When global media magazines were quite fashionable in the late 1990s we used to have the likes of Time and NewsWeek magazines. They always gave us a comparatively expansive insight into what was going on in the global west.
We also encountered the then famous Readers Digest magazine which we would crowd around to assume what love, relationships and work meant in order to be a modernised human being. Even in Africa.
At some point the African Diaspora decided to also establish an equivalent magazine called 'The New African".
This was within the ambit of not only Nkhrumaist/Nyerereist values but also the ideological argumentation of what Thabo Mbeki (South Africa) Abdoulaye Wade (Senegal) and Abdel Aziz Bouteflika (Algeria) considered as an 'African Renaissance'.
And soon after the reformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to become the African Union (AU) in mimicry of the European Union (EU) and its controversial imperialist historicity.
But we can only recognise their efforts within the context of what obtained in the narrative of assumptions global human equality and universalism.
Until we were reminded of the 'exceptionalism' of the global north. An 'exceptionalism' which still obtains today via wars and financialised capitalism as evidenced by our high dependency and border line worship of the intrinsic value of the US dollar.
Where we fast forward to the contemporary, without affinity to the formerly famous global magazines such as Time and Newsweek. Or the cable television networks such as CNN or BBC, for recognition as Africans we realise that the narrative was never designed to be un8versal. No matter how hard we (have) tried.
We are still African. And unfortunately denigratively black as ascribed by conservative global media,.
But that is not the major issue.
We are in global period where we need to re-think what it means to be African. Whether we are brown or black.
As Africans we have gone through various historical motions. Of either forced militarized inferiority via the slave trade, colonialism and counter resistance to it (both political and militarily) with lessons that inform our Pan Africanism as led by for example Cabral and Fanon.
What we did not anticipate, even in our own now global Diaspora is the fact of hanging mediums of meaning beyond the glossy magazines such as Time or Newsweek that were and are still a part of a media hegemonic complex.
We did not and probably still do not recognise the impact that social media and the Internet has had on what it means to be African.
We still try to steal remnants of our own identities in-between. While knowing that we do not own social media let alone its newer version in the form of Artificial Intelligence (my phone and laptop is autocorrecting me as I type this blog).
There is however a grey area which old media, social media and the Internet cannot reach.
That which remains your organic African being. A being that recognises the historicity of colonialism, technology (magetsi) and post/neo-coloniality and contemporary religion as foundations of a false new African and national consciousness.
As I argued initially, we probably need a 'newer African'. Or to be that more historically conscious African. As complex as this may read or sound.
This would mean, when you listen to for example Donald Trump, the president of the USA you as an African are not thinking of the 'Art of the Deal'.
Or when you watch the current UK prime minister Keir Stemmer, you are not remembering the legacies of late British colonialism.
Or even when you see Francois Macron and you do not have empathy for the fact of colonial cultural assimilation.
Even if colleagues and cdes bring in the question of how China or Russia are influencing African consciousness.
There can be no argument about that.
It is up to you if you want to be a newer organic African.
More so for one who reads between internationalised racist lines and understands who the African you are and who you should be.
With the key component being what has been referred to academically and culturally as your newer 'Africaninity'.
One in which the realities or recognition of your own history and being better placed as a reality therefore of where you can talk back to the now not so subtle racism of the global north.
But let me return to my initial admiration of the glossy magazines such as Time or Newsweek.
As an African, I used to admire the journalistic stories of those publications.
As rare and expensive as they were.
Now we have the Internet and social media.
These not so new mediums will perpetually challenge our Africanness. They however cannot change it.
What is then required is a newer more conscious African. Beyond even what was then referred to as the journalistically and magazine motivated 'New African'.
Or the Eurocentric 'African Renaissance' that birthed the contemporary African Union.
But because I know that on our African continent nothing is ever ahistorical. We need to be newer Africans that recognise not only history, our own historicity and the fact that we are still our own liberators .
Ideologically and materially. One cannot function without the other. Or in abstract mimicry.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment