Decolonising the imagination

AFRICAN liberation thinkers have in a strong way put much purchase in the importance of culture and tradition. This liberatory investment in culture and the traditions of the people has not been accidental since colonialism itself and imperial conquest prioritised cultural domination of the conquered. An interesting story is told that when Joseph Goebbels heard culture being mentioned among Jewish prisoners, he reached out for his revolver, in fear and panic.

So much liberatory energy and power lies in the culture and traditions of a people so much so that all dominators and oppressors of other people live in fear of any expressions and celebrations of people’s cultures and traditional values. Amilcar Cabral emphasised that before guns and bombs, Africans needed the weapon of theory and ideology by which he meant that liberation struggles should be guided first by liberatory worldviews and sensibilities, ahead of the need to shoot and bomb the enemy.

Closer to home, in his proposition of the idea of the African Renaissance, Thabo Mbeki also radicalised the importance of Africans following Amilcar Cabral’s wisdom of finding a “return” to the ancestral cultural and traditional “source” to tap wisdom and visions of freedom. In the process of softening the minds of natives for colonialism the missionaries targeted the culture, traditions and religions of the Africans, altered their worldviews, spirituality and sensibility, rendering them available for physical conquest. Once the natives had new gods, new worldviews and new sensibilities, their domination, use and abuse for cheap labour, corporal punishment and political rule by the settlers were guaranteed. For that reason, the decolonisation of the minds and the imagination of Africans cannot be helpfully contemplated without the decolonisation of their cultural and traditional sensibilities. In that regard, culture and the arts become central sites of decoloniality and liberation.

The Clash Civilisations When Europeans and North Americans encountered Africans in the voyages of discovery, their cultures were supposed to meet, to dialogue and have an enriching exchange. This was not the case, Empire took its own culture as the culture of the world and reduced African culture and religion to paganism, and what resulted was a violent clash of civilisations. Africans had to be converted from their cultures and traditions to Eurocentric worldviews and sensibility.

The entire world of the African, from his drinking and eating habits, his sexuality, spirituality and custom were to be disciplined to make out of him a new subject of Empire. The mission school became the cultural factory where chosen Africans were reproduced into white subjects in black skins. Some thoroughly converted and colonised Africans even took to bleaching their skins and nasalising their language to become as close to being white as was possible. That is exactly when the nose brigade and yellow bone traditions became a vogue among the African youths. In the true workings of cultural imperialism, the global entertainment industry, fronted by music and movies, sold Eurocentric sensibility as the sensibility of humanity. The global fashion industry turned Eurocentric fashion and sexuality into a universal vogue. The selling of long plastic hair and even genuine second hand hair from other corners of the world became a booming international industry. Beauty itself came up for sale and as it is, these days, being beautiful in the European definition of the term is for sale to those who can buy it. Tragically, behind the scramble for being beautiful and fashionable, lies a conquest of the African imagination and sensibility. Fashion police and magistrates of style are out there to enforce thin bodies, red lips, long noses, long hair and other Eurocentric aesthetics. Plastic surgery, artificial hips and behinds have all become available products in the fashion and beauty industry. It all looks like sport and pleasure, but behind it all is the death of a people’s belief in themselves, and a deadly wish to look like somebody else that masquerades as willful self-decoration. No matter how hard the attempts, Europeans and Americans despise Africans who mimic their looks and manners, no wonder when western sex tourists land in Africa in search of African exotica they elect the company of dreadlocked and most times dark African men and women, with some African authenticity.

Art, Culture and Liberation As a case study, the Bulawayo cultural and artistic scene has been rich and interesting. To start with, the metaphor in the name of Bulawayo as “Ntuthu Ziyathunqa” carries the original reputation of the town as a productive industrial hub of smokey factories and industries, and proud workers. Before independence in 1979, for example, Cont Mhlanga formed Dragons Karate Club to teach self-defence and personal freedom from bullies and muggers in the Makokoba and Mzilikazi township areas. In 1981, the Dragons Karate Club expanded its activities to township theatre and the birth of Amakhosi Cultural Centre was afoot at the Township Square. Self defence as personal security and freedom morphed into the search for cultural expression and artistic freedom found in theatre and performance of traditions. Soon enough, traditional foods, artefacts, mementos and other cultural goods were found at Amakhosi that participated in commerce and became a centre for the search of economic freedom for the youths of Bulawayo, and a booming tourist attraction. The example of Cont Mhlanga and Amakhosi, under the slogan “Umkhulu Lo Msebenzi” is an example of how the arts and traditions as culture can be mobilised and deployed in search of liberation personally and collectively. Traditional songs, dramatic performance and poetry can give multitudes of youths personal confidence, economic freedom and even international commercial relevance and success. Further to Amakhosi, a multiplicity of powerful and successful cultural groups emerged from Bulawayo to conquer the global cultural landscape to some dizzy heights. Meaningfully, Nkululeko Innocent Dube was to name the trending international dance, music, poetry and performance group “Inkululeko Yabatsha School of Arts” a name that refers to the freedom and power of the youth. The group mixed storytelling with poetry, dance, music and performance tapping into oral traditions to produce contemporary communication, entertainment and education through arts and culture. Besides offering the much needed entertainment, such initiatives as Amakhosi, IYASA and many other cultural groups in Bulawayo and Zimbabwe offer resistance to cultural imperialism and sustain the confidence of the people in their history and traditions, in themselves. These groups become cultural and traditional schools that disseminate liberating African sensibilities over and above being business initiatives that promote livelihoods.

On the Artist as a Ruler Famously, the late Ugandan writer and philosopher, Okot P’Bitek described the artist as a ruler who without the power of the force of arms and that of money, ruled hearts and minds through culture, songs, performances and other beautiful and soft things. The Euro-American Empire has successfully used soft power, the power of songs, movies, fashion and propaganda to control the minds and hearts of Africans and other peoples of the Global South. In thinking seriously about Decoloniality and liberation, Africans need to revisit the importance of the arts and culture itself as tools of decolonising the imagination, resisting cultural imperialism and cultivating belief in Africa as a place of confident, productive and powerful human beings that have roots in their own past and not the mimic men and women that we now find ourselves to be.

Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena is a Zimbabwean academic based in South Africa: decoloniality2063@gmail.com