tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/african-heritage-74955/articles
African heritage – The Conversation
2022-05-16T14:37:58Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182448
2022-05-16T14:37:58Z
2022-05-16T14:37:58Z
Senegal is decolonising its heritage, and in the process reclaiming its future
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462466/original/file-20220511-19-grrad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Monument of the African Renaissance sits on a volcanic hill overlooking Dakar</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Seyllou/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the morning of 5 September 2017, the inhabitants of Saint-Louis, a regional capital on Senegal’s northwest coast, woke to a <a href="http://lequotidien.sn/intemperies-faidherbe-tombe-a-saint-louis/">strange scene</a>. The statue of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Faidherbe">Louis Faidherbe</a> that had formed the focal point of the Square Faidherbe since 1887 had fallen. </p>
<p>The effigy of the 19th-century French general and colonial administrator lay next to its pedestal, its face buried in the sand of the public garden that it had decorated. This followed the call for its removal that had been heard for years.</p>
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<img alt="People standing next to a fallen effigy" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461234/original/file-20220504-14-xsy9bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461234/original/file-20220504-14-xsy9bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461234/original/file-20220504-14-xsy9bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461234/original/file-20220504-14-xsy9bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461234/original/file-20220504-14-xsy9bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461234/original/file-20220504-14-xsy9bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461234/original/file-20220504-14-xsy9bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&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">The statue of Governor Faidherbe, toppled in September 2017. Photo by Thierno Dicko.</span>
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<p>After Faidherbe’s fall, the municipality quickly reinstalled the statue but removed it again in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/world/africa/senegal-faidherbe-statue.html">early 2020</a> claiming they wanted to renovate the square where it once stood.</p>
<p>The incident illustrates the long journey Senegal has travelled in coming to terms with its colonial heritage and decolonisation which began under the country’s founding president Léopold Sédar Senghor.</p>
<p>In my recently published book, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/decolonizing-heritage/CD165173A8FD3959C836EC4FFDB4B2D3#fndtn-information">Decolonizing Heritage: Time to Repair in Senegal</a>, I examine Senegal’s decolonisation of its cultural heritage. My work demonstrates how Senegal’s reinterpretation of heritage sites enables it to overcome the legacies of the slave trade and colonialism. It succeeds in doing this, I suggest, by acknowledging the legacies of empire.</p>
<h2>Controversial legacy</h2>
<p>The city’s mayor, Mansour Faye, strongly opposed the removal of historical statues and spoke out in favour of the integral preservation of Saint-Louis’s colonial heritage. </p>
<p>Faye had a substantial but controversial legacy to defend. In the 19th century, Saint-Louis was an important trading post that developed into a military centre out of which the French conquered West Africa and established colonial control. </p>
<p>The city’s layout of military barracks, administrative buildings, ports, quays, and traffic arteries provided Saint-Louis with the modern infrastructure necessary to support France’s “civilising mission” in West Africa. This infrastructure had been realised under <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Faidherbe">Governor Faidherbe</a>, whose achievements were celebrated with a statue unveiled in 1887.</p>
<p>In a city that owes its existence to the French empire, it is not surprising that its mayor wished to maintain its colonial heritage and to preserve the memory of Faidherbe. But many young people rather imagined decolonial futures and thought the statue should go. </p>
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<img alt="A statue" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461236/original/file-20220504-13-6cm2pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461236/original/file-20220504-13-6cm2pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461236/original/file-20220504-13-6cm2pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461236/original/file-20220504-13-6cm2pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461236/original/file-20220504-13-6cm2pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461236/original/file-20220504-13-6cm2pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461236/original/file-20220504-13-6cm2pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&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">Governor Louis Faidherbe, still erect, in 2004. Photo by Ferdinand de Jong.</span>
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<p>Instead of the infrastructural legacy established by Faidherbe, they remember the villages razed to the ground and the harvests burned by the colonial army acting under his responsibility. The controversy around Faidherbe’s statue created a national debate in Senegal on the legacies of colonialism.</p>
<p>My interpretation that the legacy of empire should be acknowledged flows from Senghor’s philosophy of Négritude – or Blackness – by which he sought to restore pride in Black heritage. By celebrating the cultural achievements of precolonial Africa in art, dance, and music, Senghor sought to reclaim a heritage that had been dismissed by racial science and colonial rule. Appropriating the racist slur <em>nègre</em>, Senghor reclaimed his Blackness. But Senghor also acknowledged the achievements of French civilisation, and, as poet of the French language, was himself admitted to the French Pantheon.</p>
<p>In my view the decolonisation of heritage is a project of self-reclamation. This is a project Senegal owes largely to Senghor who, although keen to reclaim his Blackness, was also fond of French culture, and sought to unite both in his quest for a Universal Civilisation. This legacy, however, is increasingly hard to defend.</p>
<h2>Reclaiming African agency</h2>
<p>Senegal’s colonial heritage has always been a subject to contend with. But it has taken on added controversy and urgency in the current political climate, in which many former French colonies in West Africa question the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/world/africa/france-macron-africa-colonies.html">continuing presence</a> of the French army on their territories, and new global powers like China are keen to please African partners in the race for mineral resources.</p>
<p>This changing geo-political context has all manner of unforeseen consequences, for instance for Africa’s heritage held in European museum collections. </p>
<p>Many of Senegal’s monuments and museums were established under colonial rule. However, a few years ago the country opened its new <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sprawling-museum-black-civilizations-opens-senegal-180970976/">Museum of Black Civilisations</a>. With this project, Senegal signalled to the world that it has the museum infrastructure to store and preserve the art looted under colonial rule, and owned by French museums. </p>
<p>The museum opened just weeks after a <a href="http://restitutionreport2018.com/sarr_savoy_en.pdf">report</a> commissioned by French president Emmanuel Macron called for the unconditional restitution of objects held in French museums. This resulted in the return of several objects held in French museums to Benin and to Senegal.</p>
<p>Senegal was the first African country to have its colonial heritage listed by UNESCO. In 1978, Gorée Island, with its infamous <a href="https://www.unesco.org/archives/multimedia/document-1333">House of Slaves</a>, was listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its curator Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, dedicated his life to the commemoration of the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade, for which he was rewarded with an honorary doctorate. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461238/original/file-20220504-13-rdaxvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461238/original/file-20220504-13-rdaxvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461238/original/file-20220504-13-rdaxvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461238/original/file-20220504-13-rdaxvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461238/original/file-20220504-13-rdaxvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461238/original/file-20220504-13-rdaxvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461238/original/file-20220504-13-rdaxvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&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">The House of Slaves at Gorée Island in Senegal. Photo by Mamadou Gomis.</span>
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<p>He put the House of Slaves on the map and made it an unassailable monument to which Pope Jean-Paul II, George Bush, and Barack and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69T24RQgZ9Y">Michelle Obama</a> came to pay their respects. It is now hallowed ground that serves as a site of pilgrimage for African Americans and a site of atonement for White Europeans.</p>
<p>But the country also targeted the colonial monuments that the French left at independence. One of these was of <a href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b165-i400">Demba and Dupont</a>, named after two imagined brothers-in-arms, Senegalese and French, as they fought shoulder to shoulder in the French army during the First World War. To commemorate the contribution that African soldiers had made to the French war effort, a monument was erected in Dakar in 1923. </p>
<p>After independence, the Senegalese government removed it. Yet, in 2004, it was re-installed in the city’s memoryscape. </p>
<p>At the occasion of the commemoration of the struggle against Nazi rule, then 60 years ago, the Senegalese government recycled the monument to commemorate the role played by Senegalese soldiers in the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190815-world-war-ii-france-african-leaders-provence-landings-anniversary-boulouris">liberation of Europe</a>. The monument played a pivotal role in reclaiming African agency and a role for African soldiers on the world stage.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461241/original/file-20220504-25-m524ea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461241/original/file-20220504-25-m524ea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461241/original/file-20220504-25-m524ea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461241/original/file-20220504-25-m524ea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461241/original/file-20220504-25-m524ea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461241/original/file-20220504-25-m524ea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461241/original/file-20220504-25-m524ea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&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">The statue Demba and Dupont (1923), designed by French artist Paul Ducuing. Photo by Ferdinand de Jong.</span>
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<h2>Hope for another future</h2>
<p>Monuments and museums clearly play a role in the reconfiguration of relations between Senegal and France. Decolonisation of these relations is an unfinished, ongoing project. Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal’s third president (2000-2012), renewed the heritage politics of president Senghor, reinjecting his utopian hopes with a newly commissioned statue. </p>
<p>Erected on the westernmost tip of the African continent, The African Renaissance competes in size with the Statue of Liberty. The statue represents an African family. The future of Africa is represented by the young boy, carried on his father’s shoulders, looking knowingly across the Atlantic. </p>
<p>Recycling the ideals of Negritude in a new era, the North Korean built statue incorporates a plethora of sculptural styles, including Socialist Realism. But this reclamation of heritage is invested with hopes for an African Renaissance. </p>
<p>This hope for another future, as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/decolonizing-heritage/CD165173A8FD3959C836EC4FFDB4B2D3">my book</a> demonstrates, is part and parcel of the cultural heritage of Senegal.</p>
<p>To reclaim one’s heritage, as <a href="https://french.columbia.edu/content/souleymane-bachir-diagne">Souleymane Bachir Diagne</a>, a Senegalese philosopher of Négritude at Columbia University says, is to reclaim one’s future.</p>
<p><em>This article was amended and shortened.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ferdinand de Jong is associate professor at the University of East Anglia. He has received funding from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Economic and Social Research Council. Figure 3 @ Mamadou Gomis.</span></em></p>
Senegal’s colonial heritage has been interpreted to conceive an African future, turning colonial heritage into an archive of a possible Afrotopia.
Ferdinand de Jong, Associate Professor in Anthropology, University of East Anglia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/179772
2022-03-29T16:12:23Z
2022-03-29T16:12:23Z
Timbuktu manuscripts placed online are only a sliver of West Africa’s ancient archive
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453620/original/file-20220322-15-1bnaz2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MICHELE CATTANI/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ancient <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60689699">Timbuktu</a> manuscripts of Mali were back in the headlines following internet giant Google’s initiative to host <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/the-timbuktu-manuscripts/BQE6pL2U3Qsu2A">a collection</a> of them at an online gallery. The images of the documents, text in Arabic, can be found at a page called <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/project/mali-heritage">Mali Magic</a>. </p>
<p>No place in West Africa has attracted more attention and resources than the city that has always captivated the imagination of the outside world, Timbuktu. There have been documentaries and books, academic studies and a renewed public interest since some of Timbuktu’s <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/119/">world heritage status</a> buildings were damaged in <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/mali/al-mahdi">attacks</a> in 2012. The manuscripts, themselves, some reputed to date as early as the 1400s, were threatened and the international community responded.</p>
<p>While Mali Magic displays 45 very photogenic manuscripts from one private library, the site doesn’t begin to tell the full story of the wealth of West Africa’s manuscripts that are found from the Atlantic to Lake Chad. </p>
<p>But thanks to decades of scholarship and, recently, digitisation, that information is now accessible at a bilingual, open-access, online union catalogue of nearly 80,000 manuscripts at the <a href="https://waamd.lib.berkeley.edu/">West African Arabic Manuscript Database</a>. This is a resource I began 30 years ago at the University of Illinois that now provides students access to most of the titles and authors that make up West Africa’s manuscript culture. </p>
<p>It’s at this website that one can access the archive of an association of 35 private Timbuktu manuscript libraries – called <a href="https://www.savamadci.net/61+message-from-the-president.html">SAVAMA-DCI</a>. The association has been working with universities on three continents to secure and record, now digitally, their Arabic and Arabic-script manuscripts.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/timbuktu-destruction-landmark-ruling-awards-millions-to-malians-82540">Timbuktu destruction: landmark ruling awards millions to Malians</a>
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<p>The West African Arabic Manuscript Database provides an even bigger picture. It is a comprehensive inventory of over 100 public and private West African manuscript libraries. In it, we find one-third of all extant manuscripts with known authors (314 titles), written by 204 scholars, one-quarter of them from West Africa. Most of these manuscripts come from the 1800s, but have very deep historical roots. </p>
<p>The full story of West Africa’s manuscript culture and Islamic learning centres will finally be known when the attention that is lavished on Timbuktu’s manuscripts is also given to libraries in neighbouring Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria. But we already know a good deal.</p>
<h2>Centres of learning</h2>
<p>Earliest contact between North Africa and Timbuktu focused on West Africa’s gold trade. This commerce also brought Islamic teachings across the Sahara Desert. The first reference to manuscripts in Timbuktu was in the 1400s, contributing to the mystique that has always enveloped the city as a centre of Islamic education. </p>
<p>In fact, Timbuktu was only one of several southern Saharan towns that attracted scholars and offered Islamic learning. In the 1500s, what is called Timbuktu’s ‘<a href="https://medium.com/@elhadjdjitteye/the-golden-age-of-timbuktu-b4daecce33f0">Golden Age</a>’, its famous scholars were known across North Africa. </p>
<p>That period waned, but Arabic learning revived again in the 1800s across West Africa in the wake of several Islamic reform movements that stretched from today’s Guinea and the Senegal River Valley to Northern Nigeria. Today’s older manuscripts in West Africa mainly date from this period.</p>
<p>With the decline of scholarship in Timbuktu in the 1600s, Islamic learning emerged in nomadic centres to the west (in today’s Mauritania). There’s also a national collection of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/27/mauritania-heritage-books-libraries">manuscripts</a> in Mauritania that is based on the contents of 80-odd private libraries. They give us a good idea of what was traditionally found in manuscript libraries.</p>
<h2>What’s in West Africa’s manuscripts?</h2>
<p>The exact subject matter in each of the categories would vary somewhat from one library to the next. But the dominant subject – legal writing – tended to account for one-quarter to one-third of all the manuscripts. </p>
<p>West Africa’s manuscript culture evolved, for the most part, outside any state system. In the absence of a central authority, juridical matters were dispensed by local legal scholars who could cite precedent, case law, to resolve thorny problems. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454189/original/file-20220324-19-pi9vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white aerial photo of a square structure, some under roof but mostly an open courtyard with a pyramid-like shrine in the centre." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454189/original/file-20220324-19-pi9vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454189/original/file-20220324-19-pi9vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454189/original/file-20220324-19-pi9vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454189/original/file-20220324-19-pi9vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454189/original/file-20220324-19-pi9vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454189/original/file-20220324-19-pi9vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454189/original/file-20220324-19-pi9vx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=761&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">Traditional mosque in the Timbuktu area.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Michel HUET/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>The next most important subject in the manuscripts deals with the Prophet Muhammad, mainly biographical and devotional writing. The ratios of manuscripts dealing with mysticism (Sufism); the Qur’an (including copies of the Holy Book) especially recitation styles; Arabic language (lexicology, syntax, prosody, pre-Islamic poetry); and theology vary, each subject accounting for 7% to 13% of the manuscripts in most libraries.</p>
<p>Locally-written poetry and literature is generally the smallest slice of manuscripts, albeit – with correspondence – some of the most interesting. Oddly, the subject of history, like geography, is almost entirely ignored in many collections. </p>
<p>This reminds us, that Arabic and by extension, Arabic script was at base a religious language used for religious purposes, and its use for secular subjects was not common.</p>
<h2>The power of the Arabic alphabet</h2>
<p>More significant than these Islamic sciences, or disciplines, are the uses to which the Arabic alphabet was applied across West Africa. Arabic uses a phonetic alphabet; each letter always produces the same sound. What this means is that the Arabic script can be used to write any language. </p>
<p>To explain the Arabic of the Qur’an, teachers frequently translated key words into the students’ African language (written in Arabic script). Many West African manuscripts that were used in teaching show these interlineal insertions. From this practice it was an easy step to write classic legends, or memory aids, or poetry in African languages – all in Arabic script.</p>
<p>The name this writing is given in Arabic is “`ajamī” (writing in a foreign language). These manuscripts make up about 15% of most collections in West Africa today.</p>
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Read more:
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<p>In some areas, whole Arabic books are available in `ajamī form. The African languages that have been adapted to Arabic script are many, including: Fulfulde, Soninké, Wolof, Hausa, Bambara, Yoruba, and the colloquial Arabic spoken in Mauritania, Hasaniyya. </p>
<p>In recent times, `ajami writing has been increasingly used, but in historic manuscripts its use tended to focus on traditional healing methods, the properties of plants, the occult sciences and poetry.</p>
<h2>More to come</h2>
<p>Google’s new online library is drawn from the collection of SAVAMA-DCI’s director, Abdel Kader Haidara. In 2013, he entered a partnership with the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, based in Minnesota, US, to digitise his and 23 other family libraries in Timbuktu. </p>
<p>This is a bigger project that will eventually make available 242,000 manuscripts freely, online, complete with the scholarly apparatus and search capacity necessary for their scientific use. </p>
<p>Additional plans call for that project to include libraries at the town’s three main mosques, and Mali’s other centre of Islamic culture, Djenné. Already, over <a href="https://hmml.org/collections/repositories/islamic-repositories/">15,000 manuscripts</a> are accessible for scholars. Opening these manuscripts to scholars around the world to learn about the intellectual life in Africa before colonial rule promises to help re-balance the continent’s place in world history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles C. Stewart 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>
Opening these libraries up promises to re-balance the continent’s place in world history when it comes to its intellectual life.
Charles C. Stewart, Professor emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167315
2021-09-08T14:37:51Z
2021-09-08T14:37:51Z
Virtual exhibition breathes life into Lesotho’s musical tradition and clay art
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419272/original/file-20210903-17-19jzl98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=66%2C255%2C1675%2C810&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clay figurines of musicians, by Samuele Makoanyane</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kirby Collection, University of Cape Town</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The start of the news broadcast on Radio Lesotho is signalled by an unforgettable vibrating <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLbI0OCMKhE">sound</a>, rather harsh, as if made by a large bird. This is the <a href="https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/collection/islandora-20165">lesiba</a>, a musical bow. The lesiba was played by boys and men as they herded cattle, before radios and cellphones began to take the place of the national musical instrument. </p>
<p>Nowadays, there is little apparent concern for maintaining interest in the lesiba at school or any other national level in Lesotho. The unique sound of the instrument – once evocative of a rural way of life – seems to exist in a disconnected, disembodied fashion on the radio.</p>
<p>And the people who do still play Lesotho’s traditional instruments – musicians, instrument builders and innovators of their art – are seldom recognised or rewarded for their expertise.</p>
<p>But a collaboration led by the <a href="http://www.sacm.uct.ac.za">South African College of Music</a> at the University of Cape Town, aims to return attention to Lesotho’s musical tradition. The <a href="https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2020-03-31-sylvia-bruinders-music-and-art-in-lesotho">collaboration</a> involves filming musicians and exhibiting related artworks. We recorded musicians playing four instruments that are also depicted in clay figurines made by the late Lesotho artist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/samuel-makoanyane">Samuele Makoanyane</a> (1909-1944).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.iziko.org.za/">Iziko South African Museum</a>, in collaboration with <a href="https://www.dijondesign.net/">Dijondesign</a> (heritage consultants for the <a href="https://artandaboutafrica.com/artspaces/lesotho/lesotho-national-museum-and-art-gallery/">Lesotho National Museum and Art Gallery</a>), have created a <a href="https://virtual.iziko.org.za/samuele-makoanyane.html">virtual exhibition</a> of the delicate figurines. </p>
<p>They used photogrammetry – recording, measuring, and mapping – to make 3D digital models of the sculptures. These digital models are between 8cm and 18cm in height. They allow for detailed and interactive exploration. The figurines are being exhibited through Iziko South African Museum. The new Lesotho National Museum and Art Gallery will also show them at its official opening in 2022.</p>
<p>We also worked with the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/morijamuseum/">Morija Museum and Archive</a>, the Morija Art Centre and the Lesotho National Museum and Art Gallery to create a <a href="https://vimeo.com/419949659">film</a>. Called <em>Music in the Mountain Kingdom</em>, it documents Lesotho musical culture and accompanies the exhibition of figurines. Before the pandemic lockdown, we had also planned to include live performances by the musicians at the exhibitions. </p>
<h2>Makoanyane figurines</h2>
<p>The seven exquisite, little-known clay figurines in the exhibition were made by Makoanyane in the 1930s. They were commissioned by musicologist Professor <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/musical-instruments-of-the-native-people-of-south-africa/">Percival Kirby</a> of the University of the Witwatersrand, in order to document Lesotho musicians and their instruments. Made in the age-old tradition of low temperature pit firing, they are extremely fragile. They are being cared for in the <a href="http://www.sacm.uct.ac.za/sacm/kirbycollection">Kirby Collection of Musical Instruments</a> at the South African College of Music. </p>
<p>Makoanyane lived mostly in Koalabata, in the Teyateyaneng District. This is about 89km north of Lesotho’s capital, Maseru. To make the figurines, he worked from pictures in Kirby’s 1934 <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/60594">tome</a>, <em>The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Clay figurine of seated woman with a drum" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clay figurine by Samuele Makoanyane of a woman playing moropa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kirby Collection, University of Cape Town</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The figurines are recorded in the University of Cape Town’s <a href="https://www.digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/islandora/search/Samuel%20Makoanyane%20figurines?type=dismax">Humanities Digital Collection</a>. They are named as: thomo musical bow, setolotolo musical bow, seketari (guitar), lesiba musical bow, lekolilo pipe, moropa drum and pipe. </p>
<p>The Morija Museum and Archive, Lesotho’s oldest and best known museum, also has 33 Makoanyane clay figurines in its collection. The museum helped to find living musicians to perform on four of the instruments depicted.</p>
<h2>The musicians</h2>
<p>We recorded five musicians for the virtual exhibition. An older woman, Matlali Kheoana, plays the lekope (unbraced mouth-resonated musical bow) and the sekebeku (jaws harp). Sekebeku is technically not part of the collection, but a modern manufactured instrument similar to the setolotolo in the collection.</p>
<p>Leabua Mokhele, an older man, and Molahlehi Matima, a younger man, both play the lesiba (unbraced mouth-resonated musical bow). Malefetsane Paul Mabotsane and Petar Mohai, two younger men, play the segankhulu (single-stringed bowed lute with an oil can resonator). </p>
<p>Although two instruments were doubled, the performers played very differently. In the case of the segankhulu, they even constructed their instruments differently. The lesiba and segankhulu seem to still attract younger, innovative players. But the lekope is particularly at risk and Matlali Kheoana is in all likelihood one of the last few performers of this instrument.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/419949659" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Music in the Mountain Kingdom, directed by photographer Paul Weinberg.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Live performances at the exhibition would have provided the musicians with exposure and possible earnings from their expertise. Other outcomes could have included workshops and demonstrations at universities or through museum programmes. </p>
<p>We are still working on creating learning and teaching materials for the study of Lesotho music. We hope that the repatriation of the music and musical instruments through the exhibition and film will revitalise Basotho interest and the pursuit of a sustainable indigenous music culture.</p>
<p><em>The project wishes to acknowledge Steven Sack (independent curator), Jon Weinberg (Dijondesign lead exhibitory consultant) and Stephen Wessels (Dijondesign photogrammetry specialist) for the virtual installation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167315/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvia Bruinders works for the University of Cape Town receives funding from the National Research Foundation and the A.W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>
Clay figurines of musicians, made in the 1930s, are being exhibited along with a new film of actual musicians playing the traditional instruments.
Sylvia Bruinders, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157177
2021-03-31T13:28:26Z
2021-03-31T13:28:26Z
An ancient San rock art mural in South Africa reveals new meaning
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of the ceiling paintings of the San people in the Drakensberg, South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy © Stephen Townley Bassett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The indigenous <a href="https://www.kalaharipeoples.org/the-san">San</a> communities of southern Africa were originally hunting and gathering peoples. One of the greatest testaments to San history is the rock art found throughout the subcontinent.</p>
<p>The oldest rock art in southern Africa is around <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/jaa/8/2/article-p185_3.xml">30,000 years old</a> and is found on painted stone slabs from the <a href="https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/art-music/rock-art/apollo-11-plaque">Apollo 11</a> rock shelter in Namibia. Where our study took place – the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/985/">Maloti-Drakensberg</a> mountain massif of South Africa and Lesotho – rock paintings were made from about <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/earliest-directly-dated-rock-paintings-from-southern-africa-new-ams-radiocarbon-dates/B071E61BE2B9640E5B9A430E1464F980">3,000 years ago</a> right into the 1800s.</p>
<p>For decades, people thought that one guess about the art’s meaning was as good as another. However, this ignored the San themselves.</p>
<p>We can deepen our understanding if we try to view rock art in terms of San shamanistic beliefs and experiences. Advances in ethnography (literature produced by anthropologists who work with San people) help convey San worldview to rock art researchers.</p>
<p>By locating new sites – thousands are still to be found – and revisiting known ones in the light of developing insights, we can go much further than guessing. </p>
<h2>New insights from old images</h2>
<p>We <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0067270X.2020.1868757">re-investigated</a> such a site in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg mountains. It was first described in the 1950s and is recorded as RSA CHI1. At first glance, the ceiling panel seems a confusing collection of paintings of antelopes and human figures, some of which are painted on top of others, in shades of earthy reds, yellow ochres and white.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The RSA CHI1 Rock shelter." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&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 RSA CHI1 rock shelter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rock Art Reseach Institute and www.sarada.co.za</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2009 and working under challenging circumstances, South African artist and author <a href="https://www.stb-rockart.co.za/">Stephen Townley Bassett</a> produced a documentary copy of the ceiling panel. It shows the art’s beauty and mystery. </p>
<p>When we looked at his copy, we found that the significance of some images on the site’s ceiling panel had been missed by other researchers. This allowed us to examine the meaning of these images more closely.</p>
<p>Importantly, our realisation was not a technological or methodological advance. Instead, it was a conceptual development that occurred by turning our attention to a well-known site and viewing it again in the light of everything we have learned so far about San rock art. </p>
<p>Our re-investigation allowed us to arrive at a new understanding of specific elements of San belief.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of the ceiling painting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy © Stephen Townley Bassett</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Deeply religious art</h2>
<p>Two sources of San ethnography are especially important in rock art research and our understanding of the ceiling panel. In the 1870s, the German linguist Wilhelm Bleek and his co-worker and sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd interviewed a series of |Xam San people, some of whom had been brought from the Northern Cape to Cape Town as convicts. </p>
<p>Remarkably, <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/">Bleek and Lloyd</a> recorded over 12,000 pages of texts in the |Xam language, which is no longer spoken, and transliterated most of it line-by-line into English. Much of this material remains relevant to our understanding of the art. </p>
<p>More recently, in the twentieth century, a number of anthropologists worked with San groups in Namibia and Botswana with a focus on a range of topics from hunting and gathering to folklore and childcare. The <a href="https://www.kalaharipeoples.org/resources">Kalahari ethnography</a> compliments the Bleek and Lloyd archive.</p>
<p>We know from the ethnography that the San believe in a universe with spiritual realms above and below the level on which people live. Decades of research has shown that the rock art is deeply religious and situated conceptually in the same multilevel universe.</p>
<h2>Re-reading the ceiling</h2>
<p>In San rock art, the <a href="https://www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation/eland">eland</a> is a connecting element. It is the most commonly depicted antelope in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg paintings. It features in several San rituals and was believed to be the creature with the most <em>!gi:</em> – the |Xam word for the invisible essence that lies at the heart of San belief and ritual. </p>
<p>At RSA CHI1, there are many depictions of eland, but we focused on the one with its head sharply raised. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of the eland with the raised head.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Townley Bassett</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Depictions of this posture, though not common, recur in other sites. The eland’s raised head suggests that it is smelling something, most probably rain. Both smell and rain are supernaturally powerful in San thought. </p>
<p>The unique feature in this paintings is, however, the way in which a line runs up from an area of rough rock, breaking at the eland’s front legs, and then on to another area of rough rock. The painter, or painters, must have depicted the eland first and then added the line to develop the significance of its raised head. We argue that both the raised head and the line emphasise contact with the spirit realm, though in different ways.</p>
<p>The way in which the painted line emerges from and continues into areas of rough rock is comparable to the way in which numerous San images were painted to give the impression that they are entering and leaving the rock face via cracks, steps and other inequalities. But what lay behind the rock face?</p>
<h2>Behind the rock face</h2>
<p>We have noted already that the San universe is divided into different realms. Contact between these often interacting realms is sometimes depicted in the art by long lines that link images or sometimes appear to pass through the rock face. San shamans or medicine people (called <em>!gi:ten</em> in |Xam) move along or climb these ‘threads of light’ as they journey between realms to heal the sick, make rain and perform other tasks. The |Xam called these out-of-body journeys <em>|xãũ</em>. They obtained the power needed to accomplish them by summoning potency from strong things, such as the eland.</p>
<p>The inter-realm nature of the line is further evidenced by the three creatures depicted moving along it. The two moving upward are quadrupeds or four-legged animals: one is non-specifc and one has a tail and human arms. These images may depict the sort of bodily changes that <em>!gi:ten</em> say they experience during out-of-body journeys.</p>
<p>The faint white creature moving down the line was for us the climax of our work. It is clearly birdlike (<em>!gi:ten</em> often speak of flying). But closer inspection revealed that, though faint, it has a rhebok antelope head with two straight black horns, a black nose and mouth.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rhebok therianthrope." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photograph of the rhebok-headed image moving down the line.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rock Art Reseach Institute and www.sarada.co.za</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It also has two ‘wings’ emanating from its shoulders. In short, it is a hybrid form – part bird and part buck. In addition, it has two white lines coming out of the back of its neck. It was from this spot that <em>!gi:ten</em> expelled the sickness that they drew out of the bodies of sick people.</p>
<p>For many people, the detail and the complexity of the images at this site come as a surprise. Yet they are typical. San rock art ranks among the best in the world if we consider its beauty, its intricacy and the rich sources of explanation on which we can draw.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157177/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David M. Witelson is a PhD student at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand. He has a bursary with the Rock Art Research Institute. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Lewis-Williams has received funding from a NRF A-grade grant. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Challis hold an NRF African Origins Platform Grant as well as a joint Wits/Edinburgh University seed fund. He is a member of the Bradshaw Foundation Rock Art Network and the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pearce 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 team from Wits University returned to a well-known ceiling panel in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains, armed with new knowledge about the beliefs of the San people who made the paintings.
David M. Witelson, PhD candidate, University of the Witwatersrand
David Lewis-Williams, Emeritus professor, University of the Witwatersrand
David Pearce, Associate professor, University of the Witwatersrand
Sam Challis, Senior research scientist, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/153981
2021-01-28T09:09:49Z
2021-01-28T09:09:49Z
How former president Rawlings pioneered heritage tourism in Ghana – in his own words
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380970/original/file-20210127-19-1bx9ucu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tourists pose for pictures at the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NATALIJA GORMALOVA/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1980s, Flight Lieutenant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/jerry-rawlings-obituary">Jerry John Rawlings</a> launched heritage tourism as a means to economic development in Ghana. Under his initiative, Ghana’s forts and castles – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-slavery-journey-widerimage-idUSKCN1UR4JV">where</a> enslaved Africans were forcibly put on slave ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean into slavery in the Americas – were turned into heritage sites for tourism. It united Africans and African descendant people living in the disapora.</p>
<p>Rawlings was Ghana’s youngest and longest-serving post-independence leader. He led military uprisings in 1979 and 1981 and served as elected president from 1992 to 2000. When Rawlings came to power in 1981, Ghana faced numerous <a href="https://asq.africa.ufl.edu/files/Adedeji-Vol-5-Issue-2.pdf">challenges</a>. Food was scarce, medicines unavailable, over a million Ghanaians were deported from Nigeria, and the economy was almost bankrupt. Rawlings understood the capital investment necessary to rebuild the economy. </p>
<p>However, Ghana’s 1979 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Ghana-1982-1992-Revolution-Democracy/dp/9988786816">revolution</a> had criticised the former regime’s ties to the West and Western imperialism, so private investment dried up. Eastern bloc nations gave minimal support. Rawlings was compelled to secure World Bank and International Monetary Fund assistance, a tactical acquiescence that proved pivotal for heritage.</p>
<p>Rawlings rarely gave interviews. This abbreviated <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1743873X.2020.1817929">interview</a> with him was the first time he spoke publicly on heritage tourism and development. It comprises several conversations in 2018 and 2019. </p>
<hr>
<h2>How did you arrive at this innovative idea – using cultural heritage tourism for development?</h2>
<p>I was always interested in culture and art. (He shows me his childhood artwork.) As a child, I was an artist. </p>
<p>At that time (in the 1980s), Ghana was politically stable. Cocoa, gold and timber were our major commodities. The tourism idea was unplanned. But I worked with many progressive-minded people. For instance, Valerie Sackey (Ministry of Communications) and Dr Ben Abdallah (Minister of Culture and Tourism) who approached me with the idea. They targeted cultural heritage, such as the forts and castles, natural heritage, performance and arts – for example <a href="https://panafestghana.org/">Panafest</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in an overall and shades reads a placard that says, 'Do Not Mind Foreign Intervention', a crowd of peoplein the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rawlings reading a placard at a 1981 demonstration in Nicholson Stadium, Accra.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Rawlings Archival Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quite frankly, I was surprised by the response. I remember, when I was young, <a href="https://theconversation.com/kwame-nkrumah-why-every-now-and-then-his-legacy-is-questioned-120790">(Kwame) Nkrumah</a> was the star of Africa, and black Africa at that. I was acquainted with African Americans coming to Ghana. We had personalities such as <a href="https://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/Who%20We%20Are/who-was-george-padmore">George Padmore</a> and <a href="https://duboiscentreghana.org/">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. I was familiar with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/books/malcolm-x-a-life-of-reinvention-by-manning-marable-review.html">Malcolm X</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr">Martin Luther King</a>. I expected those who visited would want to know Africa better. After all, I was a young student when <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muhammad-Ali-boxer">Muhammad Ali</a> came to my school. Consequently, I saw all of this as part of a natural flow of events – even if it also brought some resentment. Many had a complex relationship with Ghana. After I left school, I observed this first-hand, when I used to ‘be-bop’ around town. African Americans struggled to come to terms with the fact that Africans participated in the transatlantic slave trade and sold their ancestors into slavery. It was a very mixed response. </p>
<p>So, when I was in office, I did not think African Americans travelling to Ghana was something to be revived. I left the matter to those who championed heritage tourism and the various ministries.</p>
<h2>Is it possible to describe you as a pragmatist, for trying to reconcile the revolution with ‘real world’ demands?</h2>
<p>We had little money to invest in what was important to provide stability – a stable climate, water, roads. But we did well, as tourism became our third largest foreign exchange earner – though we didn’t invest in tourism per se. Ghana was seen as a place where the black man had reason to feel proud and was not exploited by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/neocolonialism">neocolonialism</a>, so that was something in and of itself. The 1979 revolution also restored justice and respect… In our case, this pilgrimage … was a connection to blackness, to ‘Africanness’. </p>
<h2>Were there any challenges?</h2>
<p>Sure. The African diasporan presence raised the subject of citizenship and nationality. This created issues, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-is-morally-bound-to-offer-reparations-for-slavery-153544">reparations</a> for the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, which also created a polarisation between our own people and African descendants. Still, I would like to mention something interesting. Gradually, African Americans won recognition in various arenas, for example, sports and entertainment. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, several were so disgusted at their treatment by the United States government that they offered to participate in the Olympics on Ghana’s ‘ticket.’</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A greying man with a beard and sunglasses sits in a brown chair looking ahead intently." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rawlings later in life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alhassan Idrissu/Courtesy the Rawlings Archival Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, soon after, African American perceptions of Africa altered with the <a href="https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/1980s-ethiopia-famine-facts">Ethiopian famine</a>. Whereas previously, they sympathised with Africa’s struggles and, in a defiant move, wanted to identify with the continent, that sentiment suddenly collapsed. Horrible scenes on the television – overwhelming images of Ethiopians covered in flies, with bloated stomachs, dissuaded lots of African Americans from identifying with Africa. </p>
<h2>As head of state, you worked and lived at Osu Castle. What was that like?</h2>
<p>Often, I was too busy to give thought to the (slave trade and colonial) past. I saw my fellow black man suffering. When I travelled up north, I saw my people did not have water to flush their toilets and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/guineaworm/index.html">Guinea worm</a> was everywhere. The pressure of economic and social injustice was on me! Don’t forget that I was not always at the castle. I was always on the move. So was (my wife) Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. I had water, electricity and a bed to sleep on. What more could I have asked for? Why would I spend money on renovating the castle? Many Ghanaians did not have basic necessities. I did not even have the money to buy bullets for my soldiers in Liberia, or to protect people during the violence in the north.</p>
<h2>How do you see the heritage tourism and development initiative today?</h2>
<p>As for Ghana, we receive people well. Over the years, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">the ‘return’</a> has become increasingly known. Ghana has enjoyed a unique position because of our history, independence, Nkrumah, the assertion of black people in Africa’s liberation struggle and black people generally.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">Ghana's Year of Return 2019: traveler, tourist or pilgrim?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We are aware of our responsibilities to ourselves, our fellow Africans, and those in the diaspora. I am not enthusiastic about (financial) reparations. Those taken during the transatlantic slave trade must decide. If they return, we should offer them land and dual citizenship as restorative and social justice … As for diasporans and development … they do not have the money to develop us in Africa. Let us give them the respect that they want, that is due. That is the beginning of it all. Then other things will follow. This way, they can also fight for the continent … help us gain access to what the continent deserves. You see? This is how it should be. </p>
<p><em>Postscript: President Rawlings passed away as this article was to go to press. It is published with support from the Rawlings family. Thanks to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjht20/current">Journal of Heritage Tourism</a> for permission to republish.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann 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 rare series of interviews, the late Ghanaian leader spoke of how the country’s slave trade was revisited as a vehicle for economic development.
Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Director of Christiansborg Archaeological Heritage Project, Associate Professor at Africa Institute Sharjah & Associate Graduate Faculty, Rutgers University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144140
2020-08-13T14:23:53Z
2020-08-13T14:23:53Z
These African World Heritage Sites are under threat from climate change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352540/original/file-20200812-22-195lryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Restoring the mosque of Djenné in Mali.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MICHELE CATTANI/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Very few academics or policy makers are talking about the impact of climate change on heritage. Yet heritage is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227627268_This_Must_Be_the_Place_Under_Representation_of_Identity_and_Meaning_in_Climate_Change_Decision-Making">essential</a> for social wellbeing, for identity creation, for safeguarding traditional knowledge and livelihoods and for sustainable development. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43598076?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">conversations</a> taking place are mainly on the effects of climate change in wealthier countries. One recent <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/2143">study</a> estimates that only 1% of research on the impacts of climate change on heritage is related to Africa. Yet climate change has already resulted in loss and damage to African heritage. </p>
<p>Research that some of us are undertaking on the impacts of sea-level rise in the future drew our attention to the total lack of quantifiable data on the impacts of climate change on heritage in sub-Saharan Africa. So we teamed up with a climate scientist with years of experience working on the continent and set about highlighting the threat of different kinds of climate change and climate variability to heritage in Africa. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0067270X.2020.1792177">research</a> is conclusive. Without significant intervention some of Africa’s most important heritage will be lost as a result of the direct and indirect impacts of climate change over the coming decades. There is a need for research into the impacts of climate change on different forms of cultural heritage in Africa, and to highlight the possible harmful effects these losses will have on society more generally. </p>
<p>The next ten years will be a critical period in which research agendas can be developed that will have a practical application for the management of African heritage in the face of climate change. </p>
<h2>The bad news</h2>
<p>Coastal erosion and sea-level rise have damaged African World Heritage <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/africa/">Sites</a>. The Roman city of <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/184">Sabratha</a> on the Libyan coast and the colonial <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/34">forts</a> along the coastline of Ghana are slipping into the sea. Natural sites are also under threat. Relict Guinean coastal forests have largely <a href="http://link-springer-com-443.webvpn.fjmu.edu.cn/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-06388-1_2">disappeared</a>, partly through coastal erosion.</p>
<p>By 2050, Guinea, The Gambia, Nigeria, Togo, Bénin, Congo, Tunisia, Tanzania (including Zanzibar) and the Comoros will all be at <a href="https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789811204487_0093">significant</a> <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z?fbclid=IwAR02eB8HX3vPOgHpQjRRbujjoe0ZW932ziimLBOpJ-3wupL31SYlB81ui_o">risk</a> <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0697-0">from</a> coastal erosion and sea-level rise.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352503/original/file-20200812-22-1apz2bm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352503/original/file-20200812-22-1apz2bm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352503/original/file-20200812-22-1apz2bm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352503/original/file-20200812-22-1apz2bm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352503/original/file-20200812-22-1apz2bm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352503/original/file-20200812-22-1apz2bm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352503/original/file-20200812-22-1apz2bm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352503/original/file-20200812-22-1apz2bm.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 view from the heart of Stone Town in Zanzibar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ALEXIS TOUREAU/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Villages and towns associated with the historic Swahili Indian Ocean trading networks are all forecast to suffer significant <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11852-012-0204-5">loss</a> from sea-level rise and coastal erosion in the coming <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/1350503315Z.000000000105">decades</a>. These are almost all located on the coasts of Mozambique, mainland <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15564890902779677">Tanzania</a>, Kenya, the Comoro Islands, Zanzibar and Madagascar.</p>
<p>A host of unique heritage locations are built on coral, sand or mud – all at elevations less than 10 metres above sea level. These include Ibo Island in the Quirimbas Archipelago in northern Mozambique, Shanga and Pate islands in Kenya, Pemba and the ruins of Kaole in Tanzania, Mahilaka in Madagascar and Suakin in Sudan. A combination of underlying geology and low elevation make these sites <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0697-0">extremely</a> <a href="https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789811204487_0093">vulnerable</a> to coastal erosion. </p>
<p>In addition, low-lying World Heritage Sites that are densely populated, such as <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1055">Lamu Old Town</a> and the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/173">Stone Town</a> of Zanzibar, are located in regions of Africa predicted to be most severely impacted by shoreline retreat. </p>
<p>Inland of the coast, the World Heritage mud-built town of <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/116">Djenné</a>, on the Inland Niger Delta, is suffering multiple <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-012-0492-7">threats</a>, exacerbated by climate change. Rock art sites in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa are experiencing biodeterioration due to microbial activity arising from increased humidity. </p>
<p>But African heritage is predominantly lived heritage, which presents unique opportunities for heritage conservation. </p>
<h2>Why a site like Djenné matters</h2>
<p>Take Djenné in Mali, a town composed almost entirely of earthen buildings. Because of its unique vernacular architecture and its iconic <a href="https://www.zamaniproject.org/site-mali-djenne-great-mosque.html">mosque</a>, it was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1988. There has been a conspicuous <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebf1/4e69e41a46550ffacd051c46e0a268e25364.pdf">degradation</a> of its mud architecture. The reasons are complex but climate change has definitely worsened the process of loss. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353406/original/file-20200818-16-12l2pvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dug-out hole with water in it and mud bricks stacked next to it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353406/original/file-20200818-16-12l2pvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353406/original/file-20200818-16-12l2pvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353406/original/file-20200818-16-12l2pvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353406/original/file-20200818-16-12l2pvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353406/original/file-20200818-16-12l2pvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353406/original/file-20200818-16-12l2pvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353406/original/file-20200818-16-12l2pvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&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 mud for Djenné’s earth architecture comes from the floodplains of the river Bani just outside town.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erika Alatalo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The lowering of the high water stand of the <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8249/inland-niger-delta-mali">Inland Niger Delta</a> has meant high quality mud has become scarcer. Mud bricks must be sourced further afield at greater cost, which locals simply can’t afford. The result is buildings being <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-the-city-of-mud-stays-standing-meet-the-masons-of-djenne-mali-224225/">repaired</a> in cheaper materials such as concrete and fired clay bricks.</p>
<p>Traditional building methods are often perceived as being at odds with modernity and globalisation. But earthen buildings such as those at Djenné emit fewer greenhouse gases, consume less energy and maintain a high level of internal thermal comfort. They are more sustainable against climate change than brick and breeze block construction.</p>
<h2>Some hope</h2>
<p>Heritage has unseen potential. Traditional custodianship and community engagement will be at the forefront of a sustainable future. </p>
<p>The good news is that five years ago the World Heritage <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/convention/">Convention</a> adopted Unesco’s World Heritage and Sustainable Development <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/sustainabledevelopment/">Policy</a>. The policy is built on the principles of human rights, equality and long-term sustainability. It’s potentially groundbreaking for African heritage, which has been beset by a colonial legacy of centralised heritage management. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-future-of-africas-forests-and-savannas-is-under-threat-78421">Why the future of Africa's forests and savannas is under threat</a>
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<p>It represents an opportunity for the restoration of traditional custodianship and local community engagement in heritage management. As heritage is reinserted into local lifeways, communities are able to reengage with traditional ways of doing things, which are often much more in tune with the environment. In this, African countries have the opportunity to be at the forefront of sustainable development.</p>
<p>Resetting the research agenda towards a sustainable heritage in the face of climate change will not only enable reengagement with the past, but will help mitigate the impacts of climate change beyond heritage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144140/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 next ten years will be a critical period in which research agendas can be developed.
Joanne Clarke, Senior lecturer, University of East Anglia
Elizabeth Edna Wangui, Associate professor, Ohio University
Grace W. Ngaruiya, Lecturer, Kenyatta University
Nick Brooks, Research fellow, University of East Anglia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/121891
2019-08-22T12:42:02Z
2019-08-22T12:42:02Z
Ghana’s Year of Return 2019: traveler, tourist or pilgrim?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289036/original/file-20190822-170951-lvwhj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">African diasporans visit forts and castles in Ghana as the material embodiment of death, violence and subjugation during the slave trade.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“We may call ourselves African Americans but we are truly disconnected from Africa. I say WE because I’m not excluded! I thought ‘my people’ came from South Carolina … but this heritage was only a small part of my people’s journey that began in Ghana, a place that had kings well before Europe had theirs.”</p>
<p>These <a href="https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/entertainment/US-actor-Jai-White-writes-about-negative-reaction-to-Ghana-visit-716666">were the words</a> of American actor and director Michael Jai White, who visited Ghana towards the end of 2018. </p>
<p>He and over 40 African diasporan celebrities took part in “The Full Circle Festival”, designed to attract visitors to Ghana. The list included Idris Elba, Boris Kodjoe, Naomi Campbell, Anthony Anderson and Adrienne-Joi Johnson. During the visit, Akwamuhene Odeneho Kwafo Akoto III, the Akwamu Paramount Chief, enstooled White as Chief “Oduapong” meaning “Tree with strong roots that does not fear the storm”.</p>
<p>The Ghana government invited the celebrities as part of the “<a href="https://www.yearofreturn.com/">Year of Return</a>, Ghana 2019”. The initiative involves a year-long series of activities. These include visits to heritage sites, healing ceremonies, theatre and musical performances, lectures, investment forums and relocation conferences. The aim is to promote Ghana as a tourist destination and investment opportunity. </p>
<p>This year marks the 400-year anniversary of the first enslaved Africans’ arrival in Jamestown in the US. The Year of Return represents <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/2019-year-return-african-diaspora">an effort to</a> “unite Africans on the continent with their brothers and sisters in the diaspora”. </p>
<p>In support, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/2019-year-return-african-diaspora">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know of the extraordinary achievements and contributions (Africans in the diaspora) made to the lives of the Americans, and it is important that this symbolic year – 400 years later – we commemorate their existence and their sacrifices. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In commemoration, numerous visitors are travelling to Ghana. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will also conduct the Jamestown (Virginia, US) to Jamestown (Accra, Ghana) Memorial Trip.</p>
<p>Ghana is <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/places-to-visit-2019/index.html">number 4 on</a> CNN Travel’s 19 best places to visit in 2019.</p>
<h2>Genealogies</h2>
<p>African diasporans as “returnees” dates back to Ghana’s immediate post-independence period. Shortly after independence in 1957, President Kwame Nkrumah invited many well-known African diasporans to assist with nation building. These included Julian Bond, Martin Luther King Jr., George Padmore, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, Leslie Lacy, Muhammad Ali and W.E.B. Du Bois.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, President Jerry Rawlings <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-018-9309-z">initiated heritage tourism</a> based on the transatlantic slave trade and Pan-Africanism. Ghana’s coastal forts and castles became integral to heritage, tourism and development strategies. Events included the Pan African Festival of Theatre and Arts (PANAFEST) and Emancipation Day. All were dedicated to the promotion of Pan-Africanism and attracted African diasporans, notably African Americans. </p>
<p>As part of the nation’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/6/newsid_2515000/2515459.stm">50th independence in 2007</a> President John Kufour partnered with the Discovery Channel and launched “Ghana – The Presidential Tour”. He introduced “The Joseph Project” that targeted middle-class, Christian African-Americans. </p>
<p>The forts and castles remained centre stage. Additional plans included the development of commemoration gardens, DNA projects and sponsored tours. It also involved developing an interfaith centre at Assin Manso, where captive Africans had their last bath before being transported onto the slave ships.</p>
<p>President John Atta Mills <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBYP9RIzgPs">continued</a> with heritage tourism as a means to development. In 2009, the most high-profile African diasporan tourist and pilgrim, US President Barack Obama, visited Cape Coast Castle.</p>
<p>In 2015, President John Mahama <a href="https://en.unesco.org/news/ghana-s-president-john-dramani-mahama-visits-unesco">sought assistance</a> from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation for the forts and castles, and further development of heritage tourism.</p>
<p>Over the years, successive governments have also offered opportunities such as granting citizenship, dual nationality status, tax exemptions and land grants to diasporans to encourage returnees.</p>
<h2>Commercialising homecoming</h2>
<p>Since Alex Haley’s 1980s popular novel and television series, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/102/1028685/roots/9781784873387.html">Roots</a>, African diasporans engaging in “heritage tourism”, “roots tourism” or “pilgrimage”, travel to Africa as tourists and pilgrims. This blurs the distinctions between travel, tourism and pilgrimage. </p>
<p>African diasporans visit the forts and castles as the material embodiment of death, violence and subjugation during the transatlantic slave trade. They are the sites where captive Africans forcibly departed the continent to be trafficked through the Middle Passage and enslaved in the New World. Interpretations over the histories told at these sites are frequently contested. </p>
<p>Diasporans also visit other sites such as Manyhia Palace in Asante that represent the glorification of an African regal past.</p>
<p>In 2018, Ghana secured <a href="http://motac.gov.gh/__trashed-2/">$40 million</a> from the World Bank to develop heritage tourism. It is hoped this will stimulate economic development. </p>
<p>Yet, ongoing debates view heritage, tourism and development in various ways. Some view it as exploitative and destructive, replicating and perpetuating colonial forms of domination and structural underdevelopment. Others view it positively. A few remain ambivalent.</p>
<h2>An act of reclamation</h2>
<p>The Year of Return 2019 remains deeply embedded within a capitalist culture that engages with a complex set of practices, discourses and meanings.</p>
<p>Commercialisation of the “return” requires the saleability of the history of the transatlantic slave trade for African diasporan consumption. </p>
<p>Herein lies a painful irony: the commodification of heritage directed at African diasporans is based on a system that was once the commodification of people, through the transatlantic slave trade. </p>
<p>Descendants of the enslaved of the past are the heritage tourists and/or pilgrims in the present.</p>
<p>Still, constructions of Africa have always been central to African diasporic imaginaries. White’s comments resonate for many African diasporans. For many diasporans, the “return” symbolises an act of heritage reclamation. Africa is viewed as the motherland. It is considered a source of black resistance, pride and dignity.</p>
<p>For Africans and African diasporans such as White, knowing heritage pasts are important. But it remains to be seen how this will translate into critical and sustained engagement to realise the potentials for transforming heritage futures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121891/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann 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>
For Africans and diasporans, learning about their heritage is important. But it remains to be seen how this will translate into a sustained continental and diasporan engagement.
Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Assistant Professor, African Studies, Archaeology, Anthropology and Critical Heritage, Hampshire College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.