Ngugi wa Thiong'o: A Revolutionary Pan African Cultural Icon

 By Takura Zhangazha *

The great African writer and intellectual Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Ngugi) has left us here on earth. He passed away this week after a long illness as described by his family. I did not know or interact with him personally.

I only met him via his amazing novels and Pan African essays as I encountered them in the Waterfalls and more significantly Dzivaresekwa district libraries in Harare, Zimbabwe. Moreso when I was at University and had a lot more intellectual curiosity.  

And it was initially encountering his literary works that had me in complete awe of him.

Encounters that started with the plays that he co-wrote with Ngugi wa Miri (who I met personally via my maternal uncle Mr. Maphosa when I was a wannabe intern with what was then referred to as the Zimbabwe Dance Association)

That play was called "I Will Marry When I Want". I watched it being dramatised in Pan Africanist fashion and was slightly lost at its double meaning.

The second time I encountered Ngugi and his intellectual prowess was when my brother Fidelis was studying African literature and brought back home a set-book titled, "A Grain of Wheat" by the same author.

Our black and white television was not working at that time and we had no option but to read whatever was at our disposal. The “A Grain of Wheat” novel was complex for me as a teenager at that time but I sort of got its anti-colonial and historical gist.

 From inferences about the 'iron snake' which turned out to be the train and railway track through to the romantic contests of village lovers at a time of seismic colonial and cultural change in a Kenyan village setting.

From then on Ngugi became a key feature of my library and literary life.  I read almost anything and everything by Ngugi.

From the 'River Between', 'Weep Not Child', 'Devil on the Cross' and the seminal 'Decolonising the Mind' collection of essays on language and Africaninity among many other works I will not list because both in the past and present there are to many to write for the purpose of a blog.

But there are many symbolic matters that Ngugi taught us as Africans. Not just by way of his amazing writings but also by way of his Pan Africanist activism. And I am writing this from an intellectually distressed moment. Ngugi, in my view taught us to tell the radical pre andpost independence resistance story.

We read the likes of the “Trial of Dedan Kimathi” but also quickly encountered “Devil on the Cross” with its mixture of post-colonial socialist resistance and religious dictum of the "Voice of the People" being "The Voice of God". 

We initially thought it was just literature in English from Africa until Ngugi dramatically declared he was now going to only write novels in his native language Gikuyu. 

A language in which he authored among others, “Matigari” and the seminal “Wizard of the Crow” novels as critiques of past and contemporary African governments.

He also authored memoirs of his time in Moi's prisons and gained international acclaim for his intellectual bravery in the face of repression against literary free expression and consciousness. This made him a global icon.  And he has remained so, even in his passing.

They never gave him the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature though we knew as Africans he more than deserved it. Much more than Barack Obama. Even if it was in a different field. 

But we also knew that even if they did not give it to him, Ngugi was so ingrained in our African being and progressive intellectual consciousness  that it do not matter whether the proverbial white gaze recognised him at its highest levels or not.

The key was what he was teaching us through his writing. This included what was to become a speicif academic field on 'decolonisation' both intellectually and culturally.

Based on his novels and occasional essays.  Now we have many African intellectuals that focus on this field and teach young African students to think beyond what the technology, including Artificial Intelligence imposes upon them from a western or post/neo-colonial perspective. 

Or in other instances we have young cdes that still borrow from his more romantic novella scripts to do more Afrocentric films  that are realistically and historically grounded.

But I am writing this more from an African  mourners perspective.

Ngugi changed my initially youtfully naive perspectives of what it meant to be African. Reading his novels and other intellectual output made me understand so many organic issues about what it meant to be African.

I realised that for example in the midst of a changing rural and colonial context love is always possible. That it is not about flowers and trips to exotic places but that it can be found within the hardest of existential circumstances. I also learnt that religion was more an albatross on African society than it was liberatory.

And among many other things, I learnt to read between the slogans of our African liberation parties and identify corruption and the self aggrandizement of our contemporary African leaders. All thanks to Ngugi.

The question is how do we as Africans now say a physical farewell to an African giant who occupied and will still occupy our minds with his astounding progressive Pan African consciousness?

 

He taught us many things. He led us in new horizons of African literature and activism. The only answer is that fingers crossed, we will pursue the tasks that he did not complete. Looking forward and understanding who we are and who we can be. As Africans. As he would have wanted.

And remembering what a “Grain of Wheat” can and cannot do. With or without a biblical reference.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Takura Zhangazha

Email: kuurayiwa@gmail.com

Skype: kuurayiwa1

Blog: takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com

Twitter: @TakuraZhangazha

Ramaphosa vs Trump: House or Field Negro? An Urgent Need for a Renewed, Organic Pan Africanism.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa recently returned from what is now a controversial bi-lateral meeting with his USA counterpart Donald Trump.  It was evidently controversial in its public live streaming by the mainstream media and social media platforms.  This was mainly because the media framed it as ‘ambush’ of Ramaphosa by Trump on the issue of an alleged ‘white genocide’ happening in South Africa. 

An alleged genocide that is patently untrue.  

But had been built up as a major diplomatic relations issue between the two countries because of the USA recently offering refugee status to white Afrikaners on the basis of the same allegations of 'white genocide.'  

I would not however refer to this bilateral meeting between the two presidents as an ‘ambush’ similar to the one that occurred with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.

Instead this was supposed to be a well-planned, well- choreographed meeting on the part of both countries with a specific focus on as Ramaphosa said ‘resetting’ their bilateral relations.  Both in their diplomacy and also their trade agreements. 

Even on the part of Trump, his spokespersons had publicly indicated that they were not inviting Ramaphosa in order to embarrass him. 

Well it turns out they did not only embarrass him but also humiliated his team.  It was a clear charade in which where one was watching it streamed live on social media, as a black African, you could only wince in pain at the absurdity and racist tone of it all. 

And as a black African it definitely induced an immediate sense of anger at how an African sitting head of state can be trivialized to the extent that occurred in the White House.   Moreso by a white American president.

Or even as to why Ramphosa took white business and celebrity Afrikaners as a key diplomatic move who when they were preferentially allowed to talk were busy undermining African history and their own South African state.  

One of them even praised the USA for helping with the ‘Angola war’ forgetting that at that time the Americans were firmly on the side of the apartheid government against the liberation movements.

Now the criticisms of anyone, particularly black African, who has expressed angst and disgust at the way Ramaphosa is being treated as though we are being too emotional.  Surprisingly this criticism is also coming from black Africans who in the main purport to have ‘business lenses’ to all matters African.  

The latter are busy praising Ramaphosa for remaining calm/ mature in what they are calling either an emotional diplomatic storm or necessary engagement for the purposes of achieving the business goals of the interaction.

With all due respect calling this incident anything other than the humiliation it was is nonsense.   And signals the highest levels of our African inferiority complexes. 

And I will not go deeply into the Malcolm X narratives that defined what a ‘house negro’ or a ‘field negro’ can be.  

In this instance I would just hazard to argue that Ramaphosa and his team were being treated and accepting being treated as  ‘house negroes’ at the White House. 

In front of a glaring global mainstream and social media and under the aegis of Elon Musk. 

But beyond this, there are more important issues that we must now learn from this diplomatic disaster that was visited upon South Africa and by default Africa. (I am not sure what head of an African state will next visit Trump without similar treatment)

And I will outline at least three.

The first being that we need to understand the importance of retailing our historical and organic Pan Africanist ideological and cultural pretext as Africans.  Even if we are presidents or government minsters as we interact with global superpowers or even among ourselves.  Now this new organic Pan Africanism is not about business or fawning to private capital.  It is also about our own cultural and historical identity which must always be apparent when we interact with the rest of the world.  And our presidents and prime ministers must always bear this in mind. Especially in their public interactions with the global north. 

Business can and should generally be part of how Africa interacts with the rest of the economic world but it is not the priority as Ramaphosa tried and failed to demonstrate with Trump. 

It is about respecting our history, culture and liberation struggle legacies anew and for setting an example to younger Africans of this.  Even as time, technology and global interests in the African continent shift. 

In the second instance, linked to the first, is that as Africans we now need to re-learn how to hold our own in international affairs.   This is beyond strategic plans such as the African Union’s Agenda 2063 or the African Free Trade Continental Agreement (AFCTA).  

Being feted as politically correct in the global north may help but it is essentially a veneer that dismisses the principles of the United Nations (UN) of universal equality of all human beings.  A point that the global north increasingly electorally pushes back against.

Thirdly and finally, what happened with Ramaphosa and Trump is part of an emerging cultural, political and economic complex that directly affects young African minds in a negative way.   The incident to all intents and purposes was designed to put Africans in their place about global power and what race ultimately controls it.  

And to this add the fact of the techno-feudal entrepreneurs as represented by Musk and the social media platforms that they privately own and how they influence young Africans today.  So the impression of power and its origins even against a sitting South African president creates and exacerbates an inferiority complex among young Africans.  To the extent, and as seen by arguments being made from the ‘master’s house’ on social media that if you can’t beat them, join them. Or if they really don’t want you, just pander to their whims as Ramaphosa tried to do.

To conclude, what happened between South and the USA this week is emblematic of Africa’s placement in world.  Going forward we need to revamp our Pan Africanism, understand our colonial and post-colonial political-economic histories, make new global friends that treat us equally.  

But perhaps above all else, we need to be more resolute and believe in ourselves, our historical struggles and remember that in the final analysis, the majority of us Africans are in the Malcom X sense the more revolutionary ‘field negroes.’

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.com) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prof Masipula Sithole and Zimbabwe National Consciousness

 By Takura Zhangazha*

A very recent event made me remember my primary Zimbabwean academic mentor, Professor Masipula Sithole.  Someone had mentioned, in passing, what a new Catholic Pope Leo XIV would mean for global politics. I simply said let us wait and see. 

(And I wont return to this matter on global Catholicism in this article) 

 But before I had answered I reflected a little bit on the late Professor Masipula Sithole's  lectures with his then (1997) very famous first year Political Science degree course titled ‘Survey of Political Ideas’ at the University of Zimbabwe. 

While we were derided for even studying political science by our then peers we enjoyed the way in which our intellectual senses were cajoled into engaging ideas in his early morning lectures. We were taught about Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, S Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas before we moved onto the complexities of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and the necessity of Nkrumah, Cabral and Nyerere.

All after that we then had to move to Western liberalists in his course such as Samuel Huntington, Ali Mazrui and the age old argument then introduced about the inevitability of liberal democracy and capitalism as a panacea to all of Africa’s challenges.

The professor however never forgot what he taught us.  That is to think beyond what we perceived as our intellectuality via passing examinations and getting civil service jobs because that is what political science graduates were primed for, career wise. And he always used to humorously say, "political science is the master science." Even when we did not believe him. Which I now do.   

But we would have a rare back and forth with our tutorial supervisor, who I shall not name because I did not ask his permission to include him in this blog.  This rare back and forth would relate to the question/fact of what is ‘virtue’ in Zimbabwean society. 

 As the expert, the tutorial supervisor would retort back that and in very simple terms, "vapfana (young comrades), you have not read enough about political science and political philosophy to understand your own Zimbabwean society”. 

We were undergraduates.  So we sort of understood his point in an argumentative academic way.  And we also knew not to punch above our student payout payment weight. 

But ‘ Prof Masi’ as we affectionately referred to him would want to entice our contradictory arguments out of us. Something that rarely occurred because of either his busy schedule or his assumption that we were either not reading enough or not activist enough.  He, like the late legendary Kempton Makamure and Shadreck Guto were what are now referred to as organic intellectuals that sought to cross class divides.   And by dint of the same, belong more and more to the ‘people’.

This did not happen easily and will least likely happen in our lifetimes.  Mainly because as Gramsci and Cabral argued a lot of us wannabe intellectuals, both by way of formal qualifications or long duree activism  are unwilling to commit ‘class suicide’.  Not in an abstract sense but more in a cultural lifestyle expectation direction.  

This is completely understandable given the current status of both the Pan African as of old intellectual paucity of many Africans as it is linked to the changing dynamics of cultural, social media, donor or international aid funding for whatever reason you want to think of.

 What I would know is that Prof Masi, were he alive, would have had a robust discussion on the matter with us in his stuttering style. 

And would have attended the occasional tutorial just to listen in on what we were thinking as then or current young Zimbabweans.  Ideologically and also culturally. 

We were made to read for example Claude Ake on the democratization of Africa. Or the professors  Thandika Mkandawire, Patricia McFadden and Solomon Nkiwane’s hard to get academic articles. But in our struggles to get this knowledge, Prof Masi always tried to help us.  And he would write recommendation letters for us to get to the rare documents that we needed. For scholarships or jobs. 

The catch however was always measuring our commitment to the pursuit of intellectual and political science knowledge.  A point we did not understand until Prof Masi’s passing.   

This is because we missed that the key lesson learnt from Prof Masi was always the fact that knowledge has to be passed on.  Whether it be by way of education or lived experience.  

The reality of the matter is that Prof Masi was an organic intellectual.  From the days he wrote a weekly column for the Financial Gazette and through to the days he addressed public meetings in anticipation of a progressive Zimbabwe, including acknowledging the mistakes his now officially national liberation hero brother  Ndabaninigi Sithole made.  Through to being a founder member of what is now known as the Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) as it is linked to the Afro-Barometer index. 

I have not randomly thought to remember Prof Masi.  Instead I have deliberately thought of him as being symbolic of public intellectualism.  As he would have desired and intended for others to become. 

He was never a gatekeeper of knowledge. He shared it freely and widely.  Even if arguing about culture, music and the future of opposition politics in Zimbabwe.

Above all, he never gave the impression of being  self absorbed.  Even when he jokingly said to us in undergraduate class, “ Vanangu, ini ndinotambira nebhara”  We did not know it at that time that it was satire. Until 2007.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com) 

 

Kagame, Ramaphosa are Not Being Honest With Africans

 I have a number of friends in private business and by dint of the same, in private capital. Some of them are exceedingly wealthy. Others are in between. 

They have phases where they are thoroughly rich and phases where they sort of get by. But maintain their exorbitant lifestyles. 

This is all fair and fine. Even from the viewpoint of a leftist Zimbabwean like myself. 

Except when recently African heads of state met in West Africa, Ivory Coast at what was called an African Chief Executive Officers Forum (ACEOF). 

I watched South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwandese president Paul Kagame have a Cable News Network (CNN) mediated debate about the importance of private capital and investments in Africa. 

The moderator of the debate, a Kenyan journalist was pretty good at his job (I will not name him for fear of being sued). Except for the possibility that he was embedded in what one can refer to as 'performance journalism'. One in which you moderate a panel of very powerful people and have to follow a specified, unjournalistic script. 

But that is not his fault. He has to get paid. 

Listening to Ramaphosa and Kagame one could also tell that there was some sort of 'performance politics' around the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) conflict. 

Moreso given the fact of the withdrawal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) peacekeeping force that had been led in the main by South Africa. 

I had an impression that this meeting was of limited significance. Mainly because Zimbabwe's president did not have it on his itinerary. But also because it appeared to be another entrepreneurial junket meeting for wannabe African capitalists. 

And I am sure sure it will, in the final resolutions of this particular meeting, fit into either the African Free Trade Continental Agreement (AFTCA) perspectives or the African Unions (AU) Agenda 2063 narrative. 

The catch however is the fact that Ramaphosa and Kagame do not agree on the future of the eastern DRC. Mainly because of national economic interest reasons and the direct interference of North American and Chinese rare earth mineral concerns. 

The speculative game being played here is to almost cancel the DRC out of the general (not popular) narrative. Almost as what we are doing with Sudan and South Sudan. Two countries that are endowed with oil and gold among other undeclared rare earth minerals. While at the same time being in the midst of one or other form of civil war and major human rights violations.

As Africans we need to think through this type of high level continental forum where you have African CEOs hogging the attention of heads of state and governments directly. 

I generally refer to such events as 'fake performance politics'. All the while understanding that all politics is performance. Except that there is an organic performance to meet the minimum better livelihood requirements of the people or countries you purport to lead. 

In this I might be stretching it a little bit but Ramaphosa and Kagame are not bedfellows in the European historical usage of the term. 

Not only because they are dishonest to each other and their economic interests in eastern DRC but more because they are now being hand held by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and the United States of America on matters of vested economic interests. 

And this is before we discuss the complexities of South Africa's relationship with Ukraine and Russia. Or Rwanda and it's linkages with France, Belgium and the broader European Union.

But I will revert back to my initial point about private capital.

We are in a period in which most of us black Africans (male and female) believe that personal greed rules the global economic day. Without understanding how the system really works.

And we refuse to see the fact that what happens in Rome does not always stay in Rome. It gets mimicked and spreads globally. 

So, sure I would love to be an African Chief Executive Officer of a private company or even a commercialised or corporatised non governmental organisation (NGO) attending the vaunted ACEOF in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. 

But I am neither a president nor a corporate functionary. 

I am just an African who can read between the lines. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com 

Admiring What We Should Not: Africa’s Populist, Tragic Inferiority Complex

 By Takura Zhangazha*

 A colleague asked me recently, “What is the source of globally progressive ideas?”  It was a very casual conversation and I replied that history provides key lessons of what can be considered ‘progressive’.  By this, and with hindsight because the conversation did not last as long as it should have, I have had to think a little bit deeper about the question posed. 

Indeed what is the source of progressive ideas?  Globally and nationally?  I think in the first instance I was correct to indicate that history, global, continental and national is the primary source of progressive ideas of universal human equitability. 

Following in this is the question of what is considered ‘progressive’.  Even if only based on the occurrence of history.  On this one the answer is relatively easier.  Progressive ideas tend to be those that uplift all of humanity.  Based not only on historical experiences such as world, regional or national wars but also a specific idealism that seeks a better future for all of us. 

And this is something that should be universally accepted as a given.  Except that it is not.  Particularly from an African perspective.

The main reason being that historically (here I go again with history and progressiveness), Africa was always viewed as the dark continent. Quite literally and metaphorically.  You can crosscheck the first European/Portuguese maps of the continent in your local National archives or museum.  And then after that you can also revisit colonial cultural (literature, music, zoology and education)materials on Africa to come back to the realization of where we are placed in the imagination of global superpowers.  And their populations.

The key issue however is now in the contemporary.  Based both on assumptions of a universal equality of all nations and human beings while simultaneously retaining nodes of racism that should have been discarded a long historical time ago.  Particularly after the Second World war whose victories against the German and Italian Nazis are being celebrated this week across Europe.  

Awkwardly for not quite clear ideological reasons Zimbabwe’s current president Mnangagwa is part of these victory celebrations in Russia as they are occurring this week.

And I am yet to see a global north leader, in recent times, attend a victory parade in Africa against how we defeated colonialism.

But that is a debate for another day.  

The main debating point of this article is the fact of our continued historical and also ‘ahistorical’ inferiority complexes as Africans.

In our aspirations to be considered modern, successful and materially ‘arrivalists’ we have tended to ignore the fact of what academics have referred to as ‘mimicry’.   

When you mimic other societies or even seek to belong to them you lose the essence of your own historical being.  With or without national historical ceremonies such as a National Independence day commemoration ceremony. 

What has since emerged is a a cultural and socio-economic conundrum.  Part of it historically deliberate based on colonial historical dynamics and part of it based on our own African complicity (by way of governments and individual materialistic aspirations). 

Basically we, as Africans are admiring what we should not. This is in at least three respects in the contemporary.

The first being our admiration of society in the global west/north where in the final analysis we are not wanted beyond our basic skills.  Hence the evident rise of anti-immigrant and in particular anti-people of  of colour immigrants  governments in the aforementioned societies. Yet we still want to go there and regrettably suffer and die in for example the Sahel, the Mediterranean trying to get there. 

The second example relates to our lifestyles as Africans and in particular as Zimbabweans.  This is as it relates to a generic question as to what makes one and one’s family happy?  Is it the big kitchen?  The Trip to Dubai or Cape Town?  And why are any of the above the definition of happiness?   Or whether a child writes a United Kingdom (UK) Cambridge versus a Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) examination?  

In this the catch then becomes whose lifestyles do we intend to mimic?  And why if not for our own cultural, political and economic inferiority complexes?

The third and final instance of where we should stop admiring what we should not is the fact of a complex historical existence. One that is found in the legacy of colonialism and post-colonialism after variegated liberation struggles (violent and non-violent).  It is a history that cannot be wished away.  No matter the Rolls Royce that one may drive or be driven in.   A history that we perpetually need to be conscious of at the back our minds.  No matter the new economic or political trends that can topple or keep a government electorally or otherwise on the African continent.

I will conclude on a slightly anecdotal note. I have a few friends that admire current American president  Donald Trump and what he is currently doing with his evisceration of global aid and putting his country first. 

And others too who admire the current Russian president Vladimir Putin for how he is demonstrating defiance in the face of acrimony in the face of global disapproval.   In our conversations I tend to ask the rhetorical question, “so what does it mean for Africa?”

This is because global politics is not a movie.  Its not “Rambo” coming to save us in Africa.  Or an attempt to prove our knowledge of what is real imperialism and its post imperialistic tendencies. 

Nor is it about us trying to mimic the Trumpian “The Art of the Deal” or observe what essentially is the Machivellian “ 48 Laws of Power”. 

It is about us rising above the parapet of the narrative of the global north, as colonially and racially defined. And to rise above mimicry of the same without material fear of the consequences.

Is there an alternative one might ask.  As always there are many solutions to our inferiority complexes.  And they begin with our capacity to understand our weaknesses. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com) (takurazhangazha.com)