In this article, I argue that armed conflicts
whether desired or undesired do not only affect the psyche of the demographic
constituents where they exist, but their effects stretch to deform the knowledge, belief and
cultural taxonomy of the communities therein. This editorial is set against my
experience working with communities in post armed conflict areas of Southern
Sudan, parts of northern Uganda, and my extensive literary reading about the
implications, architecture, complexities, and simplicities of armed conflicts
in the great lakes region. I would like to emphasize that my interaction with
communities in these areas was not research based. Rather, it was consultancy
based in some cases, and mere participation in arts related activities in others.
In this bend, I am not crafting this piece as a research product. This narrative
is just an ongoing purification of what my exposure to grassroots realities in
these communities gave forth.
The great lakes region has been ravaged in
armed conflicts for more than two decades.
Southern Sudan, northern Uganda, the entire Eastern corridor of
Democratic Republic of Congo to its foot in Burundi have been drowned in misty of
political misdemeanor, tribal apprehension, interstate trepidation, and guerrilla
combat.
It is estimated that more than 3 million
people have surrendered their lives to this hazardous vice. Even with the end of
war in northern Uganda in 2005, and the signing of the CPA between Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement and government of Sudan in 2005, which paved way for the independence
of Southern Sudan in July 2011, tributaries of political and military
turbulence, fragility, tension, and volatility in the region are still gushing.
The internal tribal bickering in the new
state of Southern Sudan and the confrontational altercation between Sudan (Northern
Sudan) and Southern Sudan does not intersperse any waters of political and
military optimism. In the same blend,
the militarization of issues and conditions that are craving for political remedies
seems to be falling flat in providing the key to the paradise of peace.
Implications of armed conflicts on cultural
arts
Certainly, it is lucid that the armed
conflicts had deleterious corollaries on the compositional, preservational and
performance processes of the cultural arts within the communities that were
affected. In any armed conflict, survival of the individual, and by extension
the community, takes precedent over food, clothing and shelter-the basic
necessities. It is a continuous struggle to have clasp over life even without essential
necessities.
The psyche of innocent war victims is
preoccupied with constant search for life, which relegates basic necessities
of life to privileges or/and luxuries. In war desolated areas, people were
sandwiched between the struggle to survive and the constant threat to their
existence. Consequently, cultural arts did fall prey of this psycho-social gradient.
Surprisingly, the civil service sector, government, church, and other
stakeholders have paid miniature or zilch consideration to this cultural attrition.
Yet, any society without cultural arts is a society without memories, history,
and heritage.
One of the effects of armed conflicts in
great lakes region was forced migration, which left thousands of people homeless.
In northern Uganda, forced migration gave birth to internally displaced camps
(IDPs). It is worth propounding that the survival and relevance of cultural arts
highly leans against the geographical location of its participants. In this
vein, communities demarcate or/and identify, for example, some sites/monuments
that catalyze their artistic creativity, philosophies, ideologies, democratic, aesthetic,
and bureaucratic. Alienation from native cultural spaces did not only impinge
on the psyche and kinesthetic of the forced migrants, but precipitated estrangement
from cultural history and heritage. Worst still, performance spaces and opportunities for
the arts were fatally constricted.
Internally displaced persons camp in northern Uganda.
Reigniting cultural craftwo/manship in the
new geographical and cultural spaces became difficult for the forced migrants as
a result of disconnection from their cultural monuments, context and sites that
accommodated performance. Likewise, since cultural arts were contextually
situated, the slight budge in compositional and performance contexts altered
the form, shape, purpose, rationale, and structure of these art forms. These
contextual undulations exterminated some key aspects of cultural arts in some
cases, and changed the indigenous textual outlook and relevance in others.
Moreover, the upshot of armed conflict on the
social structures (family and community) cannot be underestimated. The practical
and theoretical foundation of cultural arts is anchored in the family and
community structures. Like other communities in sub Saharan Africa, communities
in the great lakes region rely on communal philosophical filament to lubricate individual
and communal artistry.
Couple with other belief systems, this ethno-ideological
attitude fashions the knowledge system that gives birth to cultural arts. In this
regard, the arts do not only reflect the culture of the people but they also exemplify
the social, political, economic and theological nomenclature of the communities
where the people come from. The interface between the ethno-psyche of the
people and the entire surrounding infrastructure is reciprocal – a ping-pong
between ‘ethno-with-ins’ and ‘ethno-with-outs’ or ethnic software and ethnic
hardware. Because armed conflicts preoccupy the mind with self survival, the concept
of ‘others’ is reflexively lost in this psycho-mental reformulation process.
Homelessness, which is characteristic of
communities in armed conflicts grinds down the foundation of family, and erodes
the pillars of community – a threat to the rich treasure and trait of
communalism. Suffocated in this socio-communal collapse and constant shift in
the mindset of the body demographic, some cultural arts have slid, fell and buried
in ditches of imperceptible history.
At a micro level, armed conflicts have robed
communities of skilled and knowledgeable individuals. The most potent threat of
any armed conflict is its power to disorganize, dis-empower and disable the
already established knowledge, value and support systems of a given community. Suffice
to note is that that even survivors in any war, if at all, are constantly fixated
with persistent pursuit for self survival.
As such, communal apprenticeship in cultural
arts in areas of armed conflicts has been dissuaded in the process. To this
end, demise of people has carried with it treasured
cultural knowledge and skills. The knowledge lacunas that emanated from this state
of affairs, in some cases, have become too deep and wide to bung. Progressively,
this fissure has plunged perilous holes in communal cultural identity, and the construction
and propagation chain of cultural knowledge and skills that are enveloped in
the arts.
The verity that armed conflicts have rapped,
mugged, and asphyxiated cultural arts in the great lakes region is
unobjectionable. The ugly hand of wars has extended to chock cultural arts – the
indigenous software that facilitates existence of mankind. Yet, the arts have
the potential to address conditions that steer armed conflicts. As communities
are healing from the wounds inflicted on them by armed conflicts, cultural arts
can be the doctor, nurse, medicine, and surgical knife plaster that can hasten
the curative procedure. BUT this can only see light if the arts are given
chance.
Alfdaniels Mabingo is a Fulbright Fellow at New York University.
