The latest Chimurenga celebrates the confluence of African and Asian cultures by exploring new and remixed identities. Cheekily titled Everyone has their Indian, the 14th edition of the Cape Town-based magazine also parodies anti-Indian assumptions in our public interactions. There’s the suggestion that, once subverted, these assumptions can perhaps be disarmed.
The title is borrowed from an opinion piece written by Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya back in 2006. Makhanya quoted a “Gucci revolutionary” claiming that, in South Africa, “everyone has their own Indian” — a comment that provoked a spirited response from Pallo Jordan.
“The words of the editor’s Gucci-clad drinking buddies feed off and feed into a deeply racist image of Indian South Africans as parasitic, corrupt and/or corrupting; an image not markedly different from that which anti-Semites purvey about Jews,” said Jordan.
The Makhanya-Jordan clash is invoked by Ronald Suresh Roberts in the extended “footnote” that closes this edition of Chimurenga. But the magazine also explores more interesting cultural collisions — not always involving Indians.
Take the funky collaboration between art historian Dominique Malaquais and Congolese artist Kikudji Kikudji, which comically unpacks Mobutu Sese Seko’s rise and fall. It is a montage of Kikudji’s collages and Malaquais’s writing set in the milieu of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s 1974 “rumble in the jungle”.
Mahmood Mamdani’s contribution, The Ugandan Asians’ Expulsion: Twenty Years After, is more in line with expectations. His essay looks at the differences between “non-settler colonies”, such as Uganda, and “settler colonies”, such as South Africa, and the political role played by Asians in each situation. Mamdani believes that it all comes down to class. In Uganda, he said, Asians were largely on the side of the colonial elite. Hence they became a target for the nationalist movement.
Mamdani returned “home” to Kampala — where his family had lived for three generations — in August 1972. Five months later Idi Amin announced the expulsion of Asians from Uganda. Although Mamdani writes from a position of personal pain he makes a conscious effort to avoid the trap of bitterness.
Closer to home, the Indian community in Zimbabwe is woven into the Chimurenga mosaic. Mugabe’s Tailors is a quirky account by Zimbabwean Mail & Guardian journalist Percy Zvomuya of the eponymous president’s relationship with his favourite tailors: Bhula Bhagat and Khalil “Solly” Parboo. Bhagat runs a clothing shop called The House of Nagarji and has been cutting Robert Mugabe’s suits since the 1960s. Like his colleague Parboo, whose family arrived in the colony in 1903, Bhagat holds the president in the highest esteem. Politics doesn’t come into it. Mugabe, the two men agree, is basically just a nice, warm guy. It’s not a view that you’re often likely to hear.
The 14th Chimurenga is challenging in other ways. The publishers have pushed creative boundaries when it comes to design. This time the magazine comes wrapped in a brown paper bag — the type normally used to conceal prohibited beverages enjoyed in public spaces. Without the usual glossy cover it is presented as a white stack of A4-size pages in blue Book Antiqua typescript. The stack is stapled and bound with aluminum screws. It looks as bare and unpretentious as a draft manuscript and it assumes the guise of a work in progress. That is its strength.
For a change, you’re actually invited to scribble on the pages as you journey through. Nobody’s going to arrest you for defacing something sacrosanct. So this edition of Chimurenga offers the reader a new relationship with the printed word — and a rare chance to get physical with a book in this cold digital age.
The experience doesn’t come cheap. Readers can expect to part with a hefty R80 a copy. You may wonder if it’s worth every cent. But this solid magazine is not meant to be consumed in one go. And repeated visits may just reveal fresh gems to justify the hole in your pocket.