TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
Letter From the President FEMINISM 1. African Women Writers: Problems of Reading and Identity Chantal d’Offay 2. Warrior Marks and the Reproduction of Imperialist Violences: An Analysis of Transnational Feminism and Frameworks Revolving Around Notions of Shared Oppression Alicia Paller-Rzepka
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POETRY AND LITERATURE 3. J.M. Coetzee and Colonialism’s Broken Subjectivity: The Afterword of Dusklands Michaela Kritzinger 4. Kingdom of Silence: Racial Rage and Still Points in the Poetry of Rustum Kozain and Derek Walcott Anique Kruger
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NATIONAL POLITICS 5. From Darling to Deviant: An Analysis of Uganda’s Development Under Yoweri K. Museveni and the International Donor Community Rebecca Asch 6. Risking Justice: The Dilemma of Pursuing Justice and Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda Anna Pearson 7. Rhetoric Versus Policy: How the Inconsistent Government Response to Urban Agriculture in Harare has Entrenched Inequality Nisha Giridhar
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RELIGION 8. The More the Voice was Muted, the More the Spirit Shouted: Ethiopian Pentecostalism as Social Protest During the Administrations of Emperor Selassie I and the Derg Regime Desta Lissanu 9. African Elements of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre: The Marian Devotional that Sparked Cuban Proto-Nationalism Christian Vasquez 10. Black Catholic Renegotiation of Black Messianism and Black Liberation Theology Michelle Domingue
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IDENTITY POLITICS 11. Towards a Critical Phonography: Thinking Technologies of Knowledge in Search of the Black Radical Tradition Michael Becker 12. Shades of Black: Commodification of Race in Trinidad as Seen in Minty Alley Hannah M. Giorgis 13. The Politics of Belonging: Cultivating Identity in Douala, Cameroon Leigh Rome 14. Using the “Master’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House:” Literacy and Black American Intellectualism as a Double-Edged Sword Throughout History Hannah M. Giorgis 15. Here in the South We Know Our Enemy: The VUU/Richmond 34 Marching with All Deliberate Speed in the Capital of the Confederacy Vincent Smith
Art Credit Cover: Oluremi Onabanjo, CC’15 Back Cover: Marcus Hunter, CC’15
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Letter from the President Copper Sun, Scarlet Sea has been a labor of love many years in the making, and we have many people to thank for helping its creation along. From Jazmin Graves, who dreamed big enough and worked hard enough to make an undergraduate Africana studies journal possible, to the constant support of the Institute of African Studies, to the wonderful executive board who put time and effort into this endeavor, thank you. In editing this journal, I was struck by the incredible prescience and talent of the writers. Our submissions spanned a huge variety of interests and concerns that made me reevaluate my position as a global citizen and a member of the Diaspora. The authors have interrogated the traditions on which our institutions of study rely upon, analyzed literature that puts Diasporan writers in conversation, and provided insight on the inner workings of identity in Cameroon. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We are so excited for the future of this journal and the platform that this represents: a chance for undergraduates to make their voices heard in the academic world. May this endeavor continue to empower our students to keep writing and never be afraid to keep asking questions. Olivia Harris President of the Africa Diaspora Literary Society
AFRICAN WOMEN WRITERS: Problems of reading and identity Chantal d’Offay University of Cape Town This paper examines the tensions generated by the competing claims of realistic representation and allegorization in African literature by exploring two works by the African women writers, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Bâ. Their texts are looked at in terms of the problematic of Fredric Jameson’s statement that “All third-world texts are necessarily … allegorical”. It discusses the complexities of different readings of the texts, particularly if we approach these texts as having feminist agendas. Both texts highlight the complexity of colonial and postcolonial subjectivity from women’s perspectives, which in turn complicates a uniform allegorical reading. The central concern of the paper is to explore Emecheta and Bâ in terms of the problematic of their feminisms in order to deduce in what ways we are led to or away from allegorical readings of ‘third-world’ texts, and whether or not we can therefore say that “All ‘third-world’ texts are necessarily … allegorical”.
The task of this essay is to explore two texts written by African women writers, namely, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Bâ, in terms of Fredric Jameson’s prob1 lematic statement that, “All third- world texts are necessarily … allegorical”. Within the following study I shall be exploring several critiques of texts by these two African woman writers, and deducing whether or not they are to be read as “necessarily … allegorical.” Most critics have agreed that both Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter, and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood represent how “Individual and collective identities are constructed on the intersecting axes of race, class, gender, and religion, as well as personal/subjective experiences that may 2 defy efforts of simple characterisation.” A description such as this should support a view which negates a clear-cut allegorical interpretation of the texts, however, as I shall portray, this is not necessarily so. Both Bâ and Emecheta, along with 3 several other African women writers, have publicly rejected the term ‘feminist’ Yet as Rizwana Habib Latha points out, “Bâ said that she wanted to serve as an 4 inspiration to all women to help what she referred to as ‘our common liberation’.” This statement of Bâ’s immediately opens up a platform for feminist allegorical interpretations of her novels, in that they serve not simply to represent a specific narrative of a particular fictional woman’s struggles against patriarchy, but rather they serve as narratives in contribution to a wider liberation of women.
1 Fredric Jameson, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text, 15 (Autumn 1986): 69. 2 Rizwana Habib Latha, “Feminisms in an African Context: Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter,” Agenda, 50 (2001): 23. 3 ibid 4 ibid, 26. Emphasis added.
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Contrary to Bâ’s own statement regarding her position within feminist discourse, many critics have said that So Long a Letter often leans towards western feminist ideals, most stereotypically represented through the character Aissatou. Moreover, Ramatoulaye, although she does not reject Islamic and Senegalese traditions, subscribes to the western feminist view that women should be liberated through education. As Latha points out, The focus given to each aspect of identity is not always equal and the effects of colonial discourse on African women’s perceptions of these identities is evident in Ramatoulaye’s fond reminiscences of the untraditional, westernised lifestyle she enjoyed as a member of the French-educated elite of Senegal during the early years of her marriage. In addition to this, her generally favourable attitude to Aissatou’s escape to New York has prompted western critics such as Frank and African critics such as Ojo-Ade to infer that Bâ promotes only a 5 western style of feminism in her writing.
During my research of The Joys of Motherhood and So Long a Letter, I have come across several valuable allegorical interpretations of these texts. Although such an interpretation can limit the diverse amount of interconnecting themes in these two texts, they have provided for some valuable insight into the interworkings of themes such as gender, imperialism, and postcolonialism. However, this being said, I do not believe that an allegorical interpretation is always necessary, nor is it always valuable. Such a criticism of these novels often tends to limit the complexities which they portray, and are often reductionist in their approach. For instance, in his essay “Against Allegory” Derek Attridge supports instead a mode of reading a text which he calls “literal reading”, whereby one 6 experiences the novel as a lived event through the process of reading. He claims that the danger of an allegorical interpretation is that one moves too quickly beyond the novel to find its significance elsewhere, of treating it not as an inventive literary work drawing us into unfamiliar emotional and 7 cognitive territory but as a reminder of what we already know only too well.
Yet once we have experienced the novel through the actual process of reading, we tend to look at broader implications that serve to construct allegorical readings. As Attridge himself states, “a responsive reading of a literary work will always be alert to the possibility of allegorical meaning, to the constant leaking of meaning 8 away from the literal.” Moreover, our identification with the novel and the expe5 Latha, 28. 6 Derek Attridge, “Against Allegory,” in J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005), 60 7 Attridge, 42-43. 8 ibid, 61-62.
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riences of the characters within it, tends towards a reading which crosses the cultural boundaries of the novel; this is what leads Latha to make a statement such as the following: Bâ’s “attempt to transform society and her belief in a worldwide sisterhood of women can be seen in the motif of motherhood which has shared 9 meanings across class, racial and cultural lines.” The ability of the novel to portray an experience which has shared meaning across the boundaries which the novel itself sets up is what produces an allegorical reading, in that to say that a novel of a very specific woman in a specific context may produce shared meanings is to say that the novel produces a whole second set of meanings which the novel itself does not necessarily put forward. Several critics have read Bâ’s So Long a Letter as an allegory of the embattled and oppressed state of women in an African patriarchal society. Although the novel should by no means be necessarily read as specifically a national allegory, the argument is that it nevertheless puts forward a broader experience of women in struggle or search for their own identities and subjectivity in a postcolonial Africa. In this sense the novel does tend to adhere to Jameson’s troublesome definition of a cognitive aesthetics of third world literature.10 Furthermore, it has been said that the genre of Bâ’s novel itself is allegorical, in that the epistolary 11 form lends to this allegorical search for identity. However, to say that So Long a Letter may be read as an allegory, it not to say that we should read all ‘third-world’ texts as allegorical, nor are allegorical interpretations limited to these so called‘third-world’ texts. As Attridge states, “To say what a fictional work is ‘about,’ or to find any kind of moral or political 12 injunction in it, is to proceed, in an extended sense of the word, allegorically.”
Here, I think, Attridge points at the central issue that we are dealing with. Within criticism of both So Long a Letter and The Joys of Motherhood, we find readings which attempt a search for some extended plane of moral signficance, be it gender, race, or class, as well as the oppression these spheres may produce within certain cultural contexts. Stephane Robolin reads The Joys of Motherhood as an allegory of slavery, as well as one of the liminal space which women occupy in patriarchal society. For instance, the slave woman who issacrificed for Agbadi’s deceased wife is reincarnated as Nnu Ego’s chi; Robolin states,
9 Latha, 35. Emphasis added. 10 Jameson, 69. 11 Latha, 33. 12 Attridge, 36.
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Copper Sun, Scarlet Sea The Slave Woman figures not simply as the guiding spirit of Nnu Ego; she is Nnu Ego. The protagonist, in other words, becomes an avatar of this captive servant, so that one embodies the other. The rest of the novel teases out the implications of this ostensibly metaphorical association, through which Emecheta eventually 13 conjoins the condition of slavehood and the condition of womenhood.
We might therefore read Nnu Ego’s struggles with aspects such as motherhood, patriarchy and colonialism – in a society were tradition and modernity are constantly in conflict – as an allegory of the issues and types of oppression which an African woman must endure, to the point where she becomes a slave to these oppressive forces. Robolin also employs Homi Bhabha’s theory of the in- between to articulate the themes of marginalisation which appear in Emecheta’s novel, At the cutting edge of the spatial turn in cultural studies lies Bhabha’s articulation of interstitial spaces, framed as contestatory sites of cultural for14 mation, transformation, and ultimately cultural resistance.
For Robolin, Nnu Ego’s chi allegorically occupies the liminal space in-between the spheres of the living and the dead in much the same way as Nnu Ego herself occupies a liminal space within a society structured by not only the more traditional Ibo patriarchy, but also the newer form of the inherited European/Western patriarchy which begins to infiltrate into Nigerian society and practice through colonialism. As Obioma Nnaemeka explains, “The sexual politics and Victorian ideals of colonial education created a hierarchy privileging men by virtually 15 erasing any meaningful female presence.” Furthermore, Robolin also claims that Nnu Ego’s suicide attempt is an allegory of the oppressed colonial woman’s attempt to free herself from the patriarchal and colonial system of subjugation, Nnu Ego finds the highly symbolic Carter Bridge and readies herself to plunge into the deep of the lagoon – thereby symbolically conceding to the liminal space and her interstitial distress that, like her chi (itself a figure of the in-between), relentlessly troubles her existence. The harbour’s interstitial waters could swal16 low her up and render physically what has been done to her psychically.
The bridge itself, Robolin claims, is a symbol of the Nnu Ego’s liminal space 17 in-between the two competing forces which oppress her: the British colonial rule and the patriarchal structure of traditional Ibo society. The novel thus alle13 Stephane Robolin, “Gendered Hauntings: The Joys of Motherhood, Interpretive Acts, and Postcolonial Theory,” Research in African Literatures, 35,3 (Autumn 2004): 78. 14 Robolin, 80. 15 Obioma Nnaemeka, “From Orality to Writing: African Women Writers and the (Re)Inscription of Womanhood,” Research in African Literatures, 25,4 (Winter 1994): 139. 16 Robolin, 82, and see also, 80. 17 Carter bridge connect the city Lagos to the outer rural areas, We thus have the binary of tradition versus modernity..
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gorically plays out the protagonist’s navigation between these two competing and 18 oppressive forces. Amidst the feminist critiques of Bâ and Emecheta, is Florence Stratton’s brilliant and enlightening article, “The Shallow Grave: Archetypes of Female Experience in African Fiction. Using Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s canonical study of Victorian women writers – The Madwoman in the Attic – she suggests that there are certain trends and traditions mapped out in women’s writing which tran19 scend cultural and national boundaries. Her claim is that as in Western women’s writing, in African women’s writing we find all the archetypal portrayals of women characters such as Gilbert and Gubar explore. Often, Stratton claims, in Western women’s writing we find the allegorical image of the oppressed woman as drowned, claustrophobic, buried alive, suicidal, or silenced, and these arche20 typal images of women occur in African women’s writing alike. Her hypothesis is that the similarity of female psychological and artistic response which can be mapped out across cultural boundaries is due to the fact that patriarchy is “a 21 cultural constant”. Stratton, like Robolin, employs the image of the slave as an allegory of female oppression, and argues that Emecheta portrays typical female archetype through the slave woman sacrificed for Agbadi’s deceased wife, Ordained by tradition to be buried alive with her deceased mistress in order to serve her in the afterlife, the slave woman rebels. She wants to live! She entreats the chief, her owner and the husband of the deceased, to spare her and then, to the amusement or annoyance of the male mourners, fights for her survival, 22 struggling out of ‘the shallow grave’ into which she has been pushed.
For Stratton, this image of the buried woman becomes an allegory women under a patriarchal order who are “buried in shallow definitions of their sex.” Through the blow which the slave women receives on the head, she is silenced (denied her own personal subjectivity), and is forever subdued to endure the “imposed 23 requirements of [her] masculine” society. In much the same way, Stratton argues, Emecheta’s protagonist Nnu Ego is metaphorically silenced by the paternal figures within the novel, in that through her sacrifice of “her human potential to the patriarchal order” she becomes the “the slave woman reborn”, both literally 18. Robolin, 81. 19. Florence Stratton, “The Shallow Grave: Archetypes of Female Experience in African Fiction,” Research in African Literatures, 19,2 (Summer 1988): 144. 20 Stratton, 143 21 ibid., 143 22 ibid., 146 23 ibid., 147
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(through her chi) and metaphorically. When her first son dies, Nnu Ego (by the title of the chapter) becomes ‘A Failed Woman’, in that she is unable to fulfil the patriarchal requirement of producing a male heir. Stratton says “Her attempted suicide following the death of this baby is one the one hand an act of despair, the result of a crisis of self-confidence. But it can also be seen as a subversive act, an 25 attempt to free herself forever from the impossible demands of her male society.” As I have mentioned above, Stratton argues that both The Joys of Motherhood and So Long a Letter are allegories of female entrapment. She states that Nnu Ego, Unable to affect her own escape and having herself sought marriage and motherhood, ... is overwhelmed by feelings of powerlessness and entrapment imaged by the literally claustrophobic atmosphere of Nnaife’s one-room apartment in 26 which the family lives.
Accordingly, when the second wife Adaku arrives, Nnu Ego’s physical and 27 emotional space is further reduced. We find a similar occurrence in So Long a Letter: Ramatoulaye’s physical confinement within her house during the Islamic mourning period of her husband’s death becomes an allegory of her psychologi28 cal confinement within her marriage with Modou. Thus we once again find the typical allegory of female entrapment. Stratton also discusses Gilbert and Gubar’s study of psychological Doubles in women’s writing. Often, where we find that the novelist – either intentionally or unintentionally – juxtaposes two characters, they become psychological Doubles. Such is the case with both Bâ and Emecheta. Both novels juxtapose two female characters against each other: the one being the socially acceptable, submissive woman (Ramatoulaye and Nnu Ego), and the other being the unconventional and uninhibited woman who liberates herself from the patriarchal order (Adaku 29 and Aissatou). Stratton states, It is in Adaku that that Emecheta resurrects the rebellious spirit of the slave womanFunctioning as Nnu Ego’s double, Adaku, waiting for neither man nor gods, actualises Nnu Ego’s faint dream by recreating herself as a woman 30 who is ‘not anybody’s appendage.’
24 ibid., 153. 25 ibid., 155. 26 Stratton, 155. 27 ibid., 156. 28 ibid., 159. 29 ibid., 157. 30 ibid.
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We see the same situation with Bâ›s Aissatou, who liberates herself by leaving her polygamous marriage and moving to New York to start an independent career. We can therefore say that both Aissatou and Adaku become feminist allegories of women who escape their subjection to patriarchy; whereas, Ramatoulaye and Nnu Ego become allegories of women who are unable to liberate themselves from their oppressive situations, and thus become symbolic of the silenced Woman. Ironically, both Ramatoulaye and Nnu Ego eventually emancipate themselves; Nnu Ego, in her death haunts young women by making them barren, thus stopping the cycle of female entrapment in motherhood; whereas Ramatoulaye liberates herself from entering into yet another polygamous marriage by turning down Daouda’s marriage proposal. She too, finds liberation by reversing her state of silence through metaphorically speaking out in her long letter to Aissatou. Yet, as Stratton points out, As both Bâ and Emecheta show, a woman’s acceptance of the female condition is an acceptance of confinement in the restricted roles of femininity prescribed for her by men. Aissatou and Adaku represent all women who seek freedom in personhood and find it. Through these female figures, Bâ and Emecheta chal31 lenge the basic assumptions of the status quo.
What is significant within both novels, is what Omofolabo Ajayi refers to as ‘double patriarchy’, in that not only do these women deal with patriarchy within their own indigenous cultures, but also the external patriarchy brought to Africa through colonialism. In Ramatoulaye’s case, it is largely the patriarchy which Senegal inherited from the Eastern Islamic tradition, whereas in the case of Nnu 32 Ego, it is a Western, Christian form of patriarchy. This goes to say that within these two texts of Bâ and Emecheta’s, we are not simply dealing with your ordinary Western patriarchy, we are dealing with a multitude of competing elements and oppressive forces which restrict the characters involved. As Latha states, Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter contains a strong message, not only about the disempowerment of women, but also about how women can empower themselves effectively. Likewise, it provides a vital insight into the interconnections between feminisms and multifaceted identities in societies which are becoming increasingly diverse, and this makes it meaningful to readers across 33 racial, cultural, class and religious boundaries.
31 Stratton, 164. 32 Omofolabo Ajayi, “Negritude, Feminism, and the Quest for Identity: Re-Reading Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter” Women’s Studies Quarterly,25, 3/4 (Fall-Winter 1997): 40. 33 Latha, 37.
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Amongst the criticism of Emecheta, Cynthia Ward states that most of Emecheta’s critics have agreed that The Joys of Motherhood represents an experience of the African woman struggling to assert her self against historically determined insignificance, a self constituted through the suffering of nearly every form of oppression – racial, sexual, colonial – that human society has created, a self that must find its true voice in order to speak not only for itself but for all 34 others similarly oppressed.
This statement confirms an allegorical reading of Emecheta’s novel that links back to Jameson’s theory of third world texts as being allegorical, in that the private life of an individual extends itself allegorically to the wider public experience. In the first instance, it correlates the very specific personal story of a Nigerian woman with African women in general. The private embattled situation of Nnu Ego’s experience as a Nigerian woman now becomes, for Ward, an allegory for the embattled situation of all African women. The novel becomes a national allegory on the level that a Nigerian women struggling to find her own subjectivity becomes and allegory for not only all Nigerian women, but all African women fighting against several forms of oppression (racial oppression, patriarchy, and so on). Moreover, the only factor which separates African men from this analogy, is gender, and even then, The Joys of Motherhood plays with many gender relations: it toys with what it means to be an man, or a son, and even what it means to be a father. For instance, when Nnu Ego first arrives in Lagos she repeatedly tells Nnaife that he is not a real man if he washes a “white 35 woman’s smalls” . Ward’s article, “What they Told Buchi Emecheta: Oral Subjectivity and the Joys of ‘Otherhood’”, is a highly insightful critique of Emecheta, and produces some valuable points, which I shall bring up later. However, it begins with the following, rather problematic statement that assumes there is such a thing as a coherent universal of an ‘African woman’, “For literary critics seeking authentic representations of the African woman, the works of the Anglo-Nigerian novelist 36 Buchi Emecheta provide a veritable gold mine.” Her article focuses on the problematic of what ‘self ’ Emecheta puts forward within the novel, or what ‘self ’ she intends us to read, and whether this ‘self ’ is an African woman, an African self, 37 or a feminist self. This problematic centres upon the diverging criticisms of what sort of ‘African woman’ Emecheta portrays. For instance, Ward explains that,
34 Ward, 83. 35 Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood (African Writers Series: Heineman, 1994), 47. 36 Cynthia Ward, “What they Told Buchi Emecheta: Oral Subjectivity and the Joys of ‘Otherhood’,” PMLA, 105,1 (Jan. 1990): 83. 37 Ward, 83.
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Most of the criticism available in the United States interprets Emecheta’s novels as feminist parables and charts the development of her characters’ feminist consciousness, appropriating the ‘African woman’s experience’ as part of a universal liberatory discourse and showing little, if any, regard for – or knowledge 38 of – issues that concern African literary critics.
Ward also points out that in contrast, consciously ‘African’ readings of Emecheta seek to situate her work within the African literary canon by attending to themes, rhetoric, and perspectives relevant to an African audience and rejecting the imposition of neocolonial – Eu39 ropean and North American – values and imperatives, including feminism.
Yet, as Ward claims, these diverging criticisms clearly point out that Emecheta refuses to subscribe to either reading, and that The Joys of Motherhood demonstrates this contestation between what it is to be a woman and what is to be Afri40 can. Moreover, these conflicting interpretations point to Emecheta’s resistance to portraying a clear-cut allegorical reading, whether it be a feminist one, or one 41 concerned with colonial issues specific to Africa. Ward criticises Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunjemi’s criticism of Emecheta, stating that she devalues Emecheta’s early works on the basis of the ‘ambivalent attitude’ manifested in them: ‘Her ambivalence reveals an English strain in her attitude to42 wards life, a strain in constant conflict with her innate Africanness.
What is evident here is that Ogunyemi cannot recognise a certain hybridity within not only the context in which Emecheta’s novels were produced, but also the hybridity evident in the culture represented within the novels themselves. Emecheta is a Nigerian woman living in England writing a story of African experience through a western/European form of the novel. The point is that Emecheta’s novel succeeds in portraying an individual, a woman, who struggles to deal with or understand the way in which hybridity functions in her life, and how it affects her as a woman; but more importantly, the way in which she as a mother must mediate between several conflicting and oppressive forces in her life. I personally think that although the novel can be interpreted as an allegory, this is not the primary reading, or most important reading to make of a complex and ambiguous novel such as this. As Wards states, 38 Ward, 84. 39 ibid. 40 Ward, 84. 41 ibid. 42 ibid., 85.
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Copper Sun, Scarlet Sea One could say, indeed, that Emecheta’s works are pulled apart – not by the tensions inherent in her works but by the opposing forces that try to make her 43 ‘speak’ clearly and unambiguously for them.
There are many instances in the novel which many not only be applied to Africans as a whole, but also to many other cultures and societies, indeed, motherhood is universal (that is, not confined to being African), even if experiences of motherhood might differ radically. In this sense the novel transcends itself and becomes allegorical. However, the point is to portray a woman, several women, men, children, and human beings in a culturally specific place and how a variety of influences – gender, sexuality, imperialism, colonialism, economics, tradition, modernity, and religion – affect their lives and relationships with one another. The issue here is that the majority of Emecheta’s critics look for a clear-cut allegorical representation of either the ‘African experience’ or the ‘African woman’s’ experience, which the novel does not produce. Because the novel refuses to subscribe entirely to one or the other representation, Emecheta’s critics end up stating that The Joys of Motherhood is a problematic text. As, once again, Ward points out, The practitioners of such criticism, much like their colonial predecessors, demand an unproblematic self-representation of the authentic African woman that will erase deviation and contradiction; the difference is that now white men are relieved of responsibility for textual representation and the African 44 woman is expected to shoulder the burden.
Thus, through Emecheta’s refusal to portray a clear representation of the embattled situation of an African, as well refusing to portray a clear representation of the embattled situation of a woman, she combines both ‘embattlements’ at the same time to portray a representation which resists a clear allegorical representation of the one or the other. A reading of Emecheta’s novels as allegorical does what Aijaz Ahmad states of Jameson’s theory: it suppresses “the multiplicity of significant difference among 45 and within both advanced capitalist countries and the imperialised formations” . Reading the private and subjective experience of the characters in The Joys of Motherhood as a broader allegory for all women or all Africans therefore does what Ahmad warns us against in Jameson’s theory of third world literature: it suppresses cultural difference within these two broad categories of ‘women’ and ‘African’. Ward herself is guilty of this generalisation, as is evident in her opening 43 ibid. 44 Ward, 85. 45 Aijaz Ahmad, “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory’,” Social Text, 17 (Autumn 1987), 3.
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statement that Emecheta portrays an “authentic” representation of “the African 46 woman”. There is nothing general about being a women, nor is there anything general about being an African. Until we understand exactly what a woman is or what an African is, we cannot make a general sweeping statement that The Joys of Motherhood portrays an authentic experience of an African woman. As Attridge states, allegorical readings are produced when certain stereotypes 47 or archetypes are portrayed within a text. If we understand that stereotypes produce certain discourses, then we can assume that allegorical readings are produced by discourses such as feminism and postcolonialism. These discourses are not necessarily based on incorrect stereotypes, and thus, it is not necessarily incorrect to make these allegorical readings in the first place, even if they my be reductive in their nature. Therefore, the western feminists produce allegorical readings of the embattlement of women from a text like The Joys of Motherhood not because of their inability to understand ‘the African woman’, but because of their knowledge of patriarchy, and their own struggles with its oppression. The same goes for the African critics of Emecheta’s novels, they read in her texts an allegory of the embattled situation of ‘the African’, not because of their inability to understand an African experience, but because of their recognition and knowledge of oppression in their own culture, society, or country. The stereotype of the African fighting against external European oppression is based on knowledge that as a result forms an allegorical interpretation to the extent that this embattled situation becomes ‘universalised’ for all Africans who experience a history of colonial oppression. What is ‘universal’ (or seemingly objective) in a novel – such as oppression in gen48 eral (whatever form it takes) – is what produces and allegorical reading. Women suffering in a patriarchal society– as we see Nnu Ego clearly does, among other 49 things – becomes allegorical because it is seen as a universal, that is – Western woman can relate to it because they have experienced the same oppression within their own societies. Thus, contrary to Jameson’s hypothesis, it is the similarities, not the differences between cultures which produce allegorical readings of African literature; and furthermore, this ability to relate on the basis of similarities is based on knowledge, on certain discourse with which or from which one approaches a 46 Ward, 83. 47 Attridge, 32. 48 However, one must be very careful when dealing with the term ‘universal’, in that to assume something is universal is often problematic. For instance, there is nothing universal about being a woman, because not every woman has the same experience. Moreover, we cannot say that being a woman is necessarily universal until we understand what a woman is. We must recognise Simone de Beauvoir’s statement (The Second Sex) that one ‘becomes a woman.’ In essence, the theory of universalism is reductive in the same way that Jameson’s theory of a ‘cognitive aesthetics’ of third world literature is reductive. 49 When I say universal here, I do not mean the whole world, I simply refer to a phenomenon which extends cultural boundaries
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text. It is the same mentality which defines something as being ‘authentic’, in other words, different. As James Clifford argues in his essay “On Ethnographic Allegory”, 50 the more realistic a text is, the more allegorical it becomes. Emecheta’s novels are said to be ‘authentic’ representations of the experiences of an African woman because of their realism, and their realism is exactly what produces readings of this text as allegorical. Viewed from one angle, we can see realism as a genre which strives to be based on fact, or rather (more specifically) one which strives to be based on authentic experiences which derive from real-life situations that are based on fact; these ‘real-life facts’ are then transformed into a fictional narrative. Thus realism as a genre points towards or attempts to denote an authentic representation, and in its attempt to do so, it becomes allegorical. Thus within The Joys of Motherhood and So Long a Letter, we can see the tensions brought about by competing claims of realistic representation and allegorical interpretations. On the one hand, the complexities of identity which each novel represents makes it difficult to deduce that anything represented in that novel has a clear-cut meaning or moral insinuation, that is: a meaning beyond the narrative which that narrative does not necessarily provide us with. However, we have seen that at many instances within the novels, the characters that are presented to us are portrayed in such a way as to symbolically carry of a whole host of secondary meanings or associations. Moreover, often, as Attridge points out, the readers’ interpretive mind and subjective experiences often causes an association of a secondary plane of meaning to what is represented in the novel (even if the novel does not explicitly invite this sort of reading). It is for this reason that we get competing claims within the criticism the literary works of Bâ and Emecheta, and as I have shown, the claim that their texts are allegorical is not necessarily incorrect, or not necessarily a misreading, it is simply a type of reading. Moreover, it can often be enlightening to produce an allegorical reading, and in a sense, read beyond what the author intends, or what the text itself appears to intend. Yet this being said, an allegorical reading is not always the most insightful reading we can produce, nor is it specific to so called aesthetic of ‘third-world’ literature. Often, as some critics have argued, an allegorical readingtends to be reductionistic, especially when dealing with a text which aims at portraying the complexities of a particular context or historical moment.
50 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Allegory,” in James Clifford and George Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 98. See also 119.
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References Ahmad, Aijaz. “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory’.” Social Text 17 (1987): 3-25. Ajayi, Omofolabo. “Negritude, Feminism, and the Quest for Identity: Re-Reading Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 25.3/4 (1997): 35-52. Attridge, Derek. “Against Allegory,” J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005. 32-64 Bâ, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Heinemann: African Writer Series, 2008. Champagne, John. “‘A Feminist Just Like Us?’ Teaching Mariama Bâ›s So Long a Letter.” College English 58.1 (1996): 22-42. Clifford, James. “On Ethnographic Allegory.” Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. By James Clifford, and George Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 98-121. Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. Heinemann: African Writer Series, 1994. Haraway, Donna J. “Reading Buchi Emecheta: Contests for ‘Women’s Experience’ in Women’s Studies.” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Free Association Books, 1991. 109-123. Jameson, Fredric. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital ism.” Social Text 15 (1986): 65-88. Kamara, Gibreel. “The Feminist Struggle in the Senegalese Novel: Mariama Ba and Sembene Ousmane.” Journal of Black Studies 32.2 (2001): 212-228. Latha, Rizwana Habib. “Feminisms in an African Context: Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter.” Agenda 50 (2001): 23-40. Nnaemeka, Obioma. “From Orality to Writing: African Women Writers and the (Re)Inscription of Womanhood.” Research in African Literatures 25.4 (1994): 137-157. Robolin, Stephane. “Gendered Hauntings: The Joys of Motherhood, Interpretive Acts, and Postcolonial Theory.” Research in African Litera tures 35.3 (2004): 76-92. Stratton, Florence. “The Shallow Grave: Archetypes of Female Experience in African Fiction.” Research in African Literatures 19.2 (Summer 1988): 143-169. Ward, Cynthia. “What they Told Buchi Emecheta: Oral Subjectivity and the Joys of ‘Otherhood’.” PMLA 105.1 (1990): 83-97.
WARRIOR MARKS AND THE REPRODUCTION OF IMPERIALIST VIOLENCES: An Analysis of Transnational Feminism and Frameworks Revolving around Notions of Shared Oppression Alicia Paller-Rzepka Feminist movements have the power to be inclusive, exclusive, or both inclusive and exclusive within a single moment. Black feminist movements are no exception. Despite commonality along lines of gender, women of color cannot participate in feminist coalition movements assuming a singular, common experience. Crucial differences exist in relation to ethnicity, class, levels of literacy, geographic locations and religious affiliations. However, “[t]he women’s movement has perpetuated a myth that there is some common experience that comes just cause you’re women” (Johnson Reagon). The black feminist movement, in particular, has mirrored this “mainstream feminism” myth, pushing “sisterhood” as a means of uniting women of color within the black feminist movement. For example, Alice Walker, in her documentary, Warrior Marks, relies on the power of shared oppression and black sisterhood to make an argument for why women (of color) should mobilize around the issue of female genital mutilation in Africa. She perpetuates the myth that there is homogeneity among black sisters” in the global community, as she simultaneously employs imperialist strategies that divide “First World” and “Third World” women. Considering the common erasure of difference within feminist movements and the ease in which transnational feminists perhaps mirror imperialist and colonialist violences within their activism, to what extent is the conception of transnational sisterhood a positive tool for fighting for gender equality on a global scale? Can transnationalfeminism operate as a political tool for fighting violence against women, or can it not be separated from the problematic structures of imperialism, colonialism and patriarchy that inherently ‘other’ and racialize “Third World” subjects? Focusing on black feminist scholarship and using Walker and Parmar’s documentary, Warrior Marks, as a case study, the following essay will attempt to answer these questions and address the slippagebetween positive transnational sisterhood and racialized imperial feminism.
Introduction: The Complexities of Transnational Feminism Feminist movements have the potential to be inclusive, exclusive, or both. Black feminist movements are no exception. Despite commonality along the line of gender, women of color cannot participate in feminist coalition movements assuming a singular, common experience. Factors such as ethnicity, class difference, levels of literacy, geographic location and religious affiliations are a few named differences that exist within groups of feminists. Nonetheless, “[t]he women’s movement has perpetuated a myth that there is some common experience that comes just cause you’re women” (Johnson Reagon 347). The black feminist movement, in particular, has mirrored this “mainstream feminism” myth, proposing that women of color are sisters within the black feminist movement. Audre Lorde identifies that “[t]here is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist” (285). However, many feminists continue to utilize the concepts of sisterhood and shared oppression within feminist activism.
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Alice Walker, a black, lesbian, feminist author is one such example of an activist who relies on the power of shared oppression and black sisterhood. In Walker’s documentary, Warrior Marks, the role of sisterhood is key in her argument for why women (of color) should mobilize around the issue of female genital mutilation in Africa. Employing the notion of a shared “patriarchal wound,” along with the notion of sisterly female bonding, Walker inappropriately creates a “fantasized similarity” between herself and survivors of female genital mutilation in Africa (Grewal and Kaplan 59). Furthermore, she perpetuates the myth that there is homogeneity among black “sisters” in the global community, as she simultaneously employsimperialist strategies that divide “First World” and “Third World” women. Walker’s anti-FGM project is important, yet it is necessary to acknowledge the dangerous ways in which Walker and her co-producer, Pratibha Parmar, perpetuate discriminatory representations of non-Western subjects. Though as a transnational feminist project, Warrior Marks hinges upon the seemingly universal notion of shared gender oppression, the film ironically reinforces “the racialization and gendered ‘othering’ of non-Western subjects” (55). Considering the common erasure of difference within feminist movements and the ease in which transnational feminists perhaps mirror imperialist and colonialist violences within their activism, to what extent is the conception of transnational sisterhood a positive tool for fighting for gender equality on a global scale? Can transnational feminism operate as a political tool for fighting violence against women, or can it not be separated from the problematic structures of imperialism, colonialism and patriarchy that inherently ‘other’ and racialize “Third World” subjects? Focusing on Walker and Parmar’s documentary, Warrior Marks, as a case study, the following essay will attempt to answer these questions and address more specifically the slippage between positive transnational sisterhood and racialized imperial feminism. Warrior Marks and the Violence in Claiming a Shared “Patriarchal Wound” Before broadly addressing the extent to which transnational feminism can be seen as useful or solely as a reconfiguration of imperialist patriarchal violences within a female sphere, it is first important to understand the context of Walker and Parmar’s Warrior Marks. In this film, there is a tension between the uses and limits of U.S.-based Walker claiming a shared “patriarchal wound” with the African subjects of the documentary. As a girl, Alice Walker’s brothers received pellet guns as gifts from their parents. (Young Alice did not receive a gun, because she is female). When Alice’s older brother shot a gun aimed at her, she was consequently blinded in one eye. This physically and emotionally traumatic experience led Walker to connect with other female survivors of male violence. In an interview with Parmar, Walker explains that she considers her visual blinding to mirror “the rather callous way that little girls are taken to be mutilated” (Walker
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and Parmar, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women 267). Thus, Warrior Marks is the product of Walker and Parmar’s choice to rely on the concept of a shared patriarchal wound in order to present the vio1 lent nature of female genital mutilation (FGM) in African countries. While it is important for women to collectively address gendered cultural ideals that encourage young boys to play with guns and young girls to play with tea cups, Walker’s monolithic categorization of shared patriarchal wounds ignores the many ways in which her position of privilege sets her apart from the subjects of Warrior Marks. As an educated, American, prize-winning author, Walker’s childhood experience, though an example of male violence, must be acknowledged as different from practices of FGM. Without identifying these differences, Walker perpetuates violence within her own faulty analogy. Not only do acts of gendered violence and oppression exist in extremely varied forms and carry specific consequences that are both unique and personal, but also, “the idea of ‘common oppression’ [is] a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women’s varied and complex social realit[ies]” (hooks, Sisterhood: Political Solidarity 396). By giving creed to such a widely defined category of “common oppression,” Walker erases the logistical and social realities that women face, replacing difference with a contrived belief in similarity. Using this tactic, Walker weakens the possibly beneficial aspects of working within a transnational feminist framework. Instead, she inflicts her own violence by suggesting that she shares with the subjects of Warrior Marks an all-encompassing patriarchal wound, and thus, a shared emotional and physical experience of gender oppression. 2
Ignoring Privilege, “Othering” Subjects and the Production of “Third World Difference”
Even the infamous Betty Friedan has been criticized for her early feminist text, The Feminine Mystique, in which she seemingly ignored racial and class difference and “made the plight of white women synonymous with a condition affecting all women” (hooks, Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory 270). Carrying this critique of Friedan’s feminist text over to my analysis of Walker and Parmar’s project, (in which race is acknowledged yet regarded as a unifying trait), I would like to point out the ways in which Walker and Parmar similarly ignore class and 3 ethnic privileges. It is common for non-white women to highlight the ways in which white women often ignore the “built-in privilege of whiteness” and define woman in terms that assume whiteness and consequently “other” black women. 1 There is a great deal of controversy over the term “female genital mutilation” (FGM), as “mutilation” is an ethnocentric word that heavily denotes violent disfiguration. Other terms that are perhaps more appropriate, or perhaps more misleading, include female genital cutting, genital surgeries, female circumcision 2 “Third World Difference” is a concept articulated by Chandra Talpade Mohanty in “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (273). 3 Alice Walker is based the United States and Pratibha Parmar is based in the United Kingdom.
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(Lorde, Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference 286). However, it is less common for non-white women to highlight the ways in which black women ignore their own built-in privileges (for example, the privilege of having attended and earned a degree from a university in the United States). Although Walker’s skin is dark and she self-identifies as African-American, her work mimics the above-described criticism of white women who ignore white privilege. By ignoring her built-in privileges, Walker further ‘others’ many of the African women of color in Warrior Marks. Her blackness does not warrant her incapable of reproducing racist stereotypes of African survivors of FGM. However unintentionally, Warrior Marks ironically reproduces the “racism that [Walker and Parmar’s] multicultural project seeks to resist” (Grewal and Kaplan 70). For example, Warrior Marks mirrors imperialist and Orientalist ideologies by producing African “otherness” through cinematography choices that dramatically reinforce a binary of primitive “victims” living in rural Africa and their modern, First World “saviors” (Grewal and Kaplan 56). Despite the fact that Walker articulates in the film that she wants to stand with her subjects, rather than beyond them, the way in which she poses interview questions often comes off as authoritative, judgmental and leading. At times, she is downright condescending. Walker blatantly talks down to an elderly female circumciser who elects not to describe the details of FGM during the interview. After the circumciser reports that such details are traditionally kept secret, Walker distastefully rebuffs that she knows all about said “secrets.” In this scene, visual footage and Walker’s tone work together to criminalize the circumciser’s role in what is reductively portrayed as a dangerous and primitive practice. Furthermore, Walker’s composure as she takes the hand of a different interview subject, who is conveniently shown on screen shedding tears while describing the tradition of female genital mutilation, frames Walker as the savior and the interviewee as the victim of “backward” Third World traditions, in need of “principled intervention” from Euro-American womanists (54). Walker and Parmar further convey judgmental notions of FGM by including a scene in which a chicken’s head is cut off. This act is completely unrelated to FGM, expect for the fact that it takes place in Africa and involves a sharp blade. This clip highlights the way in which Walker and Parmar insinuate the problematic, imperialistic notion that there is uncomfortable violence “over there” that “we” (women from the “Western world”) must stop through transnational feminist politics and activism. Even proponents of anti-FGM intervention must realize the ways in which Warrior Marks unnervingly slips into the realm of reproducing “First World” stereotypes of “Third World” women. I applaud that Walker and Parmar take on the challenge of opposing FGM, and I acknowledge the fact that documentaries cannot exist outside of directors’ biases. Nonethe-
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less, many aspects of Warrior Marks must be understood as fueling stereotypical notions of Third World violence and First World superiority. Chandra Mohanty, a leading transnational feminist theorist, names the production of such stereotypes “Third World difference.” Through “Third World difference,” stereotypes bolster the fixed and homogenized image of “Third World” women as “religious (read: not progressive), family-oriented (read: traditional), legally unsophisticated (read: they are still not conscious of their rights), illiterate (read: ignorant), [and] domestic (read: backward)…” (Mohanty 273). In Warrior Marks, “Third World difference” is maintained by artistic decisions, most notably the inclusion of a dancer. The dancer’s movements not only dominate the opening sequence, but also fill in as visual aides to supposedly “match” Walker’s voiceover narrations throughout the film. The dancer, (who rolls around in a sandy, cave-like setting, decorated in colorful fabric that wraps around her waist and hangs between her dark, muscular legs), clearly reproduces Orientalist notions of what Westerners envision is symbolic of Africa. This is not to say that as an African-American Walker cannot understand or represent “true” African culture. However, beyond costume choice, the dancer physically produces movement that falls within American modern dance technique, not African dance tradition. Similarly, the dancer, despite her dark skin, does not in any way resemble the appearance of the native African women whom Walker and Parmar interview. In her skin-tight leotard, she spreads her legs as Walker’s authoritative voice chronicles the process of female genital mutilation. The dancer picks up a handful of sand and rubs it between her palms over the space between her spread legs, theatrically existing as a fetish and an artistic representation of Walker and Parmar’s third-person interpretation of female genital mutilation. This contrived and Orientalist element of Warrior Marks blatantly distorts reality, fuels homogeneous stereotypes of African women (and African dance culture), and encourages the colonialist, imperialist and patriarchal ideologies that reinforce “Third World difference.” Through construction of “Third World difference” and beyond, Walker and Parmar undoubtedly portray an Orientalist representation of female genital mutilation as existing within “an international male conspiracy [and] a monolithic, ahistorical power structure” (Mohanty 257). However, within a less dramatized realm of activist documentary cinema, which more specifically addresses difference and the historical, political and cultural contexts of violence against women, can a transnational feminist framework be productive rather than destructive? Can feminists from the “West” intervene in issues of gender inequality, gender oppression, and violence against women in the “East” without inherently reproducing the notion of the victimized, powerless “Third World woman”?
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Monolithic Notions of Patriarchy and Victimhood If transnational feminism is ideally to operate outside of the structures that victimize “Third World” women, how are transnational feminists to approach the issue of violence against women? Violence against women, whether it is rape within marriage, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, or a range of other abuses, certainly forces both physical and emotional injuries upon women. Are these women not victims of violence against women? In essence, yes, these women are victims of violence. However, feminist movements and projects that frame women who have suffered from male violence as victims are damaging and counterproductive. Victimhood often connotes injury, pain, suffering and weakness. Within the U.S.-based women’s liberation movement, shared victimization was offered as a premise for female- bonding. It is clearly not the case that women who are exposed to violence are weak. So why is it that U.S.-based and transnational black feminist movements continually tend to rely on notions of common oppression and shared victimhood? By promoting unity under shared oppressionand victimhood, feminist movements run the risk of female participants (further) internalizing weakness and victimhood. Furthermore, such a platform for activism encourages women “to conceive of themselves as ‘victims’ in order to feel that the feminist movement [is] relevant to their lives” (hooks, Sisterhood: Political Solidarity 397). This strategy excludes women who do not feel victimized; perhaps they fortunately have not experienced physical male violence, or have, but recognize themselves as strong survivors and do not relate to feminists who unify under the pretext of victimhood. The framework of shared victimization, or in Walker’s words, a shared “patriarchal wound,” also insinuates a reductive, fixed notion of patriarchy and male violence. Many feminists assert a notion of patriarchal violence that is “cross-culturally singular, monolithic,” and void of historically, culturally and geographically specific contextual realities (Mohanty 257). In order to organize effectively to change patriarchal violence where it exists, male violence against women must be studied and understood within specific historical, geographical, political and cultural contexts (260). In an interview included in Walker and Parmar’s text, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, Walker discusses her satisfaction with the fact that their film suggests “that the genital mutilation of women is really just a part of the global mutilation of women, the terrorization of women, one of the numerous things done to keep them in their place, under the foot of the dominant patriarchal culture” (282). Again, Walker assumes homogeneity of both female oppression and patriarchal violence, stripping away the specific historical, political and cultural contexts that are critical to understanding female genital mutilation. For example, poverty is deeply connected to the
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issue of limited (female) healthcare. Poor women around the world, “especially in the formerly colonized parts of the world, face limited health care and educational opportunities as well as the denial of economic and political agency…” (Grewal and Kaplan 61-2). As exemplified by Walker and Parmar, such realities are often absent from Western discourses of FGM. Instead, Western discourses often project solely a “horrified gaze” toward their subjects (62). The representation of FGM in Warrior Marks, which frames FGM as operating solely within violent patriarchal systems of oppression and washes over medical and political circumstances, is thus incomplete and perpetuates myths that are in fact counter-productive to initiatives to stop violence against women. What next? Recommendations for Positive Transnational Feminist Solidarity After closely analyzing Walker and Parmar’s failure to positively implement a transnational feminist framework in their anti-FGM project without reproducing violences against their subjects, it is pertinent to consider the possibility for positive transnational feminism. Having learned from Walker and Parmar’s shortcomings, we can now hypothesize about whether or not shared identification is possible within transnational feminism, without reproducing imperialist, colonialist, patriarchal, racist and sexist ideologies. I would like to argue that despite the violences perpetrated by projects such as Warrior Marks, transnational coalition movements, even those rooted in notions of shared identification, can be powerful and potentially productive tools in fighting global inequality and oppression. I believe that this possibility exists as long as the following guidelines are met: 1. The first requirement is self-reflection on personal privilege and positionality. It is critical that individuals participate in “honest critique and evaluation of one’s social status, values, [and] political beliefs” (hooks, Sisterhood: Political Solidarity 398). Walker and Parmar failed to acknowledge their positions of privilege and the differences between their experiences and those of African women. They simultaneously ignored the heterogeneity within African communities. However, that does not mean that the acknowledgement of difference cannot be accomplished, or that unity cannot exist hand-in-hand with difference: “Women do not need to eradicate difference to feel solidarity. We do not need to share common oppression to fight equally to end oppression” (411). Divisions among categories of race, sexuality, class, nation and religion are not “insurmountable barriers” (Lorde 285). By addressing these divisions and the privileges that exist within certain localities, women can work together as “equals, neither inferior nor superior, and devise ways to use each others’ difference to enrich our visions of our joint struggles,” within transnational feminist movements (290). 2. Transnational feminist movements must strive to “eliminate sexist socialization” (hooks, Sisterhood: Political Solidarity 398). At times it is easy, comfortable and even seemingly useful to employ the female-victim/male-perpetrator para-
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digm. We must be cautious of the violences that this reductive binary produces. Transnational feminist solidarity does not need to rely on monolithic conceptions of patriarchal violence or on singular notions of common oppression and com4 mon experiences among women, in order to gain momentum and be successful. 3. It must be acknowledged that discriminatory attitudes and practices can exist within “mainstream” feminisms, black feminisms, transnational feminisms and other activist coalition movements. Even “Third World scholars who write about their own cultures” may utilize strategies that “codify working-class histories and cultures as other” (256). For example, Nahid Toubia, who was born in Sudan, educated as a doctor in Egypt, and has since become a member of UNICEF, RAINBO, and the faculty at Columbia University, includes value judgments concerning FGM in her seemingly professional Recommendations for Action, International Programs: “Counseling guidelines must be developed for health personnel which would describe how to deal with different personal attitudes toward FGM and how to overcome resistance to change” (46). Specifically, Toubia’s statement about “resistance to change” highlights her opinion that change is necessary. This is not in and of itself a discriminatory assertion, however, such opinions must be carefully examined within transnational feminist activism so as not to reproduce the savior-victim binary, and so as not to cross the thin line between helping those with limited resources and dictating cultural norms by imposing imperialist change upon “Third World” bodies. 4. Finally, a platform of equality and empowerment must trump Orientalist frameworks that position the Western feminist as the savior and the “Third World” woman of color as the victim. While privileges can be usefully employed to help particular voices be heard, it is crucial that certain voices do not speak over others.5 Transnational feminism and activism takes many forms. From cinematic productions to legal advocacy, transnational feminist agendas have the power to productively make change, as long as the savior-victim dichotomy is cautiously avoided, allowing women’s voices to be heard across borders as they work together rather than simply one for another. 4 Mohanty details in Under Western Eyes: “[C]oncepts such as reproduction, the sexual division of labor, the family, marriage, household, patriarchy, and so on are often used without their specification in local cultural and historical contexts. Feminists [mis]use these concepts in providing explanations for women’s subordination, apparently assuming their universal applicability” (268). 5 It is pertinent to note that Walker’s voice literally talks over the voices of survivors of FGM in Warrior Marks. Other filmmakers, for example, Lourdes Portillo, a Chicana woman of color, successfully work within a transnational feminist framework while allowing the voices of their subjects to be heard, both literally and symbolically. In the documentary Señorita Extraviada, Portillo allows women’s agency to be heard as her interviews are loosely structured, allowing family members of murdered women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico to tell their stories without interruption. Furthermore, the technical use of subtitles for translations (as employed by Portillo), rather than voiceovers (as employed by Walker and Parmar), literally allow subjects’ voices to be heard.
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Transnational Feminism is Positive and Possible In conclusion, despite the inappropriate violences enacted within Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar’s anti-FGM documentary, Warrior Marks, it possible for us to envision positive transnational (black) feminism. In order to strive for a productive transnational feminist solidarity that does not recapitulate imperialist, colonialist, patriarchal, racist or sexist violences, multiple steps need to be taken. Such steps include identifying differences, countering sexist socialization, acknowledging that discrimination can exist within any activist coalition movement, and moving from reliance on notions of shared victimhood to a focus on equality and empowerment. By following these preliminary recommendations, it appears there is absolutely a possibility for transnational feminism to operate as a political tool for combating violence against women without feeding the structures of imperialism, colonialism and patriarchy that ‘other’ racialized “Third World” subjects. References Grewal, Inderpal, and Caren Kaplan. “Warrior Marks: Global Womanism’s Neo-Colonial Discourse in a Multicultural Context.” 1996. hooks, bell. “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory.” Words of Fire: An Anthol ogy of African- American Feminist Thought. Ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. New York: The New Press, 1995. hooks, bell. “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity.” Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation & Postcolonial Perspectives. Eds. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Johnson Reagon, Bernice. “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century, “Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. Ed. Barbara Smith. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000. Lorde, Audre. “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. Ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. New York: The New Press, 1995. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation & Postcolonial Perspectives. Eds. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Toubia, Nahid. Female Genital Mutilation: A Call for Global Action. 2nd Ed. New York: RAINBO, 1995. Walker, Alice, and Pratibha Parmar. Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993. Walker, Alice, and Pratibha Parmar, Dirs. Warrior Marks. England, 1993, Film. Walker, Alice. “In the Closet of the Soul.” Words of Fire: An Anthology of Afri can-American Feminist Thought. Ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. New York: The New Press, 1995.
J.M. COETZEE AND COLONIALISM’S BROKEN SUBJECTIVITY: The Afterward of Dusklands Michaela Kritzinger University of Cape Town, South Africa J.M Coetzee has offered a fictional project which, in its oblique evocations of a perverse metaphysics of power rather than materialist analysis, seems to ‘float… free of time and place even in the act of seeming to allude to a time and place which is specifically South African’1. It seems, in short, a decidedly a-historical response to a South African historical situation that, to those subjugated by it, has manifested itself in nearly every material aspect of daily life. Yet more than any heavy-handed, nominally fictional materialist text could, Coetzee’s fiction succeeds in evoking a colonial condition that endures long after democratization and which produces an impossible communicative situation between former colonized and colonizer (‘unwilling’ as he or she might have been). Coetzee’s fiction simulates the epistemic and linguistic conditions under which language loses its ability to signify anything other than power itself. An interesting paradox thus emerges: language is so ‘loaded’ with the past that it is curiously empty and toothless. For Coetzee, living as a white South African is perhaps not necessarily a problem of language in and of itself, but the kind of dilemma described above serves, in Coetzee’s fiction, as the most basic distillation of the essential impossibility of the South African historical situation. This essay will examine the Afterword of Coetzee’s first novel, Dusklands, and suggest a reading of the text that helps us to appreciate how Coetzee evokes a sense of the fractured language inherited by South Africans and, in turn, analogous problems associated with identity and its expression in the post-apartheid and post-colonial context. 2
In response to living as an ‘unwilling colonizer’ in a country marked by economic and political injustice, J.M Coetzee has offered at fictional project which in its oblique evocations of a perverse metaphysics of power rather than materialist analysis, seems to ‘float… free of time and place even in the act of seeming to 3 allude to a time and place which is specifically South African’ . Indeed, Coetzee has offered a seemingly a-historical response to a South African historical situation that, to those subjugated by it, has manifested itself in nearly every material aspect of daily life. While this criticism might seem damning as far as the liberal 4 left is concerned , it ultimately does not do justice to the complexity of Coetzee’s intellectual project. More than any heavy-handed, nominally fictional materialist text could, Coetzee’s fiction evokes a colonial condition that endures long after democratization and which – and this is perhaps crucial if we are to understand 1 Stephen Watson, “Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee”, Research in African Literatures, vol. 17, no. 3, Special Focus on South Africa (Autumn 1986), p. 374 2 Stephen Watson, “Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee”, Research in African Literatures, vol. 17, no. 3, Special Focus on South Africa (Autumn 1986), pp. 370-392 3 ibid. p. 374 4 Teresa Dovey, “Coetzee and His Critics: The Case of Dusklands”, English in Africa, vol. 14, no. 2 (Oct., 1987), p. 17
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the writer’s self-imposed exile to Australia – produces an impossible communicative situation between former colonized and colonizer (‘unwilling’ as he or she might have been). Coetzee’s fiction simulates the epistemic and linguistic conditions under which language loses its ability to signify anything other than power itself. An interesting paradox thus emerges: language is so ‘loaded’ with the past that it is curiously empty and toothless. For Coetzee, living as a white South African is perhaps not necessarily a problem of language in and of itself, but the kind of dilemma described above serves, in Coetzee’s fiction, as the most basic distillation of the essential impossibility of the South African historical situation Thus to defend, or at least give justice to, Coetzee’s project is to account for the peculiar obliqueness and petrified intellectualism of reality in his novels and to argue that while this world may not represent the material reality of colonialism and apartheid, it nevertheless evokes the linguistic and ideological structures that operate in such a context. Accordingly, it is the Afterword of Coetzee’s Dusklands that proves to be that work’s most fascinating and challenging piece of text. The purpose of Coetzee’s inclusion of this piece of history writing - written by the fictional S.J. Coetzee, whom critics have presumed to have been based on one N.A. Coetzee and more generally, the historians of the Van Riebeck society writing during the 5 ascendancy of Afrikaner power – seems straightforward. This simplicity, however, is deceptive. Initially, the text seems like it must simply be a parody of self-satisfied, racist apartheid historiography and, in turn, a critique of the error-ridden, biased histories that survive and continue to be propagated. But a closer examination of the text itself – with its wildly inconsistent writing style, its eccentric and at times contradictory arguments and digressions - erodes the confidence with which one can take seriously this Afterward as a coherent fiction emanating from a single fictional source (in this case, Dr. S.J. Coetzee). Coetzee seems to have very deliberately made it difficult, if not impossible, to ‘assimilate and reduce (this Afterward) 6 down to a single canonical meaning’ , leaving the reader with the curious sensation of having merely discovered, as Watson puts it, that the work is ‘little more than an artfully constructed void’ whose ‘solid core… lies elsewhere… in something that is 7 effaced, implicit, barely alluded to’ . This essay will argue that this effect is achieved through the careful insertion of various codes and voices that evoke a sense of the fractured language inherited by white South Africans. The novel transitions from the awful violence wrought by Jacobus Coetzee in the last section of his narrative into the present day refractions of this violence that seem as slippery and difficult to pin down as the writing style and source material of S.J. Coetzee’s Afterward. Initially, Coetzee firmly inserts the voice of a pompous, racist, white Afrikaner into S.J’s Afterward, but there is a slippage into 5 David Atwell, “‘The Labyrinth of My History’: J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Dusklands”, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 25, no. 1 (Autumn, 1991), p. 8 6 Watson, “Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee” 7 ibid. p. 377
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other historical and linguistic discourses throughout the text, giving the reader the impression that in the absence of coherence on the surface of the text, so even the unwilling colonizer is left with the broken subjectivity of colonialism, somewhere in between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, as Watson would have it. In other words, Coetzee is coding and signalling a variety of expressive modes and linguistic and historical source materials in order to do what a materialist work of fiction probably could not – namely, to give a sense of the colonialism’s linguistic legacy, supplying this by way of ‘communication as an absent context, or perhaps 8 a distant context’ . He succeeds in undermining the subjectivity of S.J. by creating a subtly patch-worked text in which, for example, arbitrary and seemingly pointless scientific and empirical discourses are evoked in such a way that we wonder whether this inserted mode of expression is not perhaps emanating from another subject entirely. This Afterward, as we shall see, is the culminating point of a 9 novel Dovey correctly describes as ‘an orchestration of voices’ . There are a few discernible linguistic modes and voices that emerge here and there throughout the Afterward. The one that alerts us most immediately to the heterogeneous nature of the text is the consistent insertion of anti-climactic and indeed at times humorous, lines which conclude paragraphs that S.J. Coetzee, if he existed, would probably want the reader to take seriously. For example, a paragraph recounting how Jacobus Coetzee’s daughter-in-law was the only surviving member of her murdered family concludes with the line, ‘It is to be hoped 10 that she remarried’ . In a similar fashion, quite clueless sympathy is pompously extended to Bushmen who have been wrenched from their traditional societies – ‘The herder had evolved one sad step further toward citizenship of the world. We 11 may take comfort in this thought’ .
One cannot help but hear J.M. Coetzee’s voice here. Just when S.J.’s prose becomes short and impactful – self-consciously trying to generate a sense of gravitas – its rhythm is ridiculed: ‘In all these scenes he strikes us as a silent man. We have no contemporary por12 trait. Doubtless he was bearded’ .
Not only is S.J.’s pomposity and subtle arrogance ridiculed here, but so is the extent to which he takes historical miscellanea seriously. With careful consider13 ation, he assures the reader, ‘At an appropriate point I will describe his wagon’ . 8 Watson, “Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee”, p. 377 9 Teresa Dovey, “Coetzee and His Critics: The Case of Dusklands”, p. 18 10 J.M Coetzee, Dusklands, (London, 2004), p. 112 11 ibid. p. 110 12 ibid. 13 ibid. p. 111
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Here J.M. Coetzee is parodying S.J. more particularly, but in other moments there is a broader critique of Enlightenment empiricism which seems to rely on quoting not S.J., but on the ghost texts which underlie the mastery of the world and of reason which men like him claim to have. On a number of occasions, statements about objects or events are followed by parenthetical facts. For example, a statement that about Jacobus’ party having encountered ‘hailstones as large 14 as pigeons’ eggs’ is followed by the parenthetical ‘(diameter 14mm)’ . Crucially, the text in parenthesis does not flow grammatically from the sentence it follows. It is the cold insertion of a rational, empirical discourse that at once emanates from the idea we might have of a man like S.J. Coetzee but which at the same time seem also to come from outside of the fictional character who is supposedly producing this text. It is intentional that such insertions should feel as if they come from outside the text – and, indeed, from S.J. himself – for Coetzee is seeking, as David Attwell puts it, ‘the objectification of epistemic conditions’ which have produced men like S.J. Coetzee and further, ‘a critical reconstruction of the 15 situation in which these texts were originally produced’ . When the moment at which the Hottentots are named by shipwrecked sailors is described, it is similarly encased in parenthesis. The clause ‘aten, taten, aten, taten, 16 sang the natives’ feels almost as if it were extracted from folklore, in turn evoking the discourse of adventure, of wildness and courage in the face of an unexplored land. The lines also contain a mournful solemnity that seems unlikely to have emanated from the historical person on which S.J. is modeled. But this mood is broken 17 by the concise explanation, ‘Hence the appellation Hottentot’ . In just two lines the reader can sense the tension between this strange unification - the mythic discourse and that of the calculated enumeration of conquest. While Gallagher dismisses S.J.’s 18 writing as merely the product of a mediocre academic , it is the sheer inconsistency of his work that arouses some suspicion as to whether we are in fact being lulled into a very carefully guided tour of the textual and linguistic strategies employed by an entire culture and system of power. A line like ‘It is well known that tobacco and 19 brandy were instrumental in corrupting Hottentot culture’ seems rehearsed and is propagandistic in its surety. But interestingly, though it is presenting the reader with a normative judgement, it is nevertheless one that rings hollow and is seemingly toothless in comparison to the diatribes of Eugene and Jacobus that came earlier 20 in the novel. This is, as Watson terms it, the language of tautology which colonial conquest reverts to once its initially violence has been completely normalized and its split subjectivity (and language) must endlessly be reinforced. 14 J.M Coetzee, Dusklands, p. 114 15 David Atwell, “‘The Labyrinth of My History’: J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Dusklands”, pp. 11-12 16 J.M Coetzee, Dusklands, p. 113 17 ibid. p. 113 18 Susan Gallagher, “The Master Myth of History: Dusklands” in A Story of South Africa: J.M. Coetzee’s Fiction in Context. (United States of America: Harvard University Press) 19 J.M Coetzee, Dusklands, p. 114 20 Watson, “Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee”, p. 373
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The self-generating nature of colonialist discourse is similarly reflected in the surfacing of anthropological discourse. Initially, this move would seem simply to reinforce J.M. Coetzee’s more straight-forward critique of racist and social Darwinist discourses. Indeed, the anthropologist’s crude fascination with the ‘savage’s’ genitalia is highlighted when, for example, attention is given to the 21 Bushman male’s ability to ‘force the testicles back into the body’ and the female’s 22 ‘noticeable protrusion of the labia minora’ . More interestingly, this anthropological discourse eventually breaks down into its barest elements: ‘Their craving for fat was insatiable. Loud was their jubilation when they came upon a stranded whale. Their kinship system. Romantic love (the story of the thwarted girl who threw herself over a precipice). Burial customs. Finger-ampu23 tation as a testament of mourning. The healing virtue of male urine.’
The insertion of a footnote in the middle of this passage makes its concluding 24 comment, ‘material enough for a book’ even more ironic, for indeed, the above has been material enough for many books. The breakdown of the text and then the insertion of that footnote seem to prove that this system of representation – and the way in which it is received – requires very little maintenance. Evoking in the reader’s mind an image of indigenous savagery no longer requires long, pseudo-academic explanations. Rather, it is sufficient merely to gesture in the direction of this body of knowledge. The reader receives this coded linguistic gesture even in spite of the fact that superficially they believe themselves to be reading a fictional text written by the character Dr. S.J. Coetzee. In this way, heterogeneous source material is threaded through the Afterward’s wandering narrative. Indeed there are countless other examples of when the other-ness (or, un-S.J. Coetzee-ness) of the text presses up against the reader’s general understanding in such a way that the order and stability of the reading is superficially maintained while its substance is drained from it, leaving behind a carcass of colonial language. It is in this Afterword, therefore, that Coetzee’s authorial goal is truly realized. Whereas the narratives of Eugene Dawn and Jacobus Coetzee had established a general theory of what a so-called ‘master myth of history’, the Afterward deconstructs its remnants and so addresses ‘the most basic 25 level of language itself ’ . In the wake of the European colonist’s first encounter with indigenous peoples, Coetzee sees an intellectual situation in which it is “through language itself, through those conventional representations which come to be accepted as either “natural” or universal” that we are colonized as much 21 22 23 24 25
J.M Coetzee, Dusklands, p. 117 ibid. p. 118 ibid. p. 118 J.M Coetzee, Dusklands, p. 118 Watson, “Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee”, p. 374
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as by any overt act of physical conquest” . In the Afterward of Dusklands the reader experiences the sensation of a language hollowed out of real meaning but nevertheless structurally and discursively potent. It is to this site of colonization that Coetzee points us to as one of the gravest and most intractable legacies of the colonial encounter. Indeed, the Afterward of Dusklands simulates the way that language born from violence proceeds and is disseminated. Crucially, this conception of language can serve as a metaphor for the status of post-colonial identity that Coetzee seems to allude to through his use of his own last name throughout the novel. It would be too simple to conclude that Coetzee is implicating himself – or other white South Africans - directly in the actions and fate of the novel’s characters. However, in extracting and abstracting his own name from himself, so the signal ‘Coetzee’ becomes a set-piece around which an infinite number of chapters could be written, moving concentrically outwards from the thing it once signified, which may or may not have been Coetzee himself. Coetzee tempts the simple-minded to draw a straight line from characters whose names derive from his own name to the author himself and/or white South Africans more generally. Interestingly, there seems no need to draw decide declare this hypothesis as unequivocally wrong. If anything, the ambiguity of this move is a nearly perfect simulation of the aforementioned tension that exists within Coetzee’s fiction – that is, between language/sign as empty and language/sign as endlessly derivative, as being loaded down by history and ideology. Coetzee plays this game with the reader in order to simulate the sense of the thorny problems associated with an identity making sense in a contemporary South Africa. This essay has analyzed the Afterward of Coetzee’s early novel Dusklands and gestured at an analytical framework that can reconcile Coetzee’s cold intellectualism with the social and political conditions to which we are looking for him to react. It has argued that the South African colonial and apartheid situation is not a purely linguistic problem, however the impossibility of a post-apartheid white identity, for example, may very well be expressed via a breakdown of language and, in turn, meaningful communication and the expression of identity.
26 ibid., p. 374
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References J.M Coetzee, Dusklands, (London, 2004) David Atwell, “‘The Labrynth of My History’: J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Dusklands”, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 25, no. 1 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 7-32 Teresa Dovey, “Coetzee and His Critics: The Case of Dusklands”, English in Africa, vol. 14, no. 2 (Oct., 1987), pp. 15-30 Stephen Watson, “Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee”, Research in African Literatures, vol. 17, no. 3, Special Focus on South Africa (Autumn 1986), pp. 370-392 Susan Gallagher, “The Master Myth of History: Dusklands” in A Story of South Africa: J.M. Coetzee’s Fiction in Context. (United States of America: Harvard University Press)
KINGDOM OF SILENCE: Racial Rage and Still Points in the Poetry of Rustum Kozain and Derek Walcott Anique Kruger University of Cape Town This article is a study of South African poet, Rustum Kozain’s, work in juxtaposition with that of Saint Lucian poet, Derek Walcott. The first part of this paper draws parallels between certain motifs and themes which prove to be major preoccupations for both poets; namely the theme of racial and political oppression which both poets actualise using the term “racial rage”. This section focuses particularly on how Kozain positions his poetic voice in the post-Apartheid moment in South Africa, examining the complex array of emotions his poetry presents as he explores his own identity in terms of those things, material and psychological, which the political implications of his race have, and continue to, deny to him. The second part of this paper provides a critical survey of the way in which both of these writers use poetry as a platform upon which to allow themselves to find some form of solace from the ever-burdening reality of their socio-political oppression. The article highlights the way is which both poets use silence or “still points” within their writing to diffuse the tension created by their racial rage, illustrating the way in which, even in the face of large-scale socio-political challenges, poetry can support small-scale fictional catharsis.
In this essay I shall consider selected poems from Rustum Kozain’s anthology This Carting Life. In so doing, I shall explore the way in which Kozain consciously places his poetic voice in the political and historical moment of post-Apartheid South Africa, presenting an intimate and personalised perspective of the way in which history is ever-present and ever-burdening. Throughout this essay I shall make references to the poetry and writing of Derek Walcott – one of Kozain’s self-professed poetic influences – drawing out the common themes of historical oppression, racial anger and moments of silence which appear in both Kozain and Walcott’s work. This essay will begin with a discussion regarding “racial rage” and its manifestations, followed by an investigation into the tension within Kozain’s poetry as it constantly searches for a way in which to articulate certain “still points” and what these “still points” actually mean. To end off, particular attention will be paid to the poem “Kingdom of rain”, in which we find that ultimate “still point” which precedes the loss of innocence through the awakening of political consciousness in a child. Before I begin, I wish to acknowledge the distinction between Kozain, as a poet, and the poetic persona he uses in his work. Although this poetry should certainly not be read as the personal ruminations and experiences of Kozain himself, I feel that it would be inappropriate to construct this essay around awkward references to “the voice”, “the persona” and “the speaker”. Referring to “the persona” necessitates the use of the personal pronoun “it” and, in poetry which deals with profound personal vicissitudes, the dehumanising effects of “it” contradicts the essence of this analysis. For this reason, as well as for the sake of fluency, I shall be referring to the voice in the poems as “Kozain”, thereby using “he”, but with
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full awareness that this is not the voice of Kozain himself, but rather of a persona or alter-ego which I have given the same name. Rustum Kozain’s poetry is infused with a racial awareness which cannot be ignored. He uses the inspired phrase “racial rage” in his poem “Cape Town, Jerusalem”, which we see originally in Walcott’s “The Arkansas Testament” in which he writes: but hairs fall on my collar as I write this in shorter days, darker years, more hatred, more racial rage.1
Whilst the voice in Walcott’s poem acknowledges his “racial rage”, which grows worse as he ages, the “racial rage” mentioned in Kozain’s poem is a point of tension, cited as a problem.2 “Cape Town, Jerusalem” is essentially a poem about introspection, turning away from politics and other external burdens, in search of silence. This is the first instance noted in this essay in which Kozain places his poetic persona in a political context, and also the first instance in which “still points” are alluded to. In the second stanza he writes: And turn more from the racial rage I need still inside myself 3 and later in the same stanza Yet in my silence there is this rage, still this rage.4
The use of the word “still” is ambiguous in both of the above extracts and can be interpreted in two ways. The first is that Kozain needs stillness inside himself to quell the racial rage. The second interpretation is that he feels that he is not yet ready to release himself of this rage; it endures within him, perhaps because, for some reason unknown even to himself, he feels that he still needs it. However, this second interpretation seems unlikely. Indeed, a repeated theme in Kozain’s poetry is the existence of an inner restlessness which constantly prompts the search for “still points”. The racial rage lies within the speaker and externally – it is not merely his own rage that he mu msst turn away from, but also the rage which manifests itself in the politics of South Africa. In “Try not to breathe” and “Winter 2003” this rage is likened to a cancer which has consumed generations of people and has been passed on to Kozain. Apartheid’s legacy of anger prevails. 1 Walcott, D. 1988. The Arkansas Testament. Suffolk: Richard Clay Ltd. p.113, part XVI. 2 Anderson, P. R. 2005.”Double Bass in Lit Net Seminar Room. p.2. 3 Kozain, R. 2005. Cape Town, Jerusalem in This Carting Life. Roggebaai: Kwela Books. p. 81, 15-16. 4 Kozain, R. Cape Town, Jerusalem. 24-26.
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Copper Sun, Scarlet Sea (…) through the valleys the swarming
millions of tumours you knew ate your mother, your father. The evergrowing tumours that burned your grandparents, and before them. And you are still here, cancerous. Burning with cancer and nothing, nothing is solace.5
When reading the anthology as a whole, a pattern of rage develops around certain triggers. The first trigger is the fact that Kozain believes that society is perpetually conditioned to reduce people of colour to anonymous entities – an “afterthought of the state”6 – even when they are, in fact, all citizens of the socalled “rainbow nation”. In addition, he has a preoccupation with possession; the fact that he wishes to “make his own” those things which he loves. Thus, the second trigger, which induces this rage, is the fact that his skin colour automatically deprives him, not only of the chance to own, literally, physical commodities, but also of the right to “own” those things which cannot be commodified: a view from a mountain top,7 “the crack of parched leaves under your feet” and “the slant of sun on a dusty sill”. 8 In his poetry and in his own writing, Kozain grapples with his perception that when white people see people of colour, they do not see them for what they are, but simply as “cipher(s) of criminality”.9 The rage which stems from this indiscriminate judgement of him - the impulsive clutching of a handbag – merely based on his race, is translated into his poetry. And your love could have gathered to you even those who, now again, still corner you in their eyes, children, the old, the young, all avatars of suspicion. That flicker of a glance and the world’s oldest anger flares.10
The tension here is that Kozain feels that the potential for a “colour-blind” South Africa is destroyed by the blindness of people to his identity which extends beyond his race. The perpetuated politics of racism rankles; those people who were once his oppressors, whom he could have brought himself to forgive and 5 Kozain, R. Try not to breathe, line 17-24. 6 Kozain, R. Try not to breathe, line 46. and Walcott, D. The Arkansas Testament, part XIX. 7 Kozain, R. 2005. Kingdom of rain in This Carting Life.Roggebaai: Kwela Books. p. 88. 8 Kozain, R. Try not to breathe 9 Kozain, R. 2002. Fuck Colouredness and the Coloured Voice. Chimurenga.Vol. 1: 45-47. 10 Kozain. Try not to breathe, lines 11-16.
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love, deprive him of this opportunity whenever their suspicious glances rub salt in the oldest wound, thereby inciting the “world’s oldest anger”. Kozain, the poet and the persona, grapples with the how to situate himself in this historically and politically burdened world in which even “But two doors down a cafeteria/ remind(ed)s me of my race”11. In his review of This Carting Life Cronin identifies the anxiety of ownership as the theme of loss; although I would argue that it is, rather, the theme of unjust deprivation, of that which was never owned to begin with. The prevailing sense of loss is not a pining for a dreadful apartheid past but, rather, a conviction that our present reality is less than we had struggled for, less, perhaps, than we deserved.12
This idea recurs in all of Kozain’s poetry, but is perhaps illustrated best in the poem “Kingdom of rain”. In this poem, set during the Apartheid moment, the young Kozain will learn that places, mountains, trees and birds “already fell beyond his (father’s) possessives”.13 There is a tone of indignation and anger at this deprivation which is emphasised by the deliberately placed swear-word – the baboon’s “fuck-you arse”14 – in the second-last line. This sentiment is echoed in Kozain’s personal writing, and here I shall quote at length in the interest of full tonal preservation:
That strange country of my father’s heart – his own, yet not his own, or, differently, not his own but which he made his own, through all the strange, twisted logic and heartbreak of this heartbreaking(sic)country. My father, in winter, somewhere along a steep side of Bainskloof outside Wellington, my father, who loved the natural world, tugging at an obstinate king protea which he would himself stubbornly plant in his garden in New Orleans, year after year, where it would wither and die, again and again, my father would say: ‘Protected. Conserved.For whom? This is God’s earth, it belongs to me as well.’ It is for him that I arrive now, suddenly, at this paragraph, crying as I write this, for which I am not ashamed, for which I forgive myself, knowing that in myself crouches something of that mangled masculinity I inherited from him. And my brother too. Here we are, heirs of apartheid.15
11 Walcott, D. 1988. The Arkansas Testament. Richard Clay Ltd: Suffolk. p.110, part XII. 12 Cronin, J. 2005. Kozain carts loss into our SA present as poetry in The Sunday Independent. 09 October 2005. p.18. 13 Kozain, R. 2005. Kingdom of rain in This Carting Life.Roggebaai: Kwela Books. p. 88, line 67. 14 Kozain, R. 2005. Kingdom of rain.Line 85. 15 Kozain, R. 2008. Dagga Part Two on http://rustumkozain.book.co.za/blog/2008/12/02/dagga-parttwo/.
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In this paragraph we see the rage in Kozain’s father’s futile act of rebellion through his attempt to reclaim, not what is lost, but what exists, yet is beyond his grasp because it has been denied to him – something more than just a Protea; dignity perhaps. We also see how Kozain situates himself and his brother within his immediate political moment as “heirs of apartheid.” Kozain uses his poetic voice in a similar attempt to reclaim these things which are denied to him. I seek my own myths: words for a bird, a sky the mountain. Make it mine.16
However, this anthology is not limited to its pervasive “racial rage”. Within this tormented discourse of discrimination, deprivation and the struggle to situate itself in the present political moment, there is also an urgent and persistent search for “still points”; for a silence within the incessant babble of the “deadening talk show of a nation”.17 In the same way that Walcott’s poetry calls for a history without any memory, streets without statues, a geography without myth.18
so Kozain uses his poetry as a platform which allows him to seek solace in the “still points” he creates. The only way to still the “racial rage” within is through the momentary amnesia found in the loss of history or the oblivion of stillness. They, made somehow known in this silence of vodka, will fade, as when we touch the nation-state will fade, disappear. Borders will lift from the earth and float to heaven already also gone and immigrants and refugees are no longer. No more does anyone wander from here to there, there to here. No more. And everyone will be a citizen everywhere, anywhere, here in this room.19 16 Kozain, R. 2005. Winter 2003 in This Carting Life.Roggebaai: Kwela Books. p. 109, lines 39-41. 17 Kozain. Try not to breathe, lines 24. 18 Walcott, D. 1979. The Star-Apple Kingdom in The Star-Apple Kingdom. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p.51. 19 Kozain, R. 2005. Now. I want to wake now in This Carting Life. Roggebaai: Kwela Books. p. 79,
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In this description, the burden of politics, which Kozain carries with him, even into the bedroom, is lifted. Here, in this rapturous escapism, we find a grim sense of catharsis; for Kozain’s poetry allows solace to be found in artificial, fictional “still points” which provide only ephemeral moments of comfort. Instead of picking Proteas, he attempts to blunt his consciousness of the politics and anger which permeate his reality. He does this through these “still points” which are found in Vodka, atop mountains and in relationships with other people. an impromptu marriage where you hoped for the still point we often were. That still point we again now seek, I hope we’ll find.20
It is no coincidence that the poems in which these “still points” feature most prominently, all use the same motif: rain. “Rain in May”, “Now. I want to wake now” and “Kingdom of rain” all speak of rain and “still points” and, although the connection between the two may not be explicit, it is undoubtedly present. Perhaps the strength of this association stems from the fact that rain traps people indoors, imposing its stillness on those who, otherwise, would not allow themselves to stop – for often stopping is the most violent thing we can do21. Indeed there is something about the rhythm of water drumming on the roof of a car, slowing down the world, which is mirrored in the rhythmic structure of the poems themselves. The rain precipitates a silence which is not entirely silent and could be comforting or ominous. In Kozain’s poetry the rain, more often than not, figures as a nostalgic precursor to the bitterness of loss. Before moving on to the final examination of “Kingdom of rain” I would like to dwell, briefly, on the section of Derek Walcott’s “The Star-Apple Kingdom” in which the silence of a scream erases history. He cried out at the turtles as one screams at children with the anger of love, it was the same scream which, in his childhood, had reversed an epoch that had bent back the leaves of his star-apple kingdom, made streams race uphill, pulled the water wheel backwards like the wheels in a film, and at that outcry, from the raw ropes and tendons of his throat, the sea buzzards receded and receded into specks, the osprey vanished.22 lines 26-28. 20 Kozain, R. 2005. Rain in May, Cape Town in This Carting Life.Roggebaai: Kwela Books. p. 79, lines 26-28. 21 A similar point, made by Zizek in his 2006 volume “Violence” was brought to my attention during K. Sofianos’ seminar Cape Town. Writing the City 22 Walcott, D. 1979. The Star-Apple Kingdom in The Star-Apple Kingdom. p.57
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And a few lines later: but she heard as a dog hears, as all the underdogs of the world hear, the pitched shriek of silence. Star-apples rained to the ground in that silence, the silence was the green of cities undersea, and the silence lasted for half an hour in that single second, a seashell silence, resounding with silence, and the men with barbed-wire beards saw in that creak of light that was made between the noises of the world…23
Simply by examining these few lines, it should be clear that Walcott and Kozain are in conversation with each other. In Walcott’s silence and Kozain’s “still points” they find a place which is somewhere between the “noises of the world”, separated from the “talk show of a nation”, where history rewinds itself, water wheels are pulled backwards and “the nation-state will fade, disappear.” The dissolution of this “racial rage” does not appear to lie in the creation of something new, but rather in the symbolic undoing of what has been done. On a poetic platform, solace is found for this “racial rage”; the tension in the poetry is diffused, but the political message is unsatisfactory: hope lies in a “history without memory” and the prophetic haze of a vodka bottle – ultimately, that which is unattainable. In “Kingdom of rain” we see what is, in the contextual chronology of the life presented in the anthology, the first and probably the only true “still point”: the “still point” which sets into motion Kozain’s insatiable search for pure silence. It is during young Kozain’s trip up the mountain with his father and brother that he becomes politically aware for the first time. They are denied access to the “Kleurlingkant”24 of the mountain and the family is humiliated; laughed at by the “bronzed impatient white youth”.25 It is here that the eternal restlessness of “racial rage” caused by the unjust deprivation of opportunity, as opposed to the deprivation of things, as well as a loss of dignity, first enters the soul of this child. It is here that he becomes “the child who learns this pain past metaphor.”26 But, before he is confronted with the “ever-darkening turn of (his) growing up”,27some benevolent force – be it nature, providence or the universe – grants this young boy that which will be denied to him for the rest of his life: a transient, yet wholly perfect,“still point”. Suddenly, within the gale: 23 Walcott, D. 1979. The Star-Apple Kingdom in The Star-Apple Kingdom. p.57 24 Kozain, R. 2005. Kingdom of rain.Line 78. 25 Kozain, R. 2005. Kingdom of rain.Line 80. 26 Kozain, R. 2005. Kingdom of rain.Line 83. 27 Kozain, R. 2005. Kingdom of rain.Line 43.
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Silence. A sudden still point As the universe pauses, inhales And gathers its grace. Then the silent, feather-like fall Of snowflakes as to us it grants A brief bright kingdom28
The unlikely snow on the Paarl mountain-top slows down the poem and grants a silence so absolute that it is quieter even than the rain. Grace – the undeserved gift of a star-apple kingdom, a kingdom of rain – is granted to this child in its purest form, just once, before his painful initiation into political consciousness. This essay began by considering the way in which Kozain struggles to situate his poetic voice in South Africa’s current political moment, acknowledging the common theme of “racial rage” which saturates both Kozain and Walcott’s poetry. The restlessness characterisedby this rage was juxtaposed with the motif of rain – “still points” – which recurs throughout the poems. This analysis serves to highlight the fact that the conversation between Kozain and Walcott is louder than it initially appears to be, the recurrent theme being silence. In the work of both poets we see that one’s politics and one’s identity are wholly inseparable, moulding and distorting each other constantly. Their respective quests for solace from the ever-burdening reality of racism realistically remain largely unresolved, despite the fact that they do manage to find some form of artificial respite in the fictional realm of poetry. The overwhelmingly climactic diffusion of these tensions within the poems themselves is transient, abstract, ideological and, therefore, inconsequential in the greater political scheme of things. But it is beautiful nonetheless.
28 Kozain, R. 2005. Kingdom of rain.Lines 33-38.
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References Anderson, P. R. 2005. Double Bass inLit Net Seminar Room.http://www.oulitnet. co.za/ seminarroom/this_carting_life.asp [online: 16 May 2011] Cronin, J. 2005. Kozain carts loss into our SA present as poetry. The Sunday Independent. 09 October 2005. Kozain, R. 2002. Fuck Colouredness and the Coloured Voice. Chimurenga. Vol. 1: 45-47 Kozain, R. 2005. This Carting Life .Roggebaai: Kwela Books. The following poems were included from the abovementioned anthology: “Cape Town: Jerusalem” p.81 “Try not to breathe” p.104 “Kingdom of Rain” p.87 “Winter 2003” p.108 “Now. I want to wake now.” p.93 “Rain in May, Cape Town.” p.79 Kozain, R. 2008. Dagga Part Two.http://rustumkozain.book.co.za/ blog/2008/12/02/dagga-part-two/. [online: 09 May 2011] Walcott, D. 1988. The Arkansas Testament. Suffolk: Richard Clay Ltd. Walcott, D. 1979. The Star-Apple Kingdom. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Walcott, D. 1998. The Muse of History. What the Twilight Says. London: Faber and Faber Limited.
FROM DARLING TO DEVIANT An analysis of Uganda’s development under Yoweri K. Museveni and the international donor community Rebecca Asch NYU Gallatin When Yoweri K. Museveni rose to power in 1986, he advocated for a vision of development that was formulated during the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) guerilla stages. This vision, called the Ten Point Program, represented a clean break from its predecessor’s policies and practices, arguing that post-independence leaders had exacerbated problems from the colonial era. In short, it emphasized political participation and civic education at all levels, a focus on domestic interests and regional cooperation, and a hybrid and independent economy combining capitalist and socialist policies. But the program was short-lived once the new NRM government realized it would need to look elsewhere for economic assistance if it was to begin to recover from the years of political and economic turmoil that had plagued Uganda since independence. Thus, Museveni reluctantly turned to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance. The requirements of economic liberalization that accompanied this assistance compromised much of Museveni’s original developmental vision. Even so, Uganda fared well under the reforms relative to other African states, and the donor community was quick to portray the country as an economic success story and Museveni as the leader of a progressive “new breed” of African rulers. Significantly, this positive reputation was not merely a result of Uganda’s economic growth, but also of donors’ geopolitical interests. President Museveni consequently enjoyed a considerable amount of power in donor relations for many years. But after a decade or so, the donor community’s policy toward Museveni began to fracture as Uganda’s development path and Museveni’s behavior tested donors’ previously unwavering public support. The relationship between the donor community and President Museveni has become increasingly inconsistent and fragile, as donors have had differing and fragmented reactions to these shifts (often an indication of their varying interests in Uganda). At the risk of minimizing his achievements, Museveni’s power trajectory has evolved from a change-oriented populist leader committed to political participation and independent economic development to one who is clinging to power at great costs.
“No one should think that what is happening today is a mere change of guard: it is a fundamental change in the politics of our country.” - President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in his 1986 speech at the Parliament of Uganda When Museveni came to power in 1986, he was a beacon of hope for Uganda and soon for much of the international community as well. He appeared to represent a clean break from the political, social and economic turmoil that had plagued Uganda since its independence in 1962.
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A Brief Overview of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s Life Pre-Presidency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was born in 1945 or 1946 (the exact date is unknown) in southwestern Uganda to cattle-raising parents during the colonial era. In high school, he became a born-again fundamentalist Christian, and then subscribed to a Marxist orientation of African liberation at the University of Dar es Salaam under Walter Rodney, where he helped to found and chair the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front (USARF). Museveni took a break from university to undergo guerilla training and combat for the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) in the late 1960s, and then returned to Dar es Salaam to write his thesis on the applicability of Franz Fanon’srevolutionary violence to postcolonial Africa. After graduating, he briefly held a position in President Milton Obote’s intelligence service, which was terminated upon Idi Amin’s coup d’état and he was subsequently exiled back to Tanzania. Following membership in a failed guerilla attempt to overthrow Amin, Museveni formed another movement, the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA), which fought alongside Tanzania in the 1979-1980 Tanzania-Uganda war to successfully end Amin’s rule. He then held the positions of Deputy Head of the Army and Minister of Defense under the successor government. Museveni ran as a presidential candidate under the Uganda People’s Movement (UPM) in the disputed 1980 election, and after losing to Milton Obote, fled to the bush in protest and waged a guerilla war against the government (Oloka-Onyango, 2004). The Birth of the National Resistance Movement/Army While in the bush, Museveni and his followers formed the National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A), whose goal was to overthrow the government and implement major reforms to the political and economic structure of the country. After the fall of Obote II to General Tito Lutwa Okello through a coup d’état in 1985, the Movement began underground recruitment and training nationwide. The Movement advocated for and utilized grassroots democracy and mobilization to spread their influence. They formed Resistance Committees (RCs), which were comprised of elected officials at the local level responsible for mobilizing and educating citizens about political participation and the Movement’s vision. It was during this period that they formulated the Ten Point Program, which articulated why the NRM/A was fighting the Ugandan government. The basis for the program was a belief that leaders in Uganda’s postcolonial period had exacerbated the political, economic and social problems of the colonial era, and the country desperately needed a new direction. The ten points of the program are as follows: 1. An introduction of democracy organized at all levels from the village up 2. An elimination of insecurity through local governments and politi cized security forces
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3. The fostering of national unity through the removal of sectarian politics 4. An end to interference of foreign interests in domestic affairs through a strengthening of the Ugandan government in developing independent priorities 5. The construction of an independent, regionally integrated and self-sustaining national economy 6. The provision of basic social services such as water, health, education and housing, especially to areas affected by violence under Obote and Amin 7. The elimination of corruption, especially in the public sector; 8. A resolution of issues for victims of past governments, including land conflict and proper salaries for workers and public servants 9. Greater cooperation with other African countries, especially East African neighbors, to integrate markets and better allocate resources 10. A diversification of the economy through a combination of capitalist and socialist policies (Library of Congress).
This program formed the basis of the NRM government under President Museveni in 1986 when they took power from General Okello. In his first public speech as president at the Parliament of Uganda, Museveni articulated this vision, assuring the people of Uganda and international spectators that, “[n]o one should think of that what is happening today is a mere change of guard: it is a fundamental change of our country.” As we shall see, Museveni has in many ways strayed from this promise, proving to resemble his predecessors and the “old breed” of African leaders more than he might care to admit. Development Under Museveni’s NRM Government in 1986 For nearly the full first year of President Museveni’s rule, he remained loyal to the NRM’s Ten Point Program in his development policy. His distrust of internationalfinancial institutions (IFIs) and his conviction that Uganda needed to develop an economy independent of foreign interests drove him to resist external assistance and implement more interventionist policies that were viewed unfavorably by IFIs. For instance, he imposed price controls and a fixed exchange rate, increased public wages by 50 percent and the deficit on a commitment basis, relied on financing from the local banking sector, and retained most parastatals (Conable, 1987). The World Bank arrogantly described the NRM’s economic policy during this period as a “brief experiment … [until] a consensus emerged for a reversal in economic policies” (emphasis added, Conable, 1987: 23). Museveni’s blatant defiance of the World Bank and the IMF’s neoliberal orthodoxy was short-lived, and by 1987 the Government of Uganda (GoU) had approached the IFIs for support. It is no wonder, as the NRM government had inherited a severely damaged economy.
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A (Very) Brief Overview of Uganda’s Political and Economic Trajectory Before Museveni When British colonists established Uganda as a protectorate in 1894, they did so through relations with the Buganda kingdom, which had a hierarchical system that was similar to their own. They gradually acquired more territory, mainly through military conquest. The Baganda enjoyed preferential treatment through non-settler British rule: they were granted autonomy through the 1900 Agreement, provided with social services and other fruits of colonial power, and their elite were recruited as implementers of British rule. During this time the British demarcated districts based on ethnic boundaries, integrated the economy into the imperial system through the exportation of coffee and cotton, and created divisions of labor and political power that endure today (Leggett, 2001). Upon independence in 1962, Uganda’s greatest obstacle perhaps was overcoming these divisions to foster a sense of nationhood and a more equal distribution of power and resources, in particular building up infrastructure and economic integration in the North that had been excluded during the colonial era, and reducing dependence on revenue from the export-oriented structure of the economy. Between independence and Museveni’s rise to power, Uganda had undergone a succession of unworthy leaders. The first government to be elected was lead by Prime Minister Milton Obote and the Buganda Kabaka (King) as President, which deteriorated within four years when Obote expelled the Kabaka from his post and claimed the presidency for himself. Under Obote I, economic policy was rather interventionist, which threatened Western powers in the context of the Cold War. After a coup d’état in 1971, Idi Amin Dada came to power in a shift that was especially welcomed by the Baganda and capitalist Western powers. But this celebration did not last long, as Amin’s rule proved to be the most ruthless in Uganda’s postcolonial history through his use of brutal force targeting the Lango and Acholi of the North, and his utter disregard for human rights, the rule of law and parliamentary democracy. After expelling all ninety thousand Asians from the country, who comprised the majority of the commercial sector at the time (they had been brought in by the British for labor but prohibited from buying land for farming, so they moved into the commercial sector), Amin divided their businesses amongst his cronies and himself, and watched the economy collapse. Amin was finally overthrown in 1979 when Kampala fell to Tanzania during a counterattack (in which Museveni’s guerilla movement FRONASA was involved) in a war Ugandans now call the Liberation War. After three successors in two years, elections were held in 1980, with Museveni as a presidential candidate, although Obote was declared President again and the results were greatly disputed (Leggett, 2001). In protest, Museveni fled to the bush to form the NRM/A. As one might expect during a period characterized by such instability and turmoil, overall economic development since independence had been unsuccessful. In 1962, Uganda’s agricultural sector comprised two-thirds of GDP (the majority
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of which was from coffee and cotton – commodities with volatile prices in the world market that had just dropped), while industrial and service sectors were insignificant contributors (Economic Development in Uganda, 1962). After GDP per annum growth of about 5 percent under Obote I, the economy under Amin, especially the industrial sector, took a serious hit: per capita GNP fell by 25 percent, exports and imports by 40 percent in real terms between1974 and 1978, and inflation was rampant (Uganda Consultative Group, 1979). Following a decade of stagnating external assistance under Amin, loans and assistance from IFIs (mainly the World Bank) resumed at higher levels than ever before under Obote II, rising from US$64.2 million in 1979 to US$202.9 million in 1983, mainly directed towards institutional reforms and projects such as railways and telecommunications (Conable, 1987). Slowly under Obote II, the economy began to recover: exports and GDP rose and inflation was reduced. Still, economic activity was about two-thirds of what it had been in 1970, and foreign debt was on the rise. By the time Museveni came to power in 1986, the result of years of turmoil and the recent violence between the NRA and the government was a severely damaged infrastructure and manufacturing sector, a deteriorated power and water supply, an inflation rate of over 200 percent, and significant external debt (equivalent to one half of the FY1984/85 export of goods and services), among other grave political, economic and social burdens. Furthermore, international coffee prices fell by about 29 percent that year (Conable, 1987), a major upset to Uganda’s economy, which had greatly relied on coffee as a primary export since the colonial era. It is in this context that Museveni abandoned his original developmental vision within his first year in power and turned to IFIs for assistance. Structural Adjustment and Donor Relations After a few months of negotiations, Uganda launched its first round of structural adjustment in 1987, officially titled the Economic Recovery Program (ERP). The program included macroeconomic stabilization measures such as currency devaluation, liberalization of the exchange rate, reduction of government expenditure and privatization of industry, but also more interventionist measures such as price incentives for export crops (coffee, cotton and tea), increases in the price of petroleum, and price and profit margin control on sugar, soap and salt. In its initial report outlining the program, the World Bank was careful to frame these controls as short-term stabilization measures, emphasizing that the medium- and long-term goal of the program was to reduce government intervention. The new credits (not including backlogged credits from previous years) disbursed for this four-year program totaled over US$500 million, thus drastically increasing Uganda’s foreign debt and dependence on assistance (Conable, 1987). With this, Museveni had chugged the “poisoned chalice of devaluation, privatization, removal of import control … and ruthless downsizing of the public sector” (Davis, 2004: 18). The President himself was more defensive of this decision to abandon his original develop-
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mental vision, stating: “…the IMF helped us [by] making us realize the importance of macroeconomic tools, such as letting the prices find their own level. This was something many of our people did not understand” (Museveni, 1997: 181). Along with Museveni’s compliance with IFIs’ economic prescriptions came great praise and approval by the donor community (Hauser, 1999: 626). Scholars have put forth many explanations for what some consider an “irrational exuberance” by the West for Museveni (Rosenblum 2002, cited in Hauser 1999). One argument is that Museveni was deemed the “guru of a ‘new breed’” of African leaders (alongside Kagame of Rwanda, Zenawi of Ethiopia and Aferworki of Eritrea) that marked a departure from the “bigman syndrome” that had characterized many African states since independence (Oloka- Onyango, 2004). Many leaders in this new breed rose to power through guerilla movements, were typically young, came from militarist origins, preferred centralized governance, and embraced neoliberalism. A 1997 Times article writes that Museveni “…started an ideological movement that is reshaping much of Africa, spelling the end of corrupt, strong-man governments…” (cited in Oloka-Onyango, 2004). While some may argue that Museveni embodied the optimism of international spectators for Africa’s new direction, a closer look at Museveni’s foreign policy in the region sheds light on Western donors’ vested interest in portraying him in such a positive light following his adherence to neoliberal economic policy. For instance, Museveni supported the South Sudanese rebels in their pursuit of greater autonomy, which aligns with United States’ interests in the “war” on terror, because Khartoum is considered a state sponsor of terrorism and a safe-haven for international terrorist groups (Office of Coordinator for Counterterrorism, 2001). Museveni also supported Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front in the fight against Habyarimana’s regime, and then allowed Entebbe to be used as a hub for logistical support when the West decided to provide aid in the aftermath. In addition, Uganda signed a bilateral treaty exempting the U.S. service persons from the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, and supported the war in Iraq. Others have noted Great Britain and the U.S.’s dependence on Museveni’s leadership in the region as a “reliable partner in the post-Cold war era” and “an ‘island of stability’ amidst chaos” (Hauser, 1999: 634). Museveni is an important ally in the Great Lakes Region (particularly to the United States), and he “…thus gets away with actions that would not be tolerated by an old-breed leader,” (Oloka-Onyango, 2004) a point that I will return to later. Another reason for the donor community’s overwhelming endorsement of Museveni was a need to point to an African success story amidst questionable results from other African states that were undergoing structural adjustment. Western donors had to justify their spending back home (and possibly to themselves) with reasons other than the aforementioned geopolitical interests, so painting Ugan-
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da as a success story of these loans and Museveni as a reliable and progressive African leader alleviated some of that pressure. Through this framework, donors were also able to attribute failures in other African countries to a lack of cooperation by recipient governments rather than to the adoption of their policies (Hauser, 1999: 634). In the famous Berg Report, one can trace the birth of this explanation, which blames Africa’s economic problems on African governments and advocates neoliberal policy as a solution (Berg, 1981: 4). With this said, the praise Museveni received was not undeserved. Uganda’s economy did enjoy notable growth and development, particularly under the first two rounds of structural adjustment. Between 1989 and 1999, GDP grew at an average annual rate of7.4 percent and 3.9 percent per capita; exports of goods and services grew at 14.6 percent; agriculture as a percent of GDP was reduced from 56.8 percent to 38.5 percent, while industry and services grew by approximately 9 percent. Furthermore, Uganda’s success in reducing HIV/AIDS rates received a great amount of warranted attention. When Museveni came to power in 1986, the country was in the midst of a major epidemic, and in 1988 Uganda had the highest rate of HIV infection on the continent, peaking in urban areas at nearly 30 percent in the early 1990s. After cooperating with donors and other organizations, implementing a strong educational and prevention program, and an unusually vocal approach to HIV/AIDS for the region, the rate was reduced to less than 10 percent by 2001 (Kirby, 2008). In the midst of these notable achievements and growth, external debt rose from US$2,196 million to US$3,498 million between 1989 and 1999, mostly to the World Bank, which brought debt as a percent of GDP from 41.6 percent to 58.3 percent (Development Economics LDB Database, 2011). With these additional loans, the GoU became even more heavily dependent on foreign assistance. One might expect this indebtedness to render the GoU at the mercy of the donor community to dictate government expenditure and policy, but in reality Museveni enjoyed significant negotiating power relative to other African leaders in similar loan recipient positions. This was due to the combination of the initial positive results of loans on Uganda’s economy, as well as Museveni’s special position as an important ally to the West in the region. This does not mean that loans did not come with strings attached, and that Western donors were completely satisfied with Museveni’s government. Rather, these conditions and pressures were carried out in less public and threatening ways than they were in other African states in order to protect Uganda’s reputation as an economic success story. The donor community was still attempting to “govern [Uganda] from afar… moving beyond the myth of the sovereign African nation-state...” (Ferguson, 2006:87). Oloka-Onyango (2004) notes that in the 1990s, Uganda had more political prisoners than Kenya, was involved in more conflict-generating activities, and had a political system that was less conducive to consolidation of peace than Kenya.
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Even so, donors threatened to suspend assistance to Kenya in 1991 and Malawi in 1992 (both countries dependent on foreign assistance like Uganda) in an attempt to force them to hold multiparty elections, which they subsequently agreed to. In Uganda, the donor community used persuasion tactics instead of threats to encourage multipartyism (Hauser, 1999: 623-624). Museveni insisted that the NRM’s “no-party system” was crucial to avoid a return to sectarian politics that had characterized Uganda since the colonial era, claiming that the NRM was a “movement” and not a political party. The two sides came to a compromise for the 1994 Constituent Assembly elections in which Museveni agreed to allow opposition to the Movement system to run (albeit without party affiliation), suspend the mchaka mchaka political education during the campaign and election period (which was accused of unfairly advancing the NRM’s political agenda), and allow an independent auditor to monitor donor funds to the elections (Hauser, 1999: 627). Museveni’s success in avoiding a transition to multiparty elections in the mid-1990s demonstrates the level of power that he held in these negotiations. Another illustration of this power dynamic may be seen in Peter Chappell’s 1997 documentary Our Friends at the Bank, which follows negotiations in the mid1990s between Museveni and IFI officials. During this period, Museveni was pushing for donor funding for roads, insisting that this would lead to peasants being able to market their crops, greater trade and investment in rural areas, and eventually, “when incomes rise, other things will follow.” The Bank, in its “kinder, gentler neoliberalism” phase, insisted that without education and health this trade is irrelevant. The donor community was also dissatisfied with the lack of transparency in the government’s large defense budget. James Wolfensohn (World Bank President between 1995-2005) encapsulates this conflict and power dynamic during a conversation with Museveni: “I bet you’ll get your way, which I think you’re used to doing. But you’ll have a lot of undereducated people using the roads.” Indeed, Museveni did get his way and succeeded in securing funding for the Road Sector Development Program (RSDP) as well as major debt relief. This donor-Museveni power dynamic certainly had consequences for Uganda both politically and economically. As far as the defense budget was concerned, donors turned a blind eye to controversial government spending and policy, particularly in regards to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war. In the late 1980s, the LRA in the North took up arms against the NRM government. When they failed to gain the following they had hoped for, they attacked, abducted and forcibly recruited fellow northerners to fill their ranks. In response, the GoU implemented a policy of forced displacement into camps in affected districts. While Museveni used this insurgency to justify the GoU’s high defense expenditure (likening LRA Commander Joseph Kony to Hitler: “Did donors say it was wrong to fight Hitler? … Ask your [British Defense Minister] how much he spends”), a closer examination begs the question of where the money was going. People in the IDP camps were living in abysmal conditions, and were dependent on insufficient services
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from humanitarian aid organizations such as the World Food Program, not on government services. In addition, there were very few soldiers deployed to protect the IDP camps (in 2004, there were 6 UPDF soldiers to protect 63,000 people in Pabbo camp (Kibona-Clark, 2005)), which was supposedly the purpose of displacement in the first place, and the U.S. was providing training to the UPDF. Indeed, it was later revealed that much of the defense budget was going to “ghost soldiers,” a phenomenon in which troops were over-reported and high military officials were pocketing the surplus (“UPDF Commanders,” 2009). Others have argued that Museveni and his government profited from the surge in aid received during the war (Kiggundu, 2010). In any case, donors’ acceptance of Museveni’s lack of transparency in his defense budget fed into this corrupt and destructive policy during the LRA war. Hauser (1999) argues that donors’ reluctance to pressure Museveni in the same way that they did other African leaders has had negative consequences on the state of democracy in Uganda. She makes a case that Uganda lost an opportunity when the donor community failed to secure multiparty elections in 1994 during the constitutional writing process; a task that the elected assembly was responsible for. Furthermore, by failing to set a precedent at an early stage of loans that corruption and alienation of opposing political parties were unacceptable, the donor community implicitly tolerated these practices, which have worsened since. Hauser argues, “…donor priorities in Uganda have focused mainly on institutions and have ignored the growing political divisiveness which threatens to undermine political reforms…” (1999: 635). Oloko-Onyango (2004) agrees, declaring that: “Western powers and the IFIs bear considerable responsibility for nurturing this new breed [that] has operated to consolidate dictatorship and heighten conflict.” Inconsistent Development and Donor Relations in Uganda in the 21st Century From the end of the 20th century to the present, development in Uganda and consequently Museveni’s relationship with the donor community have been characterized by inconsistency and tension. In general, aggregate economic statistics indicate continuity with Uganda’s positive development trajectory of the late 1980s-early 1990s, while a closer look at disaggregated measurements as well as a consideration of Museveni’s increasingly severe actions indicate a backsliding into instability and inequality. These mixed signals, coupled with the West’s past glorification of Museveni, contribute to an inconsistent and fragmented shift in donor relations. There are many positive aspects of Uganda’s development trajectory over the past decade that are worth noting. Uganda’s GDP growth per annum has remained high at 7.1 percent in 2009; the economy has diversified, with agriculture comprising 24.7 percent of GDP, down from 56.8 percent in 1989; and growth in the industry and service sectors (Development Economics LDB Database, 2011). Although the
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Juba Peace Talks did not result in the signing of an agreement with the LRA, the rebels have ceased attacks and peace has returned to the North. Uganda is a member of the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), a step toward one of Museveni’s original development goals to further integrate the economy in the region. The GoU has shifted towards a more comprehensive developmental vision through the recent introduction of the National Development Plan (NDP), which differs from its predecessor, the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), in its broader focus that intertwines poverty eradication and economic growth. Therefore, in addition to its poverty reduction goals, it emphasizes public-private partnerships, agricultural growth, industrialization and value-addition, human resource and private sector development, and investment in physical infrastructure. Indeed, under the PEAP, poverty was significantly reduced from 56 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2006 (Republic of Uganda, 2010). Other positive indicators for Uganda’s development in the past decade include: an increase in foreign direct investment, life expectancy, primary completion rate, ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary school, and immunizations; and a reduction inadolescent fertility rate, prevalence of HIV, child mortality rate, and time required to start a business (Uganda Data Profile, 2010). For these advancements, the GoU has been commended for its progress toward achieving Millennium Development Goals and its sustained development. Despite these advances, though, a closer look at disaggregated development indicators as well as trends in Museveni’s behavior complicates this picture. For instance, despite overall poverty reduction, regional and rural-urban inequalities have been on the rise: there has been an increase in the Gini coefficient (.35 in 1997 to .41 in 2006), poverty in the North is almost three times that of the West, and job opportunities are increasing in urban areas andcentral Uganda, but not in rural areas in the North and East (Carroll & Hendrixson, 2010). This increasing inequality has occurred in spite of the proliferation of credit agreements and government plans since the mid-1990s that were aimed at reducing poverty and carrying out reconstruction efforts, particularly in the North and other rural areas (Poverty Eradication Action Plan; Uganda Joint Assistance Strategy; Peace, Recovery and Development Plan; Poverty Reduction Support Credit, among others). In addition, the decentralization introduced by the 1995 Constitution has in many ways proved ineffective, as the delegation of responsibility to local governments has not been coupled with sufficient funding or discretionary authority (Carroll & Hendrixson, 2010). Museveni has actually multiplied the number of districts in Uganda, especially in the North, exacerbating these problems with service delivery (in 1986 there were 33 districts, today there are 111) (Green, 2011). Furthermore, Uganda is experiencing rapid population growth (approximately 32 million today from 6.8 million in 1960, with a median age of 15 years), which means that despite a steady GDP growth, GDP per capita is actually decreasing. Education is another contentious issue in Uganda’s development: the
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GoU introduced universal primary education (UPE) in 1997 following pressure from IFIs, but did so without properly building capacity for the school system to handle the surge in enrollment, and the quality of primary education consequently plummeted. The Bank’s assessments of UPE’s implementation have been quite critical: “More than 100 students packed into one classroom, sitting on the floor due to the absence of desks, lacking reading and writing materials, and led by one teacher, is a harsh yet common scene…” (World Bank IEG, 2005). In another report, the Bank cites “wastage and leakage” of public funds for UPE grants, as well as Ministry of Health drug procurement and National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) (ADB East Africa Dept., 2010: 5). These measures that reveal the more negative trends in Uganda’s recent development trajectory present a challenge to the donor community, which had previously put Museveni on a pedestal for his successful economic practices. Museveni’s political behavior during this period further tested donors’ previously unwavering public support. In 1995, the U.S. embassy in Kampala first attempted to shift from subtle to overt and public pressure to convert Uganda to a multiparty system. The embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) issued a statement expressing dissatisfaction with the 1995 constitution’s provision to hold a referendum in 2000 on the question of moving to a multiparty system, rather than writing the system in from the start. This change in strategy was unwelcomed by other U.S. officials and European donors, and the DCM ceased this public pressure (Hauser, 1999: 628-630). However, defections in the donor community from this more subtle pressure strategy have since increased, creating a fragmented and inconsistent donor policy towards Museveni. In the 1996 elections, Museveni demonstrated what Oloka-Onyango (2004) calls a “disturbing level of intolerance” to the opposition through violence, intimidation and gerrymandering. Another red flag went up during the 2001 campaign and election period, when Museveni accused opposition candidate Dr. Kizza Besigye of being a traitor, having HIV/AIDS, and then attempted to block his candidacy. This “demonstrated that the Movement system was merely an edifice erected for the accommodation of Museveni’s continued retention of power” (Oloka-Onyango, 2004). In 2005, the GoU held a referendum on the question of a transition to a multi-party system, but in a rather blatant tradeoff included a provision for the removal of presidential term limits as well: “what appeared to be reforms in the political arena have actually turned out to be further closure” (Oloka-Onyango, 2004). Norbert Mao, then-member of parliament, called the referendum a “chalice laced with poison” (Cargill, 2004: 27). The 2006 multi-party elections were even more tarnished than the 2001 elections, as Museveni charged Besigye with rape and treason during the campaign period, announced that the opposition intended to burn buildings in Kampala, and used state funds to campaign. In an aptly named Economist article (2 March 2006) “Democracy or
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dictatorship?” the author comments that Museveni is convinced, “perhaps rightly,” that the largest donors (Britain, the U.S., Ireland and Norway) will not pull out because they have invested too much. In the latest election this past February, Museveni became East Africa’s longest-serving leader (25 years), and has officially come full circle from “new breed” to “strongman.” While this past election was not marred by violence and overt slander of opposition candidates, Museveni spent excessive amounts of state funds on voters and parliament members, infuriating the donor community and civil society (The Independent reporters, 2010). In addition to this abusive treatment of opposition, misuse of state funds and other unfair election practices, the GoU has been strongly criticized by the donor community for corruption, including mismanagement of more than Shs500 million worth of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) resources, the government purchase of six fighter jets from Russia (each worth approximately US$600 million) (Were, 2011), as well as the purchase of a second Gulfstream presidential jet valued at approximately US$50 million. The private jet purchase is particularly ironic and audacious, as Museveni stated in his 1986 speech that “Africa’s problem” was leaders who overstayed their welcome and lived lavish lifestyles: “The honorable excellency who is going to the United Nations in executive jets, but has a population at home of 90 percent walking barefoot, is nothing but a pathetic spectacle” (Rice, 2007). Local perceptions of corruption are widespread as well, with Uganda rated 2.5 on Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perception Index, an improvement from recent years. This publicized knowledge of corruption and other problems with Uganda’s development under Museveni has resulted in a very mixed response on the part of the donor community. To be sure, there has been a drastic shift in donors’ near-unanimous verbal pressure strategy that characterized the 1990s. For instance, in response to Museveni’s first private jet purchase in 2000, the IMF and the World Bank deferred a decision to cancel debts of approximately US$800 million (Rice, 2007). On the other hand, in 2006, the GoU was granted 100 percent debt relief to the World Bank, the IMF and the African Development Bank under the multilateral debt relief initiative (MDRI), and has since undertaken a “cautious borrowing strategy” to avoid heavy indebtedness (ADB East Africa Dept., 2010: 4). In a recent speech given to a budgetary workshop in Kampala in 2010, Kundhavi Kadiresan, the Bank’s country director, sternly warned: “The undeniable lack of government action to follow up on cases of grand corruption is a key area of development partner concern … [failure to act] will have implications, and donors … are currently considering a range of actions,” such as withholding disbursements, reductions in aid, or re-programming away from direct budget support (Ford, 2010). Two months later, following their word, donors cut funding to the GoU by 35 percent for the FY2010/11 (Mugerwa, 2010).
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Looking to the Future of Uganda’s Development Without ignoring the significant economic progress that Uganda has enjoyed under President Museveni since 1986, the future of Uganda’s development and of Museveni’s relationship with the donor community is fragile at best. The recent discovery of oil reserves in the Albertine rift presents new challenges and possibilities. By some estimates, Uganda is expected to earn US$2 billion a year from the reserves as early as 2015, and this resource has already attracted the interest of big oil companies. So far, Museveni has not shown a dedication to transparency in negotiations with oil companies. While many are competing for stakes, U.K.-based Tullow Oil is currently in talks with the GoU to try to secure a deal before trial production commences in July of this year (Bariyo, 2011). Once the oil reserves start generating revenue, the dynamics between the GoU and the donor community are almost certain to change, as we have seen that geopolitical interests play a significant role in these relations. Indeed, Watts (2006) warns that oil in Africa is the source of a “new scramble in the making” (2). Furthermore, the GoU has an enormous responsibility to ensure that the revenues are used transparently and to benefit the people. Unfortunately, when considering the trend in Museveni’s political behavior to cling to power at all costs, the prospects for this are bleak. Indeed, in the last few weeks, Museveni has supported brutal suppression of the “walk-to-work” campaign started by opposition candidate Besigye in protest of rising fuel and food prices. Over the course of these demonstrations more than 700 people have been arrested, including many opposition officials, and over 100 people have been injured (Gatsiounis, 2011). When considering Museveni’s increasing corruption, willingness to resort to violence, and defiance of donors’ demands, he seems to embody the very “strongman” that he so fervently despised when he rose to power in 1986. The vision that the National Resistance Movement advocated for has since been betrayed, with the NRM’s name co- opted to disguise the consolidation of power that has been gradually occurring since 1986, and Uganda once again finds itself plagued by a leader who values his own power more than the people’s well being. Most of the major problems that existed in the country in 1986 – sectarian and exclusionary politics, corruption, insecurity, interference of foreign interests, and regional inequality – have gone unaddressed, and are still prominent today. Though this paper has discussed the ways that the donor community responds to and influences Museveni, it is not my intention to imply that their influence is the solution to these issues. Quite the opposite: as we have seen, donors have their own geopolitical interests in mind when they engage with recipient governments. If Museveni had remained loyal to the vision for Uganda that he put forth 25 years ago, I sincerely believe many of Uganda’s problems would have begun to be addressed.
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References Bariyo, N. 28 April 2011. “Tullow Seeks Uganda Oil Supply Deals, Before July Trial Production.” Fox Business. Berg, E. 1981. Accelerated development in Sub-Saharan Africa: an agenda for action. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Cargill, Tom. 2004. “Still the Donors Darling.” The World Today 60(12): 26-7. Carroll, R., & Hendrixson, K. 2010. Implementation Com pletion and Results Report for Poverty Reduction Support Credits 5, 6 and 7. World Bank, Poverty Reduction and Economic Man agement Unit II, Africa Region. Conable, B. B. 1987. Report and Recommendation of the President of the IDA to the Executive Directors on the Economic Recovery Program for Uganda. World Bank. Davis, M. 2004. “Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Proletariat.” New Left Review 26: 5-34. “Democracy or dictatorship?”. 2 March 2006. The Economist. Development Economics LDB Database. 25 February 2011. “Uganda at a glance.” East Africa Department. July 2010. Uganda: Result-Based Country Strategy Paper 2011-2015. African Development Bank. Economic Development in Uganda. 1962. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Ferguson, J. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press. Ford, L. 4 March 2010. “Donors threaten to cut aid to Uganda over corruption.” The Guardian. Gatsiounis, I. 3 May 2011. “Crackdown on Uganda Protests Sparks Rumblings of a Revolution.” Time. Green, E. (2011, February 17). “2011 Ugandan Presidential Election: Pre-Elec tion Report.” The Monkey Cage. Hauser, Ellen. 1999. “Ugandan Relations with Western Donors in the 1990s: What Impact on Democratization?” The Journal of Modern African Studies 37(4): 621-641.
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Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank. “Fall out from the ‘Big Bang’ Approach to Universal Primary Education: The case of Uganda.” 2005. Kibona-Clark, M. 2005. “Violence Against Women and Girls in Northern Uganda.” The Other Journal: An Intersection of Theology and Culture (Issue 6). Kirby, D. “Success in Uganda: A History of Uganda’s Successful Campaign to Decrease HIV Prevalence in the Early 1990s.” ETR Associates: 1-68. Leggett, Ian. 2001. Uganda. Hemdon, VA: Stylus Publishing LLC. Mugerwa, Y. 6 May 2010. “Donors Cut Aid by 35 Per Cent.” The Monitor, accessed through allAfrica.com. “Museveni must fix economy by June.” 29 April 2011. The Independent. Museveni, Y. K. 1997. Sowing the mustard seed: the struggle for freedom and democracy in Uganda. London: Macmillan Education Ltd. Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. 30 April 2011. “Patterns of Global Terrorism.” U.S. Department of State. Oloka-Onyango, J. 2004. “’New Breed’ Leadership, Conflict and Reconstruction in the Great Lakes Region of Africa: A Sociopolitical Biography of Uganda’s Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.” Africa Today 50(3): 28-52. The Republic of Uganda. April 2010. National Development Plan (2010/11 – 2014/15). Rice, X. 20 December 2007. “MPs back Ugandan president’s plea for £24m jet upgrade.” The Guardian. Uganda Consultative Group. 1979. The Rehabilitation of Uganda: A Preliminary Progress Report. World Bank. Uganda Data Profile. December 2010. World Development Indicators database. The World Bank. “UPDF Commanders Confess to Existence of Ghost Soldiers.” 20 Oct 2009. allAfrica.com Watts, M. 2006. “Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the Scramble for Africa.” Monthly Review 58(4): 1-17. Were, J. 25 January 2011. “Museveni, donors lock horns over election money.” The Independent.
RISKING JUSTICE: The Dilemmas of Pursuing Justice and Reconciliation n Post-Genocide Rwanda Anna Pearson Nipissing University Between April and July 1994, Rwanda experienced a genocide resulting in the death of approximately 800,000 in about 100 days. This genocide contained core elements that represent the profound interplay of internal and external dynamics in terms of origins, practice and aftermath. In short, a legacy of interventions seeded the Rwandan killing fields. While sparked by the death of the Rwandan president and planned and implemented at national and regional levels, Hutu political, military and civic leaders echoed an imposed colonial racist ideology. Throughout the slaughter, the United Nations and the international community, through the media, bore witness yet failed to stop it. Only the intervention of the indigenous Rwandan Patriot Front would end the killing. Yet even as the killing stopped, external intervention led to the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR). For many Rwandans, the tribunal failed to meet expectations, and, in response the Rwandan government revived a traditional form of dispute resolution, the Gacaca. In light of the powerful indigenous critiques of the ICTR, this paper examines the nature and practice of Gacaca as a mechanism for post-genocide justice and reconciliation. In adopting a version of traditional restorative justice, the inherent problems, failings and short-comings of retributive justice were addressed with varied Rwandan responses to the legacies of intervention.
From April to July 1994, Rwanda experienced one of the most devastating acts of collective violence in recent history, resulting in the death of approximately 800, 000 persons over a mere 100 days. Not only did neighbours, friends, families and fellow citizens kill what were known to be ‘cockroaches’, but tens of thousands of Rwandan women were raped and hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were internally displaced or became refugees. Although genocide was planned at the national and regional levels, it was implemented by political, military and civic Hutu leaders and fuelled by a racist ideology. Throughout the colonial period, the Germans and later the Belgians relied on the current societal structures of Rwanda leaving the Tutsi to maintain the political control of Rwanda. The Tutsi (who comprised of approximately fifteen percent of the Rwandan population) had historically ruled the Hutu majority (approximately 85 percent of the population) until the declaration of independence in 1962. 1 When Rwanda became politically independent, democratic procedures were introduced that allowed the Hutus to ascend politically. Soon after gaining power, the Hutus began instituting discriminatory policies that soon turned into ethnic violence, forcing tens of thousands of Tutsis to flee to neighbouring countries including Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. Because of persistent anti-Tutsi behaviour and the refusal to allow the displaced 1 Hatzfield, Jean. Machete Season: The Killers of Rwanda Speak. New York: Farrar, Strass and Giroux, 2003.
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Tutsis to return to their homeland, the Tutsis came together to create a rebellion force in the 1980s. This rebel force, known as the Rwanda Patriotic Front, increasingly threatened Rwanda militarily through planned assaults against the Hutus. After their first major attack in 1990 and the increase of their military presence in Rwanda, in 1993 the UN intervened and created a power-sharing agreement called the Arusha Accords in order to maintain peace in the country. In order for the implementation of these accords, the UN created a small peacekeeping force of approximately 2,500 men. Unfortunately, the peacekeeping force was unable to maintain the peace. The death the Rwandan president by Hutu extremists marked the beginning of a nationwide campaign of extermination of the Tutsis. The genocide ended when the RPF invaded Rwanda from Uganda and defeated the Hutu army and militia. After taking control of a devastated country, the Tutsi rebels wanted to create an orderly and non-discriminatory society where they could inhibit vengeance and live peacefully with each other. One of their first actions was apprehending the identity cards and encouraging all refugees and displaced persons to return home. Approximately 600,000 Tutsis returned home and with the outbreak of the First Congo War many of the génocidaires would be forced to return home as well.2 In light of the gross atrocities in 1994, this paper examines and assesses Rwanda’s quest for justice and reconciliation. The post genocide government has repeatedly declared that its main priority seeks to hold perpetrators legally accountable and it also wants to build a peaceful and stable democratic country. First attempts to end problems in Rwanda at the elite level led to the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) by the international community. The tribunal has failed to meet the expectations of Rwandans and has done nothing to speed up trials to rid the overcrowded prisons. In response to this failure, the solution presented by the Rwandan government was to revive a traditional form of dispute resolution, called Gacaca. As a final measure to provide justice and reconciliation, the Rwandan government has placed pressure on these courts to accommodate the institutional failures of the ICTR and the limited capacity of the national Rwandan courts with respect to prosecuting genocide suspects. As an indigenous and traditional process, Gacaca’s potential contributions to reconciliation is praised for several reasons, such as the participation of respected community leaders and victims in the trial and sentencing process that sees the reintegration of many suspects. These aspects qualified Gacaca as a form of restorative justice that is appropriately contextualized to a post-genocide society where victims and perpetrators coexist in the same social and political atmosphere. Therefore, Gacaca, although a last resort, was the correct approach to post genocide Rwandan justice because it adopted traditional restorative forms of justice that were at the heart of Rwandan 2 Génocidaires refers to individuals (accused and/or convicted) of committing acts of genocide. Secondary sources consistently employ this term in their work.
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society and therefore more effective than the international retributive form of justice which had previously failed. When looking at the establishment of the Gacaca courts in Rwanda, most historians begin by examining the international effort to pursue justice and reconciliation in Rwanda. The ICTR was established in November 1994 and aimed to prosecute persons responsible for committing genocide and for serious violations of humanitarian law in Rwanda in 19943. Another objective of the ICTR was to “contribute to the process of national reconciliation and to the restoration and maintenance of peace”. This objective highlights the fact that the tribunal ultimately has a primary audience, namely, the people of Rwanda. However, historians such as Neil J. Kritz argue that the location of the tribunal and the Rwandan population’s inability to access newspapers or television coverage of the trials proved unsuccessful in the reconciliation of survivors4. He continues to argue that for the first couple of years; most Rwandans received little if any information about what the tribunal was doing. It took far too long to arrange even brief radio transmissions from the trial proceedings in Arusha to Rwanda5. Mark Armstuz also believes that the location of Arusha has attributed to the little impact on Rwanda. He argues that travel between the two cities is costly and difficult. As a result, the events at the tribunal are seldom reports, and rarely become news, except when a suspect is released or given a light sentence6. Current trends in post-genocide studies of Rwanda point to the failure of the UN mandated criminal court (International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda) to provide sufficient judicial action and reconciliation for survivors. As Allison Corey and Sandra F. Joireman argue, there were approximately 120,000 accused génocidaires who were awaiting trial and Rwanda’s Gacaca courts were established as a response to the backlog of untried genocide cases by the ICTR7 (only 19 judgements were passed by 2005). Amtrutz has a similar argument in his journal article, “Is Reconciliation possible after Genocide: Rwanda?” He argues that the true failure of the ICTR was not inefficiency but the inadequacy of the criminal justice system itself 3 Un Doc. S/RES/95 : Establishment of an International Tribunal and adoption of the Statute of the Tribunal, 8 November 1994; Statute of the International Tribunal for Rwanda as amended. 4 Kritz, Neil J. “Coming to Terms with Atrocities: A Review of Accountability Mechanisms for Mass Violations of Human Rights”. Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 59, No. 4, Accountability for International Crimes and Serious Violations of Fundamental Human Rights (Autumn, 1996), pp. 131. 5 Kritz, 132. 6 Armstruz, Mark. “Is Reconciliation Possible After Genocide?: The Case of Rwanda”. Journal of Church and State. 2006 48(3): pp. 553. 7 Corey, Allison and Sandra F. Joireman. “Retributive Justice: The Gacaca Courts in Rwanda.”African Affairs, Vol. 103, No. 410 (2004), pp. 73.
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in dealing with society-wide atrocities. 8 With the death of the Rwandan president, the government was overthrown and taken over by the Hutus. Unfortunately, they were unable to inaugurate a functional government until the RPF had won the war. In addition, most judges and lawyers were killed in the genocide thus it was hard to try the 120,000 accused génocidaires in an unstable justice system. Jeremy Sarkin agrees that very few trials have taken place and Rwanda’s legal system does not seem to have the capacity to meet the need9. In addition to the failure of the ICTR, in the late 1990s scholars estimated at the rate at which genocide detainees were being prosecuted, nearly a third would die in prison of old age. Therefore, to speed up the rate at which génocidaires were being tried, the Rwanda government adopted a traditional justice known as Gacaca. Most historians like Barbara Oomen and Sarkin agree that the use of traditional Gacaca courts has been adopted by the Rwanda government as a mechanism to ease the burden on the normal courts and to apply justice by assisting the legal system to deal with those in detention awaiting trial10. Armstruz adds that this traditional system of conflict resolution, which was rooted in restorative perspective, was used in villages in pre-colonial and colonial times to resolve low-level conflicts, such as property disputes, theft, and martial conflicts11. Therefore, these courts offer some important purposes, especially to genocide survivors. As noted by the UN Commission of Experts, domestic courts can be more sensitive to local culture, and resulting decisions “could be of greater and more immediate symbolic force because verdicts would be rendered by courts familiar to the local community”12. However, as Max Rettig argues in his article “Gacaca: Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Post conflict Rwanda?” and Oomen argues in her article, “Rwanda’s Gacaca: Objectives, Merits and Their Relation to Supranational Criminal Law” that scholars and international NGO’s believe that there are a range of problems that upset the Gacaca process. The lack of defence counsel and other protections for the accused raise doubts about Gacaca’s compliance with international norms, judges are inadequately trained to handle serious legal questions, fear of reprisals block free flow of testimony and finally, massacres of Hutu civilians by members of the RPF are off-limits to Gacaca thus Hutu majority may perceive Gacaca as an exercise in victor’s justice13. Additionally, he believes the most worrisome for a 8 Armstruz, 553. 9Sarkin, Jeremy. “The Tension between Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Politics, Human Rights, Due Process and the Role of the Gacaca Courts in Dealing with the Genocide”. Journal of African Law, Vol. 45, No. 2, (2001), pp. 144. 10 Sarkin, p. 159. 11 Armstruz, p. 14. 12 Preliminary Report of the Independent Commission of Experts Established in Accordance with Security Council Resolution 935 (1994) (29 September 1994), p.31. 13 Rettig, Max. “Gacaca: Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Post conflict Rwanda?” African Studies Review, Vol. 51, No.3, (2005), p 26.
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system of participatory justice, the population often is unmotivated to attend trials and give testimony. In all of the articles I have assessed, most historians have attempted to predict the future for truth, justice, and reconciliation in Rwanda. As explained above, historians vary on their opinions on the Gacaca court process and whether or not it has aided in Rwanda’s persecution of justice. For the future of Rwanda, Kritz argues that [international entities] should focus their energies more heavily on the investigation and prosecution of the leadership ranks of those responsible for the atrocities in question rather than on the rank and file. Rettig, after carrying out a ten-month, multimethod study of Sovu (a community in Rwanda’s South Province) argued that his study casted doubt on Gacaca’s contribution to post conflict reconciliation and proposes that only when the trials end will it be clear whether Gacaca has helped rebuild broken communities or has sabotages them for generations to come.14 It is frequently said that reconciliation in post genocide societies is not possible without justice. In Rwanda, the form that justice should take is at the heart of the debate. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left over 800,000 dead and over 120,000 in prison upon suspicion of committing acts of genocide. It uprooted the complete governmental system, eradicating the judiciaries thus creating problems for the implementation of justice at the national level. The international community responded to the atrocities with a call for accountability and an end to impunity. The United Nations recognized that serious violations of humanitarian law were committed in Rwanda, and acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) by resolution 955 of 8 November 1994. It was erected for the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda between January 1st, 1994 and December 31st, 1994.15In addition, it dealt with the prosecution of Rwandan citizens responsible for genocide and other such violations of international law committed in the territory of neighbouring States during the same period. By 1995, under resolution 977, the UN had decided to locate the tribunal in Arusha, in the United Republic of Tanzania. The tribunal would proceed to use the ICTR laws to try accused génocidaires, written in article 14 in resolution 955 (1995) which states that “The Tribunal consists of three organs: the Chambers and the Appeals Chamber; the Office of the Prosecutor, in charge of investigations and prosecutions; and the Registry, responsible for providing overall judicial and administrative support to the Chambers and the 14 Rettig, p.45. 15 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. “General Information”. Assessed on Feb 22nd, 2010. <http://www.ictr.org/ENGLISH/geninfo/index.htm>
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Prosecutor.”16Thus, through these three levels, génocidaires would be prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, which are defined as violations of Common Article Three and Additional Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions (dealing with war times committed during internal conflicts). The first trial of the ICTR began in 1997 and thus far, the Tribunal has finished 21 trials and convicted 29 accused persons. Another 11 trials are in progress. 14 individuals are awaiting trial in detention but the prosecutor intends to transfer 5 of these individuals to the national jurisdiction for trial. 13 others are still at large, some suspected to be dead. Thus far, the ICTR processing of trials has been inefficient in order to comply with resolution 1503 (2003). On August 28th, 2003, the Security Council adopted resolution 1503 (2003), ordered the ICTR to “take all possible measures to complete investigations by the end of 2004, to complete all trial activities at first instance by the end of 2008, and to complete all work in 2010.”17 However, it has recently been discussed that these goals may not be realistic and are likely to change. This tribunal, plagued by institutional shortcomings, has been insufficient and inappropriate in response to pursuing justice for these atrocities. Originally, the Rwandan government favoured the ICTR but once it began to take shape, the government opposed it due to following three reasons: first, it believed that justice and political reconciliation would advance more effectively if the court were located in Kigali rather than in Arusha, Tanzania. Second, Rwanda opposed the ICTR because its jurisdiction covered only crimes committed in 1994, not in the years preceding the genocide. Finally, Rwanda opposed the ICTR because the tribunal statue excluded the death penalty. In addition, they feel that the international community, which stood by and did nothing as Rwandans suffered, “cannot feign to be here now to teach us how to handle our problems.18” With the judicial infrastructure destroyed and most prosecutors and judges killed in the genocide, there was no chance that the national court system could prosecute all those accused or responsible for such crimes. Before 1994, there were a total of 758 Judges, 70 Prosecutors and 631 other supporting staff (registries and secretaries) and post-genocide numbers revealed there were only 244 Judges, 12 Prosecutors and 137 other supporting staff.19 Therefore, action needed to be taken on behalf of the RPF in order to reach some form of justice not only for the murders, but for the survivors themselves. Since there was no law punishing 16 UN Security Council. “Resolution 955(1994)”. Assessed March 29,2010. <http://www.un.org/ictr/ english/Resolutions/955e.htm> 17 Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. “Completion and Strategy Problems”. Assessed on Feb 22nd, 2010. <http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/ictr/ictr.html> 18 Habimana, Aloysius. “What Does “International Justice” Look Like in Post-Genocide Rwanda?” Human Rights Dialogue (1994-2005), Series 2, No. 2 (Spring 2000). Assessed on March 17th, 2010. <http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/publications/dialogue/2_02/articles/615.html> 19 National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions. “Gacaca Jurisdictions: Achievements, problems and Future Prospects”. Assessed on Feb 22, 2010. <http://www.inkiko-gacaca.gov.rw/PPT/Realisation%20and%20future%20persective.ppt>
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genocide in Rwanda in 1994, their first initiative was to implement the Organic Law N°08/96 which established the organization and prosecution of offences that constituted the crime of genocide or other crimes against humanity.20 This new law implemented specialised chambers for genocide crimes in the civil and military courts, confession procedures and guilt plea for genocide suspects as well as created a categorization system of genocide defendants into four categories ranging from leaders at the national level to people who committed offences against property. Although this new law had been implemented in hopes of pursuing justice, classic justice did not meet the society’s expectations because after approximately a five-year period only 6,000 files out of 120,000 detainees were tried. At this rate, it would take more than a century to try these detainees.21 Due to these reasons, the government concluded they needed to look for alternative solution. Justice and reconciliation in post genocide Rwanda were pursued in order to come to terms with the genocide and move forward as a society. Dealing with grievances, with accountability and forgiveness, and with the rehabilitation of victims and perpetrators [is] a painful and delicate process.22 The process of coming to terms with atrocities far outlasts the presence of international peacekeepers, as it stays alive in collective memory. Therefore, doing nothing about the war crimes only prolongs this feeling and leaves unsolved feelings in the societal structure. Thus, the international community responded in 1997 by creating the ICTR. By 2006, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda describes his frustration with the ICTR: “The ICTR was created to try cases of genocide, and for the time it has been there it has spent maybe 1.5 billion US dollars and it has tried fewer than 40 cases. I have a problem with that.”23 The slowness of procedures and the delay in the trials of these cases represented a serious risk of hindering the efforts made for reconciliation of the Rwandans. It became clear that it was necessary to modify the strategy that the ICTR had taken towards justice and reconciliation in Rwanda and look for another solution to the problem. This resulted in pursuing justice in the traditional context of conflicts resolution in the establishment of the Gacaca Courts. In response to the ineffectiveness of the tribunal and incapacity of its national court system, the Rwandan government has revived a traditional form of justice resolution called Gacaca. The Rwandan government passed Organic Law N°40/2000 which established Gacaca courts at the four administrative levels: Cell, Sector, District/Town and Province/City of Kigali with 19 members for each bench of Gacaca 20 National Services of Gacaca. “Gacaca Achievements, problems and Future prospects”. Assessed Feb 22nd, 2010. 21 Bremer, Liv, Charles Bakwatsa and Trude Falch. “REVIEW OF THE NPA RWANDA PROGRAMME AND ASSESSMENT OF PROSPECTS OF NPA ACTIVITIES IN RWANDA” June 2007. Assessed March 17th, 2010. < http://www.norad.no/en/_attachment/118735/binary/7284?download=true> 22 Kritz, 127. 23 Voices of America. “Rwanda President Kagame: International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda ‘Not Properly Handling’ Job”. May 31, 2006. <http://author.voanews.com/english/about/2006-06-01-kagame.cfm> accessed March 29th, 2010.
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Court. This law was a further addition to the first previously established Organic Law N°16/2004 and kept the same major principles of genocide justice: categorisation of suspects, confession and guilt plea, repentance and apologies. However, what made it unique is that it introduced the alternative penalty of community services (TIG) to imprisonment for the defendants who have had recourse to the procedure of confession, guilty plea, repentance and apologies. With the implementation of this part of Organic Law, Gacaca was put into practice in a pilot phase which covered 751 Gacaca courts of the cell within 118 sectors countrywide. The first pilot phase started on June 19th, 2002 in one sector in each Province/City of Kigali (12). The second phase of Gacaca was launched on November 25, 2002 with one sector in each District/Town (106).24 The primary focus of these pilot phases were for data collection and categorisation of the detainees. Also, the national government wanted to seek the reaction from Rwandan survivors by using an informal court system native to Rwanda. Originally, Gacaca courts settled village or familiar disputes. The courts were an informal means of solving disputes around issues like theft, marital issues, land rights and property damage. They were implemented as village assemblies where each member of the community could request to speak to promote reconciliation and justice of the perpetrator in front of family and neighbours. The name Gacaca comes from Rwanda’s national language, Kinyarwanda, meaning short, clean cut grass or umucaca and symbolizes the gathering place where the elders sit and judge the trial. The elders are chosen based on their honesty by the people of the community where they have the responsibility of gathering all accused persons to the gathering place and mediate a resolution involving reparations or some act of contrition.25 In relation to the atrocities in 1994, the Gacaca process provides a basis for settlement amongst survivors and accused génocidaires. The system emphasizes the importance of harmony, condemns the guilt, and promotes collaboration between those deciding as well as among the spectators. It is a system of participative justice whereby the population is given the chance to speak out against committed atrocities, to judge and to punish the accused with the exception of those classified by the law in the first category who are judged and punished by ordinary courts according to common law rules.26 The process follows three steps: collection of in24 National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions. “The Achievements of Gacaca”. 25 Judges are known as inyangamugayo, people who fulfil 8 criteria: Rwandan nationals, 21 years or older, have not served any long prison sentences, are not suspects in the genocide, have a local reputation for being honest, are not extremists, are trustworthy and not afraid of speaking in public. For more information, see Harrell, Peter. Rwanda’s Gamble: Gacaca and a New Model of Transitional Justice.USA: iUniverse, 2003. 26 Organic Law n°08/96 of August 30th, 1996 established the four categories of participants in the genocide. The first category that is mentioned here were planners, organisers, instigators, supervisors of the genocide, leaders at the nation, provincial or district level, within political parties, army, religious denominations or militia. In addition, people who committed rape or acts of sexual torture are also included in this category.
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formation relating to the genocide, categorization of persons prosecuted for having committed genocide or having played a role in different genocidal crimes and trials of cases falling under their competence (or jurisdiction).27 Genocide-related trials started on March 10, 2005 in the pilot phase Gacaca court which only concerned 12 Sectors that had been collecting data from June 19 2002 and 106 others which started collecting data as of November 25 2002. In the quest to pursue justice, the Gacaca court process has proved more successful than the ICTR, even though it began trials eight years later. Since the beginning of the trials in pilot Gacaca courts, figures show that 35,387 judicial files has so far been forwarded to Gacaca Courts of Sector and 7,721 trials have been completed, that is 21.81% of all cases forwarded to sector have been completed. As for Gacaca Courts of Appeal, out of the 1,661 cases forwarded, 1,115 have been heard, that is 67.12% of all cases forwarded to Appeal have been completed. As for Gacaca Courts of Cell, 33,727 cases were forwarded and 16,507 have been completed, that is 48.9% of all cases forwarded to Cell have been completed.28 The total of these percentages have demonstrated that Gacaca has been successful in completing a vast majority of its cases. The ICTR on the other hand has been quite ineffective in its quest for pursuing justice and providing reconciliation. Thus far, the ICTR has had 50 “successful” trials where eight are pending appeal and another eight have been acquitted. The low number of successful trials by the ICTR is probably attributed to the location of the tribunal and how many Rwandans know about the tribunal. Located in Rwanda’s neighbouring country of Tanzania, the tribunal is the effort put forth from the international community to justify its lack of response during the conflict. However, due to the lack of technology, most Rwandans are not even aware that it exists and those that are aware do not realize what it is supposed to offer to victims, survivors and accused génocidaires. The alternative to this is the Gacaca system that has been implemented by the Rwandan government. Gacaca’s success is directly attributed to the approach that it takes to Rwandan society. This informal court system is at the heart of Rwandans as they are familiarized with the way it functions and how it pursues justice. Unlike the ICTR, these courts are easily accessible to all Rwandans allowing for large numbers of citizens to attend trials. The implementation of these courts demonstrates the motivation by the Rwandan government to prove to the world that Rwandan society has the capacity to settle its own problems through a system of justice based on a traditional Rwandan form. Although there has been greater success in the Gacaca system, both the ICTR and the Gacaca courts have failed to meet their schedules. From the dates that trials began in the Gacaca process (March 25, 2002), figures show that “considerable efforts need to be put in speeding up trials so that Gacaca-related trials be completed 27 National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions. “Members and Structure of GACACA Courts”. 28 National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions. “Report on Trials in pilot Gacaca Courts”
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according to schedule, that is, in December 2007.”29 It is now 2010 and there are still many Gacaca-related trials that need to be completed. The same argument is to be made about the ICTR. The ICTR resolution 1503 expected that all work was to be completed by 2010. Unfortunately, with only 50 successful trials, it is going to be a long time until this resolution is completed. More than likely most accused génocidaires will die in prison before they are even tried. This is incompliant with the budget that is allocated to this tribunal. For 2008-2009, the General Assembly of the UN approved the ICTR biennial budget of $267,356,200 gross ($247,466,600 net).30 How is it that the UN has only convicted 50 people with such a large budget? It should also be mentioned that both the ICTR and Gacaca mandates are very similar and they both mention the word reconciliation. The relationship between justice and reconciliation raises questions of appropriateness and perceptions. The first question then becomes: Which form of justice is most appropriate in providing reconciliation? A review of the institutional failures of the ICTR suggests that the restorative form of Gacaca is more successful. However, there is an assumption within justice theories that if justice is perceived to be carried out, it is naturally followed by reconciliation. This begs the question of what perceptions of justice are based upon? What becomes evident is the importance of recipient and builder. As the ICTR and Gacaca both state reconciliation as a goal, the recipients of the justice they provide should be the surviving Rwandan population. The perception of justice in using both paradigms can be corrupted by the characterisation of the builders. Both the international community and the Rwandan government have threatened the success of the form of justice they adopt. The ways in which the Gacaca courts pursued justice were different from traditional forms of justice implemented in the West. Aloysie Cyanzayire, President of the Supreme Court in Rwanda, stated that Rwanda needed to adopt a law that not only deals out punishment, but which also allows the guilty person to seek forgiveness from the victims and the people. When forgiveness has been granted, the guilty person can be accepted by the people. His sentence is reduced and he can return to society.31 This traditional form of justice enclosed five points which were its primary goals. First and foremost, Gacaca’s goal was to reveal the truth about what happened. In this aspect, the unity and reconciliation of Rwandans that are targeted are based on justice for all. This justice, however, can only become a reality if the truth about the events is revealed. This requires citizens who have been eyewitnesses of the crimes to come forward thus providing a basis where a list can be created of the names of victims and those of accused génocidaires. In order to reveal the truth, 29 Ibid. 30 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. “Budget and Staff ”. Accessed March 28th, 2010. <http://www.unrwanda.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=3> 31 Gacaca Justice – Rwanda. October 5, 2009. Youtube. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um_xTKIQDC0>. Accessed on March 17th, 2010.
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the Rwandan government felt that it should be obligatory for Rwandans to appear at the Gacaca court.32 Anyone who fails to report what they have seen or who bears false witness, will themselves be prosecuted as failure to witness to what they have seen carries a prison sentence of one to six months. If this is true, the traditional form of informal justice that the Gacaca courts provide becomes more of a western approach to justice. This approach demonstrates the Rwandan government’s desire for “successful outcomes” by modifying Gacaca’s pre-colonized form of informal justice into one that can be used to process genocide related trials. Their second goal was to speed up the rate of genocide trials. Their primary focus on rectifying this problem is that in front of the eyewitnesses of their deeds, the guilty persons would not attempt to deny what has been evidenced and that there are about 11,000 Gacaca courts that deal with genocide trials whereas in classical justice, this task was performed by only 12 specialised courts. The third objective was to eradicate the culture of impunity. As described in the first goal, citizens play an important role in the reconstruction of the facts and in the accusation of those who perpetrated them. None of those who took part will escape punishment, thus, people understand that the infringement implies the punishment for the criminal without exception. The fourth goal was to reconcile Rwandans and reinforce their unity. The Gacaca courts allow population of the same area to work together in order to judge those who are accused génocidaires, identify the victims and rehabilitate the innocents. “The Gacaca Courts system will become the basis of collaboration and unity, mainly because when the truth will be known, there will be no more suspicion, the author will be punished, and justice will be done to the victim and to the innocent prisoner who will be reintegrated in the Rwandan Society”.33 By reinforcing their unity, the people of Rwanda work towards conviviality among themselves for their own and country’s development. Finally, the fifth goal was to prove to the world that Rwandan society has the capacity to settle its own problems through a system of justice based on a traditional Rwandan form. The genocide was a conflict in the borders of Rwanda with Rwandans perpetrating against each other. Thus, the importance placed on the responsibility of all Rwandans should signify in the first place to rebuild their society and to settle their disputes relating to the genocide through the trials of the accused génocidaires. 32 It should be noted that there is a disagreement about whether or not it is obligatory and there is a prison sentence if citizens do not testify. Max Rettig argues that it is obligatory in his article, Gacaca: Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Postconflict Rwanda? In Christopher J. Lemon’s article, Rwanda’s Troubled Gacaca Courts, he states the same thing that failure to attend would be “seriously punished”. However, there is no mention of attendance being obligatory on neither the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions nor the National Rwandan Government website. 33 National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions. “The Objectives of the GACACA Courts”.
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The primary goals of the Gacaca court process have been put into place and are currently outperforming all other forms of justice that have been implemented in response to the Rwandan genocide. Although the courts have not been on schedule, they have successfully tried more cases than the ICTR and national courts combined. The debate on which form of justice that should be pursued in Rwanda since the atrocities of 1994, demonstrates the complexity with post genocide justice and reconciliation. As demonstrated earlier, post genocide Rwandan society is deeply divided. The war left behind not only chronic poverty, family dislocation, ethnic hatred, and trauma but also a widespread legacy of negativism of the international community. The international community took a western approach to providing retributive paradigm of justice. What became known as “Arusha Justice” was not only a consequence of the inefficiency and remoteness of the ICTR proceedings; it was a result of the normative emphasis of the international criminal law system. The constitutive, regulatory, and evaluative norms of international criminal law prescribed a justice that did not properly contextualise a response to the Rwandan genocide. Beginning as an inappropriate legal response, in terms of providing a retributive justice rather than a restorative paradigm, the ICTR is a foreign imposition of cultural values of reconciliation that is at odds with Rwandan society. Most Rwandans know that this is the same international community that stood by the let the genocide happen. In addition, many of the ICTR’s “internationalised” norms clashed with domestic norms of justice and reconciliation in Rwanda. As noted by the Rwandan Ambassador to the United States, Richard Sezibera, “even though we had asked the international community to set a tribunal for Rwanda, we knew that, given the way international bodies work, the bulk of the cases would have to be handled by our own legal system.”34 Thus, in response, the Rwandan government believed a paradigm of restorative justice would be the appropriate measure to be taken. The restorative approach has arguably become the successor in the pursuing of justice in post genocide Rwanda. This approach places more focus on the needs of victims and offenders, instead of the need to satisfy the abstract principles of law or the need of the community to exact punishment. It places more emphasis the acts committed to individuals or communities rather than the state. The Gacaca process uses restorative justice where as mentioned previously, members of the community are encouraged to come to trials and take part so that truth can be rightfully discovered and the accused persons can be prosecuted. This process is very familiar to the Rwandans and incorporates a worldview of the indigenous people of pre-colonized Rwanda rather than one of an international community. This fully demonstrates the issues with pursuing justice in a post genocide society. 34 Sezibera, Richard. “The Only Way to Bring Justice to Rwanda” in Washington Post, April 7, 2002. Assessed March 29th, 2010. <http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/tribunals/Rwanda/2002/ 0407sezibera.htm>
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When genocide occurs, the UN or the international community usually intervenes to ‘correct the problem’. However, what they might not realize is that without understanding the context of the genocide, they are decreasing successful hopes of pursuing justice and reconciliation. The ignorance of the belligerent society, in this case Rwanda, has proven that the international community has failed to comply with their mandate. The problem with this is that the international community believes that these ‘norms’ that they are instilling on a post genocide society can work in all post genocide societies. An example of this is the very similar terms on which the ICTR and the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) are built. The UN has ignored the different contexts in Rwanda and Yugoslavia by utilizing essentially the same three steps in their mandate. This ignorance is directly related to the negative image that these tribunals have by survivors and the failure of these tribunals. Truth, justice and reconciliation are not straight forward concepts but often contradict each other and have to be against present security needs for survivors, perpetrators and bystanders. At the same time, the concepts of justice and truth are in themselves full of contradictions because different groups in society have different perceptions about what constitutes truth, justice and reconciliation for them. This leaves societies, like Rwanda, with the difficulty of finding alternatives that satisfy everybody. Thus, psychological approaches to reconstruction like Gacaca are appropriate in communities that there is a history of mistrust and animosity among racial identity groups. Although the international community has sought to pursue justice in post genocide countries, they must understand the complexities with pursuing justice in a post genocide society. The case study of Rwanda is only one way that has demonstrated that liberal ideals are not always welcome. Although Rwanda did not have the capacity to settle its own problems in 1994 due to the midst of the civil war and the tension between the Hutus and Tutsis, in 2004 they were able to begin rebuilding their country beginning with addressing the genocide. They rebuilt their judicial system as well as the whole government system as well. Rwandans welcomed post genocide help from the international community but knew that their norms would not comply with the situation. The UN and the west world watched as 100,000 Tutsis were slaughtered in 1994 and did nothing to intervene. Romeo Dallaire was unsuccessful in changing the UN Mandate and the United States just thought it was another case of tribal warfare and did not want another escapade like Black Hawk Down in Somalia a year earlier.35 Post genocide justice and reconciliation in Rwanda has been a long standing issue 35 Unfortunately, by adding the critique of the failure of the west, there is the development of an underlying theme of the generalization of all Rwandans as a single group. By addressing Rwandans as a generalized group, the atrocities of the genocide begin to be lessened as Hutu perpetrators can be generalized as a ‘child who did not know any better’ and more of a victim than a perpetrator.
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since the atrocities of 1994. The international community responded by creating the ICTR but unfortunately it has thus far failed to meet the expectations of Rwandans and has done nothing to relieve the overcrowded prisons. The national court system was unable to process trials fast enough with the 120,000 accused gĂŠnocidaires as most of the judicial had been destroyed within the genocide. In response to this failure and lack of representation, the Rwandan government revived a traditional form of dispute resolution called Gacaca. In order to use this traditional form of dispute resolution, Gacaca has been modified using a western approach to justice while still maintaining its close ties with Rwandan roots. Gacaca, as a final measure to provide justice and reconciliation, has thus far been successful form of restorative justice that is appropriately contextualized to post genocide Rwanda. This case study demonstrates the problems with post genocide justice and reconciliation. The way in which the international community suddenly wanted to intervene in post genocide Rwanda by adopting international norms was completely ineffective. In the case study of the Rwandan genocide, restorative justice has surpassed the functionality of retributive justice. The way in which retributive justice is implemented in other tribunals may be successful however, in order to do this, the international community needs to contextualize and understand the situation before it attempts to implement its western liberal values.
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References Amstutz, Mark R. “Is Reconciliation Possible after Genocide? The Case of Rwanda.” Journal of Church and State. 2006 48(3): pp. 541-565. Bremer, Liv, Charles Bakwatsa and Trude Falch. “REVIEW OF THE NPA RWANDA PROGRAMME AND ASSESSMENT OF PROSPECTS OF NPA ACTIVITIES IN RWANDA” June 2007. Accessed March 17, 2010. Corey, Allison and Sandra F. Joireman. Retributive Justice: The Gacaca Courts in Rwanda. African Affairs, Vol. 103, No. 410 (2004), pp. 73-89. Gacaca Justice – Rwanda. October 5, 2009. Youtube. Accessed on March 17, 2010. Graybill, Lyn and Kimberly Lanegran. Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Africa: Issues and Cases. African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 1, (Fall 2004), pp. 1 -18. Habimana, Aloysius. “What Does “International Justice” Look Like in Post-Genocide Rwanda?” Human Rights Dialogue (1994-2005), Series 2, No. 2 (Spring 2000). Accessed on March 17, 2010. Harrell, Peter. Rwanda’s Gamble: Gacaca and a New Model of Transitional Jus tice.USA: iUniverse, 2003. Hatzfield, Jean. Machete Season: The Killers of Rwanda Speak. New York: Farrar, Strass and Giroux, 2003. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Accessed on January 18, 2010. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. “Budget and Staff ”. Accessed March 28, 2010. Kavitesi-Blewitt, Mary. Funding Development in Rwanda: The Survivors’ Perspective. Development in Practice, Vol. 16, No. 3/4 (Jun., 2006), pp. 316-321. Kritz, Neil J. Coming to Terms with Atrocities: A Review of Accountability Mechanisms for Mass Violations of Human Rights. Law and Contem- porary Problems, Vol. 59, No. 4, Accountability for International Crimes and Serious Violations of Fundamental Human Rights (Autumn, 1996), pp. 127 – 152. Le Mon, Christopher. “Rwanda’s Troubled Gacaca Courts”. American University Washington College of Law. Accessed on March 27, 2010. Mgbako, Chi. Ingando Solidarity Camps: Reconciliation and Political Indoctri- nation in Post-Genocide Rwanda. Harvard Human Rights Journal, Vol. 18, pp. 201-224. National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions. Accessed on January 18, 2010. Oomen, Barbara. Rwanda’s Gacaca: Objectives, Merits and Their Relation to Suprenational Criminal Law. In Sentencing and Sanctioning in Suprana tional Criminal Law, edited by Roelof Haveman and Olaoluwa Olusan ya, 161-84. Antwerp-Oxford: Intersentia, 2006. Preliminary Report of the Independent Commission of Experts Established in
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Accordance with Security Council Resolution 935 (1994) (29 September 1994), p.31. Rettig, Max. Gacaca: Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Postconflict Rwanda? African Studies Review, Vol. 51, No.3, (2005), pp. 1-50. Sarkin, Jeremy. The Necessity and Challenges of Establishing a Truth and Recon ciliation Commission in Rwanda. Human Rights Quarterly, Vol.21, No. 3 (Aug., 1999), pp. 767-823. Sarkin, Jeremy. The Tension Between Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Politics, Human Rights, Due Process and the Role of the Gacaca Courts in Dealing with the Genocide. Journal of African Law, Vol. 45, No. 2, (2001), pp. 143- 172. Sezibera, Richard. “The Only Way to Bring Justice to Rwanda” in Washington Post, April 7, 2002. Assessed March 29, 2010. Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. “Completion and Strategy Problems”. Assessed on Feb 22, 2010. Staub, E., (2006). Reconciliation after Genocide, Mass Killing, or Intractable Conflict: Understanding the Roots of Violence, Psychological Recovery, and Steps toward a General Theory. Political Psychology, 27 (6), 867-894. UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, 3 August 2004, UN Doc. S/2004/616) UN Security Council, Preliminary Report of the Independent Commission of Experts Established in Accordance with Security Council Resolution 935 (1994) (29 September 1994), p.31. Voices of America. “Rwanda President Kagame: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ‘Not Properly Handling’ Job”. May 31, 2006. Accessed March 29, 2010.
RHETORIC VS POLICY: How the Inconsistent Government Response to Urban Agriculture in Harare has Entrenched Inequality Nisha Giridhar New York University This paper examines the central government response to the widespread use of urban agriculture, the production of crops on lands zoned for public use, in Harare, Zimbabwe. The government has rhetorically committed its support to urban agriculture, and its potential benefits including increasing economic, spatial and gender equality. However, the government has failed to take legislative action to create a coherent framework. As a result, urban farmers are forced to navigate contradictory policies, and they operate in a legal gray area. Thus, they are unable to achieve the benefits urban agriculture offers and inequality remains entrenched in Harare.
High unemployment, the rising cost of food, high urbanization rates and lower crop returns have all decreased food security throughout the developing world over the past five years. The number of malnourished in sub-Saharan Africa increased from twenty eight to twenty nine percent in 2008 (Conceição et al, 2010: 2-3). In Zimbabwe sixty eight percent of the population lives below the poverty and line and in 2009 ninety five percent of the population was unemployed (up from eighty percent in 2005). Harare, the capital, has a population of over 1.6 million people and faces an urbanization rate of more than three percent for the foreseeable future (CIA World Factbook 2011). Its infrastructural development has not kept pace with the needs of its citizens; it has failed to provide basic services, including consistent access to affordable food, to a growing portion of the population. In this context, the number of informal economic activities, particularly urban agriculture, have rapidly increased and become a permanent feature of the city’s landscape. While the government has recognized urban agriculture’s enormous potential and community based and international projects are investing in its development, the disconnect between rhetoric and legislative action has led to contradictory policies implemented by the government that undermine its benefits and entrench spatial, economic and gender inequality in Harare. Zimbabwe was colonized by the British, and it was one of the last colonies in Africa to gain independence. When it finally gained independence in 1980, it inherited a well developed economy (Brett 2005). As a result, at independence, urban poverty was lower in Zimbabwe than throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa and a comparatively large number of workers were employed in the economy’s formal sector. Zimbabwe was considered Africa’s rising star and a model of development for the rest of the continent. However, this economic and political success did not last for more than a decade. During the nineties Zimbabwe experienced a severe economic downturn caused by a combination of many factors including droughts, political turmoil and fragmentation, a large external debt and a series of economic structural adjustment
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programs. This economic downturn affected women most, because they were expected to supply basic necessities. As the economy worsened, basic necessities like food comprised a larger portion of each household’s budget. Women were expected to continue to supply food without the means to do it (Kanji 1995). The number of people below the poverty line rose considerably during this time period and while Zimbabwe has recently achieved economic growth again the poverty rate continues to consistently remain above sixty percent (Potts 2006). The informal economy had to rapidly expand to accommodate those who needed to supplement or replace their formal economic wage, and urban agriculture was one sector that developed. The land used for urban agriculture doubled between 1990 and 1994 in Harare (Sedze, 2006). Urban agriculture is “the production of crops and/or livestock on land which is administratively and legally zoned for urban uses” (Mbiba 1995). This definition differentiates between on plot and off plot forms of cultivation. On plot cultivation consists of urban gardens or the maintenance of livestock within the perimeter of an individual’s private property, whereas, off plot urban agriculture exclusively occurs in public spaces. Because on plot agriculture occurs on privately owned land, it is generally not interfered with. However, this distinction is not always clear; where informal or illegal housing exists - housing built on public land, urban planners and politicians claim the right to regulate agricultural activities. Farming that occurs within an illegal settlement zoned for public use is, therefore, considered urban agriculture. This paper is concerned with discourses around cultivation that occurs on public land while recognizing that private, on plot agriculture also contributes to food security, because government discourses on urban agriculture do no substantially affect legal on plot cultivation. In Harare, urban agriculture is concentrated in areas next to high density, low income neighborhoods and informal settlements. Urban farmers are among a rising number of informal workers that are re-appropriating colonial spaces and infrastructures for their own purpose. Farmers are using land unfairly or inefficiently zoned during the colonial period to serve their own needs often evading government detection (Simone 2006). Urban agriculture has reclaimed a large number of public spaces including next to roads, in ditches, industrial sites, parks and near railroads. But it is concentrated on vlei lands; sixty seven percent of off plot urban farming takes place in these areas. Vlei lands are drainages that are seasonally waterlogged and environmentally protected by law, therefore, urban cultivation on them is illegal. It continues tooccur because the land is uninhabited and is best suited for farming. The primary crops cultivated in Harare are maize, groundnuts, sweet potatoes and leafy green vegetables like rape (Mbiba 1995; Mbiba 1999). Poor women who are expected to provide food dominate urban farming, but most rely on men to fund at least their initial investment (Sedze 2006).
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There are numerous short and long term benefits to urban agriculture when its potential is maximized. Its immediate benefits are the increase in the quantity of food available for low income households; nutrition and quality of food consumed is improved as well. Improving the quantity and quality of food will also increase employe workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; productivity rates and increase health indicators (Conceição et al, 2010: 12-13). Urban agriculture, if properly articulated, also has important long term benefits for the residents of Harare in decreasing urban inequalities. Income distribution in the city is highly unequal, and the government has not taken concrete steps to improve it. The poorest populations spend up to forty percent of their income on household consumption where the wealthiest residents spend only two percent (CIA World Factbook 2011). The current economic growth has not benefited those who most need help, and the wide gap between the rich and poor continues to exist. Decreasing economic inequality through urban agriculture is a long term goal and one piece of a multidimensional process, however, it has both tangible and intangible benefits. First, it can gradually decrease economic inequalities by increasing food security, supplemental income, employment opportunities and health conditions. The living standards of low income workers will increase which will increase their productivity and ability to compete and facilitate vertical class mobility. Second, it is an important step towards demonstrating government commitment to improving economic equality within the city and could provide necessary leverage to force the government to adopt other measures to reduce poverty. Moreover, urban agriculture can also increase spatial equality within the city by increasing the land allocated to the urban poor who compromise an ever increasing portion of the population but do not have equal access to land. The government inherited a racially segregated city in 1980 divided into low density, white and high density, black neighborhoods. Post independence, this transformed into a class division. The poor are concentrated in high density areas with little to no land security. Many rent from a family member or absentee landlord. Backyard shacks are often built to accommodate more family members. While construction in low to medium density neighborhoods is legal, high density occupants face an extensive bureaucratic process to legalize their additional structures. Even if they do go through thisprocess requests are often denied. Additional building in high density areas is not only discouraged, it is also periodically destroyed by the government (Potts, 2006: 281-282). The re- appropriation of public spaces has the potential to substantially improve spatial equality by increasing access to land and creating legal, secure land tenure for those in low income, high density areas. This, in turn, will increase the probability of both private and government investment in these neighborhoods and help to both desegregate and improve equality in the city.
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Urban agriculture can also decrease gender inequality by improving the lives of women in a multifaceted way. Currently, women are less educated, have fewer economic opportunities and are more susceptible to malnutrition and its negative effects than men (Conceição et al, 2010). They were disproportionately affected by the economic decline of the 1990s and face more challenges to overcome its consequences. Urban agriculture can immediately improve women’s lives by increasing their access to food and proper nutrition. In the long term, it can empower women by providing a legal source of employment and additional, independent income. It will increase the visibility of women who currently seek to remain invisible to decrease the government risk of crop destruction (Bayat 1997). Urban agriculture provides women a pathway to promote their development and provide a powerful emancipatory tool. The government could improve the lives of urban farmers by recognizing their work as legitimate (Hovorka 2006). Additionally, urban agriculture has environmental benefits, because it utilizes green methods of cultivation including recycling wastewater or solid waste, utilizing “idle lands and bodies of water” and decreasing pollution and increasing energy conservation by decreasing transportation time (Gumbo, 2000: 2). Since independence the government has prioritized environmental conservation, and regulating urban agriculture provides a strategy that enhances conservation while simultaneously improving citizens’ lives. As detailed above, urban agriculture’s development has primarily been a response to post independence economic pressures although its practice can be traced back to at least the 1950s. The negative implications of economic liberalization increased the cost of living without an equivalent rise in real wages. This combination forced people to cut back on basic services and find alternative methods of survival; improving food security and quality of nutrition in Harare manifested as urban agriculture (Drakakis-Smith1994). Furthermore, urban agriculture increased as post independence because restrictions on rural-urban migration that existed during colonialism were lifted. This influx of people contributed to its increase in two ways. First, it increased demand for food without a subsequent increase in supply from rural areas, thus, urban dwellers had to provide their own food, and this facilitated the rise of urban agriculture in Harare. Second, rural-urban migration increased the number of farmers moving to the city who continued to maintain linkages to rural areas and traditions. Farmers often continued their practice on Harare’s periphery. As the city expanded territorially these farmers continued to practice urban agriculture, and their practice became integrated into the heart of the city. Peri- urban agriculture - cultivation near the outskirts of the city and in suburbs - has continued to expand in Harare today. The government exploits this perception of urban agriculture to portray it as archaic and contrary to modernization (The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association and The Municipal Development Partnership: Southern and Eastern Africa, 2005: 10).
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While the Zimbabwean government has increasingly accepted that urban agriculture is a permanent feature of Harare and has made statements supporting it and its regulation, no legislation has been created to clarify and crystalize the legality of urban agriculture in Zimbabwe (The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association And The Municipal Development Partnership: Southern and Eastern Africa 2005). The government’s current ambivalence at both a local and national level regarding urban agriculture’s status has led to the application of laws on a case by case basis. Sometimes it promotes local projects and help individual farmers; yet, the current system prevents long term investment and development, because farmers can never be sure if the government will support or destroy their community’s crops. Government rhetoric has progressed over time, but ultimately without substantive results. Legislation that was used to destroy urban crops still exists and continues to be utilized. At independence, the government viewed urban agriculture through a western lens and deemed it antithetical to the city and modernity more generally. It was considered archaic and the remnants of the rural homestead, so the government dismissed it as a nuisance rather than consider its potential benefits. This rhetoric, as discussed above, was concretized as rural-urban migration rose in the post-independence era (Gumbo 2000; The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association And The Municipal Development Partnership: Southern and Eastern Africa, 2005:10). Today the government utilizes environmental rhetoric to its advantage, once again manipulating modernity discourse to prevent urban agriculture’s expansion. The international community often uses green or sustainability discourse to justify urban agricultural projects due its potential environmental benefits. However, the government points to the current realities of urban agriculture in Harare as a reason to suppress it. In the status quo, farmers are forced to operate in risky and environmentally protected areas like the vlei land. As a result, urban agriculture has often negatively affected the environment in many ways including through water contamination, water source depletion and soil erosion (Gumbo, 2000: 11). The government, thus, is able to use environmental discourse to restrict and destroy urban crops. This has created a vicious cycle where the government points to the current lack of green farming as a justification for its continued destruction which forces urban farmers to continually operate in risky, illegal spaces and not invest in sustainable methods of farming. That the Zimbabwean government has an expansive set of policies aimed at environmental protection is admirable, however, its current application clearly hinders urban agriculture and ignores the socio-economic realities of its cities and needs to be revised (Bowyer-Bower, 1996). Several conservationist laws created during colonial rule aimed at ending land degradation also created and entrenched urban spatial inequality through poor quality and limited quantity land allocation to Africans. These policies are used today to justify the destruction of urban crops:..one piece of legislation that is enforced to restrict these
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activities is the Streambank Protection Regulations (Section 3 of S.I. 291: Natural Resource [Protection] Regulations, 1991; originally enacted in 1952) of the Natural Resources Act. This forbids agriculture within 30 m of any water course or on wetland. A second piece of legislation used to prohibit these cultivation activities is the land protection by- laws (Section 4 of Government Notice 104: Harare [Protection of Lands] By-Laws; 1973) of the Municipal Act which forbids cultivation in the city without the written approval of the authorities, and allows for the destruction of crops grown without such approval (Bowyer-Bower, 1996: 11). While these laws have been relaxed in their application with the increased rhetorical support for urban agriculture, they still exist and continue to be utilized to destroy crops. Not only does this decrease urban agricultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s benefits, it maintains the spatial inequality established during British rule. Health and sanitation discourse is also utilized to justify urban agriculture policies. Poor management of urban agriculture can increase water borne or mosquito spread diseases. There has been substantial research discrediting many governmental claims surrounding disease, so its use has decreased over time. However, malaria remains a real threat, and urban agriculture in its present practice often creates breeding grounds for mosquitos, so the government continues to use this threat to limit and destroy urban agriculture (Gumbo, 2000: 11). In the past decade slight progress has been made. The government has acknowledged urban agricultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s permanence. Numerous statements by government officials have been made in support of urban agriculture and several declarations including the regional Harare Declaration on Urban and Peri Urban Agriculture and the Nyanga Declaration on Urban and Peri Urban Agriculture have been signed. And new legislation has been created that nominally allows for urban cultivation; however, there are several holes in both that allow for the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current approach to urban agriculture: regulation through destruction (The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association and The Municipal Development Partnership: Southern and Eastern Africa 2005). For example, the government has started to extend permits for urban cultivation in limited areas of Harare. Government issued permits to lease land increase land security and decrease the risk of crop destruction. But this measure is too limited and urban farmers still face insecure land tenure. The permits must be renewed every year and political and economic changes do not make this process easy or guaranteed. Measurements need to be taken to increase long term land security to encourage infrastructural and technological investment in urban agriculture. The year long lease is not sufficient to promote this development. Furthermore, farmers still financial barriers including the initial start up costs and costs of navigating the extensive bureaucracy in order to legalize their
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livelihood. Additionally, land permits do not decrease the risk of theft, because police enforcement in low income areas is minimal (Sedze 2006; Gumbo 2000). More importantly, the slasher squads of the 1980s which destroyed urban crops in violation of environmentalist laws continue to operate albeit less frequently as a result of a more relaxed application of environmental laws (Bowyer-Bower: 1996, 13). Operation Murambatsvina carried out in 2005 is the most recent example of the violent and brutal suppression of informal living It sought to eradicate all forms of illegal occupation and use of public lands including urban agriculture (Potts 2005: 278). By “July 2005...around 650,000 to 700,000 people had lost either the basis of their livelihoods or their homes, or both” (276). This government destruction of informal living in the name of beautifying Harare and achieving modernity is a glaring example of the large contradictions in government discourse pertaining to informal activities which prevent the expansion of urban agriculture and realization of its benefits. Even where individual success has been achieved without government support - and there are numerous instances where it has - farmers collectively face a constant threat to their existence. Therefore, the limited steps that the government has undertaken are insufficient to improve this sector of the informal economy at best and may prove to be only lip service to appease the international community and prevent international action against it for destroying citizens’ lives. Ultimately, the current limited policy change amounts to a recognition of urban agriculture as a permanent feature but is far from creating a safe, cohesive system for it to operate in. In Harare there is a disconnect between discourse and action regarding urban agriculture which has led to the inconsistent application of legislation pertaining to it. Rhetorically, politicians at a local and national level repeatedly report the importance and necessity of urban agriculture and commit to its controlled expansion and development. However, at a policy level, concrete steps towards improving urban agriculture have been minima and blatantly contradict several existing policies. Environmental legislation implemented during the colonial period is still used to justify crop destruction. Legislation is still primarily used as a destructive as opposed to constructive tool. Insecure land tenure still inhibits investment and development of urban agriculture, the threat of theft is still rampant due to inequitable enforcement and occasional razing of crops continues to be sponsored by the governments in the name of the beautification of Harare (The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association And The Municipal Development Partnership: Southern and Eastern Africa 2005). The inequitable, opaque application of laws pertaining to urban agriculture has hurt the industry and its individual and collective benefits. The international community, including organizations like the World Bank, United Nations Development Program and several international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), has recognized urban agriculture’s expansive nature and
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its potential to improve food security and decrease poverty throughout the developing world. As a result, several actors within the international community have sponsored projects to increase its efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability. The international community has changed its rhetoric around urban agriculture in numerous ways depending on the organization involved or specific project goals, but it is almost exclusively depicted as a positive development. Development discourse is often used by international organizations. Urban agriculture is portrayed as an important part of solving food insecurity and poverty. Many international organizations also use green or sustainable development rhetoric to advance urban agriculture projects. The international community has recognized its environmental sustainability, particularly recycling organic solid waste, as an important benefit in addition to its role in poverty reduction (Gumbo 2000). Moreover, severalmultilateral and non-governmental organizations have utilized feminist rhetoric and emphasized its potential to increase gender equity by increasing the visibility of women. A framework to support urban agriculture has the potential to drastically increase womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s immediate opportunities and facilitate long term gain (Bryld 2002; Gumbo, 2000: 15). The main problem international actors face is the sustainability of their projects. While the local government generally does not interfere with internationally sponsored urban agricultural projects, their in country time frames are necessarily limited and short term. Once the international organizations meet their project goals, they turn ownership over to the community. Often its sustainability and profit decreases. While other factors may contribute to the decreased sustainability of an agricultural project post international departure, the increased risk associated with it does play a significant role in decreasing its long term success rates. Once the international actor leaves farmers no longer have protection from government destruction. The international community has made progress substantial through working with individual farmers and communities, and these achievements should be recognized. But there needs to be increased pressure on governments to force policy changes. Currently, the Zimbabwean government is able to evade real commitment, because it nominally supports urban agriculture and points to legislation that could theoretically promote its development although it currently does not. The international community must push the national government further to create legislation that explicitly focuses on it. Without a government framework that supports urban agriculture, the gains of the international community will be limited and short term. The need to pressure Zimbabwe towards accepting urban agriculture and developing a framework for it should start at a regional level. Both Zambia and Botswana have created legislation recognizing and regulating it (Sedze 2006; Hovokra 2005). Lusaka has acceptedurban agriculture and successfully formulated policy to structure it in a way that maximizes its sustainability and payoffs. It has also created lo-
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cal-international partnerships to secure funding and resources (Sedze 2006). Gaborone has increased its support of urban agriculture by providing education and funding for urban farmers. It specifically focuses on the needs of women farmers through gender targeted funding. This gendered framework is an important step towards achieving gender equality in Botswana (Hovokra 2005). Zambia and Botswana could serve as important models for the development of urban agricultural policies in Zimbabwe. Moreover, they could pressure Zimbabwe to adopt the measures outlined in regional agreements like the Harare Declaration on Urban and Peri Urban Agriculture. The combination of regional and international pressure is necessary to influence government change and increase local and international investment in urban agriculture in Zimbabwe. However, external actors are not sufficient to create a working legal structure in Zimbabwe. Local farmers potential must be harnessed pursue local and national government change. Local based initiatives and opinions are essential to understanding urban agriculture in Harare; the government must include their voices in urban planning to contextualize their policies. As past programs like structural adjustment have demonstrated, implementing a model without adapting it to accommodate local realities will ultimately fail. There are several local urban agriculture projects in Harare, one of which in particular has received political attention at a domestic and international level: the Musikavanhu Project in the Budirido suburb of Harare. These farmers have attracted substantial attention for their sustainable development of urban agriculture. The Musikavanhu Project is locally run, but it is financially backed by a variety of actors including the government, national and international private businesses and NGOs; it demonstrates the importance of collaborative efforts in achieving progress and sustainability (Sedze 2006). The Musikavanhu Project is an off plot agricultural project which leases land from the municipal government. The main crops are maize, sweet potatoes and groundnuts. Beyond urban farming, it educates farmers on more efficient and effective techniques of cultivations through classes and demonstrations supported by the government and local and international NGOs. The project proves urban agricultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s environmental sustainability through its emphasis on organic farming. Avoiding the use of chemical fertilizers has minimized the negative environmental impact, particularly on water sources, that the government previously used to justify crop destruction. And better techniques on land leased from the government decrease land degredation and increase farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; land security. Furthermore, the Musikavanhu Project has increased urban farmers access to important resources including cell phones and banks to facilitate the infrastructural development of, investment in and long term support for urban agriculture. The substantial investment in improving farming methods and increased access to resources has improved the quality of lives of the farmers and community. The quantity of food increased leading to a subsequent improvement in nutrition.
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Access to cell phones and banks is a long term investment that has created new opportunities for upwards class mobility among urban farmers. Moreover, local initiatives that support urban agriculture have positive effects that extend beyond those immediately involved. As community based projects like the Muiksavanhu Project stabilize, participants use extra income to invest in the community with a focus on children and education. (Sedze: 2006, 56). This has the potential to improve the economic status of an entire community, not just the individual farmers. Their success demonstrates the benefitsinvestment in urban agriculture can have in decreasing economic, spatial and gender inequality. At a very micro level, the Muiksavanhu Project has improved equality on all three dimensions. Community based initiatives are essential for the development of urban agriculture and highly organized projects force the government to react. However, the lack of a coherent framework impedes their progress. Land security continues to remain an issue even when the local government provides land permits, because the time frame is uncertain and policy loopholes allow local politicians to raze crops regardless of their legal status. The Muiksavanhu Project avoided this risk, because it had international support, but not all farmers can rely on international protection. Crop security is also an issue, because theft is common and local law enforcement does not frequently protect crops. And, navigating the bureaucracy to secure land permits and legalize urban cultivation can be difficult, and the start up costs prove to be prohibitive for many projects. Even when urban cultivation is approved, technicalities within laws pertaining to urban agriculture still leave farmers in a precarious position where one local politician can destroy their crops in the name of environmental or urban sustainability (The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association And The Municipal Development Partnership: Southern and Eastern Africa 2005). Moreover, the Muiksavanhu Project was successful and received government support, but it is an exception not the rule. While local projects are often successful within their communities, the limited and unreliable governmental support, financially and otherwise, prevents substantial progress. The majority of local projects will not develop without a clear and transparent legal structure. Most communities focus on avoiding government detection, because they know local laws exist to destroy their crops; however, local farmers need to confront the government in order to force government legislation and increase their security. Thus, the current farmer-government interaction creates a vicious cycle. Urban farmers strive to remain invisible to avoid government sponsored crop destruction; in order to do this farmers cultivate in risky and/or environmentally unstable areas. This leads the government to destroy the crops they find, and farmers continue to find new places to farm and evade the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reach. The Musikavanhu Project has demonstrated that it is possible to break this cycle and receive positive government attention, but more farmers need to work together and with the international com-
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munity to force government action and avoid the potential backlash. The power of informal networks must be taken seriously and harnessed to improve urban agriculture. If urban farmers work collectively and alongside international actors, they will be a formidable force that the government must take seriously (Bayat 1997). A substantial number of international NGOs have worked with urban farmers to create policies and projects that meet specific needs and take into account local contexts, including the lack of legal structure. These projects have generally succeeded even if only for the time period when international actors are on the ground. This success demonstrates both the benefits of a collaborative approach and the need for government action. The different approaches to urban agriculture in Harare currently have not promoted its long term development, because there is a disconnect between the government and local and international proponents of urban agriculture and a lack of local or international pressure for government change. Until the government explicitly supports its developments, urban farmers will only secure short term benefits and limited investment. The current divergence between government rhetoric and action has directly prevented urban agricultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s long term benefits and decreased its collective progress (Bowyer-Bower1996, 12). The laws surrounding urban agriculture do no create a structured, transparentframework that is equally accessible to all Harare citizens. In the long term, this impedes its advancement and accompanied benefits. There is a serious need for the government to create policy specific to urban agriculture to establish a framework to maximize its benefits. Its current discursive only commitment has not fostered the change necessary for improvement. And the government can create a legal structure pertaining to urban agriculture that will both immediately help urban farmers and decrease widespread urban inequalities. Both of these things will increase popular support for the government and neither requires a massive monetary commitment. If urban planners work collaboratively with the international community and urban farmers, particularly women, urban agriculture will be a mechanism to challenge the massive spatial, economic and gender inequality within Harare. This may be against the short term interests of the government, but the long term gains - a more stable, equitable and economically better off society - are far greater than any short term loss. Moreover, the increase in government popularity among a large section of the population will help offset short term losses. A detailed set of interactive policies that reallocate a portion of land specifically to urban agriculture and specifically address gender will substantially improve urban agricultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effectiveness in achieving its short and long term benefits. It will increase land security and promote long term investment increasing the productive capacity of farmers. It will also decrease spatial and economic inequality by increasing urban poor legal access to land in a transparent and fair way, increasing an additional income source and improving food
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security. It would provide a mechanism to facilitate class mobility that does not currently exist in Harare. Additionally, “UA [urban agriculture] provides women in Harare...with the capacity to pursue, and in many cases address, a variety of personal goals ranging from daily survival and well being to socio- economic empowerment over the longer-term. Given this evidence it is important for planners torecognise the multi-faceted potential of UA, as well as the diversity of the women involved” (Hovokra 2006: 57). Creating a framework that recognizes the gender biases of urban agriculture and seeks to empower women will improve their status by providing women with an additional source of income and drastically increasing their visibility within the city. In the long run, this government recognition is an important step towards equality and large scale women’s empowerment. There are a series of policies that would develop urban agriculture and establish it as an environmentally sustainable project. First, the Zimbabwean government needs to close the current loopholes that permit crop destruction in policies that claim to support urban agriculture and revise current environmental legislation that protects land at the expense of human development (The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association And The Municipal Development Partnership: Southern and Eastern Africa 2005; Bowyer-Bower 1996). It also needs to create a policy that increases farmers’ land security to discourage cultivation in dangerous or environmentally degraded areas. Creating land security would allow the government to control crop expansion and limit environmental destruction while promoting investment in areas where cultivation is allowed. In this effort, the government should expand its current permit program allotting more land for urban agriculture and extending their duration. To decrease gender inequality, the government must explicitly discuss gender roles during the policy making process. Zimbabwe could follow Botswana’s model where funding is targeted towards women and education on business and farming is provided. While challenging patriarchal structures requires more than recognizing its role in urban agriculture, it does provide an important avenue to improve women’s opportunities in Harare (Hovokra 2006: 58). The government needs to create a detailed set of policies pertaining to urban agriculture. If it decides to seriously invest inits development there are series of secondary actions it could implemented including funding or securing international aid for urban farmers to support the initial costs of securing permits, equipment and seeds and education on better farming methods. It is highly unlikely that the government will make a massive monetary investment in urban agriculture, but even a legislative commitment will substantially increase the benefits of urban agriculture in Harare. The government has already made a nominal commitment to urban agriculture, now the international community and local actors must pressure the government towards concretizing this through legislation. Urban agriculture’s development in Harare was a reaction to the economic decline of the 1990s. While it was a response to the vast rise in poverty and growing in-
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equality, it currently has the potential to improve the economic status of the urban poor. If it is properly developed urban agriculture can increase food security, economic, spatial and gender equality within Harare. The international community and local urban farmers have worked collaboratively to achieve these goals. Local actors, like those involved in the Muiksavanu Project, have already made substantial progress in their efforts especially when internationally supported. However, their success has been limited to a very micro level. The Zimbabwean government has repeatedly claimed it supports urban agriculture, but its policies are contradictory and periodically used to systematically destroy crops. Without a clear framework set forth by the government, urban agriculture in Zimbabwe will continue to operate in a legal gray area, farmers will be unable to make substantial, long term progress and inequality in the city will continue to be entrenched. The government has made a rhetorical commitment to improve and invest in urban agriculture, now it must make the policy commitment.
References Bayat, Asef. “Un-civil Society: the Politics of the ‘informal People’” Third World Quarterly 18.1 (1997): 53-72. Print. Bowyer-Bower, T.A.S. “Criticism of Environmental Policy for Land Management in Zimbabwe.” Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters 5 (1996): 7-17. JSTOR. Web. 1 May 2011. Brett, E. A. “From Corporatism to Liberalization in Zimbabwe: Economic Policy Regimes and Political Crisis, 1980-97.” International Political Science Review/ Revue Internationale De Science Politique 26.1 (2005): 91-106. JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr. 2011. Bryld, Erik. “Potentials, Problems, and Policy Implications for Urban Agriculture in Developing Countries.” Agriculture and Human Values 20 (2003): 79- 86. JSTOR. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. “CIA - The World Factbook.” The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency, 2011. Web. 08 May 2011. Conceição, Pedro, Ricardo Fuentes‐Nieva, Leo Horn‐Phathanothai, and Anthony Ngororano. Food Security and Human Development in Africa: Strategic Considerations and Directions for Further Research. Rep. Dec. 2010. Web. 21 Apr. 2011. Drakakis-Smith, D. W. “Food Systems and the Poor in Harare under Conditions of Structural Adjustment.” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geog raphy 76.1 (1994): 3-20. JSTOR. Web. 1 Apr. 2011. Gumbo, Bekithemba. “Urban Agriculture in Harare.” Diss. University of Zimbabwe, 2000. University of Zimbabwe. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. Hovorka, Alice. “Urban Agriculture: Addressing Practical and Strategic Gender Needs.” Development in Practice 16.1 (2006): 51-61. Print.
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Kanji, Nazneen. “Gender Poverty and Structural Adjustment in Harare, Zimbabwe.” Environment and Urbanization 7.1 (1995): 37-56. Print. Mbiba, Beacon. Urban Agriculture in Harare: Between Suspicion and Repression. Issue brief. Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security, 1999. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. Mbiba, Beacon. Urban Agriculture in Zimbabwe: Implications for Urban Management and Poverty. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995. Print. The Municipal Development Partnership: Eastern and Southern Africa, and The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association. A Review and Analysis of the Policy and Legislative Framework for Urban Agriculture in Zimbabwe. Rep. ZELA and MDP, Jan. 2005. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. Potts, Deborah. “‘Restoring Order’? Operation Murambatsvina and the Urban Crisis in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Southern African Studies 32.2 (2006): 273-91. Print. Sedze, Valentine T. “An Examination of a Community Based Agriculture Project: The Case of Musikavanhu in Budiriro, Harare.” Diss. University of Zimbabwe, 2006. University of Zimbabwe. Web. 7 Apr. 2011. Simone, AbdouMaliq. “Pirate Towns: Reworking Social and Symbolic Infrastruc- tures in Johannesburg and Douala.” Urban Studies 43.2 (2006): 357-70. Print.
THE MORE THE VOICE WAS MUTED, THE MORE THE SPIRIT SHOUTED: Ethiopian Pentecostalism as Social Protest during the Administrations of Emperor Selassie I and the Derg Regime (1960-1990) Desta Lissanu Harvard University Very little scholarship has been conducted on the birth and meteoric development of the Ethiopian Evangelical movement of the late 20th attempt to plot the early trajectory of this wholly unique (and decidedly indigenous) Pentecostalist movement, which bears little resemblance to Pentecostal churches in post-colonial Africa. The Pentecostal movement emerged during a time of great uPheaval and uncertainty in Ethiopiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie I and the rise of the Marxist Derg regime. Grappling with the unstoppable modernizing force of the Western world, many Ethiopians (particularly the youth) sought for a way to reinterpret their identity in light of the social turmoil enveloping them. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC) was unable to adapt to meet the needs of its constituency, due to its long entanglement with the deposed Ethiopian monarchy. The Pentecostal movement was so successful and relentless because it was able to allow its adherents to constructively and critically engage with the forces of modernity. Through the creation of safe associational spaces and the use of a rhetoric of rupture (or set aparted-ness), Ethiopian Pentecostalism unconsciously provided one of the most aggressive forms of social justice observed during the Derg years.
The story of the birth and rise of Pentecostalism in Ethiopia has been one of adversity and persecution. It is the story of a movement that began as a small nucleus of fervent believers but rapidly burgeoned into a social movement that engaged all levels of Ethiopian society. The very existence of Ethiopian Pentecostals, indeed all Ethiopian Evangelicals, created a current of dissent against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC), the Ethiopian state, and later, the Ethiopian socialist government (Derg) under Mengistu Haile Mariam. Ethiopian Pentecostalism was counter-cultural and therefore was perceived as a threat to the Ethiopian identity by all of the aforementioned institutions. The success and growth of the Ethiopian Pentecostal movement, however, stems directly from this countercultural status. Pentecostalism embraced a unique way of viewing the world at a time of great social and political upheaval in Ethiopia. Through the innovative use of such tools as music, associational unity, rhetoric and socio-political engagement, Ethiopian Pentecostalism was able to offer an alternative to the societal turmoil that embroiled Ethiopia between 1970-1991. Pentecostalism concretely met the spiritual, social and physical needs of Ethiopians at a time when both the Ethiopian state and Ethiopian Orthodox Church could not. More importantly, Ethiopian Pentecostalism critically and positively engaged with modernity during the Derg years, unlike the brutal socialist engagements of the socialist Derg regime or the conciliatory approaches of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Although the Pentecostal movement collided violently with theories of globalization and modernism, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;theology of engagementâ&#x20AC;? espoused by its followers empowered them to articulately respond to the
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socialist agenda put forth by the Marxist regime and the societal restructuring caused by modernization (Kalu108). The Pentecostal movement provided a foil to the static Orthodox Church, which largely opposed any modernizing efforts proposed by Emperor Selassie after World War II. This essay aims to explore why Pentecostalism was so attractive to a disoriented Ethiopian population and how this allure translated into the rapid spread of the movement. A thorough exploration of Pentecostal theology, organization and socio-political engagement, as well as a constant comparison with the engagement tactics of the Derg regime and the EOC, will reveal why Pentecostalism was perceived as one of the few institutions that was able to provide answers to many of the unfulfilled needs and desires of the people of Ethiopia during a time of massive social upheaval, explaining its exponential growth despite heavy persecution and resistance. Ethiopian Pentecostalism in Ethiopia did not emerge from a spiritual vacuum; on the contrary, Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries in the world. King Ezana declared orthodox Christianity to be the official state religion in the 4th century; it was this pivotal decision that gradually led to the fusion of church and state that came to characterize pre-revolutionary Ethiopia. Indeed, the ancient script known as Kebre Negast (The Glory of Kings) documents the foundation of Ethiopia by the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, clearly “conceiv[ing] church and state as one organism, without a clear separation between the religious and the secular” (Eide 21). The emperor of Ethiopia, who relied on the church patriarchy for political and religious legitimization, in turn supported the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (Eide 16). Religion facilitated the consolidation of the emperor’s power and the extension of political hegemony over Ethiopian territories. Just as the political and religious were intertwined in Ethiopia, so Ethiopian identity was inextricably tied to Christianity. Christianity allowed for the unification of the diverse ethnic identities that existed in Ethiopia, that is, it facilitated “inclusion in a supra-tribal polity under an emperor” (Eide 21). Christianity became, in the words of the Ethiopianist scholar Edward Ullendorff, “the most profound expression of the national existence of its people” (Eide 21). To be Ethiopian was to be Orthodox. To be Orthodox was to be a member of an extremely old and culturally entrenched institution, an authentically African Christian church that boasted a rich and storied legacy replete with ornate (and uniquely Ethiopian) crosses, elaborate liturgical ceremonies, and priests bedecked in sumptuous vestments. Any other expression of Christianity outside of the confines of the Orthodox Church was seen as deviant and abnormal and could not be tolerated.
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It was within this complex and highly integrated society that the Pentecostal revival of the 1960s occurred in Ethiopia.1 Pentecostal missionaries had been operating in Ethiopia since 1934, although they were forced out during the Italian occupation of the late 1930s. These missionaries emphasized the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, which was slightly different from the other evangelical missionaries, who stressed the importance of personal salvation. The entrance of Nordic missionaries (the Finland Pentecostal Missionaries and the Swedish Philadelphia Mission) in the 1950s was influential in disseminating Pentecostal literature and constructing a theological framework for the Addis Ababa youth that allowed for “the formation of a distinct Pentecostal fellowship”(Eshete 153). The spark for the Pentecostal revival of the 1960s, however, was ignited among those who had had very little contact with the small group of Pentecostal missionaries (Djaleta 42). Contrary to popular thought, Pentecostalism in Ethiopia was not a byproduct of the (American) Azusa Street revival of 1907, but rather a “strand in the element of continuity between African traditional religion and Christianity” (Kalu 134). As Eshete points out, the Pentecostal revival of the 1960s was “internally anchored, internally engineered, and internally propelled” (Eshete 168). Although Pentecostal missionaries had been operating in rural regions of Ethiopia since 1934, it was not until the 1960s that a sweeping Pentecostal revival occurred on a national scale. While extensive research still remains to be conducted on the history of the Pentecostal movement, virtually all participants in the movement recognize that the movement was a coming together of several tributaries into one stream, that is, of scattered religious revivals throughout Ethiopia coalescing into a potent religious awakening due to what believers assert to be the demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power at various locations in Ethiopia simultaneously (Eshete 148). Tibebe Eshete traces these “streams” that spanned Ethiopia’s urban centers-Harar, Nazareth, Addis Ababa, Haile Selassie I University-to their convergence in the capital of Addis Ababa in his seminal work The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia. The base of this new revival was found among the growing young urban, educated class, who were frustrated by what they perceived to be the Orthodox Church’s inability to redefine the Ethiopian identity and faith to suit the rapidly changing times. These youth saw themselves as making a clean break from the detached and outmoded traditions of the EOC by choosing to participate in a more spiritually demanding and engaging faith that 1 I am aware of the distinction between the Pentecostal revival movement of the 1960s and the Ethiopian Evangelical movements that were already underway at the time. For the purposes of this essay, I plan to include all Ethiopian evangelicals under the label “Pentecostal” for the following reasons: 1) as noted by the Pentecostal scholar Tibebe Eshete, there was very little difference in the doctrines of the various evangelical (Lutheran, Baptist, etc) churches and the Pentecostal churches 2) the continuation of the Derg regime saw a gradual charismatization of all evangelical churches, bringing the practices of such churches closer to that of the Pentecostal churches 3) the term “Pentecostal” gradually came to represent a “generic label for all non-Orthodox and non-Catholic Christians in Ethiopia” (Eshete 146,177). In the eyes of adherents to the Orthodox faith, all non-Orthodox, Protestant Christians were Pentecostal.
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rejected the “relativization of culture” and instead drew a clear demarcation between the modern and the traditional (Kifleyesus 124). It was among these youth (many of whom were students) that the charismatic expression that characterized Pentecostalism found root; expressive spirituality, the works of the Holy Spirit (speaking in tongues, healing, exorcism, etc.), and personal holiness were all trademarks of this fiery brand of Christianity. Indeed, Pentecostal theology can be summed up in the phrase Mulu Wengel (“Full Faith”), which emphasized the need for recognition of personal sin, repentance, and entrance into a new life that manifested the work of the Holy Spirit (Djaleta 38). Miraculous stories of healings, conversions, and prophesying soon began to occur in the aforementioned cities; the news quickly found its way to the other epicenters of Pentecostal activity. As the number of converts began to grow, the members of the movement realized that the organizing some semblance of institution or network was vital to the continued success of the revival. It was the Addis Ababa Conference of 1966 that allowed for the unity of the streams of the Pentecostal movement into one river; the meeting was an important milestone that led to an articulation of the Pentecostal goals and ideologies, the “pulling of able leaders under one umbrella,” and the creation of a new associational space for the previously scattered Pentecostal groups (Eshete 164). The early years of the Pentecostal movement paralleled the rapid socio-political changes that were sweeping Ethiopia. The year 1960 was a momentous year for all of Ethiopia and signaled a change in the political, social and cultural climate. A failed coup by members of the emperor’s own security forces (including the elite Imperial Guard) saw the seemingly unassailable image of Emperor Haile Selassie begin to crumble. Although Emperor Selassie quickly regained control, the floodgates that had previously kept the criticism and protest-from students, ethnic and self-help organizations and other indigenous associations- at bay were shattered (Keller 135). The clamor for modernization (which included land and tax reforms, the formation of a parliamentary democracy, and the dismantling of the monarchy) grew increasingly insistent, but Emperor Selassie’s attempt to placate all of the disgruntled social and ethnic groups only led to the worsening of social conditions (Keller 135). Ironically, the very university that Haile Selassie had advocated so strongly for, Haile Selassie I University, was the nucleus of the very student movements that agitated against his administration. Students began to organize themselves into sophisticated and highly centralized organizations that began to regularly and openly protest the emperor’s administration after 1965 (Keller 135). These students were deeply disenchanted with the vision of national identity that Emperor Selassie was offering the new generation of Ethiopians (that is, an identity entrenched in the traditional mentality of the past); the emperor did not provide a new framework by which the youth of Ethiopia could understand the dramatic changes that modernization was bringing upon Ethiopia (Djaleta 39). The youth were at a crossroads and were operating in the “absence of clear and rational guideposts” in their search for truth and meaning
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(Eshete 61). The increasing levels of education of the youth enabled them to more critically engage with the contradictions of the Ethiopian monarchy and question the slow speed at which the emperor was undertaking reforms (Balsvik 81). The friction between new and old, tradition and modernity led to the creation of what Eshete termed the “great divorce between the past and the present, between the traditional and the modern” (Eshete 200). The Ethiopian Orthodox Church did not provide a much better framework for the increasingly restive population of urban educated elites. On the contrary, the structure of the EOC rendered much of the emperor’s attempted reforms of the Orthodox Church impotent. Haile Selassie understood the winds of change that were blowing through the country and saw the need to “update” the EOC in order to make it more relevant to the new generation of Ethiopian youth (Eshete 42). However, the vast, hierarchical and complex nature of the Church stymied any of the emperor’s attempts at modernization (Eshete 42). The effects of the EOC’s stubbornness and cultural entrenchment were keenly felt by Ethiopian youth. Their engagement with modernity left them feeling disconnected from the religion of their ancestors, which was compounded by the inaccessibility of the Orthodox Church. Many of the first converts of the Pentecostal movement recall a deep feeling of dissatisfaction with the Church. Makeda Mulugeta, a Pentecostal convert from the EOC, recalls that she had many questions about her Orthodox faith, but that “both reading the Bible and asking questions were discouraged by the Orthodox Church…and as a young woman, there was absolutely no access to church leadership.” Church services were conducted in the ancient Ethiopic language of Ge’ez, leading many Pentecostal converts to view Orthodox church services as irrelevant spectator events. The factional strife and division within the orthodox clergy, the clergy’s perceived failure to engage the Biblical text deeply, compounded with the “moral laxity and lack of fervency of faith” that characterized most adherents to the orthodox faith frustrated a generation of Ethiopian youth that yearned for more (Eshete 114). The Pentecostal movement answered many of the aforementioned societal yearnings that the religio-monarchical hegemony could not. Eshete notes that the “rhetoric of lack” is helpful in explaining the allure that Pentecostalism exercised over the disenchanted youth of Ethiopia: modernity exposed the fault lines and societal contradictions between the traditional and the modern, encouraging the perception that a shift had to be made. The shift was one from a traditional faith perceived to be archaic and outmoded to a faith that was seen as vibrant, dynamic and rational (Djaleta 42). The base of the movement was primarily composed of those who had expressed such discontent at the existing Ethiopian societal structure, namely the young, urban educated elite (Eshete 148, Donham xix). The Pentecostal movement echoed the call for the personal salvation and rebirth that the previously established evangelical churches advocated, but there
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was a clear emphasis on the gifts and centrality of the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit indwelt in the followers of Jesus Christ often manifested itself in such behaviors as prophesy, healing (by laying on of hands), glossolalia (speaking in tongues), and passionate worship (Eshete 147). The strictly disciplined lives of the Pentecostals- dancing, attending movies, and drinking alcohol were strictly forbidden- emphasized what came to embody a “theology of separateness,” which directly countered the hegemonic and inclusionary approach of the EOC and echoed the Biblical mandate to “come out from them [the world] and be separate” (Eshete 35). Pentecostalism provided an alternative societal construct, one that identified the disconnect caused by the rapid modernization underway and proposed concrete methods by which to situate and orient oneself at a time of social upheaval. The Pentecostal churches were outward oriented; heavy emphasis was placed on the importance of memesker (witnessing), and the young believers were extremely eager to share their faith. For Pentecostals, their faith was at its heart an outpouring of the power of the Holy Spirit through willing conduits to a “lost” and “darkened” world. In addition to ministering to the souls of the lost, Ethiopian Pentecostals were intensely concerned with meeting the temporal needs of the body. Pentecostal Bible studies began to crop up at Haile Selassie I University in 1966, and it was not long before support groups for rural students, mutual aid programs and counseling services began to be coupled with spiritual nourishment (Eshete 162). The willingness to engage modernity and the extroverted nature of the Pentecostal church stands in stark contrast to the stance of the Orthodox Church. For centuries the inward orientation of the EOC fostered the “indigenization” of its belief system and accelerated the subsequent isolation of the church from external influence (Eshete 25). In the early 1960s, the EOC began advocating “life evangelism,” that is, the expression of faith and Christian values (i.e. Chewanet-gentility, Feriha Egzhiabher- the fear of God, etc.) through daily life and not by proclamation (Eshete 41). Practice did not necessarily follow theory, however, and many Orthodox Christians did not engage in the practices of fasting, acts of charity, and church attendance that constituted evangelism. It was precisely this lack of moral fervency and accountability that created a generation of Ethiopians that sought to make a clean break from the past. Persecution of the Pentecostal minority at the hands of the Orthodox Church began to occur after 1967. As Mulugeta recounts, a Pentecostal convert was often shunned and/or beaten by his/her family, who viewed conversion to Pentecostalism as an “abandonment of culture and family.” Many in the EOC were disturbed at the rapid proliferation of what was a viewed to be a heretical “foreign virus” among the youth of Ethiopia. Pentecostal ideology emphasized theology that was under-emphasized and over-looked by the EOC, most notably the gifts of the Spirit, the importance of holiness, individual salvation, and the necessity
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for formation of a distinct and separate religious community (Kifleyesus 130). Many adherents to the Orthodox faith were turned off by the loud and passionate worship/healing services of the Pentecostals (which showed a lack of Chewanet), the lack of centralized organization, the portrayal of women as co-laborers in the movement and the lack of ceremonialized ritual (Eshete 175). Persecution against Pentecostals, or “Pentes” as they began to be derogatorily called after a 1967 violent attack on a Pentecostal conference, escalated under the implied blessing of the Ethiopian government. Mass arrests and tortures of Pentecostals and the closing of Pentecostal churches became commonplace as the government became wary of any apparent attack on the Ethiopian identity and its political hegemony. In the words of Eshete, Pentecostalism’s shift form Ethiopian orthodoxy represented a “devia[tion] [from what it means to] be an Ethiopian” (Eshete 181). It was into this arena of religious turmoil that Marxism began to creep in the mid-1960s. The proliferation and distribution of Marxist propaganda captured the attention of the youth, who quickly latched on to the ideals of social justice and equitable distribution that Marxism espoused. As Gedeon Wolde Amanuel reflected on his involvement in the nascent student movement of the 1970s, he emphasizes the students’ focus on organization and awareness, which was spread through such Marxist newspapers as Dil Betegel (“Victory through Struggle”), Democracia and Qay Bandira (“The Red Flag”) (Zewde 132). He remembers how “the youth enthusiastically cooperated with all political organizations… [which] taught Marxism-Leninism, which we had a strong desire to imbibe… we were in love with Maoism” (Zewde 132,4). The student opposition’s cry of meret le’arrashu! (land to the tiller!) indicated the increasing radicalization that was sweeping not only the student movement, but also Ethiopian society. It came as no surprise when Emperor Selassie, who by this time was in his early 80s, was deposed in what came to be known as the “creeping coup” (Halliday, Molyneux 87). The Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, commonly known as the Derg, assumed power on July 2,1974 under the slogan Etiopia Tikdem (Ethiopia First) (Halliday, Molyneux 87). In December of 1974, Hebrettesebawinet (Ethiopian socialism) was declared as the official ideology of the Ethiopian Revolution and power was consolidated under the sole figure of Comrade Mengistu Haile Mariam (Eshete 205). Ideologically, the Pentecostal and Marxist movements both championed very similar goals: equality, social justice, the “dignity of labor” and the “supremacy of the common good” (Halliday 88). Mengistu’s call to “rise up with determination to eliminate hunger, disease, illiteracy and unemployment” clearly echoed Biblical mandates of social responsibility and response that the Pentecostals also emphasized (Haile Mariam 1979). The evangelical churches were wary, however, of endorsing the new political regime. They were excited by the possibility of a government that would bring about a more just and less exploitative society, but
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Ethiopian evangelicals were strongly apolitical (following Christ’s injunction to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”) and only fully committed to the kingdom of God. This is evident in a statement made by Qes Guddina, one of the most visible leaders of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY): considering the present special situation of our country…the Christian should invest his/her money, time, knowledge and life…and cooperate with governmental associations in working for the well-being of the Ethiopian people. The only limitation to his cooperation or obedience to the laws of his country is if he is commanded to act contrary to the law of God (Eide 179, emphasis added).
Mengistu’s violent consolidation of power in 1974 and the Red Terror of 1977-78 proved that the Pentecostals’ wariness was not unfounded and alerted the evangelical and Pentecostal leadership to the persecution that was to come. Although the Derg proclaimed freedom of worship for all, a study by the British Council of Churches in 1979 found that “the policy seems clearly to be the Marxist-Leninist policy of creating a climate in which religion atrophies” (Eide 201). As Yehwalashet Girma notes, “religion was considered the ‘opium of the people,’ and as any drug it had to be banned and the drug taker isolated and treated for the malaise” (Girma 132). Religion was not only deliberately suppressed, but also purposely brought under the control of the Mengistu regime. Mengistu sought to delicately “handle” or “tame” the EOC for propaganda reasons, but he was not interested in the fringe elements that he believed the Pentecostal and Evangelical movements represented (Eide 232). In fact, he viewed the evangelical movements as cultist and subversive, agents planted by Western spies to undermine the Ethiopian revolution (clearly untrue, as the Pentecostal churches were distinctly African) (Eshete 265). The isolation of the Pentecostal communities and the existing anti-Pentecostal prejudices in Ethiopia made them easy targets for persecution at the hands of the Derg. Indeed, the Derg’s intentions were made explicit in a statement made frequently by Qebele cadres (Communist supervisors of Ethiopia’s urban districts), “Be pentewoch kerse meqabir la’ay abyotachinen engenebalene” (We shall build our revolution on of the graves of the Pentecostals) (Eshete 265). The persecution of Pentecostal and other evangelical communities persisted almost from the advent of the Derg regime to its demise in 1991. All manner of methods-arrest, confiscation of church property, imprisonment of church leadership, public humiliation, torture and death- were employed in order to dismantle the Pentecostal movement. Ironically, the persecution had the unintended effect of increasing the numbers and strength of the Pentecostal communities. Pentecostal communities did not intend to deliberately subvert the Derg regime (i.e. advocate for its overthrow); their resistance was “mute and active…a demonstration [of the] furtive rejection of authority and its prevailing legitimating principles” (Eshete 280). [This was the same stance they assumed with the pre-revo-
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lutionary monarchical government and the EOC.] Resistance took many forms, but its primary purpose was to reclaim the cultural space from the Derg’s attempt to radicalize society. The clearest example of this creation of an autonomous cultural space involved the formation of underground house cells in response to the Derg ban on Pentecostal activity. The rapid proliferation of underground churches allowed for the creation of a new and free associational space untainted by the corrupting influences of Marxism. Distance enabled the Pentecostals to maintain their distinct identity and unity (Eshete 277). Resistance also took such form as the distribution of anti-Marxist literature, the proliferation of gospel songs with encouraging and distinctly anti-revolutionary messages, and the refusal of Pentecostals to utter any Marxist slogans that denied the sovereignty of God. The foundation of Pentecostal resistance was built on a wholesale rejection of Marxist ideology. Unlike the EOC, which adopted a largely conciliatory approach to the Derg and was manipulated by the Marxist regime, the Pentecostals were strident in their criticism of Marxist ideology and its endorsement of the “socialist man.” Pentecostals believed in the “new man,” of a rebirth that was holistic in scope and allowed for the “full liberation of the whole man” (Eide 269). Ethiopian Pentecostalism did not believe that any “ideology invented by men…could ever replace the Gospel of Christ,” which naturally leads to the conclusion that only a “spiritually self-transformed” person possessed the “moral justification to call out for actions that would bring…community transformation” (Eide 119, Eshete 167). As Kalu noted, “ [Pentecostalism] builds a corps of human agency to work with the divine in the process of restoration…participation in the public space must be rooted in the conviction that God actually sent” (Kalu 161). In essence, Pentecostals emphasized the need for a “micro-revolution” of the heart before any of the macro-revolutionary aims that the Derg propounded could be achieved. The diametrical opposition of Pentecostal and Marxist ideologies does not suggest that Pentecostals sought to distant themselves from the socio-political arena, however. On the contrary, Pentecostals were more engaged than ever and actively sought to learn about Marxist ideology and educated its members through literature, conferences and discussion groups, which in turn enabled Pentecostals to actively engage with Marxists and Marxist ideology (Eshete 255). Through this time of persecution and suffering, the Pentecostal churches were united in their experience of the “theology of suffering.” The repressive measures of the Derg largely served to strengthen the sense of community and collective identity of these churches, which is echoed in a believer’s statement that “the revolution set us apart, marked our identity, put us in an iron mold both to be shaped and strengthened like iron” (Eshete 293). As in the pre-revolutionary times, the Pentecostal church once again provided a positive outlet for the untapped creative energies of a disillusioned and ill-oriented Ethiopian youth. The lack of factionalism, the warmth of community and the creation of an identity
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separate from the political arena increasingly appealed to Ethiopians embittered by the failed promises of the Derg regime. Even though the anti-Derg nature of the Pentecostal churches must have appealed to critics of the Derg regime, Makeda Mulugeta believes that “it wasn’t a religion to get away from politics… it was not an escape, but a discovery of what my faith was rather than a government protest.” Both Pentecostalism and the Marxist-Leninist ideology of the Derg regime offered not only competing visions of modernity, but also principles by which Ethiopian citizens could reimagine a world in the (often painful) throes of modernization. The introduction of modern education to Ethiopia after World War II contributed to an academically rigorous and diverse environment that exposed Ethiopian students to Western “cultural and political values” and the experiences of other African students (Balsvik, 81). This ideological seeding left many students disenchanted with the static nature of the Ethiopian political system and exceptionally sensitive to the political restraints placed upon students by university and government administrators. These students turned to Marxism, eagerly consuming political works by Castro, Fanon, Gorky and Nietzsche (Zewde 98). Although enthusiastic at the thought of an Ethiopian government that was responsive to the winds of modernity and change, student supporters quickly realized that the Derg’s promises of peace and equality were only attractive facades for the regime’s practice of forced villagization, “politics of hunger” and anti-pluralism (Courtois et. al, 686). Pentecostals were also undergoing their own encounter with modernity during this time. Their insistence that “an alternately construed world” could only be imagined within Biblical confines manifested itself in a renewed ecumenical association among the Pentecostal and Ethiopian Evangelical churches and an emphasis on the “redemptive work of God”- witnessing, caring for the poor, nurturing the church body, etc. (Kalu 108,139). The Pentecostal churches were busier than ever, investing their time in the maintenance of the extensive underground church system, education of the Pentecostal believers in Marxist ideology and of course, the proselytism of unbelievers. This highlights the fundamental difference between the Pentecostal and Marxist approaches to modernity: Marxism called for the radical organization of socio-political elements as a means by which to facilitate a just and equitable world order. Pentecostals, on the other hand, believed that these goals would never be fully accomplished by secular states (which could “become a domination system under rulers imbued with power from Satan”) and chose instead to inhabit the apolitical space created by the tension caused by the Biblical mandate to “be in the world but not of it” (Kalu 108). Ultimately, the subversive nature of the Pentecostal movement lay in its ability to draw its followers into a new context, a context that engendered hope and community, not what Pentecostals perceived to be the detached and effete religion
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of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church or the factionalism and empty ideology of the Derg regime. Pentecostalism was subversive not by design, but by default. Converts to Pentecostalism were keenly aware of the difference in what Kalu and Felton state as Christ’s compassion and love for the oppressed and “the pervasive egoism of secular society…and its exploitation of others as instruments to achieve ends” (Kalu xxv, Felton). The Derg’s (failed) engagement with modernity had only served to increase the feeling of societal unrest and validated the Pentecostal belief that genuine socio-political transformation only stemmed from spiritual rebirth. The Pentecostal movement’s endorsement of ecumenism and critical engagement with thorny societal issues stood in stark contrast to a “mainline church [the EOC] that [seemingly] failed at that meeting point of liturgy and proclamation to provide people with new materials or old materials…that would fund, feed, nurture…legitimate and authorize a counterimagination of the world” (Kalu 139). The creation of new relational and cultural spaces, along with the empowerment of the new birth encounter, enabled Ethiopian Pentecostals to engage with modernity and Marxist political ideologies during a time of intense social upheaval without compromising their integrity or forfeiting their identity. It is precisely this combination of a life and community characterized by “personal salvation and social justice” that made Pentecostalism so alluring to Ethiopians in the midst of an unstable socio-political context (Kalu xxv).
References Boll, Verena et. Al. Ethiopia and the Missions: Historical and Anthropological Insights. Munster: Die Deutsche Biblithek, 2005. Courtois, Stephane, et.al. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 1999. Djaleta, Tesso. “ A Critical Survey of the Development of Charismatic Influences in the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus.” University of Liverpool (Chester College of Higher Education) Publishers. Masters dissertation, published in May 1994. Donham, Donald L. Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, James Currey, 1999. Eide, Oyvind. Revolution and Religion in Ethiopia: The Growth and Persecution of the Mekane Yesus church, 1974-1985. Oxford, Athens, Addis Ababa: James Currey, Ohio University Press, Addis Ababa University Press, 2000. Eshete, Tibebe. The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009. Girma, Yehwalashet. Rape of a Nation. London: Minerva Press, 1996. Haile Mariam, Mengistu. “Towards Economic and Cultural Development in Ethiopia.” Speech delivered on February 1979 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
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Halliday, Fred and Molyneux, Maxine. The Ethiopian Revolution. London: Unwin Brothers, Woking, 1981. Kalu, Ogbu U. Power, Poverty and Prayer: The Challenges of Poverty and Pluralism in African Christianity, 1960-1996. Asmara: Africa World Press, Inc, 2006. Kalu, Ogbu. African Pentecostalism: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Keller, Edmond J. Revolutionary Ethiopia: From Empire to Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Republic. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988. Mulugeta, Makeda. Personal interview (phone) conducted December 6th, 2010. Zegeye, Abebe and Pausewang, Siegfried, eds. Ethiopia in Change: Peasantry, Nationalism and Democracy. London, New York: British Academic Press, 1994. Zewde, Bahru, ed. Documenting the Ethiopian Student Movement: An Exercise in Oral History. Addis Ababa: Forum for Social Studies, 2010.
AFRICAN ELEMENTS OF LA VIRGEN DE LA CARIDAD DEL COBRE: The Marian Devotional that Sparked Cuban Proto-Nationalism Christian Vazquez The development of Cuban national identity is a historical irony. The endeavor that launched the discovery of the Americas and Cuba in 1492 was fueled by the Spanish conquest of the last Moorish Kingdom on the Iberian peninsula: Granada. Much of this Moorish civilization that Spain benefited from for over seven centuries was enriched by the West African societies that would be enslaved in this New World. However, just as much of West Africa had been syncretized into Moorish culture and as a result, made its way into Spanish culture as well, the West African tradition would undermine Spanish authority in Cuba, ultimately leading to that empire’s downfall and the rise of a new Cuban identity. But like all great narratives of empire, this one begins in the most unlikely of corners, the backwater of 17th century Cuba and with the most harmless of objects: a Catholic devotional figure to the Virgin Mary. In 1608 three men in the Bay of Nipe in the eastern frontier of the Spanish colony of Cuba a baroque statue of the Virgin Mary was discovered. The men were searching for salt out on the bay near the copper mines where they worked. In this obscure corner of the Spanish Empire would emerge one of the most important Marian devotional figures. La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre is the patron saint of Cuba. She represents Cuban Catholicism and a national identity that was developing in 17th century. The sculpture represents the trinity of Cuban racial identities: black, native and white and as a result is full of symbolism belonging 1 to those groups. The black identity is in particular is a major component of El Cobre. She was, after all, discovered by a Cuban mulatto, her own features Africanized. However, the black tradition that the Marian sculpture evokes is not monolithically West African, it is also Moorish and a product of the Spanish tradition that melded the European and the North African. Our Lady of Charity is the projection of Cuban national identity one that owes much to the Black Atlantic tradition. The legend behind the statue’s discovery exposes the African influence behind it. The myth has it that she was discovered by “three Juans,” each representing the three ethnic backgrounds of Cuba. The three were out on the Bay of Nipe collecting salt to take back home when a storm appeared. Juan, the slave, was wearing a medallion of the Virgin Mary and along with the other two prayed for her protection when an object appeared floating on the water. The three mistook it for a bird at first until they moved toward it and discovered that it was in fact a statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus in her right arm and the cross on the left. The statue was tied to a floating board with the inscription: “Yo Soy la Virgen de la Caridad” or “I am the Virgin of Charity”. The statue had the skin 1 Díaz, María Elena, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780, Stanford University Press, 2000: Stanford, California, 34.
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tone of a mixed race woman, a dress made of real cloth and real hair (see figure 1). The very fact that she was discovered by the black Juan rather than the other two is significant. It credits the origins of Cuban national identity in a metaphoric manner as being discovered by Afro-Cubans, the group that holds the earliest affinity to a non-Spanish identity because of the caste system present in colonial Latin America. The minute detail that in the legend the statue was at first believed to be a bird is symbolic of the syncretized nature of Cuban Catholicism. In Cuban Santería and other Yoruba-Catholic traditions the Virgin Mary is represented by the Orisha Oshún. Oshún is a spirit that controls love, maternity and marriage; much of the same fields that Mary is considered to have sway over in her own cult. Her color, yellow is also associated with Our Lady of Charity. The most striking aspect is the fact that two of her avatars or manifestations are birds. Oshun Ibu Ikole is the projection of the Orisha as a vulture while Oshun Ibu Akuaro is the goddesses avatar as a quail. Is this coincidental, or are the virgin and Oshún deeply intertwined in the Cuban religious tradition? Christianity has syncretized different religious figures with those of other religions, Mary in particular has been subject to this process most of any other major Christian figure. Early Christians syncretized the Roman moon goddess Diana with Mary. In the Philippines the bodhisattva Guanyin is also identified with the virgin. The Baroque era in which the statue of the virgin was discovered represented an apex in Imperial Spanish syncretism. As the Protestant Reformation contested Catholic dominion in Europe, Catholicism turned to its new converts in the Americas in order to continue the expansion of the faithful. Catholicism became truly universal in the Americas where it allowed for special devotionals dedicated to New World Madonnas (others included La Virgen de Guadalupe in 2 Mexico). This tradition was an extension of the Baroque treatment of syncretism. The Habsburg Empire that ruled over Cuba during this era was an amalgam of 3 different nations that were promised the respect of their own rule and traditions. The Catholic faith that legitimated this empire with its base in Spain protected the particular national identities of each region. This same philosophy was exported to the Americas from Europe where missionaries attempted to learn the language and customs of the people they sought to evangelize. The Marian tradition in Iberia had long held a notion of the virgen morena that stood in opposition to the blonde Madonnas of the French Cluny reforms of the 11th century. This belief in a raven haired Mary was the product of Moorish influence in Spanish thought and heredity, something that would be taken to another level in the Spanish New 4 World. This Baroque Spanish tradition provided the framework of separate nation that would lead to the Patria Chica movement in El Cobre that would eventually become the proto-national identity of Cuba in the 19th century. 2 Stevens-Arroyo, Anthony M., The Contribution of Catholic Orthodoxy to Caribbean Syncretism: The Case of la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre in Cuba, 40. 3 Ibid, 41. 4 Stevens-Arroyo, The Contribution of Catholic Orthodoxy to Caribbean Syncretism, 44.
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The narrative behind Our Lady of Charity continued seven decades after her discovery. The location at which her pilgrimage site was established, El Cobre, was overwhelmingly black and mulatto with under 1% of the population consid5 ered “white peninsular” by the 1670s. El Cobre in the eastern Oriente province of Cuba represented Cuban counterculture in this era, it was an anti-colonial mountain frontier far from the base of Spanish authority in Havana. It is no surprise that in Oriente revolt would foment numerous times— as recently as the Cuban Revolution of five decades ago. In this region the slaves formed a Marian cult that revered the virgin. Eventually they went on to view themselves as Mary’s chosen people and establish their Patria Chica in the mountains, going on strike in 1677. They were granted some of their requests by the crown, which sowed the seeds of earliest independence for the Cuban republic: this first taste of autonomy in Cuba was a black state rather than a white Creole one. The communiqué with Spain would last decades as the slaves sent apoderados (legal proxies) to Madrid in order to work out the terms of their manumission and complaints against the 6 governor that had been appointed by the Council of the Indies. These slaves had a voice, one fostered by the particular Roman legal code employed by the Spanish government and based on the convictions that they were a “chosen people.” The semi-autonomous Cobre society would serve as a model that would be followed by thousands of slaves throughout Cuba that would forego colonial authority in order to live outside of society in the mountains and the forests in palenques and cabildos. These cabildos represented black communities living outside of the law and developed throughout the island during the 19th century as Cuba became the focal point of the Spanish Empire. The Virgins people inspired black counterculture throughout Cuba as well as in Castro and his revolutionaries in the 1950s. They would, after all, launch their guerilla warfare against the Batista regime in the mountains of Oriente. The Marian cult that developed at El Cobre represents the first distinctly Cuban example of a cabildo de nación. The first cabildos were mutual aid associations of different African ethnic groups formed as early as 1568, under the auspices of the Spanish colonial state in order to prevent the crystallization of Pan-Afri7 can identity among Cuban blacks. The African cabildos have their origin in the Andalucían cofradías or brotherhoods and guilds that existed in Muslim Spain. 8 In Cuba the West and North African traditions developed upon each other. Both of these societies performed similar religious and social functions, including dances, fiestas, as well as assistance to the sick, funeral arrangements, the 5 Guerra, Lillian, Nationalism in Cuba and Puerto Rico, Lecture: January 13, 2010: Yale University. 6 Díaz, María Elena, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre, 304. 7 Ishemo, Shubi L., “From Africa to Cuba: An Historical Analysis of the Sociedad Secreta Abakuá (Ñañiguismo)”, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 29, No. 92, Africa, the African Diaspora and Development (Jun., 2002), 262. 8 Ibid, 262.
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9
purchase of land and manumission. However, membership to the 16th century cabildos was restricted to those born in Africa and not extended to blacks born in Cuba. Ultimately, Spanish attempts to undermine a united black identity in Cuba would fail with the development of the Marian cult at El Cobre that united Cuban blacks and later whites. The unity fostered by the statue would prove the downfall of Spanish colonialism on the island. The attempts to separate African elements of the population from the Hispanic proved futile as syncretism melded the two in order to create the Cuban creolized identity. This syncretism and the Santería religion that developed on the island represent a counter-hegemonic system that was at its core tied to the African resistance to Spanish attempts to break the slaves. In his 1992 publication on the subject of the subversive nature of West African religions in the Americas Andrew Apter states that: Rewriting ‘paganism’ is a particular mode of ‘signifying’ in Africanistdiscourse. Like toasting, Santería, and ‘mumbo jumbo’ in the New World,it represents black discourse in relation to something else, as marked oppositional, subver10 sive, and powerful in its ability to restructure official, ‘white’ discourse.
It is no wonder that El Cobre would project immense revolutionary and dissident power throughout the course of Cuban history. Oriente has served as a crucible of Cuban nationalism and counterculture continuously after the Patria Chica strike and the discovery of the statue of the Virgin Mary. On October 10th 1868 Carlos Manuel de Céspedes would declare Cuban Independence from Spain at Yara and launch the first of three Cuban Wars of Independence (1868-1878). Among the major generals of the independence movement was Antonio Maceo Grajales, a mulatto born not too far from the sanctuary to the virgin and who was surely influenced by her legend. This first Cuban War of Independence resulted in failure because the Spanish used racial terror tactics to bring the Cuban whites to end the war by demonizing Afro-Cubans. This collapse of racial unity was rebuffed by Maceo who held the idea that “to be Cuban is to be more than white or black.” Oriente would once again serve as a hotbed to anti-colonialism in 1879 with La Protesta de Baragúa. The protest was launched close to El Cobre as the first part the Guerra Chiquita (1879-1881), the second of the Cuban wars of independence. It is no surprise that Maceo himself would commence the third and final Cuban War of Independence from Baracoa at the eastern tip of the island in 1895. Maceo was born close to the location where the three Juans discovered the statue of the virgin. Like her he represents one of the mixed race symbols of Cuban national identity. A monument honoring him and his part in the Cuban liberation movement now stands near the pilgrimage site dedicated to the virgin. In 1916 Our Lady of Charity was declared the patroness of Cuba by Pope Benedict XV at the request of the veterans of the War of Independence; Cuban independence fighters, 9 Ibid, 262 10 Lefever, Harry G., “When the Saints Go Riding in: Santeria in Cuba and the United States”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), 318.
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both black and white united to witness this event. Our Lady of Charity had come to represent Cuban national identity itself. Fidel Castro represents another figure born in the eastern provinces that would claim to take on the mantle of Cuban liberator and without coincidence would center his barbudos guerilla close to the pilgrimage site so integral to Cuban national identity. The statue of Our Lady of Charity represented the diverse interests of the different racial groups of the island but has been used time and again as a manifestation of a Cuban national identity rather than a racial one. Cuban leaders since José Martí all the way down to Castro have attempted to claim that Cuba is a raceless society. In the era during the movement for independence this was a necessary means of uniting against the Spanish but has since been used to gloss over the racial inequalities present in Cuba today. One cannot deny the true nature of the statue of the virgin, although she is a product of Spanish and African custom and revered by all Cubans, she is particularly African. After all she was the patroness of the Slaves of El Cobre centuries before she would be recognized by the Vatican as the “Queen of Cuba”. Her contribution to the proto-national identity of Cuba is decisively an African one, she was the mediatrix for slaves desiring independence before the Mambises took her as their symbol. It is interesting to note though that Fidel Castro at the beginning of the mass immigration of middle-class Cubans to the U.S. in the 1960s was known to say: “let them go, let 11 these who wish to leave Cuba, leave. But the ‘drum,’ the ‘drum’ stays in Cuba.” Cuban union and independence is represented by the drum, one that can be traced back to Africa where it symbolizes the heartbeat of the land. In Castro’s statement it symbolizes the people of Cuba. Keeping the drum means maintaining the spiritual essence. It represents the African subliminal existence and the 12 germ of woman’s womb, the seed of nations. The drum, is also a third avatar of Oshún, the same Orisha that the Virgin Mary is syncretized with. This manifestation, Oshun Ibu Anya or Oshún of the drums is known to dance ceaselessly to forget her troubles. Something that Cubans on the island continue to practice to this day, an expression of the Black Atlantic that has been taken on by an entire nation made up of both blacks and whites. In the same way that religion played a role in the development of Cuban national identity and revolution against the Spaniards, it has served as a resistance to the Castro regime. Communism cut the island from its connection to Rome for the greater part of the last half century, but due to the syncretic and localized nature of Catholicism on the island, this had little effect. Catholicism and Santería continued to be practiced throughout the era of the regime and served as places in which resistance remained active.
11 Smallwood, Jr., Lawrence L. “African Cultural Dimensions in Cuba”, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Dec., 1975), 199. 12 Ibid, 199.
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This syncretism continues beyond the island where Our Lady of Charity takes on a transnational identity. In Miami La Ermita de la Caridad del Cobre stands as a testament to the legacy left by the statue of the virgin and her Marian cult that rivals even that of Lourdes in France. This sanctuary created by Cuban exiles in the 1960s has a prominent mural of the virgin that clearly depicts her as black (see figure 2). The mostly white Cuban-American community in Miami has internalized the Afro-Caribbean nature of Cuban nationality, many not only revering the black Mary but turning to Santería as a new spiritual path. In Miami the virgin continues to represent resistance— in this case, a resistance to the Marxist state implemented by Fidel Castro. The exile community has come to see Our Lady of Charity and the Archdiocese of Miami as a great unifying institution. It was the same institution that would coordinate Operation Peter Pan to relocate over 14,000 Cuban children throughout the United States from 1960 to 1962. Much in the same way that the Cobre slaves perceived Our Lady of Charity, the Archdiocese of Miami asserts the following about the virgin: In this archdiocese, we found our Mother, the Church, who never abandons her children, not even in the worst circumstances. The Church of Miami opened its doors to us by speaking in Spanish, as it opened its doors to the Haitian people 13 by speaking to them in Creole.
Just as slaves identified with the virgin because they had been driven out of their homeland in Africa by force, Cuban exiles have co-opted the symbol of the virgin as an exilic one and as their own.14 Conversely, communist officials on the island continue to turn to a shared African heritage as integral to the development of the Cuban national identity. In 2002, the Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque highlighted this in his address at a mass rally: Today we proclaim our right to be an independent people, to choose our own path, and what we do in this Plaza de Africa, evokes our pride in our African roots, evokes the millions of slaves who formed our nationality [and] who con15 tributed to our culture, to our religions.
Our Lady of Charity was the first manifestation of a Cuban identity that was not strictly Spanish, Angolan, Kongo or Yoruba. The cult surrounding her and the legend that she created has had an impact on Cuban history for the last four centuries. She rallied a nation to unite beyond ethnic lines and resulted in the final defeat of the greatest empire the world had ever known. But much of her 13 History of the Ermita de la Caridad del Cobre, http://www.ermitadelacaridad.org/NationalShrine. asp?op=History 14 De La Torre, Miguel A., “Ochún: (N)Either the (M)Other of All Cubans (n)or the Bleached Virgin”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion December 2001, Vol. 69, No. 4, p. 850. 15 Ishemo, “From Africa to Cuba: An Historical Analysis of the Sociedad Secreta Abakuá (Ñañiguismo)”, 270.
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work has yet to be fulfilled since the racelessness the Castro regime proclaims was brought about by the revolution has yet to become a reality in Cuba. Much in the same way that she united black and white Cubans against colonial power, today Our Lady of Charity bridges the chasm between Roman Catholicism and Santería. She reconciles the biggest divide in the Cuban community today: the one between islander and exile. She continues to be a symbol of hope.
References De La Torre, Miguel A., “Ochún,(N)Either the (M)Other of All Cubans (n)or the Bleached Virgin”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion December 2001, Vol. 69, No. 4, pp. 837-86. Díaz, María Elena, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780, Stanford University Press, 2000: Stanford, California. Ermita de la Caridad del Cobre, History of, <http://www.ermitadelacaridad.org/> González Díaz de Villegas, Carmen, Cultos populares no institucionalizados de origen africano en Cuba, Estudios de Asia y Africa, Vol. 37, No. 1 (117) (Jan. - Apr., 2002), pp. 163-178 Ishemo, Shubi L., “From Africa to Cuba: An Historical Analysis of the Sociedad Secreta Abakuá (Ñañiguismo)”, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 29, No. 92, Africa, the African Diaspora and Development (Jun., 2002), pp. 253-272 Lefever, Harry G., “When the Saints Go Riding in: Santería in Cuba and the United States,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 318-330 Ralston, Richard D., “Cuba in Africa and Africa in Cuba”, Contemporary Marxism, No. 7, Revolution in Southern Africa (Fall 1983), pp. 140-153. Smallwood, Jr., Lawrence L. “African Cultural Dimensions in Cuba”, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Dec., 1975), pp. 191-199. Stevens-Arroyo, Anthony M. “The Contribution of Catholic Orthodoxy to Caribbean Syncretism: The Case of la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre in Cuba”, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 47e Année, No. 117, Les Religions Afro- Américaines: Genèse et Développement dans la modernité (Jan. - Mar., 2002), pp. 37-58. Valdés-Cruz, Rosa, “The Black Man’s Contribution to Cuban Culture”, The Americas, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Oct., 1977), pp. 244-251
AN’ DE WALLS COME TUMBLIN’ DOWN: A Black Catholic Re-negotiation of Black Messianism and Black Liberation Theology Michelle T. Domingue II Dartmouth College Black Protestant denominations, namely Baptists and Methodists, dominate conversations surrounding Black messianism and Black liberation theology in aiding social progression among Black Americans. The following discussion offers an authentically Black and truly Catholic viewpoint of the aforementioned topics, since a deficit exists in the address of the concepts by systemic theologians. Beginning with a brief socio-historical analysis of the origins of the politics of Black Catholic and Protestant groups, the discussions launches into critical engagement with the paradigms of Black messianism and Black liberation theology, in an effort to posit the Black Catholic theology’s role in the deconstruction of the pillars of social hegemony in the United States: racism and White supremacy. Suggestions for future modes of action conclude the argument for the inclusion of the re-negotiated Black Catholic liberation theology into the conversation of social inequity and injustice. Joshua fit de battle ob Jerico, Jerico, Jerico! Joshua fit de battle ob Jerico, An’ de walls come tumblin’down. You may talk about yo’ king ob Gideon, You may talk about yo’ man ob Saul, Dere’s none like good ole Joshua At de battle ob Jerico! Up to de walls ob Jerico, He marched with spear in han’. “Go blow dem ram horns”, Joshua cried, “Kase de battle am in my han’.” Den de lam’ ram sheep begin to blow, Trumpets begin to soun’. Joshua commanded de children to shout, An’ de walls come tumblin’ down! Dat mornin’, Joshua fit the battle ob Jerico, Jerico, Jerico! Joshua fit de battle ob Jerico An’ de walls come tumblin’down.
Deeply entrenched in messages of instruction, prophecy, or experience, Negro spirituals, much like the one above, provided a familiar medium by which slaves could metaphorically communicate critiques of the social structures of oppression they endured. In “Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho,” the songwriter alludes to the Biblical account involving Joshua, the celebrated commander who led the Israelite army in one of their first battles in the conquest of Canaan—the famed Battle of Jericho. According to the narrative, Joshua ordered the Israelite militia
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to march around the walls of Jericho, seven times, on the seventh day, and to blow their trumpets with great fervor and power, while the remaining lot delivered a resounding shout so the walls surrounding the city would “come tumblin’ 1 down”. Using the framework of a Biblical narrative, this Negro spiritual suggests the eventual destruction of some oppressive institution, as ordained by a God-appointed leader. The message of Black messianism imbues this prophetic musical prose, as it places great emphasis on a particular individual leading everyone to some pre-destined resolution by God. Songwriters fashioned Negro spirituals after parables and historical accounts of the Bible, especially following the mass conversion of Black Americans to various Protestant denominations (e.g., Baptist, 2 Methodist, and Presbyterian) during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast to their Protestant counterparts, Black Catholics, both slave and free, practiced their religion in a manner where it serviced them in a very practical, day-to-day manner. Such modification of the religion stems from Catholic colonial governing systems of France and Spain and the interactive nature and desire for the tangible characteristic of many West African religions. In the Frenchturned-Spanish colony of Louisiana, slaves and free people of color syncretized Catholic saints’ images with those of loas, or lesser deities, who negotiated 3 interactions among venerators below, to accommodate their modes of worship. In the case of music, these early Black Catholics assumed dualities, wherein many practitioners would sing the Catholic hymns at Mass and dance to West African-inspired beats and sing songs in the “old language” (i.e. the language of their West African ancestors) or in a regional creole language. While many of these African modes of worship suffered dilution following the territory’s admission to the Union, there still exists an inexplicable need and curiosity to perform this duality that makes postbellum practitioners “authentically Black and truly Catholic.” Black Catholics feel implored to continue their legacies of being both a descendant of African peoples, as well as uphold the traditions of the Catholic Church, which conveniently matched many of their ideologies and values. However, the advent of slavery and its progeny—institutionalized racism—infused White supremacy into the theologies and ideologies practiced and preached to Catholic masses in the United States. The blatant ignorance of the Catholic Church towards the plight of Black Americans throughout much of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries provoked Black Catholics to assemble and devise plans of action in order to combat the exclusion and disregard they faced from the Catholic Church (and in some cases, from nearby Black communities).
1 The New American Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1987), Joshua 6:1-27. 2 Albert J. Raboteau. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 128-134. 3 These loas adhered to parameters set forth by a larger, omniscient divine being, Damballah.
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During the 1950s and 1960s, Catholic churches throughout Latin America began social movements in response to the poor treatment toward the members of lower socio-economic status, from the Church. Essentially, the movement began as a political theology theorized by Gustavo Gutiérrez and was rooted loosely in Marxist principles, using Scripture to justify their social uprising and focusing on the strength of the community to bring about the solution. The Catholic Church ultimately denounced this practice, but many Black Catholics used aspects of Gutiérrez’s liberation theology, as a means to identify sources of oppression within society and the Church. However, the formation of a Black liberation theology would not occur until theologian James H. Cone published his book, Black Theology and Black Power, in which he takes the “Blackness of Malcolm X and the theology of Martin [Luther King, Jr.] to develop a Black theology of liberation”. Furthermore, it may be argued that many Black Protestant denominations have rejected such a theology that focuses on Black liberation and have opted for a messianic approach to religion. Black Protestants, as evidenced in their spirituals and sermonic rhetoric, have relied on the promises and prophecies outlined in the King James Version of the Bible and placed their hope in a better afterlife, labeling the current situation as a “trial” or “tribulation” that Black people suffer prior to their deliverance by God. Escapist theology characterized much of the Protestant religious doctrine and practice in the U.S. South among the converted, meaning there existed “excessive emotionalism [in] black religion and […] pre4 occupation with otherworldly things.” The concept of “racial Christianity” dominated Black churches of the North, with emphasis on preaching a social gospel that reassured congregations that God would honor the unwavering opposition 5 to the blatant oppression Black Americans experienced daily. This was, and still is, the basic premise of messianism: the belief that God chose a group of debased people to uplift and redeem the world to demonstrate the social ills man has created. While Northern Protestant churches preached for broader social reform, across denominations, they lacked the dogmatic language for proper execution of these newly generated social solutions. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Black Catholics employed a liberation theology in which the community and its involvement were at the center of the movement to fight racism and White supremacy within both the Church and society-at-large. Traditionally, the sense of community and the idea of the collective have been 6 vital within many African and African diasporic communities. Religion and the Christian Church served as the vehicles to cultivate these cohesive communities and affirm unity in both Black Catholic and Protestant assemblies. However, notions of leadership developed much differently within Black Catholic church4 Wilson Jeremiah Moses. Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), p. 97. 5 Ibid. p. 67 6 Maulana Karenga. Maat: the Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt (Los Angeles: The University of Sankore Press, 2006).
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es. From the late nineteenth, and well into the twentieth centuries, leadership roles within these religious communities (i.e. Black Catholic and Black Protestant communities) developed in manners relative to the different theological ideologies. Black Catholic communities found themselves in a unique position. As a minority within an already marginalized community, many practitioners faced either scrutiny or apathy from their Black Protestant counterparts, since Black Catholics appeared to be more invested in their religious identities and not their ethnocultural identities, or “Blackness.” Black Catholic liberation theology emphasizes the community, versus the doctrine of Black messianism reiterated by many Black Protestant clergymen and blindly adopted by their congregations. While Black messianism appropriates Black people as the race to be redemptive peoples for all of humankind due mainly to their extensive suffering and oppression, Black Catholic liberation theology treats the Scripture as a tool to be implemented practically. Ergo, instead of merely proclaiming the oppression of Black people and exhibitions of meekness and humility, Black Catholic liberation theology approaches the plight of the Black people bi-focally: salvation is occurs through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as one’s personal Savior (mystical and extra-terrestrial focus), and through active mobilization of all people within the community (collective focus). The task of surmounting racially-motivated oppression does not rest on the shoulders of one appointed leader. Furthermore, Black Catholics reconfigured Black messianism to align with the fundamental catechesis of the Catholic Church, while simultaneously rejecting the discriminatory practices in place due to social order. In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Church of Corinthians, he states, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are 7 not, to bring to nothing things that are”. These verses exemplify the messianic mission of Black Catholics, as they seek to educate the masses both religiously and socially. The mission simply produces intellectual illumination that arises from following the most basic of rules—the Golden Rule, i.e. “Treat others as you would have them treat you”. Jesus adapts this rule emphasizing that we are to uphold the greatest, or most important, commandment “You should love your 8 neighbor as yourself ”. However, as theologian-activist-professor Cornel West remarks in his book Race Matters, eradication of “nihilism” only comes about after Black people learn to love themselves, first, and eventually those in their personal 9 communities and elsewhere. This step toward fulfilling the messianic message of acting as an instructive racial group for others is stifled by the Black-impoverished Catholic theological academe. With only six Black Catholics with terminal degrees in systematic theology, little support exists to develop further a libera7 The New American Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1987), 1 Corinthians 1:27-28. 8 Ibid., Matthew 22:39 9 Cornel West. Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press Books, 1994).
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tion theology applicable to these Catholic congregations…within the academe. However, in her article “We’ve Come This Far by Faith: Black Catholics and their Faith,” Diana L. Hayes argues that despite underrepresentation in the academic discipline of systematic theology, Black folk, especially Black Catholics, continuously formulate theologies that are alive, well, and forever evolving: Although the world of academe may not recognize our reflections [about God’s action in our lives or the working of the Holy Spirit in our midst] as such, we are indeed speaking theologically when we do this. And as African Americans, we have been doing so for all of our existence. What we have done, as a holistic people in whom the sacred and secular are intertwined rather than alienated, is simply to talk about God, about Jesus Christ, about the Holy Spirit and about their importance in our lives…We have not put our theology down in dry, dusty tomes that no one can or really wants to read; we have lived it in the midst of our daily lives. That theology has been expressed most clearly in our songs, in our stories, 11 in our prayers.
Based on Hayes’s argument, a structured, formalized Black liberation theology is not necessary and may not be effective, since the tradition from which it stems focuses on the re-telling and oral projection of culture, giving theology a dynamic, fluid state. Furthermore, recitations of cultural history can be adopted easily by parishioners through the inclusion of a Black Catechist, paralleling the Catechism of the Church that is taught to the youth of the Church. Hayes’s argument also addresses the role of messianism within Black Catholic liturgical practice, citing it as an instructive tool that leads to a conversion-like experience for many non-Black Roman Catholics. She states that a “number of our Catholic brothers and sisters who attend our [Black Catholic] services of worship and…join our gospel choirs, recognizing, perhaps, the absence in their lives of a joy-filled praise 12 of God that brings a comforting peace.” The potential to impart cultural practices onto the religious practices is present, but the cultivation of that potential rests not only in Black Catholics who willingly invite all Catholics to worship with them, but also in all practitioners of the Catholic faith. In an article entitled “Communion Ecclesiology and Black Liberation Theology,” Jamie T. Phelps, O.P. argues that in order for genuine harmony between people to occur, firstly principles of community and Black liberation theology must be adopted. In essence, theology becomes secondary to one’s religious beliefs and theologies, if one’s ethnic or racial identification is not accepted as “legitimate” or not an integral part in the ideologies that comprise the religious institutions. Phelps asserts, “Protestant and Catholic churches compromised Christianity 10 Diana L. Hayes. “We’ve Come This Far by Faith: Black Catholics and their Church,” U.S. Catholic Historian Vol. 19, No. 2, African American Spirituality and Liturgical Renewal (Spring 2001): p. 19, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25154766. 11 Ibid., pp. 19-20 12 Ibid., p. 21
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by confronting to the social institutions that embodied a White supremacist 13 ideology and the social patterns of slavery, segregation, and Black servitude.” The formation of a Black liberation theology arose out of a necessity to redefine theology in a manner that addressed the social needs of Blacks. However, instead of addressing the needs of Blacks within and outside of the Church, Black Protestant factions chose to dwell more on the “secular” institutions, such as the government, which dictate the “law of the land”. Black Catholics sought for acknowledgement of Black culture and legacy and equality in every sense of the word and within every space, especially within the Church. Because of the large role that religion played in the lives of many of these Black Catholics, it seemed nonsensical to ignore something seen as a fundamental part of one’s identity. Therefore, it may be inferred that the basis of the Black Protestant community rested in a continuance of isolated, homogenous worship services, with full inclusion and equal rights when engaging society. The latter portion of this conclusion seems ethical, but why continue to hold separate religious services, instead of urging your White Protestant counterparts to consider teaching Black culture and Black theology in tandem with the theologies and Biblical teachings of the respective denomination? Furthermore she proposes, “Human freedom or liberation is a precondition of ethical living since persons cannot form an authentic 14 visible community unless they are free”. Since inequality inherently restricts one’s freedom to live fully, Phelps suggests that without freedom or liberation, all humans, not just Blacks, are unable to anneal and create a cohesive unit and envision themselves truly as a community. Much like Molefi Kete Asante’s infamous statement from his theoretical framework for social change, Afrocentricity, “Consciousness precedes unity;” there can be no unified cohort, without aware15 ness of the agenda and the severity of the (racial) situation. Black Catholic communities could not envision themselves as full-fledged members of the Catholic community because of the restrictions placed on their religious expression and the restrictions placed on them regarding advancement within the clergy of the Church. The ecumenical council, “Vatican II,” convened in 1962 until 1965, and several revisions to Church doctrine were made in light of the world’s current status, as it faced much poverty, rumors of war, and scrutiny from many clergymen across the globe. Phelps cites the aims of the Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, stating its argument as “God’s plan of salvation includes all those who seek to know God, live a good life, and persevere 16 in charity.” While these principles outline moral and ethical living, perseverance in charity does not necessarily mean progression in justice; living a good life can be accomplished within an isolated community that blatantly ignores the woes of 13 Jamie T. Phelps, O.P., “Communion Ecclesiology and Black Liberation theology,” Theological Studies Vol. 61, No. 4 (2000): p. 673, www.ts.mu.edu/content/61/61.4/61.4.4.pdf 14 Ibid., pp. 673-674. 15 Molefi K. Asante. Afrocentricity. Chicago: African American Images, 2003. 16 Jamie T. Phelps, O.P., “Communion Ecclesiology and Black Liberation theology,” Theological Studies Vol. 61, No. 4 (2000): p. 673, www.ts.mu.edu/content/61/61.4/61.4.4.pdf
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others; and finding God can be done within a context that suits the needs of one’s cultural beliefs (e.g. a White supremacist framework). Yet, direct address of the “social sins” (e.g. racism, classism, and sexism) occurs nowhere in the document, allowing for multiple interpretations. In defense of the declarations and documents issued at the resolved at Vatican II, Pope Paul VI proclaimed that the Church was not to denigrate the cultural traditions of certain 17 groups of those practitioners of the Catholic faith. Thus, the construction of Black liberation theology juxtaposed with Catholic doctrine allows for a reinterpretation of the Bible that de constructs the prevalent historically White/Western interpretations of the Bible, allowing for a healthy, racially-conscious (not racially-ignorant or racially-apathetic) Catholic and national community to come into existence. Fundamentally, the employment of Black Catholic liberation theology incites conversation about the position of race within religion and other cultural practice, as well as throughout society, which, in turn, produces a community that abides by the lists of rules, values, and systems upon which the members have agreed. In order for the walls of racism to “come tumblin’ down” and for true acknowledgement and integration of Black culture and its contributions to the Catholic faith to occur, some effort must be shown on the behalves of the higher ranking, non-Black clergymen. Though mobilization for the Catholic Church to denounce publicly the wrongs and ills of the many “–isms” staining the institution and separate teaching of Afro-descendant doctrine occurs, these endeavors must be engaged by every member of the faith, from those at the Vatican to religiously creole Catholics of the Crescent City. Armed with a modified Black liberation theology developed by Cone (as inspired by Gutiérrez) and the Scripture that reaffirms their status as the people chosen to lead wo/mankind to salvation in Jesus Christ, Black Catholics are exercising proudly every rite they possess as both Blacks and Catholics, in order to trump the challenges of oppression and rescuing man from eternal damnation. As Hayes mentioned, the theology of Black Catholics cannot be transcribed onto scrolls to be studied by theologians in centuries to come; instead, the theology is a way of life, in which God is sought for understanding, assistance, and refuge. The insurrection against unnatural forces such as racism, classism, and sexism are fought only through the Holy Word and through nonviolent demonstration, since, ironically, it is up to the oppressed to enlighten those in power of their ignorance. Each time a Black Catholic speaks out against the injustice s/he faces, s/he is professing a liberating theology that prods the minds of those in conversation. Each time a Black Catholic consults God for inspiration on strategies when encountering those energies that malign the human spirit, s/he is professing a liberation theology that is “authentically Black and truly Catholic.” With the employment of Black Catholic liberation the17 Edward Hahnenberg. A Concise Guide to the Documents of the Vatican II. Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2007, p. 44
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ology, mass destruction of all forms of oppression has no choice but to surrender, forcing walls of injustice and inequality to “come tumblin’ down,” giving rise to a more cohesive, non-exclusive community.
References Cone, James H. “Black Liberation theology and Black Catholics: A Critical Conversation,” Theological Studies, Vol. 61, no. 4 (2000): 731-747. Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power. New York: The Seabury Press, 1969. Davis, O.S.B., Cyprian. “Black Catholic Theology: A Historical Perspective,” Theological Studies, Vol. 61, no. 4 (2000): 656-670. Massingale, Bryan N. Racial Justice and the Catholic Church. Maryknoll, NY: OrbisBooks, 2010. Singleton III, Harry H. Black Theology and Ideology. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1989.
TOWARDS A CRITICAL PHONOGRAPHY: Thinking Technologies of Knowledge in Search of the Black Radical Tradition Michael Becker Brown University How does one begin to grapple with the philosophy and thought of the Black radical tradition when the context of its genesis is constructed so that it cannot but be misunderstood? In what ways might the search for an appropriate archive, an appropriate place to host the question, require an understanding of the intricate connections between the episteme and technologies of knowledge and practices of oppression? In working through frameworks established by Sylvia Wynter and Walter Mignolo, this paper suggests that the fixation on the Book is located within an episteme based around Western bourgeois man. The argument follows Fred Moten’s intervention in suggesting that another locus of enunciation for the Black radical tradition can be found in Sound, particularly Black Music. The paper concludes with an analysis of Nina Simone’s work as a case study in what new (im)possibilities are opened through a serious and critical engagement with this alternative archive.
In his monumental work, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition,
Cedric Robinson asserts that, while Black radicalism’s “immediate for and object of being” might be attributed to “the historical interdiction of African life by European agents,” it is not dependent on European traditions for “the foundation for its nature and character” (73). Consequently, Robinson explains, “Black radicalism.... cannot be understood within the context of its genesis,” since the very nature of the circumstances of its creation means it cannot but be misunderstood (73). This paper will affirm Robinson’s claims, ones made through a careful and critical study of the Western exploitation of Africa and the African diaspora and the resistance of Black people, but will insist on pushing the statement a little farther. It will assert the necessity of understanding the relationship between categories of thought and the project of human liberation, through an examination of ideas of Sylvia Wynter and Walter Mignolo, pointing to the relationship between Man and the Book. It will examine the fixation with the text present in generative texts for the Black radical tradition, and contest that, given the context of its genesis and of its continued existence, to search for Black radicalism solely in the Book, in the form of text, is to continually perceive just the tip of the iceberg. As an alternative archive, this paper will suggest the potential of a Black Phonographic Radical tradition, with attention to the challenges it poses to the Western Episteme, with attention to the work of Nina Simone as an example of what alternative knowledge and ways of understanding might be brought into existence. To understand the necessity of thinking sound, one must first understand the cultural specificity of knowledge formations, the connection between epistemes and oppression, and the relationship between the Book and colonization. One place to begin to think through these nodes is Sylvia Wynter’s article, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom.” Wynter asserts that all human
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orders “have mapped their “descriptive statements” or governing master codes on the heavens, on their stable periodicities and regular recurring movements,” that is, have defined the world through what it means to be a good human being of one’s kind (272). The Greek idea was based on “increasing perfection from the earth to the heavens” (273). With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Greco-Roman ideas of what it meant to be human were carried over to Judeo-Christian Europe, whose descriptive statement was “based on its master code of the “Redeemed Spirit” (as actualized in the celibate clergy) and the “Fallen Flesh” enslaved to the negative legacy of Adamic Original Sin, as actualized by laymen and women” (Wynter 275). Wynter asserts that the Renaissance, in the form of a revolt on the part of the lay intelligentsia, was responsible for rupturing this order of knowledge, and replacing it with one “that was to make possible the rise of a nonadaptive, and therefore natural scientific, mode of cognition with respect to the “objective set of facts” of the physical level of reality” (275-6). However, the degodding of the human initiated by the lay intellectuals happened within an order of which, while Christians, Western people saw themselves as one religious genre of humans. From now on, “they would now not only come to overrepresent their conception of the human… as the human, thereby coming to invent, label, and institutionalize the indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as the transported enslaved Black Africans as the physical referent of the projected irrational/subrational Human Other to its civic-humanist, rational self-conception” (Wynter 282-3). The result was a creation of a “projected Chain of Being comprised of differential/hierarchical degrees of rationality” between the World’s peoples, cultures, religions, and ways of knowing, with the West at the apex, and other civilizations following insofar as they matched Western ideals (Wynter 203). Just as the movement of the lay intellectuals degodded and secularized the cosmos, simultaneously defining them as solely and only in the Western bourgeois genre of human, Darwin’s theory of evolution did the same for organic life, creating a “now purely secular because biocentric Darwinian variant of Man: one in which the Human Other malediction or curse, one shared with all the now colonized nonwhite peoples classified as “natives” (but as their extreme nigger form) would be no longer that of Noah or Nature, but of Evolution and Natural Selection” (Wynter 308). Darwinian biology, breaking from ethnobiology, created a “projected Chain of Being of all forms of sentient life” (Wynter 310). Darwin’s analytical principles, left to the “only available ‘object set of acts’ that remained,” found differences in the wake of the West’s exploitation of the Rest, differences “which were now harnessed to the task of projecting the Color Line drawn institutionally and discursively between whites/nonwhites” (Wynter 311). The Western Episteme is intimately connected with Western modes of presenting knowledge. The West’s break from an ethno-cosmos led to the overrepresentation of Western bourgeois Man as the Human, to the extent that the West was
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unable to recognize other ways of being Human as equally acceptable and logical. It was this same episteme of knowledge that led the West to be unable to recognize other semiotic systems. As Walter Mignolo details in The Darker Side of the Renaissance, late fifteenth century European philosophers of language drew a strong connection between literacy in an alphabetic language and civilization. Just as a hierarchy of the World’s societies was drawn with the West at the apex, and the others following insofar as they met Western principles, a hierarchy of languages was established, with Greek, Latin, and Castillian at the top, and other languages following, with priority placed on how close they were in form to these three (Mignolo 58). Alejo Venegas, a well known humanist and man of letters in Charles I’s Spain, distinguished between an archetype Book and a metagraph Book, writing, “The archetype book is the expression of the Divine Word and the container of all knowledge. God, as the supreme writer, has expressed the truth in the Book of Nature and in the Holy Book (archetype), which has been inscribed in alphabetic characters” (Mignolo 70). The metagraph book, intended for human use, is defined in relation to the archetype, as a means for them to know the creator of the universe and to “censure every human expression in which the devil manifests himself by dictating false books” (Mignolo 70). The description of the Book that Venegas provides shows the clear mark of the Theocentric genre of Man, inherited by Judeo-Christian Europe from the Greeks and Romans. While the Book might not always be the Holy Book, there is a clear relationship between the institutional and epistemic power of the Church in Europe at the chronological moment, and the production of the Book. Wynter explains that part of the power of the Western episteme is its claim not to be culture specific, its supposedly general nature. Similarly, Mignolo explains, following Jack Goody, that religions of the Book become religions of conversion, to which anyone can convert whether or not they belong to the society in which it originated, while religions that are not Book-based, like that of the Asante, are “religions of birth,” which require one to belong to the society in order to practice it (Mignolo 82). In other words, the Book is a technology that allows Knowledge to be assigned a culture-neutral value. Since the Western conception of the Book was wedded to the Western conception of Man and the Episteme of knowledge, other means of conveying information were not seen as legitimate. Peruvian quipus, “a kind of recording keeping or register made out of different sets of branches in which a diversity of knots and a diversity of colors meant different things,” were not considered as equivalent systems of writing and conveying information, even though they served similar functions for their society (Mignolo 82). European colonizers were not prepared to interpret the quipu, assuming that writing demanded graphic representations.
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A technology for spreading knowledge in which the direction of strings, the position of colors, and the texture of the strings were integral to understanding the meaning was outside their conceptual order (Mignolo 82-7). Just as the Episteme which defined so many people outside the normative genre of Human became a justification for slavery, colonization, and exploitation, the normative nature of the Book served as justification for the destruction of indigenous methods of representing knowledge in the Americas. Diego de Landa, a Spanish conquistador, epitomized the disregard of the colonizers for indigenous forms of representing knowledge, describing Mexica amoxtli: “We found a great deal of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitution and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most greviously, and which gave them great pain” (Mignolo 71). While not every encounter of a European colonizer with an Amerindian form of representing knowledge ended with a bonfire, the attitude of de Landa stands fairly consistent throughout the accounts. Although Mignolo’s book is focused on the early Spanish conquest of the Americas, and thus, does not substantially deal with African and African diasporic experiences, his description of the power of the Book in that context provides a helpful foundation on which to discuss the Book and the Black radical tradition. The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass offers one starting point. Douglass explains that his mistress began to teach him the alphabet of her own accord, but that spurred by her husband’s anxiety, who saw danger in teaching a slave to read, not only stopped teaching him, but tried to actively repress his efforts to learn. Douglass began to take a book with him when he went on errands, and tried to convince white boys in the streets to help him learn to read. For Douglass, a dialogue in The Columbian Orator, in which an escaped and recaptured slave debates slavery with his master is revelatory: As I read and thought, that dissatisfaction which Mr. Auld had predicted came into being, tormenting and stinging my soul. As I suffered, I at times felt that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, but no cure. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but gave me no ladder with which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their ignorance. I often wished myself an animal. I preferred the life of a lowest reptile to my own. Anything, no matter what, to get rid of this thinking! It was this everlasting thinking about my condition that tormented me. But there was no getting rid of it. The silver trumpet of freedom had wakened my soul. Freedom now appeared, and would never disappear again (33-4).
The moment of reading is represented as Douglass’s coming-to-consciousness, of a painful awakening to his situation in the world. He contrasts his awareness with the ignorance of his “fellow slaves,” both envying and pitying them. While it is doubtlessly true that reading offers a path to knowledge about the world that was not open to slaves until they learned how to read, Douglass’s description also
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suggests that literacy is a necessary prelude to consciousness. This negates the other ways through which Blacks communicated about their common condition, and planned ways to subvert or overthrow it, or even just continue to survive. In a sense, the emphasis on the text and the act of literacy is a conceit meant to appeal to a white bourgeois audience, who, following in the episteme Wynter describes, see literacy and the Book as the mark of civilization. The act of writing a Book itself was, in part, a means to “transgress this nebulous realm of liminality” (Gates 128). Recall that the first slave narratives were accompanied by the certification by white men that the slave whose name appeared on the cover had indeed written the narrative that followed. This mediation was necessary for the white audience to believe that the supposed author was cognitively capable of composing the manuscript herself (Casmier-Paz). Henry Louis Gates explains, “The slave wrote not primarily to demonstrate human letters, but to demonstrate his or her own membership in the human community” (128). To read and to write is to master the Book, which is then read as being reasonably intelligent, and thus, Human to the Western mind. Douglass’s struggle, through his Book, was to bring himself into Being in the eyes of his audience, through making himself appear closer in proximity to Man. The conditions of the emergence and the continued existence of the Black Radical tradition require a critical understanding of the (im)possibilities of the Book (and, by extension, written text generally), and the political economy of its production and distribution. Consider, for example, Ida Wells, the anti-lynching activist and journalist. Her press was raided and destroyed by citizens of Memphis aggravated by her efforts to write explicitly the unspoken code by which lynch law was legitimated. Wells’s life itself would have been in peril had she not already been out of town. Her agitation against the social order came to a price, a price that endangered her ability to spread text. Wells, too, one must remember, was exceptionally privileged for her era, as a black woman of some means who had the skill sets and cultural capital to enter the world of journalism (18). Lest one think this is a question for Wells’s time only, examine the history of the publication of Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism. When first published, it faced a narrow readership, and was all but ignored in the journals, despite (or, perhaps more accurately, because of) its profound challenges to the basis of Marxist thought, European historiography, and other questions, all based on extensively documented claims. Then, when Robinson attempted to publish another edition, he faced more challenges finding a willing publisher (xviii-xx). One must remember, then, that text is a fragile form; for all the promises of freedom of the press, it applies at best, and not always then either, to those who own one. Even, for a moment, setting aside the question of producing text, one must face the question of readership and access to critical texts. Hosea Hudson, for example, explains that at first, he “couldn’t do much reading,” and didn’t have
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much of an interest until the Scottsboro Case began to make headlines. Then, when he began to read the papers, he “had to spell every word before [he] said it. If it was ‘is,’[he] had to say ‘I-S, is.’” (82). Yet, to go about the task of a movement for liberation, a politically conscious and informed people is necessary, and so many Hosea Hudsons are among the ranks of people that Black radicals hope to engage. The necessary question becomes: How does one break from this Order? It is important to emphasize that the argument is not about considering the Book qua Book, but about de-centering the Book as the form which is most proper to host the question of the Black Radical tradition. As Mignolo writes, in reference to the power of religions of the Book, “What is important here is not the ‘content’ of the Book but rather the very existence of the object in which a set of regulations and metaphors was inscribed, giving to it the special status of Truth and Wisdom” (83). In other words, the fight is against the reification of the form called Book, which stands in as the technology of Knowledge for the episteme of the ethnoclass of Western bourgeois Man. In no way is this meant to minimize the insights and artistic skill of Africana writers, some of whom have made truly profound sacrifices in the fight for Black liberation. Yet, many of these writers also found the Book as not quite adequate for their project, and for the necessity of a New Form. Chinua Achebe insisted, “Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English for we intend to do unheard of things with it” (74). Fred Moten offers an intriguing intervention, which suggests that sound, particularly Black music, might offer the New Form, an alternative archive and locus of enunciation of Black Radicalism. Moten quotes a passage from “The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret” in volume 1 of Capital where Marx ventriloquizes commodities, both in what he imagines they might say, and in what he imagines classical economists would imagine they say, but then he comes down to deny the possibility of a commodity speaking. Yet, Moten insists, Marx failed to recognize the racialized slavery, in which human beings are classified as property, as commodities, and so, in Douglass’s Narrative, when he is beaten and screams, “What is sounded through Douglass is a theory of value – an objective and objectional, productive and reproductive ontology – whose primitive axiom is that commodities speak” (Moten 11). Sylvia Wynter, in probing the challenges that had been posed to date to the hegemony of Man as the totality of the Human, had pointed to the role of the Marxist paradigm as a paradigm which understood “the relation between knowledge and human emancipation” (313).Yet, as Wynter knew all too well, and Cedric Robinson traced with diligence and perception, “at base, that is at its epistemological substratum, Marxism is a Western construction” (Robinson 2). Marx creates a Proletarian to replace Man, but Marx’s Proletarian is still grounded in an episteme that claims to be universal, but is unable or unwilling to recognize other ways of Being in the world.
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To confront Marx, to overthrow Man in favor of the Human, Black (Sound/Music) is an answer. Where Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist, caught in the epistemic myth of universalism, insists, “it is impossible that sound, as a material element, should in itself be part of the language” (Moten 13), Édouard Glissant, the Martinician author and literary critic, cannot but object, insisting “For Caribbean man, the word is first and foremost sound. Noise is essential to speech. Din is discourse…” (Glissant 123). As J. Michael Dash explains in his introduction to Glissant’s Caribbean Discourse, in creating an aesthetic for a (once) plantation society, there is a necessary relationship “between the ecstatic cri (cry) and the static corps (body),” the embodied experience of the individual and the collective cannot be separated from the psychic condition and their (B/b)ody of thought. For the slave, “the body… is numbed, impotent, inert, ultimately someone else’s possession;” freedom, then, lies in unrestrained physical movement. Glissant observes that this is ultimately at odds with writing, since, above all, “the written requires nonmovement,” the written, then, requires the immobilization of the body (123). Thus, this Argument follows Moten and “the speaking commodity [that] cuts Marx; [and] the shrieking commodity [that] cuts Saussure, thereby cutting Marx doubly” (Moten 14) to Nina Simone: I sat struck dumb in my own den like St. Paul on the road to Damascus; all the truths that I had denied to myself for so long rose up and slapped my face. The bombing of the little girls in Alabama and the murder of Medger Evers were like the final pieces of a jigsaw that made no sense until you fitted the whole thing together. I suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963, but it wasn’t an intellectual connection of the type Lorraine had been repeating to me over and over – it came as a rush of fury, hatred, and determination. In church language, the Truth entered into me and I came through (Simone 89).
Simone’s coming-to-consciousness is not a neat intellectual process, but rather an emotional whirlwind, her visceral reaction to events in the South acting as physical violence upon her person. And, lest one think that this is not violence, this is Simone’s recognition that she is a marked body, that her crime is Being Black. In that moment, she is “struck dumb,” she is immobilized, she is temporarily (re)possessed, becomes slave to those who committed those heinous acts. This emotive depth, the pain and anguish, is precisely what Marx cannot account for, what the West, with its intellectualized separation of Mind and Body, is incapable of taking seriously (Glissant 122-3). Yet, this is “the phonography of the very screams that open the way into the knowledge of slavery and the knowledge of freedom,” exactly “where shriek turns speech into song” (Moten 21-2). It is amidst this whirlwind that Simone broke her artistic silence on political issues and wrote “Mississippi Goddamn.”
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Simone performed her composition before a predominantly white audience at Carnegie Hall, announcing as she began to play, “The name of this tune is ‘Mississippi Goddamn.” The audience audibly laughs on the recording, and laughs again after a few opening lines, and her announcement, “…and I mean every word of it,” demonstrating the broad and deep chasm between Simone’s experience and theirs, which is also as the chasm between Man and his Others. The performance, then, is Simone’s attempt to breach that gap, to force her audience to feel, to see, to hear something, to collapse the Epistemic order that makes her Music unthinkable. Simone describes it as “a show tune” for which “the show hasn’t been written… yet,” and, in structure and form, it is one, “with piano, bass, and drum accompaniment” (Kernodle). Yet, it is also an apoplectic political manifesto, predicting a day of reckoning for white America, offering a grim assessment of both black and white politics, and insisting that the clock is running out on Black political demands. Simone expresses the tension of the moment, explaining “I can’t stand the pressure much longer/Somebody say a prayer,” and her own trepidation, singing “I think every day’s gonna be my last.” She turns to the Lord, asking Him(?) to “have mercy on this land of mine,” but predicting, “We all gonna get it in due time.” Yet, just a few lines later, she asserts, “I’ve even stopped believing in prayer.” Kernodle interprets this a move towards secularism, but that’s perhaps too easy a division (302). After all, Simone both depends on God to levy her critique, “goddamn,” but simultaneously doubts His(?) existence; it refuses to establish that dichotomy. From this, Simone insists that the time is over for white America to be setting the timetable for Black liberation: “Don’t tell me/I tell you/Me and my people just about due.” She moves into a bridge section, where she voices a white Master or employer, ordering around Black help, as the band responds with “Go slow!,” evoking ” the call-and-response aesthetic of the mass meetings” (Kernodle 302). Simone turns to her audience, and asks sardonically, “Bet you thought I was kidding, right?” She then launches into the most militant section, a piece which is simultaneously manifesto, scream, and lamentation: You lied to me all these years. You told me to wash and clean my ears. Talk real fine just like a lady And you’d stop calling me Sista Sadie This whole country is full of lies. You’re going to die and die like flies. I don’t trust you anymore. You keep on saying go slow. Go slow.
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But that’s just the trouble (go slow)Desegregation (go slow) Mass participation (go slow) Beautification (go slow) Do things gradually (go slow) will bring more tragedy. Why don’t you see it? Why don’t you feel it? I don’t know. I don’t know.
As Chloe Wayne observes, one of the most shocking elements about Simone’s performance was that, while her power and politics were compared to “Leroi Jones or Stokely Carmichael,” her work received a surprisingly warm reception. In a way, her subjectivity, as “a woman who had become one of the world’s most popular and controversial entertainers” provided her a position from which to speak, overturning notions that “empowered resistance and militant force” were male domains (102). Where both whites and black moderates, and even black masculinist radicals, encourage Simone to “Talk like a lady,” she refuses, breaching the boundary of propriety in order to issue critique. Although Simone does not identify as either a feminist or a womanist, her work demonstrates a critical consciousness about sex-based oppression, and offers an antidote to the masculinism of some of her contemporaries. In pieces like “Go Limp,” and “Four Women,” she holds the Movement to task for thinking that true liberation can be achieved while Black women are still oppressed (Feldstein 1352-64). As she explains, “Black women didn’t know what the hell they wanted because they were defined by things they didn’t control and until they had the confidence to define themselves they’d be stuck in the same mess forever” (Simone 117); her music sought, in part, to create that opening for their self-definition. Simone’s work, of necessity, disrupts the falsely rigid barrier between the Artistic and the Political. It is interesting, in this regard, that the journalist who marveled at the political nature of her work, described a firm opposition between Simone’s role as “popular and cultural entertainer” and “some black power disciple of the caliber of Leroi Jones or Stokely Carmichael” (Wayne 102). Yet, Carmichael described Simone as “the true singer of the Civil Rights Movement,” and considered her a comrade (Wayne 86). Simone, in turn, “openly acknowledged her relationship with SNCC and on several occasions headlined fund-raisers for it” (Kernodle 306). Simone was also deeply involved in discussions of the political and the aesthetic with other cultural arena activists, from Amiri Baraka to Langston Hughes to Dick Gregory (Simone 67). She had a particularly close relationship with Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright of A Raisin in the Sun, and
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writes of their conversations, “It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl’s talk…” (Simone 87). Although Simone’s base was at the Village Gate in New York City, she made frequent trips South and also toured Europe and Africa. The global scope of her performances was matched by her global political vision. Feldstein recounts a performance at a club in London where Simone dedicated a piece to “all the Black people in the audience,” shocking white audience members, and demonstrating her recognition of Britain’s own racial dynamics (Felstein 1373). In the context of worldwide anti-colonial revolutions, combined with worker and student activism, Simone’s performances abroad did not let her audiences confine her political sensibility and strong words to the United States, instead forcing them “to consider histories of colonialism and race relations in their own countries” (Feldstein 1373). Simone was as interested in the aesthetic and the craftswomanship of the music as it is in its political message, working from “a political imperative that is never disconnected from an aesthetic one” (Moten 196), recognizing that the struggle for a New Form is intimately connected with the struggle for a New Wor(l)d. As Simone explains in her autobiography, prior to writing “Mississippi Goddamn,” she was uncomfortable with the form of the protest song, wondering, “How can you take the memory of a man like Medger Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune?” (90). Her compositions moved past the “simple and unimaginative” nature of those works, and celebrated the Struggle, expressed frustration and rage, and through militant agitation, demanded dignity and material justice for Black people. “Mississippi Goddamn,” then, might be the phonic substance of Medger Evers’s death and the Birmingham Church Bombing, might be one articulation of the sort of project Fred Moten considers when he investigates the sound of the photograph of Emmett Till. Moten insists: We’ve got to try to understand the connection between [the material resistance of the photograph] and political movement, locating that movement’s direction toward new universalities held within the difference/s of phonic substance, in the difference of the accent that cuts and augments mourning and morning, a difference semiotics has heretofore thought either to be fatal to its desire for universality or proof of the foolishness and political and epistemological danger of that desire (198).
Simone’s music, like Till’s photograph, is that very straining against the Episteme that lunges to create a rupture. Following Wynter and Fanon, Simone strains to bring invention into existence, to find a New Dimension through the Music.
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In order to process this New Dimension, it is essential to contest the de-valuing of Music as a potential revolutionary force, against a conception of Struggle that tries to reduce the terrain to the direct confrontation between the People and the System. It is both necessary and prescient to point out, in an age where claims of the political value of culture are all too rife, that the Struggle must be material as well as aesthetic. Simultaneously, the possibility of a radical sound must also be interrogated with attention to the process of production, of labor, and of distribution. For, if the Book may still be the dominant symbol of the Episteme that Wynter calls on the power of invention to dismantle (82 ), Music is an Industry, and inextricably implicated in the system of global capital. As Moten observes, “the best efforts of producers, record company executives, music journalists, and so on” are directed “toward the domestication of radical sound” (226). The sound, as long as it is commercially produced and distributed, is always already a commodity. The question is not, then, as much if it’s possible to find an unmediated media, but how and in what ways is it mediated. What new (im)possibilities are opened up? As Wayne contends, since the forces of “structured, formal, and rational” are, by and large, forces created and sustained by the hegemonic social order, it is imperative that progressive black politics search for something beyond (91). Moten suggests, “…black radicalism is (like) black music. The broken circle demands a new analytic (way of listening to the music” (24). That the New Form may not fit the designation of Proper Revolution, then, may illustrate ever more clearly that “to struggle against power is to disrupt fixed notions of propriety and superiority” (Wayne 92), that the Revolution will always be Improper .The conditions of possibility, then, for a Black Radical Phonographic Tradition pivots on the break, between formal politics and culture, the Book and the Music, (R)evolution and (A/a)rt, the Master and the Slave, Marx’s unspeakable commodity and the shrieks of Fredrick Douglass, the New World and New Wor(l)ds.
References Achebe, Chinua. The Education of a British-protected Child: Essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Casmier-Paz, Lynn A. “Slave Narratives and the Rhetoric of Author Portraiture.” New Literary History, 34.1 (2003): 91-116. Douglass, Fredrick. Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. West Berlin, NJ: Townshend, 2004. Feldstein, Ruth. “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore’: Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s.” The Journal of American History 91.4 (2005): 1349- 1379. Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
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Glissant,Èdouard, and J. Michael. Dash. Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1989. Hudson, Hosea, and Nell Irvin Painter. The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1979. Kernodle, Tammy L. “ ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free’: Nina Simone and the Redefining of the Freedom Song of the 1960s.” Journal of the Society for American Music, 2.03 (2008): 295-317. Mignolo, Walter. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2003. Moten, Fred. In the Break: the Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2003. Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: the Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2000. Simone, Nina, and Stephen Cleary. I Put a Spell on You: the Autobiography of Nina Simone.New York: Pantheon, 1991. Wayne, Chloe. “‘I Put a Spell on You:’ Performative Liminality, Black Radical Politics, and the Self Creation of Nina Simone.” The Esu Review 1.1 (2009): 85-116. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Southern Horrors and Other Writings: the Anti-lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900. Ed. Jacqueline Jones Royster. Boston, MA: Bedford, 1997. Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3.3 (2003): 257-337.
SHADES OF BLACK: Commodification of Race in Trinidad, As Seen in Minty Alley Hannah Giorgis Dartmouth College This work explores the multi-layered racial dynamics in post-colonial Trinidad as described in West Indian author C. L. R. James’s seminal text, Minty Alley. Too often discussion of racial relations in the Americas hinges on perpetuation of the arbitrary binary of Black and White to the exclusion of other identities.The West Indies, however, is characterized as a region by its overwhelming racial diversity. It is therefore difficult to paint a portrait of any Caribbean nation’s citizenship utilizing the tools offered by traditional American racial discourse. This paper engages with various scholarly articles about the misunderstood nuances of broader Caribbean racial and cultural identity to contextualize assertions made about the specific characters in James’s text. In doing so, analysis allows readers to arrive at the conclusion that phenotypic and cultural Blackness in the Caribbean, particularly Trinidad, often directly correlates with (and perhaps even causes) low socioeconomic standing.
Within the grand scheme of North American racial politics, too often the binary of black versus white becomes the landscape onto which any conflict is haphazardly mapped. The reasons for this gross simplification are as nuanced as they are numbered. Most notably, however, the harsh binary system of classification can be attributed to the hegemonic desire to separate the Accepted from the Other. Rather than explore the complexities of (multi-)racial identities, those of privileged racial background seek to distance themselves from all who do not fit neatly into their White boxes. The so-called “one drop rule” became the bizarre measuring stick by which all those with even a “drop of Black blood,” or any known trace of Blackness in their lineage, were deemed unequivocally Black within the United States. This polarizing dichotomy, however well it may have held up in America, could not be applied half so neatly in the Caribbean. In favor of the strict American interpretation of race, broader West Indian culture utilizes a complex racial spectrum of sorts. “Caribbean blackness—as constrasted to the [B]lack experience in…the United States—moves in and among so many other cultures and is dependent on context” (Edmondson 112). That is to say, Caribbean racial identities are oftentimes deeply rooted in traits far more difficult to quantify than phenotype, and “Blackness itself is not a fixed and absolute entity” (Edmondson 112). Trinidadian author C. L. R. James’s Minty Alley offers a complex depiction of the intersections between racial spectrums and societal perceptions of class, illuminating the ways in which Blackness and socioeconomic disenfranchisement so often coalesce. Through his amplification of the relationship between phenotypically expressed racial backgrounds and the widely accepted social and economic standings that come along with them, James criticizes and subverts a social order that aligns them.
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In many ways Minty Alley reflects the transition of the nascent Caribbean literary tradition from the impractical nineteenth century Victorianism of Mother England to a harsher, if also more accurate, twentieth century realism. Rather than wax poetic about the beauty of an outdoor world only rich colonizers had the leisure to enjoy, James details the enigmatic beauty of Trinidad’s greatest natural resource: her people. Certainly colorism—or the systematic preference of one (typically lighter) shade of skin over another—is not exclusive to the Caribbean, nor to James’s Trinidad. The role it plays in Minty Alley, however, is unique in that it allows the reader a glimpse into social systems that operate on many, sometimes contradictory, levels. A nation comprised of countless ethnic groups, Trinidad defies traditional racial categorizing. Trinidad owes it ethnic diversity largely to the various colonialist actions of the British, who not only utilized African slave labor but also “hired” a considerable population of East Indian indentured servants after nominally freeing the island’s African slaves (Evans and Tata 26). This combination, in conjunction with the small population of Chinese who were “brought to Trinidad but…judged ‘unsuited’ to the rigors of plantation sugar cultivation” and the British colonizers who stayed on the islands, made for a veritable melting pot of ethnic backgrounds (Evans and Tata 26). Therefore, it is no surprise that the Trinidad of which James writes is home to citizens across a broad racial spectrum. In order to best understand the implications of race in his text, the reader must first do away with “traditional” (read: American) notions of racial categorization. If “we accept that the categories of race…and culture are not fixed, discrete and ahistorical essences, we must also accept that their discursive formulations will follow a parallel logic” (Edmondson 110). Doing so implicitly suggests a movement away from using race as a marker of the strict binary between the colonizer and the colonized. Rather, James invites the reader to explore the hazy no man’s land of all those who fall somewhere in the middle. Perhaps the most effective manner in which James challenges societal understanding of race and its implications is through his candid depictions of No. 2 Minty Alley’s many residents. The reader’s first introduction to the house’s tenants begins with a purposeful personification of the novel’s least obvious, yet perhaps most pivotal, character—the yard. “The yard was reddish dirt and bits of stone, but much more dirt than stone, so that on rainy days it would be a mass of slippery mud, treacherous to shoe and slipper, and needing care even from naked feet” (James 28). Throughout the Caribbean literary tradition, and in James’s text, the yard comes to symbolize the people who live, work, and die upon it—the politically, economically, and socially disenfranchised (Vasquez). Not simply a physical location, it bears the weight of its inhabitants’ burdens. The imagery of its “reddish dirt and bits of stone” is apocalyptic, calling to mind the “fire and brimstone” promised in the end times. James makes no attempt to describe the yard in an aesthetically pleasing manner; life here is harsh and unforgiving. There is no room for flowers in the barren yard; there is no room for flowery language
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in James’s text. Though the “reddish dirt” of its description is not a literal racing of the yard, readers can still interpret it as a nebulous coloring. The mention of dirt calls to mind Blackness, whereas the specific mention of the color red evokes an East Indian pigmentation. Racially, the yard is anything but white. More interestingly, however, is James’s portrayal of the yard as “needing care even from naked feet” but “treacherous to shoe and slipper” (28). It is the first of many indications that residents of the yard—those who cannot easily afford “shoe and slipper”—are in many ways better suited to its unwelcoming climate, as well as morally superior to those for whom the hellish yard is a foreign entity. James subtly praises the resilience of the disenfranchised; because they have withstood such atrocities already, they possess a pragmatic nobility lacking in their frivolous wealthy counterparts. James simultaneously celebrates the working class residents of the yard, those whose hearts have been hardened by the experience of tenement life at its worst, and criticizes those who created the situations that force such experiences to exist. The notion of miscegenation as the process responsible for deviations from authentic Blackness, and its socioeconomic implications, is first explored through the character of Mrs. Rouse. “Her face was a light-brown with a fine aquiline nose and well-cut firm lips. The strain of white ancestry responsible for the nose was not recent, for her hair was coarse and essentially negroid” (James 26). She exhibits elements of Whiteness, her “fine aquiline nose” clearly a redeeming physical attribute. Mrs. Rouse is still, however, entrenched in poverty. While the two facts seem contradictory at first, one must consider the extent to which Mrs. Rouse’s Whiteness manifests itself. James asserts that her coarse, “essentially negroid” hair makes evident the fact that the “white ancestry responsible for the nose was not recent,” a statement that distances Mrs. Rouse as a person from the miscegenation in her blood. Rather than acknowledge her as an entire human being, James splices Mrs. Rouse into warring body parts—aquiline nose, firm lips, negroid hair. The effect of this is one of distancing and dehumanization; the image of her barbaric negroid hair overpowers that of the aquiline nose for which her long lost White ancestry is responsible. Even the diction here underscores the White supremacy that rationalized the likely non-consensual relations that introduced aquiline noses into Mrs. Rouse’s gene pool. Her White ancestry is “responsible for” the aquiline nose, as if the body part were in and of itself an accomplishment of sorts and simply possessing Caucasoid features were a noble feat. The gravity of Rouse’s ancestors being responsible for simply an aquiline nose—a physical feature considered beautiful—rather than the potential rape by which they introduced it into her gene pool lies primarily in its irony. Even the most cursory research of colonialist actions and master/slave relations turns up innumerable accounts of unreported, unpunished rapes. The men who committed them never claimed responsibility for their actions, and yet here responsibility is bestowed upon them— not for the rapes themselves, but for their aesthetically pleasing results.
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Mrs. Rouse presents the first example of race as a predictor of one’s role in the workforce and society as a whole. Her lingering traces of Whiteness seldom manifest themselves; she makes cakes for a living and lives among other colonial outcasts. James’s attention to the imagery surrounding his characters is particularly acute in his portrait of Mrs. Rouse, whose “apron was dirty, but the dress below was clean,” as if to indicate some latent inner purity as a by-product of the miscegenation responsible for her nose (James 26). However, this negligible innate virtue does little to better Mrs. Rouse’s life; she remains loveless, unhappy and chained to her work simply to survive. Because she falls so close to the darker end of the phenotypic—and racial—continuum, Mrs. Rouse represents the vast majority of miscegenated Afro-Trinidadians. It is her innate goodness—synonymous with the Whiteness of her distant ancestors—that produces the “nearly white” child whose phenotype most perplexes the novel’s protagonist, Haynes. Haynes “wondered at the presence of so fair a skin among all those dark people” (29). Again, Mrs. Rouse’s mixed racial background is brought to light: “[b]rownish though [she] might be it was inconceivable that she should be a party to any form of miscegenation which would produce offspring with hair so straight and complexion so fair” (29). He immediately thinks to deem the child an outsider, based entirely on his socialized understanding of the upward mobility granted by fair skin. Clearly a child of such fair complexion did not belong in an environment teeming with such poverty. James intentionally focuses his reader on Haynes’s failure to comprehend the child’s presence in the yard; the child’s conspicuousness is notable for a number of reasons. First, the child “at once obeyed orders,” as though only White children could be well-behaved. Further, the child is the first person to be described as physically attractive, described as “unhealthy-looking but cute,” an indication that his ill-suited environment robbed him of the virility his light complexion ought to have afforded him. It is, among other things, a complex commentary on what is considered beautiful. Through this underhanded assertion, the reader can once again understand how nonsensical it is to assume that the child ought to be granted a better life than the woman who birthed him based solely on his lighter complexion. The passage surrounding Haynes’s arrival is littered with descriptions of the house’s inhabitants, not simply Mrs. Rouse and her nearly white child. Mr. Benoit first makes his appearance with “his very black face…undistinguished-looking, neither handsome nor ugly [and] very dark skin and curly hair [that] showed traces of Indian blood” (30). His French name alone is a nod not only to the creolization of his ancestral lineage, but also to his class standing, given that mastery of French Creole language indicated education and wealth. Whether or not Benoit ever studied European languages, his miscegenated birthright granted him access to certain social circles. Similarly, the description of his physical form is a curious one. Again, standards of beauty are framed directly within the parameters of Blackness. Benoit’s traces of Indian blood grant him freedom from
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the ugliness of his very dark skin, as evidenced his “curly”—not kinky, coarse, matted, or nappy—hair. Moreover, his removal from Blackness affords him a “slight paunch,” oftentimes an indication of wealth. Though the protrusion may be unsightly, its implicit message surrounding Benoit’s economic status is attractive in and of itself. He knows he is “a man girls like” (31). Benoit, whose name denotes French Creole heritage and whose hair shows traces of Indian blood, repeatedly finds himself at ease regardless of the situations in which he is placed. Further reading of the novel suggests not that Benoit is a blameless man, but rather that he is conniving and manipulative; the man is not one who should feel pleased with himself on a regular basis. One who frequently engages in dubious financial schemes and even more questionable relations with women, Benoit is hardly deserving of the fortunes life (and his phenotype) gives him. His good fortune is, however, complicated by his marriage to the enigmatic nurse. Benoit describes his future bride to Haynes as “a nice woman…[n]ice colour, straight hair, and a moving woman” (63). Here James conflates the absence of Blackness with the presence of positive personality traits: the nurse is “nice” not because she is kind or compassionate, but because her hair is straight (not coarse or negroid like Mrs. Rouse’s) and her skin color is “nice,” a very thinly veiled euphemism for “light.” That her physical appearance and distance from Blackness automatically reflects positively on her personality is problematic, but not nearly as troubling as its relation to her role as a nurse. There are few professions as widely esteemed as those in the medical field. Given that the nurse is a woman, it would be unlikely for James to assign her the occupation of doctor, making her position as nurse even more meaningful. Essentially, she occupies one of the highest career roles possible for a woman. This is particularly troubling given that the nurse is the only woman in the entire novel with no obvious phenotypic link to Blackness. She is the furthest away from the dark end of the spectrum; though it is unclear from the description of her “straight hair” whether the nurse is of East Indian or European racial background, Benoit’s reference to her “nice colour” makes evident that the “Indian blood” responsible for his loose curls do not course through her blue blood. “Her colour help her, you see,” he explains (50). Therein lies the crux of James’s argument surrounding race relations and socioeconomic standing: color (or rather, the lack thereof) helps. That the nurse can occupy a socioeconomic position of significantly more privilege than those of her Blacker female counterparts is alarming, indicative of the glaring disparities of West Indian life across racial gaps. James paints a complex picture of race relations in post-colonial Trinidad, one in which the presence of Whiteness in one’s ancestry can be either adverse or advantageous—depending entirely upon exactly how much of this Whiteness manifests itself phenotypically. As the characters drift further from Blackness, their plight improves, a trend steeped heavily in history. Against the landscape
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of her brown skin and coarse hair, Mrs. Rouse’s aquiline nose serves only as a constant reminder of the abuse of her ancestors. Her son’s fair skin and straight hair fall short in that they are not enough to erase the blemish of his mother’s Blackness, serving only to exclude him from a feeling of belonging at the place he calls home. Benoit’s East Indian phenotype presents a challenge to the traditional binary; while his dark skin identifies him as clearly Black, his loosely curled hair indicates Indian blood, which maps him onto the black and white picture in a way that is far more nuanced. He does not fit neatly into either category, his literal brown-ness a departure from the traditional paradigm. As a character, he reflects the paradox of his racial background; he is sleazy but successful, conniving but eventually conned by his own bride. He, too, falls victim to the plight of the colored West Indian. His bride, however, not only earns respect through her career as a nurse, but also more evidently through the attribute that allowed her to obtain that career: her fair skin and straight hair, her Whiteness. In his portraits of the nurse, James conflates her social and emotional intelligence with her Whiteness, a characterization that seems absurd to a reader who witnesses her many transgressions, particularly the merciless beating of her son (81). Perhaps the most unsettling facet of James’s pointed characterization of all the characters is not the manner in which each character wrestles with racial background and its implications on class and social standing, but rather the fact that despite any advances, all find themselves irrevocably subordinated to the British colonizers.
References Edmondson, Belinda. “Race, Tradition, and the Construction of the Caribbean Aesthetic”. New Literary History 25.1 (1994): (109-120). Web. 22 Jul 2011. Evans, Arthur S. and Tata, Robert J. “Racial Separation Versus Social Cohesion: The Case of Trinidad-Tobago”. Revista Geografica. (JULIO – DICIEM BRE 1986): 22-31. Web. 23 Jul 2011. James, C. L. R. Minty Alley. London: Villiers Publishing, 1975. Print. Vasquez, Sam. “Class Lecture.” Dartmouth College. Hanover, NH. 12 July 2011. Lecture.
THE “POLITICS OF BELONGING”: Cultivating Identity in Douala, Cameroon Leigh Rome New York University This paper is drawn from ideas on the fluid state of citizenship that exists in Douala, Cameroon. Two separate ways of negotiating identities in Cameroon – through youth movements and cultural movements – are discussed. Identity is highly contested in Cameroon, as it determines one’s role in the economy and access to resources. However, the ways that the state has attempted to solidify identity, and link ethnicity and citizenship make identity highly problematic. Solidification of identities in Cameroon has led to state policy of autochthony. How are new identities for being and belonging constructed in a situation where they are so repressed? The competing ideas of autochthonous roots in Cameroon as compared to migratory routes creates tension. Cameroonians are producing new publics in light of the failure of the post-colonial commons, which makes it clear that Cameroon can no longer rely on the old categories of colonial nationhood; they need to change the paradigm to account for the fluidity of ethnicity, and the dynamism of their citizens.
Identity is often contested in Africa since the cultural landscape of the continent exists in excess of national boundaries. Citizenship ascribed on the basis of belonging to one nation-state is not fluid enough to account for the many spaces that Africans operate in. In Cameroon, European colonialism, and in particular, the anthropological cohort of the project, developed and exacerbated a certain construct of ethnicity which has endured as one of the main factors determining citizenship in Cameroon today. However, the dominance of these ethnic structures is being challenged as individuals define their own identities instead of blindly accepting the dicta of the state. In Douala, Cameroon, two ways individuals are creating new identities and communities for themselves include through cultural movements and youth movements. While by no means inclusive of how all identities are being renegotiated in post-colonial Douala, these examples provide insight into how citizenship may be defined in a more inclusive sense, and allow for identity to be cultivated instead of being proscribed by immutable characteristics. Discussing the ethnic constructs that exist today in Douala necessitates pinning down a workable definition of what identity is. For the purposes of this analysis, identity is the end result of the processes of being, belonging, and becoming that individuals engage in to make sense of their circumstances and surroundings; “Identities are not undifferentiated and one-dimensional social realities” (Vubo 2010: 621). Rather, identity is re-workable, and for many, a life-long process of cultivation and contestation. Contrary to this liberal interpretation of identity, in Cameroon, identity is interpreted by the government very narrowly as inextricably tied to ethnicity. Ethnicity is the theory that a group of people may identify with each other in an intrinsic way by having common language, culture, or religion while being simultaneously linked through their ancestry. The root of the word
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‘ethnic’ comes from the Greek word ethnikos, which refers to someone who was not a member of the polis. Ethnicity thus is fundamentally about dividing people into categories, and indeed, in Cameroon, ethnicity as interpreted by the government classifies individuals into inflexible groups. This sort of division becomes complicated quite quickly, as identifying one ethnicity to belong to is not necessarily a clear distinction. “Where do you come from” can be a contentious question, and lead to a host of others. Is where you come from or where your parents come from? Is it where you were born and raised? Is it the language you speak? Is it the area you live in? The assumption by the government that ethnicity can be easily discerned is felt to be a straitjacket for many Cameroonians. This is exacerbated by the fact that there are high stakes to one’s ethnic identity -- it is directly related to one’s citizenship. Ethnicity is interpreted for purposes of governance as something solid, but in a place where culture transcends boundaries and encompasses multiple identities this is inherently problematic. How did ethnicity come to be such a loaded topic? “Anyone looking for plausible answers to the thorny question of ethnicity in Cameroon must revisit its historical elision, multiple agency and regional trends” (Fonchingong 2005: 364). The territory that comprises Cameroon today was technically under the auspices of the vast Kanem Empire, but its inhabitants were free to migrate to other kingdoms as they chose. Most analyses of the period before colonization list ethnic groups, their traditions, and their ‘customary’ or ‘tribal’ territories as substantiation for a pre-colonial past, but this in itself is a form of historical revisionism and neo-nativism. It is not that there were inherent distinctions in the past between the groups referred to today as the Bamileke, Bamoune, or Beti for example, but that individuals could commute between different identities, and ethnicities overlapped. There were no political or cultural constraints on identity, and if people didn’t agree with the rules of the land they were in, they could join a different group elsewhere. This pre-colonial acceptance of difference was vagrantly misinterpreted and broken by colonialism. Colonial interpretation of ethnicities viewed them in a strict manner, while previously, ethnic identity was accommodating and negotiable. Cameroon’s colonial experience is unique in that the country was colonized by three separate powers. The Kanem Empire had traded with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Spanish from 1492 onwards, and in 1844 Christian missionaries entered Cameroon, and British settlements cropped up to compete for the territory (Mbaku 2005: xx). At the Berlin Conference in 1885, Germany ‘claimed’ Cameroon, and soon set up structures to extract resources like timber, and exploit the fertile soil for cultivation. After a period as a German protectorate, ‘ownership’ of Cameroon was transferred to France and Great Britain. Post-World War I,
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Germany’s colonies were confiscated, and Cameroon became a League of Nations mandated territory that was divided between the French and the British: “The colony was splintered to cater for French and British interests against the backdrop of the imperialist compass that ensued” (Fonchingong 2005: 364). Today, Cameroon is divided into ten provinces, two of which are Anglophone (the former Southern Cameroons, which was colonized by the British), while the remaining eight are Francophone and had been under French auspices. While French and British colonial strategies were somewhat different in Cameroon, both emphasized ethnicity as a means of control. These short and late consecutive periods of colonialism involved little investment in Cameroon; it was never considered a settler colony, and thus full investment in infrastructure was not necessary or desirable. The colonial challenge in Cameroon, as elsewhere, was to create knowledge systems about the people being colonized to maintain control. This led directly to the cultivation of identity constructs – it was easier for the colonizers to rule if they could force people into categories and divide them in some way to prevent united rebellion against colonialism. These policies solidified ethnicities that had previously been fluid, and overstated and even invented ethnic differences to segregate the population. As Mahmood Mamdani articulates in Citizen and Subject (1996), colonialism bounded identity and broke it up into smaller pieces, declaring that each polity had its own ruler and own defining boundaries that delineated a common group identity. The colonizers were also preoccupied with keeping people where they were and discouraging or outright forbidding migration. Most Europeans involved in colonial rule believed that Africans belonged in ‘traditional’ rural areas, and that every African had a village and a tribe to belong to. “Both Indirect Rule and la politique des races were inspired by the idea that people should be kept where they belong in order to facilitate ruling them; identity should be rooted in the soil” (Gershire 2006: 4). Here, scientific racism as articulated by the colonial anthropologists warned about the ‘detribalized African’ who was a danger to colonial rule, and should be kept out of cities at all costs. G.W. Hegel was one scholar who used this brand of scientific racism to justify exploiting Africa. He declared, “Africa proper, as far as history goes back, has remained—for all purposes of connection with the rest of the world—shut up… the land of childhood which, lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of night” (Keita 45). Anthropology treated Africans as objects to be studied to substantiate prejudices of their ‘primitiveness’. One’s ethnicity was as rigid as the images captured by colonial photographers; once frozen in time, you were restricted from movement and denied subject-
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hood. These ethnic paradigms continue to hold; as the British and the French withdrew from their colonies, citizenship in Cameroon was deracialized but not detribalized. In 1961, the British Southern Cameroons joined the French mandated territory to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, an entity with a single president, Amadou Ahidjo. Ahidjo adopted the authoritarian legacy of colonialism to attempt to stabilize the population, which was comprised of two separately governed territories who had endured different colonial pasts; “As head of the new federal republic, Ahidjo faced the challenge of creating a country, and developing a new national consciousness among a group of people with different colonial experiences, political memories, and convictions” (Mongo 2000: 725). Ahidjo’s strategy to account for difference was to adopt a policy of ‘regional equilibrium.’ This meant “…the determination of just how many candidates from each ethnic group or region should pass a given national examination was made according to an ethnic alchemy aimed at achieving social justice” (Mongo 2000: 725). The ‘ethnic arithmetic’ practiced by Ahidjo was not equitable in practice, and did little to soothe the transition of Cameroon from two separate entities into one state. Ahidjo adopted the colonial policies of ethnicity without acknowledging that the categories used for his ‘equitable’ division of power were irrational themselves. Instead, “This emphasis on regional and ethnic identities resulted in the creation of an acute, sustained awareness of ethnic belonging and regional affiliation” (Mongo 726). The Cameroonian government was diminishing individuals’ abilities to fit in by codifying difference. As a result, “Five decades of experimentation with such a situation have not ushered in a united nation where the conditions for citizenship have meaning above the local groups or peoples” (Vubo 2010: 597). Clearly, Ahidjo’s strategy to select “… his clients on the basis of ethnic arithmetic or ethnic balancing” did not resolve the situation (Konings 2003: 5). Instead, his choice “…constitutes the genesis of ethnicisation, the polarization of communal identities” (Fonchingong 2005: 364). Ethnicity and identity very much remained contested issues in Cameroon when Ahidjo resigned as president in 1982 and appointed a successor, former prime minister Paul Biya, who remains the president of Cameroon to this day. Biya has further capitalized on ethnic divisiveness as a method of rule. Today, “…the key to the survival of the state has been its inertia— the capacity to play off sectors, regions, ethnicities, ministries and actors against each other so that the independent initiative is tempered…” (Simone 2006: 523). Biya inherited the state as a one party regime and has since amended the constitution to enable unlimited elections. There is technically universal suffrage, but elections have generally been regarded as flawed, and the president is not obliged
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to consult with the National Assembly before enacting policies. Thus, Biya’s power is largely unchecked by any political mechanism in Cameroon. To maintain his grip on power in the face of rising commodity prices, increasing poverty, increasing unemployment, and general dissatisfaction with the state, instead of addressing grievances, he has pursued policies that divide and destabilize the country by exacerbating or creating ethnic tension to divert attention. “The long Biya era, his manipulation of ethnic identities and the corruption and criminality among elites have generated numerous frustrations” (Crisis Group Africa 2010: ii). Instead of constructively resolving these problems, Biya’s strategies have in effect “…increased the political and economicbenefits of ethnic loyalty and made the development of a national consciousness quite difficult” (Mbaku 2005: 5). Thus, both of the presidents of Cameroon since independence have not governed in a way conducive to formation of an identity beyond ethnicity. “… Cultural diversity has become polarized as a result of elite manipulations and the scramble for shrinking state resources” (Sama 2007: 195). In Cameroon most individuals are acutely aware of their ethnic and regional affiliations, as “… access to state functions depends not primarily on competence and merit but instead on one’s strategic ethnic and regional affiliations” (Konings 2003: 5). For example, it is assumed that one will not attain acceptance into university without a powerful connection or patron, and there is de facto segregation of which ethnic groups may hold which jobs in both the formal and informal economies. “The ethnic factor has continued to influence the equilibrium of administration and appointment to high office. It has also persisted in the popular imagination as the motive force behind all social phenomena within the political sphere” (Vubo 2010: 598). Maintaining the colonial ethnic status quo overall provides for coerced identity and community, rather than voluntary association. Identity in Cameroon has high stakes because it is a large determiner of one’s role in the economy. Failure of the state to provide reliable services has lead to a ‘do-ityourself bureaucracy’ which means “…users substitute themselves for agents who undertake tasks and services usually rendered by public power” (Mbembe 1995: 343). However, how one gets access to purchase scare materials, or even find money for them depends on where on the economic spectrum you fit in. If you must provide your own gauze and bandages at a hospital in order to be treated, how are the unemployed of Cameroon able to be served? This is complicated by the reality that certain economic opportunities are restricted to certain ethnic groups, and ethnic stereotypes of who has access to capital and who does not abound. “Douala is…increasingly fraught with tensions about who has the right to operate there and whom particular resources such as land and economic opportunities belong to” (Simone 2008: 76).
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For example, the Bamileke are commonly referred to as “the Jews of Cameroon” or “the Ibos of Cameroon” for how successful they have been economically. There is a stigma to identifying openly as Bamileke and their economic success given them a reputation of being both ruthless and greedy. The expression “Tu es Bamiléké?” (Are you Bamileke?) is an idiom that serves to accuse someone of being avaricious. Yet paradoxically, while many Cameroonians rue the Bamileke for their economic success, the reason that many individuals classified as Bamileke were forced into these entrepreneurial (and ultimately profitable) positions in the first place was that the state openly saw them as strangers and discriminated against them publically. Bamileke are thus forced to engage in commercial activities because they are barred from the civil service and formal private sector employment (Simone 2006: 524). This is a bizarre contradiction that in many ways is emblematic of the absurdity of ethnicity dominating rule in contemporary Cameroon. The obsession with characterizing people into groups has lead to increased competition for resources beyond traditional employment in Cameroon. “The abrupt switch by the development establishment – the World Bank and the major bilateral donors – from a strongly statist conception of development to a policy of decentralization and ‘bypassing the state’ raised similar questions: who can claim to ‘really’ belong to the ‘community’ that is supposed to profit from a new-style development project?” (Gershire 2006: 4) This is an additional source of tension that no members of the development establishment in Cameroon seem to be taking into account. How does ethnicity play in to who is entitled to reap the benefits of donor investment? The government argues that it is based on blood ties and familial ties to the area where the project is taking place, but in urban spaces where individuals are fighting the traditional constructs of ethnic identities, who is entitled to receive what is difficult to parse out. Migration additionally complicates identity and economic opportunity in contemporary Cameroon. The colonial powers saw Africans as rural by nature, and believed that the city was ‘not African’; Africans were to remain on their ‘tribal’ areas, and the ‘detribalized’ African in the city was dangerous. Yet migratory processes have always been important as a way to seek opportunities, and today, cities in Cameroon are migratory poles. Indeed, many see it as impossible to stay where they are and expect to prosper; “…this impossibility is reflected not only in reiterating the historical capacities of many African populations to move and to move long distances, but in wide-ranging and diffuse tactics attempting to affect a mobility of perception and action within the confines of the city itself ” (Simone 2006: 361). Cities in Cameroon, especially Douala, are growing at an exceptional rate, and this is partly because of migration. “In 1976, the rate of urbanization was 28.5%. This figure rose to 40.4% in 1988 and the current figure reveals an increase of over 5% since then” (Fon 2010: 19). Increased population in cities like Douala can be linked to “the large influx of migrants into most regional
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headquarters in search of jobs and improved living standards…” (Fon 2010: 21). Many seek their fortunes in the city, which leads to diverse urban populations. Cities are assumed to be places of wealth, and an escape from rural poverty, especially post-structural adjustment policies which were incredibly detrimental to rural economies dependent on crop cultivation. When people can no longer compete they go to the cities, in the hope that they might be better off. Of course, not everyone expecting the city to be his or her Mecca finds it so, but the city is often still seen as a more desirable option than remaining in a rural area. At least in the city, one’s future is not yet known. There are massive migrations from rural areas to the cities, and it is projected that by 2015 over half of the country will be urbanized (Fon 2010: 20). In the cities, it is true that there are more concentrated services, but from an identity standpoint, it is also true that it is more possible to negotiate one’s identity within the diversity of people that the cities attract. In Cameroon, cities provide as space for rethinking ethnicities and a direct challenge to what the state advocates in its reliance on firm ethnic identities to rule through. The agency of migration places a crucial role in self-determination and identity cultivation outside of state auspices. Solidification of identities in Cameroon has led to state policy of autochthony as means of citizenship. This means that “…attachment of elections and citizenship to regions encourages a more formal distinction of rights based on birth or residence: the distinction between autochtones / allogènes or natives and strangers” (Nyamnjoh 1998: 321). In Cameroon, “…the intensified polarization of society into sub-national, ethnic and sub-ethnic cultures widely separated in terms of identity and loyalty encourages further hostility rather than cooperation” (Sama 2007: 199). Autochthony creates an imagined threat of the stranger who usurps power, and benefits, and in Cameroon, this perception has created fear and lead to a “…rhetoric of ethnic cleansing… as a sign of indigenous superiority over minorities…” (Nyamnjoh 1998: 326) Autochthony is inflexible and not contextual enough to show all the sides of the story. In many cases, the people termed ‘strangers’ are actually second or even third- generation descendents of migrants. “A language of ethnicity promotes the fear that any kind of mixture will in the end be injurious to the interests of the minority. What is emerging…is regionalism linked with ethnicisation as the key to control of resources” (Nyamnjoh 1998: 332). The end result of autochthony is that “national integration is jeopardized by ethno-regional jingoism, fanned and sustained by the state. People are overtly encouraged to demonstrate stronger loyalties to their ethno-regional or sub- national groups than to the Cameroon nation” (Fonchingong 2005: 369). This loyalty is overpowering, and ethnic discourse in Cameroon subverts all other
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structures to it. A Cameroonian expression astutely explains the problem “Kontchou does not represent the Bamilékés; Mboui does not incarnate the Bassa people; and Owona is not mandated by the Betis to defend their interests. However, all three men, and many others, originate from one and the same ethnic group: the chop tribe!” (Challenge Hebdo, N°3, 1991) The ‘chop tribe’ derogatorily refers to the methods that the party, and President Paul Biya engage in to promote their divisive ethnically based rule which is in the end detrimental to Cameroon. Ethnic rule has been directly challenged most prominently by those in the cities, where people do not understand the rationality why their neighbors are privileged in ways that they are not for a characteristic they did not get to determine. There has been backlash to government policies of ethnicity, and some organizations have lobbied that the government actively promotes ethnic conflict and prejudices against certain groups. For example, Laakam is an organization that “…accused both the Ahidjo and the Biya regimes of deliberately fostering ethnic conflict and prejudice against the Bamileke for the purpose of maintaining national unity” (Nyamnjoh 1998: 325). They protest that “Cameroon’s cultural diversity, instead of serving as a melting pot for state construction, has been used by unscrupulous politicians to foster dived et impera” (Fonchingong 2005: 367). But thus far, the state has not budged in terms of its citizenship policies that emphasize ethnicities. This realization has lead many people to work outside of the state, and create new ethnicities for themselves that are voluntary. People are making their own claims to identity by producing structures apart from those advocated by the government. Individuals have instead constructed “regimes of subjectivity”, defined as “…a shared ensemble of imaginary configurations of ‘everyday life,’ imaginaries which have a material basis; and systems of intelligibility to which people refer in order to construct a more or less clear idea of the causes of phenomena and their effects, to determine the domain of what is possible and feasible…” (Mbembe 1995: 325) These are born out of the recognition that “The narratives presented in nationalist histories do not always represent the majority of African experiences…” (Schler 2005: 90) Two ways individuals are claiming and framing these new identities include through cultural movements and youth movements. These are allowing people to create something new and separate from the state apparatus of ethnicity. Artistic movements in Africa have traditionally been at war with states that have disfranchised them and Cameroon is no exception. Post-independence the government was out of step with its people, and art was one way found to make community through voluntary organization instead of ascribed ethnicity. Artists are aware of the futility of the government attempting to classify the population into strict categories, and protest through their works. This is a devised means
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of survival that is in dissonance with the state. Voluntary artistic organizations have created communities, particularly in Douala. One prominent organization advocating arts-based citizenship is Doual’art, an “experimental laboratory” which as existed since 1991. Doual’art has worked to commence dialogue on ethnicity in Cameroon by providing a forum for critique of the government and a space for contemporary art productions. In doing so, Doual’art has provided the space for voluntary communities to coalesce around the arts, either through direct participation or participant observation. It is a safe space for multiculturalism and diversity, and allows, and encourages individuals to embrace a concept of identity that exists beyond ethnicities. Identity in Doual’art is specific to each individual, and is largely whatever each person perceives or cultivates his or her identity to be. It is certainly not restrictive based on ethnicity, and identities are allowed to change. Authors have also challenged the ethnic policies of the government and alluded to how divide-and-rule tactics have damaged the country. This brand of literary critique dates back to the colonial period, where authors recognized how concepts of ethnicity as they existed in practice were being mutilated by the colonizers. Pre-independence a writer from British Cameroon named Sanke Maimo produced a play called I Am Vindicated, which dealt with these issues of restrictive identity that resonated with the qualms of his compatriots (Mbaku 2005: 81). Other works published during the colonial period “…reflected this search for liberty and self with in the context of a morally idealistic world view…”, including Un enfant comme les autres (Pabe Mongo), L’enfant Bamileke (Jean Mba Lenou) and Tout pour la gloire de mon pays (Victor Fotso) (Mbaku 2005: 85). Writers in Cameroon today also reflect on the persecution of the government in its ethnic policies, and such activities have increasingly come under attack. One particularly critical author, Bertrand Teyou, has been imprisoned since November 2010 for allegedly insulting President Paul Biya’s wife in his book La belle de la république banaière: Chantal Biya, de la rue au palais (The belle of the banana republic: Chantal Biya, from the streets to the palace), which provided a critique of the government profiting from divisive rule in Cameroon. Literature has become political as attempts to side step the government’s ethnic policies are being increasingly persecuted themselves The artistic community in Cameroon has successfully shown one avenue the possibility of new identities outside the ethnic constructions the government advocates can take. Urban artistic culture in Douala is a response to the capricious nature of politics in Cameroon; it is ‘…shaped by a sclerotic political regime that not only runs in a patrimonial fashion but rewards and punishes almost arbitrarily” (Simone 2006: 364). Artistic movements are embracing fluidity of iden-
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tity as a strength, and potential way forward for Cameroon -- “While politicians are thus sacrificing the very notion of a common Cameroonian nationality and identity, some artists and intellectuals have drawn on the same categories to try and break ethnic boundaries and define a popular national culture characterized by acceptance of ethnic differences” (Monga 2005: 723). In this separate sphere, “Cameroonian artists and art promoters have succeeded in using cultural difference to produce a popular culture that has helped to establish a sphere of ethnic tolerance and respect” (Monga 2005: 743-744). These practices create new communities and force dialogue on ethnic issues with the hopes of bringing about change. For example, Petit Pays, a Douala musician “proclaimed in his first release that his mother was a Duala and his father a Hausa”, and French speaking comedian Dave Moktoi impersonated an Anglophone man to discuss the absurdity of stereotypes (Monga 2005: 744). “…Popular culture...ultimately provides a public space of mutual ethnic acceptance in Cameroon”, which could lead to widespread change in how identity is defined and perceived (Monga 2005: 744). AbdouMaliq Simone advocates “Urban popular culture is a mirroring process through which residents understand something about their collective life, a well as a vehicle through which implicit forms of social collaboration are put to work” (Simone 2008: 76). Yet in accepting this reading, one must acknowledge that the process cannot stop there – artists must work to obliterate the forces that encourage Cameroonians to see in ethnic terms in the first place. Without this progression, ethnicity will continue to dominate as the most prominent mode of identity in Cameroon. By contrast, if the fruitions of these cultural movements are capitalized on, they could revolutionize the formulation of identity in Cameroon to make it more useful to the people and less of a burden that one has little to no control over. Youth movements also provide a means for identity to be renegotiated beyond ethnicity. Yet, defining ‘youth’ as a category itself provides difficulties, “For beyond the important observation that different societies do define and demarcate youth differently, even within a society people of a wide range of ages are often treated as youth, and people of a wide range of ages claim the space of youth, at specific times and in specific places” (Durham 2000: 113). For this reason, Deborah Durham advocates for defining youth as a social ‘shifter’, in the sense that in the fluidity of a ‘shifter’, the definition of youth “…can go beyond immediate relationships being negotiated and draw attention to the structure and its categories that produce or enable the encounter” (Durham 2000: 116).
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Regardless of how youth may be numerically categorized, the fact remains, that in terms of actual age numbers, Cameroon is a ‘young’ country. According to the United Nations, more than half the population of Cameroon is under the age of 20, and “The general census published in 2010 found that 43.6 per cent of the total population is under 15” (Crisis Group Africa 2010: 12). The 2010 census also found that 22% of young people in Douala are officially unemployed. Being in this position of disenfranchisement without a clearly evident solution has led youth to contest the ethnic boundaries that are for many, stifling their ability to fully participate in the economy despite credentials.The power of youth to question the dominant discourse and promote a counter movement is not unique to Cameroon -- “In many cities across Africa youth have often undertaken efforts to upend social practices and local power regimes which they believe hold them back or contribute to a suffocation of possible change and progress” (Simone 2008: 83). In Cameroon, the young population has a great stake in how ethnicity relates to employment. Cameroon has traditionally had a high rate of school attendance, but there is no guarantee that even the best education will lead to a job, as formal employment as controlled by the government is increasingly based on patronage and ethnic ties than on qualifications. This means that in order to support themselves, many youth have to participate in the informal economy in order to make a living. Following, many of the moto-taxi drivers, the “call1 box” owners, and the market vendors in Doualahave had higher education in Cameroon – “80% of the motorcycle taxi drivers in the city have a high school diploma, while half of them have a university degree” (Crisis Group Africa 2010: 12). There is high aggravation amongst youth that the government recognizes their ethnicities as more important than their qualifications. Young people in Cameroon are acutely aware of their situation. As popular rapper Valsero wrote in his song “For 2008, I Speak”, “This country kills the young / the old don’t let go / 50 years of power and after that they don’t let go / The young are slowly dying while the old are getting drunk on fire water in their fortress / This country is like a bomb and a coffin for its youth / Beware, when it blows up they will be only bits of flesh, so make way the old, the torch must be passed on”. It is generally accepted among youth that the less qualified workers will get jobs through these nepotism practices as a direct result of their ethnic affiliation (Crisis Group Africa 2010: 12). This has served to politicize ethnicity even further for youth, and lead many young Cameroonians to search for an alternative means to create their identity in. It is true that not all youth in Douala are politically active or interested in contesting the ethnic apparatus of the state. “But there are sensibilities on the part of 1 Those people who charge individuals in the street to use their cell phones result of their ethnic affiliation (Crisis Group Africa 2010: 12). This has served to politicize ethnicity even further for youth, and lead many young Cameroonians to search for an alternative means to create their identity in.
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increasing numbers of youth that are at least capturing the imagination, as well as being translated into various actions” (Simone 2005: 519). No one is claiming that all youth in Cameroon are politically active. But a significant portion are, in some capacity, aware of the role that ethnicity has played in defining their parents identities, and are actively contesting these paradigms. Youth movements that have resulted from this realization are an important departure from commonly accepted ethnic norms. These youth movements sculpt new identities that are not tied the ethnicity that they have inherited from their parents. Indeed, this is not a relevant distinction for most young people as youth in Douala have often migrated away from their families and are living on their own not even in the same city or even country as their parents, and have severed ties with them. In Douala, AbdouMaliq Simone found through his interviews with youth in that there was a “…prolific desire to ‘make oneself into a new person’” outside of the identity that had given to them from birth (Simone 2006: 365). This new ideology instead promotes tolerance, diversity, and stepping beyond ethnicities. In 2005, young Cameroonians in Douala organized a weeklong exhibition that “… was expected almost to act as a repository of dreams that could launch everyone’s private initiatives into a different plane of orbit: a kind of collective talisman that couldconcretize the strivings of neighborhood youth” (Simone 2008: 84). The success of the program demonstrated how organized youth are amongst themselves, as well as how “...urban youth in Douala, Cameroon attempt to expand their spaces of operation outside any formal or apparent institutional structures by finding ways to perform particular kinds of circulation around the city” (Simone 2005: 517). Youth are not afraid to be outspoken about their new identity creation. One interviewee claimed “the difficulty is that the old rules no longer apply, and efforts to adhere to them only get us into trouble” (Jean-Paul, age 22, in Simone 2005: 517). “As youth in Douala frequently remark, the ability to ‘become someone’ is directly linked to the ability to ‘move around’, and so circulation is also about acquiring a facility to operate everywhere, and to not be known as a specific son or daughter of a specific family coming from a specific place with specific ethnic origins and professions” (Simone 2005: 520). Static identities and ethnicities are not useful, and thus youth are discarding them to create their own. There remains the promise that when the youth of today became tomorrow’s leaders in Cameroon, they will change the dominant paradigm. But the fact that they will not remain obedient to what the government tells them they are has already led to fracturing in the government apparatus, and forced Paul Biya to clamp down even harder on the ‘youth quarters’ in Douala to retain control. So far Biya has had the force to remain in power, but, youth as a vehicle for change – es-
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pecially youth who are highly educated -- should not be underestimated. Citizens in Cameroon today are wrestling with ideas of how to claim citizenship, but how to interpret the ‘new ethnicities’ in Cameroon can be read in different ways. For example, if Achile Mbembe were to critique this analysis of identity in Cameroon, he would likely be more drawn to discussion on how Cameroonian citizens are defining their own spaces, and find it less crucial to historicize details of autochthony by relating them to colonialism. As he argued with regards to Johannesburg, the apartheid model of looking at the city is no longer the most relevant lens, and what is more important is the fact that people can serve as their infrastructure, as articulated by AbdouMaliq Simone. In this framing, one’s identity is based on one’s agency. Contrastingly, Michael Watts would likely question the stakes of focusing on the positive ways people are creating new identities in light of the very real, very problematic identity formulations advocated by the government. People may be incredibly resilient, and able to adapt and create their own structures in the face of adversity, but from a critical development standpoint, glorifying and celebrating these accomplishments allows the government to get away with continuing to advocate historically disenfranchising paradigms with out redress for the people. Finally, citizenship is something that constantly mutates, but in Cameroon, the policies the state has chosen to pursue require people and cultures to be static in order for them to work. Rather than letting publics formed by agency suture into commons organically (and thus drawing attention to the social agency that people have), the state uses coerced communities as a control mechanism. How are new identities for being and belonging formed and constructed in a situation where they are so repressed? The competing ideas of autochthonous roots in Cameroon as compared to migratory routes and attempts to create new publics creates tension. The state is in dissonance with its people – while Cameroonians are defining themselves beyond ethnicity, they are being told by the state that their participation, resources, and opportunities are constricted based on one specific feature which they do not have control over. The weakness in ethnicity as a ruling structure is thus that one idea of modernity is never enough to frame a people in their entirety, and rather, overlapping modernities are a reality not taken into account by the state in Cameroon. The commons in Cameroon predicated on ethnicity is fracturing, and through these fractures come new publics, of which two examples – art movements and youth movements—are coming to light. Cameroonians are producing these new publics in light of the failure of the post-colonial commons in Cameroon, which makes it clear that Cameroon can no longer rely on the old categories of colonial nationhood; they need to change the paradigm to account for the fluidity of ethnicity, and the dynamism of their citizens.
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References Crisis Group Africa. Cameroon: The Dangers of a Fracturing Regime. Rep. no. 161. 24 June 2010. Print. Durham, Deborah. “Youth and the Social Imagination in Africa: Introduction to Parts 1 and 2.” Anthropological Quarterly 73.3 (2000): 113-20. Print. Fon, Lawrence, and Sounders Nguh. Balgah. The Urbanisation Process in Cameroon: Patterns, Implications and Prospects. New York: Nova Science, 2010. Print. Fonchingong, Charles C. “Exploring the Politics of Identity and Ethnicity in State Reconstruction in Cameroon.” Social Identities 11.4 (2005): 363-80. Web. Geschire, Peter, and Stephen Jackson. “Autochthony and the Crisis of Citizenship: Democratization, Decentralization, and the Politics of Belonging.” African Studies Review Sep 49.2 (2006): 1-7. Web. Konings, Piet, and Francis B. Nyamnjoh. Negotiating an Anglophone Identity: a Study of the Politics of Recognition and Representation in Cameroon. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Print. Mbaku, John Mukum. Culture and Customs of Cameroon. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005. Print. Mbembe, A., and J. Roitman. “Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis.” Public Culture 7.2 (1995): 323-52. Print Monga, Yvette. “”Au Village!”: Space, Culture, and Politics in Cameroon.” Cahiers D’Études Africaines 40.160 (2000): 723-49. Web. Nyamnjoh, Francis, and Jude Fokwang. “Politics and Music in Cameroon.” Cameroon: Politics and Society in Critical Perspectives. Ed. Jean-Germain Gros. University of America. 185-207. Print. Nyamnjoh, Francis, and Michael Rowlands. “Elite Associations and the Politics of Belonging in Cameroon.” Journal of the International African Institute 68.3 (1998): 320-37. Web. Sama, Molem C. “Cultural Diversity in Conflict and Peace Making in Africa.” African Journal on Conflict Resolution 7.2 (2007). Web. Schler, Lynn. “History, the Nation-State and Alternative Narratives: An Example from Colonial Douala.” African Studies Review 48.1 (2005): 89- 108. Web. Simone, AbdouMaliq. “Some Reflections on Making Popular Culture in Urban Africa.” African Studies Review 51.3 (2008): 75-89. Web Simone, AbdouMaliq. “Urban Circulation and the Everyday Politics of African Urban Youth: The Case of Douala, Cameroon.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29.3 (2005). Web. Simone, AbdouMaliq. “Pirate Towns: Reworking Social and Symbolic Infrastructures in Johannesburg and Douala.” Urban Studies 43.2 (2006): 357-70. Print. Vubo, Emmanuel Yenshu. “Levels of Historical Awareness: The Development of Identity and Ethnicity in Cameroon”
USING THE “MASTER’S TOOLS TO DISMANTLE THE MASTER’S HOUSE”: Literacy and Black American Intellectualism as a Double-edged Sword Throughout History Hannah Giorgis Dartmouth College This work engages directly with works by preeminent Black American authors Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington—as well as secondary articles about their respective works—to form an opinion on Black intellectualism in the 21st century. Though education is often heralded as the only route by which Black Americans can effectively compete with their advantaged White counterparts, the notion of intellectualism as freeing in and of itself is a flawed one. This paper critically tackles issues of what it means to be a Black intellectual, how one can promote literacy in Black communities without losing any sense of “Blackness,” and what role the Black intellectual ought to occupy in society. In synthesizing Douglass’s and Washington’s works, the work arrives at a gentle suggestion that Black intellectuals (particularly within the context of the United States) do not seek higher education and intellectualism simply for intellectualism’s sake, but rather do so with the goal of uplifting the Black community as a whole. Keywords: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, African American
The conflation of “proper” English (that is, standard American English and decidedly not African American vernacular) with intelligence is hardly a recent sociological development. Far too often in contemporary American society, the role of archetypal “bookworm,” one for whom there is no greater pleasure than to be immersed in the intricacies of language, is not that which is most often tied to Blackness. To be a Black linguaphile, as society would tell it, is to be an oxymoron, a walking paradox. The coloring (or rather, the whitening) of intelligence as a concept is a direct product of White supremacy, but its manifestations have transcended color lines; even Blacks have unwittingly (if also unwillingly) bought into this damaging rhetoric. Certainly the suggestion that eloquence is an inherently White trait is unequivocally racist, and yet people of all points on the melanin gradient continually reinforce the notion that “nerdy” Black children (and, to extend the argument, their older counterparts) are performing Whiteness. Yet the assertion that literacy—and subsequent mastery of language, particularly English—is not intrinsic to the African American experience, contemporary or otherwise, is a problematic one. In a social and educational climate that patronizingly suggests Black children who cling to their dictionaries are “acting White,” what is to be made of theories that posit education and literacy as the most valuable vehicles for progress within the Black community? How can Black society be expected to better itself through education if the acquirement of education is viewed as an inherently non-Black endeavor? Throughout his Narrative, Frederick Douglass both explicitly and metafictionally wrestles with the notions of literacy as an exclusively White male privilege. His assertions are complicated by those of Booker T. Washington, who struggles with many of the same topics in his Up From Slavery but arrives at different conclusions. Whereas Douglass, biased
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though he may be by his position as author, repeatedly enumerates the benefits of literacy (particularly writing as a form of self-creation), Washington challenges Black America to pursue excellence in more “traditional” arenas before rushing to adopt an educational system that does not have its best interests at heart. Upon synthesizing the two disparate arguments, readers can form an opinion on the importance of literacy and education in Black American life that is neither abstractly (and impractically) intellectual nor woefully lacking in erudition. To fully understand what is implicated by both Douglass’s and Washington’s claims regarding literacy within the context of modern-day Black America, we must first deconstruct what the term “literacy” meant during the era of Southern slavery and the years immediately following its legislative abolition. Literacy as a concept certainly transcended the static knowledge of alphabetic characters, but it was not the automatic gateway to autonomy modern readers sometimes assume it to be. The antebellum and Reconstruction-era United States did not present a social climate that allowed slaves and/or freedmen to simply read or write their way to de facto liberty. “Too often, readers conceive literacy in [slave] narratives as an emancipating skill which leverages the slave out of bondage and into freedom” (Royer 364). The truth, however, is far less simplistic. Literacy was and is arguably most important in that it affords one self-reflective capabilities otherwise inaccessible or perhaps even inconceivable. “When critics conceive literacy in more complex ways, it is frequently problematized by attendant poststructuralist conundra which pit language, and hence the process of acquiring literacy, against the narrator’s ‘being’ or ‘authentic self ’” (Royer 364). More simply, “strong-text” characterizations of language assert that literacy, and the desire to attain it, is inherently driven by (and therefore encourages) introspection. Though the millennial era values self-reflection almost to narcissistic effect, Douglass and his contemporaries would not have had nearly the amount of leisure time such soul-searching necessitates. What little time was afforded them for literary acquisition, if any time at all, was therefore treasured far beyond a modern-day bibliophile’s appreciation. With no access to modern reference resources or the leisure to peruse them even if said resources existed, those who sought knowledge of themselves—of their own identities—turned eagerly, if also covertly, to books for answers. Therein lies perhaps the greatest problem with a Douglass-inspired modeled for self-creation via literary pursuit and subsequent authorship: the books to which Black Americans turn(ed), be it simply to further their grasp of the written word or for answers regarding their own identity politics were (are) so often penned by White hands whose intentions were not to uplift but rather to denigrate the populations of which they wrote. In this vein, author Carter G. Woodson’s seminal text, The Miseducation of the Negro, posits that education as an institution has failed Black Americans. The crux of Woodson’s argument is that the Negro’s
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newfound permission to become educated is not only unfulfilling but perhaps even detrimental to his conception of self because it is a forced indoctrination in White supremacy via the inherently racist literature given as learning material. Moreover, Woodson propounds that the White man possesses power over the education process in that it is granted exclusively on the White man’s terms. Douglass acknowledges his White master’s tremendous privilege of doling out education early in his Narrative. Though he utilizes purposely self-adulatory rhetoric, Douglass makes evident the frightening immutability of his mistress’s control over his education (and, consequently, his intellect): “I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years. During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in a mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute” (Douglass 61).
Though Douglass initially casts some positive light on his mistress, what he leaves readers with is hardly a rosy portrait of a benevolent woman. Instead, his assertion that her instruction came from the kindness of her soul only serves to amplify the horror of her later refusal to continue liberating him from “mental darkness” and her husband’s insistence that she cease and desist. Douglass establishes the parameters around which his education is framed: White America’s desires. His mistress possesses the power to keep him mentally shackled, and chooses to wield it. The injustice of the master’s attempt to intellectually castrate Douglass by forbidding his wife from teaching the inquisitive young Negro is further compounded by the master’s desire to keep Douglass from being instructed by others. At work in this scenario is not simply a wish to keep the mistress from wasting her own time educating the boy, but a deeply rooted fear of what would happen if Douglass were to amass the same intellectual resources his White counterparts took for granted. That Douglass’s first mention of his own self-instruction in the English language centers on his understanding of the word “abolition” is telling. Douglass hears the word mentioned in connection with discussion of slavery and grows curious as to its meaning. Upon looking it up in the dictionary and discovering only “the act of abolishing” by way of definition, he turns to the city papers for answers (Douglass 66). “From this time [he] understood the words abolition
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and abolitionist, and always drew near when that word was spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to [himself] and fellow-slaves” (Douglass 66). Douglass’s newfound knowledge of this one word granted him access to the conversations exchanged around him; his literacy provided him opportunity with which to gauge not only the sentiment toward abolition in his own home, but also across the South and the United States as a whole, all via the words his master assumed him too illiterate to understand. The implications of Douglass’s ability to ascertain the word “abolition” and the effort it took for him to do so are not to be taken lightly. That the first word Douglass must actively work to learn is “abolition” speaks volumes about the significance of this hard-earned literacy. To learn the meaning of the word “abolition,” Douglass contends, is to embark on a path toward abolition itself. Yet this step toward literacy alone does not divorce Douglass from his position as a slave. In many ways, his initial steps toward literacy allow Douglass to better comprehend how deeply entrenched in the slave system the South (and he, by virtue of his citizenship in the region) had become. The process by which Douglass learns to write mirrors the Black educational experience: Douglass learns to write only when left alone, away from the watchful gaze of a master and mistress who know better than to allow their human chattel an opportunity to increase his expressive capabilities. “When left [alone, Douglass] used to spend the time in writing in the spaces left in [his] Master Thomas’s copy-book, copying what he had written. [He] continued to do this until [he] could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, [he] finally succeeded in learning how to write” (Douglass 68). Douglass’s initial writing is not his own; he learns to mimic that which his White master has already written. The symbolism of Douglass learning to write only through the vehicle of duplicating the White man is both powerful and difficult to process. When extended to modern educational systems, this speaks to the tendency of the educated Negro to despise his own Blackness following his exposure to “traditional curricula of the times which did not take the Negro into consideration except to condemn him or pity him” (Woodson 11). After all, how is one to learn an appreciation of self if everything one learns is marred by the Master’s fingerprints? Furthermore, it draws attention to Douglass’s use of English as the language in which his Narrative is published: he writes a text exposing the severity of his people’s oppression in the very language of the oppressor, the same tongue that gave life to the verbal vitriol of such men as Jefferson Davis. Woodson suggests that, among the reasons for this linguistic choice is the fact that, in “the study of language in school pupils were made to scoff at the Negro dialect as some peculiar possession of the Negro which they should despise rather than directed to study the background of this language as a broken-down African tongue—in short to understand their own linguistic history, which is certainly more important for them than the study of French phonetics or Historical Spanish Grammar” (Woodson 12).
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That Douglass must use the Master’s language to subvert the Master’s systems is both challenging and revolutionary. Despite its status as a reminder of Douglass’s inability to formally learn his Negro dialect, it also comes as a particularly devastating blow to White America that Douglass, as one denied the privilege of training in proper English language acquisition, is so versed in its intricacies, so able to parlay the language into a powerfully persuasive argument. More specifically, “we need not accept the prevailing assumptions that literacy for Douglass involved social betrayal, psychological escape, or any sort of dialectical movement away from his identity rooted in traditional black slave culture...Douglass’s literacy can be understood not merely as a mastery of textuality, but as growth in what Brandt calls ‘metacommunicative ability’; that is, ‘an increasing awareness of and control over the social means by which people sustain discourse, knowledge, and reality’” (Royer 367). Upon completing his informal education, Douglass does not simply abandon his essential “Blackness,” problematic though the term may be to define. Curiously, throughout the course of his self-education, Douglass echoes Washingtonian sentiment in his decision to delay his escape to the North until after he has learned to write (Douglass 67). The choice is a deliberate one: Douglass effectively decides to use his subjugated status to his benefit before proceeding to more lofty goals. In this same vein of measured approaches to freedom, intellectual or otherwise, Washington cautioned against a hasty reliance on liberal arts academia to advance the Negro in a social climate that did not yet permit him to find employment following such schooling. A firm believer in the value of industrial labor as a valid, even honorable, enterprise, Washington believed the Negro must first concern himself with more pragmatic courses of study “The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race. One man may go into a community prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of Greek sentences. The community may not at that time be prepared for, or feel the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons. If the man can supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to an demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it” (Washington 75). Having such developed thoughts surrounding the natural order for upward social mobility, Washington did not dabble in texts he deemed frivolous. Accordingly, he grew frustrated with those who came to his Tuskegee Institute with delusions of premature literary grandeur. He wrote with disdain of those more interested in acquiring knowledge of the White man’s books than in learning skills that would be useful to their livelihood. “Most of the new students brought a written or a verbal request from their parents to the effect that they wanted their children taught nothing but books. The more books, the larger they were, and the longer the titles printed upon them, the better pleased the students and their
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parents seemed to be” (Washington 75). Here Washington attacks the obsession with learning for the sake of status; to him, literacy for literacy’s sake is not valid. Washington takes issue with literacy as a frivolous marker of class, social status, and entitlement; pedantic obsession with acquiring impractical information— not knowledge—struck him as not only unfruitful, but also counterproductive. Perhaps the most commonly misunderstood tenet of Washingtonian thought is that surrounding the Negro’s place in society and the role education ought to play in preparing him for it. Washington does not suggest that the Negro ought to completely abandon the pursuit of literary knowledge or remain permanently subordinated to the White man; rather, he seeks to frame this quest for comprehension onto the sociocultural landscape of his time. He is more concerned with economic gain than with abstract literary or academic prowess, a valid trepidation given that the “literacy myth includes…the mistaken assumption that literacy [automatically] begets economic freedom” (Royer 365). Essentially, Washington merely condemns the quixotic search for impractical literary prowess at the expense of endeavors that are more economically sound. His approach is that of the skeptic, not the pessimist. Among the most significant distinctions Washington makes in this statement is the racialization of literature; he does not necessarily decry the senseless analysis of literature in general, but rather specifically targets the foolish studying of Greek literature. This is a thinly veiled disparaging of those Negroes who spend their time dissecting the words of European authors; it does not, however, necessarily reflect on those who study the work of their Black literary forerunners. To study Greek literature is not productive, Washington argues, partly because the Greek man did not and does not write with the colored man in mind. For a colored man to invest valuable time and energy studying the work of someone who would likely deem the Negro’s very enrollment at an educational institution unthinkable is not unproductive but also the height of self-deprecation in that it robs the Negro of energy he could theoretically devote to learning subjects that will enhance his economic prospects. Difficult though this message may have been to rally around during an era in which Blacks sought equality and not in slow, measured steps, his views are not obsolete even today. To reconcile the two schools of thought—that of Washington and that held by Douglass—is not impossible, but it certainly presents challenges. Royer suggests that the “answer to the puzzle of how Douglass became so masterfully literate with so little help from traditional, schoolbook pedagogy lies in observing the power of involvement in the social practices that promote and sustain literacy. For it is not only the learning about language that is important, but, as Brandt says, ‘experiencing intersubjective processes—learning how to participate in the work of life (especially the work that involves print)—has to be given equal attention as part of literacy development’” (Royer 372). That is to say, the experience of laboring on one’s writing is just as vital as the writing ability itself. Douglass
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creates his identity not simply through his absorption of texts that tell him what his character as a Black man ought to be, but also through the learning process itself. “By reconceptualizing the nature of literacy, the process of acquiring literacy described in Douglass’s narrative can be seen as natural, creative, and liberating—in effect, a vehicle for intersubjective community” (Royer 373). Because he has the ability to process these texts, to then later utilize the words on their pages to his own ends, he succeeds in forging a new identity of his own: in the act of reading about himself as a slave, Douglass liberates his mind. He becomes a mentally free man. However, his psychic liberation is fruitless without literal freedom. Washington’s arguments are often directly contrasted with those of his contemporary, W. E. B. DuBois, whose idea of the “talented tenth” of Negroes paving the way for Blacks as a community to advance hinged primarily on the value of a liberal arts education. In analyzing DuBois’s work, however, one can understand that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. “Education, for DuBois (1973), is ‘by derivation and in fact a drawing out of human powers,’ and it involves…essentially three things: first, a critical knowledge of the past, that is, critical study of African as well as ‘world’ history; second, questions of culture, ‘cultural study,’ as DuBois put it, and critical cultural inquiry; and last, an understanding of present and future vital needs of not only continental and diasporan Africans but of humanity as a whole” (Rabaka 400). This paradigm—that of intellectual autonomy being most powerful when married to literal, pragmatic autonomy—can be applied to modern discussions of literacy and education as they pertain to Black America. While conceptions of self and the development of positive identity politics within the Black community are certainly of merit, it is perhaps more imperative that a Washingtonian approach first be taken. To first focus on fixing the tangible problems plaguing Black American society—be it poverty, incarceration, HIV/AIDS epidemics, etc.—and then concentrate on the voracious consumption of (Black) literature would not hinder progress. Rather, what the community most “feels the need for” at the moment is not for its best and brightest to hold symposiums featuring abstract discussions of race, but rather for them to formulate practical solutions to the problems plaguing those who are not privileged with access to the same resources. If eradication of these social injustices became Black intellectuals’ first priority, the number of Black intellectuals in existence would increase by virtue of improved access to educational resources. To then spend large amounts of time contemplating the complexities of Black identity politics would not only make sense within the context of Black intellectualism, but in the context of society at large. A society in which Blackness is no longer synonymous with criminality would arguably be far more prepared to discuss the ramifications of the one-drop rule than one in which impoverished Black youth are funneled into prisons rather than colleges. The onus is therefore on Black intellectuals—those with access
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to the educational resources some colored folk cannot fathom and many White folk take for granted—to actively better the communities from which they spring before (selfishly) seeking to attain arbitrary signifiers of status in their own lives. Because educated Blacks can wield both the archival and rhetorical tools to articulate their own identities, they have taken the first step toward neo-abolition— that is, the process of freeing society from the remnants of slave psychology that linger dangerously to this day.
References
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2004. Print. Rabaka, Reiland. “W. E. B. DuBois’s Evolving Africana Philosophy of Education”. Journal of Black Studies 33.4 (2003: 399-449). Web. 10 Oct 2011. Royer, Daniel J. “”The Process of Literacy as Communal Involvement in the Narratives of Frederick Douglass”.” African American Review 28.3 (1994): 363-374.Web. 22 Aug 2011. Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1995. Print. Woodson, Carter G. The Miseducation of the Negro. New York, NY. BN Publishing. 2008. Print.
“HERE IN THE SOUTH WE KNOW OUR ENEMY’: The VUU/Richmond 34 marching with All Deliberate Speed in the Capital of the Confederacy Mr. Vincent T. Smith, Jr. Virginia Union University African American History has reached a state where greater knowledge can be brought to the table, and groundbreaking discoveries can be made. At the start of the Civil Rights Movement in America, it was the Sit-Ins which eventually first captured the conscience of America. While many know about protests and demonstrations such as the Greensboro 4 and The Nashville Sit-In, the VUU/Richmond 34 are hardly recognized. This study recovers some of the VUU/Richmond 34’s perspective through interviews ranging from student participants, civil rights leaders, and everyday citizens who lived in Richmond. A careful analysis of these interviews yields the eyewitnesses’ own testimonies and explanations that bring this crucial sit-in to life. As a result of this study their stories add nuance to our understanding of the Richmond Sit-In Movement of 1960. This study is part of a growing body of research on African-American perspectives of the Civil Rights Movement. In using a largely untapped source of Virginia Union University History; and oral histories with VUU students, this project will contribute to future research on similar topics.
This paper is a portion of a forthcoming book manuscript and an oral history collection dealing with the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia, which focuses on the Richmond sit-ins of 1960. Partially modeling after the methodology used in the book, Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South, by William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad, the project aims to capture oral histories of African Americans and others who participated in the downtown Richmond 1960s sit-ins. Although priority is placed on Virginia Union University students, other perspectives are necessary and essential in gaining a broader context of the events that occurred. This paper explores the dynamics of the Richmond sit-ins.1 While placing an emphasis on the “VUU/Richmond 34” sitin, the dynamics will be uncovered by answering the following questions: (1) How did the Richmond sit-in events unfold; (2) Who were the “VUU/Richmond 34”; Some insight to backlash; (3) How the Richmond sit-ins compare with two other notable [civil rights] movement events; and lastly (4) What is the legacy left behind? On February 1, 1960, when four young distinguished gentlemen from North Carolina A&T College, known as the “Greensboro 4”, parked themselves at the nearby Woolworth’s lunch counter, the sit-in movement across the South commenced. The four gentlemen’s display of arguably the most potent action, the sit-in, Wyatt T. Walker states, “started a prairie fire, across the South of sit-ins.”2 Stemming out 1 I will base my initial study of the Richmond sit-in events off of the following: journal articles; news-papers, a documentary, the Virginia Union University Archives and Special collections at the L. Douglas Wilder Library, Richmond, VA, participant eye witness testimonies; and a wide array of other primary sources. 2 Wyatt Walker, interview by author, 15 May 2009, Chester, Virginia, tape recording, Bon Secours Medical Center, Virginia.
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of the methodology proposed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which was first used in Alabama, the weapon of choice was nonviolence and resisting the system of segregation by sitting in became its bullet. “It was the silver bullet that we needed to find as a means of resisting racism in the South particularly because it was so blatant.”3 To combat this culture of racism, others looked to the “Greensboro 4” as a model to follow. The Greensboro sit-in specifically to this context and the many that were to come after embody a self-proclaimed commission which entrusted others to carry out its mission to sacrifice oneself in the fight for equality and egalitarianism that would eventually come to Richmond, Virginia. One must not forget that Virginia has a far different implication than North Carolina. Richmond, Virginia, was the capital of the Confederacy during the American Civil War under President Jefferson Davis. Moreover, “Jefferson Davis had supported this new pseudoscientific racism prior to the Civil War with an endorsement of a racist pamphlet by Van Evrie asserting that sub-Saharan Africans were a separate species intermediate between the white man and orangutans.”4 This endorsement of racism would continue to psychologically damage African Americans even up to and through the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, the Confederate flag being seen then and even now is partially to blame. “The issue of the Confederate flag is whether Americans such as myself…will have to suffer the indignity of being reminded time and time again that at one point in this country’s history, we were human chattel, we were property, and we could be traded, bought and sold.”5 As this culture of racism developed, any event that would occur in Richmond, Virginia, would be more significant because it was the capital and the symbolism of its flag to African-Americans. Such event(s) include the seemingly forgotten Richmond sit-ins of February 1960, which were headed by primarily Virginia Union University students. In retrospect, the February 1960 Richmond sit-in event(s) took place on two crucial days. The first being February 20, 1960, and the subsequent February 22, 1960. Keeping these two dates in mind one must first look at what led to deliberate action. Neglecting not the effects of the “Greensboro 4” sit-in, February 2-19, 1960, marked the period when the sit-in movement spread through the Upper South. Although black students in Richmond did not take deliberate action for three weeks, they were clearly planning. Frances J. Bancroft-Dalton, an elementary education major at Virginia Union, speaks of planning about 1 1/2 months prior: Before the Christmas holidays, two people came to talk with us, I later realized that was Frank Pinkston and Charles Sherrod. And they discussed with us the possibility of sit-ins and what was going on around the country.6
3 Interview with Walker. 4 The Natural History of Man, by Henry Hotze, from The Index, July 23, 1863. 5 Carol Moseley-Braun, 1947- U.S. Senator 6 Frances B. Dalton, Interview by author, 22 February 2010, Richmond Virginia, tape recording, Marriot Hotel, Richmond, Virginia
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In addition, Bancroft’s pre determined attitude had been set for mounting a revolution. And we had the attitude that well we’re from the North and we can sit down. So we were going to come down and help the southerners sit down. We were going to save the South, so to speak. And it was poignantly pointed out to me that here in the South we know our enemy but in the North we don’t. That became a greater focus for me to realize the injustice that all of us were feeling.7
Neither wavering nor putting aside the task that lay before the Virginia Union students the revolution in Richmond began. On that Saturday, at 9:00 a.m., 200 VUU students assembled in orderly fashion and converged onto Richmond’s major shopping district located on Broad Street. The district included many department stores but VUU’s students had five target points. The first of them was Woolworth’s store on Broad and Fifth streets. “Ignoring the small counter at the back of the store set aside for black customers, they occupied the thirty-four seats in the section reserved for whites. Store officials quickly closed the white section. The students continued to sit, talking among themselves or reading.”8 Contrary to many sit-in movement participants from across the country, Bancroft masterfully does the unimaginable. Another point I picketed in Woolworth’s store. In fact I believe...I did that twice. I’m not sure of that but I do remember carrying a peanut and butter jelly sandwich down to say I’m going to show them that I will eat at this counter. I upset the manager because he wondered where the sandwich came from and he made the comment, ‘Don’t anybody give her a water; let her suffer with that peanut butter sandwich in her mouth.’ And I was determined I wasn’t going to let him know that my throat was dry.9
A desiccated mouth I’m sure was the status of each student at the lunch counter, but that couldn’t compare to what many department store employees endured on a consistent basis. The work load for Doris Smith, a Woolworth’s employee for over 14 years, low a burden so bad that she couldn’t endure any longer. When I started working on these five booths and had to prepare for each person, some of them wanted a meal, a whole meal. Some of them wanted, after the meal dessert, and some of them wanted milkshakes. They wanted banana splits and all of that, and you had five booths to attend to it just got to be too much for me. And that was one of the reasons why I walked out. No one knew I was going out, I was quitting that day. Even if you told Ms. Mims she needed to put help 7 Interview with Dalton. 8 Peter Wallenstein, “To Sit or Not to Sit: The Supreme Court of the United States and the Civil Rights Movement in the Upper South.” Journal of Supreme Court History 29, no. 2 (2004): 147 9 Interview with Bancroft-Dalton.
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While at Woolworth’s, another group of students went to Grant’s Department Store but the lunch counter was closed, so their next target point would be G. C. Murphy’s store. Students took up all the seating in the white-only section, and then it was closed. Students then were questioned and explained that they came as individuals, which would later be the argument of NAACP lawyer Martin A. Martin. Two students, Charles M. Sherrod and Frank Pinkston, shared with management, “These are my classmates.” “The two leaders took pains to characterize the demonstration as ‘spontaneous’-----that is, not in any way sponsored by the university—but they conceded strong sympathy with similar demonstrations elsewhere. Richmond was just one of many offshoots of the original Greensboro protest.”11 Managers of both stores announced that their stores would be closing, and students then moved to their third focal point, Thalhimer’s Department Store. The store located on Sixth and Broad, was headed by William B. Thalhimer, Jr. “At the restaurant on the fourth floor, they had to wait in line, but they took seats at the soda fountain in the basement and at the lunch bars on the main floor and the mezzanine.”12 All four sections of the store were closed and the protesters were asked to leave. While demonstrators were exiting, “William B. Thalhimer, Jr. announced that the store would remain open, but that the eating places would remain closed for the rest of the day.”13 While being turned away on the inside, the outside still had demonstrators going strong. Thereafter students went to People’s Service Drug store which would be their final target. Just as in G.C. Murphy, the group took up all the seats and then the manager announced, “The store would close for ten minutes, and when it opened it would be for prescription business only.”14 Then Charles Sherrod spoke for the group and made their purpose clear. “The group had no intentions of backing away from its objective: Our aim is to end segregation period.”15 Once Sherrod spoke these profound words, day one of protests were over. Students would rest on Sunday and gear up to resume sit-ins on Monday Feb 22. Students not only continued their campaign to desegregate places of public accommodation but actions would speak to those places and say “No More! Enough is enough.” Day two of the sit-ins arrived, and on that morning 500 protesters showed up. Murphy’s and Woolworth’s stores were both closed all day, but students did choose to sit in at Grant’s store. In addition, another group decided to go to People’s. 10 Doris Smith, Interview by author, 11 February 2010, Virginia. Tape recording, 2506 Wright Ave, Richmond Virginia. 11 Wallenstein., 147. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 148. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid.
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“They also were refused service, and again the counter was closed for a time.”16 Outside, students were picketing with signs that read “JUSTICE, WHERE ART THOU HIDING, DO WE EAT TODAY?” and “YOU JUST CAN’T LUMP JUSTICE”. Police officers were standing outside discussing the possibilities of what was going to happen. While students kept picketing on the outside, the inside of Thalhimers’ “Richmond Room, a tea room on the fourth floor”17 was attempted to be entered by seventy-five people. The arrival of students there was orderly and done in a dignified fashion because they knew what was expected of them. For instance, Dr. E. D. McCreary Jr., a theology professor at Virginia Union, made sure students knew what conduct would be tolerated. “The first group that went down was led by Dr. Tinsley Spragans and me. We made it clear that there was not going to be any violence, that we were sincere in boycotting, and that there would be respect. We were ready to be arrested if necessary. I took the chance, not even talking with my wife for example, that if funds had to be put forth, that I would get a loan on this home. That’s what I’m saying we were not playing and we told the students we were not putting up this for any foolishness from you. This was an actual boycott because we were spending money at the store.”18
Among these seventy-five that tried to enter, thirty-four VUU students were allowed access to the Richmond Room, and others sat at the first-floor lunch counter. The “VUU/Richmond 34” would include the following students: The Richmond 3419
Frank George Pinkston Charles Melvin Sherrod Elizabeth Patricia Johnson Joanna Hinton Gloria C. Patricia A. Washington Barbara A.ron Lois B. White Thalma Y. Hickman Celia E. Jones Carolyn Ann Horne Marise L. Ellison Virginia G. Simms Anderson J. Franklin
16“34 Are Arrested in Sitdowns Here,” Richmond Times Dispatch, 23 Feb. 1960: 1, 5. 17 Ibid.,149. 18 Rev. Dr. Edward D. McCreary, Jr. interview by author, 12 February 2010, Virginia, tape recording, 2416 North Cumberland Avenue, Richmond, Virginia. At the time Dr. McCreary was a theology professor at Virginia Union University. Dr. Edward Daniel McCreary, Jr. has held many roles. He was the first born son of Rev. Dr. Edward Daniel McCreary, Sr. and Florence Storrs McCreary and the brother of the late Rev. Dr. Charles Riley McCreary, Sr. Beginning his life in Williamsburg, Virginia, Dr. Edward McCreary, Jr. would later go on to complete his primary education in Staunton and Charlottesville, Virginia. The world would become his place for learning and teaching as he would travel through Virginia, the United States and abroad as both student and educator. 19 1960 Panther Yearbook, Archives and Special Collections, Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia
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Ronald B. Smith Larry Pridgen Woodrow B. Grant Joseph E. Ellison Gordon Coleman Milton Johnson Ford Tucker Johnson, Jr. Donald Vincent Goode Robert B.Dalton Samuel F. Shaw Leroy M. Bray, Jr. Albert Van Graves, Jr. Wendell T. Foster, Jr. Randolf A. Tobias Clarence A. Jones Richard C. Jackson George Wendall Harris John J. McCall Ceotis L. Pryor Raymond B. Randolph, Jr.
These names would not only be significant to just the “VUU/Richmond 34” event but also other notable civil rights movement events. Back inside, Frank Pinkston, one of the group’s organizers, was talking with Newman “Newt” Hamblett, vice president and operations manager at Thalhimers store. Pinkston had an overall attitude of, “If we can get (this), this is all we want, see if … let him feel the hard economic hurt.”20 While talking Hamblett remarked, “If you don’t leave I’ll have a warrant for your arrest and charge you with trespassing.” Students remained at lunch counters and “store officials called for city magistrates and again requested that the students leave.”21 Frank Pinkston stood bravely and wouldn’t move. A city magistrate told him, “you are not welcome in the store, and I’m charging you with male trespassing, and I’ll be right back with more in just a minute.”22 Police then moved to the lunch counters and students were still seated for the most part. Samuel F. Shaw was cool, calm, and collected smoking a cigarette while a police officer was ticketing a fellow classmate. After a few minutes one male student was led out by magistrates in black suits and police. A somewhat stout man with glasses was typing up warrants to give to the students for their arrests. One magistrate said to one female student, “You will not leave this store; we’re going to have to issue you a warrant for your arrest if you do not leave. You understand that?” As she was sighing, the female student replied, “yes” in a sobering soft voice. One student came over to see about his classmate but the magistrate said, “Please stay out of this - I’m talking to her.” Then two white boys came in and Hamblett, remarked, “Avoid trouble, you’re going to have to keep it moving. You can’t block these aisles.” The students were in a line and the stout man was still typing up trespassing cards and one by one as the student came up a policeman gave him or her a card and said, “We’re going to have to charge you with trespassing”.
20 Madeline, Anderson. Prelinger Archives, Integration Report 2, Andover Productions. Documentary showing the civil rights movement in 1959 and 1960: sit-ins, marches, boycotts and rallies in Montgomery, Ala., Brooklyn, N.Y., and Washington, D.C. Directed by Madeline Anderson. 21 Ibid.,149. 22 Integration Report 2
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At the lunch counter and tea room, “seventeen arrests were made.” The Richmond Times Dispatch reported there might have been many more, but not all students stayed. Dr. E.D. McCreary, Jr., was among one of the faculty members who suggested that the students leave. He explained: “We’re just advising students to leave because we believe we have the case.”23 As students were walking, they spotted a policeman on horseback and a patrol car labeled 21. Police then “herded the students into six patrol wagons and charged.”24 One of the policemen in charge of putting the students in one of the patrol cars while initially locking the car was hesitant to do it. As this car was filled, other members of the ‘34’ came out and filled the other wagons as well. Then after all cars had been filled, patrol wagons headed down to the “police lockup on Sixth Street at Marshall.”25 Upon arrival at the jail much to the 34’s surprise the streets were lined with fellow colleagues and classmates, faculty, university personnel and others looking and waiting to see what would happen next. As the onlookers lined up, policemen guarded the street with barking dogs. As a policeman opened the first wagon door, three women were the first to go in and those who lined the street cheered, shouted, and screamed in joyous fashion. The three women with textbooks and notebooks in their hands walked with dignity and pride and never looked down. Frank Pinkston, Ceotis L. Pryor, and Virginia Simms entered a few moments after. As the remaining of the ‘34’ followed suit, on the inside they all were “completing the process of being booked and then released on a $50 bond.”26 Continuing to line the street in an orderly fashion one person remarked, “They called us heathens, they called us animals. I mean they ridiculed us; everywhere we went they ridiculed us. It is obvious we’ve come a long way with nothing. We get half the salary another man is getting, the same job but half the salary.”27 Students finally came out and were directed by policemen on horseback where to go. One student commented on the crowd of people lined outside the jail lock up, he said, “That means a whole lot. To know that you aren’t in some mud hole, trying to fight for something that nobody else gives a damn. But that every… that your… your fellow neighbors are with you. And that means a whole lot to anyone fighting for something or an idea.”28 Another student remarked, “I do believe, there is a lot of respect for this movement.”29 Students were then feted at the Eggleston Hotel downtown. 23 Ibid.,149. 24 Describes the way students were put into patrol wagons and gives the exact amount of cars students were in. Dr. R. P. Hylton, “The Barriers They Broke: Just 48 Years before a black man ran for president, Virginia Union University students put themselves on the front lines of Richmond’s civil rights movement. (Style Weekly Magazine 2010), 14-16. 25 Integration Report 2 26 Ibid.,149. 27 Integration Report 2. 28 Integration Report 2. 29 Integration Report 2.
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At the hotel, the ‘34’ gathered in light of their successful efforts. The name of Ford T. Johnson, Jr., would be forever more embedded into judicial history on April 29, 1963, for refusing a judge’s order that he sit in the section of the court designated for African Americans, which eventually led to a decision that rendered courtroom segregation illegal, states: Well there was food, that was big we hadn’t been successful in eating as the day went on. So it was great to get the food. But more than anything else we heard some of the attorneys speak. I think some of the leaders of our own group spoke, Sherrod and Pinkston, spoke. It was just an overall feeling of elation. There was a feeling there that we had succeeded, no one was hurt, that we made our point, that we were able to sit-in, that the lawyers had the case that they wanted. And that was something that was clear to me. It was a strategic move. It wasn’t just an action to sit-in.30
After the hotel many students launched a boycott on February 23, 1960. This time numbers were smaller and protesters’ focus was on picketing Thalhimers store instead of sitting in. “They distributed leaflets urging black Richmonders not to enter the store and certainly not to buy there. It explained: “Thalhimers had our Negro youths arrested because they tried to exercise their constitutional rights to eat in a public place. Don’t buy or eat in this store!”31 The backlash of all of the Richmond sit-in events, affected all sit-in participants but moreover those arrested. Being arrested hit home for Barbara A. Thornton literally. The affect that it had on me was when I went home. My father always read the newspaper. The next morning he saw my name in the newspaper. Then when he went to work some of his clients faced… approached him and said, “Oh, so I saw your daughter’s name in the newspaper, and we no longer need you.” He lost about forty percent of his business, he did landscaping, and one person I know that stuck with him I know was Mr. Thalhimer. So it was hard… I just felt so ashamed, I guess from being arrested. My father he was upset, and of course by him losing forty percent of his business I felt so bad and ashamed. And I really think that’s why I left for New York for the summer and I didn’t return because of that.32
After the Richmond sit-ins were over the ‘34’ went to trial and did not receive a ruling until June 1963. The bravery and leadership of the students will never be forgotten. Among those involved, Frank Pinkston as he was led away declared, “The 30 Ford T. Johnson, Jr. Interview by author, 21 February 2010, Virginia, tape recording, Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia. 31 Ibid.,150. 32 Barbra A Thornton Nero. Interview by author, 20 February 2010, Virginia, tape recording, Virginia Union University. Richmond Virginia.
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students have set the flame. Now we challenge you to put some oil on it and keep a blaze going!”33 Pinkston would also lead the Civil Rights campaign in Ocala, Florida, and would later die in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1973. In contrast to other (civil rights) movement events these events are different. In dissimilarity to the “Little Rock 9”, with Daisy Bates, the fact that high school students were met with violent resistance, while trying to desegregate Central High School, would draw both the Arkansas State government and the Federal government into its vortex on opposite sides but in Richmond they weren’t. Secondly, when putting side by side the nature of two sitins, the “VUU/Richmond 34” to the Greensboro Sit-in; the latter was spontaneous rather than strategically planned, and mushroomed as time continued. The students’ marches and protests led to a creation of The Campaign for Human Dignity [CFHD]. “In January of 1960, the Jim Crow infrastructure throughout Richmond seemed to be solidly established. By December 1969, much had been dismantled. It was during that December that the voters of Richmond, in a special election, overwhelmingly chose a lawyer named L. Douglas Wilder as the first African American to fill a Virginia State Senate seat since Reconstruction.”34 Along with Richmond’s conscious questioning its own actions in electing a black senator, William B. Thalhimer Jr.’s efforts to integrate early did not go unnoticed because later he would be asked to consult for his efforts at the White House by the late President John F. Kennedy. With a culmination of a lengthy struggle and conviction demonstrated by the action of the ”VUU/Richmond 34”, the legacy of the Richmond Sit-in events would come ironically slow. Elizabeth Johnson Rice pushed for a celebration years’ after the initial sit-ins but no real progress was made. Four years later I had my health back, I said ok no one has done anything yet. I was teaching middle school and I came home from school one day and it was like something hit me on my head. Like whose in the room. It was like you need to do this. Nobody else is going to do this. You need to do it. You need to do it now. Right then I had tears in my eyes and so it was a spiritual moment. It was a spiritual paradigm. I got on the phone at that instant, dialed Richmond, Virginia police department. I said, ‘Hello this is Elizabeth Johnson Rice. I was a person who got arrested in the sit-ins in 1960 at the Thalhimers Department store. I would like to have a commemoration march on February 22, 2004, is that possible? What do I have to do?’ The response was, ‘That’s an awesome idea, and many things have changed for the better since then. Somebody needs to do this. Get in touch with the park police and they will tell you what you have to do.’ So, I got in touch with the park police. Then I said, ‘Who do I call next?’ That was the easy. From there 33 The Richmond Afro-American 1960 34 Hylton.,16.
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In spite of the adversity, on February 22, 2004, Elizabeth Johnson Rice and her brother, Ford Johnson, Jr. staged a march to the old Thalhimer’s building to commemorate the “VUU/Richmond 34” March. Mrs. Rice’s efforts would bring about a bigger and better celebration six years later. February 22, 2010 marked the 50th Anniversary of the arrests. The anniversary commemoration was six days long beginning with a “Remembering, Reflecting, Rededicating” event sponsored by VUU’s English Department. During VUU’s weekly chapel service Rev. Leroy Bray, one of the “34”, preached. The climax of the commemoration events were the two dedication marker ceremonies. One marker was placed on VUU’s campus and the other was placed downtown at Richmond Center Stage (the old Thalhimers building) where the commemoration concluded during an evening with John Legend and the Amaranth Contemporary Dance Group. In conclusion, very few historians know about the Richmond sit-ins of 1960 and the “VUU/Richmond 34”. Virginia Union University played a momentous and meaningful role in the overarching Freedom Struggle. As the South’s most venerable historically Black College and University, by virtue of its location in the former capital of the Confederacy, the “VUU/Richmond 34” legacy shall live on forever. By carefully mining through a wide-array of primary sources and conducting oral histories we can more thoroughly understand the lives of sit-in movement participants in Richmond, Virginia. Someone did eat at that Woolworth’s store lunch counter which sheds new light on the movement at large and yes, it is clear by the students’ deliberate action they knew their enemy in the South. In the North there were, “sympathy demonstrations, and the resolution hinged on the boycott methodology which prompted negotiation and conciliation.”36 Moreover, I’m honored to impart the words of VUU’s fifth president, Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor, who best recapitulated the Civil Rights Movement in these prophetic and profound words:
35 Elizabeth Johnson Rice. Interview by author, 18 February 2010, Virginia, tape recording, Virginia Union University. Richmond, Virginia. 36 Wyatt Tee Walker, Analysis of the Concentric Circle Development of the Nonviolent Movement in the U.S. Benchmarks of the Civil Rights Movement
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The movement in the’ 60’s had so much drama and impetus because targets were so clear. The pain is still clear, but the target is amorphous. How, after all do you march against sin?37
So I charge you today to march on, march on, and march on because marching with all deliberate speed will see you through. His truth is marching on.
References Primary Sources Anderson, Madeline. Prelinger Archives, Integration Report 2, Andover Pro ductions. Documentary showing the civil rights movement in 1959 and 1960: sit-ins, marches, boycotts and rallies in Montgomery, Ala., Brook lyn, N.Y., and Washington, D.C. Directed by Madeline Anderson. Dalton, Frances, B. Interview by author, 22 February 2010, Richmond, Virginia. Tape recording. Virginia Union University, Virginia. Johnson, Ford, T. Jr. Interview by author. 21 February 2010, Richmond, Virginia. Tape recording. Virginia Union University, Virginia. McCreary, Edward, D. Jr. Interview by author. 12 February 2010, Richmond, Virginia. Tape recording. Private home, Virginia. Thornton-Nero, Barbara. A. Interview by author. 20 February 2010, Richmond, Virginia. Tape recording. Virginia Union University, Virginia. Picket protest of Thalhimers downtown, 1960 Panther Yearbook, Archives and Special Collections, Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia. Rice, Elizabeth, J. Interview by author. 18 February 2010, Richmond, Virginia. Tape recording. Virginia Union University, Virginia. Smith, Doris. Interview by author. 11 February 2010, Richmond Virginia Private home, Virginia. The Richmond Afro-American 1960. VUU Students Sit-In at Murphy’s Lunch Counter, 1960 Panther Yearbook, Ar chives and Special Collections, Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia. Walker, Wyatt, T. Interview by author. 15 May 2009, Chester, Virginia. Tape recording. Bon Secours Medical Center, Virginia. Wyatt Tee Walker Analysis of the Concentric Circle Development of the Nonviolent Movement in the U.S. Benchmarks of the Civil Rights Movement. “34 Are Arrested in Sitdowns Here,” Richmond Times Dispatch, 23 Feb. 1960: 1, 5. 1960 Panther Yearbook, Archives and Special Collections, Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia. 37 Samuel D. Proctor, 1921-1997 Minister and Educator. Dr. Proctor was the fifth president of Virginia Union University (1955-1960).
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Secondary Sources Hylton, P.R. Dr. “The Barriers They Broke: Just 48 Years before a black man ran for president, Virginia Union University students put themselves on the front lines of Richmond’s civil rights movement. (Style Weekly Magazine 2010), 14-16. Loewen, James. “”The Natural History of Man,” Heny Hotze, July 23, 1863.” Confederate Truths: Documents of the Confederate & Neo-Confed erate Tradition from 1787 to the Present. Newman, Richard. “Confederate Flag.” In African American Quotations, 89. New York, NY: Oryx Press, 2000. Newman, Richard. “Civil Rights Movement.” In African American Quotations, 81. New York, NY: Oryx Press, 2000. Wallenstein, Peter. “To Sit or Not to Sit: The Supreme Court of the United States and the Civil Rights Movement in the Upper South.” Journal of Supreme Court History 29, no. 2 (2004): 147
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