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The pre-colloquium event of the Lagos Black Heritage Festival
explored the theme of ‘Memory and Performance in the return to source.’
Featuring Wole Soyinka, Joanna Lipper, and Danny Glover, the event took place
at the Civic Centre on Sunday, April 4. African-American scholar, Henry Louis
Gates Jr., was unable to make the event.

Nobel laureate and foremost social critic, Wole Soyinka, led the
way with his paper on ‘African Aesthetics as seen through the eye of an Irukere.’

‘Irukere’ in the eye of
the beholder

Focusing on aesthetics and utility in what many will call the
‘paraphernalia of office’ or ‘the insignia of power,’ the paper traced the
history of the military man’s swagger stick vis-a-vis a king’s ‘Irukere’ (fly
whisk or horse-tail whisk to the uninitiated). The paper also focused on how
the appearance of structures reflects its business, emphasising especially, how
the rundown facilities in some Nigerian educational institutions (across all
levels) reflect in the performance of its graduates. He asked the audience to
compare products of merely utilitarian structures to those from more condusive
environments.

He, however, underlined that, “I do not say for one moment that
the mind cannot overcome any adversities (or) that the most adverse
environments have failed to produce geniuses.”

Soyinka used the example of the ‘Irukere’, which “when swished
has the advantage of comparative silence.” The hilt of the fly-whisk, he said,
was etched with intricate designs because it was used by not just anyone, but
by kings and hunters. The ‘Irukere’, he said, was therefore a perfect
combination of both beauty and purpose.

In the midst of all the scholastic communication, Soyinka
infused some comedy. He referred to Mobutu Sese Seko’s assumed native name as
‘that long incantation of a name’, which he translated to mean ‘the fearless
one who mounts numerous wives at the same time without the aid of Viagra.’ This
naming ceremony was, of course, for him an African validation of his African
authenticity. “Such were the interventions of the clowns of African leadership
into a serious minded soul-searching agenda.”

Mobutu was perhaps, not the only clown of such extraction.
Soyinka reminded the audience of how a former military administrator in Lagos
State began an exaggerated horticultural expedition, in which flower beds
planted state-wide would bear his name. This man, Mohammed Marwa, would in the
future run for president, sparking in people’s minds the image of flower beds
bearing his name running across the length and breadth of the nation.

Referring to the schools and housing scheme introduced by former
Lagos State governor, Lateef Jakande, Soyinka said, “Those structures were
tailor-made for eventual slumification.” In his conclusion, the Nobel laureate
said, “Environment can inspire or douse inspiration. When the environment
decays, its contents also follow suit.”

Girl from Zanzibar

Soyinka introduced the next speaker, Joanna Lipper, as “being
generally active and curious about humanity.” Her presentation, he said, would
soon prove that much. It also proved her knowledge of her subject matter.

The filmmaker, writer, and photographer, displayed a series of
multimedia slide shows completed last year in Zanzibar while she was doing
research for a feature film based on a screenplay she co-wrote, ‘Girl from
Zanzibar.’ The story is based on the eponymous novel by Roger King.

“Some of the work you’ll see today is just very early
preliminary research on the project,” Lipper said. The film is about a girl of
Goan Indian, Portuguese, Arab African and Catholic Muslim parentage. She is the
result of an adulterous relationship between a Goan Indian Moslem and a
Portuguese Arab African Catholic couple.

The scholar said, “For me, the concept of a black heritage
festival returning to the source involves collective travelling back through
our cultures and conscious memories, cultural histories, and forms of
representation, to arrive at the core of how each individual perceives his or
her own life experience.” In her presentation, Lipper provides the social,
political and historical context within which we can better understand the
heritage of Marcella D’ Souza, the proposed film’s protagonist, vis-a-vis the
overall Zanziban experience.

“As a film director, I use photography as a way of organically
and spontaneously exploring and breaking down components such as emotion, mood,
tone, narrative, identity, relationships, tension, intimacy, distance, theatre,
opaqueness, transparency, and a sense of time passing.”

Her first slide show was of seaweed farmers on the east coast of
Zanzibar. Lipper’s images showed the women in their work environment,
highlighting their faces with close-ups and distance shots, showing them
against the sunset. Some of the shots were similar but showing only the passing
of time, a technique Lipper said was influenced by the work of impressionist
artist, Claude Monet.

Seaweed farmers

Lipper said, “There’s something sacred about the seaweed
farmers’ proximity to nature and something deeply spiritual about the total
absence of intrusive mechanical machinery, something reassuringly pure and
uncomplicated about the direct contact between the water and the seaweed. But
the truth is that the thin thread that connects them to the global economy and
to their meagre income is growing thinner by the day.”

Throwing in some statistics to illustrate the pros and cons of
seaweed farming, Lipper said 3% of the population in Zanzibar is involved in
seaweed cultivation, accounting for 20% of Zanzibar’s export earnings. The
United States, she said, imports $50 billion worth annually.

On the down side, the mostly female seaweed farmers lack the
required education and business skills to make the most of their venture.
Quoting from Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s ‘Half the Sky,’ Lipper said,
“In many poor countries, the greatest unexploited resource isn’t oil fields or
veins of gold. It is the women and girls who aren’t educated and never become a
major presence in the formal economy.” The images in Lipper’s Seaweed Farmers
series have been nominated for the Prix Pictet environmental photography award.

Slavery and
multiculturalism

The next slide show was of Stone Town, the Zanziban capital, and
centre of “global cosmopolitanism, cultural borrowing, and appropriation of
foreign elements.” The variegated influences from Portugal and India were
reflected in the architecture of this town. Its slave history was represented
by a monument in the image of two slaves chained together. Not only the
architecture is different, the various peoples also show the city’s
multiculturalism: a perfect home for the Marcella, whose heritage means she is
from everywhere but belongs nowhere.

According to Lipper, Arabs introduced slaves into Zanzibar and
expanded the slave route. It became the centre of the East African slave trade.
Indian merchants were also involved. There were about 5000 slaves in Zanzibar
alone at the beginning of the 18th century. Many more worked on farms or were
transported to Persia. “By 1866, their number had grown to 20,000 a year.”
After 150 years of slavery and oppression, the locals had had enough. A
revolution took place in January 1964 and the sitting government was
overthrown. Arabs and Indians were killed in their thousands. Others were
forced into exile or to relinquish their amassed wealth and property. Lipper
noted that the overthrow was the climax to years of growing racial and ethnic
tension on the islands and a violent rejection of Zanzibar’s cosmopolitan heritage.

It was the end of “150 years of Arab and South-Asian economic
and cultural hegemony in Zanzibar, forcing into exile tens of thousands of
non-African minorities, ending Asian and Arab domination of the island
economy,” Lipper said.

Lipper’s work has already drawn the attention of The Seaweed Center and the
Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND). She is currently the Sheila Biddle
Ford Foundation Fellow at Harvard University’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute.