Category: Perspective

Black laughter and suing Pontius Pilate

Black people’s relationship to laughter fascinates me. As a friend recently pondered, where does one begin understanding a Facebook status update that says: “That awkward moment when your mother dies”? Or how does one make sense of the Kenyan lawyer, Dola Indidis, who took such strong exception to the unfair prosecution of Jesus Christ that he decided to sue Pontius Pilate, Emperor Tiberius and King Herod at the International Criminal Court in The Hague in July 2013?

The obviousness of this move astonished me. Indeed, why hadn’t anyone thought of this before? Never mind that accused number one, Pontius Pilate is long dead and probably long forgiven by Christ— as are Emperor Tiberius and King Herod. Never mind, too, that not-so-small detail that the Christian in me is daily reminded of by my name: God authorised His son’s ‘unfair’ trial as an act of divine grace. Despite this — or as we say in Kenya, ‘irregardless’ – Indidis took serious umbrage to what he calls the abuse of Jesus’s human rights. So, he is suing Pilate for judicial misconduct, abuse of office, bias and prejudice. He is also suing the Republic of Rome and the State of Israel for their complicity in Jesus’s malicious prosecution. His aim? To have the trial of Jesus declared null and void; following a similar precedent in the nullification of the unfair trial of Joan of Arc. As a Christian, this is the part where I get stuck. It is all well that Joan of Arc got posthumous justice, but what would it mean for Jesus’s trial and crucifixion to be declared null and void?

In all honesty, Indidis’s court case cracked my ribs when I first read it. But absurd as it sounds, anyone who has read Toni Morrison will know that black people’s seeming absurdities are not always a light affair. So, when you meet grown men and women bearing names like Tea-Cake and Baby Suggs, it is not funny in a Nandos-advert kind of way. It is funny in that funny-sad way that explains how Louis Armstrong‘s fans could fondly call him Satchmo [Satchel mouth] as a loving nickname.

Come to think of it, it is in naming that this contradictory blend of hurt and affirmation plays out most explicitly. My personal favorite is Pilate Dead, a woman in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Her family carries the unfortunate surname — Dead — courtesy of a drunk soldier who captured her father’s details wrongly for his identification papers. When he explained that he was from Macon and his father was dead, the soldier entered these details under ‘name’ and ‘surname’ respectively. And that is how many generations of the family came to be, well, Dead. But Pilate’s first name is an in-house job. The same father inaugurated a family tradition of naming children by opening a Bible and pointing a finger at a random page. Wherever a finger fell, that would be the child’s name. This tradition is strictly observed in the family, generations later, despite literacy. So, when her father’s finger landed on the unfortunate spot in the Bible, the name stuck, despite the midwife’s protests about saddling a new born baby girl with not just a man’s name, but a “Christ-killing man’s name.” Thanks to this tradition, Pilate has nieces named Magdalene Dead and First Corinthians Dead.

Pilate Dead and Satchmo’s names are a reminder that black people’s laughter embraces the grey ambiguities of life, in full recognition of the fact that life and death are next-door neighbours. So are pain and laughter. This sensibility was brought to me recently in a most bizarre way. It was a Sunday mid-morning, and I was looking at children’s clothes in a retail store at my local mall. It is generally a quiet shopping time, which I like. You have space for your thoughts, without bumping into everyone else’s thoughts in the aisles. Even the music is played at a lower volume. So, on this Sunday, as I looked at little boys’ shirts, the store was quiet enough for me to hear four attendants’ voices from different parts of the shop, having a loud lighthearted conversation, in Afrikaans, filled with relaxed laughter. They all seemed deeply amused at an inside joke. My entire Afrikaans is a few phrases picked up from 7de Laan and the inevitable swear words one tends to learn when one encounters a new language, so I had no clue what the joke was. But one phrase kept coming up, followed by long peals of laughter: “Easter bunny”. After the fifth Easter bunny, I looked around the shop, slightly confused: had this store decided to have a second Easter marketing campaign in the middle of August? But there was not a single ‘Easter-branded’ item or poster in sight.

I was still puzzled at this when I got to the pay counter, and one of the assistants called out to one of the colleagues they had been conversing with, to come and serve me. As Alex walked over to the counter laughing, he shouted, “Easter bunny!” to his colleague, who responded with another “Easter bunny”. And another laugh. It was when he came in my line of vision that I finally figured what the word was, and felt even more confused. It wasn’t Easter bunny. It was isitabane, laced with an Afrikaans accent.

I was speechless. To my knowledge, this is a derogatory, homophobic word. And Alex was clearly a gay black man. Many thoughts collided in my mind as Alex processed my purchase: When did this word become publicly sayable? Laughable? Was I witnessing the playful taming of a violent word? The softening of a hard, damaging label? Was this the same as the reclaiming of the word ‘queer’? Or was it normalising a hurtful word? Did the foreign languageness of the word make it easier for the Afrikaans speakers to play with it, in much the same way swear words in your mother tongue sound much dirtier than in English? Reading Siyanda Mohutsiwa’s concern about similar taming of hurtful racial and gendered words a few weeks ago, I was reminded of this conversation.

As I left the store this Sunday, wrestling with what this lighthearted banter between colleagues meant, I remembered another even more random conversation a few years earlier between two young ladies at Wits University:

“He says he will love you forever? Aawwww, chommie! That’s so romantic!”

“Ja, but forever is a long time, hey?” the friend responded, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Something about this conversation just killed me dead, as they say in Nollywood. It was both funny and profound. You see, forever IS a long time. This is the spirit in which Pilate Dead walks around with that name in Morrison’s novel. This is probably the same spirit with which a gay black man would be laughing at “Easter bunny”. It is the same logic behind Indidis’s pursuit of justice for Jesus. See, forever IS a long time to promise to love someone, but two thousand years isn’t too late to get justice for God’s son. This is that awkward moment when conventionalised logic gives way to unconventional logic.

Grace A. Musila is a Kenyan who studied in South Africa.

12 years ago

‘Walk-in vagina’ kindles anger and approval in SA

It lets out a high-pitched scream as you enter, then a sneering laugh. It’s a walk-in vagina, a conceptual art installation that has South Africans wagging their fingers and scratching their heads.

When 30-year-old South African artist Reshma Chhiba was asked to produce artwork for a disused apartheid-era women’s jail in Johannesburg, she wanted to make a statement about women’s power.

What she came up with was a talking “yoni”, or vagina in India’s ancient language, Sanskrit.

“It’s a screaming vagina within a space that once contained women and stifled women,” she told AFP. “It’s revolting against this space… mocking this space, by laughing at it.”

Visitors enter the 12m red padded velvet and cotton canal by first stepping onto a tongue-like padding. Thick, black acrylic wool mimics pubic hair around the opening.

A view of the art installation “Giant Walk-In Vagina” installed at a former women’s prison by artist Reshma Chhiba in Johannesburg. (Pic: AFP)

The shrill soundtrack that assaults visitors as they stroll through the tunnel is a revolt against the women’s jail, built in 1909, that held some of South Africa’s leading anti-apartheid activists.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was incarcerated there twice in 1958 and 1976.

“I definitely did not make this work for the sake of controversy,” said Chhiba.

For her, it was about artistic freedom and challenging deeply entrenched patriarchal systems .

“You don’t often hear men talking about their private parts and feeling disgust or shamed,” as women often do, she said.

“And that alone speaks volumes of how we’ve been brought up to think about our bodies, and what I am saying here is that it’s supposed to be an empowering space.”

The artist also wanted to address the scourge of rape in South Africa, where nearly 65 000 attacks on girls and women are reported a year in one of the highest incidences of rape in the world – with little improvement.

But the installation, on display throughout August, has collided with some sensitive cultural and religious taboos.

“It’s the most private part of my body. I grew up in the rural areas, we were taught not to expose your body, even your thighs let alone your vagina,” said Benathi Mangqaaleza, 24-year-old female security guard at the former prison that is now a tourist site.

“I think it’s pornographic, I think they have gone too far.”

‘A sacred space’
Twenty-four-year-old gardener Andile Wayi thought the exhibition — on the site of the Victorian-era brick women’s jail and another that once held Mahatma Gandhi – as well as the Constitutional Court – was wrong.

“The [Constitution] Hill is respected, it’s a heritage,” he said.

The fine arts graduate,who is also a practising Hindu, has spent years of research into the Hindu goddess Kali whom she views as a symbol of defiance.

She expressed “shock” at the media onslaught and allegations of blasphemy from some Hindu followers who complained through radio talk shows.

“To talk about the vagina, or visualise it, is something that is not out of the ordinary,” she insisted

The exhibition, entitled “The Two Talking Yonis”, was the product of two years of discussion with curator Nontobeko Ntombela on the mythology of female power in patriarchal systems.

Visitors have to take off their shoes to walk through the softly cushioned canal.

“By talking off your shoes, essentially you are respecting it, making it a divine space, a sacred space,” said Chhiba.

Gender Links, a lobby group promoting gender equality in southern Africa, praises Chhiba’s artwork for re-igniting discussion on a subject normally avoided.

“It is bringing the private into the public, that the woman’s body is not necessarily a private matter,” said Kubi Rama, Gender Links boss.

12 years ago

The barbershops of West Africa

Andrew Esiebo is a Nigerian photographer whose photo essay, Pride, is an exploration of barbers and their shops across seven West African countries. He captures the spaces in which barbers operate and looks at the aesthetics of their shops.

Pride was recently featured in the New York Times’ online magazine Lens, and ten of his prints have been added to the permanent collection of the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.

Côte d’Ivoire. (Pic: Andrew Esiebo)

Esiebo chatted to Voices of Africa about the barbers, their shops and the hairstyles he shot.

How did the barbershop project come about?
The idea for Pride came about during a street photography project I was doing in Lagos. While photographing people on the street, I stumbled upon a barbershop and started talking to the owner. He said to me that while he might not be considered an important person in the society, he was proud to be the barber to one of Nigeria’s ex-presidents. That resonated with me and made me think about the role, and importance, of barbers in West African society. I thought about the idea for several years and in 2012, following an artistic award I received, I was able to develop the project. I travelled to several West African cities and looked at the relevance, and the role, of the barbershop in the city.

Liberia. (Pic: Andrew Esiebo)

What can you tell us about the role that the barber plays in West African societies?
Barbers help people to gain an identity. Some people have to have the right cut to project who they are. The way they look, through their hairstyle, influences the way they feel about themselves, the way people see them and address them.

Barbers are also influential because their shops are what I call “public intimate spaces”. People share their problems in conversation with the barber. The barbers learn a lot from this, and this knowledge is then shared with other customers.

So, barbershops are not only a place for cutting your hair but a space where people meet, where they come to relax and discuss issues; a space where relationships are built, business deals are sealed and where intimate subjects are often discussed.

Mali. (Pic: Andrew Esiebo)

Which barbershops were most interesting to you?
The barbershops I found most interesting were those which displayed icons, religious images, pictures of hip-hop artists, posters of soccer teams and icons of global black culture. There was a shop in Mali where the guy had posters of [Osama] Bin Laden and [Muammar] Gaddafi next to pictures of President Obama. I found this contrasting use of icons interesting. The barber said that, on the one hand, Bin Laden and Gaddafi were his heroes while on the other hand Obama is a global symbol of black power. For a black African to be the president of the US is something to be proud of, he said. So he named his shop Barack Obama Coiffure. There were many others I found interesting too.

Hairstyles. (Pic: Andrew Esiebo)

Tell us about the hairstyles.
Many of the hairstyles offered by barbers were similar, inspired by football stars or hip-hop icons in America. While the hairstyles themselves overlapped, their functions differed, depending on the country.

In Senegal or Mali, which are restrictive Islamic societies, a hairstyle can be a way of making a social statement, while in Liberia or Côte d’Ivoire, that same hairstyle can be a way to get attention from the ladies.

There was one particularly eclectic one from Senegal, worn by a barber. I asked the guy why he barbered that style for himself. He told me: “You know, this is a very conservative society but through my hair, I have the freedom to express what I want”. I really fancied that. He was rebelling against the conservative nature of the society.

Benin. (Pic: Andrew Esiebo)

Were there any regional or national differences across the barbershops you photographed?
To be honest, I did not find many regional or national differences in barbershops across West Africa. In fact, I found them very similar. There also was unity in the hairstyles themselves; unity in the language of using your head to talk.

Sure, there were differences in the names of the styles but many of the styles were the same. It shows how globalised or how connected the world is today. Many of the styles come from the same influences: Western media.

Côte d’Ivoire. (Pic: Andrew Esiebo)

Are you exhibiting Pride at the moment?
No, but I hope to exhibit this project across West Africa and beyond. I am still looking for an organisation to support the exhibition. I would also like to publish a book on the project because I think this is an important part of our culture that needs to be documented. It has to be celebrated and shown around the world.

Ghana. (Pic: Andrew Esiebo)

What is your next project?
I will be looking at the nightlife of Lagos and beyond through the eyes and lives of DJs. DJs at parties, DJs in concerts, DJs at various ceremonies. I want to use DJs, who are an integral part of our nightlife, to depict life in Lagos.

Senegal. (Pic: Andrew Esiebo)

Any advice for aspiring African photographers?
I think the only advice I can give is for them to work hard, to be passionate about what they do, to never give up and always be ready to learn new things. Keep pushing and open your horizons. You’ll go places with that.

12 years ago

Moving forward in Liberia

Liberia is getting back on its feet after a protracted civil war that killed over 200 000 people, displaced over a million, and largely destroyed the country’s infrastructure and institutions. After a decade of peace, the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office (Echo) is pulling out of the country, saying its needs are shifting from humanitarian to developmental.

Liberia has indeed made progress, particularly in attracting international investment that has led to steady growth in GDP, and most importantly in maintaining peace. But poverty and unemployment remain rife, corruption is pervasive, and little headway has been made towards post-war justice or reconciliation. In short, significant challenges remain.

IRIN recently spoke to a few key individuals who worked on Echo-funded projects – most of them health-related – during and after the war, to learn how far Liberia has come.

Moses Massaquoi, doctor:

Moses Massaquoi started working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) after being displaced by a rebel attack in July 1990. He went on to work with the NGO in numerous postings across Africa before returning to Liberia with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (Chai).

“The main challenge in the post-war [era] is a challenge of building the system, from the point of view of having the necessary human resources,” he told IRIN. “So I would say the big challenge is capacity. How do you build the capacity, with all systems broken down – health, education and everything?”

Massaquoi has committed himself to rebuilding a health system left in tatters by the conflict. In particular, he would like to see Liberia producing its own medical specialists.

He says he wants the country “first and foremost, in my own medical profession, to bring back a system of specialisation. We didn’t have control of producing our own specialists. The government had to send people out [abroad], and when they go out, they don’t come back,” he explained.

A sign of progress in this area, he says, is a post-graduate training program currently being established by the government, which will see its first students starting in September 2013.

Barbara Brillant, nurse:

Another former MSF employee currently engaged in medical training is Barbara Brillant, who runs a nursing school in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

Brillant first arrived in Sierra Leone as a missionary in 1977. “I arrived here [in Africa] as a young lady… with a lot of enthusiasm, and I was going to cure the world and teach everybody. And I ended up here 38 years later, having learned a lot,” she told IRIN.

“It [the conflict] was very, very sad. For me personally, it was scary, no doubt about it. But as a missionary and having lived with the people of Liberia, the sorrow was more seeing the Liberian people in the condition they were in,” said Brillant.

She says she saw both resilience and pride, but also “evil at its worst” during the conflict.

Sister Barbara, as she is known to the 450 students in the nursing school, is concerned that behind Liberia’s current peace there is no true reconciliation. She sees little improvement in the quality of life of most Liberians.

“It’s a pity, because… the hurt is still there, the anger is still there. You can only pray and hope that time will heal a lot of the wounds. They will never ever forget it, that’s for sure… They’re having a very hard time.”

Despite peace, “it’s a difficult place to live in,” she said, with cost of living having risen steadily over the years. “To rent a house now is insane,” she added.

Nyan Zikeh, programme manager:

Like Massaquoi, Nyan Zikeh began working for MSF while himself a refugee. He returned to Liberia in 1998 and has since worked with the NGOs Save the Children and Oxfam, where he is currently a programme manager. He says he now feels the dividends of Liberia’s lasting peace. “What I’m grateful for is that we have peace, and the chance to raise a stable family now exists,” he explained.

His plans for the future are to leave his job and become an agricultural entrepreneur, which he says will create opportunities for others to work, earn a living and learn. “I will still be working in development, but not in charity,” said Zikeh, who is concerned about the dependence being created by Liberia’s current aid culture.

“It is also to let the authorities know that we can make examples, that we don’t have to sell all of our land to very large companies,” he said. Recent large-scale land acquisitions by foreign businesses have been criticised for exploiting local communities and engaging in corruption in the awarding of concessions.

A recent audit revealed that only two of 68 land concessions awarded since 2009 fully complied with Liberian law.

Nathaniel Bartee, doctor:

When the war broke out in 1989, Nathaniel Bartee was a doctor who had just returned from earning a master’s degree in the UK. He started the organisation Merci to deal with the humanitarian situation in Monrovia; it quickly expanded into the provinces.

During the conflict, Bartee was at times separated from his family. “I didn’t want to leave Liberia because of the amount of suffering, and the [numbers] of health personnel were not many. So I stayed to guide a younger generation of doctors.” By the end of the conflict, he was one of just 50 doctors left in the country.

Bartee says there has been clear improvement in the provision of health services since those days. “Today I think health is much better. Most of the health workers have returned, and there are more graduates being produced,” he explained.

But he is concerned that the Liberian government is not sufficiently prioritising healthcare. For this reason, he intends to become a senator to push for increases in the health budget in Parliament.

Ma Annie Mushan, women’s peace activist:

In late 1989, Ma Annie Mushan was, in her own words, “not a woman to speak of”.

“I was just a housewife” she told IRIN. During the war, Mushan was displaced from her village and ended up living in the town of Totota, where she was approached by the women’s peace movement that had sprung up in Monrovia.

Mushan eventually became the leader of the Totota branch of the women’s peace movement, which ultimately played a significant role in putting an end to the conflict.

Like many Liberians, she is frustrated by the slow pace of post-war development. “Even though there is progress, people in Liberia are looking for jobs up and down… There are so many people that are not working in Liberia – not a day. That has been one of the major problems we’re faced with.”

She now works on the Peace Hut project, which emerged from the women’s movement, and seeks to address the problem of gender-based violence, which she sees as one of Liberia’s biggest challenges. Mushan feels the existing court system in Liberia is unable to effectively deal with cases concerning women’s issues.

“My focus will stay on the women, to build their capacity up. I still want to be working for the Peace House [Hut], because it is the Peace House [Hut] that got me where I am today,” she concluded.

12 years ago

Economics, politics and a rural Zimbabwean wedding

Two Saturdays ago, we set off from Bulawayo at 6.30am in a Land Rover Discovery for my cousin sister’s wedding. It was scheduled to start at 9am at Zvegona Church of Christ in rural Zvishavane, a town well known for asbestos mining but which has now been taken over by Mimosa, a lucrative platinum mining company.

Mimosa mine. (Pic: AFP)

We were waved through most police roadblocks by officers speaking mainly in Shona to stoic Ndebeles. I wondered why they did not harass us like they usually do. It could have been the small Zimbabwean flag associated with Zanu-PF that was hanging by the rearview mirror or possibly the type of car we were driving – the police wouldn’t want to offend Zanu-PF ‘officials’, would they? But we were not Zanu-PF officials and besides the odd driver or two sporting a cap with the ruling party’s insignia, there were no visible reminders of the recent presidential election.

We reached Zvegona at around 9.30am after getting lost several times. Everyone we asked directions from was also going to the wedding; rural weddings are for the whole village. There was an impressive building next to the church. We were later told that this was where Mimosa was was setting up a clinic for the community as part of its fulfillment of Zimbabwe’s indigenisation laws.

The small church was adorned in purple and white satin fabric. The wedding cake was the usual fruit cake with plastic icing. The bride and the groom were just like any other bride and groom I have seen before, as were the bridesmaids who danced the same dance I have been seeing for over twenty years as they ushered in the bride. She entered to loud ululation from excited female friends and family.

Standing there in the crowded church, I wondered what distinguishes a rural wedding from a city wedding. The bridal party even went to the nearby dam for a photo shoot, just like bridal parties in Bulawayo go to Centenary Park to pose for photos. Do they go to the Harare gardens in Harare? There was a PA system, there were video cameras. Did the reed mats in place of carpets add a bit of ruralness to the function?

There was an excited aunty who threw rice grains at the bridal party and the crowd. I forgot to ask what the rice signified – my initial thought that they could not afford the usual confetti and glitter was quickly rubbished by the apparent evidence of money throughout the wedding ceremony. Besides asbestos and platinum, there seems to be a lot of gold in Zvishavane, which is mined ‘illegally’. Illegal gold mining creates a cash economy that is shocking to broke city dwellers like us: Our tiny wedding presents were embarrassing in the face of refrigerators, microwaves and cash that the people of Zvishavane tossed at the young couple. Cash ranging from US$10 to US$200 was put on the table in front of the newlyweds while we sat, dished out rice and big chunks of meat, and felt out of place.

There was no sign of the recent elections in Zvishavane, not even talk of it. It was us city guys who discussed Morgan Tsvangirai’s embarrassing defeat and Bulawayo’s rejection of Welshman Ncube in preference for the MDC leader. The rural folk danced and sang the day away, oblivious to what we city folk think is the ‘destruction’ of the Zimbabwean economy by our leader.

I wondered if this kind of life in Zvishavane was sustainable. Could it be translated into real wealth and perhaps lead to poverty alleviation? A few years ago I went to Chiadzwa, near the city of Mutare, where people were enjoying the same kind of liquidity I was seeing in Zvishavane. Now they are back to being destitute because diamond mining in Chiadzwa has been ‘formalised’. Gold panning in Zvishavane will also come to an end. And then what?

We left for the city at dusk. I remain in a confused state about the dynamics of the Zimbabwean economy and Zimbabwean politics.

Mgcini Nyoni is a poet, playwright and blogger based in Bulawayo. He blogs at nyonimgcini.blogspot.com and mgcininyoni.blogspot.com.Connect with him on Twitter.