Traumatic political, military and social events create deficits that are not easily fixed. Yet I’ve also found that powerful identities around empowerment and self-determination can survive the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3637-9">extremes of colonialism and occupation</a>.</p>
<p>The 20-year Afghanistan war was not just a military exercise — it was also a moralizing attempt by the Global North to construct institutions in their own image. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/afghanistan-shows-the-u-s-folly-of-trying-to-implant-democratic-institutions-abroad-167613">Afghanistan shows the U.S. folly of trying to implant democratic institutions abroad</a>
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<p>The cost? <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadian-death-toll-in-afghan-mission-158-soldiers-four-civilians-1.1814248">Almost 160 Canadians</a> died, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-43d8f53b35e80ec18c130cd683e1a38f">2,448 American service members were killed</a> and, astonishingly, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/911-civilian-casualties-iraq-afghanistan-b1912816.html">363,000 Afghan civilians</a> perished. Billions of dollars were spent, and another superpower was left humiliated.</p>
<p>Post-colonialism is still very much in play in Afghanistan. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/mujahideen-Afghani-rebels">The Mujahideen</a> drove out the Soviets in 1989, and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Taliban">cult-like Taliban</a> surprised everyone, and possibly themselves, with how quickly they took control in the wake of the clumsy U.S. withdrawal. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A soldier holding a gun stands in front of a troop of soldiers walking towards a building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438977/original/file-20211223-49229-r8b8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Taliban special force fighters stand guard outside Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. withdrawal in Kabul, Afghanistan in August 2021. The Taliban seized Kabul after the last U.S. plane left its runway, marking the end of America’s longest war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Post-colonial theory at play</h2>
<p>The resurgence of the Taliban was consistent with post-colonial theory on identity construction, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203820551">understood to happen in three steps</a>.</p>
<p>First, there was the Eurocentric expectation of mimicry: when confronted by the world’s most powerful military, Afghans were expected to adopt the norms of their occupiers. America and its allies saw themselves as having a superior form of civilization worthy of emulation, doing a favour for Afghans by liberating them from the Taliban.</p>
<p>Second, a hybrid identity was created. Afghanistan became neither Afghan nor American. A <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-a-puppet-government.html">puppet government</a> was installed to force an identity onto Afghanistan by their foreign occupier that would be palatable to the Global North.</p>
<p>Third, there was a space of transition. In this space, people reflect on ongoing uncertainties and their history, and reimagine the future; it is here that the colonized resist and push back against occupying forces.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Groups men walking down a road. A few of them carry guns." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438980/original/file-20211223-17-nmd0uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Militiamen loyal to Ahmad Massoud, the founder of the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, stand guard in Panjshir, the last region not under Taliban control following their stunning blitz across Afghanistan, in August 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Jalaluddin Sekandar)</span></span>
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<h2>A monster of their own creation</h2>
<p>For 20 years, the U.S. was trying to destroy its own flawed, hybrid creation: the Mujahideen. These guerrilla fighters had been trained and armed by Americans to fight in a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08/the-taliban-indoctrinates-kids-with-jihadist-textbooks-paid-for-by-the-u-s/">death for country</a>,” suicide-bombing style. </p>
<p>This was not the Afghan way. Rather than blowing themselves up, Afghans had preferred to put down their weapons for tea time, hang out with their adversaries and then go back to fighting them the next day.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/origins-of-the-taliban-and-what-their-history-tells-us-about-takeover-of-afghanistan-podcast-166699">Origins of the Taliban and what their history tells us about takeover of Afghanistan – podcast</a>
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<p>By installing a <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/16/pers-a16.html">corrupt puppet government</a>, the Americans pursued nation-building based on their own western model. This thwarted the natural evolution of Afghan institutions and hung on the country like an ill-fitting suit, with deadly consequences. </p>
<p>The speed with which U.S.-backed president Ashraf Ghani fled, and the occupation government collapsed, heralded a significant transition in Afghanistan. The Taliban stepped into that space of transition with surprising ease. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two people walking in front of a wall with a large mural of a man's face on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C79%2C5936%2C3456&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438979/original/file-20211223-49229-20a5kh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People walk near a mural of President Ashraf Ghani at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan. Ghani fled the country in August 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>A majority of Afghans, like any occupied people, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3637-9">want to create their own solutions</a>. For this, they often need help. But that help should not be guns pointed at them by a foreign military. </p>
<p>After two decades of fighting that left so many of their citizens dead, Afghans faced the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-occupation-of-afghanistan-was-colonialism-that-prevented-afghan-self-determination-167615">unpalatable choice between the tyranny of the occupiers or the tyranny of their own people</a> — meaning the Taliban. </p>
<h2>Restructuring the narrative</h2>
<p>This <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58484155">does not mean Afghans are happy</a> with the Taliban. But the current narrative that the Global North is trying to “save” Afghans is an attempt at damage control over a misadventure that cost so many lives. </p>
<p>Afghanistan has been taken back to the same place it was 20 years ago. That requires reconstructing the narrative, because it’s hard to say you’re promoting human rights when hundreds of thousands have been killed.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-my-20-years-in-afghanistan-taught-me-about-the-taliban-and-how-the-west-consistently-underestimates-them-167927">What my 20 years in Afghanistan taught me about the Taliban – and how the west consistently underestimates them</a>
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<p>The post-colonial situation suggests that, with Afghanistan’s occupiers gone, Taliban rule is a flawed but authentic first step in a long process of transition. This process is more authentic than the one imposed by occupiers, because it allows Afghan society to evolve on its own terms.</p>
<p>Colonialism changes the trajectory of a nation. The political, economic and social structures that normally evolve are interrupted. To prosper, Afghanistan needs partnerships and business investment, not bullets and bombs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174033/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>F. Haider Alvi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To prosper after the legacy of imperialism and colonization, Afghanistan needs partnerships and business investment, not bullets and bombs.F. Haider Alvi, Assistant Professor of Innovation Finance, Athabasca UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1726342021-11-25T18:08:44Z2021-11-25T18:08:44ZMaking sense of Wole Soyinka’s difficult and brilliant new novel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433975/original/file-20211125-19-1hkzoi4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wole Soyinka in 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>A <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/chronicles-from-the-land-of-the-happiest-people-on-earth-9781526638229/">new novel</a> by celebrated Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka – Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth – is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/27/chronicles-from-the-land-of-the-happiest-people-on-earth-by-wole-soyinka-review-a-vast-danse-macabre">major event</a>. But some critics have <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/02/1042482424/wole-soyinka-chronicles-review">complained</a> that the book is too long and difficult. Esteemed literary critic David Attwell takes these critics on in his annual <a href="https://englishacademy.co.za/resources/">English Academy</a> Lecture in Cape Town, titled ‘Just what gods do you serve, if any?’: Wole Soyinka’s Chronicles and the Destruction of Postcolonial Reason. This is a shortened version of that lecture, which will be appearing in the <a href="https://englishacademy.co.za/english-academy-review/">English Academy Review</a>.</em></p>
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<p>This year, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/">Nobel laureate</a> Wole Soyinka published his <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/chronicles-from-the-land-of-the-happiest-people-on-earth-9781526638229/">first novel</a> in 48 years, <em>Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth</em>. His previous novels were <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700574/the-interpreters-by-wole-soyinka/"><em>The Interpreters</em></a> (1965) and <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/170647/season-of-anomy-by-wole-soyinka/9780593467190/"><em>Season of Anomy</em></a> (1973). Fiction is not Soyinka’s most favoured medium. He is a dramatist first, as well as being a poet, essayist and memoirist in a career whose creative energies have never waned. </p>
<p>But the fact that it has taken him half a century to return to the novel, specifically, creates an irresistible opportunity: in the context of a single (and a singular) <em>oeuvre</em>, to compare and contrast two quite different literary and historical moments.</p>
<p>Of course, this is what critics do: we look for opportunities, the coins scattered from the purses of the people with genuinely creative talent. This novel, however, gives nothing away for free. The reviews are mixed, not because of any perceived slackening of Soyinka’s ferociously challenging writing, but because, apparently, the book is too long, dilatory, and difficult. There is no admission from those who strike this note that the fault might lie with them. It is surely our task as reviewers and critics to take the work on its own terms. </p>
<p>If there is a question of scale, then we should take the measure of that too. Why <em>does</em> Soyinka’s subject need such expansive treatment?</p>
<h2>Soyinka’s matrix</h2>
<p>Soyinka’s early fiction sought to anchor the day-to-day lives of his characters in the cultural matrix of what he called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Myth-Literature-and-the-African-World">“the African world”</a>. As his essays show, that matrix was defined mainly in terms of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yoruba">Yoruba</a> mythology, but the emphasis was not exclusive; in fact he was just as likely to draw on Shakespeare and classical European sources as the adventures of the Yoruba <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Oshun">deities</a>. </p>
<p>The existential and psychic drama being played out, whether on the page or on the stage, had to be grounded in an underlying matrix that gives meaning to experience, one in which the living, the dead and the unborn are thrown together in time and space.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433978/original/file-20211125-27-1xe9338.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover reading 'The Interpreters A Novel' and featuring an illustration of a boat at sea, its sails are flames" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433978/original/file-20211125-27-1xe9338.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433978/original/file-20211125-27-1xe9338.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433978/original/file-20211125-27-1xe9338.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433978/original/file-20211125-27-1xe9338.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433978/original/file-20211125-27-1xe9338.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433978/original/file-20211125-27-1xe9338.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433978/original/file-20211125-27-1xe9338.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House</span></span>
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<p>This helps to explain the curious title of the first novel, <em>The Interpreters</em>. It is not about a class of clerical functionaries who mediate communication among people speaking different languages. It is about a group of young Nigerian professionals, “been-to’s” in the language of the 1960s, who have returned from studies in Europe to establish themselves in their newly independent country. Their fortunes are mixed, for various reasons: the corruption of the ruling elite places obstacles in their path at every turn, but equally, their personal challenges are far from straightforward.</p>
<p>The artist in the group, Kola, is painting a large canvas depicting the birth of the Yoruba <a href="https://www.penn.museum/sites/journal/562/">pantheon of gods</a>, using his friends as models. A process of coming-into-being, understood in mythic terms, underlies the interpreters’ search for identity and relevance. </p>
<p><em>Season of Anomy</em> is a very different novel, but the point of departure is similar. One way of reading it would be to see it as a transitional novel, in which Soyinka is in search of a mythic structure that is still capable of addressing the political and moral failures that emerged in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/memory-practices-are-not-enough-to-remedy-nigeria-biafra-war-injustices-156067">Biafran War</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433979/original/file-20211125-13-e9w2jp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with the words 'Season of Anomy' featuring illustrations of fruit and seeds, one sprouting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433979/original/file-20211125-13-e9w2jp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433979/original/file-20211125-13-e9w2jp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433979/original/file-20211125-13-e9w2jp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433979/original/file-20211125-13-e9w2jp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433979/original/file-20211125-13-e9w2jp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433979/original/file-20211125-13-e9w2jp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433979/original/file-20211125-13-e9w2jp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Another explanation is suggested by a luminous remark in Soyinka’s prison memoir of the same period, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wole-Soyinka#ref162245"><em>The Man Died</em></a> (1972), to the effect that “history is too full of failed Prometheans bathing their wounded spirits in the tragic stream”. The Nigerian critic Dan Izevbaye <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=vEgbYQ3Ly2cC&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=Dan+Izevbaye.+%22Soyinka%E2%80%99s+Black+Orpheus.%22&source=bl&ots=WE2pM8vwCl&sig=ACfU3U31AkfeOe_E55dPWDAAGiO1w64Jog&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi4gIKV4LP0AhUGTsAKHUHDDq8Q6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=Dan%20Izevbaye.%20%22Soyinka%E2%80%99s%20Black%20Orpheus.%22&f=false">suggests that</a> Egbo, Kola and the journalist Sagoe in <em>The Interpreters</em> are indeed “failed Prometheans” and that, by the 1970s, after the war, the figure of Orpheus – the survivor, the lute player and artist, at odds with society – had become more representative of Soyinka’s authorship. </p>
<p>The truth or otherwise of these speculations will have to remain locked away in the strongroom of Soyinka’s creativity. But they point to a wider issue, which is the “postcolonial reason” of my title. </p>
<h2>Postcolonial reason</h2>
<p>What is postcolonial reason? I will spare the reader a history of philosophical reflections on the Enlightenment and its legacies, or the history of Western rationality and its roles in the colonial enterprise. To explore them here would be a distraction from the task of understanding what Soyinka means by the African world. </p>
<p>Specifically, he <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/za/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/computational-linguistics/myth-literature-and-african-world-1?format=PB&isbn=9780521398343">speaks of</a> “an attitude of philosophical accommodation” that absorbs foreign matter into the “social armoury” of a society’s struggle for existence. The African world is intact because it is adaptive, absorbing into itself the rationality and technology of colonial modernity.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fela-saro-wiwa-achebe-what-nigerias-icons-have-said-about-its-politics-111835">Fela, Saro-Wiwa, Achebe: what Nigeria's icons have said about its politics</a>
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<p>Following Soyinka’s lead, academic and poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-poet-and-professor-harry-garuba-we-continue-to-learn-with-you-134065">Harry Garuba</a> <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/42967/pdf">speaks of</a> “the re-enchantment of the world”. He refers to what Max Weber, following Friedrich Schiller, called “disenchantment” in the West. The baseline position is that Europe has undergone ever-increasing degrees of secular rationalisation following the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution. By contrast, an animist consciousness, says Garuba, in which the material world is infused with spirituality, continues to influence social morality in postcolonial Africa.</p>
<p>Fast forward 27 years from <em>Season of Anomy</em> to 1999. Soyinka was in Cape Town to deliver the annual <a href="https://www.news.uct.ac.za/news/lecturesandspeeches/tbdavie/lectures/all/">T.B. Davie Academic Freedom Lecture</a>. Not remarked at the time, it was an encounter between different versions, and moments, in the narrative of African postcoloniality. In South Africa, then president <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki </a>had floated (and was funding) an <a href="https://theconversation.com/mbekis-dream-of-africas-renaissance-belied-south-africas-schizophrenia-58311">African Renaissance</a>. </p>
<p>With exquisite circumspection, Soyinka took this as his provocation. Since the situation in many postcolonial states had “beggared the imagination” of even those who had made the “direst predictions” it was surprising to hear “that the African continent is actually on the verge of a Renaissance”. </p>
<p>Soyinka’s stock-taking was a devastating indictment. Biafra had set postcolonial Africa on course for a series of withering civil wars: Angola, Congo, Rwanda, Algeria, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone. Each of these wars was marked by atrocity on a massive scale. The argument is poignant, given the aesthetics I have sketched out: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What traditional, organic resources are still accessible to poets after nearly half a century of independence?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In all the destruction, he concluded, he could not hear “the annunciation of a Renaissance, nor read the first flickers of its regenerating fires on our ever-receding horizons”.</p>
<p>The Cape Town lecture set a different tone, consistent with later interventions. If a novel was to follow, what version of the African world could now be mobilised? In the 1970s, Soyinka had <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Myth-Literature-and-the-African-World">spoken of</a> the need for artistic “self-apprehension” – an essential task if the “metaphysical void” created by the denial of African humanity in the long years of colonial rule were to be filled. But what form would self-apprehension take in this new world of material, ethical, and human destruction?</p>
<h2>Myth and satire</h2>
<p>Soyinka had always been a satirist: the answer that <em>Chronicles</em> gives to this question is that he has moved satire, rather than myth, to the centre of the project. The novel’s scale is commensurate with the task: to diagnose and bring to the light of day an unimaginable spiritual corruption. In anglophone African writing, <em>Chronicles</em> is the work closest to the despair of a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jonathan-Swift">Jonathan Swift</a>, who in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm"><em>A Modest Proposal</em></a> suggested that a solution to Irish poverty would be for Irish babies to be served up on English dinner tables. </p>
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<p>What explains the paradoxical shift from a strong account of the importance of the mythological and the spiritual to a scathing attack on religion? The answer is that into Soyinka’s “metaphysical void” have stepped the fake evangelists and <a href="https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/faq/pentecostalism-nigeria">Pentecostalist preachers</a> of the prosperity cults who have learned to manipulate and fine-tune the very <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/animism">animist</a> sensibility that Garuba describes. Their accomplices are the politicians who milk the state for every penny, and a class of wealthy collaborators whose appetite for material goods knows no bounds. It is the god of Mammon that is venerated, otherwise known as consumer capitalism.</p>
<p>In part, <em>Chronicles</em> takes off from <em>The Interpreters</em> in following a group of young professionals, who meet as students in the UK, into late middle age and the height of their careers. Duyole Pitan-Payne is an engineer who dies in Salzburg on his way to a UN appointment; Kighare Menka is a surgeon known for his work on mutilated victims of Boko Haram; Prince Badetona is a statistician who walks a thin line between corporate finance and money laundering; and Teribogo, a university drop-out (he returns from his studies in righteous indignation, having been accused of rape) fakes his qualifications, drifts into the film industry and finally becomes an evangelist called Papa Davina, proselytising for a new religion he calls Chrislam.</p>
<p>In one sense the novel is all about perspective, since the title refers to an actual <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/2011/jan/04/nigerians-top-optimism-poll">2011 Gallup Poll</a> that placed Nigeria top in its annual happiness index. As was the case with Mbeki’s African Renaissance, Soyinka took up the provocation.</p>
<p>By the end of the novel, the hazards of professional life in Nigeria leave three of the characters damaged, and one dead. Teribogo rises to the top because he is more capable than the others of keeping on the right side of power and playing a venal game.</p>
<p>Just how venal the game is becomes apparent in the closing chapters. Menka, the surgeon, endures a mysterious but menacing attempt to recruit him into a secret organisation with connections to the national leadership. It turns out, in implications gradually revealed, that this organisation is Human Resources, which is running a lively trade in human body parts to be used in traditional medicine. </p>
<p>While loosely based on an <a href="https://thenationonlineng.net/the-return-of-okija-dreaded-shrine-resurrects-15-years-after-causing-national-uproar/">actual episode</a> at the Okija Shrine in Anambra State in 2004, where dozens of bodies were discovered in a condition that implied that they had been used for medicinal purposes, and where senior politicians were found to have taken oaths, the trade in <em>Chronicles</em> is used as a satirical device which, in its scale, is as disturbing and implausible as Swift’s recommendation of cannibalism as a solution to the Irish problem. As the novel approaches its conclusion it uses plot devices more familiar in the political thriller than satire, but the effect is no less shocking. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/aliens-in-lagos-sci-fi-novel-lagoon-offers-a-bold-new-future-154661">Aliens in Lagos: sci-fi novel Lagoon offers a bold new future</a>
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<p>The point is that Soyinka is summoning all the rhetorical power he can to cauterise the psychospiritual wound. </p>
<p><em>Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth</em> is satire, political thriller, and finally, in its darkest register, tragedy. It is the work of a great writer who is entitled to a deep sense of fulfillment, rootedness, and belonging; instead, in the <a href="https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571173372-testaments-betrayed/">words</a> of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Milan-Kundera">Milan Kundera</a>, he must feel as if his testament has been betrayed. As Pitan-Payne says in <em>Chronicles</em>, reflecting on the history of black struggles elsewhere:</p>
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<p>This is different. This, let me confess, reaches into … a word I would rather avoid but can’t – soul. It challenges the collective notion of soul. Something is broken. Beyond race. Outside colour or history. Something has cracked. Can’t be put back together.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172634/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Attwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The new novel by Nigerian icon Wole Soyinka is at once satire, political thriller and tragedy. It is the work of a great writer that marks the destruction of postcolonial reason.David Attwell, Professor of Modern Literature, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1712372021-11-11T16:03:34Z2021-11-11T16:03:34ZWhy wearing a poppy and taking a knee in football should not be dismissed as ‘gesture politics’<p>At the London Stadium on Sunday, November 7, the players of West Ham United and Liverpool football clubs gathered around the centre circle, arms interlinked. Falling poppies filled the big screen as former England team captain Trevor Brooking read John McCrae’s poem, In Flanders Field, and a trumpeter played The Last Post. Such remembrance ceremonies have become a <a href="https://theconversation.com/poppies-are-a-political-symbol-both-on-and-off-the-football-pitch-68113">familiar feature</a> of the football calendar in November. </p>
<p>Since June 2020, a more recently adopted ritual has been observed in UK football. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, English Premier League players started <a href="https://theconversation.com/taking-the-knee-in-football-why-this-act-of-protest-has-always-been-political-162541">taking the knee</a> in a gesture of protest against racial discrimination inside football and the <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/posts/dear-england-gareth-southgate-euros-soccer">wider community</a>. The English Football League and the Scottish Premier League followed suit.</p>
<p>Football has become enveloped in the burgeoning post-Brexit <a href="https://theconversation.com/culture-wars-uncovered-most-of-uk-public-dont-know-if-woke-is-a-compliment-or-an-insult-161529">culture wars</a>. This is often framed as an intergenerational conflict between young and old or as a political clash between conservatives and the so-called woke left. </p>
<p>At first glance, there seems to be little that unites these two symbolic acts. But, on closer inspection, there are commonalities. Identifying these can help us avoid, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17526272.2021.1930701">as I have shown</a>, the intellectual dead end that is the “keep politics out of sport” mantra. </p>
<h2>Invented traditions</h2>
<p>During Euro 2020, Home Secretary Priti Patel defended some fans right to boo players who knelt. For her, the latter were engaging in “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/priti-patel-taking-knee-boo-england-b1865409.html">gesture politics</a>”. <a href="https://theconversation.com/gesture-politics-and-foreign-aid-evidence-vs-spin-90718">This term</a> is most often used disparagingly to describe crude symbolism resulting in little practical action. But Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben <a href="https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/2066/46452/65632.pdf">argues</a> that such gestures harness potent political power. </p>
<p>Whereas wearing the poppy is often portrayed as <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/37848413">traditional and apolitical</a>, taking the knee is perceived as new and ideological. In reality, both are what British historian Eric Hobsbawm has called <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0275720042000257403?journalCode=ghan20">invented traditions</a>. They draw on longer legacies to imply continuity with the past, seeking to inculcate values and norms of behaviour through repetition. </p>
<p>Although the Poppy Appeal was first launched by the Royal British Legion <a href="https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-involved/remembrance/about-remembrance/the-poppy">100 years ago</a>, the poppy entered the football calendar far more recently. Minute silences were introduced to matches <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17526272.2021.1930701">in around 2000</a> and footballers only started wearing a poppy in 2009, following <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225562/Kop-Liverpool-Manchester-United-Bolton-refuse-wear-poppies-weekend-matches.html">a Daily Mail campaign</a>.</p>
<p>Conversely, although the immediate inspiration for taking the knee came from quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/14/the-kaepernick-effect-a-story-of-the-other-athletes-who-kneeled-in-protest">protest</a> in 2016, the gesture has a much longer lineage. The English Football Association <a href="https://www.thefa.com/news/2021/jun/12/a-message-to-england-supporters-20210611">pointed out that it</a> can be traced back to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/africans_in_art_gallery_02.shtml#:%7E:text=The%20inscription%20%27Am%20I%20Not,of%20the%20Pennsylvania%20Abolition%20Society">the 18th-century abolitionist movement</a>.</p>
<h2>Collective memory</h2>
<p>Wearing a poppy and taking a knee are examples of what French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs calls <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17526272.2021.1930701">collective memory</a>. They seek to reconstruct the past through the prism of the beliefs and needs of the present. In commemorating fallen soldiers and victims of racial injustice, both represent public performances of collectivised grief. These in turn generate what sociologists term <a href="https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/1000207/mod_resource/content/1/%5BNeil_J._Smelser,_Richard_Swedberg%5D_The_Handbook_Economic%20sociology.pdf">symbolic capital</a>: which can help to facilitate political reform, as well as consolidate or reinvent national identities.</p>
<p>If the culture wars can be understood as a debate about what values the UK stands for, as a nation, the controversies surrounding the poppy and taking the knee (in UK football) can be seen as attempts to shape the narrative on British national identity. Both address a perceived sense of <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexits-global-britain-uk-needs-a-clear-economic-strategy-for-its-trading-future-not-a-dead-colonial-fantasy-116707">crisis</a> in postcolonial Britishness from alternative perspectives. </p>
<p>In the context of a fracturing British state, military remembrance remains, as the political scientist Michael Moran put it in <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-49965-9">The End of British Politics</a>, “the one civic ideology” that is truly bipartisan and common to all parts of the United Kingdom. Although taking a knee has been <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/england-fans-boo-players-knee-southgate-not-political-stand-b938499.html">explicitly defined</a> by the players according to a relatively narrow anti-racist message, it is symbolically connected (not least by its <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1404360783467851777?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1404360783467851777%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost-new.php">rightwing detractors</a>) to the wider Black Lives Matter movement, as well as <a href="https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/324092">the campaign</a> for greater critical awareness of Britain’s colonial past and contemporary inequities.</p>
<p>These collective visions are punctured by the alternative experiences of individuals. James McClean and Nemaja Matic have refused to wear the poppy because of its connotations with British military interventions in <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo3619875.html">Northern Ireland</a> and <a href="https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/nemanja-matic-manchester-united-poppy-22022377">Serbia</a>, respectively. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/56126928">Wilfred Zaha</a> and <a href="https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11661/12413223/marcos-alonso-chelsea-defender-to-stop-taking-knee-after-claiming-anti-racism-gesture-is-losing-strength">Marcus Alonso</a> have similarly vowed to stop taking the knee, describing it as “degrading” and “losing strength” as a gesture of anti-racism. </p>
<p>Common to both <a href="https://talksport.com/football/152145/poppy-not-political-statement-its-symbol-remembrance-and-mark-respect-scottish-fa-chief/">military remembrance</a> and <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/england-fans-boo-players-knee-southgate-not-political-stand-b938499.html">taking the knee </a> in football is a denial of their underlying politics. More than mere gestures, they convey a great deal about how the British think about their collective national identity in the 21st century.<br>
Acknowledging this is the first step to better mutual understanding. Closing down debate and maintaining the naive belief that politics can be kept out of the national sport only enables expedient politicians and commentators to exploit football for cheap populist points.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Fitzpatrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On-field demonstrations of remembrance and protest are able to harness potent political power.Daniel Fitzpatrick, Lecturer in Politics, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1694842021-10-07T17:34:41Z2021-10-07T17:34:41ZAbdulrazak Gurnah: what you need to know about the Nobel prize-winning author<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425262/original/file-20211007-15-jgqdto.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C7%2C1196%2C790&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alamy/Bloomsbury</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Abdulrazak Gurnah has been awarded the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature/">2021 Nobel prize for literature</a>. The Tanzanian novelist, who is based in the UK, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/nobel-prize-in-literature-2021-abdulrazak-gurnah-honoured-1.4693669">was awarded the prize</a> for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.</p>
<p>Migration and cultural uprooting along with the cultural and ethnic diversity of east Africa are at the heart of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/07/abdulrazak-gurnah-wins-the-2021-nobel-prize-in-literature">Gurnah’s fiction</a>. They have also shaped his personal life. </p>
<p>Born in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zanzibar-island-Tanzania">Zanzibar</a> in 1948, Gurnah came to Britain in the 1960s as a refugee. Being of Arab origin, he was forced to flee his birthplace during the revolution of 1964 and only returned in 1984 in time to visit his dying father. Until his retirement, he was a full-time professor of English and postcolonial literatures at the University of Kent in Canterbury. </p>
<p>Gurnah has written ten novels to date, including the Booker-nominated <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/paradise-9780747573999/">Paradise</a> in 1994 and <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/by-the-sea-9780747557852/">By the Sea</a> in 2001. His most recent novel, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/afterlives-9781526615855/">Afterlives</a>, was described by the Sunday Times as “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/afterlives-9781526649751/">an aural archive of a lost Africa</a>”, and indeed the opening pages of this and many of his other works take the reader directly into the realm of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/storytelling-and-cultural-traditions/#:%7E:text=Oral%20storytelling%20is%20telling%20a,historically%20accurate%20or%20even%20true.&text=Here%20are%20some%20examples%20of,of%20passing%20down%20cultural%20traditions.">oral storytelling</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/30/afterlives-by-abdulrazak-gurnah-review-living-through-colonialism">Afterlives</a> is set against the backdrop of <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199846733/obo-9780199846733-0020.xml">German rule in east Africa</a> in the early 20th century. It tells the story of a young boy sold to German colonial troops. The novel was shortlisted for the 2021 Orwell prize for political fiction and longlisted for the Walter Scott prize for historical fiction. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-european-countries-ever-take-meaningful-steps-to-end-colonial-legacies-148581">Will European countries ever take meaningful steps to end colonial legacies?</a>
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<p>Gurnah’s work is attentive to the tension between personal story and collective history. In particular, Afterlives asks readers to consider the <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-european-countries-ever-take-meaningful-steps-to-end-colonial-legacies-148581">afterlife of colonialism</a> and war and its long lasting effects, not only on nations but also, and perhaps mainly so, on <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-britains-colonial-legacy-still-affects-lgbt-politics-around-the-world-95799">individuals and families</a>. </p>
<h2>Influence and style</h2>
<p>His writing is heavily <a href="https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11741">influenced by</a> the cultural and ethnic diversity of his native Zanzibar. Shaped by its geographical location in the Indian Ocean off the coast of east Africa, it was at the centre of the major Indian Ocean trade routes. </p>
<p>The island attracted traders and colonists from what was then known as Arabia (modern-day Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the UAE), south Asia, the African mainland, and later Europe. </p>
<p>Gurnah’s writing reflects this diversity with its many voices and its range of references to literary sources. Most of all, it insists on hybridity and diversity in the face of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41157604">Afrocentrism</a>, which dominated the east African independence movements in the 20th century. </p>
<p>His first novel, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/memory-of-departure-9781408883983/">Memory of Departure</a>, published in 1987, is set around the time Gurnah left Zanzibar. A coming-of-age story in the form of a memoir, it follows the protagonist’s attempts to leave his birthplace and study abroad. </p>
<h2>Consequences of colonialism</h2>
<p>His novel Paradise is similarly conceived as a coming-of-age narrative, though set earlier in time, at the turn of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, when Europeans were beginning to establish colonies on the East African coast. Paradise also addresses domestic <a href="https://theconversation.com/slavery-was-never-abolished-it-affects-millions-and-you-may-be-funding-it-105153">slavery</a> in Africa, with a bonded slave as the main character. </p>
<p>Above all, Paradise highlights the great diversity of Gurnah’s literary repertoire, bringing together <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00138398.2015.1045158?src=recsys">references to Swahili texts</a>, Quranic and biblical traditions, as well as the work of Joseph Conrad.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A narrow street in Zanzibar, Tanzania, where Gurnah was born.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-people-in-a-narrow-street-in-stonetown-zanzibar-tanzania-53418378.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=BA9889F9-18B6-4140-87EB-027B36AE284A&p=27879&n=0&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3dbar%26st%3d0%26pn%3d1%26ps%3d100%26sortby%3d2%26resultview%3dsortbyPopular%26npgs%3d0%26qt%3dZanzibar%26qt_raw%3dZanzibar%26lic%3d3%26mr%3d0%26pr%3d0%26ot%3d0%26creative%3d%26ag%3d0%26hc%3d0%26pc%3d%26blackwhite%3d%26cutout%3d%26tbar%3d1%26et%3d0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3d0%26loc%3d0%26imgt%3d0%26dtfr%3d%26dtto%3d%26size%3d0xFF%26archive%3d1%26groupid%3d%26pseudoid%3d447050%26a%3d%26cdid%3d%26cdsrt%3d%26name%3d%26qn%3d%26apalib%3d%26apalic%3d%26lightbox%3d%26gname%3d%26gtype%3d%26xstx%3d0%26simid%3d%26saveQry%3d%26editorial%3d%26nu%3d%26t%3d%26edoptin%3d%26customgeoip%3dGB%26cap%3d1%26cbstore%3d1%26vd%3d0%26lb%3d%26fi%3d2%26edrf%3d0%26ispremium%3d1%26flip%3d0%26pl%3d">Alamy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gurnah’s work, with its diverse textual references and its attentiveness to archives, reflects and touches on wider concerns in postcolonial literature. His novels consider the deliberate erasure of African narratives and perspectives as one major consequence of European colonialism. </p>
<p>In highlighting conversations between the individual and the record of history, Gurnah’s work has similarities to Salman Rushdie – another postcolonial writer who is equally attentive to the relationship between personal memory and the larger narratives of history. Indeed, alongside his novels, Gurnah is also the editor of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-salman-rushdie/4D1FA62312A720A74BA17BDFAA9520A2">the Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie</a>, published in 2007.</p>
<p>Gurnah’s books ask: how do we remember a past <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-history-is-a-discipline-on-the-rise-and-one-that-raises-many-questions-74459">deliberately eclipsed and erased</a> from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/school-curriculum-continues-to-whitewash-britains-imperial-past-53577">colonial archive</a>? Many postcolonial writers from diverse backgrounds have addressed this issue, from the aforementioned <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-salman-rushdies-decision-to-publish-on-substack-the-death-of-the-novel-167530">Rushdie</a> to the Jamaican writer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/books/michele-cliff-who-wrote-of-colonialism-and-racism-dies-at-69.html">Michelle Cliff</a>, both of whom pitch personal memory and story against a collective history authored by those in power. </p>
<p>Gurnah’s work continues this conversation about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-dogs-no-indians-70-years-after-partition-the-legacy-of-british-colonialism-endures-82489">long shadow of colonialism</a> and employs a diversity of textual traditions in the process of commemorating erased narratives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Otto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gurnah won the prize for his “uncompromising and compassionate” look at the “effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugees”.Melanie Otto, Assistant Professor in English, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1639342021-07-29T15:12:54Z2021-07-29T15:12:54ZDogs in the city: on the scent of Zimbabwe’s urban history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413360/original/file-20210727-17-18tn3qd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A politician argued that the Rhodesian ridgeback was the dog of the ancestors and proposed renaming it the Zimbabwe ridgeback.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dogs are political. Their very existence in modern cities has goaded those in power into trying to discipline them – and their owners. This has happened in the past too: for instance, authorities trying to modernise Paris in the 19th century regarded stray dogs as belonging to the “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/past/article/234/1/137/2965802?login=true">city’s criminal, dirty and rootless dangerous classes – to be slaughtered</a>”. But similar campaigns against stray dogs in Bombay in 1832 resulted in civil protest, used as an opportunity to challenge <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-royal-asiatic-society/article/abs/mad-dogs-and-parsis-the-bombay-dog-riots-of-1832/FAE1BD958098093802B0F278033C6E66">aspects of colonial rule</a>. </p>
<p>Our own <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2021.1929442?journalCode=cjss20">study</a> focused on changes in regimes regulating dogs, especially those owned by Africans, between 1980 and 2017 in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. We drew on archival sources, newspaper sources and oral interviews to describe how Harare dealt with its urban canine citizens over the years following independence. The story shows how dog management reflected competing visions of the modern city. </p>
<p>The city developed a hybrid dog-keeping regime that mixed elements of long-enduring local knowledge with the self-consciously modern and cosmopolitan, as we show below. For instance, rural practices such as tolerating “stray dogs” came to the city after 1980 because the new government was reluctant to enforce colonial-era by-laws. National leaders, animal welfare organisations, kennel clubs and individual dog-owners and breeders all helped shape a shifting vision of the city.</p>
<h2>Inventing good dogs and bad dogs</h2>
<p>Southern Rhodesia’s white settlers (who were mostly of English stock) established kennel clubs in the first decade of colonial rule. Their mission was to teach Africans to keep fewer and “better” dogs, which meant imported “purebred” dogs. Kennel clubs, animal welfare societies and city councils sustained western regimes of dog-keeping up to independence in 1980.</p>
<p>As middle-class Africans started moving into the (formerly whites-only) suburbs of Harare, so did “free-roaming dogs”. This triggered complaints about malnourished, maltreated, misbehaving “bad dogs”. Irate suburbanites spoke of “wretched animals” – which were not pets and were not walked on leashes but did bark when they chose and freely roamed the leafy streets. They also complained of “mongrel bitches” introduced from rural areas which threatened the purity of breed and sexual health of “well-bred male dogs”. Such intense fears of “mixing” may have been a proxy for anxieties over racial and class order.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dogs huddled together being fed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413361/original/file-20210727-18-nbqzpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Picture of township mongrel dogs feeding.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The period between 2000 and 2017 witnessed the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070600655988?needAccess=true">“Zimbabwean crisis”</a>. This period of political instability saw hyperinflation, state-sponsored violence and massive involuntary migrations. It was a time of lawlessness and yet increased crackdowns on law-breakers. Shacks were destroyed, vendors and hawkers were harassed, and those who did not conform to standard citizenship (such as the homeless) were forcibly removed. The city was being reimagined and dogs were part of this reimagining.</p>
<p>It is a pattern we see in many cities around the world. But we found something special in Harare: a young urban “ghetto dog fancy” was part of the reimagining. The “ghetto dog fancy” gave rise to new ideas about breeding dogs and the aesthetic appeal of particular breeds. The Harare City Council blamed the new breeders for the ballooning dog population and for causing rabies <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/harare-declared-rabies-area/">outbreaks</a>. By 2005, the city’s canine <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2021.1929442?needAccess=true&journalCode=cjss20">population</a> was around 300,000 dogs (one dog per five people).</p>
<p>While authorities fretted, youthful dog breeders and owners associated owning particular dog breeds with being cosmopolitan, and being <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/the-most-expensive-dogs/">part of modernity</a>. Young male African urbanites took up dog breeding as a new survival strategy.</p>
<p>Since the voices of the ghettos do not appear in the public archives, we conducted oral history interviews on the streets. We found that Africans started breeding boerboels, German shepherds and rottweilers and sold them to security companies and anxious home-owners for as much as <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/dog-breeding-is-big-business-in-zim-1819770">US$400 each</a> – in an economy where the average worker might bring home about <a href="https://kubatana.net/2018/11/23/2019-national-budget-insult-civil-servants/">US$280–300 per month</a>. There was a shifting interaction between local and so-called western knowledge about dog-keeping, as the breeders learned international practices of breeding but improvised with the local breeding stock and their own knowledge. </p>
<p>One Zanu-PF politician, Tony Monda, insisted on a new kind of breed purity. In 2016, he <a href="https://www.thepatriot.co.zw/old_posts/closer-look-at-the-zimbabwean-lion-dog/">argued</a> that the Rhodesian ridgeback was the dog of the ancestors and proposed renaming it the Zimbabwe ridgeback. There was a nascent nationalism wagging the tail of such endeavours.</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2021.1929442?needAccess=true&journalCode=cjss20">research</a>, we interviewed a dog breeder who wanted to create “our very own Zimbred Mastiff” suited to Zimbabwe’s environment, with its own breeders’ association. Yet these hybrid dogs were the product of hybrid bodies of knowledge. Purists within the urban “dog fancy” opposed such experimental breeding, fearing that this would produce monsters: <em>mabhinya embwa</em> (canine thugs or brutes). </p>
<p>Indeed, for some young men in Harare, such dogs operated as projections of their own masculinity. This new investment in dogs – both economic and emotional – created a new economic and social identity for these men. But city authorities worried that they were emulating <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/016059760703100403">“American ghetto culture”</a> based on <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/mans-feared-best-friend/">illegal dog-fighting</a>. Anxiety over dogs mirrored <a href="https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/mans-best-friend-can-be-worst-enemy">anxieties</a> over an urban under-class of dangerous young men. </p>
<h2>Gone to the dogs?</h2>
<p>Our tracing of dog history in Zimbabwe showed that political independence brought to power a regime that was prepared to tolerate African “traditional” dog-keeping in the city. This increased complaints about urban free-roaming dogs and a new African modernity that often challenged white dog-owning. Dog rearing regimes came to blend aspects of western breeding standards and African tradition with shifting ideas from international and local working-class cultures and from African middle-class modernity.</p>
<p>The human residents of Harare imagined dogs in multiple, changing and conflicting ways that were contoured by power relations. Dogs have been useful metaphors in re-figuring the race, gender and class order and re-imagining the political order in a post-colonial state.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Innocent Dande is affiliated with the International Studies Group, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Professor Sandra Swart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How Harare has dealt with its urban canine citizens over the years following independence reflects the competing visions of a modern city.Innocent Dande, Post-doctoral research fellow in the International Studies Group, University of the Free StateProfessor Sandra Swart, Professor of History, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1620012021-06-17T16:12:27Z2021-06-17T16:12:27ZSport in Africa: book delivers insights into the games, people and politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405349/original/file-20210609-14833-6usbjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eliud Kipchoge (R) of Kenya at the NN Mission Marathon in 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The efforts of a range of academics across Africa have produced a new anthology of articles about sport on the continent. It’s an important book because it’s a subject that’s been largely neglected. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Sports+in+Africa%2C+Past+and+Present"><em>Sports in Africa, Past and Present</em></a> engages with the core themes that have emerged from a series of conferences. Chapters provide an array of sporting windows through which to view and understand key developments in Africans’ experiences with leisure and professional sporting activities. </p>
<p>The history of African sports is also a history of Africans’ reception and appropriation of an assortment of “modern sports” that European colonisers introduced. If Europeans colonised Africa, as the maxim goes, with a gun in one hand and the Bible in the other, they were also equipped with soccer, rugby and cricket balls.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the intentions of the colonial powers, historians of African sports have established that the indigenous practitioners were hardly passive consumers. They contested various aspects and fashioned new meanings of these sports. </p>
<p>Various chapters address the roles that sport played during and after decolonisation. It helped shape local and national identities in newly independent African states. They also look at the ways in which individuals, communities and governments have used sports in contemporary Africa for social and political ends.</p>
<h2>Covering a continent</h2>
<p>One of the themes in the book is the impact of colonisation, and how African players responded to various restrictions on their participation. </p>
<p>Africans were typically banned from white settlers’ sports clubs and associations. They often responded by forming teams and leagues of their own. This helped foster the development of distinct identities. In certain cases, these autonomous efforts at sporting organisations even simulated institution building in an imagined post-colonial state.</p>
<p>Trishula Patel’s chapter on cricket in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), for example, examines how the game helped reinforce various identities of the resident Indian community. Members struggled to negotiate racial discrimination at the hands of the white settler regime. Mark Fredericks demonstrates how the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the attendant unification of rugby and other sports leagues, signalled the death knell for community sports. In practice this meant the end of mass-based sports in black communities. </p>
<p>David Drengk’s chapter on surfing along the then <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Transkei">Transkei</a> Wild Coast and Todd Leedy’s chapter on the history of bicycle racing complicate ideas of interracial interactions during the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> era. Meaningful interactions could and did occur between black and white South Africans, or at least basic tolerance and respect. </p>
<p>The Nigeria women’s national soccer <a href="https://www.sportskeeda.com/team/nigeria-womens-football">team</a> has faced gender discrimination in a deeply patriarchal society. Chuka Onwumechili and Jasmin M. Goodman set out how players have used a series of sports-related strategies to push back against a range of sexist structures and entities. These include the Nigerian Football Federation.</p>
<p>Solomon Waliaula’s chapter offers significant insight into the pay-to-watch football kiosks that are ubiquitous throughout the continent, though his focus is on Kenya. He refutes the notion that because participants pay to watch European soccer, western culture dictates the dynamics in these settings. Instead, he argues, these spaces function based on local realities, cultural norms and social relations.</p>
<p>Christian Ungruhe and Sine Agergaard consider the acute challenges that West African football migrants face in Europe when their playing careers end. </p>
<p>Going back in time, Francois Cleophas reconstructs the experiences of <a href="https://theconversation.com/narratives-about-south-africas-black-athletes-need-to-be-reclaimed-and-retold-89869">Milo Pillay</a>, a South African-born ethnic Indian physical culturalist. His weightlifting story illustrates the racial challenges that athletes faced, and at times surmounted, during the apartheid era.</p>
<p>Michelle Sikes uses the example of elite sprinter <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/magazine/pioneer-in-kenya-s-athletics-seraphino-antao-a-champion-1291980">Seraphino Antao</a> to highlight the challenges and opportunities that sports generated in the final years of British colonial control in Kenya and early independence. In an attempt to cultivate a common identity and purpose, leaders opportunistically trumpeted Antao’s successes. Politicians throughout the continent similarly used sports to build national unity in the aftermath of imperial overrule.</p>
<p>Marizanne Grundlingh examines the museum associated with South Africa’s <a href="https://www.comrades.com">Comrades Marathon</a>, the world’s oldest and largest ultramarathon. In particular, she considers the ways that the race is remembered through gift-giving. Former participants donate various items for display, adding to the emerging subfield of sports as heritage.</p>
<h2>Positive change through (studying) sports</h2>
<p>Research on sports in Africa has gained considerable traction. But, like books such as <em>Sports in Africa</em>, the introduction of this topic into the classroom has lagged behind. </p>
<p>Three chapters address course design, approaches and learning outcomes. They also consider how African sports content can hone students’ critical analysis capabilities, digital research methods and intercultural learning skills.</p>
<p>Todd Cleveland draws on his experiences teaching the history of sports in Africa to offer lessons and insights. Matt Carotenuto’s chapter brings the reader into the world of a liberal arts institution. He offers advice based on his experiences teaching courses in African athletes and global sport. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A turquoise book cover with yellow text reading 'Sports in Africa: Past and Present' and a black illustration that is the silhouette of a man running, she shape of the African continent emerging behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382999/original/file-20210208-17-yrh1j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ohio University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Peter Alegi’s chapter looks at his experiences teaching an undergraduate seminar that examines the intertwined relationships between sports, race and power in South Africa. </p>
<p>We hope that the book can help precipitate positive change in the classroom and on the continent. And that it can enable practitioners, supporters and observers to better understand the lifeworlds in which sports are played and take on meaning. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is the first in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?q=%23SportInAfricaSeries">series</a> examining African sport. The articles are each based on a chapter in the new <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Sports+in+Africa%2C+Past+and+Present#:%7E:text=%22A%20long%20overdue%20project%20by,studies%20as%20a%20humanities%20subject.&text=It%20challenges%20longstanding%20racial%2C%20ethnic,prescribed%20social%20and%20cultural%20identities">book</a> Sports in Africa: Past and Present published by <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com">Ohio University Press</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162001/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gerard A. Akindes works for/consults to/owns shares in Northwestern University, Qatar. He receives funding from WISE.He is affiliated with Northwestern University, Qatar.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tarminder Kaur and Todd Cleveland do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sports in Africa, Past and Present examines the role played by leisure and professional sports in shaping African life, including resisting colonialism.Tarminder Kaur, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of JohannesburgGerard A. Akindes, Adjunct associate, Northwestern UniversityTodd Cleveland, Associate professor, University of ArkansasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1534692021-02-01T15:25:22Z2021-02-01T15:25:22ZHow DRC’s colonial legacy forged a nexus between ethnicity, territory and conflict<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380440/original/file-20210125-15-18cq1mo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Internally displaced persons gather for government briefing in South Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the scene of violent clashes between rival communities since 2019.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by ALEXIS HUGUET/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Throughout history, ethnic stereotypes have been used to justify <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/waves-of-war/46DE8110E37E2BEBE2D0673E59235BDB">mass violence</a>, <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14250.html">exclusion</a>, oppression, and <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo3637242.html">inequality</a> in many corners of the world. In times of violent upheaval and conflict, ethnic narratives often come to the fore. This is true even when the origin and the stakes have little to do with ethnicity. This colours people’s understanding of the conflict’s stakes and fault-lines. </p>
<p>In such moments, people may start to think of conflicts in ethnic terms. They may begin to attribute certain cultural, or genetic, characteristics of their adversaries as the cause for conflict. A perceived ethnic adversary may be regarded as “violent”, “aggressive”, “greedy, "savage”, “rebellious”, “restless”, “backwards”, “undemocratic” or “cunning”. This makes it easier to cast them as a threat to one’s own ethnic community. </p>
<p>Such stereotypes are not simply created on the spot by opportunistic leaders. Rather, they should be understood as identity categories embedded in society’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313/313127/black-skin--white-masks/9780241396667.html">power structures</a>,<a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/race-and-the-education-of-desire">discourses</a>, and, more broadly, in people’s ways of <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674510418">thinking and feeling</a>. In brief, across the world people are socialised into thinking, feeling and acting as members of an ethnic community, or group.</p>
<p>Because ideas of ethnic territories are a major source of political friction and persecution in the world, it’s important to investigate how they are created and used in conflicts. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718520301858">recent article</a>, I dissected how ethnic territories have been imagined and constructed historically, and how they have been used in political struggles for power and resources in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).</p>
<p>Formerly known as Zaire, DRC is the second largest country in Africa and home to <a href="http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=congo+population&d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3a12%3bcrID%3a178%2c180">90 million people</a>. A sizeable part of its rural population is administered under no less than 250 traditional chiefdoms. These are ruled by customary chiefs, who are recognised by the government and who apply both modern and customary laws. In addition to chiefdoms, there are myriad smaller customary units such as groupings and villages. </p>
<p>The focus of my study is the area directly west of Lake Kivu, known as Kalehe Territory, which has been the <a href="https://ifro.ku.dk/english/staff/?pure=en%2Fpublications%2Fcontesting-authority(7e9f070f-8766-4663-b553-7127d296eec0).html">scene of violent conflict</a> for more than two decades. The main conclusion I draw is that the ideas of ethnic territories used by actors in struggles over power and resources in DRC have their <a href="https://www.gov.uk/research-for-development-outputs/ethnogovernmentality-the-making-of-ethnic-territories-and-subjects-in-eastern-dr-congo">roots</a> in the way in which the territory was run under Belgian colonial rule. </p>
<p>This matters today because ethnicity still plays an important role in politics and violent conflicts in eastern DRC. Evoking ethnic narratives remains an effective strategy of mobilisation because of entrenched <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-history-matters-in-understanding-conflict-in-the-eastern-democratic-republic-of-congo-148546">mutual distrust</a> and prevailing fear. This is especially so in areas marked by persistent violent conflict such as Kalehe and Uvira further south.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-history-matters-in-understanding-conflict-in-the-eastern-democratic-republic-of-congo-148546">Why history matters in understanding conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo</a>
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<h2>Ethnicity, territory and conflict</h2>
<p>A key component of how DRC – and other territories across Sub-Saharan Africa – were run was the creation of <em>chefferies</em> or chiefdoms. </p>
<p>Chiefdoms were envisioned as mutually exclusive ethnically discrete territories ruled by a single customary chief governing through customary law. The colonial authorities used them to rule indigenous people indirectly as “tribes” or “races”, in their natural environment, and through their own customs and political institutions. </p>
<p>Across the world colonial regimes created “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718520301858?dgcid=rss_sd_all">ethnic territories</a>”. By creating “ethnic territories” they sought to balance demands for profit and self-financing with objectives of maintaining order, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/651942">managing dispossession</a>, and upholding racial boundaries and hierarchies. </p>
<p>Hundreds of chiefdoms were created in DRC. The object was to ensure that order could be maintained at the same time as the indigenous populations were turned into productive and taxable subjects. Customary chiefs with extensive powers became particularly important intermediaries. They were framed as the embodiment of traditional indigenous political institutions despite the enormous diversity of these. </p>
<p>However, the indigenous political units were not the pliable natural units imagined by the colonisers. Rather, they were complex polities populated by people with diverging interests and complex external relations. In eastern DRC, local leaders – such as the Bashi chief Kabare and the Banyungu prince Njiko – mounted <a href="https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/9910344730602121">rebellions</a> against the colonial authorities. As a result, violent repression became a common theme. </p>
<p>Over time, the territorial model fragmented. As a result, the creation of ethnic territories became a dynamic process where boundaries were determined by political struggles. Violence, and the threat of violence, played a big role. </p>
<p>At the same time, theories of racial superiority – of mixed biblical and scientific vintage – were <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3171483">harnessed</a> to authorise colonial decisions to create ethnic territories and impose paramount chiefs on previously independent polities.</p>
<h2>Buhavu chiefdom</h2>
<p>I focused on the creation of <a href="https://books.google.dk/books/about/La_cr%C3%A9ation_de_la_chefferie_buhavu_et_s.html?id=4xchHQAACAAJ&amp;redir_esc=y">Buhavu chiefdom</a> in the 1920s. It was made up of several hitherto <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/218548?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">independent indigenous polities</a>. This brought together culturally diverse populations into a single chiefdom under the rule of the Bahavu chief. </p>
<p>But several indigenous leaders and groups refused to recognise colonial overrule. These included rival Bahavu chiefs and leaders of the people collectively known as the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/218548?origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Batembo</a>. The Batembo lived in small independent communities on the eastern edge of the Congo River Basin. Among the Batembo, authority was dispersed among several clans and groups. This meant that the idea of a mono-ethnic territory ruled by a single chief was significantly at odds with the existing political culture. </p>
<p>These communities and their leaders were forced into submission through severe repression, making the creation of the Buhavu chiefdom <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/terror-and-territory">a violent act of exclusion and inclusion</a>. </p>
<p>Its creation violated the area’s existing cultural diversity and political institutions. It also silenced subaltern and rebellious voices, and concentrated authority in the hands of indigenous royal élites willing to collaborate with the colonial authorities. </p>
<p>Independence from Belgium in 1960 created opportunities for a new set of Congolese actors to shape politics. In Buhavu chiefdom, a group of leaders, claiming to represent the Batembo ethnic group, demanded the right to territorial self-rule. They justified this demand on grounds that it was an economically sustainable and culturally homogeneous area. As such, they argued, it deserved to be recognised as a self-governing entity.</p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Glory-Monsters-Collapse-Africa/dp/1610391071">Congo Wars</a>, the first in the mid-1990s and the second between 1998-2003 – the struggle to create a Batembo territory became engulfed in the larger dynamics of regional war. Batembo leaders mobilised a powerful militia, which fought alongside Congolese government troops against Rwandan army units and their Congolese allies. This they justified on the grounds that DRC was threatened by a plan to forge a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rebel-governance-in-civil-war/myths-set-in-motion-the-moral-economy-of-mai-mai-governance/2FF83FD1EB80311509BE2F414E15BF46">“Tutsi-Hima” empire</a> in Central Africa sanctioned by the major western powers. Their new-found military strength also inspired Batembo leaders to push for the creation of their own ethnic territory called “Bunyakiri”. </p>
<p>But the politics that emerged after the second Congo War did not play out in their favour. Their soldiers either demobilised or became integrated in the Congolese army. And the group’s leaders were sidelined or outmanoeuvred once they entered the arena of national politics. Today, Batembo leaders still clamour for the creation of an independent chiefdom.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>The numerous conflicts in eastern DRC cannot be ascribed to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-history-matters-in-understanding-conflict-in-the-eastern-democratic-republic-of-congo-148546">ancient hatreds</a> between ethnic communities. There are many different causes of the complex conflicts in eastern DRC. Nevertheless, the idea of discrete and mutually exclusive ethnic territories do play an important role in these conflicts. </p>
<p>This idea was introduced and institutionalised by the colonial administration, and, in fact, violated the existing political institutions and cultural diversity of eastern DRC. Hence, colonial ways of administering indigenous populations has played an important role in sowing the seeds of ethnic tensions in the present.</p>
<p>It seems logical, therefore, that a reconciliation process in eastern Congo should entail a reckoning with colonial ways of thinking about ethnic territories. This will not be an easy task given the vested interests in the status quo. On the one hand, customary chiefs and political and military leaders derive much of their power from the idea of ethnic territories. For many ordinary Congolese, on the other hand, chiefdoms provide both customary land rights and political inclusion since belonging to a chiefdom is a prerequisite for citizenship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kasper Hoffmann works for the University of Copenhagen and Gent University. The research for this article was funded by a joint PhD grant from Roskilde University and the Danish Institute for International Studies, the European Research Council (ERC), Ares (2015) 2785650-ERC-2014-AdG-662770-Local State, and UK aid from the UK government (GB- 1-204428); the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.</span></em></p>Because ethnic territories are a major source of political friction and persecution in the world, it’s important to investigate how they are created and used in conflicts.Kasper Hoffmann, Post-doctorate researcher, Department of Conflict and Development Studies, University of CopenhagenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1472142021-01-31T07:52:53Z2021-01-31T07:52:53ZMedical volunteers in rural Zambia: learning from attitudes to angels and vampires<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373344/original/file-20201207-23-t7p4oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Medical volunteers have been a common sight in African countries like Zambia since the colonial era.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Engraving from The Illustrated London News, volume 96, No 2654, March 1, 1890/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the past decade, the work of medical volunteers in Africa has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/magazine/the-voluntourists-dilemma.html">heavily debated</a>. These volunteers – often from Western Europe and North America – arrive in African countries to work in clinics and hospitals, providing medical treatment for patients in poor urban and rural settings. </p>
<p>Important criticisms have been made of this kind of work. The Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole coined the term “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/">white saviour industrial complex</a>” to describe a sector that does more to affirm the “sentimental needs” of white volunteers than to engage with the political dynamics that sustain inequality and poverty in African countries. Social scientists have also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17441692.2017.1346695?casa_token=m4Rv_SyyBc4AAAAA:TTa5yGDpLwISGrbS80kyqosQMYTIoN2_znrfWTvcSJFq8JA1N-LpvmYgbucClD-vy8KPE8y7i8Hx">studied</a> the work of international medical volunteers. This research shows that these volunteers often cause harm by undermining the authority of African health professionals or by performing risky clinical procedures. </p>
<p>But important voices are sometimes missing from these debates – particularly those of the people on the receiving end of this “help”. </p>
<p>In the area of rural Zambia where I have been conducting research since 2014, international medical volunteers are a common sight. In my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02757206.2020.1711749">recent research</a> I have considered how people who live in rural Zambia regard these outsiders and make sense of their behaviour. One of the aims of this research is to examine how people in rural Zambia have come to understand the actions of the many medical volunteers who have been arriving in the area since the colonial period. </p>
<p>But to understand how people in rural Zambia perceive these medical volunteers, it is important to observe that such volunteers have been closely associated with several kinds of non-human actors, whose behaviour is worth examining in more detail. </p>
<h2>Angels and vampires</h2>
<p>Historians and anthropologists have studied how medical interventions by white Europeans – from colonial-era missionary doctors to modern medical researchers – have been perceived by people in African countries in the past. This important work has shown that the presence and behaviour of these outsiders has often produced powerful anxieties and rumours. One of the striking findings of <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520217041/speaking-with-vampires">this research</a> is that white medical doctors in central Africa were often identified as “vampires” (<em>banyama</em>). This was because people thought they sought to enrich themselves by extracting their African patients’ blood and vital body substances. </p>
<p>I found in my own research that white medical volunteers in rural Zambia were sometimes associated with vampire rumours. But I also discovered that they were connected to a less malevolent figure: the “angel spirit” or <em>mungelo</em> (<em>bangelo</em>, plural) in Chitonga, the language spoken in southern Zambia.</p>
<p>Traditional healers in the area explained that these spirits visited them and offered them powerful healing advice. One of these traditional healers – a woman I will call Dr Simamba – described the behaviour of these spirits. Arriving at Dr Simamba’s home with a friend, I was shown her shrine. In it, she had placed a tall white feather. This, she explained, was the kind of object that might attract angel spirits who sometimes visited her in person and in dreams. </p>
<p>Dr Simamba could not say for sure why these angel spirits were attracted to white objects. But she thought it might be because these spirits physically resembled white people (<em>bakuwa</em>) and always dressed in white clothing. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, these angel spirits were notoriously difficult to attract:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They come at whatever time they please … sometimes a whole year goes past and nothing!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These spirits were worth waiting for, though. They offered highly effective guidance on how to treat patients. This included advice about which herbs and plants to pick, how to prepare them, and whether to drink them, smoke them or rub them into an incision.</p>
<p>Sometimes angel spirits offered Dr Simamba advice about patients who were already under her care and living within her homestead. On other occasions <em>bangelo</em> offered advice about patients who were going to visit in the future so that Dr Simamba could prepare in advance for their arrival. </p>
<p>I encountered six traditional healers – and was told of many others – who also received visits from spirits. But Dr Simamba’s account also resembles the descriptions of diviners and healers throughout the region. In her work on vernacular healing in Tanzania, the American medical anthropologist Stacey Langwick <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-Politics-African-Healing-Maladies/dp/0253222451">notes</a> that many people who become healers are “called into relationship with a variety of (new) actors”, including spirits and other non-human actors. And for <em>bangelo</em> diviners, one of the non-human actors with whom they were “called into relationship” was the angel spirit.</p>
<h2>Ambivalent actors</h2>
<p>Despite the advice they could offer, angel spirits were regarded in morally ambivalent terms. Although they could provide effective advice, they were essentially unpredictable. Diviners struggled to sustain long-term relationships with them. </p>
<p>Much like many of the international medical volunteers whom they physically resembled, these spirits acted according to a logic of their own. They arrived and left when they pleased, without offering a reliable and enduring form of care. </p>
<p>In this sense, both medical volunteers and angel spirits depart from the kind of relationships of care and mutual dependence that people in the region often value highly. </p>
<p>The idea that medical volunteers in Zambia stand outside local relationships – and are therefore not bound by social obligations to Zambians – is one that might explain their association with both vampires <em>and</em> angels. I am not suggesting that these non-human actors are simply metaphoric representations of the “real” white people whom they represent. Rather, I think the behaviour of these human and non-human actors should be considered alongside one another. </p>
<p>The moral attitudes that many people in rural Zambia have towards vampires and angels provide an interesting view – even a critique – of the work of medical volunteers. Perhaps it is time to take these criticisms more seriously and include them in debates about medical volunteering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147214/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Wintrup does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>These medical volunteers have been closely associated with several kinds of non-human actors, whose behaviour is worth examining in more detail.James Wintrup, Research Fellow in Social Anthropology, University of OsloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1455692020-09-03T13:13:15Z2020-09-03T13:13:15ZJG Farrell’s The Singapore Grip: new TV adaptation brings to life the final book by one of the UK’s finest novelists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356311/original/file-20200903-24-1g5z6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=130%2C147%2C4896%2C2918&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">SIngapore Grip: the final book in JG Farrell's Empire Trilogy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In March 2020, when it became clear that my university campus was about to close due to the coronavirus pandemic, I hastily grabbed from my office shelves my well-thumbed copies of <a href="https://www.nyrb.com/collections/j-g-farrell">JG Farrell’s Empire Trilogy</a>: Troubles (1970), The Siege of Krishnapur (1973), and The Singapore Grip (1978). This was no sentimental choice on my part. I believed that Farrell could help me deal with my queasy feelings that everyday life as I knew it was dissolving frighteningly into incertitude.</p>
<p>As a writer, Farrell was concerned with those suddenly tipped into uncertainty, no doubt because of his own life being irreversibly turned upside down due to the sudden advent of sickness. Aged 21, he had become seriously ill after playing rugby at Oxford University in December 1956 and was diagnosed with polio. A spell in an iron lung was followed by a long and painful recovery. Farrell’s upper body was permanently affected by the disease. He never recovered full mobility. </p>
<p>Almost overnight, a young, healthy and ambitious undergraduate had become physically fragile and equipped with a keen sense of how quickly and unexpectedly all we take for granted is lost. Cruelly, his illness would play a part in his untimely <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/last-gaze-of-jg-farrell-as-ocean-took-him-kdql22lqfd0">death by drowning in August 1979</a>, aged 44. While fishing near his new home in Ireland’s Bantry Bay, he was swept into the rough sea. Unable to swim strongly, he was soon lost to the water.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Middle-aged man in evening dresss photographed in profile." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Taken too young: JG Farrell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Farrell’s early novels had often dwelt gloomily on the frailty of life. His second novel, The Lung (1965), in particular, sought to explore the dispiriting emotional and existential upset of his sudden illness. Yet, along with A Man From Elsewhere (1963) and A Girl in The Head (1967), it drew little attention – today, all three remain out of print. </p>
<h2>Making it as a writer</h2>
<p>His fortunes changed with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/may/21/jg-farrell-troubles-lost-booker">publication of Troubles</a>, where he deployed more purposefully his consciousness of life’s latent fragility when depicting British colonial societies falling apart. </p>
<p>This turn to matters of Empire was not fanciful. Born to an Irish mother in Liverpool, Farrell had lived a modestly affluent childhood between England and Ireland before going up to Oxford. He knew the privileged social circles that were home to British colonialist attitudes but took a postcolonial position regarding the unhappy treatment of colonial subjects, such as the Irish. </p>
<p>Troubles imagines the lives of the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095413526">Anglo-Irish Ascendency</a> as the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) develops. Its often comical depiction of the Ascendency’s decline pokes fun at their arrogance and short-sightedness. </p>
<p>But Farrell’s sensitivity to the bewilderment and anxiety felt by all undergoing history also brings to the novel a measured sense of compassion for those whose worlds were at last evaporating. Indeed, the Empire Trilogy would uniquely combine the compassionate and condemnatory, the sensitive and the satirical, in its indulgent if unforgiving presentation of the colonial establishment. The novel established his critical reputation: it received the 1971 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, while in 2010 it was awarded the “<a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/lostmanbooker/2010">Lost Booker Prize</a>” after a public vote.</p>
<h2>End of Empire</h2>
<p>Farrell’s next novel, the <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/books/siege-krishnapur-by">Booker prize-winning The Siege of Krishnapur</a>, depicted the ready collapse of British civility during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Buoyed by its success, Farrell used part of his prize money to travel to south-east Asia to research his next – and, sadly, last – full-length novel, The Singapore Grip, which has just been adapted for television by Christopher Hampton.</p>
<p>Punctuated in turn by scenes of high comedy and historical solemnity, the novel portrays Singapore prior to its humiliating surrender to the Japanese in February 1942. At its heart is one of Farrell’s least likeable befuddled expatriates, the rubber magnate Walter Blackett, whose business empire exemplifies the unholy grip of capitalism and colonialism over the region’s impoverished workers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Mustachioed man in linen suit on varandah." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Unpleasant and manipulative: David Morrissey as Walter Blackett in The Singapore Grip.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Pictures</span></span>
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<p>Keen to secure his firm’s future, Walter plots to marry his daughter Joan to Matthew Webb, the son of his geriatric business partner – a scheme all the more bizarre in an increasingly besieged and dangerous city. </p>
<p>An idealist at heart, Matthew’s progressive vision of a world where wealth and wisdom are equitably enjoyed soon becomes as battered as the bombed-out city. Events in Singapore appear instead to prove the “Second Law” often quoted by his American friend, James Ehrendorf: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In human affairs, things tend inevitably to go wrong. Things are slightly worse at any given moment than at any preceding moment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet The Singapore Grip never loses faith in the capacity for survival and endurance. It mixes its unforgiving vision of colonialism’s absurdity and collapse with an unyielding and often warmly humorous embrace of human fellowship. And, while Matthew fails to flee in time, one important figure significantly escapes: an abandoned, diseased and distressed King Charles spaniel, sardonically named “The Human Condition” by one of Matthew’s friends, who is last seen bolting up the gangplank to safety on a soon-to-depart ship.</p>
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<img alt="Young man with glasses, dirty uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Captured: Luke Treadaway as Matthew Webb in The Singapore Grip.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Pictures</span></span>
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<p>Highly amusing and deeply penetrating by turns, Farrell’s fiction often renders the human condition as precarious and insubstantial as the ailing dog in The Singapore Grip. But it crucially recognises that people are as complicated as the changing historical circumstances into which they are mercilessly thrust. Farrell’s firm condemnation of Empire never stopped him trying to understand humanely those undergoing its decline.</p>
<p>In reaching for Farrell when lockdown commenced, I had hoped to deal less fearfully with the experience of sudden change. But he soon reminded me, too, of the humane resources we also need at life-changing moments: steadfast hope, a saving sense of humour, and – for those lucky to escape or recover from illness – the wisdom of survival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John McLeod does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The writer was drowned at the age of 44, but he left three novels which have come to represent the decline of the British Empire.John McLeod, Professor of Postcolonial and Diaspora Literatures, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1392442020-06-08T16:19:12Z2020-06-08T16:19:12ZCharles Dickens: how two novelists gave Great Expectations a second life in the Pacific<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340038/original/file-20200605-176538-12yesia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C2995%2C2056&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dickens in his study at Gad's Hill Place in Higham, Kent.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Samuel Hollyer via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Charles Dickens’ <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva35.html">first biographer, John Forster</a>, ended The Life of Charles Dickens in 1874 with the <a href="http://anglicanhistory.org/england/apstanley/dickens1870.html">Dean of Westminster’s sermon</a>. This was delivered in Westminster Abbey on June 19 1870, three days after the novelist’s funeral. Dickens’s grave in Poets’ Corner would, said the dean: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>henceforward be a sacred one with both the new world and the old, as that of the representative of literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the century and half since his death, writers from the southern hemisphere have continued to recast Dickens’s fictions in new forms. Two novels – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/1997/sep/28/fiction.petercarey">Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997)</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jul/07/featuresreviews.guardianreview21">Lloyd Jones’s Mr Pip (2007)</a> – rework Dickens’s Great Expectations (1859-60). </p>
<p>In so doing, they present readers with opportunities to rethink ways in which Dickens was “a representative of literature”; including the power relations around class and colonialism that have shaped the transmission of writing in “our English tongue” for the past two centuries.</p>
<h2>Altered expectations</h2>
<p>In Jack Maggs, Carey – a double Booker Prize-winning Australian novelist – rewrites Great Expectations from the perspective of a convict who returns from his sentence in the new world to terrible risk: the only sure thing that old England can offer him is a noose. Dickens’s original novel sees the world from the shifting perspective of Philip Pirrip – or “Pip” – an orphan boy plucked from obscurity who thinks he has been “made” by the wealthy Miss Havisham. In fact his fortunes have been advanced by Abel Magwitch, a convict who the young Pip had helped in an escape bid.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340042/original/file-20200605-176595-x25wvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340042/original/file-20200605-176595-x25wvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340042/original/file-20200605-176595-x25wvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340042/original/file-20200605-176595-x25wvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340042/original/file-20200605-176595-x25wvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340042/original/file-20200605-176595-x25wvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340042/original/file-20200605-176595-x25wvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340042/original/file-20200605-176595-x25wvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ambitious reworking of Great Expectations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
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<p>In Carey’s pastiche, Magwitch becomes Jack Maggs, who has survived transportation to Australia and become a successful and wealthy brickmaker. He returns from the British colony of New South Wales to the London of 1837, the year during which Dickens rose to fame. Maggs wants contact with Pip – rendered here as the young man Henry Phipps, whom he has made into a gentleman. </p>
<p>Instead, he encounters the young, upwardly mobile novelist Tobias Oates: ambitious, anxious to hold onto the new respectability he has secured after childhood poverty, and riddled with emotional and financial insecurities. Oates is of course a version of the young Dickens prior to the consolidated public image of the respectable literary giant commemorated in Forster’s biographical portrait. </p>
<p>Carey reminds us, through Oates, that the Dickens of 1830s <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780312123277">closely observed</a> a London world of crime and sexual misdemeanour that could scarcely be rendered in the language of fiction available to him. Dickens also <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x16nr">flirted with the new science of mesmerism</a>, a technique which Oates applies to Maggs to exorcise him of the “phantoms” or traumas of brutalised convict life. Oates thereby appropriates Maggs’s story as a series of “burgled secrets” which are to be recast as a crime melodrama for his own literary gain. </p>
<p>Yet Carey reverses this invasive power relation and enables Maggs to tell his own story, restoring him to his own emotionally scarred but resilient origins. Carey concludes with the image of Maggs as redeemed Australian subject who has exorcised the phantoms of English class longings, and is restored to his family in the new world.</p>
<h2>Pip in the Pacific</h2>
<p>Lloyd Jones’s Mr Pip transports Great Expectations to the Pacific, the conflicted island of <a href="https://dl.nfsa.gov.au/module/357/">Bouganville in Papua New Guinea</a>. The New Zealand novelist writes about the reading and interpretation of Dickens’s novel among a group of black children and their eccentric, self-appointed white teacher, Mr Watts, as an event punctuated by the rebel insurgence, military occupation and horrific violence experienced in the 1990s. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340044/original/file-20200605-176571-9svj2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340044/original/file-20200605-176571-9svj2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340044/original/file-20200605-176571-9svj2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340044/original/file-20200605-176571-9svj2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340044/original/file-20200605-176571-9svj2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340044/original/file-20200605-176571-9svj2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340044/original/file-20200605-176571-9svj2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340044/original/file-20200605-176571-9svj2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The power of fiction to transform lives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
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<p>If Dickens wrote Great Expectations as a tale of betrayal, guilt and ambiguous origins in 1860, Jones’s novel shows how that moral and emotional frame can be adapted to new, post-colonial conditions. Matilda is Jones’s 14 year-old fatherless narrator, who comes to appreciate that Pip’s story of mobility and self remaking, which the migrant Mr Watts reads to his pupils as a source of inspiration, is powerfully apt for those whose lives are subject to displacement and migration. </p>
<p>But the “Pip” that Matilda venerates by writing his name, in shells, on the beach is mistaken by military occupiers as the name of a rebel who is being concealed by the villagers. In a terrible unfolding of misunderstandings, both Matilda’s mother and Mr Watts are butchered.</p>
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<p>As Matilda escapes to a life of education and possibility, reunited with her migrant father in Australia, she comes to realise that the Great Expecations that Mr Watts read to them was in fact an abridged format for the children of empire: that Dickens’s “sacred” text existed in multiple versions.</p>
<p>Jones’s story casts powerful new light on the way in which Dickens can be seen as a leading “representative of literature”. In one sense, Dickens was the great author of Forster’s biography, buried in Poet’s Corner. In another, as Matilda comes to recognise, the name “Dickens” helped to drive and commodify the global transmission of Victorian literature in many different formats to many new parts of the globe. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/705689?mobileUi=0&">Regenia Gagnier’s research</a> on the global circulation of Dickens and other Victorians shows, literature itself is always in a process of migration to and through new power relations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139244/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Amigoni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two sequels which show how the Victorian novelist’s stories can be adapted to reflect post-colonial narratives.David Amigoni, Professor of Victorian Literature, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1279812019-12-18T12:26:14Z2019-12-18T12:26:14ZFrozen 2’s postcolonial plotline: is it all a bit of a charade?<p>Parents across the globe have been dragged into the cinema to watch Disney’s latest icy offering. I, being of them, was expecting Disney’s usual fare – princesses with special powers who, in an amazing feminist twist (because recently Disney do enjoy subverting the princess fairytale genre now they’re “woke”), don’t marry the prince at the end of the film. </p>
<p>In a curve ball, however, Frozen 2 appears to tackle the historically silenced issue of indigenous land rights and <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199235605.001.0001/acprof-9780199235605-chapter-14">repatriations</a> head on. It suggests that, at all costs, land must now be returned to the people it was once stolen from. However, whether it is a genuinely a rewriting of biased colonial historical narratives from the perspective of the dispossessed is up for debate.</p>
<p>Let me provide a bit of context. The film starts with a grand tale which hides a terrible lie, as do all <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1157257">colonial narratives</a>. King Agnarr of Arendelle tells his young daughters, Elsa and Anna, a bedtime tale about their “heroic” grandfather, King Runeard, who sought to establish a treaty with the neighbouring “tribe” of Northuldra. He does this by building a dam on their territory, the Enchanted Forest. To mark the treaty the people of Arendelle invite the Northuldra to celebrate in the Northuldra territories – but the good people of Arendelle are attacked by the “savage” tribespeople. </p>
<p>“We let down our guard, we were charmed, it felt so magical,” King Agnarr tells his daughters, “but they were attacking us”. King Runeard dies but Agnarr (who was then a young prince) escapes with the help of a mysterious saviour. The battle makes the spirits angry (“Air, Water, Fire and Earth”) and in their fury they create a great impenetrable wall of smoke around the Enchanted forest and its people. In a final warning, King Agnarr tells his wide-eyed girls: “We are safe but the forest may wake and we must be prepared.” </p>
<h2>Narratives of colonial control</h2>
<p>Postcolonial theory examines how literary and historical narratives seek to uphold and legitimise colonial control and the stealing of land from indigenous people. This bedtime story reasserts this, and Frozen 2 is dedicated to unravelling such a damaging colonial myth. The film hinges on the idea that “water has memory,” like the poet Derek Walcott’s poem <a href="https://poets.org/poem/sea-history">The Sea Is History</a>, it suggests that water remembers ancestral wrongdoings. </p>
<p>The Northuldra are of course a romanticised portrayal of indigenous people and there is much of the stereotype of the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-myth-of-the-noble-savage-55316">noble savage</a>” reflected here. They live in a magical forest, are deeply in tune with their natural environment and are innocent and pure. As the lies on which the Kingdom of Arendelle is founded start to unravel, we discover that Anna and Elsa’s mother, Iduna, is from the Northuldra tribe – she was the mysterious saviour who rescued their father during battle. </p>
<p>After Elsa is drawn to the Enchanted forest by a haunting song, she realises she must travel to a glacier named Ahtohalla to find answers. There the past is revealed to her through a series of ice statues – ancestral crimes are literally frozen in time. </p>
<p>It transpires that King Runeard cheated the Northuldra, the dam he built was to weaken their lands and he attacked them while they were defenceless. His reasons for doing so was that they have their own magic and people with magic cannot be trusted. “It makes them think they can stop the will of a king”, he states – <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23166213">echoing colonial fears of indigenous belief systems</a>. </p>
<p>As the deeds of her ancestors are revealed to her, Elsa also becomes an ice statue. Anna realises that the wrongs of the past must be corrected if Elsa and Arendelle are to be saved. “Arendelle has no future unless we make things right”, she proclaims passionately. </p>
<h2>Retroactive rehabilitation</h2>
<p>For all its worthiness, this is clearly a plotline created in retrospect. It seems in the wake of the <a href="https://nowtoronto.com/movies/features/disney-frozen-2-indigenous-culture-sami/">negative backlash on social media </a> against the first Frozen – which depicts indigenous songs, musical scores and clothing without any acknowledgement that they are inspired by indigenous culture – Frozen 2 has placed indigenous issues at centre stage. The Northuldra are fictionalised portrayals of the <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/49749ca35.html">Sámi</a> who are traditionally reindeer herders and whose lands covered parts of present-day Sweden, Finland, Norway and Russia. </p>
<p>The filmmakers worked alongside Sámi experts, formed an advisory group and a <a href="https://nowtoronto.com/movies/features/disney-frozen-2-indigenous-culture-sami/">contract was signed</a>, the first of its kind, between the Walt Disney Company, the transnational Sámi Council and the Sámi parliament to ensure a culturally sensitive depiction of the inspiration behind the fictional Northuldra people. </p>
<p>From the 1800s onwards, the Sámi have been oppressed and discriminated against. They have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/03/sweden-indigenous-sami-people-win-rights-battle-against-state">been subjected to</a> forced sterilisation programs, segregation, scientific study and ethnic discrimination and prevented from speaking <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/saami-languages-present-and-future">their indigenous languages</a>. Settlers have been encouraged to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-arctic-sami/swedens-sami-struggle-over-land-rights-idUSL0320809920070108">move on to Sámi lands</a>, money has been invested to <a href="https://prospectjournal.org/2016/10/31/the-sami-a-disappearing-indigenous-minority-in-scandinavia/">eradicate Sámi culture</a> and parliamentary acts have ensured <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2015/08/507642-land-resource-rights-key-sami-peoples-self-determination-says-un-expert">the allocation of their lands to settlers</a>. It seems that the dam in the film may be based on the controversy over the construction of a hydro-electric power station and dam on <a href="http://www.environmentandsociety.org/tools/keywords/alta-dam-controversy">Sámi land in 1979 in Alta</a>, which brought Sámi rights into the public eye and started a international movement for the protection of the Sámi and their culture. </p>
<p>Anna realises that she must break the dam, which will flood Arendelle, to put things right. She is willing to sacrifice Arendelle and its ill-gotten gains to heal the Northuldra community and return what belongs rightfully to them. By doing this she can save Elsa, free the Northuldra and appease the angry elemental spirits. As she plans to break the dam, she sings a song entitled: “The Next Right Thing”. Reparations are the next right thing to do and she is the woman to do it. </p>
<p>Yet, as expected, the sacrifice is minimal. Elsa arrives just in time to freeze the floodwater before it reaches Arendelle. Order is quickly restored, the spirits are at peace and the wall of smoke around the forest dissolves. The Northuldra and the forest are free. It all ends neatly with marriage, a “new” monarch and the idea of freedom. </p>
<p>So did Disney do the next right thing? Quite frankly, it’s all a bit of a charade. But at least they tried.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Zobel Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a surprising twist, Frozen 2 tackles the complicated issue of warped colonial narratives and the case for repatriation. A worthy feat, but how well does Disney pull it off?Emily Zobel Marshall, Reader in Postcolonial Literature, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1282412019-12-04T08:55:54Z2019-12-04T08:55:54ZSwapo’s unassailable position shattered: what next for Namibia?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304896/original/file-20191203-67028-zkby3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The results of the Namibian election reflect growing discontent among voters with the way the country is being run. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The level of uncertainty that surrounded the sixth Namibian elections since the country’s independence in 1990 was unprecedented. Held late <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/incumbent-party-wins-namibian-election-amid-corruption-scandal-20191201">last month</a>, the poll combined voting for the country’s president and for the national assembly.</p>
<p>Two issues dominated the debate until right before election day. The first was that an independent candidate, Panduleni Itula, was expected to split the presidential vote for the ruling party, South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo). </p>
<p>The second was a major corruption scandal around the allocation of fishing quotas. This erupted two weeks before the poll, and involved the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/officials-namibia-corruption-scheme-remain-custody-191202140206392.html">arrest of two cabinet ministers</a>.</p>
<p>A further feature of the poll was the controversy around electronic voting machines. Questions around their efficacy highlighted an erosion of trust in the state apparatus. Even on election day, independent candidate Itula continued to express misgivings about this central feature of the <a href="https://neweralive.na/posts/apprehensive-of-evms-itula-casts-his-vote">electoral process</a>. </p>
<p>These issues shrouded further reasons for rising discontent in the country. These include staggering unemployment rates, particularly among young people, a persistent economic crisis and gross social inequality. Another conflict-ridden issue is the unresolved land question. These crises are compounded by rising constraints on the state budget. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.elections.na/PresidentialRace.aspx">election results</a> showed voters registering their demand for dramatic changes. This was most evident in the sharp drop in support for incumbent President Hage Geingob. Five years ago he <a href="https://theconversation.com/namibian-elections-the-sands-are-shifting-slowly-127656">garnered 87%</a>. This time he scraped through with just 56.3%, helped by voters in the preponderantly rural north, where he could rely on a loyal Swapo power base. </p>
<p>Itula insisted throughout the election campaign that he remained a Swapo member. Using a loophole in the party constitution, Itula and his supporters apparently hoped to tap Swapo support. His candidature reflected a persistent split in the ruling party, which seems to include ethnic resentment against “Damara” Geingob. Itula came in with just under 30%, after a strong showing particularly in urban areas and among youth, much less though in the populous north.</p>
<p>In the national assembly, opposition parties, including the newly formed <a href="https://www.politicalanalysis.co.za/listen-namibias-landless-peoples-movement-on-its-2019-priorities/">Landless People’s Movement</a>, saw their positions strengthened. The final result gave Swapo 65.5%, just short of a two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution. This was a massive loss of some 15 percentage points against the resounding 80% of 2014. It is the first time that Swapo has dipped below the magic 66% since 1994.</p>
<p>Voter participation also fell, from over 70% in 2014 <a href="http://www.elections.na/RaceForVotes.aspx">to 60%</a> of registered voters. </p>
<p>Swapo’s seemingly unassailable position has been shattered. The outcome of these elections may well go further than a slight erosion of Swapo’s power position. It may lead to a situation where discontent by frustrated voters is channelled into directions other than formal politics. Thus, a latent crisis of legitimacy of the postcolonial state might break into the open.</p>
<h2>Trust in tatters</h2>
<p>But will the result mean that the government deals with the country’s massive challenges? Besides the long-term issues of persistent gross inequality and the worsening crisis of state finance as well as a bleak economic outlook, these also include the interrelated issues of corruption and transparency in government and politics.</p>
<p>A huge corruption scandal over the allocation of fishing quotas broke only weeks before the elections. <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/86051/read/Shanghala-dodges-N$4m-Fishrot-payment-questions">“Fishrot”</a> involves culprits from Namibia as well as Angola, Iceland and Norway. It revolves around kickbacks for the allocation of Namibian fishing quotas, which are given out by the responsible line ministry. Among those arrested are two former cabinet ministers.</p>
<p>Corruption in high places is well known. It’s common cause in the country that fishing rights are dished out to people who are not connected to fisheries in any way, only to pass them on for a hefty fee. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/namibian-elections-the-sands-are-shifting-slowly-127656">Namibian elections: the sands are shifting -- slowly</a>
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<p>The most recent case was unusually dramatic with the arrest of top politicians shortly before the elections. But it’s widely considered to be the tip of the iceberg. Both former ministers were due to be back in the national assembly after the elections, but have now been removed from the Swapo list.</p>
<p>The corruption cases may well add to the lack of trust in the institutional set-up, which appears severely shaken in the aftermath of the elections. </p>
<p>Prior to the polls expectations were running high for the independent presidential candidate and for opposition parties. This was particularly true among young urban people. </p>
<p>Publication of the official results engendered not just disappointment but chagrin. One cause was the delay of more than 72 hours in the announcement of the results. This was despite the use of new electronic voting machines which should have expedited the process. In the event, it increased suspicions about manipulation, adding significantly to these concerns.</p>
<p>The leader of the newly formed Landless People’s Movement, Bernardus Swartbooi, went as far as to call the election results <a href="https://neweralive.na/posts/opposition-question-poll-outcome">rigged</a>. He also bemoaned the fact that recourse to the justice system appeared to be meaningless, as the courts had in the past repeatedly sided with the electoral commission, as he stressed at a press conference on November 28 where the present author attended. </p>
<p>For the first time since independence, Namibia’s institutional set-up has been called into question. Within the system, there is seemingly no chance to appeal against shortcomings or intentional abuse. The unresponsive <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/86036/read/ECN-officials-refuse-to-take-media-questions">attitude taken by the electoral commission</a> added to the misgivings. A range of opposition parties have announced they will consider <a href="https://www.namibiansun.com/news/lpm-rdp-claim-daylight-robbery2019-12-03/">legal action against the election results</a>.</p>
<p>Swapo faces serious challenges. The perennial issue of gross social inequality is articulated in demands for land, not only for farming, but above all for <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?page=archive-read&id=144771">urban housing</a>; the Fishrot scandal has already rekindled <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/86105/read/Namibians-reel-over-Fishrot-revelations">workers’ resistance at the coast</a>. The break-up of Swapo’s two-thirds majority has been hailed by the leader of the official opposition, McHenry Venaani of the Popular Democratic Movement, as a chance to <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/86045/read/Reduced-victory--Swapo-Geingob-drop-votes">“sanitise the debate in the house”</a>. But formal politics also suffers from an inflated cabinet and attendant spoils system which permeates the state apparatus. Again, this is related to a budgetary crisis in the face of a persistent economic downswing. </p>
<p>Swapo’s clinging to power in this election may prove to be the opening of a much more dramatic period than has been seen over the three decades since the much-lauded transition to independence in 1990.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Reinhart Kössler has used research funds of the NRF available through his position as a Visiting Professor and Research Associate at the Institute of Reconciliation and Social Justice, The University of the Free State</span></em></p>For the first time since independence, Namibia’s ruling party has suffered electoral setbacks in the midst of economic and political crisis.Reinhart Kössler, Professor in Political Science, University of FreiburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.