Nyathi speaking from Brazil: Breaking the Global-South barrier
The uniformity of Pan-Africanism and decoloniality is the consciousness of Africa by Africans based on their history of imperial domination.The history that gave rise to Western capitalist supremacy and its recent role of being a moral prefect of global p
TODAY decoloniality boldly confronts Western imperialism as an uncontested by-product of pan-Africanism. In taking this position which is volatile to intellectual refute can be affirmed in the writings of the late South-African philosopher, Professor Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane. He sums Pan-Africanism as a concept of Afroglobal synergies in his book The Ties That Bind: African-American Consciousness of Africa (Magubane 1987). The uniformity of Pan-Africanism and decoloniality is the consciousness of Africa by Africans based on their history of imperial domination. The history that gave rise to Western capitalist supremacy and its recent role of being a moral prefect of global politics. However, this point of departure in my analysis does not alienate the contribution of non-Africans in the enhancement of the pan-Africanist decolonisation agenda. Likewise, decolonial movements of peripherally racialised populations in as wide-ranging places as the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, to name only a few, substantiate that decolonisation remains pertinent in addressing the marginality of those said to be fraternal members of the Global-south. This is this reason why the late Professor Sam Moyo had close intellectual ties with scholars like Professor Paris Yeros in pursuit of the Agrarian debate in both Africa and Latin-America. It is against this background that the recent “Fees Must Fall” dispensation has been summed by Professor Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni as “decolonising the university”. Actually Professor Achille Mbembe ushered a similar exposition in light of cognitive decoloniality aimed at catalysing relevant African knowledge production.
Now when Pathisa Nyathi gave a presentation in Brazil on 1 June, 2016 those with a consciousness of Africa could not help, but think of the “ties that bind” as presented in Professor Magubane’s thesis.
Much like Russia and China, Brazil’s Africa discourse today places a strong importance on historical ties. Brazil’s attachment credentials to Africa are ever resurfacing in this discourse. However, the Afro-Brazilian ties are not only entrenched in the combat zones of the independence struggle; Brazil’s relationship with Africa is even more ancient than the pan-African decolonisation and decoloniality phases of our nativist confrontation with imperialism. Modern Brazil was not only built upon the sweat and blood of slaves brought from western Africa throughout the colonial and imperial epochs, but the heritage of these slaves imprinted strong African nuances in modern Brazil. To this day, the African dimension remains very robust and apparent in Brazil, namely through its genetic, cultural (such as folklore, music, religion, literature and cuisine) and linguistic legacy. As such when Pathisa Nyathi went to present a paper at the Afreaka Festival 2016 he affirmed the importance of Africa’s shared cultural heritage with the globe. Indeed this was no holiday trip, but a chance to prove the unifying force of the two globalcousins (Brazil and Africa) in reclaiming their identity in the scheme of things. This week, I will proceed by sharing the second half of Pathisa Nyathi’s presentation which narrates Africa’s cosmological oneness with the rest of the world.
Enduring African identities: unpacking the hierarchy of cultural expressions
Paper presented by Pathisa Nyathi on 01 June 2016 at Sao Paulo, Brazil (Continued from last week’s instalment)
Given the homogenising tendencies towards the creation of a global village, some cultures will not make it to the village. Their cultural practices are denigrated largely because they are not in line with those of the pacesetters, the ruling class in the global village. The second level in the hierarchies of cultural expressions is the more visible and one that is easy to dismiss. They are the tips of a larger cultural iceberg. Their visibility renders them vulnerable. What we are saying is that the two lower levels of cultural expressions are facing extinction. It is the third level, that of creative or cultural expressions that endures. We need to understand why this is so.
That requires us to further clarify that particular level so that we may begin to understand its unique character that enables it to endure sustained onslaught. This is the level of performances such as poetry, theatre, song and dance. Rhythmic and periodic movements are an important trait of the cosmos. Performances are aesthetic executions; they emotionally and intellectually engage audiences. They appeal and persuade people to listen and watch. While these artistic expressions entertain, they may carry important messages. For example, both theatre and dance have been used as agencies for behaviour change. In artistic works, aesthetics is accompanied by functionality or utility. This is particularly so in the visual arts where decorative motifs are used. For example, vessels bear symbols that carry meanings or messages. At the same time motifs appeal to the eye, they are beautiful. Over time messages being communicated by decorative symbols were lost while the beauty persisted albeit without meaning (Nyathi and Chikomo 2016).
This is a case where aesthetics persists beyond functionality or utility. African identity remains at the third level of artistic expressions. One can work backwards to figure out the lost messages in the decorative motifs and in performance repertoires. Our recently published book, “Echoes From the Past: Interpreting Zimbabwe’s Decorative Symbols” seeks to bring back the lost underlying meanings and messages. Despite the messages or meanings having been lost in the sands of history, aesthetic traditions persisted as enduring identity markers of Africanness. It is here where links between peoples of the African continent and AfroAmericans in the Diaspora are identifiable and still in existence. In fact, it is possible to even identify enduring identities between the Brazilians of First Nations, the Brazilian Afro Americans and the mainland continental Africans. It is generally believed that people of the First Nations left the African continent several thousand years ago and moved into North America through the then shallower Bering Strait before spreading out and down to occupy the two continents of North America and South America. Some of these settled in the Amazon Valley over a thousand years ago. At the start of the 16th Century Portuguese settlers led by Pedro Cabral arrived. It was the Portuguese that were responsible for bringing the over four million slaves into Brazil. The cultures of the First Nations people and the Afro-Brazilians had their cultures similarly affected by the European Portuguese culture. Be that as it may, there were common cultural traits in both that endured and continued as a common denominator for the two cultures.
It is thus argued that if we really wish to unravel African links or African cultural commonalities of contemporary Africa and the African Diaspora we have to search for those seminal identities resident in the creative sector. We can then move lower down the ladder of hierarchies of African cultural expressions to get back to the two levels being expressed at the third creative or artistic level. Indeed, these will inevitably have been influenced by western cultural and religious ideas as is the case with Samba Festival. An excavation of the Samba Festival should unpack the basic elements including those of African origin. This is work that can be undertaken by researchers at appropriate universities and other research institutions. It has been argued that Brazilian slaves took with them their gods, spirituality and music. Incoming Portuguese version of Catholicism intermingled with African musical traditions including the use of the drums to produce the Samba Festival, certainly a hybrid between the two cultures.
We thus should view the Samba Festival as encompassing some enduring African worldviews and cosmologies. All that is necessary is some cultural excavation to access the lower layers or levels that informed, conditioned and shaped the form, character and content of the African components within the Samba repertoire. It is these enduring character-lending traits that link the Brazilian Blacks with their past, present and future. Here lies their identity that reflects the fusion of disparate cultures. African conceptualisations of the universe are encapsulated within a performance, within the Samba Festival. The design of materials used, the use of the drums, singing in a circular formation, all point to the fundamental African traits steeped in African cosmologies and worldviews. Lying at the centre of these worldviews are artistic expressions that articulate African cosmologies is the idea of continuity or fertility, infinity, endlessness or imperishability. As will be shown below, there are artistic expressions that are informed by these basic African ideas that are perpetuated without understanding, but are perpetuated by virtue of their aesthetic appeal. It is an idea that is found in the conceptualisation of human beings. Human beings comprise both material and spiritual components. Upon death the flesh/body and spirit separate. The body is interred while the spirit lives on eternally. Beyond death there is eternity. Life is inconceivable in the absence of death. This compares well with the duality resident in a created object. The object has two critical elements: utility/functionality and aesthetics. Over several centuries utility/functionality has died out leaving aesthetics to perpetuate the original ideas and the underlying cosmological underpinnings. Messages and meanings resident in various objects as embellished decorative motifs were lost while their erstwhile aesthetic counterparts persisted.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva is an independent academic researcher, Founder of Leaders for Africa Network — LAN, Convener of the Back to Pan-Africanism Conference and the Reading Pan-Africa Symposium (REPS) and can be contacted on rasmkhonto@gmail.com