Culture: A catalyst for freedom
A new essay collection focuses on the role of culture in fostering radical consciousness
The grand narrative of the South African liberation struggle is problematic on many levels. It dabbles liberally in romanticism and political narcissism, the principal result of which has been debilitating navel-gazing, potted and ideologically lazy historical accounts and, of course, outright fabrications.
Culture and Liberation Struggle in South Africa: From Colonialism to Post-apartheid makes a crucial contribution to upsetting the apple cart, at least in so far as it centres culture in the animation of radical political consciousness, principally African nationalism and Black Consciousness.
Mainstream narratives typically ignore culture in accounting for the genesis and evolution of radical consciousness among the victims of colonial conquest and subjugation in South Africa. These accounts mask the reality that the liberation struggle was as much about self-determination as it was about self-image, a perpetual battle to define the self in its own terms.
But as African American scholar Cornel West argues: “These challenges (of self-determination and self-image) are abstractly distinguishable, yet concretely inseparable. In other words, culture and politics must always be viewed in close relation to each other.”
Culture and Liberation Struggle in South Africa necessarily focuses attention on the imperial project’s superstructure and its effects on the native population. The different chapters deliberate on how colonialism and apartheid influenced identity formation and expression. Using the tools of colonial acculturation, progressive native cultural practitioners produced works that materially subverted cultural imperialism and upraised radical consciousness among the oppressed. These instruments included the written word, language, music, theatre, cinema and media.
One of the anthology’s examples is a poem, Fight with the Pen, by Isaac Williams Wauchope. Written in isixhosa, in 1882, it is arguably the original appeal for the use of “culture
as a weapon of the struggle”. penned in 1919, also cited in the book, represents an early heeding of the exhortation. Through the fictionalised historical account, author Sol Plaatje counters prejudiced discourses on precolonial African history and seizes the initiative to self define. Culture and Liberation Struggle in South Africa further chronicles a host of other overt and subtle instances of rebellion against colonial norms of discourse and aesthetic representation.
In addition to accounts of the resistance to cultural hegemony, for instance in the beauty industry as Nakedi Ribane deftly elucidates, the anthology traces the dispersion of radical consciousness through various art forms. It also recounts the role black cultural formations and individual artists played in the liberation struggle. Many of the subjects the anthology tackles have been written about before, but perhaps not at the same level of accessibility. The writing style in Culture and Liberation Struggle in South Africa
averts the pretentiousness characteristic of most academic writing, without becoming simplistic.
The anthology includes a series of original historical accounts, commentary and analysis. For example, it dismantles the popular thesis that Drum magazine pioneered
short-story writing by Black writers in the 1950s. Lebogang Lance Nawa, in the chapter “People’s Literature”, marshals and presents evidence that the Cape Town-based The Guardian newspaper published brief fictional prose by Black writers from as early as the late 1930s.
Culture and Liberation Struggle in South Africa draws its insights from a diverse and intergenerational mix of contributors. Legendary cultural practitioners, notably Wally Mongane Serote, Vusi Mahlasela and Ribane, write side by side with their emerging counterparts, academics and journalists. Other notables include Sandile Memela, Sam Mathe, Lucas ‘Styles’ Ledwaba,
Vukile Pokwana and Nawa, who edited the anthology and contributed several essays.
The contributors do not shy away from controversial subjects, such as the politics of language. In one of the chapters, Mathe makes a thought-provoking case, again using Mhudi, of how the native population appropriated and used the English language as a weapon in the fight against colonialism and apartheid.
The periodisation of the anthology opens up an interesting, though perhaps also provocative, debate. It covers the years 1916 to 2020, but still refers to the prior period for historical context. The cutoff point is politically loaded, because it is widely presumed that the liberation struggle should have ended in 1994 with the death of legislative apartheid.
The chapters dealing with contemporary times are titled “Politics and the Arts in Post-apartheid South Africa (1994-2020)”. This is, perhaps, the part that could trigger the biggest reader interest; Sadly, the scenario it paints is not pretty. The topics include national cultural policy, governance issues and media transformation. One leitmotif resonates throughout: most of the challenges of the old order still exist. The section proffers rational and constructive, but still trenchant, critiques of the status quo, revealing deep-seated frustration. For instance, Serote, commenting on government policy failures around indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), states: “[I]f the DAC [department of arts and culture] has not declared IKS mumbo-jumbo, it has done so through pure innocent ignorance and neglect by those in the government who have, to say the least, unconsciously (we hope), neglected this national treasure. Colonialism and apartheid had, besides declaring it pagan and primitive, also declared it … a free-for-all domain.”
Culture and Liberation Struggle in South Africa reminds the readers of the pervasiveness of the vestiges of racial prejudice in media discourse and aesthetic representation. Not even the racial diversification of newsrooms has helped much, Memela observes. But it is not all doom and gloom. Music, dance, film, theatre, literature, art and other forms of cultural expression continue to navigate the hostile terrain with varying degrees of success, and contributions to the anthology celebrate the small triumphs.
Crucially, there is a blossoming of cultural productions that provide not just a passive mirror of reality, but also contribute to shaping a new, equitable social reality. Filmmaker and contributor Obett Motaung shines the spotlight on the irreverent critique of post-1994 corruption and the Jacob Zuma presidency in the local film Wonder Boy for President. This and other reviews underscore the role cultural practitioners continue to — and should — play as a bulwark against state excesses in the current political milieu.
Culture and Liberation Struggle in South Africa is a valuable book, mainly because of the breadth and treatment of its various topics. The breadth of the period it covers was always going to make an exhaustive narrative a tall order, but this is not what it seeks to achieve.
Overall, the book succeeds in weaving disparate parts into a cogent, rounded reservoir of historical memory from a different vantage point. The central argument that it makes of culture as a catalyst for nationbuilding and the quest for true freedom demands the urgent attention of all — practitioners, policymakers and society at large.