At an African cultural heritage conference in Zambia, a West African colleague asks: “Where does this name come from, this Africa?”
“It’s a Latin word, from the Roman province of Africa, where Tunisia is today,” is the first response.
“We’re Africans, but we don’t really know how our continent was named, or why,” grumbles another.
Disgruntled, the conversation soon moves on, but the question lingers. Later, at home, investigations reveal confusion even in authoritative sources. The Roman appellation Africa is, perhaps, from the Latin aprica, for sunny; or maybe it derives from the Greek aphrike, “without cold”.
Then again, the Romans used Africa mainly to refer to the continent’s northern coast. Another speculation is that they termed the area south of their North African colony the Land of the Afrigs, after a Berber sub-group living south of Carthage.
Africa remains as elusive and indefinable today. It is sunny, yes, but grey and cloudy and stormy, too. And is it really “without cold”? That is a fond generalisation — but then, views of Africa have been littered with such simplifications.
Among the chief propagators of those are foreign correspondents. Air travel has exacerbated the problem, encouraging the syndrome of drop in, deliver a burst of instant authority, and jet out. Evelyn Waugh’s satire Scoop has much to answer for, by way of wannabes and more ambitious imitators, those species of Africa watchers, Africa hands and would-be-expert commentators on Africa.
“Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that, without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.” So writes Binyavanga Wainaina in his satirical piece How to Write about Africa, one of 15 contributions in Granta 92, The View from Africa.
Wainaina’s advice reminds one of Shackled Continent, by The Economist‘s former man in South Africa, Robert Guest. Accept my neo-liberal prescriptions for your hopeless continent, and all will be well, is Guest’s pitch, which won readers abroad and here (where, revealingly, it also attained bestseller status).
Peppered with mordant wit, Wainaina’s is a concise rebuttal of much journalistic cant about Africa. Here are some other gems:
“Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).” (Kuki Gallmann’s absurdly overblown “memoir”, I Dreamed of Africa, thuds into both categories; naturally, it was an “international bestseller”.)
“Anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa’s rich heritage. When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees.”
This is as perfect a picture as one could hope to see painted of the game-farm industry in South Africa. Who would have guessed that beneath the blunt exterior of dairy and maize farmers there lurked bunny-huggers nonpareil? Or that rich city execs and their spouses harboured such tender feelings towards game — or had genuine aspirations to utter the words: “I had a (game) farm in Africa.”
South African photographer Santu Mofokeng gets to the nub of the problem of shallow views of Africa. In his piece, The Black Albums, he writes: “In my pursuit of the art, I was not paying enough attention to the narratives and aspirations of the people I was photographing.” That was redressed when he began to set side by side “images of the township (public/political) with images in the township (private/personal)”.
Mofokeng’s selection from old family albums speaks volumes and invites the construction of narratives when those are absent. His is a meditation that is mindful, engaged and of unquestionable integrity.
So too is Geert van Kesteren’s photo essay on the Ogiek of Kenya’s Mau forest. More properly, formerly of that forest because, for the past hundred years, the Ogiek have been forcibly removed from their ancestral land, once Africa’s second-biggest forest. Van Kesteren tells us that 80% of the forest’s 900 000 acres has been lost to logging; the deforested 720 000 acres have been given over to agriculture.
Astonishingly, the Kibaki government “regards the Ogiek as squatters”. Van Kesteren does not make the point but, astoundingly, Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace prize in 2004 for her “contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”, is part of that government.
China, as the West belatedly realises, is the Next Big Thing in Africa. Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News international editor, ponders the phenomenon in We Love China. Her reportage and informed projections, and the situation on the ground, suggest amending Pliny the Elder’s aphorism to: Out of Africa there is always something new. And that is a subject, undoubtedly, for a future Granta.
In its fiction offerings, The View from Africa grips and tantalises. The War of the Ears is Ugandan Moses Isegawa’s cadenced tale of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances: the war between government and God’s Victorious Brigades (The Lord’s Resistance Army by another name).
Gifted by Segun Afolabi of Nigeria examines the dislocation of leaving Africa through the alienation of a diplomat’s family stationed in Japan. This is a view of Africa from without, and deeply within.
South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer gives us Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, a contemplation of fraternity that recalls the exploration of national myths in Carlos Fuentes’s novel A Change of Skin.
Among its many pleasures, The Master by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), looks profoundly at African identity, and most embodies the intent of The View from Africa project. It made me wish for speedier publication of her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, from which this is extracted.
In sum, it’s impossible to sum up Africa. But one line from Ivan Vladislavic’s Joburg comes very close: “We will never be ourselves anywhere else.”
The details
The public is invited to attend the launch of Granta 92: The View from Africa on February 18 at 11am. There will be readings by the local contributors to this issue, Nadine Gordimer and Ivan Vladislavic. Santu Mofokeng will exhibit his photographs. At Boekehuis, corner of Lothbury and Fawley Streets, Auckland Park. Tel: (011) 482 3609