20 September 2010
Book: "No Serenity Here"
NEW BOOK INFORMATION: No Serenity Here
An Anthology of African poetry in English, French, Portuguese Amharic and Arabic translated into Chinese, edited by Kaiyu Xiao, Isabel Ferrin-Aguirre and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
244 pages
Publisher: World Knowledge Publishers, Shanghai
October 2010
ISBN 978-7-5012-3895-8
Six months, about 1000 e-mails, one facebook chat and here it is: No Serenity Here, a contemporary anthology of African poetry to be launched during the Shanghai Biennale in October 2010. Original poems in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Amharic will be published alongside their Chinese translations. The volume includes Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, along with voices from 25 African countries, and was translated by a team of Chinese poets under the guidance of Kaiyu Xiao.
Edited by Xiao in China, Isabel Ferrin-Aguirre in Berlin and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers in Johannesburg, No Serenity Here celebrates established writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana), Makhosazana Xaba and Lebo Mashile (South Africa), Veronique Tadjo (Cote d’Ivoire) and Fatima Naoot (Morocco), and introduce lesser known yet brilliant voices like TJ Dema (Botswana), Shailja Patel (Kenya) and Tania Tome (Mocambique), as well as Amanda Hammar and Joyce Chigiya (both from Zimbabwe).
Besides the veterans like Soyinka (Nigeria), Kofi Anyodoho (Ghana), Chirikure Chirikure (Zimbabwe), James Matthews (South Africa) and Keorapetse Kgositsile (South Africa’s Poet Laureate, whose poem lent the title to the anthology), the volume also showcases the prodigious talents of Shabbir Bhanoobhai (South Africa), Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Ghana), Tolu Ogunlesi and Obododimma Oha (Nigeria), Stanley Onjezani Kenani (Malawi) and Beaven Tapureta (Zimbabwe), Keamogetsi Molapong and Dorian Haarhoff (Namibia), Hama Tuma and Alemu Tebeje Ayele (both from Ethiopia).
“We read widely, but it was the contact with contemporary poets that brought the project to life and delivered its unique vibrancy and varied voice,” says Ferrin-Aguirre, who also worked until recently as a programmer for the Berlin Poesiefestival and researcher for the Literatuurwerkstatt, a global database of poets which collects recordings of poets reciting their work in their original languages in its Lyrikline project.
Acclaimed Chinese poet and academic Kaiyu Xiao admits in his foreword: “the poems … would make me physically quiver as the poems shattered my expectations.” Many of the poets are appearing in print for the first time, and most of them for the first time in Chinese.
“African writers have made an important contribution to the world reservoir of thought on the human condition; this is just a small part of the literary wealth that we have to offer. China has given us so much, and I’m proud that we are reciprocating,” said writer and performer de Villiers.
Published by World Knowledge Publishers and commissioned by artist and philanthropist Mr Hu, the tri-continental project also received support from the Jiang Nan Art and Design Foundation and the Moonchu Foundation.
…/ends
For further information contact Phillippa Yaa de Villiers phillippayaa@gmail.com
Isabel Ferrin-Aguirre aguirre_siemer@hotmail.com
Kaiyu Xiao kaiyu@gmx.de
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Review by New Internationalist
The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories
by Hama Tuma
(Heinemann ISBN 0-435-90590-2 )
‘Writers in Ethiopia are as rare as peace,’ asserts Hama Tuma and that alone could be reason for welcoming his book. But there are others. The first half consists of satirical stories set in a court of law where such dangerous criminals as queue-breakers and incurable hedonists are tried.
Though the stories are short on plot they have a Swiftean bite: the writing is deceptively simple and admirably taut. The Ethiopia that is revealed in this collection is a land of paradoxes where everyday people must have an array of masks ready to counter the machinations of the militia. As case follows case in the courtroom, the most topsy-turvy arguments are followed to more and more bizarre conclusions. Yet the reader finds the overall picture getting increasingly clear.
Like all good satire the details are worked out for maximum effect, giving the stories a sense of inevitability. The narrator acts as a naive observer who, like the child noticing the Emperor’s nakedness, reveals every discrepancy of an absurdly repressive state through what he says and what he leaves unsaid.
by Hama Tuma
(Heinemann ISBN 0-435-90590-2 )
‘Writers in Ethiopia are as rare as peace,’ asserts Hama Tuma and that alone could be reason for welcoming his book. But there are others. The first half consists of satirical stories set in a court of law where such dangerous criminals as queue-breakers and incurable hedonists are tried.
Though the stories are short on plot they have a Swiftean bite: the writing is deceptively simple and admirably taut. The Ethiopia that is revealed in this collection is a land of paradoxes where everyday people must have an array of masks ready to counter the machinations of the militia. As case follows case in the courtroom, the most topsy-turvy arguments are followed to more and more bizarre conclusions. Yet the reader finds the overall picture getting increasingly clear.
Like all good satire the details are worked out for maximum effect, giving the stories a sense of inevitability. The narrator acts as a naive observer who, like the child noticing the Emperor’s nakedness, reveals every discrepancy of an absurdly repressive state through what he says and what he leaves unsaid.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
New Book by Berhanu Sertsu
ግፋ ቢል አዶላና ሌሎች ወጎች
የተባለ መጽሓፍ በገበያ ላይ ዋለ!!
ከየከተማዎቹ በአፈሳና በሰበካ የተወሰዱ ሰዎች በቀድሞው አዶላ በጉልበት ወርቅ አምራችነት ያሳለፉትን ሕይወት የሚዳስስ መጽሓፍ ከአሁን ቀደም ‘የደርግ የእስራት ዘመን’ የሚለውን መጽሓፍ ባቀረበልን በብርሃኑ ሠርፁ ተደርሶ በገበያ ላይ ውሏል። ገዝታችሁ በማንበብ የአዶላን የቀድሞ ገጽታ ተረዱ በሌሎቹም ወጎች ተዝናኑ።
ዋጋው £10.00
ከአውሮፓና ከለንደን በፖስታ ለሚያዙ መላኪያ £3.00
ከአሜሪካ ለሚያዝዙ £5.00
መጽሓፉ በለንደን እንጎቻ የባልትና ውጤቶች መደብር ይገኛል።
ከአስር መጻሕፍት በላይ ለሚያዙ የዋጋ ቅናሽ የሚደረግ ሲሆን በሚከተለው አድራሻ ይጠይቁን።
B_sertsu@hotmail.com
የተባለ መጽሓፍ በገበያ ላይ ዋለ!!
ከየከተማዎቹ በአፈሳና በሰበካ የተወሰዱ ሰዎች በቀድሞው አዶላ በጉልበት ወርቅ አምራችነት ያሳለፉትን ሕይወት የሚዳስስ መጽሓፍ ከአሁን ቀደም ‘የደርግ የእስራት ዘመን’ የሚለውን መጽሓፍ ባቀረበልን በብርሃኑ ሠርፁ ተደርሶ በገበያ ላይ ውሏል። ገዝታችሁ በማንበብ የአዶላን የቀድሞ ገጽታ ተረዱ በሌሎቹም ወጎች ተዝናኑ።
ዋጋው £10.00
ከአውሮፓና ከለንደን በፖስታ ለሚያዙ መላኪያ £3.00
ከአሜሪካ ለሚያዝዙ £5.00
መጽሓፉ በለንደን እንጎቻ የባልትና ውጤቶች መደብር ይገኛል።
ከአስር መጻሕፍት በላይ ለሚያዙ የዋጋ ቅናሽ የሚደረግ ሲሆን በሚከተለው አድራሻ ይጠይቁን።
B_sertsu@hotmail.com
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Hama Tuma book published
AFRICAN ABSURDITIES IV
WHY DON' THEY EAT COLTAN?
to order a copy contact
sankisa@comcast.net
PRICE US $ 15
POSTAGE US $ 3
TOTAL US $ 18
WHY DON' THEY EAT COLTAN?
to order a copy contact
sankisa@comcast.net
PRICE US $ 15
POSTAGE US $ 3
TOTAL US $ 18
Monday, October 18, 2010
READING HAMA TUMA IN HEBREW
Reading Hama Tuma in Hebrew
21 June 2009
Written by: Ayelet Dekel
“Languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express.”
Walter Benjamin in “The Task of the Translator”
Western culture has a penchant for worshipping the exotic from a safe myopic distance, overlooking the human reality rubbing up against its elbows and knees, unintentionally creating cross-cultural connections comical, frustrating, and inspirational all at once. Israel, literally and figuratively, finds itself somewhere between Europe and Africa. The “people of the Book”, are currently celebrating “Book Week” with hundreds of new titles on display in all the major cities. Despite Israel’s considerable Ethiopian population, the only work of fiction (to the best of this writer’s knowledge) published by an Ethiopian writer this year is Hama Tuma’s The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories, translated by Dori Parnes (Ahuzat Bayit 2009). Activist writer-in-exile Hama Tuma’s book is out of print and essentially unavailable in English, and has never been officially published in Ethiopia in either Amharic or English, so if you want to read this brilliantly funny, sensitive, intelligent portrayal of life under Mengistu’s reign of terror, start learning Hebrew.
The book is written in two parts, each consisting of eleven stories. The stories in the first part are all written as court cases, described by a narrator, able to observe and comment, yet not personally involved in the proceedings. This distance allows an ironic humor to permeate the text, as translator Dori Parnes recounts, “The first thing that grabbed me was his humor…then you suddenly reach the second half – it grabs you by the throat. These are the same stories but he tells them with pain.” Hama Tuma, who has been a political activist for freedom and human rights since his student days in the 1960s, “stumbled” into fiction writing when he responded to a BBC call for short stories.
“Vendetta”, the opening story of the book’s second part, was his first work of fiction, growing out of the painful experiences of life under Mengistu’s regime, and the moral dilemmas with which people had to contend on a daily basis. Translator Parnes says of “Vendetta”: “I was stunned when I finished translating it. It wipes the smile off your face and you say to yourself – what was it that I smiled at before?” “Most of it has not been written,” says Hama Tuma of this period in Ethiopian history, “What really happened, happened in a worse way.”
The Hebrew edition is prefaced by Professor Hagai Erlich’s eloquent introduction, providing an historical perspective on the revolution in Ethiopia which began in hope and culminated in oppression. Comparing Mengistu’s reign to that of Stalin, Hitler and Sadam Hussein, Erlich notes that a key to the success of these regimes lay in their ability to release the potential “little Stalin” and “little Adolf” lurking within any of us, and let them take over the hearts and minds of the people. As it happens, while he was translating the book, Parnes read Orlando Figes’ The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin’s Russia based on personal archives and interviews. Parnes says, “What 50 years of that government did to a people is more terrible than what Hitler did in 12 years. People were born into it. The books complement one another, I didn’t have much comfort between the two…When you read one and translate the other, your dreams at night are not very pleasant.”
“A lot of people collaborated out of fear,” says Hama Tuma, “They denounced others or didn’t help. It is a sad part of our history, we should live it as such, or else nothing is learned. I offer my stories as a suggestion: we should look for another way of solving the problems.” Hama Tuma’s stories penetrate the heart, mind and dreams. His humor is grounded in unflinching honesty, nurtured by a wellspring of hope, a sense of fun and mischief: “to prick their serious balloons.”
Parnes originally translated two of Hama Tuma’s stories at the request of Doron Tavory, artistic director of Hazira Performing Arts Center, for a stage adaptation to be performed by the Netela Theatre Company. “It suddenly aroused my curiosity,” says Parnes, who went to great lengths to acquire a copy of the book, feeling, “there is something here that seems to me important.” In his essay “The Task of the Translator”, Walter Benjamin discusses the way that a translation reveals the hidden connections between languages, saying that a good translation will bring some of the “foreign,” of the other language and culture into the text of the target language. Reading his translation inspired my own quest to locate the author, as described in “Finding Hama.”
The relationship between Israel and Ethiopia is ancient and current, certainly complex. The Ethiopian monarchy considered themselves descendents of King Solomon and the Jewish community there, known as Beta Israel, has ancient roots. Israelis are also mentioned in the book as having trained the Ethiopian military in interrogation techniques. As Parnes notes, “Our excellent young men went to give them all sorts of tips…Why must Israel be involved in the ugliest things?” This journey from Addis Abbaba, through Paris, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv brings forth a work of fiction in Hebrew that makes Ethiopia a more vivid part of our lives, to reflect on Israel’s relationship to Ethiopia and by extension, the situation of Ethiopian Israelis. Says Parnes, “I am curious to know if the book will reach the members of the Ethiopian community in Israel and what feelings it will arouse in them.”
Our lives and histories are interconnected in mysterious ways, on a cultural and personal level. The difficulties of translation may sometimes bring us closer to the text, as in the story “Madman, Killer, Saint, You…” in which a seriously injured political activist is hospitalized, his accusers await his recovery so that they can force him to reveal information, and he asks the attending physician to help him escape this fate by assisting his death. In contemplating this dilemma the doctor reflects on his younger brother, also a political activist, and the male nurse also plays a central role. In translating the story Parnes was confronted with a problem “because Hebrew has this thing you are stuck with – the same word means “brother” and “nurse”. I was afraid it would be confusing, so I wrote “head nurse” and as the story continued I slowly removed the word “head”. Having established the identity of the character as a nurse in the hospital, Parnes gave himself the freedom to let the word and its dual associations work in the reader’s mind.
I feel that it is this kind of relationship to the text that Benjamin had in mind when he referred to a translation as revealing the relationships between languages, one that can extend to cultures and the individuals within them. To paraphrase Benjamin, Parnes’ translation of Hama Tuma reminds us that “people” are “not strangers to one another…but are interrelated in what they want to express.”
Book Launching: “The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories”
By Hama Tuma, Translated by Dori Parnes, Ahuzat Bayit 2009–06–21
21 June 2009
Written by: Ayelet Dekel
“Languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express.”
Walter Benjamin in “The Task of the Translator”
Western culture has a penchant for worshipping the exotic from a safe myopic distance, overlooking the human reality rubbing up against its elbows and knees, unintentionally creating cross-cultural connections comical, frustrating, and inspirational all at once. Israel, literally and figuratively, finds itself somewhere between Europe and Africa. The “people of the Book”, are currently celebrating “Book Week” with hundreds of new titles on display in all the major cities. Despite Israel’s considerable Ethiopian population, the only work of fiction (to the best of this writer’s knowledge) published by an Ethiopian writer this year is Hama Tuma’s The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories, translated by Dori Parnes (Ahuzat Bayit 2009). Activist writer-in-exile Hama Tuma’s book is out of print and essentially unavailable in English, and has never been officially published in Ethiopia in either Amharic or English, so if you want to read this brilliantly funny, sensitive, intelligent portrayal of life under Mengistu’s reign of terror, start learning Hebrew.
The book is written in two parts, each consisting of eleven stories. The stories in the first part are all written as court cases, described by a narrator, able to observe and comment, yet not personally involved in the proceedings. This distance allows an ironic humor to permeate the text, as translator Dori Parnes recounts, “The first thing that grabbed me was his humor…then you suddenly reach the second half – it grabs you by the throat. These are the same stories but he tells them with pain.” Hama Tuma, who has been a political activist for freedom and human rights since his student days in the 1960s, “stumbled” into fiction writing when he responded to a BBC call for short stories.
“Vendetta”, the opening story of the book’s second part, was his first work of fiction, growing out of the painful experiences of life under Mengistu’s regime, and the moral dilemmas with which people had to contend on a daily basis. Translator Parnes says of “Vendetta”: “I was stunned when I finished translating it. It wipes the smile off your face and you say to yourself – what was it that I smiled at before?” “Most of it has not been written,” says Hama Tuma of this period in Ethiopian history, “What really happened, happened in a worse way.”
The Hebrew edition is prefaced by Professor Hagai Erlich’s eloquent introduction, providing an historical perspective on the revolution in Ethiopia which began in hope and culminated in oppression. Comparing Mengistu’s reign to that of Stalin, Hitler and Sadam Hussein, Erlich notes that a key to the success of these regimes lay in their ability to release the potential “little Stalin” and “little Adolf” lurking within any of us, and let them take over the hearts and minds of the people. As it happens, while he was translating the book, Parnes read Orlando Figes’ The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin’s Russia based on personal archives and interviews. Parnes says, “What 50 years of that government did to a people is more terrible than what Hitler did in 12 years. People were born into it. The books complement one another, I didn’t have much comfort between the two…When you read one and translate the other, your dreams at night are not very pleasant.”
“A lot of people collaborated out of fear,” says Hama Tuma, “They denounced others or didn’t help. It is a sad part of our history, we should live it as such, or else nothing is learned. I offer my stories as a suggestion: we should look for another way of solving the problems.” Hama Tuma’s stories penetrate the heart, mind and dreams. His humor is grounded in unflinching honesty, nurtured by a wellspring of hope, a sense of fun and mischief: “to prick their serious balloons.”
Parnes originally translated two of Hama Tuma’s stories at the request of Doron Tavory, artistic director of Hazira Performing Arts Center, for a stage adaptation to be performed by the Netela Theatre Company. “It suddenly aroused my curiosity,” says Parnes, who went to great lengths to acquire a copy of the book, feeling, “there is something here that seems to me important.” In his essay “The Task of the Translator”, Walter Benjamin discusses the way that a translation reveals the hidden connections between languages, saying that a good translation will bring some of the “foreign,” of the other language and culture into the text of the target language. Reading his translation inspired my own quest to locate the author, as described in “Finding Hama.”
The relationship between Israel and Ethiopia is ancient and current, certainly complex. The Ethiopian monarchy considered themselves descendents of King Solomon and the Jewish community there, known as Beta Israel, has ancient roots. Israelis are also mentioned in the book as having trained the Ethiopian military in interrogation techniques. As Parnes notes, “Our excellent young men went to give them all sorts of tips…Why must Israel be involved in the ugliest things?” This journey from Addis Abbaba, through Paris, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv brings forth a work of fiction in Hebrew that makes Ethiopia a more vivid part of our lives, to reflect on Israel’s relationship to Ethiopia and by extension, the situation of Ethiopian Israelis. Says Parnes, “I am curious to know if the book will reach the members of the Ethiopian community in Israel and what feelings it will arouse in them.”
Our lives and histories are interconnected in mysterious ways, on a cultural and personal level. The difficulties of translation may sometimes bring us closer to the text, as in the story “Madman, Killer, Saint, You…” in which a seriously injured political activist is hospitalized, his accusers await his recovery so that they can force him to reveal information, and he asks the attending physician to help him escape this fate by assisting his death. In contemplating this dilemma the doctor reflects on his younger brother, also a political activist, and the male nurse also plays a central role. In translating the story Parnes was confronted with a problem “because Hebrew has this thing you are stuck with – the same word means “brother” and “nurse”. I was afraid it would be confusing, so I wrote “head nurse” and as the story continued I slowly removed the word “head”. Having established the identity of the character as a nurse in the hospital, Parnes gave himself the freedom to let the word and its dual associations work in the reader’s mind.
I feel that it is this kind of relationship to the text that Benjamin had in mind when he referred to a translation as revealing the relationships between languages, one that can extend to cultures and the individuals within them. To paraphrase Benjamin, Parnes’ translation of Hama Tuma reminds us that “people” are “not strangers to one another…but are interrelated in what they want to express.”
Book Launching: “The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories”
By Hama Tuma, Translated by Dori Parnes, Ahuzat Bayit 2009–06–21
NEW BOOK PUBLISHED
HAMA TUMA'S FOURTH AFRICAN ABSURDITIES BOOK HAS NOW BEEN PUBLISHED. TITLED WHY DON'T THEY EAT COLTAN? IT CONTINUES IN THE TRADITION OF THE PREVIOUS THREE WITH BITING SATIRE AND CRITICISM OF THE POWERS THAT HAVE MADE OUR LIVES SO MISERABLE.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Tragedy of Remaining a Slave
THE TRAGEDY OF REMAINING A SLAVE
Hama Tuma
"Education for colonial people must inevitably mean unrest and revolt; therefore, had to be limited and used to inculcate obedience and servility lest the whole system be overthrown."
W. E. B. Du Bois
"It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the Negro who creates negritude."
Frantz Fanon
"White is right
Yellow mellow
Black, get back!"
Langston Hughes
Diatribe it is not. Certainly not vitriolic. Anger at a sad situation? Maybe. Fury at our inability to be free? Perhaps. The whole thing was spurred by me seeing a security guard at a super market asking (once again) a black man to open his bag for inspection.
Africans who live in Paris know a particular African species, black of course, often bald and muscular, sometimes puffed up but still looking less menacing and more pathetic, dressed in a cheap standard issue black suit, sometimes wearing dark sunglasses, often found at the doors of super markets and department stores. Maybe the species exists elsewhere. This is no African to be categorized as a paperless émigré, a street cleaner, a frightened unemployed soul, the majority, as it were, in the increasingly unwelcoming capital that Paris has become. This special species is the security guard, the keeper of His Masters gates, a trusted mastiff, underpaid but still proud--he has a job and he has his working papers in order. Two valuable things that thousands other Africans do not have at all. These guards and elderly white women share the same phobia --they fear the African. In the Metro or in the buses, if an African stands close to her, the elderly white woman will usually hold her purse tighter after casting a fearful glance towards him. The black, often African, security guard will also stare at the African entering the supermarket or the department store, follow him with his eyes and more often than not accost him as he leaves to ask him to open and show the contents of his bag just as (or while) the whites, some of whom may have indulged in shoplifting away from the prying eyes of the camera, calmly walk out. "Good day Bwana, Have a nice day Sir, Please open the bag!"-- This last one addressed to the African, of course. At the airport, the black policeman or woman soften stop the black person and rarely dare to do the same with the white ones.
It is all connected to the colonization of the mind, an inculcated self hatred and inferiority complex. There is no denying that the slave trade and colonialism ruined Africa to no end and that the wounds open up even today to debilitate Africa's search for development and overall progress. That said, it is equally true that all of Africa's woes cannot be traced back to those two evils even though 50 years after the so called independence from colonialism, the enslaved African bourgeoisie owes its rottenness and lack of nationalism to the colonial (mis)-- education and formation. Colonialism was wanton murder but it was really worse than that. True that Germans almost wiped out the Herero in Namibia, the French killed thousands over thousands in the Maghreb, the British committed heinous crimes in Kenya and in their colonies, the Belgians slaughtered 15 million Congolese, Mussolini killed at least one million Ethiopians as he attempted to colonize Ethiopia, but all this and other crimes pale when it comes to the crime of the colonization of the minds of millions of Africans. The former passed, the latter crime still persists. Slave owners of America called it seasoning, the deculturization process that knew no end, leading to total subservience of the mind and the acceptance of the slave holder's beliefs. The slave hated himself or herself, his culture, his blackness, his name his, kinky hair, lips and nose and in general his very being. This variety of "epistemic violence", as some call it, afflicted many colonized Africans and Indians too. Structurally, British colonial control over India ended a longtime ago but the British left "persons, Indian in blood and color, but British in taste, in opinions, morals and in intellect". Indian society worships the white skin, hates black and millions of the untouchables are, yes, quite black. In Kenya, a typical example was the Attorney General Charles Njonjo who assumed he was British and refused to shake hands with ordinary Kenyans thereby provoking the anger of Kenyan students who, when they demonstrated, often held placards calling on Njonjo to " Go Home to England!". And they were not joking at all.
Brainwashing is another word for it, massive brainwashing or what some have called "menticide". Mental colonialism as the Iranian Jalal Al-e Almadi argued in his book Occidentosis. It has afflicted most colonized peoples. African Americans had to struggle against "seasoning" to decolonize their minds, to realize that black is also beautiful. It took a long time and is still not victorious. Even James Baldwin, as Eldridge Cleaver put it in his "Soul on Ice", could himself qualify as a "reluctant black", Malcolm X and others had to spend hours "conking" their hairs. The struggle for national liberation in Africa was not accompanied by a cultural struggle that was just as fierce. The African leaders and ruling elite left in power by colonialism were black in colour but white at heart and in desire. The Western companies that make skin lightening creams and lotions profit millions in Africa and India as their products spread skin diseases and reinforce the feeling of self loathing. Having a pale or white skin has become a must. Many colonized people bleach their skins, want to identify themselves with the colonial entity, are ashamed of their origin and punish their hairs. The French refer to light skinned blacks as the "saved colors" (couleur sauvé) meaning saved by a miracle from the disaster that would have been "being black". Even in Ethiopia, where colonialism never took place, we talk of color of various hues, differentiating Ethiopians as black, red and brown--ignorance being bliss and you can imagine what color is frowned upon. Wearing wigs over kinky hairs has earned millions for wig makers (Comedian Chris Rock has made an interesting film on the hair issue amidst African Americans). And the African male is accused of going wild for blondes fulfilling the white stereotype of ages--the black man yearning and lusting for blue eyed blondes. We are the eternal King Kongs, no? This is the most serious colonial crime committed on Africa--the colonization of our minds, now continued by the West under new forms. The African yearns to be a caricature of the white, to ape the white man's culture, to have little or no self respect. We do not even consider ourselves able to express our woes and look up to self appointed stars and foreign self declared do-gooders to voice our plight and find us some solutions. The African was colonized and now he himself, devoid of an independent mind, continues with his own colonization, perpetuates negritude.
I am, however, of the opinion that Afro centrist positions often reflect, albeit in reverse and at times unwittingly, the base inferiority complex that characterizes the colonized mind. We do not have to insist that everything under the sun originated with the black person or in Africa to be proud of our heritage. Mobutu launched the authenticité campaign and changed his name from Joseph Desiree Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Wazabanga but that did little to change his colonized mind or state of servility to the West. Civilization, what is right, progress and what is or is not modern are all relative and not always white. The concept of the mind as an occupied territory, this same mind becoming the enemy within of the assimilated "natives", filled with self contempt, who imbibe the education of the colonizer (language and all) and become carbon copies of the colonizer highlights the confusion and debilitating trauma and tension the colonized have to live under. Ngugi wa Thiongo, in his book "The Decolonization of the Mind", raises the problem as it relates to language and the dominance of English. He argues that writers should write in their native languages as a means of decolonization of the mind. How far is the relevance and even importance of Western education? Should the African elite feel proud and gloat just because, as one Western African put it, he has "sat at the foot of the white man and drank from the fountain of knowledge" in some Western university and got a degree. And yet the resort to what is generally known as tradition is fraught with deadly mines. Automatic deliverance is not offered--actually this solution may be worse than the problem in many instances. Harmful traditions are many; the overall rejection of all that is labeled Western (what is really Western and not universal?) could also be disastrous. After all the Taliban mind is not decolonized, they and the likes of the Somali Al Shabab, who rile against music, sports and the rights of women and decapitate, stone or throw acid at the faces of young girls going to school, are not a better deal over the colonized mind. Choose your poison.
Hence, the black security guards and policemen who tend to believe that all blacks are first class suspects are not to be blamed--they need to be pitied. Next time you go to a supermarket or a department store, do open your bags voluntarily to give the black security guards articles and books on the need to decolonize our minds. It is tragic to stay a slave and not know it at all. Fifty years after mostly fake independence, the real liberation of Africa demands an end to servility and to the colonization of our minds.
Hama Tuma
"Education for colonial people must inevitably mean unrest and revolt; therefore, had to be limited and used to inculcate obedience and servility lest the whole system be overthrown."
W. E. B. Du Bois
"It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the Negro who creates negritude."
Frantz Fanon
"White is right
Yellow mellow
Black, get back!"
Langston Hughes
Diatribe it is not. Certainly not vitriolic. Anger at a sad situation? Maybe. Fury at our inability to be free? Perhaps. The whole thing was spurred by me seeing a security guard at a super market asking (once again) a black man to open his bag for inspection.
Africans who live in Paris know a particular African species, black of course, often bald and muscular, sometimes puffed up but still looking less menacing and more pathetic, dressed in a cheap standard issue black suit, sometimes wearing dark sunglasses, often found at the doors of super markets and department stores. Maybe the species exists elsewhere. This is no African to be categorized as a paperless émigré, a street cleaner, a frightened unemployed soul, the majority, as it were, in the increasingly unwelcoming capital that Paris has become. This special species is the security guard, the keeper of His Masters gates, a trusted mastiff, underpaid but still proud--he has a job and he has his working papers in order. Two valuable things that thousands other Africans do not have at all. These guards and elderly white women share the same phobia --they fear the African. In the Metro or in the buses, if an African stands close to her, the elderly white woman will usually hold her purse tighter after casting a fearful glance towards him. The black, often African, security guard will also stare at the African entering the supermarket or the department store, follow him with his eyes and more often than not accost him as he leaves to ask him to open and show the contents of his bag just as (or while) the whites, some of whom may have indulged in shoplifting away from the prying eyes of the camera, calmly walk out. "Good day Bwana, Have a nice day Sir, Please open the bag!"-- This last one addressed to the African, of course. At the airport, the black policeman or woman soften stop the black person and rarely dare to do the same with the white ones.
It is all connected to the colonization of the mind, an inculcated self hatred and inferiority complex. There is no denying that the slave trade and colonialism ruined Africa to no end and that the wounds open up even today to debilitate Africa's search for development and overall progress. That said, it is equally true that all of Africa's woes cannot be traced back to those two evils even though 50 years after the so called independence from colonialism, the enslaved African bourgeoisie owes its rottenness and lack of nationalism to the colonial (mis)-- education and formation. Colonialism was wanton murder but it was really worse than that. True that Germans almost wiped out the Herero in Namibia, the French killed thousands over thousands in the Maghreb, the British committed heinous crimes in Kenya and in their colonies, the Belgians slaughtered 15 million Congolese, Mussolini killed at least one million Ethiopians as he attempted to colonize Ethiopia, but all this and other crimes pale when it comes to the crime of the colonization of the minds of millions of Africans. The former passed, the latter crime still persists. Slave owners of America called it seasoning, the deculturization process that knew no end, leading to total subservience of the mind and the acceptance of the slave holder's beliefs. The slave hated himself or herself, his culture, his blackness, his name his, kinky hair, lips and nose and in general his very being. This variety of "epistemic violence", as some call it, afflicted many colonized Africans and Indians too. Structurally, British colonial control over India ended a longtime ago but the British left "persons, Indian in blood and color, but British in taste, in opinions, morals and in intellect". Indian society worships the white skin, hates black and millions of the untouchables are, yes, quite black. In Kenya, a typical example was the Attorney General Charles Njonjo who assumed he was British and refused to shake hands with ordinary Kenyans thereby provoking the anger of Kenyan students who, when they demonstrated, often held placards calling on Njonjo to " Go Home to England!". And they were not joking at all.
Brainwashing is another word for it, massive brainwashing or what some have called "menticide". Mental colonialism as the Iranian Jalal Al-e Almadi argued in his book Occidentosis. It has afflicted most colonized peoples. African Americans had to struggle against "seasoning" to decolonize their minds, to realize that black is also beautiful. It took a long time and is still not victorious. Even James Baldwin, as Eldridge Cleaver put it in his "Soul on Ice", could himself qualify as a "reluctant black", Malcolm X and others had to spend hours "conking" their hairs. The struggle for national liberation in Africa was not accompanied by a cultural struggle that was just as fierce. The African leaders and ruling elite left in power by colonialism were black in colour but white at heart and in desire. The Western companies that make skin lightening creams and lotions profit millions in Africa and India as their products spread skin diseases and reinforce the feeling of self loathing. Having a pale or white skin has become a must. Many colonized people bleach their skins, want to identify themselves with the colonial entity, are ashamed of their origin and punish their hairs. The French refer to light skinned blacks as the "saved colors" (couleur sauvé) meaning saved by a miracle from the disaster that would have been "being black". Even in Ethiopia, where colonialism never took place, we talk of color of various hues, differentiating Ethiopians as black, red and brown--ignorance being bliss and you can imagine what color is frowned upon. Wearing wigs over kinky hairs has earned millions for wig makers (Comedian Chris Rock has made an interesting film on the hair issue amidst African Americans). And the African male is accused of going wild for blondes fulfilling the white stereotype of ages--the black man yearning and lusting for blue eyed blondes. We are the eternal King Kongs, no? This is the most serious colonial crime committed on Africa--the colonization of our minds, now continued by the West under new forms. The African yearns to be a caricature of the white, to ape the white man's culture, to have little or no self respect. We do not even consider ourselves able to express our woes and look up to self appointed stars and foreign self declared do-gooders to voice our plight and find us some solutions. The African was colonized and now he himself, devoid of an independent mind, continues with his own colonization, perpetuates negritude.
I am, however, of the opinion that Afro centrist positions often reflect, albeit in reverse and at times unwittingly, the base inferiority complex that characterizes the colonized mind. We do not have to insist that everything under the sun originated with the black person or in Africa to be proud of our heritage. Mobutu launched the authenticité campaign and changed his name from Joseph Desiree Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Wazabanga but that did little to change his colonized mind or state of servility to the West. Civilization, what is right, progress and what is or is not modern are all relative and not always white. The concept of the mind as an occupied territory, this same mind becoming the enemy within of the assimilated "natives", filled with self contempt, who imbibe the education of the colonizer (language and all) and become carbon copies of the colonizer highlights the confusion and debilitating trauma and tension the colonized have to live under. Ngugi wa Thiongo, in his book "The Decolonization of the Mind", raises the problem as it relates to language and the dominance of English. He argues that writers should write in their native languages as a means of decolonization of the mind. How far is the relevance and even importance of Western education? Should the African elite feel proud and gloat just because, as one Western African put it, he has "sat at the foot of the white man and drank from the fountain of knowledge" in some Western university and got a degree. And yet the resort to what is generally known as tradition is fraught with deadly mines. Automatic deliverance is not offered--actually this solution may be worse than the problem in many instances. Harmful traditions are many; the overall rejection of all that is labeled Western (what is really Western and not universal?) could also be disastrous. After all the Taliban mind is not decolonized, they and the likes of the Somali Al Shabab, who rile against music, sports and the rights of women and decapitate, stone or throw acid at the faces of young girls going to school, are not a better deal over the colonized mind. Choose your poison.
Hence, the black security guards and policemen who tend to believe that all blacks are first class suspects are not to be blamed--they need to be pitied. Next time you go to a supermarket or a department store, do open your bags voluntarily to give the black security guards articles and books on the need to decolonize our minds. It is tragic to stay a slave and not know it at all. Fifty years after mostly fake independence, the real liberation of Africa demands an end to servility and to the colonization of our minds.
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