Special Issue: Culture and social justice

The first Pan African Cultural Congress was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia this week (13 to 17 November 2006). The Congress was organised by the African Union (AU), and its purpose was to “review and assess the cultural sector in Africa, and consider challenges and opportunities in order to draw strategies and appropriate programmes,” according to the AU press statement.

To coincide with that conference, Pambazuka News publishes today a special issue on the theme of Culture and Social Justice. It is a ‘multimedia’ edition, with a series of audio-recordings accompanying the written word.

Culture is frequently seen as something that is either peripheral to the struggle for social justice, or as entertainment or fashion. In many cases it is seen as something embedded in history, immovable and sacrosanct, referring to some idealised vision of the past, confining creativity and limiting freedoms. The continued oppression of women, for example, is frequently justified on ‘cultural’ grounds. But culture is a living form: it is rooted in our histories, but constantly evolves. It reflects the deeper spirit of humans, but also serves as a tool for emancipation. As with all aspects of human existence, whether it is art, literature, music, economics, personal relationships, and science (yes even science), culture expresses the underlying social relationships: the ‘culture’ of those who sit comfortably in the back of the Mercedes is different from the culture of those over whose lives the wheels churn. Culture has many languages, even in a society that appears homogeneous.

In this collection of essays and poems, accompanied by a series of audio-recordings that we are distributing as ‘podcasts’, Pambazuka News celebrates the culture of resistance in Africa.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the renowned Kenyan writer and thinker, discusses in his recorded interview with Robtel Pailey the critical role of language and its potential both to free thought as well as imprison it, a theme that is developed further by Neville Alexander, interviewed by Mandisi Majavu, who cautions against using race discourse in our quest for social justice.

Wangui wa Goro argues that to talk of the African Renaissance when Africans go without food and die unnecessarily of curable diseases, when children have no access to clean water and basic education, compels us to ask ourselves who this renaissance is intended for. “… unless we can meet the fundamental needs of the majority of African people,” she argues, words like Renaissance (rebirth) in the face of death for many sound like a mockery.”

From the Harlem Renaissance, to the Negritude Movement, up to the present day African Renaissance, black people have always struggled to find ways to redefine themselves, while in the process creating sites of cultural resistance. From literature, to the movies, history, and to fine art black people have struggled to create spaces, “wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see.” (hooks,1992:116) The ‘gaze’, as bell hooks argues, is the actual site of resistance for culturally colonised black people globally.

Mphutlane Wa Bofelo points out that when it comes to poetry, one of the sites of resistance is the global slam poetry movement. However, Bofelo problematizes the issues by asking: “How do we relate the slam movement to our own history of using poetry in particular and literature and theatre in general to open the space of discourse and critical engagement with prevailing socio-economic, political and cultural conditions? Can we draw from the experiences of pre-colonial African oral traditions in developing an organically grown and contextualised slam poetry movement in [Africa]?”

It is in the same spirit of resistance that Milton Allimadi writes that the overall Western attitude towards Africa is that the continent is trapped in a tribal time warp. Allimadi states that the Western media plays a vital role in perpetuating this misconception. Western journalists and editors, writes Allimadi, still have the same colonial attitude towards Africans. “…Not much has changed since the earliest days when Western reporters first started to cover African countries on a widespread basis.”

In a podcast interview, emerging rapper PlanBe explores with Sokari Ekine violence and rape in South Africa and he performs his rap Stand Against. And in another podcast, Congolese poet Omékongo wa Dibinga shares three of his poems with us exploring the attitudes towards Africa, aid and development (the text of the latter is also reproduced here).

This issue was guest edited by Robtel Pailey, to whom we express our thanks.