Rescuing African Dances from Citadels of Annihilation: a Pentagonal Paradigm

The colonial era opened a new phase for deterioration of African dances by compelling (and in some cases coercing local people to lose trust and confidence in these cultural practices). This absurd trend has extended through the postcolonial period. The fears that African dance practices are enmeshed in palisades of profligacy are not a hyperbole. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that some dances have been condemned to the chasm of extinction.  For example, kifuule dance among the Baganda people is no longer performed.  ones that are have managed to survive are struggling to find sanctuary in the ever evolving local and global convolution. This is not want to create an impression that attempts have not been made to preserve and revive some of these art forms. Various efforts have been made by arts organisations, academic institutions, artists, and museums to keep the spirit of these dances alive.  But in most cases, these endeavors have done all but shambled.

The detachment of these art forms from the people (that are supposed to preserve them) has gravely hastened their entombment. The architects of these artistic practices knew that the best library is the people. They entrusted communities to create, preserve and disseminate these practices through performances that organically existed within these communities. Wo/man coexisted with dance and music. The principle was that wherever there is a wo/man there is music and dance; wherever there is dance there is life. Every woman has two beings, her own and the creative being. Every man has two minds, his own and the artistic mind. Every society has two souls, the souls of the community and the soul of art. Every woman carries two wombs, the baby’s womb and the womb of music and dance.

A group of women performing dance in rural Africa. African dances are caught between revisiting their roots or taking unknown new directions. Photo by Holly Mann

The African society has gradually digressed away from this principle. What went wrong? Should we just keep singing requiem songs as this artistic richness is being condemned to mass burial? Can these dance forms be pulled out of the maxillae of degeneration and tendered back to humanity? Or, to paraphrase the African adage, does the calabash on the water even know where the river is heading?

All is not lost. Hope is still looming large. Mother African can still reclaim her womb - dance. This hope borrows legitimacy from a pentagonical model proposed by Mazrui and Ostegard (2002) to address Africa’s challenges in a global age. This model covers five key processes: ‘indigenization, domestication, diversification, horizontal interpenetration, and vertical counter penetration.’ which, if applied to African dance practices, can frontally expedite the revival, survival, and relevance of these dances within globalized contexts. It is to the applicability of these five processes to the revival and survival of African dances that I now turn.

African dances are in search for their indigenous soul. The road to this search is painted with tears of the lost glory. And I say to African dances: ‘Relax, African dances. Relax! For you cannot put on the bones of your former self. But you can gather some flesh for a shadow of your earlier persona.” For African dances to reclaim their earlier persona, indigenization process of dance practices has to be set in motion. Indigenization process for this case will “include greater utilization of indigenous techniques, personnel, and approaches to purposeful change” (Mazrui and Ostegard, 2002, p. 2002). As I noted earlier, communities have left dances to waste away. The process of resurrecting dances should take place in communities where these people live with a people as active players. The different needs these dances once served still exist. Festivals, ceremonies, competitions, and other home-based and community-based occasions need to be rejuvenated. For as long as dance is part of Africa’s histories, stories and heritage it can be indigenized. For as long as communities have histories and heritage they can still indigenize their artistic practices.

Westernization and globalization have tended to overlap in Africa. Be it in social, political, cultural and economic spheres, the two influences have taken foot on the African soil. Should African dances be hostage to westernization and globalization? Domestication of artistic practices can free African dances from this inimicalness. Domestication entails using/applying foreign ideas, paradigms, institutions, and approaches for the benefit of the local communities. University, school, church, dance company, government ministry are all foreign ideas and institutions in Africa. But these institutions can play a pivotal role in stimulating the centrality of African dances in social, cultural, economic and political development. What does a university, school, church, government ministry, Dance Company, tourism center lose by integrating native dances into its core activities? Is it intellectually sacrilegious for an African scholar to study, research about, and teach and wribe about native African dance? Domestication of imported knowledge, concepts and ideas has been done, albeit remotely.  In a number of cases it has played to the gallery of where it is imported from than where it is applied.

Relatedly, we cannot talk of African being part of the global cobweb and ignore diversification as a global process. Diversification involves embracing foreign ideas, knowledge, concepts and institutions and allowing them to exist along side the native ones. African dance scene needs to open up its echelons to other dance forms and artistic experiences. Most importantly, the African dance artist, scholar, learner, educator must learn from these fronts of exposure, with aim to deepen their artistic base. New dance forms have made inroads in Africa, but these dance forms have either been thoughtlessly embraced at the expense of the native ones, or they have been ascetically snubbed in protection of the native ones. Obviously, other dance forms are different in philosophy, structure, purpose, and assumptions underpinning their artistry, but this should not be perceived as a threat to local artistic orientations. Strength is when two forces pull in opposite directions. Global discrepancies whether in favour of ‘Westphilia’ or against Africa can be addressed through co-existence of diverse dance forms and artistic experiences.

The area that should concern all Africans – dance artists and non-dance artists alike is the lack connectivity and artistic corresponded between different African communities. This is a sign that horizontal interpenetration is yet to appear on the African horizon. Even in case of neighbouring countries, there is little or no understanding, exchange and appreciation of dance forms from cultures in these countries. Scanty crossovers exist at the border, and that’s it! Individuals have cross-crossed borders but dance forms have not. The spirit of pan-Africanism has not reverberated in African dance artistry. There is no East Africanisation of West African dance artistry and vice versa. In dance terms, central Central Africa, which lies between East Africa and West Africa, is not even aware that these two neighbors artistically exist. Dance artistry has so far failed to connect Alexandria with the Cape of Good Hope. Is regionalization and continentalization of African dance artistry under siege from globalization and Westernization? Have we drunk too deep of the Western malt and tested too little of African spring?  Arts organisations, academic and research institutions, government ministries, and civil society organizations can stimulate horizontal interpenetration through dance. A university in Malawi can introduce a course in Zambian dances. A South African dance researcher can conduct research and write about dances from the Congos; A Ghanaian national television can host a program about Ethiopian dances; an Egyptian dance company can have Cameroonian dances as part of its repertory.  Dances can be traded in spite of the demographic differences. This will open new frontiers of intra-continental artistic re-organization and new cultural conformations.

Since the colonial period, Africa has been on the receiving end of Eurocentric and Anglo-centric hegemony. It is not farfetched to say that the process of globalization has so far showed signs of one sidedness. The West has penetrated Africa, with very little offered in return. It is not disputable that Africa has experienced some form of modernization. Mazrui and Ostegard (2002) define modernization to “mean change which is consistent with the present stage of human knowledge, which seeks to comprehend the legacy of the past, which is sensitive to the needs of future generations, and which is responsive to its global context” (p. 214). Has African modernization sought to comprehend the legacy or the past? Has it been sensitive to the needs of future generations? Has it responded proportionately to the global context? The dance practices do not seem to suggest so. An analysis of the dance sector reveals that African is still limping in as far as using dance to globalize African experiences is concerned. There is urgent need for vertical counter-penetration. 

African dance practices have to stamp their presence at the courtyards of western and Eastern artistic bastion. The route to globalization should be littered with African dance artistry in areas such as dane research, education, performance, and scholarship. The shadowiness of African dance artistry in the Western and Eastern worlds is a challenge that needs to be urgently and frontally confronted. Where efforts have been made to support, encourage and promote African dance artistry, they need to be buttressed. But mostly importantly, Africa needs to be understood for what it really is. African dances need to be appreciated as dance forms that are deeply grounded in human philosophy and science. These dances firmly rest on a well systematic platform whose pillars are deeply held in human thought and human conscience. African dance stretch beyond just having hunters gather and jump around a dead elephant in the middle of the forest or tribesmen and women just moving and shouting around a very big heap of food harvest.

African dances have been part of African cultures. If culture is a “lens of perception, means of communication, basis of stratification, spring of motivation, standard of judgment, pattern of production and consumption and foundation of identity” (Mazrui and Ostegard, 2002, p.214), then the dilemma of African dances is indubitably a predicament for African cultures. A polygonal approach to salvaging African dances from chains of debauchery is possible for Africa – provided the calabash on the  water gets to know where the river is heading.

African Dilemma and the Post-colonial Experience: A Tale of Colonial Software running Indigenous Hardware

The postcolonial period has witnessed a struggle between African (indigenous) civilization and Western civilization. African is still entangled in colonial legacies, she has not yet moved beyond colonial pasts.  A number of questions emerge from this trajectory: did independence of the state from colonialism translate into independence of the mind of an African? If independence of the state was the answer to the colonial woes, how vague was the question? Did colonialism corrupt us so much so that we are determined to alienate ourselves from our cultural history and identity? Is this a case of colonial software (colonial mindset) running indigenous hardware (native Africans)?

Nobody captures this African predicament than Ali A. Mazrui who has noted that the colonial mindset has stimulated “…the development of Western tastes without Western skills; Western consumption patterns without Western production techniques; urbanization without industrialization; secularization (decline of religion) without scientification (the rise of science); and capitalist greed without capitalist discipline.”

The story of post colonial Africa has been a story of squandered self-determination and surrendered sovereignty, a tale of liberated states being occupied by colonized minds. It is a narrative of forgotten ancestry and eulogized westernization, alienation of indigenous knowledge in pursuit of western knowledge paradigms. It is a contest between Western and African civilizations, a case of cultural ambiguity substituting native identity. 

The continent of Africa has undergone three form of colonialism. The first form ended at the advent of independence of African states while the remaining two are still in full force:

The first form of colonialism was presided over by colonial masters from Europe. This form of colonialism took a form of spreading European civilization - Victorian morality to different corners of the continent, and occupation of some territories. For the first time the colonial master stepped on the African land, ruled over Africans of the soil and blood and acquired native territories. This colonialism set the stage for two other forms of colonialism. Therefore, one can argue that the subsequent two forms of colonialism are an elongation of original colonialism.

The second form of colonialism has been perpetuated and sustained by the Africans of the blood and soil. These Africans see life through the lens of the former imperialists. They want to live like Europeans on African soil. They distance themselves from their native cultural identity. This is synonymous with indigenous new bottles containing colonial wine. Even after decades after independence, the mindset of this breed of native Africans is still under colonial servitude. The indigenous hardware is being run by colonial software.

The third and final form of colonialism is being applied and presided over by ex-colonizers in their respective countries. This can be referred to as offshore colonialism, and is executed by proxy. Under this form of colonialism, economic and political policies are imposed on ‘independent’ African states. These impositions feed into the strategic geo-economic and political interests of the former colonizers and not the native people of the continent. State institutions and systems are ran on models and policies designed and imposed by the West through organisations such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Union, among others. The imposition of neo-liberal economic policies on a number of African countries by the World Bank and IMF in the 1980s and early 1990s gives a clear snapshot into the taxonomy of this colonialism. This form of colonialism has been exacerbated by the aid, humanitarian and charity industry. Political leaders and some native elites are used as proxy agents in this post-colonial.

But how did we get here?  A number of factors have converged to fashion this social, cultural, political and social trend. To understand where we are we need to revisit history. During the colonial rule, Western education was introduced; the school emerged as the centre for knowledge acquisition, production and propagation. The colonialists knew that in order to colonize the natives, they need to imprison and indoctrinate their intellect. The school changed peoples’ perception of life. The school was eulogized as the only base and source of knowledge. Nobody illustrates this eloquently that Mahmood Mamdani in his book Politics and Class Formation in Uganda. He posits thus:

“The political usefulness of missionary education, it should be clear, stemmed from its dual nature: it was technical as well as ideological, that it imparted skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetics [sic] as well as values such as loyalty to the existing order and discipline d self-sacrifice in the interest of that order. This was not education, but training; not liberation, but enslavement. Its purpose was not to educate a person to understand the objective limits to the advancement of individual and collective welfare, but to train a person to accept and even administer the limits in an ‘efficient, reliable and honesty’ way.”

With school came the foreign language and education systems and models. Intellect and academic excellence was determined by how good a person a foreign language. Sadly, this mindset (colonial software) still exists being housed by some indigenous hardware (native Africans). The school distanced the indigenes from their families and communities. The rift between natives and their indigenous value, knowledge and intellectual systems widened. Western oriented books, teachers, subjects, education systems, procedures, pedagogies constituted the basis of education. Consequently, tacit, cognitive, psycho-motor and affective intelligences were all influenced by western education. Cultural identity was eroded, cultural history lost. Colonial software was being developed to run indigenous hardware. The road to colonization of the mind was paved.

As we have seen above, western education is one of the aspects that have determined human existence. Second to education is religion. Nothing in the history of African civilization has ever titled the social, cultural and political dynamic than education and religion.  Many people converge in schools and churches than any other spaces or avenues or occasions in African communities. Whereas education was introduced by colonialists to arrest the intellect, religion was introduced to capture the faith of Africans indigenes. Indoctrination of the intellect and faith completed the installation of colonial software (mindset). Schools and churches acted as installation centers where colonial software was installed into indigenous hardware (African natives). Like the Western school, the church dragged, quite forcefully, indigenous people away from their indigenous knowledge and ways of life. Worst still, the preachers, who were part of the colonial scheme demonized indigenous knowledge. It was a gospel of indigenous cultural defamation. The indigenous software inside the indigenous hardware was crashed, to be replaced with colonial software. The bible, biblical scriptures and dogmas formed the basic for this colonialism configuration.

Western theology and education situated outside indigenous knowledge and cultural systems was always going to alienate continental Africans from their lived existential realities. By constantly pursuing new western oriented knowledge, native Africans were caught in a web of self sabotage and self identity obliteration. But was an act of ingenuousness. An amalgamation of the colonial and indigenous hardware would have been a better option. Indigenous software was disregarded, the people lost track of its anthropological, sociological and theological base.

Foreign Language: A Component of neo-colonialism

In the article Language and the Rule of Law: Convergence and Divergence, Ali A. Mazrui observes that the official language of almost every constitution south of the Sahara is European. Sub-Saharan constitutional law is almost entirely Eurocentric in that sense. Every right, every civil liberty, has to be interpreted in terms of its meaning in the relevant euro-colonial language. But can legislation be rightly and justly interpreted using foreign language as the magnifying glass? How does constitutionalism developed on the benchmarks of foreign language serve the interests of the critical mass, majority of whom are less educated? Is that constitutionalism just to all (including those who cannot read and interpret it)? Within the context of legislation, we again see indigenous hardware (African legal fraternity) being ran by colonial software (Eurocentric legal language).

The story of language as a driver that has facilitated and sustained neo-colonialism stretched beyond legal fraternity that Mazrui posits. In Uganda, for example, English is the official language. Gladly, it is not the national language. Because Uganda does not have a national language, this has enabled local languages to survive, and cross-tribal learning of languages by natives for trade and other social cultural and political purposes.

In most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, foreign languages are used within education systems and official work. Foreign languages as a medium of communication (teaching and learning) in class and lecture rooms concretize the installation of colonial software (colonial mindset) and indoctrination of the native mind. This orientation prepares natives to implement policies, programs and models developed by former colonizers (in their respective foreign languages).

Post-colonialism, globalization and the place of native Africans

The post-colonial and globalization era  has been a period of continued colonialism. This time it is not colonization of the state but the mind. The mindset of the native Africans is under siege from within and without. The gods must be wondering what happened to their descendants. The ancestors must confused about whether this is the world that they set their descendants to inherit. The wave of change is sweeping across the entire continent. This change is taking Africa far away from her cultural and native history. The African is being de-africanized. S/he is not European, neither is s/he American nor Asian, and s/he is not sure whether s/he is still African.

But where does this leave native Africans? There is a school of thought that believes that the colonial mindset has globalized native Africans. That foreign culture and lifestyle that is permeating the demographic walls of Africa has, after all, situated native Africans at the centre of global enterprise. Yet, Africa is yet to claim her place in the global arena. She is still at the periphery of the global enterprise. In fact, the existence of the colonial mindset has prepared native Africans as global consumers of what is produced by the key players in global market. Native Africans are not neither global producers nor entrepreneurs.

In Uganda, for example, after 50 years of political independence, material that is telecast on local television is predominantly foreign, the leading newspapers are published in English; classroom textbooks that are used for academic reference are foreign; most of goods and services consumed are imported (foreign); models, policies, and programs that run local institutions are foreign. The classroom, living room, office, church, shopping store is de-africanised.

The advent of computer digitalization came with hope and excitement that transformation of native Africans was on the horizon. This excitement is slowly being extinguished by the inability of the indigenous people to utilize digital technology for human innovation.  Never in history of global computerization has Africa ever invented any digital application that has influenced modern civilization. Google, facebook, twitter, youtube, myspace, yahoo, etc are all results of Western productivity. Even internet itself is a Western product. These are products that indigenous Africans are happy and proud to consume. The colonial software has successfully dragged the native African/indigenous software into a club of global consumers.

Africa needs to revisit and redefine her postcolonial logic. In indigenous knowledge, Africa has the treasure that can leap her to social, economic, cultural and political excellence. The people of Africa need to look inside before looking outside for economic, social and political progression.