Milisuthando (Photo: Delwyn Verasamy/ M&G)
As a creative person, I sometimes catch feelings about the fact that, in my current job, I’m not really in a position to create my own work as much as I would like but instead have to facilitate commentary on, response to and engagement with other people’s work.
This is a serious privilege in a country like the unhinged tap of creativity that is South Africa right now.
That said, I can’t deny the “even me” feeling that attaches itself to my mental list of anxieties about my life’s purpose when I see what my peers are doing in film, music, fashion, art and literature both locally and internationally.
My anxiety is gaining mass lately, not because of my pale green envy but because of the perspective I’m gaining on the lack of African lived experiences as stories and histories in the world’s legitimised knowledge systems.
Knowing the necessity of stories as a human tradition and as a tool of a people’s historicisation, I find it astounding how many stories there still are to tell about this continent – stories that are not being told to the world and thereby contributing to the erasure of African perspectives.
This, of course, extends to all of Africa’s thievable intellectual property: fashion, jewellery, food, music, architecture, medicine, sciences, esoterism and all forms of design – oh, and those lovely minerals.
So, what has brought this anxiety on? I’m developing an ambivalence about the amount of energy we spend consuming, writing about and discussing in real life the work of, say, American cultural producers. How much we collectively look forward to new seasons of American shows, album drops from American artists and just nje the overall (understandable) knowledge and reverence we have for their ideas when Americans hardly know anything about Africa, nor do they care.
There are myriad structural and economic reasons for this, of course, although they are holding less weight as the digital age matures.
Over the past year, I’ve been accused number one, listening to a lot of American podcasts, among other things. I listen to, on average, two a day. I have two polar opposite favourites: On Being with Krista Tippett and The Read with Crissle and Kid Fury. They are night and day in terms of content but both brilliant in their own way.
On Being is a weekly podcast that encourages contemplation on “the deepest most perplexing questions facing humankind: Who are we, why are we here and where are we going?”
I listen with glee to Tippett’s captivating, unedited interviews with scientists, psychologists, writers, poets, activists and religious and spiritual leaders.
Although I return to this show because of the irrefutable wisdom of its host and guests, I wrote to them a few weeks ago, praising them on the salubrious nature of the show but expressing that, as an African listener, I have found some of the guests’ (read Westerners’) views of the world, life, psychology, science, history and philosophy to be shockingly limited in perspective. At times, these experts speak in conclusive but wildly unfinished terms about a variety of subjects owing to the fact that their views are only influenced by Western or Eastern philosophies and fields of study.
When listening, I sometimes charge back at the radio, shouting: “But what about African histories of this same thing? We have much older and more valid theories about this! OMG, this is called ubuntu!” – when the show’s guest is only now discovering the importance of human interconnectedness as a tool for human survival.
Needless to say, I have not received a reply.
The Read is the opposite in content and delivery. It’s a tjatjarag weekly two-hour show on the most useless celebrity news and includes a hilarious agony aunt segment and the hosts’ “reads” of the week, where they cuss somebody who pissed them off that week. All of this is delivered with first-class profanity.
I love the show for many reasons but, my goodness, when it comes to Africa, Kid Fury and Crissle can be ignorant AF. I’ve cringed at how little these two deeply woke podcasters know or desire to know about Africa, and I often get turned off by how American they are.
But can I seriously blame them? Of course not. They are Americans pushing their culturally imperialist agenda as they’ve been taught to because it works. Besides, nobody is forcing me to tune in, so what am I mad at?
I’m concerned about the fact that we down here could be doing more to urgently respond to the glaring absence of African perspectives out there, at a time when knowledge production and distribution are more accessible than they have ever been.
When Beyoncé comes out with a new album, clothing line, video or baby, you’ll find us standing in a queue that leads straight to more dollars for Parkwood Entertainment and Tidal, and more range for America’s cultural empire.
Look, I like Beyoncé and I’m all for building black wealth globally, but not when the chances of a smallanyana quid pro quo cultural or creative exchange are zero to none.
Instead, we get dizzy with excitement when our cultures, dance moves, hairstyles or traditional blankets are mentioned, borrowed or appropriated by “less traditional” cultural appropriators like black, cool, indie or underground overseas artists or organisations to advance their careers, fatten their bank accounts and buy them more global relevance.
We are all too content with “exposure” when, looking at the originality of work coming out of this country, we should be demanding long-term collaboration and real money, and striking deals that have more longevity than the one music video or Instagrammed lunch or the few hundred dollars, pounds and euros that we get when so-and-so is interested in working with one of us.
It’s encouraging when other cultures see value in our cultural production but, as South Africans, I wish we could learn from Nigerians (Nollywood) or Indians (Bollywood) when it comes to looking to and trusting our own ideas regarding the potential economic value of our arts, culture and entertainment industries.
Look at the stamina of the South African musical King Kong – still relevant, still employing people, still telling this story nearly 60 years later.
It’s what Italy has done with its fashion industry, what France has done with its culture, what Germany has done with its engineering and what America is brilliant at doing – packaging and selling Americanness through Hollywood and its incredible entertainment industry.
Iimbali! is a space for stories and other narrative-based social analysis