Art and Trauma in Africa: Representations of Reconciliation in Music, Visual Arts, Literature and Film 9780755604302, 9781788310772

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This book is dedicated to Tom and Philma Bisschoff and Edmond Weyn

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to the many people who contributed to this collection on various levels – intellectually, practically and otherwise – whether through an informal discussion or more formal, institutional support. Firstly, we would like to thank the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh who hosted the original symposium that served as the inspiration and starting point for this collection. Specifically, we would like to thank the Centre’s director Professor Paul Nugent, the co-director Professor James Smith and Centre member Dr Barbara Bompani, who have always been generous in their support of the Africa in Motion Film Festival, in particular all the academic strands of the festival. Dr Andrew Lawrence from the Centre of African Studies and Dr Michael Marten from the University of Stirling acted as panel chairs at the symposium and have offered support and advice throughout. Dr Jacqueline Maingard delivered the keynote speech at the symposium and also contributed the foreword to this volume. Professor David Murphy from the University of Stirling was the PhD supervisor for both the editors of the volume and has always been supportive of our work. Further support came from Dr Leen Maes who offered intellectual input as a trauma studies specialist. Professor Marilyn Booth, chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies, and Professor Jolyon Mitchell from the School of Divinity, both at the University of Edinburgh, kindly hosted discussions after screenings at the 2009 Africa in Motion

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Film Festival, sharing with audiences their passion for peace-building and reconciliation efforts in the African and Arab worlds. Dr Jude Murison and Master’s student Jenna Sapiano, both from the University of Edinburgh, also offered intellectual support through their academic work on reconciliation in Africa. The papers delivered by the speakers at the symposium in 2009 served as the original impetus for this volume, inspiring us with their original, challenging and important research. The papers of most of these speakers became chapters in this volume, and we also had a number of additional contributors. We are grateful for the enthusiastic participation of all our contributors, who made the production process of this volume a joyful experience for us – their prompt responses to our queries throughout the editing phase made this process as seamless as possible. On a practical level, Anita van der Merwe was a wonderful copy editor to work with, and the support of the editors at I.B.Tauris, first Jenna Steventon and later Maria Marsh and Nadine El-Hadi, was instrumental in enabling this volume to see the light. Our final word of thanks goes to all the African artists who tirelessly continue their work on promoting reconciliation in Africa through their music, works of art, writing and films – it is their inspired and inspiring work that we are celebrating in this book.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Stefanie Alisch Stefanie Alisch is a musicologist and DJ from Berlin. She is working on a PhD on Angolan kuduro at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS). She has researched and published on groove, kuduro, female hip hop and broken beat. She teaches academically and in outreach programmes of cultural institutions. In 2009 Alisch founded the Groove Research Institute Berlin and she is currently research assistant at Iwalewa-Haus Bayreuth. Lizelle Bisschoff Lizelle Bisschoff is a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and Founder of the Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival in Edinburgh, now in its seventh year. She holds a PhD in African Cinema from the University of Stirling, in Scotland, for which she researched the role of women in Southern and West African cinema. She is currently conducting a two-year research project into the emerging East African film industries, has published several articles on sub-Saharan African cinema and regularly attends film festivals in Africa as jury member and speaker. Moulay Driss El Maarouf After working on the discourse of gender representation in Moroccan photography for his Master’s degree at Mohamed V University, Rabat, Moulay Driss El Maarouf won a position as a PhD student in Bayreuth

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International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), Germany. He is exploring the local and global dynamics in/of Moroccan music festivals and has published a number of critical articles. El Maarouf is an ex-member of the Medi Cafe, a writing project launched by the British Council in 2007. He has published many stories in American and British magazines and is a co-editor of Moorings. Tobias Robert Klein Tobias Robert Klein studied, researched and taught in Germany and Ghana, at Humboldt University, Berlin, and Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg (PhD with distinction in 2007). He is a research scholar at the Centre for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin, and an associate member of the International Centre for African Music and Dance at the University of Ghana. He is editor of Texts, Tasks and Theories: Versions and Subversions in African Literature (Amsterdam/Atlanta, 2008) and Figuren des Ausdrucks (forthcoming), and author of Moderne Traditionen: Studien zur postkolonialen Musikgeschichte Ghanas (Frankfurt, 2008). He has contributed to various musicological reference works. Robyn Leslie Robyn Leslie holds a Master’s degree in International Conflict Studies, with distinction, from the Department of War Studies, King’s College (London), winning the O’Dwyer Russell award for outstanding performance in her MA. She also holds a BSc (Honours) in Politics and Environmental Science from the University of Cape Town, and has previously worked as a freelance journalist and researcher in South America and South Africa. She is currently freelancing as a writer and researcher in the field of international justice. Sarah Longair Sarah Longair is completing a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, and is an education officer at the British Museum. In 2010-11, she led a research project to examine the needs of museum professionals in East Africa for the British Museum Africa Programme. She is co-editing a volume of essays entitled Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience (forthcoming, Manchester University Press).

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Jaqueline Maingard Jacqueline Maingard is a senior lecturer in Film and Television Studies in the School of Arts, University of Bristol. She is the author of South African National Cinema and has published on African film and South African film in various volumes and international journals including the Journal of African Cultural Studies, the Journal of Southern African Studies and Screen. She directed the short film Uku Hamba ‘Ze – To Walk Naked (1995) commissioned for the first South African Biennale, which is distributed by Third World Newsreel. Her current research is on black cinema audiences in South Africa between the 1920s and 1960s. Before moving to Bristol, she was based at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town. John Masterson John Masterson is a lecturer in the Department of English Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He teaches postcolonial studies, critical theory, European and US literature. He has published chapters and articles on Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers and Nuruddin Farah. Forthcoming articles concern the work of Abdulrazak Gurnah and Kiran Desai, as well as an interview with Elleke Boehmer about her 2008 novel, Nile Baby. He is currently preparing a monograph for a publication entitled The Disorder of Things: A Comparative Approach to the Work of Nuruddin Farah. Frank Möller Frank Möller holds a PhD in Political Science and is currently a Research Fellow at the Tampere Peace Research Institute, University of Tampere, Finland. Möller specialises in the role and function of images in conflict and post-conflict situations. Recent articles have been published in such journals as Alternatives, Review of International Studies, Peace Review and Security Dialogue. Cara Moyer-Duncan Cara Moyer-Duncan is a Scholar-in-Residence at Emerson College where she teaches courses on African cinema, literature, and history. She holds

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a PhD in African Studies from Howard University, an Master’s degree in Africana Studies from Cornell University, and a BA in Sociology and Black Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was previously a Frederick Douglass Doctoral Scholar, a Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Foundation Fellow, and a Preparing Future Faculty Fellow. In 2008, she was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for African Studies while completing field research for her doctoral dissertation, “Projecting Nation? Cinema and the Creation of a National Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” She has authored papers on contemporary South African cinema for Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture and Directory of World Cinema: Africa. Albert O Oikelome Albert O Oikelome holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He obtained his Masters and PhD degrees in Ethnomusicology from the University of Ibadan. He has published several books and articles in local and international journals. Oikelome is an active member of numerous music associations at both national and international levels, such as the International Society of Music Education (ISME), Pan African Society of Musical Arts Education (PASMAE), and the International Association of Popular Music (IASPM). He is presently a senior lecturer in the Department of Creative Arts (Music Unit), University of Lagos, Nigeria. Chérie Rivers Chérie Rivers holds a BM in Film Scoring from the Berklee College of Music, an AM from Harvard University, and is a doctoral candidate in the departments of African and African American Studies and Music at Harvard University (completion 2012). She is also a composer whose music is performed internationally. Her work combines research and social engagement with a central focus on the power of art – specifically film and music – to initiate and mediate sustainable social change in conflict-ridden areas in the Great Lakes Region of Eastern Africa.

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Amy Schwartzott Amy Schwartzott is a PhD candidate in African Art History at the University of Florida where she holds an Alumni Fellowship. She is currently a Centre for Conflict Studies Research Fellow, 2011-2012. Her research investigates the diverse materiality and meaning of recyclia used by contemporary urban Mozambican artists. Amy’s investigation of Mozambican artists and their media builds upon her completion of one year of dissertation research with funding from a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Grant 2010-2011, in addition to previous trips to Mozambique, London, and Dakar. She has presented her ongoing research at several academic conferences, in the United States and internationally. At the University of Florida, Schwartzott has taught several classes inspired by her research, including African Popular Culture, Global Visual Culture and Non-Western Art. Nadine Siegert Nadine Siegert is vice-director at Iwalewa-Haus, the Africa Centre of the University of Bayreuth, and a PhD candidate at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS) with the project ‘(Re) Mapping Luanda - International art networks and local assertiveness in Angolan contemporary art production’. She studied cultural anthropology, philosophy and sociology at the University of Mainz, where she worked in the African music archive until 2008. At the University of Bayreuth she worked on various contemporary art-related research projects and has curated a number of exhibitions, mostly related to Angolan art. Rafiki Ubaldo Rafiki Ubaldo is a survivor of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. He is a photojournalist and independent scholar of genocide studies. He has spoken extensively on the genocide in Rwanda at various conferences and seminars in Europe. Ubaldo has advocated and campaigned for the study of genocide and prevention in Rwanda and has served as an advisor for the implementation of the newly created Master’s programme in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the National University of Rwanda. He is the co-editor (with Samuel Totten) of We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.

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Stefanie Van de Peer Stefanie Van de Peer is Senior Research Fellow at the Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton, and Co-Director of the Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival. She received her PhD from the University of Stirling in Scotland, where her research focused on filmmaking in the Middle East and North Africa. She was a Research Fellow at the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center in Massachusetts, where she also worked on women in cinema, has published on Tunisian, Egyptian, Moroccan, Syrian and Lebanese women’s films and also programmed films for the Middle Eastern Film Festival in Edinburgh, the REEL festival in Damascus and Beirut and the Boston Palestine Film Festival.

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FOREWORD Jacqueline Maingard

Art and Trauma in Africa is a collection of scholarly contributions on conflict, trauma and reconciliation, and examples of various art forms representing these in a pan-African context. It has been developed by Lizelle Bisschoff and Stefanie Van de Peer, two enterprising scholars who are also the co-directors of the Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival. In 2009 they took as the theme of the symposium attached to the festival ‘Realities and Representations of Trauma and Reconciliation in Africa’, which drew a wide range of contributions primarily from early scholars. Many of these contributions are represented in this volume, which makes it an especially remarkable publication coming from scholars who will be leaders in their fields in the future. The festival itself screened a large number of films dealing with atrocities, trauma and reconciliation, including the documentary Between Joyce and Remembrance (2003), which I discuss in this foreword. The screening of the documentary had a profound impact on audience members and a panel discussion with the audience afterwards, in which I participated alongside a trauma counsellor, allowed spectators to engage with the traumatic contents of the film. This is one example that demonstrates the importance for the general public, Western and otherwise, of interacting with African

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works of art, including those depicting complex and challenging themes. Indeed, the Africa in Motion Film Festival has become an especially important platform for African cinema in the UK, bringing films to British audiences that they would not otherwise be able to see. Africa in Motion’s work on drawing attention to reconciliation through film at the 2009 festival, in the context of the United Nations’ International Year of Reconciliation, was internationally recognised through an award received from the Foundation for Subjective Experience and Research (S.E.R. Foundation) in June 2010. This followed the S.E.R. Foundation’s presentation of a report on the festival to the UN Secretary General in January 2010, which described it as an ‘outstanding project’ because of its emphasis on ‘the need for reconciliation and the necessary steps for its realisation to be taken in order to improve conditions and build bridges leading to a better mutual understanding, and thus creating a basis for sustainable peace’.1 This volume extends this aim further through a wide range of discussions that include not only African film, but also African music, visual arts and literature. In 1966 at a colloquium on ‘The Crisis Character of Modern Society’ Hannah Arendt cautioned that: Particular questions must receive particular answers; and if the series of crises in which we have lived since the beginning of the century can teach us anything at all, it is, I think, the simple fact that there are no general standards to determine our judgments unfailingly, no general rules under which to subsume the particular cases with any degree of certainty.2 While Arendt’s perspective has been much debated, in the present context it is a salutary reminder of the importance of understanding the specific circumstances of the atrocities about which we speak and that we seek to understand, both as events in history and through their representation in film, literature, music, photography and visual art. The scholarly works collected here are just such a contribution, where the specificities both of trauma and the art that represents it are given scholarly description and scrutiny.

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In her opening presentation of the Africa in Motion Film Festival in 2009, Lizelle Bisschoff, AiM’s founder and co-director, proposed that ‘the arts can and do fill the gaps left and made by official histories’. Indeed, artists – including filmmakers, musicians, writers and visual artists – reveal and interpret the contexts of our lives in the details of their works. They often present and represent what otherwise cannot always be seen, heard or spoken of, especially in times of repression and civil conflicts or war. In this Foreword, and as a scholar primarily of film, I highlight a few examples drawn from films that assume this task of representing atrocities. In doing so I elaborate some thoughts on representations that reveal the subjective worlds of survivors and victims of atrocities, which is arguably key to the particularities that Arendt entreats us to seek. In the light of this volume’s focus on reconciliation, inevitably linked with notions of truth, it is sobering first to consider some statistics about truth commissions in relation to Africa as a whole. According to Priscilla Hayner there have been 40 truth commissions in the world and of these nearly one third have been in African countries. The majority were established in the last 15 years.3 This quantifies the extent to which questions of truth and reconciliation have been centrally significant in Africa in relation to the rest of the world, underlining the importance of this volume on the atrocities that have given rise to them. In the first decade of the twenty-first century we have seen the production of a number of feature films that deal with the subject of atrocities in Africa, including Hotel Rwanda (2005) and Shooting Dogs (2005), both describing the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994. Other films have focused on wars in other parts of the continent. Ezra (2007) is located in Sierra Leone during the civil war in the 1990s. Johnny Mad Dog (2008) is located in Liberia during the civil war that started in 1999. Both these films focus on child soldiers and ascribe to them a sense of subjectivity by engaging their points of view. Stories of child soldiers have not been limited to films however. In Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), the novel by award-winning Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the child Ugwu is abducted and forced to be a soldier for rebel fighters in the Nigeria-Biafra war, 1967–1970.

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Adichie also works with subjective point of view, exemplified in the following extract that achieves a visceral sense of the boy’s experience of war: There were more operations. Ugwu’s fear sometimes overwhelmed him, froze him. He unwrapped his mind from his body, separated the two, while he lay in the trench, pressing himself into the mud, luxuriating in how close and connected he was to the mud. The ka-ka-ka of shooting, the cries of men, the smell of death, the blasts of explosions above and around him were distant. But back at the camp his memory became clear; he remembered the man who placed both his hands on his blown-open belly as though to hold his intestines in, the one who mumbled something about his son before he stiffened. And, after each operation, everything became new. Ugwu looked at his daily wrap of garri in wonder. He read pages of his book over and over. He touched his own skin and thought of its decay.4 This embodiment of subjective point of view is an especially important feature of art that blurs or transcends boundaries of fiction and documentary and that therefore has a claim on lived realities. Audiences, viewers or readers thus become witnesses to atrocities in ways that formally construct their responses. The media activist organisation Witness is described as ‘us[ing] video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations’.5 It documents and exposes atrocities perpetrated across the globe. The short documentary A Duty to Protect: Justice for Child Soldiers in the DRC (2005) describes the experience of child soldiers ‘remobilised’ through the work of AJEDI-Ka, a Child Soldier Project in Uvira, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The documentary primarily adopts the formal conventions of the observational and interactive documentary at the same time as it advocates forms of action against the recruitment of child soldiers and in finding solutions.6 It opens with the voice-over narration of AJEDI-Ka’s director, Bukeni Waruzi, who provides some statistics of child soldiers in the DRC. Rather than retaining a strictly interactive style where an on-screen

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interviewer questions interviewees, however, the image cuts directly to the child soldier named Mafille, who speaks to the camera about her experience and thus directly to the audience. A further testimony from a young woman called January describes her personal experience of joining the army. While the documentary is broadly conventional, these first-person testimonies give a significantly subjective aura to the overall account of the recruitment, training and use of child (‘girl’) soldiers, as well as to their sexual exploitation. This subjective effect is the key element I focus on in the following discussion of the South African documentary film Between Joyce and Remembrance that relates to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) but is arguably an exposition extending far beyond it. Directed by Mark Kaplan, Between Joyce and Remembrance is about political activist Siphiwo Mtimkulu, who disappeared in 1982 at the age of 22. The ‘Joyce’ of the title refers to his mother, Joyce Mtimkulu, and ‘Remembrance’ to the English translation of the name of his son, Sikhumbuzo. An African National Congress (ANC) activist, Siphiwo Mtimkulu was detained by the security police in 1981 and subsequently tortured in prison. When he was released he filed an application to sue the Minister of Police. After spending a few months in hospital where it was discovered he was suffering from thallium poisoning, he filed a second application, adding the accusation of poisoning. About two weeks before his case was due to be heard, he mysteriously disappeared along with fellow activist Topsy Madaka. The car in which they had been travelling was found abandoned close to the Lesotho border. Fourteen years later, in 1996, it was revealed through the TRC that Mtimkulu had been abducted and assassinated by apartheid police in 1982. The car had been purposefully placed at the border to suggest that he and Madaka had crossed it to join Umkhonto we Sizwe (‘Spear of the Nation’), the armed wing of the ANC. When the case came before the TRC in 1996, Mtimkulu’s assassins successfully gained a court interdict that prevented the family from testifying at the hearings and naming those they believed to be implicated in his disappearance. But these legalities were finally overcome and Joyce Mtimkulu was eventually able to testify. The perpetrators applied for amnesty at the eleventh hour, just 48 hours short of the deadline, which brought

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the case before the TRC and allowed the family to hear the disclosures of Siphiwo Mtimkulu’s assassination. The film recreates Mtimkulu’s individual life and story in the context of the heinous crimes against humanity committed under apartheid. Indeed, its meanings hinge on this interrelationship between the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. In this regard, Bill Nichols’s work on documentary film and its ideologically-rooted, rhetorical relationship with the viewer becomes pertinent. He poses the following critical question: ‘What structure might documentaries have that will conjure or restore for the viewer those orders of magnitude appropriate to the full dimensionality of the world in which we live and those who inhabit it?’7 In other words, how can documentary defy the miniaturising effect of reducing complex political issues to the flat twodimensionality of the film screen? This is not so much an aesthetic question as one of ideology and rhetoric that calls into play the potential for praxis. Nichols’s example is the film Roses in December (1982) and its representation of the body of Jean Donovan, a lay woman who was tortured, raped and murdered in El Salvador by a military death squad, alongside three nuns with whom she was working. His example thus has some similarities with Between Joyce and Remembrance. Nichols formulates a detailed argument on the ‘work’ of documentary that invokes ‘full dimensionality’. This relates to how the viewer or ‘witness’ is ideologically situated by the film, that is how she/he is sutured or ‘stitched in’ to the film’s rhetoric, and how it invokes the rhetorical ‘n’est-ce pas?’ or ‘don’t you agree?’ question. This becomes problematic when the body is absent and the documentary has to ‘present its central character as a structuring absence’,8 a condition that pertains to both Roses in December and Between Joyce and Remembrance. These films repeatedly raise the question of the visibility/invisibility of documentary evidence, a dyad that Michael Chanan explores in ‘Filming “the invisible”’,9 extending Nichols’s earlier work. It relates to Between Joyce and Remembrance in two primary ways: firstly, it facilitates a discussion of the body/character of Siphiwo Mtimkulu as being ‘invisible’ in ‘real’ terms, and how this came about, at the same time as he is rendered ‘visible’ in documentary terms, and what the effects of this are; and secondly, it suggests a way of unlocking the broader

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questions about power and authority that are embedded within the dynamics between Mtimkulu’s assassins and his family and how these represent the personal/political ruptures between apartheid and postapartheid South Africa. Between Joyce and Remembrance is an example of how documentary can make visible the invisible. It remembers those bodies made absent by apartheid and simultaneously reminds us of those magnitudes that are ‘behind and beyond the image’.10 Most crucially it records the systemic and systematic obliteration that apartheid hegemony exacted upon those who opposed it, and thus enacts a trial of apartheid itself. In doing so it also raises the question of the viewer as ‘rhetorical witness’,11 and how art in its broadest sense can remind us of the need for praxis in the historical realities of the world in which we live. Given that the visibility of the invisible subject plays a crucial part in the positioning of the ‘rhetorical witness’, I also want to focus on how the film reconstructs the character of Siphiwo Mtimkulu and how it creates mechanisms for subjective identification with this ‘absent’ character. The filmmaker achieves this by inserting dramatic reconstructions from Mtimkulu’s point of view, using his legal affidavits as the script. These are interspersed throughout the film, the register shifting each time to a sepia-toned, impressionistic and artistic representation. Sometimes these are momentary glimpses of Mtimkulu’s experience to illustrate a point, other times a more detailed exposition of the torture he endured. These dramatic reconstructions present Mtimkulu’s words as a first-person narrative in the voice-over, illustrated by the images accompanying it. The camera watches as his torturers force his head under water, the image dropping beneath its surface as his head is pushed and held under. This dramatic embodiment of torture, with the camera as witness alongside, engages our empathetic alignment with the horror of his experience. At the same time, the consciousness of the shift in aesthetic in these dramatic inserts, as against the rest of the film, breaks the boundaries of documentary realism by creating poetic, artistic abstractions of reality. This is exemplified in the form of the water that fills the bath and overflows, or the recurring image of the turning fan. The objective, iconic elements of this horrific, traumatic space are highlighted as a

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gallery of individual punctums, to invoke Roland Barthes’s term for elements of a photograph that ‘wound’, ‘bruise’, and ‘prick’,12 and these become emblematic in their own right. A central feature of the film is the relationship between Gideon Niewoudt, one of Mtimkulu’s assassins, and the Mtimkulu family. Niewoudt was responsible for a number of apartheid atrocities, including the death of Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness leader brutally tortured and murdered while in police custody in 1977. He also assassinated three activists from the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation, known as the Pebco 3, as well as four security policemen in the Motherwell bombing. For this last crime he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. For the others he met the conditions for amnesty defined by the legislation governing the TRC, namely that the killing had a ‘political objective’ and that the perpetrators should make a ‘full disclosure’ of their role in the killing.13 In relation specifically to the

From Biko Series (1980). Photograph: Courtesy of Paul Stopforth.

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Elegy (1981). Photograph: Courtesy of Paul Stopforth.

Mtimkulus, Niewoudt claimed to have had a religious conversion and asked Kaplan, the filmmaker, to arrange a meeting with the family to ask their forgiveness, which he agreed could be filmed. Since Niewoudt was involved in the assassinations of both Biko and Mtimkulu, it is appropriate here to refer to the work of the artist Paul Stopforth that interprets Biko’s interrogation, torture and death. Stopforth created a number of works following Biko’s death, including The Interrogators (1979), Biko Series (1980) and Elegy (1981). The later works are representations of Biko’s body. In Biko Series Stopforth creates icons of parts of Biko’s body based on the findings of the postmortem and inquest following his death. These ‘portraits’ of his limbs expose the damage to his body in ways that invoke the metallic gloss of x-rays and the precision of medical science, providing an indisputable claim to ‘the real’ and to truth, albeit in artistic form. In Elegy (1981) Stopforth encapsulates Biko’s heroic status by drafting his tortured body full-length onto a grey slab that rests on a red cloth almost covering the full frame. But prior to these works Stopforth created The Interrogators, which relates specifically to the present discussion. In this work,

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The Interrogators (1979). Photograph: Courtesy of Paul Stopforth.

three faces of Biko’s interrogators dominate the work, ‘like a trio of oversized Orwellian television screens’.14 The form of a small chair poised alongside all three as a ‘shadow’ and linking them together, re-presents how for Stopforth ‘the most mundane objects can take on frightening connotations in prisons and interrogation spaces’.15 The dominance of iconic objects in Kaplan’s dramatic reconstructions in Between Joyce and Remembrance – the fan, the table, the chair – thus refer back to Stopforth’s evocative imagery and the wider contexts and examples of Niewoudt’s notoriety as an apartheid assassin. These images can be seen then as illustrating the ‘banality of evil’, Arendt’s

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chilling description of Holocaust perpetrators of atrocities against humanity.16 Returning to Between Joyce and Remembrance we might note that just as documentary can miniaturise the sense of the ‘full dimensionality’ of our worlds, so too can it be reduced to the ideological limits of the events it portrays. Between Joyce and Remembrance works against this form of miniaturisation by extending its investigation beyond the confines of the proceedings of the TRC. The visit Niewoudt makes to the family to ask for forgiveness, filmed by Kaplan, takes on a deep significance beyond the TRC. Where in the TRC hearings there are mechanisms and protocols in place to support the survivors of atrocities committed against them or their family members, here in their domestic space there are no such frameworks. This creates an already raw edge to the documentary as the camera follows Niewoudt’s arrival at their home. Once inside, this edgy tension erupts explosively when Mtimkulu’s teenage son, Sikhumbuzo, impulsively grabs a vase and smashes it on Niewoudt’s head. We learn later that his skull is fractured, but not fatally so. The film pushes through the limited boundaries of the socially and politically legitimised TRC by becoming a kind of trial in itself, where Sikhumbuzo exacts his own punishment. When the family is finally able to conduct a funeral for their son and father, all that remains to bury is a few pieces of hair collected by a family friend that had fallen on his pillow after he was poisoned (a symptom of thallium poisoning). Famously, at the TRC hearings Joyce lifted her fist clutching her son’s hair in a combined freedom salute and defiant ‘proof’ of her son’s poisoning, as well as a statement of her need for the truth to be revealed. By the end of the film, many years after the TRC hearings, we hear how the family’s problems have increased. Joyce and her husband Sipho have aged and their health is failing. She has pains in her joints and he has lost the ability to speak. This knowledge and Sipho’s silent tears at the graveside become a painfully ironic inversion of his previously powerful vocalisation to Niewoudt that he will not find them saying sorry: ‘No sorry here’, he says. The funeral scenes where Mtimkulu’s son and daughter bury the only remaining parts of his body in a miniature coffin are filled with an indescribable, unforgettable pathos and poignancy. But in the

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light of the film’s representational strategies that embody Mtimkulu’s life and particularly his imprisonment, the emotional closure that the funeral brings, in tandem with the film’s closure, does not foreclose historical reality. The engagement with the subjectivity of characters exposed to human atrocities is a key aspect of another film made in South Africa, Zulu Love Letter (2004), to which I will briefly pay some attention.

Poster for Between Joyce and Remembrance (2003). Courtesy of Mark Kaplan.

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I have explored elsewhere this film’s comparatively extraordinary contribution in relation to the cluster of feature films that followed from the proceedings of the TRC.17 Not unlike the dramatic reconstructions in Between Joyce and Remembrance, Zulu Love Letter incorporates a series of flashbacks that represent the posttraumatic subjective memories of the film’s chief character Thandeka. As a journalist in the 1980s, Thandeka had witnessed the assassination of young activist Dineo, which the film replays in flashbacks from Thandeka’s point of view. Described as ‘interludes’ by the screenwriter Bhekizizwe Peterson, these shift aesthetically each time they appear through both visual and aural distortions.18 As in Between Joyce and Remembrance, the repetition of specific iconic elements in each interlude provides a set of punctums: the close-up on the wheel of the car crunching into the gravel, the flap of the corner of the assassin’s long coat, the gun in his hand, the church, Dineo’s defiant shout, her fist in the air, the sound of the shot that kills her. The film plots Thandeka’s attempt to come to terms with her past, including her own detention and torture and the horrific assassination

Zulu Love Letter (2004). Photograph: Courtesy of Natives at Large and JBA Production. Photographer: Tucha Basto.

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of her photographer friend Michael. This is also presented as a flashback, although it is not clear that Thandeka in effect witnessed it. This assassination repeats the form of many of the accounts of atrocities committed by apartheid hit squads, where the perpetrators enjoy an outdoor barbecue while their victims lie dying or dead. In My Traitor’s Heart Rian Malan describes just such an instance in his account of the horrific torture and murder of a black man, Dennis Moshweshwe, who is chained to the back of a truck in the burning sun, while his assassins barbecue in the background.19 Ultimately Zulu Love Letter draws Thandeka towards her own healing from the emotional wounds she carries when in the film’s final interlude it becomes clear that deep in her psyche she holds herself responsible for Dineo’s assassination. This is realised through Thandeka’s nightmare that, for the viewer, appears as if it is a flashback like the others. This time, however, the plot within it shifts even as the iconic punctums remain the same. In this interlude Thandeka is driving Dineo, who gets out of the car and runs away. Thandeka calls to Dineo but she keeps running, chased by the assassin who then shoots her. This time, however, as Dineo falls, her eyeline matches that of Thandeka and the film thus creates a gaze between the two. Moreover, the gaze from Dineo towards Thandeka is represented directly to the camera and thus not only is Thandeka helplessly implicated in Dineo’s death but so is the audience. By directly engaging audiences and thereby inviting a personal response to Dineo’s assassination, the experience of viewing the film is invested with a glimpse of the ‘full dimensionality’ of apartheid assassinations and their contexts. I hope to have shown that art watches, remembers and interprets for us. It can facilitate expressions of loss and mourning; it can remind us of the untruthfulness of claims to truth and the infinite nature of searching for it at all; it can warn us of the inevitability of testimony’s patchy fumblings through the fractures and fragments of pain and trauma; but it can also help us to look, to see, to hear, if not to act. Before we become too idealistic, however, it would be wise to heed the words of Michael Renov that ‘in the face of staggering, epochal loss, art can only hope to signify the limits of its healing powers’.20 The examples presented throughout this volume, and that I have portrayed

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here, remind us how much ‘working through’ trauma and the ‘work’ of reconciliation and healing are limited always by the excesses of the atrocities and violations we seek to transcend.

Notes 1. Cook, Gillian, ‘AiM wins award from UN’, 18 June 2010, http://www.filmandfestivals.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1168: aim-wins-award-from-un&catid=106:industry-news&Itemid=113, accessed 4 June 2011. 2. Arendt, Hannah, Responsibility and Judgment (New York, 2003), p.vii. 3. Hayner, Priscilla B, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (Oxon and New York, 2011), pp.xi-xii. 4. Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, Half of a Yellow Sun (London, 2007), pp.365–366. 5. See: www.witness.org. 6. For detailed discussion of these and other modes of documentary see Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991), pp.32–75. 7. Nichols: Representing Reality, p.230. 8. Nichols, Bill, ‘History, myth, and narrative in documentary’, Film Quarterly vol.41, no.1 (1987), p.11. 9. Chanan, Michael, ‘Filming “the invisible”’, in Thomas Austin and Wilma de Jong (eds), Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices (Berkshire, 2008), pp.121–132. 10. Chanan: ‘Filming “the invisible”’, p.132. 11. For a useful discussion on ‘rhetorical witnessing’ see Hesford, Wendy S, ‘Documenting violations: Rhetorical witnessing and the spectacle of distant suffering’, Biography vol.27, no.1 (2004), pp.104–144. 12. Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida (London, 1993), pp.26–27. 13. In the ‘9th Victoria and Griffiths Mxenge Memorial Lecture’ on 13 April 2011, the comments on amnesty made by Zak Yacoob, Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, put a fresh light on Niewoudt’s delaying tactics and his subsequent attempt at getting the family’s forgiveness. Yacoob said: ‘The sub-text of modern amnesty discourse seems to suggest [. . .] that there has been a certain equalisation between the forces of oppression and the forces of resistance. The thesis that emerges is apparently that

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14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

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both sides in the struggle, the oppressor and the valiant participants in the struggle, were both guilty of unlawful conduct during that struggle. It was therefore appropriate, so the thinking goes, to ensure that the perpetrators of unlawful conduct on both sides should be granted amnesty as a matter of fairness.’ Yacoob went on to ‘disagree fundamentally’. While the TRC’s emphasis was on ‘full disclosure’, which arguably went some distance in revealing to families of victims what had happened to the remains of their loved ones, as Yacoob confirms the perpetrators ‘were significantly not required to commit themselves to reconciliation . . .’, http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/9th-victoria-and-griffiths-mxenge-memorial-lecture-justice-zack-yacoob/, accessed 7 June 2011. Williamson, Sue, Resistance Art in South Africa (Cape Town, 2004), p.112. Paul Stopforth quoted in Williamson, Resistance Art, p.112. See Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil (New York, 1963). See Maingard, Jacqueline, ‘Love, loss, memory and truth’ in Bhekizizwe Peterson and Ramadan Suleman, Zulu Love Letter: A Screenplay (Johannesburg, 2009), pp.5–17. Peterson, Bhekizizwe, ‘Writer’s statement: trauma, art and healing’ in Bhekizizwe Peterson and Ramadan Suleman, Zulu Love Letter: A Screenplay, p.22. Malan, Rian, My Traitor’s Heart (London, 1991), pp.131–139. Renov, Michael, The Subject of Documentary (Minneapolis, 2004), p.120.

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INTRODUCTION

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REPRESENTING THE UNREPRESENTABLE Lizelle Bisschoff and Stefanie Van de Peer

We recall our terrible past so that we can deal with it, forgiving where forgiveness is necessary - but not forgetting. By remembering, we can ensure that never again will such inhumanity tear us apart. Nelson Mandela1 Nelson Mandela cannot be neglected in a volume that takes as its title Art and Trauma in Africa. Mandela has become an enormously powerful symbol of reconciliation in South Africa specifically, for Africa more widely and for the world generally. He is loved and admired the world over, and embodies the stubborn belief in reciprocal forgiveness between powers that committed past atrocities. His involvement in commemorations, music festivals and political reconciliatory events has almost transformed his persona into a tangible work of art itself. One of the editors of this volume is white South African. She grew up in apartheid South Africa and spent her youth questioning it while witnessing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on television. The other editor of this volume is Belgian and grew up ignorant about Belgium’s role in the devastation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Until she read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad when she was nineteen, she was – just like all the other young students in her university – ignorant of the atrocities committed in the heart of

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Africa. Our combined interest in African art and reconciliation then stems from a personal struggle with our own pasts and our heartfelt responsibilities as academics and festival organisers to dispense knowledge and awareness. Lizelle Bisschoff founded the Africa in Motion Film Festival in Edinburgh in 2006, when she started her academic career, precisely in order to share with an audience art from Africa and the diversity within this vast continent. Stefanie Van de Peer joined her in Edinburgh in 2007 for the same reasons. It is our firm belief that art has much more to offer than aesthetic pleasure or entertainment. Art has a task, and we believe in its power to engage people in a shared experience. With this volume we hope to illustrate that a wider community of academics share these beliefs and we aim to engage ever more people with art that is inspired by and produced in countries where people optimistically believe in a conciliatory and peaceful future. In 1955 Theodor Adorno stated ‘to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric’, implying that it is impossible to create art after such an atrocity.2 Adorno argued that after the horror of the Holocaust, the critique of culture has reached a dead end in confronting the dialectic of culture and barbarism. This quote has often been used to express the challenges one is faced with when attempting to (artistically or otherwise) represent immense individual and societal trauma and atrocity, sometimes described as ‘unrepresentable’. Indeed, the complex experience of remembering and recalling trauma as well as the seemingly unrepresentable and unimaginable nature of personal and collective trauma have permeated trauma studies since its inception. The seeming paradox between creative representation and the reality of horrific events such as genocide presents challenges for the relationship between ethics, poetics and politics. There is certainly an ethical responsibility embedded in an artist’s decision to tackle such a subject, particularly if the event has happened relatively recently with many victims and survivors still struggling to cope with the pain and trauma of their experiences. One just needs to think of how long it took filmmakers and novelists to attempt fictional representations of the Holocaust as confirmation of the complex nature of such an undertaking. However, there seems to be a general consensus in trauma

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studies that remembering and representation are important steps in working through traumatic experiences, and that these could even serve as preventative tools for the future, as Nelson Mandela expressed so eloquently in the quote at the beginning of this chapter. E Ann Kaplan confirms the necessity of representation through stating that an emphasis on the singularity and the unrepresentable character of trauma may push trauma ‘into the mystified circle of the occult, something untouchable and unreachable’.3 Rather, she states, the representation of trauma could transform the viewer into the position of being a witness, opening up a space for emphatic identification without vicarious traumatisation, ‘an identification which allows the spectator to enter into the victim’s experience through a work’s narration’.4 However, the creative representation and aestheticisation of trauma and the reception of such creative works are very complex, in particular when considering representations of African trauma and conflict created outside the continent, through global news networks, popular media and cultural industries. Many representations of African conflicts by non-Africans, for example mainstream Hollywood films using African atrocities as a backdrop, have not been useful in creating multi-faceted views of the continent. Rather, they have led to the desensitisation of viewers, promoting voyeurism and a type of ‘atrocity tourism’, both real (for example through physically visiting memorial sites) and imaginary (through reading news articles on Africa or watching documentary news footage on television). Susan Sontag has addressed these limitations in truly experiencing and understanding ‘the pain of others’, with reference to photography. She considered how successful the representation of trauma could be in invoking sympathy and solidarity in observers.5 As many of the chapters in the volume affirm, her work forms a useful starting point for addressing these complex issues. The typical and pervasive Western kind of one-dimensional engagement with Africa runs the risk of flattening the perception of Africa into a single narrative of war, corruption and devastation. In this volume we are specifically concerned with the diversity of indigenous artistic representations of conflict and reconciliation in Africa, rather than perpetuating a simplistic image of Africa as a war-torn, troubled

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continent. We regard it as crucial that scope should be given to the representations of African artists who create their own interpretations of their pasts and visions for the future. For an international audience, such representations could lead to a more nuanced and complex view of this vast and diverse continent, as well as a deeper understanding of conflict and empathy with victims worldwide. For the African audience, these representations could contribute to working through trauma, ultimately enabling forgiveness, reconciliation and healing. We acknowledge that there are many obstacles – economic, literary and otherwise – preventing grassroots African audiences from engaging with indigenous artistic representations and thus limiting their potential power. However, we affirm the importance of and need for African agents and representatives to rewrite and revise official historical accounts and mainstream perspectives emanating from the West. African artists are filling in the gaps left by official histories through creating alternative representations that challenge the master narratives of international media and politics. The extent to which creative texts succeed in ‘representing the unrepresentable’, and engage with, interpret, depict and comment on African trauma in order to ultimately aid understanding, tolerance and reconciliation forms the basis of this volume.

Origins of the volume The inspiration for this volume on trauma and reconciliation and its representation in African arts grew out of the Africa in Motion Film Festival and an accompanying academic symposium.6 In 2009 the festival took as its main theme representations of trauma and reconciliation in a pan-African context, in the framework of the United Nations’ International Year of Reconciliation. The symposium offered a forum for academics from around the world to present their research on the artistic representation and treatment of conflict, trauma and reconciliation in Africa. We realised the urgency of a volume such as this one, as the chapters offered new insights into the worldwide academic work dealing with contentious and challenging issues such as trauma and reconciliation

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in war-torn and conflict-ridden countries in Africa, and the many creative ways in which African artists engage and deal with postcolonial atrocities. The creative output addressed in the research not only reflects the memories and social identities of the artists and their societies, but also offers a mirror to African and worldwide audiences grappling and coming to terms with a collective memory that can at times be extremely challenging and traumatic in itself. The scope of the chapters delineates an interest in a wide range of issues such as genocide, war and inter-ethnic conflict, rape as weapon of war, memorialisation, and truth commissions. The variety of research projects also demonstrates that different art forms deal with these difficult issues in different ways, and that this type of research generally explores the possibilities within African art to regenerate resilience, hope and reconciliation in the aftermath of atrocities.

Conflict and trauma in Africa Most African countries have had a troubled and violent colonial and postcolonial experience. Although some of the chapters in this volume address the origins of conflict, it is not within the scope of this volume to fully examine the causes and effects of the conflicts and atrocities on the continent. Furthermore, we would argue that mainstream media representations of African histories have not done justice to the multi-dimensional realities on the continent, nor has Africa received a fair or balanced share of global media representation. Stereotypically, Africa is home to the perpetrators and the victims of wars between nations, civil wars and ethnic conflicts within nations, colonial wars and liberation struggles in the quest for independence, secessionist and separatist conflicts, and significant episodes of atrocity such as riots, massacres and genocides. The effects of these conflicts, including hardship, poverty, displacement, exploitation, murder, torture, rape and disappearances are too numerous to catalogue comprehensively. Rather more positive and constructive is the evidence of African nations dealing with their traumatic pasts on individual and societal levels through, for example, the establishment of truth commissions and other processes intended to contribute to attempts at truth-seeking,

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justice, understanding, tolerance and reconciliation. In an updated version published in 2011 of Priscilla B Hayner’s seminal work on truth commissions, she lists 14 of the 40 truth commissions worldwide as having been established in Africa.7 Although these truth commissions have had varying success and impact, as demonstrated in some of the chapters in this volume, the role of truth commissions in facilitating forgiveness and reconciliation should not be underestimated. Giving victims and survivors a public platform for testimony and recollection, and offering perpetrators an opportunity for confession and remorse, are important steps towards reconciliation and forgiveness. Without denying the need for legally justifiable punitive and retributive justice, truth commissions are generally created from the firm precept that violent retribution and revenge are neither favourable nor effective; continuing the cycle of violence is not a sustainable or productive solution to Africa’s conflicts. As the discussions in this volume show, African artists are contributing to these processes of reinterpreting the violent past in order to establish a more peaceful, secure future.

Trauma, art and memory A number of recent novels, films and other forms of art have sought to represent in varying ways the traumas of conflict and war in postcolonial Africa and the attempts of national commissions and other endeavours to facilitate peace, truth, justice and forgiveness. The academic work that is being done in these areas is equally challenging. To study trauma, conflict and reconciliation in a pan-African context offers new perspectives on a continent that is often misrepresented and under constant scrutiny from the Western media and its political discourse. New ways of representing the reconciliatory attempts going on in different African countries inspire the world to believe in a positive and progressive future for Africans, dictated by their own artists and representatives. We believe that it is this hope and optimism for the future that is remarkable in African arts, and in the ways it deals with the atrocities of the past. The academic interest surrounding trauma studies moreover seems to focus predominantly on Holocaust studies, its literature and its

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politics. While this is obviously essential, we argue that this focus could be broadened to include African arts and African efforts of dealing with individual and societal conflicts and traumas. Previous publications on representations of reconciliation and trauma in Africa primarily focus on sexual abuse, childhood traumas, and psychological/psychoanalytical studies, but not on the arts. It would appear that most studies on art and trauma remain focused on the global North, and the West more specifically. Often the specific contexts as well as the more generalised assumptions of these intellectual works deny African arts their uniqueness and neglect other, non-Western approaches to the arts in trauma studies.8 Psychoanalysis has been employed widely to critique art and literature and to analyse claims to representation of atrocities and traumatic memories. The analysis of traumatic events in art brings together various fields of study in an effort to grasp an essentially incomprehensible phenomenon. This volume offers an incentive for more well-placed academics to explore a new direction in trauma studies in a postcolonial African context. While it is beyond the scope of this book, we regard it useful to provide a non-exhaustive overview of the major trends in trauma studies and art. From Freud over Caruth to Kaplan, we acknowledge that trauma studies is a predominantly Eurocentric/ American discipline that has grown from being decidedly patriarchal to become inclusive of feminist issues as well. This book is an effort to transnationally explore the possibilities of these theorists’ findings. Nevertheless, as Kaplan acknowledges, more substantial research is needed in this area. The first psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, was intrigued by traumatic experiences. Harold Bloom notes that ‘Freud’s peculiar strength was to say what could not be said, or at least to attempt to say it, thus refusing to be silent in the face of the unsayable’.9 The reason why trauma is perceived as unsayable is precisely because of the basic principle Freud stuck with: the pleasure principle. This principle posits that everything in the human psyche aims to avoid unpleasure and procure pleasure. For Freud, dreams illustrate this: they are the psychic fulfilments of an unconscious wish; they strive to obtain pleasure for the psyche without necessarily disturbing reality. However, the

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non-communicable nature of trauma forced Freud to revise his reasoning on the subject several times, because it contradicted his entire hypothesis on the human psyche. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, as the title implies, Freud challenged his own emphasis on the pleasure principle. Freud noticed the repetition of a traumatic event in the dreams of World War I survivors. This contradicted the pleasure principle. The traumatic dream moreover occurs entirely against the will of the one who is dreaming.10 Freud stated that the unexpected nature of the trauma unbalances the psyche. The psyche instinctively strives towards mastery of this crisis and does so through the repetition-compulsion, which is precisely the peculiarity that originally challenged Freud’s notion of the pleasure principle. The mastery of this crisis is established through the presence of anxiety. Freud realised in Moses and Monotheism (1939) that trauma cannot be captured within one single event of the past. He accentuated the period of latency that is situated between the actual traumatic event and the subsequent recurrence of the trauma in the form of inexplicable symptoms. This interval of seeming normality was crucial for the development of the trauma and its implied consequences. The traumatic event was at first repressed and subsequently reappeared through associative chains.11 From the 1980s onward, the domain of trauma theory began to develop more widely and was used extensively in art and literature studies. Cathy Caruth renewed Freud’s conception of traumatic experience. She did not reject his theory, but accentuated certain issues. Caruth claims that the pathology of traumatic experience should not be defined by the event itself or the distortion of that event, but by the structure of its experience.12 Like Freud, she acknowledges the period of latency of the traumatic experience, but situates it within the traumatic event itself, while it occurs.13 Caruth situates latency in the accident. There is injury during the accident, but it is not registered consciously. Caruth prolongs the period of latency and adds that the victim was not fully conscious. By placing the start of the latency period within the traumatic encounter, trauma is redefined: trauma is ‘the way [in which] it was precisely not known in the first instance – [and] returns to haunt the survivor later on’.14 Trauma is

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a temporal delay that carries the individual beyond the shock of the first moment. In her book Trauma Culture, E Ann Kaplan points out that many theorists in the humanities since Caruth have chosen the dissociation route for trauma analysis. By this she means that these psychoanalytical theories came at a time when postmodernism and deconstructionism were popular in the arts and humanities, where it was claimed that trauma had affect but no meaning. Kaplan argues however that one can indeed choose a meaningful discourse to share the experience of a traumatic event. Contrary to Caruth’s insistence on the unspeakable and the unrepresentable, Kaplan argues that firstly, telling the story of a trauma may achieve a working through for the victim, however limited or weak. Secondly, she contends, the telling of a trauma permits an empathic sharing that moves both teller (traumatised) and receiver (vicariously traumatised) forward.15 Both these ideas are most useful for the purposes of this volume. We, too, insist on the possibility of representing trauma in a way that leads to reconciliation. Trauma, in whatever context, is both an individual and a communal experience. In the pan-African context of this volume, trauma refers specifically to the collective experience of violence such as colonisation, genocide, war and repression. But these collective traumas are also, and very significantly, experienced on the level of the individual. Kaplan not only acknowledges the agency of the victim and his or her testimony, but also of the receiver of the story, through whatever means. While the artist may or may not be the direct victim of the trauma, he or she is the mediator through which the spectator is enabled to become part of or share the collective trauma and the commemoration. The link between the collective and the individual experience of trauma is highly important, as the expression of the individual through art becomes available to the collective commemoration and reconciliation. The accessibility of art and its availability will in turn evoke diverse reactions in spectators/listeners/readers. Ultimately, it is the empathy between the individual and the collective that will connect the subjectivity with its wider significance. This empathy is precisely what constitutes the ideal of reconciliation: the message expressed by the work of art is seen or heard and has

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performed its function as a platform for communal understanding. The representation of the trauma of the atrocity expresses a subjective truth in the traumatised person’s grasp of his/her past, not in terms of an all-redemptive talking cure but as a frame that makes the telling possible. The dialectic between the impossibility and the inevitability of representing trauma is central to each chapter in this volume. An important concept that underpins all the chapters is the centrality of testimony to the art form, whether it is music, visual art, literature or film. In all of the art forms, an artist, who is not necessarily the survivor of a trauma, tells his/her story of the atrocity. Survivor testimony invariably provides either the subject matter of the text or its point of departure. More specifically, the meaning and expression of testimony are highlighted and are, in turn, related to the subjectivity of the narrator and/or reader. We conceptualise testimony as an inherently (inter)personal event. We pay particular attention to the distortions of the past in these artistic testimonies as they draw attention to the value of testimony beyond a mimetic enumeration of historical facts. The imagined testimonies consolidate the subjective meaning that an artist and/or spectator need to attribute to the past: testimony is a highly individual act of creating and/or receiving a story that inevitably reflects personal investments onto the common experience. As Felman and Laub stated: ‘Testimony in effect addresses what in history is action that exceeds any substantialised significance, and what in happenings is impact that dynamically explodes any conceptual reifications and any constative delimitations.’16 Testimony tries to approach the enigmatic. Testimony is, however, not merely a mode of representation; it is a necessity for the traumatised: ‘One has to know one’s buried truth in order to be able to live one’s life.’17 If one equates testimony with narrative, then the previous findings by Caruth demonstrate the complication of testimony: ‘To speak is impossible, and not to speak is impossible.’18 Art underlines the constructedness of testimony, emphasising that it is the representation of an atrocity with its own particular mode of expression. The imagination is an essential point of departure. Imagination or invention precisely enrich and complicate the meaning of testimony.19

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Art then has several responsibilities. One of its tasks is to address the unspeakable. Another task is to transport the spectator/reader/listener into the realm of the experience. Kaplan emphasises the importance of sharing. Without generalising different traumas, the subjective experience in a specific context must be shared between various individuals. She says that humans need to give meaning to experiences and communicate them. The sharing of the trauma then is embodied in all the art forms discussed in this volume. In its mimetic capacities, art can address representational difficulties that are inexpressible in words. Non-verbal communication tools depend entirely on the subtlety with which the spectator or receiver of the non-verbal message can interpret the art form. The role of the receiver of the message and his or her responsibility vis-à-vis the testimony is considerable. Although testimony is an attempt at cure, the traumatic event to which it testifies remains (partly) irrevocable. If contemporary experiences are to be lived to the full, it is nevertheless crucial – both for the sake of the traumatised and for the listener – that the past is evoked in art that manages to fill the gaps that trauma has left in individual and collective memory. It is the job of the artist to enable people to commemorate. The artist, according to Kaplan, finds ‘ways to make meaning out of, and to communicate, catastrophes that happen to others as well as to oneself. [ . . . ] Art is not passively consumed, it is an activity. Art is not just receiving, but involves active participation. The meaning of art is created in between the space of the work and the spectator/ reader/listener.’20 The nature of this volume also has an affinity with art therapy, an area of psychology that underscores the cathartic power of art through creation and experience. As David Edwards writes, art therapy became a discipline when the word was coined in the forties. Since then, the term has developed in different directions, most notably art as therapy and art used as an integral part in therapy. According to Edwards, art therapy involves ‘both the process and products of image making (from crude scribblings through to more sophisticated forms of symbolic expression) and the provision of a therapeutic relationship’.21 In different therapeutic methodologies, the actual artwork is treated differently. Art therapists use the artwork as integral to the process of

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healing through which the patient must go. Other therapists employing art work as a means to get closer to the healing process use art as one of many means through which the relationship between therapist and patient is established. For the sake of this volume, we prefer to encourage the belief in art as therapy, whereby the artwork is valued in and of itself, as the manifestation of the process of working through the traumatic experience, and coming to terms with the past. Art for us is the expression of that which is difficult if not impossible to express. It completes the narrative of the testimony for the individual (the artist) as well as the community (the reader, listener, and spectator) – the artwork is a dynamic activity, not a static materiality, with which the audience is requested to engage and argue. As such, commemorative artworks have a communal responsibility to engage individuals on a higher level. The artistic quality of the art forms dealt with in this volume attempts to represent the gaps that have been left in the discourse on trauma. Art contributes to testimonies and commemorations through an empathic understanding between victim, artist and spectator. Absences, ruptures and gaps in the testimonies and in the artwork indicate the unrepresentability, while the whole of the artwork simultaneously represents the inherent necessity to testify. The individual artist’s expression of the atrocity and the traumatic experience therefore enable the spectators to subjectively and collectively remember, commemorate and take responsibility for the future.

The scope of this volume This volume primarily explores the challenges facing artistic representations of trauma and reconciliation in Africa, as well as its different contexts and consequences. The volume is cross-disciplinary in its representation of artistic genres, theoretical ground covered, and academic disciplines incorporated. Through a focus on Africa, we attempt to offer a new direction in trauma studies which simultaneously cuts across many academic disciplines including trauma, war, peace and security studies; media and journalism studies; religious studies; history; psychology; political science; cultural studies; immigration,

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migration, exile and refugee studies; as well as the artistic disciplines of visual arts, literature, music and film. Delineating these four main artistic disciplines in the overall structure of the volume, we do not pretend that the volume is comprehensive, but rather we wish to offer analytical snapshots of artistic endeavours across the continent. In terms of art forms, the most noticeable omissions are theatre and dance – both art forms have been utilised and applied extensively in art therapy – although references to these two art forms are incorporated in some of the chapters.22 While this volume therefore primarily fits into the existing field of worldwide trauma studies, and more specifically lies at the intersection of trauma studies and the arts, we believe that the dearth of academic publications dealing with these issues in an African context makes this book a timely contribution to the field. The volume presents nine African countries from many regions of the continent: three chapters deal with South Africa (with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission through film and literature respectively, and a third chapter on visual representation of suffering in a prison museum); two chapters take on Nigeria (postcolonial literature and hip hop music); two chapters refer to the Rwandan genocide (photography and literature); two chapters deal with Morocco (music festivals and documentary film); there is one chapter on Angola (kuduro music and dance); one on Ghana (postcolonial literature); one on Mozambique (sculpture); one on Burkina Faso (film); and one on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (film). The reader will detect a slight over-emphasis on South Africa and Rwanda. It could be claimed that post-apartheid South Africa and its Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath are two topics that have, arguably more than others, captured the attention of global audiences through activism, international development, politics, the media, and indeed also through the popular arts. A common denominator of all the artwork discussed in this volume is their African origin. While trying to avoid any essentialist claims with regard to notions such as ‘authenticity’ and ‘truth’, a focus on the work of African artists was an important part of our criteria from the outset. However, we are aware that the academic scope of

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the volume is international, incorporating the work of a number of African as well as worldwide scholars. We believe it is not only justifiable, but necessary and important for international scholars to engage with African issues, though we would argue that Western-based African studies should be balanced and complemented by the work of African scholars, working in Africa and abroad. We aimed for a balanced and varied range of views and perspectives, incorporating the voices of African artists and scholars, and we hope to have achieved this at least partially. Part one incorporates three chapters on the relationship between music and reconciliation in Nigeria, Angola and Morocco respectively, recognising the potentially powerful influence that popular music can have on post-conflict situations, especially among the African youth. On an individual and societal level, music therapy is generally acknowledged as an effective, evidence-based model of using music interventions to accomplish therapeutic goals such as emotional wellbeing, physical health, social functioning, communication abilities and cognitive skills. Music improvisation, receptive music listening, song writing, lyric discussion, music and imagery, music performance, and learning through music are recognised therapeutic tools in working through traumatic experiences and dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder. The chapters in this part of the volume demonstrate how music can contribute to negotiating political agency, addressing conflict and trauma, and aiding reconciliation not only on an individual but also on a collective level. Albert O Oikelome considers the role of hip hop music as a tool for conflict resolution in chapter one, with his analysis of hip hop songs by musicians from the conflict-ridden Niger Delta. Oikelome claims that a hybrid, indigenised form of hip hop has permeated the stream of Nigerian music with variants found in traditional, neo-traditional, popular and religious music. A number of hip hop musicians in the Niger Delta have become political agents challenging government institutions. Oikelome is particularly interested in the way some Nigerian musicians have utilised their music as a conduit for the propagation of peace, compassion and tolerance in the Niger Delta. This chapter examines how hip hop musicians have used their music to address

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painful traumatic truths without cynicism, placating militants on the need to sheath their swords and embrace peaceful dialogue. In chapter two Stefanie Alisch and Nadine Siegert analyse the cultural phenomenon of kuduro music and dance in post-war Angola. Kuduro as a creative medium dealing with a traumatic past is of particular interest if one considers that Angola bears the marks of roughly 500 years of Portuguese colonialism, slavery and more recently a thirty-year civil war that scattered people and their cultural practices around the country and the diaspora. In contrast, thanks to its oil, diamonds and South-to-South business, Angola is experiencing extreme economic growth. It is in this context that the electronic beats and fast raps of the popular sound and dance form kuduro are produced, in basic studios in Luanda’s rapidly growing musseque neighbourhoods. The chapter reflects on the role of kuduro in coming to terms with the civil war legacies such as personal experiences of fighting, death, physical and emotional injuries as well as media images. As the inability to remember or verbalise traumatic events is characteristic of posttraumatic stress disorder, the authors of this chapter suggest that the theatrical kuduro music and dance relate to traumatic events in a preverbalised way that allows for a negotiation of topics that may otherwise be impossible to discuss. In chapter three, Moulay Driss El Maarouf extends the discussion of music for peace with an analysis of how music festivals in Morocco are working towards promoting reconciliation through art for settling the country’s traumas of violence. El Maarouf claims that the 9/11 spectacles of terror, as well as the terrorist attacks on Casablanca in 2003 and 2007, have brought major changes to the configuration of music festivals in Morocco, so much so that they have turned into counter-terror spectacles. Moroccan music festivals operate as magnets for counter-terror communities initiated by the state both to help smooth away the traces of violence from collective memory, and to maintain peace by creating moments of glocal get-togetherness. One case study in this chapter is the Essaouira Gnawa Music Festival, the orchestrators of which fall back on its diasporic African glocal artists to diffuse ideas of tolerance and to find ways of re-interpreting trauma, offering new cultural ways of forgetting through remembering.

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Part two consists of three chapters on approaches to the artistic representation of trauma in different types of visual art. The visual has played a crucial role in the representation and remembrance of trauma, in postcolonial Africa and elsewhere, through photojournalism and visual documentation, for example, as well as sites of commemoration such as museums, monuments and memorials. The fourth chapter, by Amy Schwartzott, explores contemporary Mozambican artists’ transformation of recycled materials into art, revealing the potency of recycling as a tool for investigation. Mozambican artists use recyclia to both literally and figuratively recycle and deconstruct Mozambican history. The chapter focuses on the Transforming Arms into Ploughshares/ Transformação de Armas em Enxadas (TAE) project, founded in 1995 following the devastation of the Mozambican civil war. Schwartzott explores the profound impact and efficacy of TAE’s grassroots use of recycling and art as it continues to promote peace seventeen years after the civil war. The artists use their work to engage viewers to remember the destruction of Mozambique’s protracted history of war. TAE presents an innovative approach to reconciliation and memorialisation by Mozambicans. By recycling weapons of war and turning them into art, healing and commemoration are achieved in addition to preventing the weapons from killing again. In chapter five Sarah Longair considers the prominent role of museums and heritage sites in post-apartheid South Africa, where the histories and memories of the trauma and brutality of the apartheid years are politically charged and continuously contested. Existing museums have had to re-interpret their mission and their collections in the post-apartheid era, while new museums have responsibilities both to present formerly suppressed stories and to retain their objectivity to avoid a further rewriting of history. This chapter investigates the development of the museum in the former prison for black inmates in Johannesburg, known as Number Four, on the site of the Old Fort and home of the new Constitutional Court. Longair demonstrates how Number Four reflects national consciousness, attempts at reconciliation, and contemporary heritage issues. The chapter also focuses on the spatial design of the museum and the artistic rendition of memory through the installation of ‘new’ objects. Longair suggests that the

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museum’s visitors and audiences also experience a form of reconciliation, turning the museum into a multi-layered tool for commemoration and representation. In chapter six Rafiki Ubaldo and Frank Möller consider the claim that genocide and trauma cannot be represented, critiquing the numerous photographic representations of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 conducted mostly by Western visual artists and photographers. While they acknowledge that these projects have helped to raise Western awareness of a genocide that most chose to ignore while it happened, they claim that these visual representations reveal our societies to be obsessed with representing others, which is especially true in the case of Africa. Their chapter makes an original contribution to the existing literature on visual representations of the Rwandan genocide by exploring Rwandese photography (including the photography of one of the authors) of the experiences and aftermath of the 1994 genocide. They criticise the freezing of people in the subject position of victim. This chapter discusses photography as a medium through which people might exert agency and explore future perspectives and reconciliatory possibilities. While the chapter focuses on Rwanda, its theoretical stance could be applied more widely to post-conflict situations across Africa. Part three consists of three chapters on literature, and narrative more broadly, in the contexts of post-conflict situations in different African countries. Postcolonial African literature, fiction specifically, elucidates a dense and illustrious tradition through diverse treatments of African history, politics, culture and identity in the work of internationallyknown and celebrated poets and novelists such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Steve Biko, Ama Ata Aidoo, Nadine Gordimer, Ousmane Sembene, Wole Soyinka and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, to name a few. Chapter seven, by Tobias Robert Klein, discusses the literary mediation of social conflicts and the misery of everyday life, which occupy a prominent place in post-1990 West African fiction. In novels such as Biyi Bandele-Thomas’s Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams (1991) and Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2003) the experience of political oppression is interspersed with personal agonies of young Nigerians. Benjamin Kwakye’s novels The Clothes of Nakedness

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(2007) and The Sun By Night (2006) on the other hand establish a social panorama of postcolonial Ghana where the ever-widening gap between haves and have-nots appears as the underlying cause of family rifts, human insensitivity and ignorance. The prospects and limits of a narrative reconciliation of such fictitious experiences form the main focus of this chapter. In chapter eight Robyn Leslie considers the impact that literature and theatre could have on understanding post-conflict reconciliation efforts through the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a case study. Leslie argues that the official story (reports published by the TRC) demonstrates one side of the TRC narrative only, and that attempts at reconciliation in South Africa cannot be fully understood without the examination of an alternative narrative, a story built through an investigation of fiction and theatre addressing and critiquing the TRC as a reconciliation mechanism. Through the discussion of two different pieces of creative narrative that respond to the TRC process – Ubu and the Truth Commission (play, Jane Taylor) and Country of my Skull (fictional memoir, Antjie Krog) – this chapter suggests that creative narrative can provide a unique understanding of the TRC. In chapter nine John Masterson offers a comparative reading of two literary accounts produced in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Masterson states that debates about the ‘right to write’ predominate in such overlapping areas as postcolonial studies, ethnography and travel writing. A text such as Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998), written by a white, male, American journalist, inevitably raises questions about relationships between native informants and alien observers. We Wish to Inform You has, moreover, been accused of pro-Tutsi bias, with Rwandan writer Marie Béatrice Umutesi’s harrowing personal account, Surviving the Slaughter (2000), often cited as a necessary antidote. Surviving the Slaughter details her experiences as a Hutu woman caught up in the genocidal violence and forced to flee her home. The reconciliatory reading does not attempt to nullify tensions between respective authors and their accounts, but is more concerned with how certain lines of contrapuntal inquiry might allow us

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to lay the foundations of a more nuanced discussion of these issues in the historical present and beyond. The last part of the volume deals with filmic representations of trauma and reconciliation in four chapters on Burkina Faso, Morocco, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa respectively. The popular appeal of the audiovisual, cinematic medium in Africa is immense. However, the continuous battle between small national and independent cinemas on the one hand, and the capitalist onslaught of Hollywood domination and commercialisation on the other, is of particular concern when considering the representation of African conflict and trauma in film. Indigenous filmmaking in Africa is a decidedly post-independence and post-colonial phenomenon, with African filmmakers increasingly and continuously representing their own visions of trauma and reconciliation in African contexts. Lizelle Bisschoff discusses a fiction feature film from Burkina Faso, Fanta Regina Nacro’s La Nuit de la Vérité (The Night of Truth, 2004) in chapter ten, analysing the ways in which this film represents ideals of reconciliation within a divided, post-war African nation. The film is a plea for a plural understanding of the African nation where tolerance and respect for difference (ethnic, gender, class and otherwise) would lead to peaceful notions of national identity and belonging. Set in a fictional African country, The Night of Truth deals with the process of reconciliation after a decade-long brutal inter-ethnic conflict, and depicts the attempts of two factions to come to a peace agreement during one night’s gathering. Though the film’s conclusion portrays hope for a better future for Africa in which differences would be resolved and peace achieved, the film also depicts the fragility of such attempts at reconciliation, a process fraught with difficulties. In chapter eleven, Stefanie Van de Peer discusses a Moroccan documentary, Leila Kilani’s Our Forbidden Places (2008). Van de Peer suggests that in light of other, more prominent truth commissions in Africa and elsewhere, the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (ERC) in Morocco is generally neglected. The Moroccan commission had different principles and goals than other commissions, and as a result its effectiveness is often questioned. Our Forbidden Places illustrates the workings and failures of the Moroccan commission in the country’s

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struggle to come to terms with its human rights violations, torture and disappearances during the Years of Lead from the 1960s to the 1980s. The chapter analyses the portrayal of the ERC in Our Forbidden Places, and the effect of past colliding with present on the four different families in the film. Different generations are affected and react differently to the commission. Van de Peer explores whether attempts at reconciliation manage to fill in the gaps that the past has left in memory and whether the medium of the documentary can successfully represent the intricacies of memory, trauma and reconciliation. In chapter twelve, Chérie Rivers analyses indigenous filmic representations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country that epitomises the African ‘heart of darkness’ in the Western imaginary through its brutal conflicts and power struggles. Since its independence in 1960, the DRC has been among the most conflict-fraught regions in Africa. While official peace treaties were signed in 2003, the conflict continues to the present day. Rivers demonstrates that in response to the extensive trauma, violence, devastation and corruption of the postcolonial Congolese experience, art and culture have played an active role in movements of peace, healing and reconciliation. Notably, in the DRC film is emerging as a particularly salient medium of both individual and collective transformation. Rivers suggests that cinema’s efficacy as a mode of healing is due both to its content and its potential for empowerment. The chapter specifically examines the role of the films of Petna Ndaliko. The analysis goes beyond artistic and theoretical dimensions of Ndaliko’s work to examine how his films incite positive change in his home community on an immediate and practical level. In chapter thirteen Cara Moyer-Duncan considers representations of truth and reconciliation in two films by black South African directors. Black South Africans were systematically excluded from producing their own images on screen during apartheid. Since the fall of apartheid, black filmmakers have slowly begun to emerge, using the camera as a tool to confront the past by recasting the gaze. Two recent South African productions, Sechaba Morojele’s Ubuntu’s Wounds (2001) and Norman Maake’s Homecoming (2005), use the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a backdrop to explore the recent past

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and its impact on the present. These films focus specifically on the role of memory and truth at both the individual and national levels. Using Robert Rosenstone’s theorisation of the new history film, this chapter examines how films can challenge traditional history, and in particular more mainstream representations of the TRC in films such as In My Country (2004) and Red Dust (2004), by privileging a black perspective and contesting, visioning, and re-visioning history.

Conclusion While the field of trauma studies highlights and to an extent relies on the importance of individual memory and collective remembrance and commemoration in determining its effectiveness and relevance, memory and remembering are by no means simple notions. Memory operates on various levels, not only on the individual level of the memories and testimonies of people who have experienced and survived trauma, but also on the level of the collective psyche of societies scarred by trauma and atrocity. Both are reflected in the memories and interpretations of artists attempting to interpret and represent traumas, and in the post-memories and experiences of people who have not directly experienced the trauma but who are exposed to it through the role of bearing witness to the representations of trauma, historical as well as creative. While it is a widely accepted belief that the act of remembering could potentially be a preventative force for the future – for those directly affected by the trauma as well as for outsiders – memory could be regarded as a double-edged sword; while it has the potential to be cathartic and therapeutic for the individual as well as society, remembering could also re-traumatise and re-victimise people and inflame a desire for revenge. The relationship between memory and history is notoriously difficult, as memory is always partial, subjective and unreliable. These delicate issues related to the memory of trauma have perhaps come to the fore most prominently in the efforts of various countries worldwide in establishing truth commissions to address past human rights abuses, traumas and atrocities. As we show with this volume, the role of art and the function of creative expression to bear witness to trauma and to become repositories for individual and

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collective memories, play a crucial part in giving a voice to the often forgotten and neglected victims of atrocities in Africa.

Notes 1. Mandela, Nelson, ‘We should forgive but not forget’, Civilization: The Magazine of the Library of Congress (June/July 1999). 2. Adorno, Theodor W, Prisms (Cambridge, 1955, reprinted in 1967). 3. Kaplan, E Ann and Ban Wang (eds), Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explorations (Hong Kong, 2004), p.8. 4. Kaplan and Wang: Trauma and Cinema, p.10. 5. Sontag, Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others (London, 2003). 6. The Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. For further information see: www.africa-in-motion.org.uk. 7. Hayner, Priscilla B, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (New York and London, 2011). 8. For some of the most significant recent publications focusing on art and trauma, but generally excluding Africa, see: Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer (2010), Mick Broderick and Antonio Traverso (2010), Stephen K Levine (2009), Roger Hallas (Editor), Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik (2009), Michael Rothberg (2009), Birgit Haehnel and Melanie Ulz (2009), Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas (2007), Lisa Saltzman and Eric Rosenberg (2006), Lisa Saltzman (2006), Jill Bennett (2005), E Ann Kaplan (2005), Julie P Sutton (2002), Dominick LaCapra (2000), Cathy Caruth (1995 and 1996) and Kalí Tal (1995). 9. Bloom, Harold, ‘Freud: Frontier concepts, Jewishness, and interpretation’ in Cathy Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995), p.113. 10. Caruth, Cathy, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995), p.5. 11. For our insights into Freud’s work, we would like to thank Dr Leen Maes from Ghent University, whose introduction to her PhD thesis Imagined Witness: Representing the Holocaust in American Women’s Fiction from 2006, written at University of Newcastle upon Tyne, insightfully outlines the basics of trauma studies. 12. Ibid, p.4. 13. Caruth, Cathy, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Baltimore, 1996), p.17. 14. Ibid, p.4. 15. Kaplan, E Ann, Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature (New Brunswick, 2005), p.37.

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16. Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York and London, 1992), p.5. 17. Laub, Dori, ‘Truth and testimony: The process and the struggle’ in Cathy Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995), p.63. 18. Caruth: Trauma: Explorations in Memory, p.154. 19. Dr Leen Maes’s elucidation on Felman and Laub’s theories on testimonies helped our understanding of these considerably. 20. Kaplan: Trauma Culture, p.19. 21. Edwards, David, Art Therapy. Creative Therapies in Practice (London, 2004), p.4. 22. Chapter eight on creative narratives of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Leslie) also incorporates theatre, and chapter two on Angolan kuduro (Alisch and Siegert) deals as much with this creative pursuit as a form of music than as a form of dance.

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CHAPTER ONE HIP HOP LYRICS AS A TOOL FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN THE NIGER DELTA Albert O Oikelome

The intensifying conflicts in the oil-rich Niger Delta have become a subject of discourse in the market places, government, civil society, security, media, and academic circles in Nigeria and internationally. These conflicts have further degenerated into serious violence, some developing into intractable armed struggle that has, to a large extent, threatened the existence of Nigeria as a country. Recently the conflict in the Niger Delta has assumed a much more dangerous dimension resulting in the wanton destruction of state properties and loss of lives, leading to stagnation in the social and economic growth of the country. There have been reported cases of armed militia groups that have taken root in the creeks of the Niger Delta, particularly in Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta States, whose activities range from bunkering and piracy to kidnapping and blowing up oil installations. Societal conflicts are usually a product of human need and fear often provoked by official neglect, persecution, denial of human rights and insensitivity of leaders.1 According to Hagher the reasons for conflict in most countries include social injustice, insecurity of life and property, territorial ambition, national pride, religious intolerance and ideological

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differences.2 These he aptly describes as the ‘oils igniting the flames of war all over’.3 While the causes and effects of violent conflicts are numerous, their resolutions are challenging and complex. It is on this premise that the medium of hip hop lyrics as a tool for conflict resolution in the region is investigated in this chapter. Nigeria is one of the most culturally diverse countries in Africa. This cultural diversity is reflected in the numerous musical typologies that exist in popular music. A number of studies have been carried out on popular music as entertainment genre, cultural signifier and therapeutic agent.4 Several scholars have contemplated the role of music in both inciting and resolving social and political conflicts in contemporary society. However, often these studies do not include the analysis of hip hop lyrics because of their perceived misogynistic and sexist nature. This chapter examines how hip hop music is being used to impact positive changes in the Niger Delta region. Specifically, it investigates the ways in which lyrics are utilised by Nigerian hip hop musicians to combat criminalisation and advance conflict resolution in the region. The popularity of hip hop among youths is evident from the number of young people operating in this medium. The reason, according to Bennett, is the fact that hip hop opens up the possibility for new forms of local expression.5 This chapter explores the significance of hip hop music as a possible mode of expression open to ethnic minority youths in the Niger Delta. I consider how hip hop musicians in Nigeria are able to find a common voice via the appropriation of cultural resources developed to articulate issues which shape the decisions of the policy makers in the Niger Delta. The theoretical framework for this study is based on Femi Adedeji’s theory of transformative musicology.6 According to Adedeji, transformative musicology encompasses all musical activities that focus on transformative purposes, a product of intercultural musicology. He postulated that music could be used as a vehicle for the transformative process needed in a society and that composition constitutes its major tool. He opined that musical compositions could be used to meet contemporary social challenges. This echoes the assertion of Hall that hip hop music and culture are part of public pedagogy, meaning that music itself has intrinsic educational value.7 Adedeji further examined the process by

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which musical sounds – understood as forms of audio-tactile material culture – are created, mediated, and disseminated, and ways in which these sounds become meaningful in diverse everyday contexts.

A brief history of the Niger Delta The Niger Delta region has a steadily growing population estimated to be over 30 million people as of 2005, accounting for more than 23 per cent of Nigeria’s total population.8 According to a report by the Niger Delta Development Commission,9 the population density is also among the highest in the world with 265 people per square kilometre. The Niger Delta comprises nine of the 36 states making up the Federal Republic of Nigeria and consists of over 40 different ethnic groups, speaking 250 different languages and consisting of about 300 communities.10 Though the region is naturally endowed with huge deposits of oil and gas reserves and produces the bulk of the national wealth, it has been at the centre of protracted intra- and inter-community violence and rifts between local community groups and oil companies since independence. Despite the efforts of the Nigerian government to contain the violence, altercations within and between communities and different ethnic groups on the one hand, and between community groups and multinational oil companies on the other, have continued to increase. Adler and Rodman define conflict as ‘an expressed struggle between two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from other parties in achieving their goals’.11 This definition gives us an understanding of the reasons for the various struggles among the groups in the Niger Delta. The current conflict in the Niger Delta revolves entirely around the issue of oil. Since the discovery of oil over four decades ago, the region has become the ‘breadwinner’ of the nation; the main source of foreign exchange earnings for the nation as a whole. The region’s oil resources account for 90 per cent of the nation’s export earnings. However, physical infrastructural development that is evident in other parts of Nigeria is absent in most parts of the Niger Delta. According to Aladesuwa the complaint of oil-bearing communities is borne out of exasperation that they, as producers of national wealth, are neglected and languish

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in penury, while others who contribute little or nothing to national wealth have received disproportionately large doses of development from the Nigerian government.12 Aladesuwa stresses further that: The people’s perception is that the multinational oil companies are acting in concert with Nigerian government to deliberately under-develop the area [ . . . ] given the fact that they do not benefit from the proceeds of the oil produced from the land.13 The predominant occupation of the people in this region is farming and fishing. However, the Niger Delta people are faced with environmental degradation that disempowers those who rely on land and water resources for their livelihood. There is also unemployment among youths, as well as an absence of basic infrastructure such as roads, hospitals, schools and potable water. In summary, the region is the least developed constituency of the country in physical and socioeconomic terms. Another major cause of conflict in the Niger Delta is resource control; the struggle for control and equitable and justifiable means of distribution of wealth. There is a perceived marginalisation of the region in terms of wealth distribution, despite its enormous contribution to the overall revenue generation in the country. Developments in this region do not in any way reflect a fair or justifiable measure, and therefore attempts are made to force the authorities to concede more allocation to the people. One of the methods adopted is to kidnap expatriates and top management staff of the oil companies operating in the area and forcing a negotiation with the parties involved. It stands to reason, therefore, that the marginalisation of the people of the Niger Delta and the despoliation of their environment, and the attendant conflicts, have their roots in the exploration and exploitation of oil by the multinationals. Commenting on this, a representative of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) states in an interview with Odudu Okpongete: Let us state without mincing words that we have launched out a new initiative in the Niger Delta, which is all encompassing.

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Exploited communities now have an open option to resort to strategic militancy to get their wishes done. Nationalist groups are building new synergies and working partnerships to challenge the old ways of gross neglect and grim exploitation.14 The activities of the oil companies operating in the region have brought about serious ecological problems resulting in water pollution and decay in the farmlands. Underdevelopment of the Niger Delta has taken the form of no provision of potable water, affordable health-care delivery or education.15 Worst of all, most of the oil-bearing communities are crisscrossed by oil pipelines and gas flares burn around the clock at ground level. This poses great health and ecological risks for the region. Apart from the neglect of the region by the government, there is also the problem of ethnic conflicts among the Ijaw, Itshekiri and Urhobo, which, according to Obi and Okwechime are reflected in the increased outbreak of violent inter-ethnic and inter-communal conflicts across the Niger Delta.16 The reasons for these conflicts have less to do with the oil in the region and more with the struggle for supremacy and land disputes. These conflicts have raged between neighbouring towns, communities and villages, involving the use of arms and resulting in the loss of lives and properties.

Hip hop music and conflict resolution Contemporary discourse on the use of art forms as a medium for conflict resolution has gained importance in scholarly research and activism.17 There is a realisation of the potency of music in development. Music has the power to influence thought and opinion, and can serve as a popular and effective means of political propagation, economic empowerment and cultural diffusion.18 According to Sofola it can act as a stimulant or tranquiliser for people to harness their potential towards collective social development.19 As a tranquiliser, music can function to bring about peace and calm in situations of conflict. An example of the conflict resolution function of music is the Rwandan Ballet Isonga, where songs and dance were employed to mediate in the

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conflict between the major ethnic groups, the Hutus and Tutsis, in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The Kenyan Amani People’s Theatre is another outstanding example of the interventionist role of music and drama in conflict resolution. The Amani People’s Theatre is an association of young African artists who are committed to using their talents and skills in drama and theatre to transform structures of conflict within the communities in which they work, and concomitantly build stories of peace.20 The use of hip hop lyrics as tool for propagating peace is not a new concept. An example is the study carried out by Bennett on the localisation of rap music and hip hop culture in Germany.21 In this study, he examined the cultural significance of rap music and hip hop culture for the youths of certain ethnic minority groups in Frankfurt am Main. He found that hip hop music is being used for the expression of issues relating to race, identity, unity, peace and understanding, all relevant to the experiences of the youth of ethnic minority groups in Germany. My study seeks to investigate the way hip hop musicians in Nigeria are appropriating the poetics and politics of the music towards achieving peace and diffusion of conflicts in the troubled Niger Delta region.

The origins of hip hop music According to Bennett hip hop music originated in New York during the early 1970s as a youth-oriented genre and a form of AfricanAmerican street culture.22 Aware of the inner city tensions as a result of urban renewal programmes and economic recession, a street gang member, who called himself Afrika Bambaaka, formed the Zulu Nation in an attempt to channel the anger of young people in the South Bronx away from fighting into music, dance and graffiti.23 The emergence of hip hop in Nigeria dates back to the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to Adebiyi the emergence of an African American rapper in exile in Nigeria, Ibrahim Salim-Omari, led to the release of the first Nigerian rap album titled I am African.24 This opened the floodgates for other artists like The Remedies and The Plantation Boyz. The Remedies’ first album, Peace in Nigeria, initiated what is

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now known as the afro-hip hop culture in Nigeria.25 The commercial success of The Remedies led to the emergence of other groups like The Plantation Boyz, Maintain and The Black Reverend, and also solo artists like Danny Wilson, Junior, Pretty, Weird MC and Bembe Aladisa. The first generation of Nigerian hip hop artists initially copied their counterparts in the US. However, the later trends from the 1990s onwards showed a paradigm shift towards the evolution of their own form of hip hop culture which was christened ‘Naija hip hop.’ This was also precipitated on the need for a distinguished form of hip hop that demanded its own localised and particularised mode of expression.

Hip hop music and youth identity Hip hop music has become one of the most heavily consumed forms of popular music among youths in the world, and Nigeria is no exception. A survey carried out on the influence of hip hop music on Nigerian youth shows that more than 62 per cent of 250 young people interviewed favoured the hip hop genre above all others (such as reggae, highlife, fuji, juju, country music, etc.).26 The National Youth Policy for Nigeria (Federal Government of Nigeria, 1981) defines youths as persons aged between 12 and 30. The characteristics of ‘youth’ according to this document is a period of complex change – physical and intellectual – and a continuous search for the true meaning of life. Thus the term ‘youth’ denotes a transitional social phase between childhood and adulthood marked by changing values, attitudes and practices.27 Because of its enormous appeal, hip hop music has been used as a medium for expressing a variety of ideas, feelings and emotions. Over the years, hip hop culture has been criticised for its association with gangsterism, misogynistic lyrics and its propensity towards promoting violence and materialism. However, the genre should not be reduced to this specific strand, which limits its significance as a tool for cultural expression. According to Odom, gangster rappers in America have used their music to: . . . reclaim a sense of pride and control over their own existence in the face of extreme circumstances. They were able to use their

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works to reclaim the dignity of the African American men while concurrently criticising the mainstream establishment.28 Martinez argues that hip hop music is a form of oppositional culture that offers a message of resistance, empowerment and social critique.29 Yasin likewise claims that the primary elements of hip hop have been embraced by youths globally and are used to address issues of social injustice.30 In an analysis of 30 songs from eight Nigerian hip hop artists by Awala, the main finding is that the lyrics of 50 per cent of the songs comment on social issues, while 30 per cent contain lyrics that are misogynistic in nature.31 Hip hop artists from the Niger Delta have used their music to comment on the social ills affecting their region. My case analysis focuses on five hip hop artists whose music embodies significant thematic strands in the genre: social dislocation, mediation, peaceful coexistence and criminality. Textual content analyses are drawn from the songs of Timaya, Izon, Kefee, Nneka and Idris Abdu Kareem.

Hip hop music as a medium for articulating the social dislocation of people in the region Hip hop artists from the Niger Delta articulate their songs in a manner that allows them to maintain socially acceptable identities and patriotic consciousness. According to Mlama, this intends to empower the common man with a critical consciousness crucial to the struggle against forces responsible for his poverty.32 This is in tandem with the concept of critical consciousness developed by Paulo Freire.33 He defines critical consciousness as the ability to perceive social, political and economic oppression and to take action against the oppressive elements of society. In the song ‘Dem Mama’, Timaya expresses the social dislocation, deprivations and chaos resulting from the soldiers’ raids on the people of Odi, Bayelsa State, in 1999. The background to this incident was the supposed abduction of eleven soldiers meant to keep watch over the oil pipelines by unknown gunmen in Odi village. Outraged by this dastardly act, the President of Nigeria ordered an immediate search for the perpetrators. However, hell broke loose when the soldiers eventually discovered the bodies of the missing soldiers

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buried in the thick forest. This led to the complete annihilation of the village by the soldiers. Timaya sings: Pidgin Well e bin happen for Bayelsa oh Nineteen Ninety nine oh . . . Ten thousand soldiers for road iyo Ask them where them dey go Them say them dey go Bayelsa oh Which place for Bayelsa One village they call Odi oh

Translation Well it happened in Bayelsa oh Nineteen Ninety Nine oh . . . Ten thousand soldiers at road iyo Ask them where they were going They said they were going to Bayelsa oh Where in Bayelsa? One village called Odi oh

Timaya’s contempt for the Nigerian rulers is reflected in his choice of a depersonalised noun phrase ‘dem’ in pidgin (meaning ‘they’ in Standard English). The overall picture of the Nigerian leaders after a scrutiny of the lines below is that of a wicked, callous and inconsiderate government: Pidgin Na im dem enter our village and rape our young girls And make us homeless oh dem kill our mama iyo dem kill our papaa iyo dem kill our brothers dem kill our sisters

Translation They came into our village and raped our young girls And made us homeless oh They killed our mothers They killed our fathers They killed our brothers They killed our sisters

A collective identity is defined by Timaya’s repeated use of ‘our’ and as a result, Timaya attempts to construct a sense of deprivation experienced by the people in the Niger Delta region. Timaya’s music illustrates how hip hop music can be used as a means of creating narratives about the negativity surrounding the urban environments. In telling this story, Timaya focuses his anger on the government and soldiers as mechanisms of exploitation and brutality against innocent men and women in the guise of preserving the nation’s oil reserves.

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A similar tone of anger, frustration and opposition against the government is used in ‘Same water’ by Izon. In this song, Izon indicts the government for colluding with foreign oil companies to exploit the region. He also expresses his displeasure at the environmental hazards the oil spillage has caused the people, hence canvassing for equity and fairness in sharing the oil revenue in favour of the people of the Niger Delta: Pidgin Why you think the boys dem they act abnormally? Environmental plus water pollution Na within be the result? Na mental pollution After dem suck our oil, kill all our fishes Gas flaring blind our people dem

Translation Why do you think the boys are acting abnormally? Environmental plus water pollution What is the outcome? It is mental pollution After they have sucked our oil, killed all our fish Gas flaring has blinded our people

In addition, Izon illustrates the prevalence of unemployment as a result of the ecological problems. He claims the effect of these will be a rise in crime, saying ‘the idle hand is the devil’s workshop’. Pidgin Wetin you expect dem the youths dem to do? No job no school. Idle hand na devil’s workshop. Our only source of living na from water.

Translation What do you expect the youths to do? No job no school. The idle hand is the devil’s workshop. Our only source of living is from water

Izon describes the deprivation of the Niger Delta region based on the neglect of the youths in the region. Plagued by the aforementioned problems as a result of oil pollution, Izon postulates alternative routes for the youths in the region, namely the provision of schools and job creation by the government:

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Pidgin Oil and gas? Another matter As dem don pollute the water Make dem provide another means for survival Make dem give us schools. Provide us jobs.

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Translation Oil and gas? That’s another sorry state Since they have polluted the water Let them provide another means of survival They should give us schools. Provide us with jobs.

The songs analysed above expose the role of the federal government in flaming the crisis in the Niger Delta. These songs give voice to the internal thoughts of the youths who have no alternative but to take up arms as militants because of the destruction of their farmlands. Ultimately, Timaya and Izon vividly demonstrate the emotional and physical strain the indigenes of the Niger Delta region go through as a result of oil exploration in the region. They believe attention should be given to the protection of human rights, agrarian reform, delivery of basic social services and the resolution of gross economic inequities.

Condemning criminality and deception in the Niger Delta The conflict in the Niger Delta has resulted in cases of armed militia groups that have taken root in the creeks of Niger Delta, particularly in Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta States, whose activities range from bunkering, through piracy to kidnapping and blowing up of oil installations.34 All of these have caused irreparable damage and loss to the Nigerian State and artists are unanimous in their condemnation of these acts. Singer Nneka condemns these acts in her song ‘Niger Delta’ by stating that they are only temporary strategies with disastrous consequences. Nneka implores the militants to stop the violence and sheath the sword for the sake of peace: Stop the violence in the Niger Delta Remember there’s a law that’s called Karma Sins of the Fathers was very popular

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Nollywood made a great flick, I admire But for real, our kids don’t have to suffer For mistakes we made when we was stronger Violence ain’t gonna make it any better In direct contrast to militancy and taking up of arms, Nneka suggests civil disobedience and peaceful resistance as employed by Martin Luther King and Gandhi as peaceful means of venting their grievances: Stick to the ways of King Martin Luther Civil disobedience might Make things clearer Gandhi used it in India and King in America I speak my mind Ain’t got time for no haters It’s time for a change People of Niger Delta Nneka describes the methods of kidnapping and burning oil installations by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) as a ‘blunder’, adding that whatever ill they are doing to their land in the name of liberation, they are doing to themselves and the next generation: The MEND is just another major blunder Left with no choice but to grab the power Kidnapping just to get paid higher Claiming it’s for the peeps But for real, our kids don’t have to suffer For mistakes we made The hip hop medium has been used as a tool for making the youths aware of the potential of harnessing their individual energies collectively towards addressing the myriad of problems they are faced with. In ‘Yankulu Ya’, Timaya advises the youths to stop the killings

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and kidnappings in the region and engage in meaningful business ventures: Pidgin We no need kidnapping eh I don tell una finish eh We no need to dey fight eh Make una use una headi eh Nigerian people are one Make una stop to dey kill My brother make una wise eh

Translation We do not need kidnapping I’ve said it all We don’t need to fight You should use your head Nigerian people are one Stop the killings My brother, be wise

The criminality in the region is also fuelled by militants with impure motives. According to Smock some of the militants are pure opportunists who use the crisis in the Delta as cover for criminality.35 He stresses: ‘Much of the bunkering and other criminal activities in the Delta are committed by persons making no pretence of being militants for a cause, including persons in official positions.’36 The song ‘Uncomfortable truth’ by Nneka is a direct reference to the deception of the rulers in the Niger Delta region who are clamouring for justice in the region on the one hand, and on the other hand are using the agitation of the Niger Delta people as a guise for oil bunkering and kidnappings. In the song, she condemns the hypocrisy of the ethnic regions that talk about love when indeed their hearts are filled with hatred and deceit: Love is something else you practise it to be The line is long for you and me That leads us to the very depth of our hearts We’re still on the surface deceiving ourselves Inside we hate, and want to see our best friends fall . . . oh You talk about peace Put it in your mouth The same mouth you use to declare your bombs And still we think that it is all about us

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It’s all about you You sold your soul to the evil and the lust and the passion and the money and you In ‘Same water’, Izon advises the youth against being used by politicians as thugs to rig elections, warning that their promises of a better future will end in deceit: Pidgin Dem go give we the youths Small okuba make we begin to dey kill ourselves All dem youths I beg Soji yourselves and lets shun violence These people wey we dey fight for When dey enter office, dem go bone us All the empty promises we don don taya Don’t give us fish; just teach us how to fish

Translation They will give the youths Small money so that we start killing ourselves I am appealing to all the youths Wake up and let us shun violence These people we are fighting for When they get into office, they will forget us We are tired of empty promises Don’t give us fish, just teach us how to fish

The songs described here condemn militancy and criminality and promote dialogue and peaceful demonstrations. By imploring the militants to stop the use of violence, they are adopting an oppositional collective identity that is defined by resistance to oppression, and change through peaceful means.

Songs of hope and peaceful co-existence The struggle to satisfy inherent human needs is common to all conflicts. However, Keffi suggests negotiation through equity and justice is vital in order to achieve peace among ethnic groups in the region. In the song ‘Wado’ (meaning ‘greeting’ in Urhobo), Keffi stresses the

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need for people in the Niger Delta region to live as one. Here, Keffi makes the term as an offering of love, hope and optimism dedicated to the people of Ijaw, Itshekiri and Urhobo communities: I have a dream that some day That under the sun we’ll live as one We’ll be our brother’s keeper yeh, yeh Niger Delta we say Wado The theme of the song is based on the need for peaceful co-existence of the different ethnic groups in Nigeria. For a long time, the Itshekiri had seen the Urhobo as sworn enemies even though they live in the same town, Warri. Being an Urhobo living in Warri, Keffi had witnessed the ethnic crisis between the Urhobo and Itshekiri communities, which had resulted in the loss of lives and properties. She also talks about the unique cultural heritage of the region and stresses that diversity is a blessing, not a curse: I bring you greetings from my country Nigeria in Africa Land of culture and heritage Promoting unity in diversity So ready for this new age Some of the most common themes in hip hop lyrics are those that speak of hope for a brighter future. Many artists use their music to express optimism in the face of utter dejection. In the excerpts below, Keffi expresses the hope that peace and tranquillity will one day return to the Niger Delta if the youths can keep a positive outlook. Keffi argues that conflict resolution must address the causes of the conflict and must be based on equal rights and justice among the warring ethnic groups in the region: To my people in the Niger Delta Praying for peace I’ve got good news for the innocent prisoner

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Crying out for justice Your day will come Let’s find a common cause Let’s learn to tolerate one another There’s unity in our diversity Things are going to get better I know they will Perhaps the most intriguing of all the artists is Idris Abdukareem. A native of Borno State in northern Nigeria, Abdukareem’s music is resolutely political. In his song ‘Prayer for peace in the Niger Delta’ he appeals to the warring communities to embrace peace, adding that the fighting and killing would make things worse: May there be peace in Niger Delta From Port Harcourt to Bayelsa The people for Warri make you no worry All things can’t come in a hurry Drop the guns stop the war Killing killing fighting fighting no fit help person Niger Delta let’s come together Let me see you flash una lighter Taking a swipe at the insensitivity of the government to the plight of the people in the region, Abdukareem advises the government agencies to stop ‘beating about the bush’ (jagajaga and yamayama) while emphasising the importance of communication in conflict resolution: From Niger Delta, Port Harcourt to Bayelsa Warri, no worry, God dey by your side This time around make we stop jagajaga Make we stop yamayama Make we do things right Make we embrace dialogue NDDC, Niger Delta, Federal Government, United Nations

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Conclusion This chapter set out to explore the use of hip hop lyrics as a tool for conflict resolution in the Niger Delta region in Nigeria. I attempted to demonstrate that music can be used as a medium for resolving conflict in the Niger Delta region, thereby fostering notions of lasting peace, security, democracy, sustainable development and good governance. The musicians discussed employ this approach to demonstrate their preference for total communication, sensitisation and mobilisation. Giving credence to the power of music as an instrument of persuasion in an interview with the Guardian, Daddy Showkey states: We should know that celebrities are more popular and (easily) attract people, especially when you are using them in concerts to promote peace. The more people are engaged in programmes like this, the level of kidnapping and violence will be reduced among youths. Violence is their only pastime because they constantly see the cheating on a daily basis.37 But the question we need to ask is: Are they listening? Are there any clear indications that hip hop has contributed to less conflict and violence in the region, or is this an ideal set by the artists that has not been fulfilled? There are several reasons to conclude that hip hop music is making reasonable impact among youths in the Niger Delta conflicts. In the earlier years of the struggle (the 90s) the government was uncomfortable with the highly political messages being passed to the youths through hip hop and implemented a censorship law to forbid the circulation of the songs through the media. This was corroborated in an interview with Sesay when Nneka said: People can identify with the messages but at the same time there are a lot of people, especially the government, who had problems with me speaking my mind or the minds of many. When I spoke about the problems of the Niger Delta, they found the messages uncomfortable. I feel responsible for my people. People who might not have the courage to stand up or the opportunity

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to stand up and speak about things that are very delicate and that people do not want to hear. So I’ve decided to take that role of being the siren of my people. It’s challenging.38 With the rise of activism in the 2000s and the continuous agitation of the people in the region, we have witnessed reasonably positive steps from the government, such as the use of hip hop musicians in official peace campaigns. This has given credence to the fact that the government does acknowledge the impact of hip hop on the youths and is willing to explore the medium in conveying a message of peace and tolerance. Furthermore, hip hop musicians like OJB Jezreel, Africa China and Kefee were appointed as United Nations Young Ambassadors for Peace in 2008 for their role in the promotion of peace in the troubled region. The declaration of amnesty to the militant youths by the government and the institution of the Niger Delta Roadmap to Peace in 2008 have yielded positive results. Since the declaration of the amnesty programme, the Niger Delta ministry has created jobs and improved social infrastructure in the region. Recently, the rehabilitated militants have been offered scholarships in various fields and several others have been given significant grants to start meaningful business ventures. The multinational oil companies have increased their level of relevance in the region by creating social amenities such as roads, water, electricity and scholarship schemes for the youths in the region. Still, there is more to be done, and the hip hop artists are not keeping quiet. There is an urgent need to restore the degraded environment and observe an oil moratorium, to ensure natural recovery of the dying ecosystem through well-planned integrated remediation measures. Furthermore, there is a need to redress the flagrant violations of the rights of the people of the Delta as experienced in the region over the years. The level of awareness among the youths in the region has increased considerably, according to research findings by Oritsejolomi Awala in 2008.39 The aim of the research was to identify the level of impact the hip hop lyrics have on the audience. Of the 150 youths interviewed, the findings reveal that 62 per cent were of the opinion that they were more informed about the situation in the Niger Delta region and were ready to take proactive steps to address the situation.

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The issues raised by the musicians have provoked several debates among youths in the region through blog sites on the internet, thus encouraging healthy dialogue among the youths. Hip hop musicians now have their own personal websites where young people are invited to contribute to the discourse on the Niger Delta region. Even though the level of impact of hip hop music on the militants in the creeks deserves further research, it is important to note that the hip hop artists have not only played their part with other Niger Delta activists in setting up an agenda for development, the Niger Delta Roadmap to Peace, but they have also become a significant index in achieving peace in the region. The musicians have found a voice through hip hop to create positive changes in the Niger Delta. Ultimately, their lyrics do not only reflect shared experiences and concerns, but also function as a means to actively construct an alternative political and social reality.

Notes 1.

Nkoro, Emeka, ‘Conflict in the Niger Delta: The way forward’ (2005), http://searchwarp.com/swa20447.htm, accessed 4 November 2010, p.3. 2. Hagher, Iyorwuese, Lamp of Peace (Ibadan, 1997), p.14. 3. Hagher: Lamp of Peace, p.14. 4. See for example Idolor, Emrobhome, ‘Music in Africa; facts and illusions’ (Benin City, 2001); Aluede, Charles O and Mattew A Iyeh, ‘Music and dance therapy in Nigeria: The task before the potential Nigerian music therapists in the twenty first century’, Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy vol.8, no.1 (2008), https://normt.uib.no/index.php/voices/article/view/446/364, accessed 3 April 2010; Austin, Diane, The Theory and Practice of Vocal Psychotherapy (London, 2009). 5. Bennett, Andy, ‘Hip hop am Main: The localization of rap music and hip hop culture’, Media, Culture and Society vol.21, no.1 (London, 1999), p.79. 6. Adedeji, Femi, ‘Transformative musicality: Recontextualizing art music composition for societal transformation’, in Dan Agu (ed), Nigerian Musicology Journal vol.2 (2006), p.137. 7. Hall, Stuart, ‘What is this black in black popular culture?’, in Gina Dent (ed), Black Popular Culture (Seattle, 1981), p.23. 8. Nkoro: ‘Conflict in the Niger Delta’, p.3. 9. Niger Delta Development Commission, ‘The Niger Delta’, A publication of the Federal Goverment of Nigeria (2004), p.1.

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10. Nkoro: ‘Conflict in the Niger Delta’, p.3. 11. Adler, Ronald and George Rodman, Understanding Human Communication (Oxford University Press USA, 2005), p.235. 12. Aladesuwa, Ajayi, ‘Nigeria: Crisis and conflict in the 4th Republic’, The Midweek Telegraph, 23 August 2000, p.28. 13. Aladesuwa: ‘Nigeria: Crisis and conflict in the 4th Republic’, p.28. 14. Okpongete, Odudu, ‘Between Exxon Mobil and Niger Delta militants’, Daily Independent, 15 March 2006, p.9. 15. Tugbokorowei, Martins and Ifeanyi Ogu-Raphael, ‘Agitation and the limits of rights: An assessment of Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground in the context of the Niger Delta question’, Unpublished paper presented at the 21st Annual Conference of Society of Nigerian Theatre Artists (SONTA), University of Benin (2008), p.12. 16. Obi, Cyril and Iwebunor Okwechime, ‘Globalization and identity politics: The emerging patterns of inter-ethnic relations in Nigeria’s Niger Delta’, in Duro Oni et al (ed), Nigeria and Globalization Discourse on Identity Politics and Social Conflict (Ibadan, 2004), p.355. 17. Ssewakiryanga, Richard, ‘“New Kids on the Block”: African American music and Uganda youth’, CODESRIA Bulletin 1&2 (1999), p.24. 18. Ogu-Raphael, Ifeanyi, ‘The medium of theatre as an alternative conflict resolution mechanism: A case for the Niger Delta’ (Unpublished article, 2009), p.5. 19. Sofola, Zulu, The Artist and the Tragedy of a Nation (Ibadan, 1984), p.2. 20. Peacebuilding Portal, ‘Amani People’s Theatre’, http://www.peacebuildingportal.org/index.asp?pgid=9&org=2334, accessed 4 April 2010. 21. Bennett: ‘Hip hop am Main’, p.77. 22. Ibid, p.78. 23. Lipsitz, George, Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place (London, 1994), p.26. 24. Adebiyi, Abiodun, ‘Youths and popular culture: An appraisal’, in Izuu Nwankwo (ed), Relevant Arts for Sustainable Global Development, Proceedings from the Professor Femi Osofisan International Conference on Performance (Ibadan, 2008), p.247. 25. Ibid. 26. Awala, Oritsejolomi, ‘The contemporary Nigerian popular music: A study of hip hop styles’, Unpublished dissertation of the University of Lagos (2008), p.38. 27. Omoniyi, Tope, ‘So I choose to do am Naija style: Hip hop, language and post-colonial identities’, in in Samy Alim, Awad Ibrahim and Alastair Pennycook (eds), Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities and the Politics of Language (New York, 2009), p.195.

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28. Odom, Michael M, ‘Inmates serving time in the ghetto: Gangsta rap, the carceral city and prison industrial complex’, A paper presented at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association annual meeting, 12–20 February 2009, p.6. 29. Martinez, Theresa A, ‘Popular culture as oppositional culture: Rap as resistance’, Sociological Perspectives vol.40, no.2 (1997), p.265. 30. Yasin, Jon A, ‘Using Hip Hop Culture to Motivate Millenial Students’ (2006), http://www.nyu.edu/frn/publications/millennial.student/Hip-Hop. html, accessed 4 April 2010. 31. Awala: ‘The contemporary Nigerian popular music’, p.43. 32. Mlama, Penina, Culture and Development: The Popular Theatre Approach in Africa (Uppsala, 1991), p.67. 33. Freire, Paulo, Cultural Action for Freedom (Harmondsworth, 1972), p.73. 34. Ogu-Raphael: ‘The medium of theatre as an alternative conflict resolution mechanism’, p.3. 35. Smock, David, ‘Crisis in the Niger Delta’, A USI Peace Briefing (2009), p.3. 36. Smock: ‘Crisis in the Niger Delta’, p.4. 37. Vanguard, ‘Aguariavwodo at 51, Toasts with a Peace Concert’ (Nigeria, 2008), http://allafrica.com/stories/200812080727.html, accessed 4 November 2010. 38. Sesay, Isha, ‘Singer Nneka tells world of love and injustice in Nigeria’ (2010), http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/08/31/nigerian.singer.nneka/ index.html, accessed 3 April 2011. 39. Awala, ‘The contemporary Nigerian popular music’, p.34.

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CHAPTER TWO GROOVING ON BROKEN: DANCING WAR TRAUMA IN ANGOLAN KUDURO Stefanie Alisch and Nadine Siegert

While research on trauma in arts and literature has increased in recent years, little has been published linking trauma with popular arts and music. African experiences and their link to popular culture are in need of further scholarly attention within trauma studies. Kuduro is an Angolan electronic music and dance culture that has evolved since around 1990. It can be considered the number-one genre of Angolan popular culture today.1 Kuduro dance moves are highly expressive and call for an analysis beyond its role as a popular dance accompanying a musical style. In this chapter we examine the ways in which kuduro dancing responds to the emotional legacies of brutal wars in Angola, and potentially effects change. We contend that kuduro recalls violent events while sustaining a contemporary form of dealing with turbulent urban living in Luanda.2 After introducing perspectives on trauma from social and cultural sciences as well as psychotherapy, we provide background on historic processes in Angola, including an examination of audiovisual kuduro material.3

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Approaches to trauma from psychology and cultural studies The literature we consulted pertaining to trauma and creativity can be roughly divided into two schools of thought: scholarly approaches to artistic works, and accounts of therapeutic endeavours. The former seek to associate historical events and creative products or performances from an analytical academic perspective. The latter are often informed by the view of a certain line of therapy in an attempt to promote a particular method to resolve trauma and achieve individual or collective healing and reconciliation. Harris, for example, uses dance therapy methods to invoke agency and self-worth, community cohesion and empathy among traumatised former child soldiers in Sierra Leone.4 Thompson and Laubscher offer a combination of a psychotherapeutic and cultural-historical perspective. They suggest that trauma, creativity and healing are closely connected in their discussion of trauma and creativity in South African art.5 The only information available regarding trauma and war in Angola from a psychotherapeutic perspective are reflections on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) detailing the experiences of Portuguese soldiers. After returning to Portugal from fighting in the colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau in 1974, many found themselves unable to integrate back into Portuguese society and lead normal lives.6,7 As of yet, research concerning the trauma experienced by Angolans during the colonial conflicts is unavailable. Jill Bennett and Liese van der Watt offer a perspective on art that is not representative but rather performative.8 They argue that trauma is transferable and artworks are able to trigger an emotional response in the audience and thereby involve them in the process of dealing with the trauma – acting it out and working it through. Art of this kind is transactive rather than communicative and offers signs that are felt rather than perceived. Art of this kind embodies emotion.9 We find this performative perspective useful in our discussion of kuduro and its relation to trauma. Kuduro does not offer an externalised, conscious, tangible and visualised form of expression, but is rather an embodied, ephemeral and performative phenomenon.

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Ethnomusicologist Thomas Burkhalter was among the first to investigate the correlation between traumatic war experiences and popular music. Burkhalter discussed the trauma of Lebanese civilians exposed to war, and explored the ‘complex interrelations among childhood, war, trauma, and music-making’.10 His work focuses primarily on the auditory aspect of music and how sonic phenomena of war shape the sounds musicians are producing. He explores how sonic impressions such as airplanes, bomb detonations, propaganda radio, dying people and shouting soldiers, as well as the use of music making and consumption of music in order to mute war noises, shape the aesthetic principles of musicians in present-day Lebanon. The bodily-performative practices that we discuss in this chapter are left out of Burkhalter’s considerations. As a starting point we follow the notion that war legacies have an impact on popular music and extend this idea to popular music’s bodily-performative realm. Both the Lebanese and the Angolan civil wars were very long (Lebanon 1975– 1990, Angola 1975–2002) and had confusing constellations of different warring factions. We conclude that these circumstances imprinted similarly enduring effects on the populations of both countries. Both psychotherapeutic and cultural-historical approaches to trauma and creativity aim at either identifying and mourning ruptures in a balanced system, or rectifying those ruptures. In their article ‘Losses and returns: The soldier in trauma’ Goldberg and Willse suggest a third approach. They elaborate a model of trauma in terms of thermodynamic energy management that aims at maintaining a state of equilibrium called homeostasis. In their reflections on traumatised US American Iraq veterans ‘trauma [ . . . ] occasions unexpected productivity for which narratives of loss cannot fully account’.11 We combine Thompson and Laubscher’s point, that creativity can enable working through trauma, with Goldberg and Willse’s view of war trauma in the light of its productivity. This led to our hypothesis that kuduro might serve as a performative way of dealing creatively with traumas of war and dislocation. We suggest that kuduro’s musical and bodilyperformative practices relate to real-life and media events and images, and that engaging in these practices on a non-verbal level allows for negotiating topics that may otherwise be impossible to discuss.

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Geographical and historical context Angola gained its independence in 1975 after 500 years of Portuguese colonialism and the liberation war (1961–1974), during a time when most of the other African countries had already gained independence. The new freedom was immediately followed by nearly 30 years of civil war (1975–2002), which devastated land, economy and social structures.12 The struggle was based on the unresolved conflicts of the liberation movements MPLA and UNITA, both striving for the leading position. It has never been officially labelled an ethnic conflict, even if UNITA was mainly supported by the ethnic group of the Ovimbundu in the central highlands and eastern provinces, while the MPLA has always been the party of the urban and ethnically mixed elite. Moreover, the civil war was also one of the ‘hot’ conflicts of the Cold War, a proxy war between the communist powers of USSR and Cuba backing the socialist MPLA, and the US and South Africa supporting UNITA. The latter was fighting its border war against the Namibian liberation movement SWAPO on Angolan territory. In 1992, politics in Angola changed towards a multi-party system and market economy, but the war continued until the death of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in 2002. During the decades of war, ethnic groups and cultural traditions were scattered throughout the country, and tens of thousands were forced into exile. With Angola having one of the highest rates of landmine injuries per capita in the world, amputees are a common sight in the streets of Luanda. Today Angola’s economy is rapidly growing, relying on natural resources such as oil and diamonds as well as South-South business arrangements. The capital Luanda – historically the centre of the political, economical and cultural elite – is among the most expensive cities in the world with regard to property and food prices.13 Life of its approximately seven million inhabitants is influenced by the increasing urbanisation that began during the civil war. About 30 per cent of the Angolan population live in the cities, in particular in the outskirts of Luanda, where large informal neighbourhoods called musseques have appeared. Here, the most basic needs like running water, electricity and canalisation are often lacking for a large proportion of the population. Often,

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musseque dwellers depend on the informal sector to secure their survival.14 Social structures are changing rapidly due to the new situation and traditional family structures have become less important. In addition, Portuguese, the colonial language, has increased in significance in the urban setting over the indigenous languages Kimbundu, Umbundo and others.15 Despite these hardships, Luanda might not be considered a ‘city of trauma’ in a visual sense. In times of war the city’s infrastructure had been fatally neglected, particularly in the informal neighbourhoods. There are, however, very few spots in Luanda where one can see direct results of fighting, like the bullet holes at the Hotel Turismo in the city centre. Here the troops of the two rivalling parties of UNITA and MPLA were fighting after the failed attempt of the first democratic elections in 1992. These tracks and traces of war stem from indirect consequences or collateral effects rather than a war proper. Today there are efforts underway aimed at reconstructing the city’s infrastructure. Traumatic experiences of war are brought with the migrants and refugees to the city and in most cases are not associated with the city. The Angolan musician Diamondog recalls: ‘The war in Luanda wasn’t so heavy, but those who went there from the Angolan provinces took a lot of memories with them.’ Trauma is rather situated within the biographies of the victims and perpetrators, not inscribed into the topography of the Luandan cityscape. From this perspective, Luanda might be understood as a space that is not emotionally marked. It can thus be regarded as an open space in which to perform embodied traces of the past and imagine concepts for the future. Angola faces a situation of silencing the recent past, particularly the years of the civil war. It is more than probable that historical events such as the slave trade, forced labour, brutal colonialism and multiple wars have led to traumas. Angola has been described as ‘land of nightmare’ or ‘in a permanent state of emergency’ not only by journalists, but also by novelists, poets and artists.16 Direct or indirect violence has become an enduring experience for most of the Angolan population. There is no public discourse on the civil war and no reconciliation policy comparable to that found in Rwanda, Sierra Leone or South Africa. This might be due to the fact that several years’ distance is needed

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after traumatising events before it is possible to talk about them. But this national amnesia might also be politically motivated. Past and present violence, as well as the precarious life in the musseques lacking the most basic facilities, seem to demand a form of expression in which these memories and experiences can be acted out.

Kuduro as a phenomenon Kuduro is performed in Luanda, Lisbon and club dance floors worldwide and was developed in the suburbs of Luanda and Lisbon around 1990.17 The name kuduro has a double meaning in the sense that it refers to ‘hard ass’ (cu duro), but also to ‘hard surrounding’ because ‘ku’ is a locative in the Kimbundu language.18 Today, kuduro is the most popular music style in the musseques. The electronically produced tracks contain, among other elements, Angolan rhythms such as kisomba and kazukuta, Caribbean soca as well as influences of techno, house and euro-dance. MCs rap to the asymmetric beats produced on simple equipment. The lyrics are mostly rapped in Angolan Portuguese and Calão, a mixture of Kimbundu and Portuguese that is the dialect spoken in Luanda. The fact that the hard raps are mostly delivered in half time, against an upbeat tempo around 130–140 BPM, creates a certain intensity that is typical to kuduro. In 2006, the Lisbon-based group Buraka Som Sistema released their single ‘Yah!’, which catapulted kuduro onto club dance floors worldwide. Another example of Lisbon-made kuduro is the outfit Batida, who uses footage of the civil war as well as traditional Angolan dances in their video ‘Bazuka’. They were one of the first to raise questions regarding the civil war through kuduro. In Luanda, kuduro is produced in basic studios in the musseques. Kuduristas emphasise the importance of the gueto, thus synchronising themselves with global hip hop culture’s ghetto discourse.19 In 2009, the young Angolan independent filmmaker Henrique ‘Dito’ Narciso released A Guerra do Kuduro (The War of Kuduro). Like his successful films Assaltos em Luanda (Assaults in Luanda, 2007) and Assaltos em Luanda II (Assaults in Luanda II, 2008) the film was shot in the suburbs of Luanda, telling the story of two rivalling bands/gangs: Os

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Lambas of the musseque Sambizanga, and Os Vagabanda of Rangel. The animosities between the kuduristas in the various musseques of Viana, Rangel, Cazenga and Sambizanga seem to increase. Kuduro reis (kings) make their way into the media limelight. They consider themselves in charge of their ghetto; making music is now called a luta (the fight).20 The borders between affiliation with kuduro and running with the gang of a kuduro celebrity in a specific musseque become blurred (‘O kuduro representa o gueto’).21 Carrying out conflicts verbally is called beefar.22 Beefs are also carried into the media in TV shows like Sempre a Subir, as well as on YouTube. Here, the kuduru reis claim to take over the responsibility for their gang members, who strongly identify themselves with their respective musseques.23 These practises cross the spheres of cultural expression, and thus kuduro serves as ‘second home’ in its local context of Luanda. The kudurista Puto Ouro Negro expresses this in a simple statement: ‘Nos não somos do gueto, nos somos o gueto [ . . . ] O kuduro recolhe.’24 These processes show the entanglement of kuduro as an urban youth culture, which allows demarcations through identification with a specific locality.25

Kuduro music and dance Kuduro music and dance are inseparable. Kuduristas perform in the small clubs, on musseque street corners, and utilise the beach as an open stage. Big sponsored media events are on the rise. Kuduro dance steps are called toques. They are extremely dynamic, can be rigid but also sensual, physically challenging and partly acrobatic. Kuduro’s toques contain elements of at least three areas, namely: popping and locking, break-dance, head spins and power moves from hip hop; traditional and carnival dance movements from Angola; and graphic theatrical movements such as crawling on the ground as if in a battle, dancing on the thighs as if the legs were amputated, dancing with legs turned inwards as if on crutches, dancing on crutches with missing limbs, slapping themselves in the face and falling flat on the ground as if shot, or mimicking media images of ‘starved Africans’.26 According to Diamondog, the practice of mirroring movements of handicapped people has a long tradition in Angolan vernacular

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dancing. He describes the famous limping toque Ti Nogueira where dancers jump on one leg while the other lags behind, slightly rotating in the air. More often than not the mutilation of the dancers’ bodies is not only mimicked in the dance. Some kuduro dancers actually lack limbs, walk on crutches or bear other overt physical memories of Angola’s recent war history.27 Deliberately crass facial expressions called cara feia (‘ugly face’) are part of kuduro dancing as well. The MCs Puto Prata and Bruno M have a song called ‘Cara podre’ (‘foul face’). In the corresponding video clip the kuduristas’ faces are contorted by movement or digital effects. The practice of changing from one extreme facial expression into another while passing the hand over the face can be found in many kuduro videos. Some of the movements can be traced back to popular dances, often stemming from the Angolan carnival. In António Ole’s documentary Carnaval da Vítoria dancers of various groups also crawl on the floor or move as if handicapped.

Traces of trauma: Kuduro on YouTube Kuduro goes beyond rationalisation of often earnest and socially conscious hip hop, or as the photographer Kiluanji Kia Henda expresses: ‘Hip hop in Angola is about Angola, but kuduro is Angola.’28 In this section we aim to provide a reading of audiovisual kuduro material to support the idea that kuduro might not only serve as a form of expression of Luanda’s turmoil, but also as a re-enactment of traumatic experiences and thus a tool to maintain collective homeostasis in a post-war context. The internet video platform YouTube offers kuduro dance performance videos that range in quality from MTV standard to barely recognisable mobile phone footage. Extreme forms of expression and body markers seem to be apt in representing the life on Luanda’s streets and are chosen here to represent the body at the edges of its physical borders. The aesthetics of the movement involve the alterity of the bodies and integrate them into the movement vocabulary. The identity of kuduristas is visually transported through clothes. Trends are changing constantly. In the early 2000s a dress code of baggy pants and sneakers was borrowed from hip hop culture. Recently, kuduro

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performers seem to align their wardrobe with the current hipster dress code of thick rim glasses, skinny jeans, wild print hooded tops all in strong primary colours, or even the tongue-in-cheek preppy style of London Shoreditch. Hairstyles are part of this image cultivation and may be bleached or dyed pink. Tattoos and body piercing, not very common among young people in urban societies in Africa, are also part of the set of visual markers of DJ Sebem, who clearly expresses this continuously developing kudurista style. He is regarded as one of the main role models in terms of style and fashion.29 Another kudurista, Yanilson Number 1, wears a bulletproof vest and a haircut trimmed with the image of a gun, possibly referring to his song ‘Faço dois tiros’ (‘I shoot twice’), in which he tells the story of a guy who kills teachers, friends and families, all of them with two shots.30 In the way that Angolans are represented in their own imaginary as well as from the outside, we find nearly no representations of victims, but instead that of a hero or potent warrior. In the words of Assmann, one can describe Angolan collective memory as a memory of perpetrators, not victims.31 She shows that it is necessary to create a narrative of resistance in the process of remembering in post-war societies, in order to be able to develop political aims and motivations. It is much easier to remember in the heroic mode than in the self-definition of a traumatised victim. In the fields of art, fashion and popular culture, national Angolan icons like Rainha Ginga appear in artworks and on consumer products. Even traces of violence like missing limbs are integrated into narratives and visualisations of power. We find, for example, a fashion model without legs, performing on the catwalk for fashion designers Shunnoz & Tekasala. Other icons from the realm of pan-African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, political activists like Steve Biko, as well as symbols for change and freedom like Bob Marley also appear in different forms within the reservoir of signs appropriated by artists, musicians and other cultural actors. The narrative of kuduro’s origin fits into the image of heroism, because it is said that Tony Amado, the well-known inventor of kuduro, wanted to create music that fits to the dance movements of Jean-Claude van Damme, an icon of the potent warrior and action hero. One of the most popular kuduro clips on YouTube is ‘Xiriri’ by Costuleta.32 The famous kuduro star has lost one leg. He enjoys himself

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at a pool party, gyrating his pelvis, dancing skilfully with crutches or performing acrobatic tricks. All the while he is surrounded by young women in bikinis, much like US American gangster rappers.33 In the clip ‘Mama Kudi’, he performs together with a small boy, who also has only one leg, both dancing a self-affirming dance.34 Costuleta seems so vigorous that despite a missing limb he remains attractive to women. In the video clip’s commentaries, Costuleta’s talent is discussed alongside questions of violence and war in the Angolan context and abroad. Even though he has not specifically talked about the reason for his amputation in public, the commentators use the narrative of the landmine victim to formulate criticism towards the ignorant parts of the virtual community and offer some insight into the Angolan reality: ‘You really think someone cut this guy’s leg? What kind of people do you think we are? He just stepped on a landmine dude. Don’t assume things! And you should take your hat off to him . . . because he’s awesome!!’35 In his early clips Costuleta tended to hide his amputation under long jeans, but later he confidently shows it as an integral part of his show alongside the crutches, which he uses for his relentless acrobatic dancing. Other dancers also adopted crutches as integral parts of their dance. The open representation of body alterity in kuduro clips is a common practice. For example, the dancers in the clip ‘Os marteleiros’ by Rei Helder do kuduro adapted movements with crutches and playfully include this distinct corporeality into their dance moves by folding in their arms as if mutilated. In the same clip the dancers mimic marching soldiers.36 A dance battle called batida is shown in the clip ‘De faia’ by Os Turbantes. Here, dancers and MCs compete in the streets. A young man falls backwards to the ground several times in response to a gunshot in the music.37 With the song ‘Ta maluca’ (‘She is crazy’), the female kuduro star Noite e Dia introduces a new dance style in which the head is shaken very fast while the arms are stretched out stiffly in front of the body and the dancer walks forward like a zombie. This style has also been adopted by other performers and has been integrated into kuduro’s repertoire of movements. Rigid movements, staggering steps and high body tension are characteristic of this toque.

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The only kuduro outfit using historic visual references we encountered during our research are the Lisbon-based group Batida. They deploy images of the legendary queen Rainha Ginga in their video clip ‘Bazuka’.38 The picture is inserted with a statement of a young kudurista saying: ‘Me, who drafted me, ain’t my mother nor my father . . .’ Then we see found footage from the Portuguese Radio and Television (RTP) archive showing a marching army, images of political personalities like the Portuguese dictator Salazar, and footage of traditional dances. In bright colours scripts are pasted over the images asking questions like Quem me rusgou? (Who drafted me?), with a jumping kuduro beat.39 The second part of the clip shows more pictures of the civil war and the present situation. Both the roles of the current president Dos Santos and of Savimbi – the former warlord and leader of the UNITA – are questioned, relating back to the first question: ‘Who drafted me? Not my mother (Dos Santos), not my father (Savimbi).’ Then, pictures of kuduro dancers and traditional dancers are edited one after the other, illustrating the similarities in the dance style. The last part of the clip shows a short interview with a young man telling about his injuries sustained from the war – two pieces of shrapnel in his body.40 Naming, lyrics and images establish strong links with Angolan history and the wars. Batida uses images of Angolan heroes and footage of the liberation war. The imagination of a strong and potent nation in spite of, or maybe even because of the war, is fulfilled here. As in the time of the liberation fight, a strong relation between art and culture with the construction of cultural self-confidence is emphasised in both official and pop-cultural discourse. Icons of Angolan history, like Rainha Ginga or Agostinho Neto, are (re)inscribed with meaning. By the appropriation of the strongest symbols of Angolanidade, kuduristas in both Angola and the diaspora are localising their practise in history and in its cultural context.

Conclusion Angolan kuduro seldom refers verbally to the country’s history. We can only guess that the current political system does not permit it. One indicator to support this argument is the story of the career dip

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of Dog Murras. He was one of the most popular kuduro artists during the first years after the civil war and used to be sponsored by a general of the Angolan military. Around 2010 Dog Murras relocated to Bahia (Brazil), where he kept performing. Until this article was written in 2011 he had not appeared in any of the kuduro TV shows in Angola. According to an Angolan informant it seems that Dog Murras had fallen from grace because of lyrics that criticise the fact that the Angolan population is not benefiting from the country’s wealth of natural resources. In 2011, however, Dog Murras returned to Luanda to open a music school as a social project for children. The drumming and dancing classes presented there seem to be based on essentialising notions of ‘Africanness’ that are popular in Bahia. Despite the absence of overt political commentary in kuduro we perceive an awareness of political sensibilities. This intersection of music and politics was established during the fight for independence, as Moorman has shown.41 She explores how Angolan national consciousness was created and negotiated through music and cultural production in general, and emphasises that the urban population actively participated in the imagination of an independent nation. Musical activities still constitute a large part of the Angolan patriotic self-conceptualisation (Angolanidade), even if musical and dance styles have evolved drastically since the struggle for independence.42 Angolan novelist José Eduardo Agualusa, who regards kuduro as a form of resistance with a strong political impact, confirms the continuation of this. According to him, kuduro gives voice and movement to a new generation in postwar Angolan society.43 Both kuduro dance and music express the urban reality of a generation growing up between the legacies of war and the promises of a new future. The highly capitalist economy is built on neopatrimonialism and led by kleptocratic elite.44 Resistance against the political system is seldom expressed verbally in lyrics or comments by kuduristas, but kuduro still offers a medium for expression of discontent. In the lyrics, the urban reality is reflected and some critical remarks are developed in coded form. We argue that these topics are negotiated by and are an embodiment of the experiences of a generation that re-conquers their bodies while navigating through a space and time of unfulfilled expectations

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for a brighter future. These bodies, which have been used as munitions during the civil war, thus bereft of self-affirmation and self-dependency, are now used as a source of empowerment. Trauma is transferable between individuals and generations. As the post-war generation, kuduristas inherited Angola’s cruel history and have to deal with it, even if they are not themselves war veterans or landmine victims.45 When discussing the experiences of Iraq war veterans returning to the US, Goldberg and Willse describe traumatised soldiers’ expressions of sentimentality towards the life on the battlefield. They had a purpose and enjoyed the company of their army comrades. Back home they feel confined in a money-driven care system that poses administrational challenges to them. Their physical and mental injuries are turned into commodities that render income to the veterans themselves as well as the care system’s actors.46,47 We are not aware of such an elaborate care system in Angola. Life in Luanda does not seem to allow any feelings of stalling. With regards to newly arrived refugees in Luanda, Diamondog states: ‘You have two options: you adapt or you adapt. You have to adapt. If not, where will you go? You lost your house, your plantation, your job – it’s impossible.’ Life in Luanda is strenuous; kuduro literally and figuratively keeps you on your toes, pushing forward. While kuduro creates a space where young Angolans can reinvent themselves as internationally connected and digitally savvy, this same space allows them to act out tensions. By re-enacting images of selected war atrocities, they become part of a national collective heritage while they serve as a means to express, thus distancing the individual dancer from the real world or media image exposure of them.48 According to Harris, re-enactment in dance/ movement therapy enables empathy with others, a critical step towards reconciliation.49 Symptoms of trauma – such as hyper-vigilance,50 high muscle tone51 and short tempers52 – are aestheticised in kuduro dancing and rapping, and thus incorporated into popular culture. In his TV show Sebem demands from the visiting kuduro artists that they deliver their performances with mais carga (more charge). Carga has become a quality criterion for kuduro rapping and dancing. Urgency and uneasiness as translated into the artistic delivery of kuduro have been aestheticised, categorised and labelled.

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This uneasiness leads back to the initial question of the potential of art to deal with trauma. Dominick LaCapra introduced the notion of ‘empathic unsettlement’ in his work on artists dealing with the Holocaust. Insecurity and unsettlement are regarded as positions that do not identify with the victims, but instead try to build an empathic relationship with them.53 This is mainly true for performative forms of art dealing with trauma, which is contrary to a representational or documentary one. It is an active engagement and negotiation, not an image of traumatic history but its repetition.54 In contrast to harmonising and tranquillising the experience, this performative approach continues to give space to disharmony and fraction within the bodily expression. This engagement with traumatic memory releases something uncanny and inconvenient to keep memory alive, and to finally be able to work through it. In this form, art is the opposite of amnesia due to its power to keep memory alive. We suggest that kuduro dancing’s potential for corresponding to traumatic events lies precisely in the fact that it is not overtly promoted as a therapeutic device. Instead, kuduro makes trauma bearable, as it offers a possibility to perform the unutterable in all its controversies (e.g. the thrill of collective fighting) where other culturally accepted forms of expression are still lacking. In contrast to the huge numbers of NGOs dealing with reconciliation projects in African countries and using popular culture such as hip hop as one tool of action, there are not yet any approaches of that sort in Angola. What is celebrated in kuduro is coolness, dance-offs and beefs. Asked if he sees kuduro as a genre dealing with war trauma, Diamondog responded: ‘No, no, no, kuduro is a music of joy. To initiate some kind of meditation process . . . No, that’s impossible with kuduro.’ Over the past five years we observed a growing acceptance of kuduro in Angolan society and media. While hardly any coverage used to be granted to the topic in mainstream media, Sebem now has his own show on national TV. In July 2010 the weekly journal Semanário Angolense devoted several pages to kuduro, dubbing it the ‘new ambassador of Angolan music’. Along with kuduro’s growing mainstream acceptance there is a smoothing out of the crasser dance movements and facial expressions, as well as an improving sound quality. Linking

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back to Goldberg and Willse’s line of thinking, both the acceptance and taming of kuduro can be seen as the same process of maintaining a state of collective homeostasis. It seems to us that during its two decades of existence kuduro has already helped to equilibrate Angolan society after the colonial and civil wars. Where a verbal discourse on war trauma has not been opened, kuduro culture can be read as a reconciliation tool in disguise. As we have shown above, bodily-performative practices that mimetically incorporate real world and mythical images have a long tradition in Angola. We argue that kuduro dancing serves as a medium that continues the established communicative functions of bodily-performative practices. Kuduro dancing therefore provides the opportunity to negotiate the memories of violent events on a non-verbal level, while PTSD entails the inability to remember or articulate the violating event. As the new national popular culture, kuduro works across ethnic lines without being an official tool of reconciliation. We conclude that kuduro facilitates grappling with the effects of the collective experience of life-threatening violence while maintaining the Angolan practice of incorporating quotidian imagery into vernacular dancing.

Notes 1. 2.

Siegert, Nadine, ‘Kuduru – Musikmachen ohne Führerschein’, Ethnoscripts vol.10, no.1 (2008), pp.102–124. This article is part of the preparations of a PhD project by Stefanie Alisch. Interviews will be conducted with protagonists in Angola, Portugal and other relevant sites. Some experiences such as war, rape, natural disasters or catastrophes caused by humans might be understood to be trans-culturally or universally traumatic [Hanisch, Branka, Aspekte des Portugiesichsprachigen Kriminalromans im Werk von Maria do Céu Carvalho (Berlin, 2008), pp.27–29]. These concepts can be applied to Angolans as well. However insightful the research on trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder in Portugal is, it only includes the perspective of the Portuguese soldiers in a foreign country, not that of the Angolan soldiers and civilians whose country was under war. Not often do we hear the direct voices of those affected by (potentially) traumatising events. Dealing with trauma often entails the inability to remember or articulate the violating event [Goldberg, Greg and Craig Willse, ‘Losses and returns: The soldier in trauma’ in Patricia Tincineto Clough with Jean

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Halley (eds), The Affective Turn - Theorizing the Social (Durham, 2007), p.267], thus statements by traumatised individuals are difficult to come by. Most academic literature consider trauma from a European/American point of view. The Freudian and later psychoanalytical concepts of trauma may miss the point in settings of the Global South as they have been developed mostly in European circumstances. We are by no means suggesting the atrocities of the Angolan wars are affecting those who received and executed them with less impact than in other societies. We are, however, questioning whether Western concepts of trauma are universally applicable. We aim to proceed cautiously in order to avoid effects of re-traumatisation in our interviewees and shield ourselves from possible substitute traumatisation. We have no intention either to persuade anyone that they should be feeling traumatised when they are in fact feeling fine. 3. Our argument is further supported with statements from an interview with the Angolan MC and DJ Diamondog. We used an interview method inspired by narrative interviews according to Fritz Schütze [see Küsters, Ivonne, Narrative Interviews: Grundlagen und Anwendungen (Wiesbaden, 2006)]. Narrative interviews are an established tool in biography research and have been applied to research on Chechen war experiences [see Cremer, Marit, Frembestimmtes Leben (Bielefeld, 2007)]. 4. Harris, Alan D, ‘When child soldiers reconcile: Accountability, restorative justice, and the renewal of empathy’, Journal of Human Rights Practice II, no.3 (2010), pp.334–354. 5. Thompson, Vanessa and Leswin Laubscher, ‘Violence, re-membering, and healing: A textual reading of drawings for projection by William Kentridge’, South African Journal of Psychology vol.36, no.4 (2006), p.816. 6. Hanisch: Aspekte des Portugiesichsprachigen Kriminalromans. 7. In 1980, PTSD was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder of the American Psychiatric Association. Only in 1999 was it officially accepted as a disease in Portugal. In 1994 the Congresso Internacional de Medicina Familiar dos Países de Língua oficial Portuguesa brought the discussion of war trauma into the broad media. In October 1995 the I. Encontro de Língua Portuguesa para o Estudo do Stress Traumático made a connection between the colonial wars, trauma and its reflection in the arts. As a result, psychiatric research and treatments were developed for Portuguese war veterans (see Hanisch: Aspekte des Portugiesichsprachigen Kriminalromans). 8. Bennett, Jill, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art (Stanford, 2005); and Van der Watt, Liese, ‘Witnessing trauma in post-apartheid South Africa: The question of generational responsibility’, African Arts XXXVIII, no.3 (2005), pp.26–39.

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9. See also Deleuze’s concept of ‘encountered signs’: Deleuze, Gilles, Proust and Signs (New York, 1972). 10. Burkhalter, Thomas, ‘“Playing music saved us from going nuts”: Childhood trauma and the sound works of Beiruti artists of the Lebanese war generation’, Unpublished paper (2010). 11. Goldberg and Willse: ‘Losses and returns: The soldier in trauma’, p.267. 12. For an overview of the historical and political context see this recent publication: Chabal, Patrick and Nuno Vida, Angola: The Weight of History (New York, 2007). 13. ‘Luanda, The Monaco of Africa’, France24, http://www.france24.com/ en/20080915-luanda-monaco-africa-angola, accessed 1 June 2011. 14. The documentary É dreda ser Angolano (2009) by Lisbon-based production company Radio Fazuma provides examples. 15. Hodges, Tony, Angola: Anatomy of an Oil State (Bloomington, 2004). 16. See Miessgang, Thomas, ‘Die Wunde des Seins. Neue afrikanische Kriege und ihre Spiegelungen in der Kunst’ in Tobias Wendl (ed), Africa Screams. Das Böse in Kino, Kunst und Kult (Wuppertal, 2004), pp.263–70; Mendes, Pedro Rosa, Baía dos Tigres (Alfragide, 1999). 17. On the different developments of kuduro see also Alisch, Stefanie and Nadine Siegert, ‘Angolanidade revisited: Kuduro sound and dance updating Angolaness’, Online publication in Norient – Independent network for Local and Global Soundscapes (forthcoming). 18. Moorman, Marissa J, Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to recent times (Athens, 2008), p.235. 19. This links to the musical movements of the time of liberation war and independence. For an analysis of the role of music within the context of the liberation war, see Moorman: Intonations. 20. TV programme Sempre a Subir, Interview with Pai Banana, TPA, 14 August 2009. 21. ‘Kuduro represents the gueto.’ 22. Appropriation of the hip hop practice of beefing. If you ‘got beef’, you have a problem with someone. In the kuduro context it is similarly used as ‘tem beefs’. 23. This shift from national or ethnic association towards association with one’s neighbourhood can also be seen to happen with the youth in the French banlieus. 24. ‘We are not from the gueto, we are the gueto. Kuduro adopts you.’ 25. This might be comparable to other recent developments of youth culture in African cities, like the Bakassi Boys [see Harnischfeger, Johannes, ‘The Bakassi Boys: Fighting crime in Nigeria’, Journal of Modern African Studies

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26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

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vol.41, no.1 (2003)] in Nigeria, a gang-like organised local militia, or the kuluna gangs of martial art practitioners in Kinshasa, who raid and occupy the city squares [see Engwete, Alex, ‘Kuluna and Kuluneurs in Kinshasa: A low-intensity urban insurgency?’, http://alexengwete.blogspot.com/2010/02/ kuluna-and-kuluneurs-in-kinshasa-low.html (2010), accessed 1 June 2011]. Even if kuduro gang culture in Luanda has not (yet) been articulated in such violent forms like the kuluna or the Bakassi Boys, it can also be regarded as expressions of the negotiation of new masculinities (and to a lesser degree also femininities, and with the appearance of the transsexual dancer Titica, we might also regard kuduro as realm of acting out alternative gender), partly by transferring the war from the battlefields to the spaces of daily life. See Buraka Som Sistema, ‘Sound of Kuduro’, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=4CkXhtw7UNk, accessed 24 March 2010. An earlier example of this practise is Joana Pernambuco, who was a legendary handicapped dancer in Luanda’s sophisticated dance circuit of the 1950 and 1960s. She could write her name in the sand as she danced. Her name comes from the term perna mbuka, a mix of Portuguese and Kimbundu that means ‘limping leg’. In dancing she transformed her physical liability into a boon (Moorman: Intonations, p.118). Conversation with Kiluanji Kia Henda, Bayreuth, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ3cL0MwdfE, accessed 19 August 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kspl1aWP4K4&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtA_T-LKeSw, both accessed 18 August 2010. Assmann, Aleida and Kurt Wettengl, Das Gedächtnis der Kunst (Ostfildern, 2000), p.72. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ve8MNc1WE, accessed 23 March 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxeg8Rd08Bo, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zmXWxzbCeBw, accessed 23 March 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94a_BAy47k&feature=related, accessed 23 March 2010. Comment by Ojekernegro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94a_ BAy47k&feature=related, accessed 19 August 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsMxbS86a4E, accessed 19 August 2010. http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=ugIkC49j1xk, accessed 24 March 2010. Rainha Ginga was a political leader in the 17th century who resisted the Portuguese colonialists. She is one of the major historical icons of Angola today, representing anti-colonial opposition and Angolanidade (Angolaness).

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68 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

Art and Trauma in Africa Rusgar means drafting by the army in urban slang. These images are part of É dreda ser Angolano (2009). Ibid, p.112. This aspect is also further elaborated in the article Alisch and Siegert: ‘Angolanidade revisited’. Personal conversation with José Eduardo Agualusa, Bayreuth, 2010. Chabal and Vidal: Angola: The Weight of History. According to Dori Laub [in Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York and London, 1992)] it is possible to be traumatised even if you have never directly experienced the traumatising event. Goldberg and Willse: ‘Losses and returns: The soldier in trauma’, p.278. Goldberg and Willse (‘Losses and returns: The soldier in trauma’) also relate soldiers’ descriptions of double layers of perception where war images mix into present reality as well as a felt co-presence of the dead among the living. One of our hypotheses is that as Angola has a rich heritage in ancestor veneration in music and dance [see Kubik, Gerhard, Angolan Traits in Black Music, Games and Dances of Brazil: A Study of African Cultural Extensions Overseas (Lisbon, 1979)] these visiting ghosts of the war past may be put into categories of spirits rather than psychological phenomena. This aspect will be looked into as part of the forthcoming PhD project. For the relatedness of the real and surreal worlds in an urban setting see De Boeck, Filip and Marie-Françoise Plissart, Kinshasa: Tales of the Invisible City (Antwerp, 2004). See Ashworth, Gregory, Brian Graham and John Tunbridge, Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies (London, 2007). Harris: ‘When child soldiers reconcile’, p.352. Ibid, p.337. See Eberhard, Marianne, ‘Als das Kaninchen vor der Schlange in Bewegung kam. Tanz- und Ausdruckstherapie mit traumatisierten Menschen’ in Ruth Hampe, Philipp Martius, Alfons Reiter, Gertraud Schottenloher and Flora Von Spreti (eds), Trauma und Kreativität (Bremen, 2003). Goldberg and Willse: ‘Losses and returns: The soldier in trauma’, p.267. LaCapra, Dominick, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore, 2001), p.xi. Ibid, p.103.

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CHAPTER THREE LOCAL ARTS VERSUS GLOBAL TERRORISM: THE MANIFESTATIONS OF TRAUMA AND MODES OF RECONCILIATION IN MOROCCAN MUSIC FESTIVALS Moulay Driss El Maarouf

This chapter discusses the increasingly discursive role of music festivals in Morocco in dealing with trauma and violence.1 While cultural and religious festivals have always abounded in Morocco, I argue that music festivals thrive since the terrorist attacks on Casablanca in 2003 and 2007. They have, I propose, three purposes: economic, political and social. While the economic factor is important, I am more interested in the other factors, which serve to demonstrate how festivals can be used politically and culturally to fight local terrorism and how they are often used by the organisers and the state to create a sentiment, however transient and constructed, of togetherness and peace. On the one hand, it is essentialist to ascribe a singular role to music as a onefunctional medium. I argue that music serves, among other things, reconciliatory purposes as it moves from the cultural to the political. On the other hand, I use the term hegemony because I believe that in the context of political violence, music and music festivals can be

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used by the state, as the representative of a dominant power, to accept peace as a constructed ideology through consensus. This is a mode of cultural hegemony, which, far from suggesting brute modes of persuasion, materialises through consent.2 To drive this idea home I should place this argument in context, departing from an incident that took place in 2003, a few weeks prior to the suicide bombings in Casablanca. A simple trial case in the Moroccan court had given way to a contentious debate on the preservation of religious ethics, which, after the attacks, turned into a debate on how religious ethics could be instrumentalised for destructive objectives. Thirteen young Moroccans were arrested for their involvement in Satanism, a case that was assisted by the fundamentalist religious mentality that associates the impersonation of evil traits, however theatrically, with devil-worship, a highly punishable crime in Morocco. The terrorist attacks in Casablanca happened a few weeks after these young Moroccans were released. It was an occasion when society turned schizophrenic, torn between religious doctrines and scepticism towards overt religiosity. The state opted to give more freedom to musical attitudes to strike a balance, and consecrate spaces for the metaphors of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to co-exist. The idea that ‘Satanists do not terrorise, religious fundamentalists do’ was diffused widely after the terrorist attacks, and embraced by various media. Ahmed Boulane’s film Les Anges de Satan (The Satanic Angels, 2007) illustrates that repression leads to the absence of freedom.3 The film tells the story of the thirteen young heavy metal fans. They throw a party in the cellar where the band members usually rehearse. When police forces rush in and arrest them, they are accused of Satanism and shaking the Islamic faith; Rock ‘n Roll CDs, a ‘kiss my ass’ black T-shirt and a plastic skull are enough to send them to jail. At a press conference in Tunisia in 2003 Boulane questioned: ‘Why don’t we give freedom to young Moroccans to express themselves, because if we corner them, they fall prey to the dark forces which will firstly contain them and secondly turn them into time bombs.’4 There are alternatives, even if limited. Alternatives might be triggered by despair at the absence of alternatives. Before the Casablanca bombings, Islamists influenced the decision of the court to arrest

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the young music fans. After the attacks people turned against the Islamists; people drew the conclusion that the Islamists were now themselves a threat to the stability of society. Indeed, the problem of Satanism piloted the problem of religious fundamentalism, which was already a global phobia since 9/11. Satanism then triggered a revolutionary artistic movement, Nayda (‘Wake Up’), in Morocco.5 Music festivals started to function as alternatives to the spectacles of death that have been visualised by and are stored in the collective memory. Music festivals offer the possibility of a collective catharsis.

Reading terror in context Taking his cue from the various attempts to explicate the phenomenon of terrorism, Marvine Howe, a former correspondent for The New York Times, offers an attempt to locate the foundations of violence in Moroccan society, stating that ‘the terrorist attacks shocked the kingdom – much in the same way that the assault of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon traumatized the United States’.6 Tracing the symptoms of violence in a country known for its censorship is difficult. Morocco was experiencing a form of development and democracy, until the enemy within appeared. The Casablanca attacks put Morocco on the world map. Howe says: ‘Moroccans would continue to believe that their country was an exception, immune to the fanatical deviations of Islam, until 16 May 2003.’7 Morocco was on the road to democracy, but the traumatic events motivated a mission to uncover ‘the underlying causes of this appalling tragedy and how to respond without jeopardizing the country’s newborn and still-faltering democratic gains’.8 Howe comments repeatedly on the panic that followed the rage: The terrible blow occurred. The May 16, 2003, suicide attacks against ‘un-Islamic’ targets in Casablanca shook the nation’s confidence in itself, the monarchy, and the country’s faltering progress toward democracy.9 Howe admits that the Casablanca bombings posed several key questions, one of which is how King Mohamed VI, who had tried to initiate

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a less authoritarian way of governing, would react to the brutal assault on the traditional Moroccan values and co-existence among Muslims, Jews and foreigners. I argue that although the Moroccan security machine, dating back to the days of King Hassan II, known for its cruelty, shrewdness, and measures of torture, was reactivated in answer to the war against terror, more peaceful and reconciliatory measures followed. Ahmed Benchemsi, publisher of TelQuel, a Francophone Moroccan magazine, wrote that ‘torturing suspects would not make them change their views, on the contrary, this will convince them that the system is not only impious but barbaric and must be fought until death’.10 Suicide bombers, causing horror and destruction in the name of religion, are manufacturers of death. In a rare interview with Paris Match, King Mohamed VI declared: ‘Those who committed these acts have no right to call themselves Muslims. Islam is life. Suicide is the negation, the antithesis of Islam.’11 Life must battle the antagonistic forces maintained by the bombers who believe that through killing they attain a happy after-life. From this conviction arises the idea that death should be fought with a celebration of life. People emerge more powerfully, having succeeded to overcome the trauma. Howe quotes Fauzia Assouli, national secretary of the Democratic League for Women’s Rights, who said that ‘before May 16, the women of Sidi Moumen did not dare sing or listen to music or dance in their own homes’ because they lived under an oppressive regime in the Bidonvilles, where the police is never seen within the walls of the slums, and where Islamic fanatics have established their own laws.12

Counter-terror spectacles: Music festivals and the production of life There is a strong link between the politics of sadness imposed by terrorists and the era of constructed joy that followed. Since the distressing events of 16 May 2003, music and festivals in Morocco have worked towards broadcasting and promoting reconciliation through art for overcoming the country’s traumas of violence. In the past, festivals had served to celebrate the Moroccan heritage through fantasias and music.

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After 2003, festivals were instrumentalised as counter-terror spectacles. Whereas before (rural) festivals functioned as celebrations of traditions and the diversity of Moroccan communities, Moroccan music festivals in the urban spaces now operate as magnets for counter-terror communities fabricated by the state both to smooth away the traces of violence from collective memory, and to maintain peace by manufacturing moments of ‘glocal’ togetherness. In an interview with Nacim Haddad, a member of the rap group Hbab El Ghiwan, I asked about the role of music in the age of terror. He asserted that: While listening to music, dancers in trance, those who feel repressed by the system, the subdued, the depressed, could leave out their disturbances and come to grips with the self. Music is like a psychiatrist in a sense because it cleanses the soul, and I think the Moroccan state fell back on this fact after the terrorist attacks on Casablanca as a way to steer the youth away from fanaticism and towards rap music as a medium for edification. The state probably thought it is safer for a young man to be a member of rap communities than to be part of religious fanatic groups. After the terror attacks on Casablanca in 2003 and 2007 music festivals stopped to exist in their traditionally conceived aura of expressiveness. They have become more purposeful and arguably more restrictive in theme and premise. That is to say, the festival as an event staged by the community for the community to celebrate, most of the time, an innocent need for celebration has changed. In the main, outside tragedies (global terrorism) were borrowed to take the shape of internal conflicts (local terrorism), producing alter egos that often presuppose alternate characters and roles for society before the attacks. There can hardly be a sense of a coherent identity or historical linearity, because it is impractical for society to undergo so many changes on the political and cultural level in a rapidly transforming world. I suggest this leads to the desirable and undesirable characteristics of modern schizophrenia. It is interesting to see how festivals have become a construct for collective commemoration while at the same time maintaining the impression of cultural entertainment and celebration.

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At the beginning of the twenty-first century, interest in the dynamic interaction of the local and the global (the ‘glocal’), its interventions in the production, dissemination and reception of popular culture, has developed its own kind of topicality.13 Popular culture has undergone essential changes affected by world changes and the history of modern violence. These have rendered popular culture subject to elemental changes that incorporate multiple ideologies. John Richard Thackrah’s Dictionary of Terrorism (2004) explores how violent behaviour hinges on misunderstandings, which result in what he calls ‘uncertain conflicts’, whereby the mentality of the terrorist cannot converge with that of the democratic environment he strives to destructively interrupt. Thackrah argues that the history of terrorism can be written in a more meaningful way, and states that an insight can be gained in organisational behaviour and operational postures when one analyses the nature of its impact. In an interview with the co-founder of the Boulevard des Jeune Musiciens in March 2010 in Casablanca, Mohamed Merhari, also known as Momo, affirms that music festivals are efficient weapons against fundamentalism. Boulevard is the largest contemporary music festival in North Africa and the first event dedicated to urban contemporary music. Momo says: ‘We certify that music festivals are meant to combat fanaticism. This festival, or any similar festival, could be a barrier standing in the face of fanaticism.’ I want to suggest two interpretations of festivals in Morocco. One embraces the ideal of the collaborative movement towards reconciliation, the way in which only art can overcome the unspeakable. In this interpretation, music and the communal experience of it at festivals will present the possibility to attain a transcendental feeling of togetherness and community. The other option I want to propose is that, when the government and policy-makers become too involved in the organisation of such events, a festival faces the danger of becoming a cynical effort to construct a façade of involvement and compassion for the youth. While festivals celebrate music and culture, they are also tools to avert attention from the danger and presence of terrorism. Within this logic, Moroccan festivals have ceased to be festivals. They have transformed into counter-terrorism scenarios and constructed cultural events. Festivals are anti-violence projects. They are

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the policy-makers’ newest peace-seeking strategies, postmodern tools of hegemony. In short, they are post-festivals. Moroccan festivals have always been promoters of multiculturalist sentiments, constructs of coexistence. With the global war on terror and with the politically motivated spirit of Islamophobia, however, festivals are caught up with the flotsam of new ideological missions of cultural domestication, missions that use cultural manifestations such as festivals to bring insurgent behaviour under control. There is a governmental tendency in Morocco to fight terrorism with art. The state then has appropriated the communal spirit at festivals in order to drive their message home. Working in a context of political violence, ‘art therapists must throw into question [their] very practice, challenge [their] basic assumptions that art can contain, hold and transform, can draw on resilience and give meaning to atrocity and trauma’.14 In Arab culture a combination of expressive art forms, such as those that involve music and movement, can function as traditional forms of healing.15 Music is employed discursively in the Moroccan context, on the one hand to meet cultural objectives and, on the other hand, to seek, within a context of atrocity and terror, the hegemonic activation of people against the ideologies of death. Both festivals and terrorism create an audience, a spectacle, and in both cases spectators go through a great range of powerful emotions. In many ways music epitomises the questions and dilemmas entailed in aesthetic engagement with politics.16 Music that engages emotionally with the narratives and histories of terrorism, involves dealing with the memory of death, suffering and trauma, leading to emotional calls for political action, often involving feelings of retribution that go far beyond the need to provide security.17 Music exemplifies the potential and limits of gaining emotional insights into political questions. Far from representing a particular occurrence in the political world, music connects to sides outside itself, to a way of thinking, an attitude, an idea or an emotion.18 Music is unique in a variety of ways, including its performative and rhythmic nature and the fact that it can be perceived simultaneously from all directions, which is not the case with visual or textual sources.19 To drive this idea home, Bleiker maintains that music, which can be both performative and rhythmic, is open

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to a spectrum of interpretations, ranging from analysis of text and reverberations to the symbolism that shoot through musical forms. Music addresses the essence of things because it involves emotions, while it can, at the same time, be critical and objective, sated with its paradigms of knowledge. In his article ‘Can there be “Music for peace”?’ Gerald L Phillips contends that artworks cannot just demonstrate for peace, they must resist subversive ideologies centred in commodification and power. If music merely makes a plea for reconciliation, what is reconciled is just that particular piece of music with exactly the ideology justifying the radically commodified culture of the music’s emergence. For Phillips it is challenging to find answers to questions such as ‘How might music be actively and fruitfully engaged in the pursuit of peace?’ and ‘Can music be used in the interests of peace?’. Labelling music as a generator of peace is trying to assign the role of diplomat to it. In other words, music turns out to be functionally diplomatic, and therefore, political. As anthropologist and musico-ethnologist Deborah Kapchan acknowledges, music is an intercultural, transnational exchange that holds the promise of universal understanding. But even ‘a promise is a “performative”: it enacts rather than refers and by its very action accomplishes its goal, which is to create an intersubjective contract that is often affective and implicit rather than acknowledged and juridical’.20 According to Kapchan it is the sacred nature of the festival event that brings people together in an emphatic communal experience.21 The belief in this power and ability of festivals to engender a new community could lead to the construction of music festivals as measures of control. Festivals put reality into discourse, while feeding the illusion of peace to traumatised audiences by controlling the existent traces of violence in the psyche of the collective mob.

The visual campaign against terror: The construction of educational images At the Boulevard Festival in Casablanca in March 2010, I noticed an industry trading in attitudes. The Boulevard Festival caters for all tastes, and sponsors a wide range of ideologies. It has managed to build

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up a public persona, whereby the public, in terms of mannerisms, fashion trends and attachment to urban music with all its different styles, draws its own original traits. As Moroccans increasingly look to the media for local and global trends, it is not surprising that their choice of clothing, its statements and styles are to a great extent determined by this contact with the media. The war against terrorism materialises on the streets with surprising mobility. Mobile reporters, both men and women, wear T-shirts with statements on the ongoing ideological struggle between advocates of violence and advocates of peace. Festival organisers host, in addition to the music spectacles, the souk, allocating space to a market where young people conduct business selling T-shirts, headwear, books, past festival booklets, tattoos and piercings, music albums, etc. With such a marketplace the organisers underscore the philosophy of community-making. The festival is a social caravan, moving past cities in many shapes, transporting artistic meanings and ideological principles grafted on or worn by the body as a messenger. Today’s media are reaching the attention of the public by informally recruiting volunteers, who, by exhibiting the statements of the mainstream through their T-shirts and caps, are becoming more visible and audible. They stand up against the promoters of violence through the reinforcement of their ideologies of peace. Music festivals provide an ambiance of peace through music, and clothing worn at the festivals textually prepares the minds of festival-goers to consume anti-violence statements.

Overlapping communities: The festival as public-maker and exercise toward hospitability Hospitality and tolerance are basic traits of festivals and are foundational to the process of annihilating the physical boundaries between people. The biggest music festivals in Morocco, the Mawazine Festival Rhythms of the World in Rabat, the Gnaoua Festival in Essaouira, and the Festival of World Sacred Music in Fez are highly technologised and modernised to fit universal standards of organisation, catering for native and foreign spectators. The Festival of World Sacred Music, for instance, offers music deemed to be spiritual and sacrosanct.

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The Gnaoua Festival disseminates an African flavour. Mawazine hosts musicians from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. These festivals attract tourists and capitalist investment and operate for the enhancement and the promotion of the image of the city, generating ‘visitability’.22 Taieb Belghazi likewise argues that ‘cultural ephemera in general and festivals in particular are adequate means to fulfil the strategic objectives of a new global trend in cultural policy geared towards marketing cities and turning them into “magnets of tourism”, economic development and urban regeneration’.23 Nevertheless, as a cultural formation indelibly marks the interaction between the self and the other, the local and the global, the festival becomes the locus for the elaboration of what Derrida calls ‘unconditional hospitality’ in his attempt to criticise the limits of tolerance.24 The festival is no longer a local property, and neither is terrorism. The modern festival is always influenced by global forces. Attending a modern Moroccan festival is a hybrid experience. It operates in a space of territoriality and extra-territoriality. A festival is not only an instance of liberation from the age-old pressures and strains of humanness, whereby festivalgoers assure their primitive desires for communal union, but it is also a juncture that emphasises people in their blurred outlines. This leads us to questions about the concept of community in light of the current re-conceptualising gestures of violence. Terrorism has re-shuffled communities beyond questions of place. Terrorism’s power of reference makes of it the world’s best place-maker, giving cities and places new forms of existence. Terrorism has triggered transnational movements and redefined the concept of place to such an extent that communities that have suffered terrorist attacks become paranoid, displaying distinct identities. Cities affected by terrorism change, gripped by depersonalisation. Depersonalisation, or self-stereotyping, is the process ‘whereby people come to perceive themselves more as the interchangeable exemplars of a social category than as unique personalities defined by their individual differences from others’.25 The virus of violence stretches globally, introducing phobic behaviour to communities, and an attempt to create detachment, to project the self as disengaged from such acts, while recognising the acts come from disobedient elements in society. This recognition signals a state of depersonalisation,

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avoiding any connection to the fatal transgression (terrorism), while demonstrating one’s own non-violent leanings. After the 2003 trial of the thirteen young Moroccans, the suicide bombings of the same year sparked a groundbreaking and unprecedented wave of music in the urban spaces across Morocco. People were overwhelmed by the traumas of terror, and had two perceived options: to join the fundamentalists (terrorists) or subscribe to the groups of peace messengers (artists). The original debate on the shaking of faith, which had paved the way to the trial in the first place, became a debate about how faith could shake the nation and endanger security. The quickly expanding music culture affected the initial format and serviceability of the existing festivals, which had been turned into arenas for discipline and catharsis, as well as signifiers of tolerance. In this sense, festivals can be said to be controversial, and the way they proliferate in space, place and time, reveals instances of depersonalisation, charged with physical and psychological makeovers. If depersonalisation is a state in which an individual experiences either his/her feelings, thoughts, memories, or bodily sensations as not belonging to himself, possessed by a feeling of distance from oneself, a sense of unreality of oneself,26 it is important to study media treatments of traumas and the applicable functions of media-driven signs that identify, accentuate, and trivialise the politics of fear and violence locally. Terrorism has the force to effect radical changes by way of destruction. At the same time, it beckons a similar amount of power in enforcing sweeping changes in the way communities operate in world political and cultural theatres and display themselves locally and globally. To eventually be able to hypothesise the necessary time and methods for healing, afflicted communities go through a number of diagnostic stages. They automatically accelerate the sense of identification with other communities that went through the same violence, making a distinction between a troubled and non-troubled community, tagging the self as either traumatised or not, with or without distinctive traumatic experience. At the same time, terrorism, like many image-focused commodities, is inimitable and incomparable, in the sense that its creative chaos is governed by its own geographical and political context, objectives and style.

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Such a creative domain of violence requires the same amount of creativity to fight it, recruiting the services of the media, of local and global therapists. Festivals are ancient tools of therapeutic curing. A festival is an event situated in time and space. It turns cities into crowdpullers, inviting strangers into the transformation into one crowd. This oneness promises therapy through art and creativity, regardless of social stratifications. The festival’s function has long been accepted to be introducing the individual to the larger community, with the purpose of mending any possible cracks and divisions caused by imposed boundaries. I argue that festivals offer group treatment to communities that experienced terror. In a personal interview in April 2010 with Hassan Nafali, the president of the Moroccan syndicate of theatre professionals, he describes the festival as ‘a moment of constructed joviality’, which ‘need not be authentic, to be real’. He continues: Festivals synthesise world communities. In the Fez festival we bring bands from the three monotheistic religions to play before world music fans with the purpose of showing the world that music is powerful enough to eradicate all differences. In the same bearing, we have created family bands, featuring Moroccan and non-Moroccan artists in the 2010 Mawazine edition. Evidently, the Fez festival emphasises the shared experience of the world’s heritage of spirituality and sacredness. After the terrorist attacks on the USA, musical presentations at the 2001 edition of the Fez festival were selected from many genres of sacred music. Performances included diverse sacred music such as chants from Jerusalem, mystical Sephardic songs and American gospel. In 2010 Fez boasted an even richer programme and as such inspired many festivals worldwide. It is presented as a continuation of the civilising role played by the sacred city historically.27 The Fez festival is a display of ‘acceptance skills’ that are deep-seated in the testimonies of the city’s past. Both inclusive and tolerant, the Fez festival embraces all world religions and spiritual traditions, and recognises that the diversity of world-views has been a key element in the preservation of a certain equilibrium of the world.28 It is equally important to combine the socio-political dynamics of the

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event (how the festival frames society within a context of terror) with the semiotics of the images of the event (images that keep referring to the acts of violence). These are textual constructs using a mixture of media and cultural practices. As a community-maker, the souk acts in response to and creates awareness of the dynamics of underground practices within the political and cultural organisation of festivals. They personalise reconciliatory instruments. Festival actors such as artists, sponsors, market merchants, fans, etc. play a vital role when discussing theatricality, consumerism, social narratives and cultural politics.29 These politics, however, cannot neglect the social satisfaction that festivals offer their audiences. I propose two ways into the cultural complexity of festivals. If festivals relate to ideologies for building ephemeral communities that spring up along strategies of reconciliation, this arguably reduces festivals’ complexity into a homogenised experience, neglecting social, cultural, economic and aesthetic meanings. Conversely, the assertion that the festival is ambivalent and paradoxical lays open the chance for different or shifting evaluations by various readers. The political-cultural dynamics which arose with music festivals during the first decade in twenty-first-century Morocco have further confirmed the social efficacy of festivals in creating ephemeral communities. By virtue of their social parameters and power of unity, festivals seem to give optimistic signs of identification to an ordinary community. The images of reconciliation between the state and the people and between the people and the urban space, overrule old oppressive measures of surveillance that typified the police state in Moroccan history. This provokes reflection on how a sense of community, once non-existent or weak, could be produced, advertised and consumed. While I argue that the majority of music festivals in Morocco are arenas for underground cultures, it is crucial to examine what goes on at the intersection of different cultures. There are at least five communities in any music festival in Morocco: the community of organisers; the workforce; the local and global fans; the artists; and the community of neutral elements (people with non-artistic intentions such as robbers, fugitives, beggars, street vendors, security agents and the police). Like

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any music event fusing people from different communities, the festival disintegrates any possible borders around the community. Even in festivals with social categorisations, the technical and strategic boundaries can be interpreted to be fake, given the festival’s ability to bring different levels of the social pyramid into close contact, something the architecture of the city would not allow. The boundaries, though both real and imaginary, remain secondary, because everyone is consuming the same product, acting as an organic whole. When Benedict Anderson talked about imagined communities, he conceptualised the term community as constructed, looking at what brings people together. Cultural artefacts – not the people – arouse ‘deep attachments’ and a strong sense of nationalism.30 Anderson believes that communities are shaped by what unites them, which helps them recognise their affinities. Anderson says a community is imagined because people hinge on the mental image of unity to look at themselves as similar, sharing the same geography, culture, religion, etc. For Anderson, regardless of proximity or distance between cities, they are ‘made’ into matching forms because they are contained by similar cultural, historical and geographical bondage. The affinity people ascribe to themselves is a construct, rather than a reality. Anderson does not account for occasions where different communities unite, as they do at the Gnaoua Festival. At this festival, locals, Moroccans from every city in Morocco, local Moroccan Jews living in the old medina, Jews from different parts of the world, ordinary tourists and nomads are all present in a hybrid mixture. This suggests we must deal with the importance of forming a new conceptual mould, bearing in mind the image and reality, similarity and difference. Membership ceases to exist in moments of community building, during the trance. That is to say, the trance generates a sense of obscurity which symphonises with the idea of membership, which in turn hints at the comparisons we can draw between various interiors and exteriors, and which can even be traced within the festival itself. If they mean anything, trance-enabled obscurity and all the interior/exterior dynamism symbolise the failure to see, or to see clearly. The precise place of the

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line between imagined communities is ambivalent. Different forms of existence are similarly encapsulated within one festival. It is sensible to attach flexibility to festival communities because they are delicate (they come and go in space and time), quite inflexible (because they are punctual and physical) and not open to revision. Organisation of any festival is part of the process of image building. It is here that the transient becomes real, with multiple versions of an encounter and a complex understanding of community politics. The theme of peace in a festival is an ideal, but the mob and harmony that characterise it, the music, dance and guests, are real. Policy-makers can therefore opt for ideals that have the potential to change reality, and build concrete communities based on such ideals. These are overlapping communities that share ideals other than the reality of a stage, accommodating different cultures and conveying traces of the history of a nomadic community. Festivals are thresholds whereby participants are neither in nor out; they are in sites of inspiration and change. Festivals are instances of encounter between similarities and differences. A festival offers to diverse communities the idea of a shared community, however imagined it is. It offers the opportunity to reconcile through a common experience of ideals.

Don’t touch my country: Striking back at terror At the heart of the philosophy of tolerance spawned by Moroccan music festivals emerges a tendency toward rejecting terrorism, sung and performed by young hip hop artists, who are, as viewed by many observers, the new commentators of the nation, the uncompromising voice of the people. ‘Khatwa’ (‘A step’), a song by Moroccan rapper Gamehdi, tells the story of a young man who moves from poverty to a series of circumstances where he falls in the hands of extremist jihadists. They accommodate him, preparing him for a suicide mission in Casablanca. Gamehdi’s character then is a suicide bomber, who undergoes a series of psychological tests on his way to the hotel where he will cause damage to his brothers. In his song Gamehdi intelligently plays with the word ‘brothers’. He uses it several times to denote the paradoxical meanings of the term. When his character was brainwashed by

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the jihadists, he mentions how the new brothers negatively changed his heart. By the end of the song, he attributes his violent inclinations to poverty and the inability to feed his blood brothers, not to any intrinsic desire to kill his brothers (innocent people). After he decides not to carry out the bombing, he sings: Everyone is kafir they made me believe. Go to Afghanistan, the faithless leave, poverty, they said in the mosque you had no room till one day they asked me to join in a room. They said my country is one for prostitution, that it doesn’t do justice to those with education, that for me paradise is waitin’, that I should not keep sufferin’. ( . . .) They started to call me Mujahid. I was made to swear on the Quran the day of the eid. ( . . .) Days passed n’ brothers we became, my heart merciless became. ( . . .) It is not that I want to kill my brothers, I had no food to provide f’ my brothers. ( . . .) ‘Allah is the greatest!’ they said I shouldn’t forget to say. They didn’t know that He hates evil deeds per se. The suicide bombings in Casablanca created a literature that reflects in various ways on the enormity of the impact of violence on Moroccan society. Violence has created a new generation, new forms of expression, new definitions of religion and art. ‘We use rap to terrorise. We have terrorised rap music. Rap is our only medium for expression, without which we won’t feel at peace,’ says Mic from Collective B3.31 Mic as well as Gamehdi contribute a functional role to music as an initiator and eliminator. Rap music initiates young people into a world of constructed non-violence, where each one is offered a tremplin (springboard)

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through acquiring new skills such as rapping, writing lyrics, etc. This then leads to a scope of possibilities for living and expression, while eliminating a structure of violence through themed performances. The musicians believe it is their mission to transmit messages that subvert those in power, because of the overt language of resistance and defiance underground music offers against modes of corruption. They also aim to change the music genre, as each rapper or group of rappers tries to bring new elements into the musical style. Many Moroccan rappers have condemned the terror attacks in Morocco in their own lyrics, including Fnaire and Bigg the Don: M’ country’s the country of prayer, of Islam, n’ of crime yo. M’ country’s the country of May sixteenth, country of explosions yo. M’ country’s the country of parliament, half of it sleeping. The other quarter absent-minded, the rest with corruption reeking. M’ country’s the country of justice, charity and of development. M’ country’s the country of those who suicided in them malice dormant. Trauma surfaces subconsciously in Bigg the Don’s song. Unlike Gamehdi’s ‘Khatwa’, which aims to relate its story through the point of view of a terrorist, Bigg speaks of it subconsciously, reflecting on corruption and the unequal struggle between the powerful and the vulnerable. While Gamehdi’s hip hop song is discursively direct, Bigg’s song speaks in unclear codes, blurring the meaning of a country of which he cannot make sense. Bigg transmits a sense of shock that grips him in the midst of his reflection on corruption. Gamehdi puts the audience straight into the psychological impasse that engulfs the terrorist in the making, one whose fury at the existing corruption and social disparities paves the ground for his readiness to become a terrorist. Therefore, the two rappers are creative witnesses who complement one another along separate narratives. They verbalise through music a deep inner desire to resolve, through artistic reconciliation, a traumatic burden and a history of recent violence.

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Conclusion There is a global trend to fight terrorism with music festivals. They encourage an implicit agreement that festivals could reduce the spirit of fear, as regulatory and reconciliatory tools used by the state to contain rage and promote a culture of tolerance through an aura of multiculturalism.32 The discourses of threat and negotiation become a cultural dialogue at the organisational level. This new discourse is redefined by festival organisers who borrow its aesthetic legacy from the multiculturalist perspective. Festivals can be regarded as essential tools of reconciliation, sometimes initiated by the state. They not only generate a sense of overlapping communities, consolidated and reunited in time and place across the year’s calendar, but they also give the public space back to the people. Larbi El Harti said: Festivals, in the way they bring people together, transformed into reconciliatory tools. First, they eased the tension between the state and the people. Second, they have ushered the people into what in the past were private, almost forbidden, spaces, spaces they are now growing to identify as theirs. Third, they have ascribed a new character to urban arenas. These urban arenas were once lead by surveillance and control, but they are now sites for civic governance. As such, the Moroccan state patches up the sentiments of resentment that once existed between itself and the people. Through festivals, it has endowed the people with the possibility to overthrow the makhzan (the state) as the ultimate holder of ownership: through festivals the people gain access to urban spaces.

Notes 1. I would like to thank Professor Abdellatif Khayati for his lectures on the subject in 2007 and the students of the MCSC in Fez, as well as Professor Belghazi (Rabat), Professor Ute Fendler (Germany) and the editors of this volume for their insightful remarks on this chapter. 2. For more details, see Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony.

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3. Anonymous, ‘Boulane yad’u ila i’tiqal al-mutatarrifin a-dinyin badala “abadat a-chaytan”’ (‘Boulane calls for the Arrest of Religious Extremists Instead of “Satanists”’), 13 April 2009, Hespress, http://hespress.com/ permalink/12136.html, accessed 13 May 2011. 4. Ahmed Boulane, film director: Anges de Satan (2007). 5. See for example CasaNayda, a film by Farida Benlyazid. 6. Howe, Marvine, Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges (New York, 2005), p.viii. 7. Ibid, p.124. 8. Ibid, p.ix. 9. Ibid, p.24. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid, p.124. 12. Ibid, p.239. 13. Biddle, Ian and Vanessa Knights, ‘National popular musics: Betwixt and beyond the local and global’, Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local (Burlington, 2006), p.1. 14. Kalmanowitz, Debra and Bobby Lloyd (eds), Art Therapy and Political Violence: With Art, Without Illusion (London, 2005), p.2. 15. Ibid, p.7. 16. Bleiker, Roland, ‘Art after 9/11’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political vol.31, no.1 (2006), p.8. 17. In his article ‘Art after 9/11’, Roland Bleiker deals at a particular point with music. He argues that although music gives the impression that in its ‘“pure” instrumental form’, it does not refer to anything outside of itself, popular music is replete with songs that engage with politics and political violence. He pays particular attention to how music texts (lyrical content) and musicians, in the way they read the world in which they live, address issues of politics and violence, especially in the context of 9/11. 18. Budd, Malcolm, Music and the Emotions: The Philosophical Theories (London, 1985), p.x. 19. Roland Bleiker (‘Art after 9/11’, p.10) borrows this idea from Walter Ong. 20. Kapchan, Deborah, ‘The promise of sonic translation: Performing the Festive Sacred in Morocco’, American Anthropologist vol.110, no.4 (2008), p.470. 21. Ibid, pp.467–483. 22. Dicks, Bella, Culture on Display. The Production of Contemporary Visitability (London, 2003), p.8. 23. Belghazi, Taieb, ‘Festivalisation of urban space in Morocco’, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies vol.15, no.1, Oxford Journals (2006), pp.97, http://afraf. oxfordjournals.org/content/105/420/501.full, accessed on 15 May 2011.

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24. Unconditional hospitality is a concept that occurs for the first time in the interview Giovanna Borradori conducted with Derrida in Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (2003). The concept comes handy when one deals with a situation that necessitates the invitation, the presence and the attendance of the other that ‘doesn’t belong’, without judgment or control. See also Derrida’s interview with ‘Le Monde’ in The Principle of Hospitality (2005), where he argues that ‘pure hospitality consists in welcoming whoever arrives before imposing any conditions on him, before knowing and asking anything at all, be it a name or an identity “paper”.’ 25. Turner, John C, Michael A Hogg, PJ Oakes, Stephen D Reicher and Margaret S Wetherell, Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-categorization Theory (Oxford, 1987), p.50. 26. Trueman, David, ‘Depersonalization in a nonclinical population’, Journal of Psychology vol.116, First half (1984), p.107. 27. Belghazi: ‘Festivalisation of urban space in Morocco’, p.100. 28. Festival Catalogue 10, as cited in Cook, Bruce, ‘The 2001 Fez Festival of World Sacred Music: An annual musical event in Morocco embodies and reflects Sufi traditions and spirit’, International Journal of Humanities and Peace vol.17, no.1 (2001), p.1, www.questia.com, accessed on 15 May 2011. 29. ‘Underground practices’ is meant to refer to the philosophical particularity of the Boulevard festival, which has always stressed to excess the non-official and the defiant. It also refers to festivals’ goal to create a genuine space for underground music. Gothic elements suffuse the boulevard. The tremplin music contests of the Boulevard festival take place in a deserted slaughterhouse, covered in dark graffiti drawings, displaying blood, ghosts and indiscernible faces. 30. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 2006), p.4. 31. Collective B3, pronounced in French B Trois, is an emerging group that draws together Moroccan hip hop rappers from different cities like Mic, Basta, Tempo, Cleoro, Chaklo, Kimdawn and others. Some of its MCs used to live in the diaspora such as Faresvox who joined B3 during the summer of 2009. They create underground hip hop music. 32. The festivals described in this chapter are the most prominent festivals in Morocco. All of them receive funds from the state, except for the Boulevard Festival. Two of them, namely the Mawazine Festival and the Fez Festival, are organised under the auspices of the ruling monarchy.

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CHAPTER FOUR TRANSFORMING ARMS INTO PLOUGHSHARES: WEAPONS THAT DESTROY AND HEAL IN MOZAMBICAN URBAN ART Amy Schwartzott

The Transforming Arms into Ploughshares/Transformação de Armas em Enxadas (TAE) project in Mozambique reveals the potency of recycling as a tool in art for post-conflict resolution and investigation. This chapter will explore the impact and importance of the Mozambican TAE project and its artists, who create art from weapons recycled from Mozambique’s past wars. Through an expanding framework linking social anthropology, visual culture studies, art and trauma studies, and post-conflict resolution theories, I focus on the materiality of TAE’s assemblage art. The Mozambican civil war (1977–1992) directly followed the nation’s battle for independence from Portuguese colonial rule (1962–1975). The civil war was fought between the ruling party, FRELIMO or Front for Liberation of Mozambique, and RENAMO, the Mozambique Resistance Movement. This conflict precipitated economic collapse, famine, nearly one million war-related casualties, and the displacement of several million civilians. Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, is a compelling case study site because of its large number of artists using

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various recycled materials, its strong network of arts organisations, and its function as the location of TAE.

Theoretical framework of research Post-conflict resolution has become a developing field of interdisciplinary scholarship following former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s use of the word ‘peace-building’ in his influential 1992 report Agenda for Peace. I investigate connections between TAE’s innovative grassroots use of art and recycling to promote peacekeeping and memorialisation to recent theorisations of post-conflict resolution.1 Recent scholarship indicates recognition of the important role of art in the field of post-conflict resolution and trauma studies. Eminent Africanist political scientist Goran Hyden has commented that ‘the use of art as an alternative mechanism (in post-conflict resolution) is an innovation especially appropriate in the light of rapid urbanisation with its more concentrated and accessible audience’.2 Scholarship linking art and trauma studies is a developing field in the discipline of art history. Many scholars have begun to look at the importance of art as a tool for dealing with issues of healing the pain of the past using memorialisation and remembrance. While some scholars linking the arts and conflict resolution distinguish between the process and the product in the role of the arts,3 others tend to agree in their focus upon art as a therapeutic device, its role in remembrance of conflict, and how it contributes to the process of community building and reconciliation. The artists of the TAE project create artworks designed to evoke the memory of Mozambique’s long history of war for the viewer, as well as serving as a potent process for the artists, many of whom lived through the civil war in Mozambique and are motivated to promote peace in the creation of their art. The TAE project is innovative in that it adds another dimension to the process of reconciliation through preventing conflict by destroying the weapons and turning them into art. In this way, the artists make the invisible concept of peace visible by creating a spectacle of the unusable weapons – instead of a tool for killing, they become a tool for reconciliation.

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The theoretical framework for this research is largely drawn from social anthropology and visual culture studies, specifically the writings of Igor Kopytoff and Nicholas Mirzoeff. Kopytoff’s seminal essay ‘The cultural biography of things’ focuses on an object’s transformation from its initial use through its many lives, providing the basis for my analysis of the incarnations of meaning in a recycled object through its transformation into art. Particularly forceful is Kopytoff’s important question: ‘How does the thing’s use change with its age, and what happens to it when it reaches the end of its usefulness?’4 I am interested in the materiality of the original forms of the weapons transformed by TAE, and the fact that initially they were artefacts of Mozambique’s protracted conflicts. Kopytoff’s emphasis on the object is at the root of the importance this research places on the identity of the object (a weapon of war) and how its intrinsic meaning is maintained despite its destruction and inability to be used again. Whereas the weapons are physically cut to prevent their further use, the recognisable shapes of the parts of the guns remain. The iconic symbolism of weapons as they are transformed into artworks is essential for understanding the meaning of the TAE project’s art. The recognisable gun parts’ strong visual presence translates memorialisation and reconciliation through its intrinsic symbolism of war and peace. Mirzoeff’s assertion of ‘the visual as everyday life’5 underscores my desire to explore the everyday aspect of recycling in Mozambique and its function as a trope in contemporary African art. Looking at contemporary art in Mozambique through recycled weapons, I investigate how TAE links elements of visual memorialisation, psychological healing and negotiation of the past to rebuild Mozambique through the transformative power of art. TAE’s grassroots approach to post-conflict resolution uses art as an iconic visual reminder, a mnemonic device symbolising the violence of the civil war. A further innovation of TAE’s destruction and re-presentation of weapons is the purposeful visual language used in their promotion of peace. TAE’s narrative through the sublime imagery of weapons transformed presents an alternative identity for contemporary Mozambique. TAE’s visual narrative moves beyond Mozambique’s past reliance upon socialist revolutionary imagery wherein the pristine, iconic form of the AK47 is employed. TAE artists present

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contemporary Mozambican society glorifying peace instead of war – symbolised through instruments of war that have been destroyed and transformed. William Kelly, American artist and founder of The Peace Project states: ‘It has been said that a painting can never stop a bullet, but a painting can stop a bullet from being fired.’6 The TAE project of Mozambique proves this statement by ending the violent cycle of the life of weapons through transforming them into powerful art forms that evoke the visceral symbolism of their former lives.

TAE history and mission TAE is part of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission branch of the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM), which was founded in 1948 and is motivated by a mandate of the church to bring peace. TAE is CCM’s largest programme and considered to be its most important and successful. Although CCM is an NGO, it is more often considered a religious organisation, comprised of at least 20 different religious denominations, including mainline churches brought to Mozambique by missionaries and indigenous local churches. TAE, which is donorbased, was founded in 1995 by Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane. Within CCM it inspired workshops aimed at establishing peace and democracy following FRELIMO/RENAMO negotiations and the General Peace Agreement in Rome in 1992. The intention of Bishop Sengulane and CCM was to facilitate community dialogue and civic education dealing with reconciliation, memory, healing and forgiveness. A central focus of these workshops was to prepare Mozambican people to return to their homes after many years of displacement by conflict. The primary motivation following the peace agreement was to come together after the war to reunite as a nation. This process included travelling to different provinces and finding out what Mozambicans most feared after the war. Bishop Sengulane explained that a woman in the Nampula province (in northern Mozambique) asked him: ‘What are we going to do with so many guns in the hands of the people?’ He said that he applied principles he found in the Bible: ‘. . . and they shall beat their

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swords into ploughshares. And their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’7 His solution was that the Mozambican government and the United Nations should complete the disarmament programme, and then CCM, through the establishment of TAE, would focus on using the idea of transformation as a guiding principle.8 Bishop Sengulane’s plan for TAE to focus on the principle of transformation did not originally include the creation of art from weapons, but it consisted of a tripartite process: to collect weapons, make them non-usable, and give an instrument of production as an incentive in exchange for the collected weapons. TAE gives incentives to informants who hand over guns and other artefacts of war to them to be destroyed. Incentives TAE offered originally took only three forms: bicycles, sewing machines and ploughs. Over time TAE has become flexible with what they offer as incentives, focusing on confidence building and creating an honest living for an individual who turns in weapons.9 Such diverse incentives as farm implements, seeds, cement, zinc roofs, and even tickets for trips to home villages are not unusual. TAE policy stresses the notion of anonymity and lack of involvement of the army or police when weapons are handed over. No names are recorded.10 Bishop Sengulane and other TAE religious leaders I spoke to stressed that the incentive was never made in terms of money, because TAE never wanted to give the impression that they were buying the guns. Weapons were received from demobilised soldiers, individual civilians, and eventually entire communities, following similar frameworks exchanging weapons for products or services. I had the opportunity to speak with two individuals who turned in weapons to TAE, with very different stories to tell. Their stories are retold here to underscore the point that the weapons TAE receives come from widely diverse areas and people from all sectors of society. The first individual, Alex,11 discovered an AK47 buried in the ground as he was digging the foundation for the home he was building in Matola. He explained to me: ‘I saw on television on Wednesday Sitoe making sculpture. When can I find help to pick up gun? I call police and (they) don’t show up. I come here – into CCM.’ Coincidentally,

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this man saw a discussion with Nicolao Luis, TAE coordinator, and Sitoe, an artist who participated in a recent exhibition of TAE art, on television. Seeing this broadcast, in addition to the police not showing up to retrieve his weapon, inspired him to contact TAE. I travelled to Matola with the TAE coordinators to get the gun, where we were shown where it was unearthed along with an ammunition box. I saw the family’s five children; one child stood out, wearing a makeshift wig of blue foil. An older woman was clearly overjoyed that the gun was taken away. Alex asked to receive a bag of cement that enabled him to continue building his home in exchange for the gun. The second informant’s story is quite different. Arlindo12 explained why he turned in the weapon to TAE: ‘I try to fight like a criminal in the street. I can go into the street to show it (a gun) and that is bad. That is harmful. We know it is dangerous and I give it (to TAE) without questioning it. Is good for me.’ When asked about the TAE project and its effectiveness, he responded: ‘As you know, I need something to help my life. I receive things that can help my life (incentives) and I (am) helping to save lives. My mind gives me peace (by handing over the weapons).’ I travelled to Machava to see the cement blockhouse that he built using building supplies given as incentives by TAE in exchange for the weapon. Arlindo told me that he has friends with weapons who are deciding whether or not to turn them over to TAE. In the course of the guerrilla warfare by FRELIMO and RENAMO troops, many caches of weapons were buried within heavily mined perimeters to protect and maintain these hiding spots. The troops did this in case re-arming was necessary should peace negotiations fail. TAE works hard to become integrated into the provincial communities where many of the weapons are being found. The organisation gains access to the communities by focusing on traditional grassroots ideals based on trust and the sharing of food, drink and information. After gaining the acceptance of the community, TAE representatives are often led to hidden weapons.13 Bishop Sengulane said that in order to convey the dangers of keeping the weapons, he often warns: ‘To sleep with a gun in your bedroom is like sleeping with a poisonous snake in your room.’14 TAE coordinator Boaventura Zita told me that while the response to the TAE project has been great so far, ‘the truth

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is that there are no numbers on how many weapons existed in the first place’.15 Whereas TAE has succeeded in collecting some 600,000 weapons since its inception in 1995, many weapons continue to be discovered and turned in to TAE. TAE officials worry how many weapons still remain in Mozambique, and the great danger this poses to maintaining the country’s peace.

Art component of TAE: History and present The process of transformation that Bishop Sengulane envisioned for TAE also involved the question of what was to be done with all the collected weapons. At this point, Bishop Sengulane’s reliance on the biblical verse ‘. . . and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares’ as a source for peace and reconciliation becomes clear. In the Mozambican context, the TAE illustrates the more forceful reliance on the verse in its completeness. A closer reading of the verse reveals not only a desire to promote peace, but also the transformation of these weapons into something constructive. TAE in Mozambique therefore transforms the weapons into art through the principles of recycling. TAE’s initial plan, based on a literal translation of the Biblical verse, was to melt the weapons down and turn them into tools. Ultimately, this process proved too costly and was abandoned. Bishop Sengulane now views the change of plan as ‘providential’ for it would have altered the visual outcome of the weapons’ transformation, permanently modifying and erasing their former identities as destructive tools. By destroying the weapons while maintaining a visual reference to what Kopytoff calls their ‘former lives’, weapons transformed into art now serve as iconic images. The destruction of destructive tools and their construction into art is more than symbolic. These images reflect the church mandate and focus of TAE ‘to bring peace and to forgive, not forget, and keep on touching the wound that is bleeding’.16 Thus, in the transformation of weapons into art, the peace-building ethos of the TAE project succeeds by disarming bodies as well as minds. TAE’s transformation of destroyed weapons into art did not begin until 1997, two years after the project was established. Bishop Sengulane was striving to glorify peace instead of war, and wanted to

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create a visual memorial of it. He realised that historically artists had always created these types of monuments. He forged a partnership with Núcleo de Arte, a long-standing arts organisation in Maputo. Initially fourteen artists were involved in a workshop where Bishop Sengulane challenged them to transform weapons into symbols of peace. The TAE artists’ only stipulation was that they use the weapons to create imagery associated with peace, avoiding violent themes. TAE artists were given complete freedom to create. This concept is similar to the grassroots approach to post-conflict resolutions taken in Mozambique to attain peace for the country. Mozambicans believe the approach they have taken now serves as a global model for peace. The church played a major role in the mediation of the peace process for Mozambique, largely taking place within the community of Sant Egidio in Rome, which involved a strong religious presence. Several times I asked the Bishop and other religious figures in TAE leadership where they located their inspirations in post-conflict resolution theory and the development of the TAE project. The responses I received were interesting. Over and over I heard: ‘It’s Jesus.’ ‘It’s the Bible.’ ‘It’s Micah and Isaiah from the Bible.’ When I probed further, inquiring about specific theorists they may have looked to for guidance in creating their successful programme, they said: ‘Not only are we collecting weapons, we are awakening ideas in grassroots organising. We don’t need fancy theories about conflict resolution. Academics want more, beyond this. Bishop Tutu led programmes – peace talks come from the church.’17 It is this grassroots approach to peacekeeping and re-conciliation that has inspired the TAE artists to memorialise the past violence of the Mozambican wars through their use of transformed weapons. The TAE artists I have worked with display unique sensibilities in their approaches to invoke the memory of war to move Mozambique and the world forward in peace through remembrance. Fiel dos Santos was one of the first artists to start creating art for the TAE project when CCM approached Núcleo de Arte in 1997. While many artists have dropped out over the years, Fiel has maintained his connections with TAE, continuing to create works of art from weapons. His relationship to the project is personal. As he explained: ‘I grew up during the fighting. Now it’s my time to do something for

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society. I want to be voluntary to work on this project. I’m working here for my soul.’18 Fiel’s forms evoke his curiosity about nature. He is interested in the relationship of the parts to the whole, often revealing the intricacy of the individual materials in his overall constructions. Sensitive in his treatment of form and placement, his focus on the objecthood of the weapons forces the viewer to intimately connect to the meaning of the weapons and the intrinsic power of violence within each. The Tree of Life is a large-scale artwork made of weapons created through TAE in 2005 by four artists: Fiel dos Santos, Cristóvão Estevão Canhavato (Kester), Adelino Serafim Mate and Hilarió Nhatugueja. International attention has been drawn to this work that has become both a symbol of peace and a symbol of Africa. Tree of Life is on display and part of the permanent collection of the British Museum in London. Curator of African art, Chris Spring, commissioned Tree of Life in conjunction with the British Museum and Africa05, celebrating African culture and heritage in London in 2005.19 In addition, The

Bird by Fiel dos Santos, made from recycled weapons. Photograph: Author’s own

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British Museum’s Pentonville Prison Project is an outreach programme aimed at engaging dialogue with prison populations on the subject of violence. Programme director Jane Samuels explained that this project is based on prisoner interactions with Throne of Weapons, a TAE artwork created by Kester that travels to English prisons. Constructed primarily from recycled AK47s, Throne of Weapons’ powerful visual presence is used to facilitate discussions on gun crime, violence and peace. Samuels referred to the Throne of Weapons as an ‘aggressive symbol’ to deal with ‘key objectives which are issues of rehabilitation and re-education (on gun crime, issues of peace reconciliation, community rebuilding, amnesty)’.20 Both the Tree of Life and Throne of Weapons underscore the broad diversity of meanings translated through the materiality of TAE artworks, as well as the continuing global impact of TAE’s projects using recyclia in art. It transpires that the TAE project serves as a paradigm for art and reconciliation, and peacekeeping. TAE artists have been contacted by individuals in Angola to train artists there in the hope of instituting a project based on the model of TAE.21 Another example of TAE’s influence is the Peace Art Project Cambodia (PAPC) that was initiated in 2003. It is often described as being loosely based on the TAE project, using decommissioned weapons from war to create art. TAE has recently expanded its number of artists creating artworks from weapons. After Bishop Sengulane initially contacted artists in 1997, the number of artists working for TAE first dropped dramatically over the years. It has been one of the hopes of TAE to increase the number of artists working for them and to strengthen their relationship with Núcleo de Arte.22 Collaboration between the two organisations took place in the autumn of 2010 in an effort to install an exhibition commemorating Mozambique’s Day of Peace (Dia do Paz) from the civil war on 4 October 1992. Entitled Fale, Nao Temas, Deus Tem Muita Gente Nesta Cidade; Fale de Paz/Speak, No Fear, God Has Many People in This City; Speak the Peace, the exhibition was designed to incorporate the ideals of TAE and invite more artists from Núcleo de Arte to participate in the TAE project. Civic education, reconciliation, remembrance and memorialisation were evoked in the artworks displayed in this collaborative

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exhibition. Kester was one of the earliest TAE artists, originally working as an engineer. He has continued to create artworks constructed of weapons for TAE. He was responsible for supervising artists from Núcleo de Arte, who were invited by CCM to create works for the Mozambican commemoration of peace exhibition. Commenting on the collaboration and the outcome of the exhibition, Kester said: ‘I want to collect the people who want to know about the peace made by weapons and bring the peace to his mind and his heart and bring to his heart what is good . . . (the exhibition) brings good results, for people can have knowledge of the peace in Mozambique.’23 Exhibitions such as this one are essential in spreading the message of the TAE project through the visual power of the artworks. Plans are underway with TAE organisers and Bishop Sengulane for future exhibitions, as well as a plan to create a travelling exhibition of Throne of Weapons. Peace Monument, a monumental public sculpture in progress currently on hold pending funding, is one of the many works Kester has constructed during his tenure with TAE. Kester also created one of the largest and arguably more powerful artworks in this TAE exhibition, O Abraco da Paz/Embrace of the Peace. This work represents the figures of Joaquim Chissano and Afonso Dhlakama, president of Mozambique, leader of FRELIMO and leader of the opposing RENAMO party respectively, shaking hands. This work represents an important moment for Mozambicans as it symbolises the moment peace was achieved in 1992 between the two opposing parties of the civil war. Kester creates a powerful form with this artwork constructed from the recycled weapons of the same war. The potent messages of TAE are implicit within this large three-quarter life-size work. Artists from Núcleo de Arte and existing TAE artists spent much time working together creating artworks from weapons in preparation for the exhibition. Artists worked at CCM where they shared tools, space, ideas and electricity. Jorge Jose’ Munguambe (Makolwa) is one of the artists from Núcleo de Arte who participated in this collaborative project. His involvement with TAE dates back to 2000. He has intermittently created artworks for them during this time. Asked about his motivation to be involved in this exhibition, he responded: ‘It’s a nice project to show people that

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Abraço da Paz by Kester, made from recycled weapons. Photograph: Author’s own

weapons are not a nice thing for the world – killing innocent people like children and old people and destroying everything.’24 When asked about his reaction to the collaborative workshop of artists for this exhibition, Makolwa explained: ‘We have different experiences. (You can) collect other experiences between you and your friends to show the young people not to use the guns, it is too much danger. If you destroy the guns, we’re going to stay in peace.’25 Silverio Salvador Sitoe (Sitoe) is another artist from Núcleo de Arte that participated in the workshop and the ensuing exhibition. Most

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Artists working: TAE/Núcleo de Arte Collaborative workshop. Photograph: Author’s own

of the artists who participated in the collaboration produced two or three artworks for the exhibition. Sitoe is distinct, as one of the pieces he created was not welded. He created a work, Dou-vos a minha Paz/I Give my Peace, which not only stood out from all of the other pieces, but has also become the basis of the trajectory of theorising by Sitoe on the merits of not welding the weapons to create TAE artworks. When I asked him about his inspiration to create a TAE artwork of weapons that were not welded together, he responded: ‘In my mind we don’t even have money to buy bread - how are we buying supplies, machines to weld?’26 The theoretical framework Sitoe is developing around the concept of not welding the weapons to create artworks includes several platforms for expansion of TAE and sustainability of the materials. A few points he outlines include the ability to create quick demonstrations/ performance art with strong impact at the site of weapon retrieval, low cost, versatility in creating the artworks (who and how), and the

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Artist Makolwa working for Collaborative workshop. Photograph: Author’s own

Artist Sitoe creating his artwork, Dou-vos a minha Paz. Photograph: Author’s own

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Artwork Dou-vos a minha Paz by Sitoe, made from mixed media. Photograph: Author’s own

ability to recycle the weapons over and over.27 Commenting further in conjunction with his non-welded artwork, Dou-vos a minha Paz, Sitoe states: ‘Those weapons have killed people and these people are lying down now. They are bones. If you look at that picture (Dou-vos a minha Paz) it looks like people who have died but in a different way, with open arms – (they) embrace me although I’m dead. With these people I’m in peace.’28 Sitoe’s works draw powerful connections between understanding the peace of the present and the conflicts of the past in

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Mozambique. His reference linking Mozambicans of the present to those who died in the past wars suggests the effectiveness of memorialisation and remembrance in the continuation of peacekeeping in Mozambique.

TAE community-building projects Not only has TAE inspired the development of similar programmes that transform arms into arts globally, but within Mozambique new programmes are also being developed. For example, Water for Weapons is a TAE initiative that is supported by the Church World Services (an NGO donor based in the United States). This programme has achieved a number of great successes. Inaugurated in 2009, Water for Weapons focuses on building wells in areas with limited water supplies. Supplies necessary for well-building are offered as incentives for communities to engage and help with the process of peace-building by collecting weapons left over from the war. This programme is based in areas such as the Niassa and Inhambane provinces, which experienced heavy military action during the war, and where many weapons are still believed to remain.29 Programmes such as Water for Weapons exemplify TAE’s community-building, where incentives are offered to an entire community rather than an individual, by providing help with the construction of a source for water. Projects such as this one are important for several reasons that extend beyond the realm of TAE’s focus on civic education, peace and reconciliation. In addition to eradicating weapons and providing safer and cleaner water, unexpected successes are achieved through this programme. The presence of a well in the village creates more free time for women who would typically spend hours each day locating and fetching water. The presence of a water source nearby allows them more time to attend to other necessary activities. Additionally, children have more free time to attend school. All of these positive attributes lend themselves to the overall goal of community-building and post-conflict development in Mozambique.

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The future of TAE In terms of the future of post-conflict resolution and the arts in Mozambique, TAE continues to expand, but not only in the number of artists it involves in the process of visually teaching about peace through art. Great efforts are being made to increase the visibility of the artworks of TAE and the expansion of the project. TAE coordinator Zita has commented on this: ‘We should have more exhibits, more debates on issues of art as an instrument of peace to show pain, expectation and hope.’30 New programmes such as Water for Weapons and the development of a sewing project in the Zambezia province indicate the outward growth of TAE and its message of peace and post-conflict resolution at grassroots level. Further development plans include incorporating additional recycled materials such as metal, pottery and other objects into the creation of artworks, as well as addressing ecological concerns and tackling environmental issues. At the same time, TAE continues to foster and support outreach to other countries for the development of similar projects, such as the one already underway in Angola. TAE coordinators envision a peace institute in the town of Liberdade, outside the capital city of Maputo. This plan includes creating an international institute where scholars will convene to teach, learn and develop ideas surrounding peace, conflict resolution, and the use of art as a tool in this process. Bishop Sengulane once explained how Dhlakama viewed the TAE project as allowing one to see the end of the life of a gun.31 This reminds of Kopytoff’s timely question: ‘How does the thing’s use change with its age, and what happens to it when it reaches the end of its usefulness?’32 I argue that the TAE project does not represent the end of the life of a gun, but rather an incarnation of its many lives, a culmination made possible by art. This new life represents the gun transformed and recycled from its previous life into a new life - where it serves as an iconic symbol of the past, a site of memorialisation and education for generations in both the present and the future.

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Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping Document A/47/277 - S/241111, no.17 (New York, 1992); Sengulane, Dinis Salomão, Vitória sem Vencidos (Victory without Losers), (Maputo, 1994); Tutu, Desmond M, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York, 1999); Walkowitz, Daniel J and Lisa Maya Knauer, Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space (Durham, 2004); Crocker, Chester A (ed), Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World (Washington, 2007); De Jong, Ferdinand and Michael J Rowlands, Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa (London, 2007). Interview with Goran Hyden, 20 November 2009, New Orleans, LA, USA. Liebmann, Marian, Arts Approaches to Conflict (London, 1996); Epskamp, Kees, ‘Healing divided societies’, People Building Peace: 35 Inspiring Stories from Around the World (Utrecht, 1999); Zelizer, Craig, ‘The role of artistic processes in peacebuilding in Bosnia-Herzegovina,’ Peace and Studies Conflict vol.10, no.2 (2003), pp.62–73; Cleveland, William, Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines (Oakland, 2008). Kopytoff, Igor, ‘The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), p.67. Mirzoeff, Nicholas, Introduction to Visual Culture (London, 1999). Kelly, William, Violence to Non-Violence: Individual Perspectives, Communal Voices (Chur, 1994), p.117. Isaiah 2:2–4, Holy Bible: King James Version (New York, 1996), p.179. Interview with Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane, 21 August 2009, Maputo, Mozambique. Interview with Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane, 7 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. Ibid. The names and locations of the informants have been changed to protect their anonymity. The names and locations of the informants have been changed to protect their anonymity. Interview with Boaventura Zita, 18 August 2009, Maputo, Mozambique. Ibid. Interview with Boaventura Zita, 1 August 2008, Maputo, Mozambique. Ibid. Interview with Reverend L Ammos/Bishop Sengulane, 20 August 2009, Maputo, Mozambique.

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18. Interview with Fiel dos Santos, 1 August 2008, Maputo, Mozambique. 19. Spring, Christopher, ‘Killing the gun,’ British Museum Magazine (Spring 2005), pp.20–25. 20. Interview with Jane Samuels, 28 October 2009, London, England. 21. Interview with Fiel dos Santos, 5 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. 22. Interview with Boaventura Zita/Nicolao Luis, 19 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. 23. Interview with Cristóvão Estevão Canhavato (Kester), 10 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. 24. Interview with Jorge Jose’ Munguambe (Makolwa), 9 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. 25. Interview with Jorge Jose’ Munguambe (Makolwa), 20 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. 26. Interview with Silverio Salvador Sitoe (Sitoe), 18 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Church World Service, Empowering Youth, Families, and Communities Church World Service (n.d.), p.3. 30. Interview with Boaventura Zita, 19 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. 31. Sengulane, 7 October 2010, Maputo, Mozambique. 32. Kopytoff: ‘The cultural biography of things’, p.67.

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CHAPTER FIVE UNLOCKING THE DOORS OF NUMBER FOUR PRISON: CURATING THE VIOLENT PAST IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA Sarah Longair

It’s history in the flesh. I really mean living, experiencing and walking in the shadows and paths of true leaders, fighters and historians.1 Rendering history relevant and engaging in the twenty-first century, when a variety of media compete for the attention of the public, is a paramount concern for contemporary museum curators.2 In South Africa, the histories to be interpreted are often painful and contested, none more so than those embodied in the former apartheid prisons. This chapter will examine the development of the exhibition displays in the prison for black inmates in Johannesburg, known as Number Four. During the apartheid era, this prison was synonymous with the punishment inflicted upon black people who transgressed the multifarious apartheid laws set up to restrict and control their lives. A site of memory and experience, it has become a monument, not only of architectural merit, but a symbol of the violent past in contemporary South Africa. The significance of the prison is heightened by its

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location alongside the new Constitutional Court. The stark contrast between these two buildings – one representing incarceration, the other open judicial process – emphasises the transition from a past typified by injustice to an era of equitable justice. The transformation of Number Four into a heritage site gave its former inmates the opportunity to reconcile their memories with experiences in the present. Artistic techniques were integral media for the reconciliation process. As a case study of a site-specific reconciliation project, it reveals the challenges and ambiguities in the mediation between memory, history and representation. This chapter will explore how its curators excavated memories of the site and used visual media to mediate and interpret these violent experiences for the museum visitor. The museum is an interface between academic history and the public. Changes in museum style and displays are a form of historiography through which we can examine a society’s relationship with its past. Before the 1980s in South Africa, ‘museums were museums of white South Africa’.3 Segregation gave the black community an instinctive suspicion of all historical truths, especially those that were encased behind the colonial façade of the museum. In the late 1980s and 1990s, South African museums reinvented themselves to reflect the national political and ideological change of government and the associated reappraisal of history. The prison on Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town was the first former apartheid prison to become a museum. It opened soon after the end of apartheid and presented a narrative dominated by stories of the heroic struggle.4 The development of Number Four in the early twenty-first century represents the next phase in memorialisation in South Africa, where the very fragility of truths and histories associated with the site are brought into focus. As notable artists and historians in Johannesburg, the curators had a keen sensibility of the aesthetics of curating traumatic histories. Number Four is one museum of many that form what has been described as the emerging ‘post-apartheid South African memorial complex’.5 This analysis of Number Four is situated at the intersection of studies on memory, trauma and museums, and their relationship with history. In her analysis of Freud’s work on trauma and history, Cathy Caruth draws attention to the phenomenon of trauma as part both of

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the past and the present.6 It is a mental wound that cannot, unlike a physical wound, be healed. In the last fifty years, museums devoted to memorialising traumatic events have been established as one way of ‘dealing’ with trauma on a national scale. Such museums and sites of memory seek to simultaneously help victims of trauma cope with these mental wounds. As Susan Sontag has written, museums of memory simultaneously perpetuate the memory, with the intention of educating others on the causation of the events.7 By exhibiting the past for visitors in the present, the curators of these museums ultimately hope they may have an impact on how their visitors will act in the future. In an analysis of the work of two white artists in South Africa, Liese van der Watt particularly notes the inherent challenge in finding ways to convey the experience of trauma, both by witnesses and perpetrators, to subsequent generations.8 The development of museums devoted to memory has been the subject of scrutiny within the field of museum studies, particularly due to the proliferation of Holocaust memorial museums.9 Authors of these pieces include both scholars analysing the process and curators whose direct experiences inform their accounts. There is general support for the principle of memory museums – Steven Lubar describes the rich possibilities of using the ‘prism of memory’ to elicit more comprehensive and rounded visions of history.10 The challenges involved in the practical realisation of such projects are revealed by the works of curators, such as Edward Linenthal’s analysis of the struggle in creating the Holocaust Museum in Washington.11 There are important differences and similarities between these museums and Number Four, whose curators were aware of these global precedents. This chapter will trace the history of the site and then examine the process of collecting source material for the exhibits through reconciliation projects with former inmates. Then follows an analysis of how this research was transformed into the exhibition displays. Finally the chapter will assess their reception by the public. The primary sources for the chapter are transcripts of recorded interviews with former inmates held at the site, interviews with key participants in the exhibition development, and the museum itself as it was in 2006 shortly after opening.

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Number Four: Gaol to heritage site The Number Four Museum is part of a larger complex on the site of the original Old Fort in Hillbrow in central Johannesburg, now known as Constitution Hill. The oldest buildings on the site – among the oldest buildings in Johannesburg – were originally constructed to serve as a high-security prison by Paul Kruger, the president of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, in 1893. After the Anglo-Boer War,

The courtyard of Number Four, looking towards the isolation cells. Photograph: Author’s own

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despite attempts to relocate it, the Fort became a permanent fixture. In 1904 the prison for black male prisoners, which came to be known as Number Four, was built outside the ramparts of the Fort, while the cells in the Fort held white inmates. The Women’s Gaol, with cells for black and white female prisoners, followed in 1910 and the Awaiting Trial Block for black prisoners was added in 1928. During the apartheid years, in the words of an ex-prisoner, ‘Number Four was very, very notorious’ and widely feared among the black community for its reputedly inhumane conditions and harsh treatment of inmates.12 Political prisoners, including those from the ANC, PAC and white men and women, were held in Number Four, the Awaiting Trial Block and the Women’s Gaol in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Among them were several celebrated activists, such as Mohandas K Gandhi in 1908; Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, Walter Sisulu, Helen Joseph and Lilian Ngoyi in 1956; Albertina Sisulu and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in 1958; and Robert Sobukwe in 1960.13 Most of the inmates were non-political prisoners, or ‘ordinary’ prisoners.14 The majority of these prisoners were black people who had simply violated the apartheid pass laws. The white community was most familiar with Number Four as the place where they would collect their black servants when arrested for contravening this oppressive legislation. There were also those prisoners, both black and white, who in any society would have been jailed – thieves, murderers and rapists. The most violent and traumatic events in the prison took place within the cells of these ordinary inmates, both by warders – who treated the black ordinary inmates notably harsher than their white counterparts in the Old Fort – and between the inmates themselves as a part of a complex gang culture.15 In 1964, the Old Fort was proclaimed a National Monument, 16 years after the election of the National Party government. The stark and functional architecture of Number Four was not included in this designation, reflecting the authorities’ collective disregard for its existence and inmates. The prison finally closed in 1983, and many of the buildings became derelict during the next decade. The site re-emerged in public discussion in 1996 when a permanent location was sought for the two-year-old Constitutional Court. Reasons for selecting it included

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its central position in Johannesburg, the need to revitalise the Hillbrow area and, most importantly, the symbolic significance of constructing the new court on the former site of such acute injustice. The winning architectural design directly responded to the prison site through its emphasis on transparency and accessibility to justice – the antitheses of the physical containment and punishing regime of the prisons. When clearing the site to build the new Constitutional Court, the Awaiting Trial Block was demolished. The architects of the new building were aware of its significance and the potential controversy in its demolition. The bricks were meticulously salvaged and subsequently incorporated into the new building. A heritage consultancy firm, Ochre Media, was chosen in 2002 to form the Heritage, Education and Tourism (hereafter HET) team to research and curate the displays in the Old Fort, Number Four and the Women’s Gaol.16 The selection panel was particularly interested in Ochre Media’s interpretation of the site as a palimpsest, where layers of history were inscribed over one another, leaving traces from all periods. The whole site was inaugurated on Human Rights Day, 21 March 2004, while the Women’s Gaol, also curated by the HET team, was opened in 2006.

Excavating the site’s history: History, memory and reconciliation The HET team undertook the first in-depth research into Number Four’s history. They chose to excavate memories of its former inmates in the form of workshops, which became a form of reconciliation in itself. The memory project by the HET team must be understood in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. Under apartheid, the education policies of the National Party from 1948 promoted an Afrikaner nationalist historiography. With the dominance of this authoritarian and incontrovertible history, other narratives and forms of historical knowledge were silenced or destroyed.17 Up until 1990, the apartheid government censored the views of ANC leaders. One visitor to Number Four described his suspicion of history: ‘In my years of living I was fed with the distorted history about my country South Africa.’18 After 1994, there was a consensus that coming to terms with recent history

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was a fundamental element in constructing the new nation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), led by Bishop Desmond Tutu, used public testimony to address atrocities of the apartheid period, with an emphasis on reconciliation over prosecution. Public hearings took place from 1996 to 1998 and included confrontations between victims and oppressors. Through the TRC, personal memories were brought into the public domain. These vocalisations instituted the articulation of memory as a reconciliatory tool.19 Transcripts of the TRC testimonies became a new archive of historical sources for the young nation, which had formerly been denied and suppressed.20 This presents a significant challenge to historians in the post-apartheid era. Memories voiced in the context of reconciliation projects must be carefully managed by historians. Testimonies are not simple recollections. A testimony, with its legal connotation, is made self-consciously with an acknowledgement of its potential use to validate a point of view. This is combined with the additional layer of hindsight. As one ex-prisoner visiting Number Four described: ‘After forty years since I have been here, I find nostalgia is playing tricks on me.’21 This reference to nostalgia demonstrates the awareness of the ex-prisoner that his memory was subject to retrospective knowledge and experience.22 The narrative of trauma can become a construction of a personal experience combined with an awareness of the historical significance of the event – such effects were also frequently cited in interviews with Holocaust victims.23 As long as the fluid character of memory is acknowledged by the historian, the credibility of the source remains intact.24 As Benedict Anderson writes in his discussion of national identity: ‘All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias.’25 Such a significant change in ideology as occurred in South Africa means there are several layers of amnesia to break through. ‘Heritage technologies’ as identified by Rowlands and De Jong in their volume on memory and heritage in West Africa allow certain memories to emerge and others to be denied, and even repressed.26 Collective amnesia can put pressure on the articulation of personal memory, which is itself malleable and can be reworked to suit the context in which the recollection is being made.27 The power of the curators as ‘memory makers’ conveys responsibility in creating an

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exhibition where the ‘one truth is that there is no single, overarching agreement on historical truth’.28 The challenge for a museum, while responding to the public need for comprehensible history, is to extend and reconfigure public memory to include a variety of histories, rather than dictate new ‘truths’. The power of such a form of historical representation rests in its ability to engage visitors by forcing them to question their own memory and thus actively interact with the past. The curators and designers of Number Four were trained in an intellectual climate where oral history dominated. They decided early on that their prime vehicle for animating the derelict site was via the oral testimonies and memories of the ex-prisoners. As well as being driven by an ideological decision to make memories the principal primary source, there was a paucity of written evidence. Mark Gevisser, content advisor to the HET team, noted that the story only existed in text ‘from above’ in the official documents, and ‘from below’ in the form of graffiti.29 The memories of ex-prisoners were collected in a campaign known as ‘We the People’ where those with historical relationships with the prisons were brought to the site to record their testimonies. Further evidence was collected in a public Memory Room set up in 2004, where visitors listened to these ex-prisoners’ testimonies and were invited to respond.30 Simultaneously, workshops were held with Hillbrow residents to establish links with the local community and to discern their needs. This multi-layered approach was designed to give ownership to the prisons’ various constituents and to tap into South Africa’s personal archive. Inevitably a process such as this is determined by self-selection and an individual’s willingness to be involved. Some former inmates chose from the outset not to be a part of the project. The story of the warders, both black and white, was even harder to elicit. Subsequent history makes their position dubious, inevitably creating a reluctance to acknowledge or recollect their role in the prison system.31 One ex-prisoner described being wary of revealing traumatic memories after ‘the stories were not accepted at the TRC’.32 From his experience, evidence of black-on-black violence had not been welcome. Political prisoners, both male and female, were much more willing to be involved in the memory project than the criminal inmates. For a

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politician, time in prison was almost a rite of passage.33 Mr Nthute, a former political prisoner, stated: ‘I do not regret my being on Robben Island or being in the Fort. No, that has made me a man, I was able to teach myself about life, and the struggle, and see to it that whatever I want, I must go for it.’34 Overwhelmingly they recalled moments of solidarity, for example communal singing: ‘A song to a black man means a lot . . . songs lifted our spirit, so we would sing at night after we’d been locked up.’35 Their testimonies traced the specific and group-defining experience for political prisoners who arrived together, had a collective purpose and identity, and gained some respect and privileges from the prison authorities.36 In contrast, ordinary inmates arrived alone and were immediately subjected to the violent gang lifestyle and cell hierarchies, accounts of which dominated the workshops. These prisoners were unaccustomed to telling their stories. Many took some time to habituate to the process, but once they did so, became the most emotional.37 For example, one man revealed: ‘I am still haunted by the eyes of a man who introduced himself as Xikwenbu xa Yina, which means “God Almighty” in Shangaan. I asked him why he was called that. He bragged that in Number Four he could decide if people like me would live or die.’38 This emotion contrasted with the political prisoners whose prison narratives were well-rehearsed and formed part of their identity. One facilitator and former inmate explicitly used the threat of another rewriting of history to persuade others: ‘I said, “Look Jubs, we spent a long time here and if you do not come and tell the truth, somebody else will write what they like about this place.”’39 The history of this violence had hitherto not formed part of the collective memory of the apartheid prison, as epitomised by Robben Island, which was presented as ‘the university of the struggle’.40

Curating and visualising memories Curators in many South African museums are aware in the post-apartheid era of the danger of creating a new ‘synthesised’ memory.41 Given the wide range of memories collected from the reconciliation project, the curators of Number Four sought to find a visual and spatial

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experience that allowed contradictory and problematic accounts to be expressed concurrently. In contrast to a traditional museum or heritage site, the ‘key objects’ in Number Four were memory and space. The decision to move away from the primacy of the physical object as the foundation of the history museum, in favour of intangible subjects, was both an ideological and practical one. The prison itself was the object to be encountered, interpreted and explored, while memories of prisoners formed the authoritative text to animate the cells. The designer, Clive van den Berg, wanted to avoid imposing a new permanence to the history: ‘I was much more interested in the absent, the fugitive, the non-material.’42 Practical necessity also drove this decision. Very few artefacts remained or were retained by male prisoners and only one photograph of the prison in use was found (photography had been prohibited when Number Four functioned as a prison). This restriction on the curators’ work created an important contrast to the displays designed for the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, opened in 2001, which relied entirely upon dense text, objects, films, photographs and newspapers. The dearth of visual media was significant. Sontag has written about the primacy of photographs in the twentieth century as the central medium for understanding and relating to world events, in particular violent ones.43 The absence of such evidence directed Van den Berg to employ alternative modes of representation. Throughout the exhibits, personal testimony via video or text panel was prioritised over dense historical context. Van den Berg’s background as a practising artist led him to use a wide variety of interpretative interventions, such as video art and installations. Film and visual projections were the principal media employed to exhibit memories and evoke atmosphere, in the absence of tangible material.

Displaying the intangible: Number Four’s exhibits The main displays in Number Four constructed in 2006 were situated in the prison courtyard and four exhibition cells. The Memory Room

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was positioned towards the exit, containing books in which visitors could add their reflections and memories to the archive of the museum. The muted, fading colours and decaying walls conveyed the lack of respect given to the prisoners and were intentionally left untouched, physically realising the palimpsest. From the isolation cells, the tower and logo of the Constitutional Court was visible through the overhead barbed wire, juxtaposing past brutality with the democratic present – one of many symbolic references around the site.

The tower of the Constitutional Court as viewed from the isolation cells. Photograph: Author’s own

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The four exhibition cells addressed one of four themes: ‘Life in a Cell’; ‘Who is a Criminal?’; ‘Power and Punishment’; and ‘Resistance and Resilience’. In each cell, videos of ex-prisoners describing their experiences were projected on large screens on the far walls. These film clips were interspersed with graphics and the cells were animated further by still images that moved slowly around the walls and the ceiling, a technique more usually associated with art installations and performance than historical exhibitions. The video for the ‘Life in a Cell’ display depicted a reconstruction of the prisoners going to bed in the cells, highlighting the daily rituals and the cramped conditions. Their modern clothing and staged movements disrupted the perception that this could be a historical recording and brought a sense of timelessness to the prison experience. Many objects were created and commissioned specially for Number Four. That they were not ‘original objects’ is irrelevant – history exhibitions frequently use facsimiles, enlargements and transparencies.44

Interior of a cell showing video screen and blankets representing sleeping arrangements. Photograph: Author’s own

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Blanket and soap sculptures created by former inmates. Photographs: Author’s own

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One of the rehabilitative processes for the ex-prisoners consisted of the recreation of these artworks. The creation of games and sculptures from blankets and soap was part of everyday life in the prison. Sculptures were one form of currency in the prison – an attractively decorated cell would win the prisoners privileges from the warders or give an underling a chance to impress a gang leader.45 The HET team brought former inmates back to the prison and gave them the raw materials – blankets, soaps, razor blades – to recreate these sculptures. One member of the group was subsequently employed by the museum as a resident artist to create additional blanket sculptures for Number Four.46 The few artefacts that remained from the past were displayed in the ‘Power and Punishment’ cell. This cell exhibited the most challenging and traumatic memories – those of the violence inflicted by warders and by inmates on each other. The objects included warders’ tools such as handcuffs, batons and a flogging frame. As in the other cells, a ‘talking head’ of a former prisoner was projected on the far wall. These interviews presented chilling descriptions by gang leaders of the violence they inflicted on fellow inmates and the distressing memories of their victims. Interspersed between these clips were still images of some of the violent practices in silhouette, such as rapes and beatings. The anonymity of these silhouetted figures contrasted powerfully with the highly personal images of the ex-prisoners recalling their trauma. The still images and pauses in the film allowed the viewer a moment to reflect, providing space for some objective consideration. The term ‘empathetic unsettlement’, used by Van der Watt drawing from the work of Dominick LaCapra, is useful to describe the impact of these cell displays. ‘Empathetic unsettlement’ does not mean full identification with the victim, but instils in the viewer a bond and rapport with the other, while still respecting the victim as other.47 The ‘Power and Punishment’ room provides an example of the techniques employed to present fragmented and complex truths. Unlike the memories describing punishment or injustice at the hands of white warders or policemen, the underground corruption, violence, rape and persecution between black prisoners was a reality that was far more controversial to display. The museum on Robben Island did

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not acknowledge any form of prison violence.48 Watching gang leaders describe the graphic and shocking practices starkly revealed the depths to which the apartheid prison regime forced its inmates to descend.

Reception by the public Today I have learned our history not by reading it in a book or a paper but by looking at it, feeling it and touching it.49 The impact of confronting such distressing histories by visiting the museum can be assessed in part by examining responses in the visitors’ book. They indicate whether the museum, as intended, was able to disrupt pre-existing memories or stimulate suppressed ones. Clearly limitations must be acknowledged in these sources. In her analysis of visitors’ books as a source of evidence, Sharon MacDonald describes the act of writing in a visitors’ book as a socially situated performance.50 Those who write in these books are aware that their act of writing is consciously adding to the record – it will be read by other visitors and curators. One ex-prisoner found himself moved to record further memories of violence after visiting the exhibition, citing a case when a gang leader paid the warder not to take a fellow prisoner they had tortured to hospital. He pleaded that ‘such stories must be told and made virtual’.51 There were several instances of ex-prisoners, who had not been involved in the exhibition, writing about gang violence in response to their visit, suggesting that recognising this history publicly had unearthed a repository of buried recollections.52 When analysing comments that particularly mention the impact of Number Four on memory, three principal reactions are discernible. The first two sets can be broadly drawn down racial lines. Firstly, black visitors, though haunted by traumatic memories, which Caruth demonstrates is an element of trauma itself, had rarely expressed them.53 Their comments demonstrated that their visit had revived these memories. For example: ‘I think back at the time of apartheid and how we used to live. I remember the chill going down my spine when I

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hear of someone being arrested or detained and taken to Number 4. The stories we heard about Number 4 were scary ones.’54 For them, the museum validated recollections of their experiences. Their anger at past injustices was frequently expressed. Overwhelmingly they strongly praised this version of the ‘true’ story. The white visitors in contrast found their memories of the site dislodged and contradicted. The horror of the reality shocked those who were familiar with the site but did not know, or chose not to remember, what occurred inside: ‘As a young student at Wits University, I used to walk past the Old Fort every day, not realising or caring about the horror taking place inside.’55 Feelings of guilt and shame were frequently incited. Such entries often concluded with a conciliatory statement about relief at the advent of democracy and change. The third and overarching message recorded by all races expressed the well-known phrase ‘we must never forget’, reflecting the widely acknowledged belief that an understanding of the past informs the present and the future. Sontag describes this message as one which reminds us not to forget ‘what human beings are capable of doing, may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously’.56 Building the future without forgetting the past was one of the primary principles behind locating the Constitutional Court at the Old Fort site, providing a sense of optimism for the future with the rule of the Constitution.57 The prevailing sentiment of these comments acknowledged and promoted the need for reshaping the public memory to incorporate these lost histories. The notion expressed by many visitors, that ‘it is a place all South Africans should visit’, confirms awareness by the public of the importance to continually revise the collective memory.58 These testimonies suggest that the experiential museum, which uses minimalist artistic techniques to interpret a derelict space, can have a powerful impact upon the visitor, forcing reflection and revision of personal memories.

Conclusion A stone, concrete and metal symbol of where we have been. This is a SCAR. Scars are always visible to remind us not to inflict the same cut into our skins.59

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This insightful analogy between the building and a scar brings together several of the arguments articulated within this chapter. The concrete scar stimulates the memories of the past and imparts the ‘never again’ message into the body politic. While rewriting South African history of the twentieth century from below is essential, the Number Four curators tried to avoid creating an equally dominant and unquestioned narrative with new heroes and villains.60 The voices of the ex-prisoners resonated throughout Number Four. It is an indisputably powerful and democratic project, which confronted a traumatic and harrowing history. The empathetic experience, forcing the visitor to imagine the impact on the individual body within the spaces, elucidates a microhistory with multiple voices. The example of Number Four offers an illustration of the misuse of power on a governmental scale, and on an individual scale within the cells. The designer of Number Four hoped that the ephemeral and non-invasive style of the display would encourage new generations to question and reinterpret the space for their social needs.61 Paradoxically, visitors praised ‘the correct history’ displayed there.62 Questions about history, truth, heritage and memory show, according to Annie E Coombes, ‘health and vitality of political culture forged in the toughest circumstances’.63 The younger generation can be empowered not just by understanding their nation’s struggle towards democracy but also by being encouraged to question curatorial interpretations in order to demonstrate how history can be distorted to establish power. Several layers of memory are involved in the process of creating Number Four. This chapter has shown that this has been a project both for memory and of memory. The former is present as the museum forces the visitors to reconstruct their collective memory of recent history to incorporate untold stories or confirm histories that had been repressed. It is also of memory since asking ex-prisoners and warders to revive distressing pasts and record their oral testimony created an archive, in essence the collection of this museum. As with more conventional museum collections, this collection must be continually expanded, researched and reorganised. Different stories can be retold in the exhibition spaces, maintaining a dynamic dialogue where the

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prison acts as a canvas upon which future generations can paint their interpretation of history. Number Four is one part of a site with multiple civic roles. The Constitutional Court has become a vital and potent symbol of the new democratic South Africa. The survival of Number Four as a visitor attraction depends on the Court and its symbolic and actual value. Two additional exhibitions on Nelson Mandela and Gandhi were opened in the Old Fort section of the site in 2009. Although the presence of celebrity prisoners counters the original intentions of Number Four’s curators, these names naturally attract the interest of visitors. Museums rely upon maintaining numbers, and retaining these two separate exhibition areas with their distinctive stories allows Number Four to reap the benefits of expansion and profile of the entire site. Criticism of past horrors and inequalities is much simpler than confronting the challenges of the post-apartheid era. The spiral of criminality and violence is one of the foremost concerns in contemporary South Africa. Public programmes and events at the site address some of these issues. A prison museum in Johannesburg has potency beyond its mere message of commemoration. The prison is the symbol of the city’s attempt to punish and control criminality and violence, and is a striking emblem of its visceral history.

Notes 1. Constitution Hill Archive (CHA hereafter), Number Four Visitors’ Book, comment dated 20 June 2004. 2. Research for this chapter was undertaken in 2006 with the support of Birkbeck, University of London. I wish to thank all the staff of Number Four museum and the library at Constitution Hill, and particularly Lauren Segal, Clive van den Berg and Justice Kriegler. I would also like to thank Lizelle Bisschoff, Gabrielle Lynch, Stefanie Van de Peer and Hilary Sapire for their insightful comments on the text. 3. Davison, Patricia, ‘Museums and the reshaping of memory’, in Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (Oxford, 1998), p.148. 4. Coombes, Annie E, History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa (London, 2003), p.62.

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5. Rassool, Ciraj, ‘Key debates in memorialisation, human rights and heritage practice’, in District Six Museum and contributors, Reflections on the Hands on District Six Conference (Cape Town, 2007), p.26. 6. Caruth, Cathy, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Baltimore, 1996), p.4. 7. Sontag, Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others (London, 2003), p.78. 8. Van der Watt, Liese, ‘Witnessing trauma in post-apartheid South Africa: The question of generational responsibility’, African Arts XXXVIII, no.3 (2005), p.28. 9. For example: Henderson, Amy and Adrienne L Kaeppler (eds), Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian (Washington, 1997); Young, James E, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, 1993); Karp, Ivan, Corinne A Kratz, Lynn Szwaja and Tomás Ybarra-Frausta (eds), Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (London, 2006). 10. Lubar, Steven, ‘Exhibiting memories’, in Amy Henderson and Adrienne L Kaeppler (eds), Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian (Washington, 1997), p.24. 11. Linenthal, Edward T, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum (New York, 2001). 12. CHA, Group interview with ANC Male Political Prisoners, 21 December 2003, p.9. 13. Segal, Lauren, Number 4: The Making of Constitution Hill (Johannesburg, 2006), p.8. 14. This terminology was used by the curators and researchers creating the Number Four displays. 15. Segal: Number 4: The Making of Constitution Hill, p.161. 16. Ibid, p.115. 17. Witz, Leslie and Carolyn Hamilton, ‘Reaping the whirlwind: The Reader’s Digest Illustrated History of South Africa and changing popular perceptions of history’ in Peter G Stone and Brian L Molyneaux (eds), The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education (London, 1994), p.30. 18. CHA, Number Four Dignity Book, comment 24 April 2004. 19. Krog, Antjie, Country of my Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (New York, 1998), p.vi. 20. Nuttall, Sarah and Carli Coetzee, ‘Introduction’ in Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (Oxford, 1998), pp.1–18, p.2. 21. CHA, Number Four Dignity Book, comment 21 May 2005. 22. Wachtel, Nathan, ‘Introduction’ in Marie-Noëlle Bourguet, Lucette Valensi and Nathan Wachtel (eds), Between Memory and History (London, 1990), p.3.

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23. Kirmayer, Laurence J, ‘Landscapes of memory: Trauma, narrative and dissociation’ in Paul Antze and Michael Lambek (eds), Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory (New York, 1996), p.175. 24. Geschier, Sofie MMA, ‘Beyond experience: The mediation of traumatic memories in South African history museums’, Transformation 59 (2005), p.47. 25. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991), p.204. 26. De Jong, Ferdinand and Michael Rowlands, ‘Reconsidering heritage and memory’ in Ferdinand de Jong and Michael Rowlands (eds), Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaires of Memory in West Africa (Walnut Creek, CA, 2007), p.13. 27. Crewe, Jonathan, ‘Recalling Adamastor: Literature as cultural memory in “white” South Africa’ in Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, 1999), p.75. 28. Davison: ‘Museums and the reshaping of memory’, p.158. 29. Gevisser, Mark, ‘From the ruins: The Constitution Hill project’ in Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall (eds), An Elusive Metropolis (Durham, 2008), p.324. 30. Segal: Number 4: The Making of Constitution Hill, p.121. 31. Some seek public reconciliation: see recent case of ex-security minister Adriaan Vlok symbolically washing the feet of Reverend Chikane, BBC News online, 28 August 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5292302. stm, accessed 9 October 2010. 32. CHA, Group interview with ANC Male Political Prisoners, 21 December 2003, p.5. 33. Gevisser: ‘From the ruins’, p.335. 34. Bonner, Philip (ed), Selected Extracts of Interview with Prisoners (Male), (unpublished, compiled 2003), p.13. 35. Ibid, p.7. 36. Ibid, p.9. 37. Segal: Number 4: The Making of Constitution Hill, p.161. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid, p.145. 40. Coombes: History after Apartheid, p.64. 41. Witz, Leslie, Apartheid’s Festival: Contesting South Africa’s National Pasts (Bloomington, 2003), p.11. 42. Segal: Number 4: The Making of Constitution Hill, p.177. 43. Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others, p.6. 44. Becker, Rayda, ‘Marking time: The making of the Democracy X Exhibition’ in Andries Walter Oliphant, Peter Delius and Lalou Meltzer (eds), Democracy X: Marking the Present, Representing the Past (Cape Town, 2004), p.273.

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130 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

Art and Trauma in Africa Segal: Number 4: The Making of Constitution Hill, p.192. Ibid, p.180. Van der Watt: ‘Witnessing trauma in post-apartheid South Africa’, p.32. Author’s visit; The Guardian, 28 December 2005, http://www.guardian. co.uk/artanddesign/2005/dec/28/art.southafrica, accessed 9 October 2010. CHA, Number Four Memory Book, comment 30 November 2004. MacDonald, Sharon, ‘Accessing audiences: Visiting visitor books’, Museum and Society vol.3, no.3 (2005), p.122. CHA, Number Four Dignity Book, David Moroe, comment undated. Several examples in Number Four Dignity Book, including Lucky Malungana, comment 22 March 2004. Caruth: Unclaimed Experience, p.7. CHA, Number Four Memory Book, comment 17 December 2004. Ibid, comment 13 June 2004. Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others, p.102. CHA, Number Four Memory Book, comment 31 July 2005. Ibid, comment 3 August 2004. Ibid, comment February 2005. Geschier: ‘Beyond experience’, p.59. Author interview with Clive van den Berg, 11 May 2006. CHA, Number Four Memory Book, comment 26 October 2004. Coombes: History after Apartheid, p.55.

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CHAPTER SIX IMAGING LIFE AFTER DEATH: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE 1994 GENOCIDE IN RWANDA Frank Möller and Rafiki Ubaldo

I wanted to get entirely away from the art that might be presented at the Hayward, and to try to see how art fits into, and perhaps even enriches, the lives of ordinary people. It seems to me that, as African poverty continues to scar the world’s conscience, it doesn’t really matter whether African art makes it in London. But maybe art – the form of creativity that human beings have been addicted to longest – might have a function in the lives of the poor. [ . . . ] I wanted to know what forms of visual culture might actually be of use to those who have nothing. Jonathan Jones1 This chapter analyses representations in the visual arts, especially in photography, of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath.2 We want to question in what ways photography can help people develop agency and future prospects. To echo the quotation that opened this chapter: which forms of photography might enrich the lives of ordinary people in Rwanda? Rather than being a historical project in search of new knowledge on the genocide proper, the chapter explores ways

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through which photography may help people gain future perspectives in a post-genocide society that cannot yet be considered a post-conflict society.3 When looking at photographic representations of the genocide and its aftermath, we are inspired by politically informed criticisms of photography and the visual arts. In our interrogation of Western4 art theory in light of survivors’ voices as articulated in interviews, we are inspired also by Alex Danchev’s suggestion that ‘art articulates a vision of the world that is insightful and consequential; and the vision and the insight can be analysed’.5 As we will show, the vision and the insight generated by art are not always appreciated. In addition to such an analysis we are also interested in the ways in which art ‘in its specific [ . . . ] forms of bearing witness or testifying to that [traumatic] past, might assist in partially working that past over and through, thereby making more available other possibilities in the present and future’.6 More specifically, how does photography contribute to reconciliation between and among groups of people in post-genocide Rwanda? Can photography contribute to what Jacques Rancière calls ‘a new landscape of the possible’, that is to say, ‘new configurations of what can be seen, what can be said and what can be thought’7 without which new political configurations, including reconciliation, can hardly emerge? Can visual representation, owing to its inherent tendency to show ‘the commonalities of being human’,8 become an effective instrument for reconciliation? The evidence presented in this chapter is indicative of the complexities of the issues revolving around visual representations of genocide. As one of our interviewees (I2) states: ‘It would be pretentious to give ready-made answers or pretend that we are on top of [the] issues related to [such] questions.’

Representations of genocide It is often claimed that genocide cannot be represented. There are, however, several representations of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath in photography, film and the visual arts, for example by the photojournalists Gilles Peress and Sebastião Salgado,9 the photographers and visual artists Kathryn Cook, Alfredo Jaar, Robert Lyons

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and Jonathan Torgovnik, and the film directors Roger Spottiswoode and Peter Raymont (Shake Hands with the Devil),10 Anne Aghion and Eric Kabera,11 Terry George (Hotel Rwanda), Michael Caton-Jones (Shooting Dogs) and Raoul Peck (Sometimes in April). Autobiographical writings by Roméo Dallaire and Paul Rusesabagina have inspired motion pictures, both independent and mainstream. With regard to photography, the social sciences have shown some interest in the above works, mainly focusing on Jaar’s work with occasional references to Peress’ photography.12 These projects contribute to a world that is said to be ‘hyper-saturated with images’.13 It has become a cliché to say that we are also overexposed to atrocity images14 – as if the images, and not the atrocities, are the main problem. It is also regularly alleged that such images have a very specific impact on the observers, effectively infringing upon the extent to which the observers feel involved in and responsible for the conditions depicted. Rather than promoting empathy and engagement, such images are said to promote indifference and detachment and – in the words of David Campbell who comments on war photographs focusing on victims – to produce ‘a generalised and standardised visual account that anonymises victims and depoliticises conflict’.15 Spectators are said to ‘become callous’,16 ‘numb’17 or ‘desensitise[d]’18 as a result of which they are alleged to fail to respond to the conditions depicted. David Levi Strauss argues in connection with the genocide in Rwanda that changes in the politics of images have ‘acted to erode their effectiveness’19 resulting in viewers feeling separated from the experience and accepting what they see, rather than engaging politically with it. It is thus alleged that a causal connection exists between photographic representations of human suffering and the viewers’ failure to respond politically to the depictions – not least because visual representations of people in pain tend to evoke among the viewers feelings of ‘own personal moral inadequacy’ that effectively depoliticise the issue depicted.20 However, while both images of human suffering and a lack of political response to human suffering can regularly be observed, it is difficult to show that the lack of political response to human suffering follows causally from the existence of images of this very suffering.

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Indeed, written reports of what happened in Rwanda were equally ignored in the West. Furthermore, as Carolyn J Dean argues in her discussion on empathy versus numbness, it is often hard to say ‘whether critics believe that images and narratives of atrocity and violence are the effect of a real diminution of empathy or its cause’.21 People may fail to respond to atrocity images, not because they have seen too many images but because they have not seen enough images, because they have seen the wrong images, or because they have not (yet) developed sufficient political consciousness to read images politically and respond to them morally.22 Even if the viewers would want to respond, it is often said that they could not do so adequately, with ‘adequately’ referring to responses that ‘alleviate the suffering depicted’.23 This is arguably a very ambitious understanding of what is adequate. It ignores the fact that the sum of the inevitably inadequate individual responses to images of human suffering may ultimately form an adequate response of individuals as members of a political community who can exert political power only together with other people, never alone. Reflecting on the above discussion it may be suggested that the best way to deal with atrocities visually is by avoiding representations of gruesome acts of violence and alluding to violence only by implication. Many survivors welcome the absence of images of real killings24 because, in the words of Innocent Rwililiza, ‘images of the killings underway – I could not bear that’.25 Berthe Mwanankabandi emphasises the unrepresentability of ‘the intimate truth of the genocide’, which is a property of ‘those who lived it’.26 Mwanankabandi concludes that ‘pictures of the preambles and the premeditation are the only important ones for allowing foreigners to understand the mechanics of the [genocide]’.27 Likewise, one of our interviewees emphasises that ‘pictures have played an important role in informing about the genocide of 1994, starting from the time the genocide was being committed’ (I1). This is said to have been especially so with respect to Rwandans who were living outside of Rwanda during the genocide. However, the relevance and the power of these images have been called into question by one of our interviewees: ‘If the amount of pictures taken here during the genocide cannot help fight denial of the genocide in the West, then what is their importance?’ (I2)

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According to the same interviewee, the images taken by photojournalists during the genocide ‘have fallen in the traditional cliché of “this is just another tribal warfare – after all, Africans kill each other all the time”’ (I2). This cliché is both skilfully nourished by the perpetrators in order to maintain Western inactivity, and to some extent unavoidable: ‘The negative depiction of Africans in Western media dates from long before the genocide and I think it was difficult for photographers to escape the cliché in 1994, and this independently of what they wanted to show with their pictures’ (I1). Regarding the question of whether these images should be shown or not, it is important to note that photographs of victims during the genocide do not dehumanise them ‘because the future victim is already dehumanised beforehand’ (I1). In this view, antecedent dehumanisation is a condition for the possibility of genocide. Yet, no clear picture emerges from our interviews. On the one hand, ‘if the pictures are traumatising then they should not be shown’ (I1). They should be shown, on the other hand, ‘if they are a “passage obligé” [ . . . ]. I would ironically say they then constitute a necessary sufferance. We have to learn from our actions. We proceed by testing. If these pictures help to understand the genocide, then they are necessary’ (I1). However, Rwililiza adds that pictures of actual killings ‘would make nothing more explicit to people who did not experience the genocide’.28 One of our interviewees adds that, since the survivors know what happened to them and the perpetrators know what they have done, neither survivors nor perpetrators need pictures to be reminded of what happened in 1994 (I2). Artists working nowadays on representations of the genocide are deeply aware of the ethical problems involved in representing acts of violence29 and the danger of re-traumatising the victims noted, for example, in connection with the production of the BBC film Shooting Dogs.30 Many photographers have decided to represent violence only by implication – although digital technologies offer them the possibilities of integrating original images from the genocide into their work. Representations alluding to violence by implication neither put the viewers in impossible subject positions31 nor do they seem to expose people in pain too directly to the viewers’ gaze. This gaze is often said to prolong a person’s suffering,32 to constitute a ‘secondary

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exploitation’,33 to undermine the dignity of the person depicted, to freeze people in pain in the subject position of a victim and to deny them agency.

The aftermath One way of alluding to violence by implication is by focusing on the aftermath of the genocide. The aftermath we are referring to here is different from the aftermath captured for example in American Civil War photography depicting ‘bodies left behind’.34 Such photography tends both to make individual human beings invisible (given the huge overall number of bodies depicted) and to reduce human beings to victims. As such, it tends to ignore the various subject positions people carry with them before becoming victims of violence, and it tells the viewers nothing about the lives the victims lived. Our focus – as shown in the photographs reproduced below – reflects the emphasis in recent photography theory on ‘slowing down image making, remaining out of the hub of action, and arriving after the decisive moment’35 and ‘after the fact’36 thus acknowledging ‘what is left behind in the wake of [ . . . ] tragedies’.37 What is left behind is people – perpetrators and survivors,38 children born of rape during the genocide and their mothers,39 and orphans.40 Some of these photographs, especially Torgovnik’s and Cook’s, are strikingly beautiful. They would seem to invite standard criticisms according to which the aestheticisation of suffering directs the viewer’s attention from the suffering depicted to the compositional refinement of the image, from the pain of the victim to the virtuosity of the photographer. However, representations necessarily aestheticise – and beauty, rather than being an obstacle to action, can also be ‘a call to action’.41 Reflecting the unattainability of pure beauty, these photographs also radiate sadness and it is the simultaneity of beauty and sadness that makes them so powerful and irresistible. Lyons’s photography42 is powerful because it engages with convenient but, as Lee Ann Fujii has argued, inappropriately simplifying ways of categorising people in the aftermath of genocide.43 Lyons’s portraits of perpetrators and survivors distract from acts of violence by focusing on faces – faces that do not reveal to the viewer whether the

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person depicted is a perpetrator, an alleged perpetrator, or a survivor; nor do they reveal what kind of perpetrator, what kind of alleged perpetrator, or what kind of survivor the person depicted is. It is precisely the fixation of subject positions that Lyons’s photography avoids. For more information on the people depicted, the viewer has to consult the list of plates at the end of the book. It is during his or her journey from the photographs to the list of plates that the viewer can interrogate his or her assumptions regarding visual representations of genocide.44 Left behind in the wake of genocide are also material objects. For example, in one of the strongest moments of Raymont’s Shake Hands with the Devil, Dallaire picks up clothes lying on the ground that are both remainders and reminders of genocide. Jane Blocker writes with respect to an old photo album photographed by Peress that it ‘seems to lie somewhere between memory and oblivion, between burial and exhumation’.45 Images such as the ones by Ubaldo reproduced below refer to the preceding violence only by implication but nevertheless, or because of it, they encapsulate memories (including fading memories) and emotions. These images were taken, after years of hesitation, in Rwandan churches, schools and government buildings where thousands were killed in 1994. These buildings are now monuments to the abject brutality of the genocide by displaying shelves with rows of skulls and pews scattered with the clothing of the dead. We want to suggest that photographs can help the viewer empathise with individual suffering of individual people that the viewer can identify with and that are directly connected to the everyday lives of individual victims, by focusing on ordinary material objects – a wedding ring, a stove, a hat, a comb. Personal belongings are more than just material objects left behind: they are items used by the victims in their everyday lives and it is precisely for this reason that the viewers can connect to them because the viewers, too, use similar items in their everyday lives. The personal belongings of the victims therefore represent much more than found objects – they represent life itself.46 How far can the representation by implication of acts of violence be pushed without trivialising such acts, losing contact with the subject matter of the work of art, and undermining the artist’s mission? In Alfredo Jaar’s work, very far indeed. In ‘Field, Road, Cloud’ – a part

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The Wedding Ring: A compelling image in a genocide memorial museum in Rwanda of a female victim still wearing her wedding ring. Her body lies on one of the shelves in one of the rooms at the Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre. Photographer: Rafiki Ubaldo

of The Rwanda Project – Jaar uses three photographs that he took in Rwanda after the genocide: a green field of tea, a dirt road illuminated by sunlight, and a white cloud framed by blue sky. Jaar connects the photographs with the memories of the genocide by adding geographical sketches of where the photographs had been taken: the cloud, for example, is above Ntarama church, which is the place where Gatete Emerita, the subject of another part of the project, witnessed the murder of her husband and sons.47 It is illuminating here to take a closer look at the cloud, guided by Ernst van Alphen’s analysis of the work of the philosopher Hubert Damisch: ‘Which pictorial qualities and elements attract us and seduce us into looking at art? In [Damisch’s] A Theory of /Cloud/ the answer is found in the /cloud/. By means of the /cloud/ we get access to those realms that are visually unrepresentable.’48 Even the cloud then would seem to be a way to engage what Mark Reinhardt

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The Stove: The stove in the kitchen section of Ntarama Church Genocide Memorial. One house in the compound of the church complex was used as a kitchen. Note the white candle survivors kept following the genocide memorial services. Photographer: Rafiki Ubaldo

The Hat: This old and disintegrating hat is among the victims’ clothing on display at the Nyamata Church Genocide Memorial. Photographer: Rafiki Ubaldo

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The Comb: A comb kept inside the tabernacle of Nyamata Church Genocide Memorial. Also visible is a rosary, two broken smoking pipes and a small white tube of toothpaste. Photographer: Rafiki Ubaldo

calls ‘the limits of representation in situations of extremity’,49 seducing the viewers into looking at art and confronting them with sights and sites they would rather not see or think about. Works of art on the genocide by non-Rwandan artists aim to raise Western awareness of a genocide that most people in the West ignored while it happened as well as afterwards. As works by non-Rwandan artists, however, they also reflect that we are living in societies where people – rather than representing themselves – are more often represented by others. Being exposed to the lenses of visiting photographers has for a long time been an integral component of the Southern experience owing to photography’s close historical relationship with the visual-anthropological mapping of the world in light of both colonialism and tourism. In terms of genocide, such representations are nevertheless necessary because they acknowledge the survivors’ need for recognition. Furthermore, such pictures transform invisibility into visibility. In a world dominated by images, this transformation is an important one, at least in the metropolitan multimedia world,50 because invisibility

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would exclude people from the realm of the political.51 The survivors’ invisibility would amount to the ultimate success of the génocidaires. However, if they depict the continuing pain of others, artistic projects by non-Rwandan artists may also – and quite unintentionally – reflect and confirm traditional forms of visual exploitation and (re-)traumatisation, cultural hegemony and denial of agency. As Jill Bennett argues: ‘If art purports to register the true experience of violence or devastating loss – to be about a particular event – then it lays claim to an experience that is fundamentally owned by someone.’52 Furthermore, most projects by Western artists primarily target people in the metropolitan areas outside Rwanda where the photographs are discussed in scholarly writings, exhibited in museums and printed in expensive books, of which few copies are likely to be sold in Rwanda. Their relevance for people in Rwanda seems to be rather limited. Likewise, it can be expected that there are limits to the extent to which representations by non-Rwandan artists can make ‘possibilities in the present and future’53 available – provided that we are not only interested in the question of what these works of art tell people in the West about the pain of others but also, and mainly, in the extent to which they might actually be of use to local people. These limits must be acknowledged. For example, Torgovnik’s photography – an immensely important project that directs the viewers’ attention not only to the plight of the women and their children but also to the social, cultural and political processes through which some people marginalise others54 – can be criticised for showing ‘survivors in pain or highlighting their post-genocide problems’ (I2). As one of our interviewees claims, such pictures ‘are not actually helping the situation because the former killers are happy about that sorry situation of those they did not wish to live. And we have documented comments of that kind after such pictures were shown. It does not help our country to constantly show pictures of weak survivors, even if that is the situation. It weakens them more in the eyes of other Rwandans’ (I2) while seeming to confirm, in the eyes of Western observers, the traditional image of Africans as people in need of help. The same interviewee notes that current media representations of Rwanda (for example in connection with commemoration ceremonies

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and trials in Arusha) still communicate the ‘impression [that] the country is actually burning sixteen years after the genocide. [ . . . ] Media in the West are still portraying us according to 1994’ thus ignoring – and failing to communicate to the readers and viewers – the constant learning process the Rwandan people have engaged in since then, resulting in what this interviewee deems ‘a good balance between our dividing past and our will to build a viable country today’ (I2): Talking about the images of the genocide and the commemoration of genocide today, I have observed an interesting phenomenon. Young people want to see the images of 1994 but they do not want their emotions filmed or photographed during commemorations. They first ask why you want to take the pictures, what you will use them for. I have asked some of them why they want to watch 1994 images and see pictures taken at that time [while being] reluctant at the same time to be photographed during the commemoration of genocide. Some say they do not want to be defined by how they feel about the history of the country. Some others do not want to look traumatised on images in the future. And I understand them. We still have a problem in the way society stigmatised people affected by trauma. In our society you do not want to reveal you have a trauma because the society will think you are crazy or you cannot recover. So, I can understand looking at some survivors whose iconic pictures taken in 1994 are still defining them, even after the genocide when they have rebuilt their lives and definitely live a somewhat better life than the one they went through in 1994 [that is] still visible on these pictures (I2). Victims, therefore, do confront sorrow. Yet despite traumatic re-enactment and their understanding of genocide as a film that cannot be stopped, they regularly try not to be dominated by it.55 They want to rebuild their lives without forgetting the past and they want to do so as subjects of their own actions rather than as objects of the actions of others. Even if it is meant as a vehicle with which to help people leave behind the subject position of a victim and regain their own lives,

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photography often contributes to the perpetuity of victimhood – that is to say, to the exclusive or primary definition of a human being as a victim at the expense of all the other subject positions each person carries with them. This quandary characterises the role of photography in connection with representations of genocide, a role that is a fundamentally ambiguous one. The generalising tendencies of photography can also be observed with respect to visual representations of former perpetrators that are said to ‘criminalise all the Hutus instead of establishing individual responsibilities’ (I2). What, then, can photography achieve in a post-genocide society that, in the eyes of the members of this society, is much more than a post-genocide society?

Life after death Life as a Tutsi (and as a politically moderate Hutu) in Rwanda after the genocide means life after death, as no Tutsi was supposed to survive the killings. Many, however, did. Others, having fled the country during the genocide or earlier (for example, after the 1959 Hutu ‘Social Revolution’56), returned to Rwanda after the genocide. Designing their life after death includes the necessity to manage complex personal relationships between majority and minority groups but also – equally importantly but often overlooked – within these groups. As Torgovnik’s work shows, tensions can be traced back to relationships within families. Photography can help ease some of these tensions, especially tensions in connection with gaps in biographies and identities without roots: I have a niece who was two years old during the genocide. Now she is 18 years. I have noticed she wanted to know more about the genocide. And here comes the importance of pictures. I happen to have the pictures of her parents, both killed in the genocide. These pictures have very much helped us to tell her who her parents were, what they looked like, events that took place when she was still little. Another point: when she was born, her father sent me a letter and a picture of her the day she was born. That is how I actually helped the family to know when she was

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born because after the genocide it was difficult for the family to know. No one in her direct family survived. All the relatives she has now were in exile when the genocide took place. After the genocide she was traced in an orphanage. No one knew her age. But I still had the letter written to me, and her picture from the date she was born. So when I came back here [to Rwanda], we had these discussions and I of course noticed she did not know anything consistent about herself. Now she has the letter her father wrote me the very day she was born and she has a picture of herself from the very day she was born. And these important documents were saved because I was out of the country; if I had been in the country at the time of the genocide, they would not have survived me. When I came back home, I found that the relatives taking care of my niece had randomly chosen a date to celebrate her birthday. We had to change to the real date and now she is happy. But telling her the real story of her life was very painful and traumatising of course (I1). Other interviewees confirm the importance of photographs to those who ‘lost everything’ (I4). The responses from some of our interviewees also show how photographs often catalyse conversations about family history, help recover lost memories, and help express that which cannot be said. Family photographs are places of intimacy that help construct identities, articulate feelings of belonging and form collective memories.57 Such photographs cannot be limited to visuality. They do not only touch the viewers; the viewers can also touch them and, by so doing, connect intimately to the person depicted. Indeed, touch ‘produces a much less dramatic transubstantiation of the object’s material substance and form into a spiritual expression of boundless significance than do seeing or hearing’.58 In Rwanda, family pictures taken before the genocide are important to survivors as the pictures remind them of relatives, places and events they cannot remember otherwise. Such pictures help families to re-unite and understand each other’s pain.59 They can help promote people’s reconciliation with themselves and make possible ‘the mental integration of otherwise disconnected points in time into a seemingly single

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historical whole’60 without which a coherent personal identity cannot be expected to emerge. However, with this comes the difficult question of who owns the pictures: those appearing in the pictures, for example Tutsi survivors who lost their copies during the genocide, or those who still have their copies of the pictures, especially Tutsis who returned to Rwanda after the genocide? Furthermore, as the above quotation shows, photographs may replace the trauma of not knowing one’s past with the trauma of knowing it. Another possibility for photographs to contribute to reconciliation between groups of people is by documenting sustained cooperation between perpetrators and survivors so as to escape from the shadow of the events of 1994. If such cooperation is initiated and subsequently visually documented by NGOs, however, a note of warning may be in order: These pictures seem to say, “See, we live together now, the past is passed and we do not have problems anymore.” I think this approach will stoke conflicts again because these people are mostly together because they are getting help, and these portraits are simplifying a more complex and complicated situation like a genocide that happened just sixteen years ago. That is not really such a long time for emotions to settle (I2). However, processes of ‘forced reconciliation’ between survivors and former perpetrators reflecting the hardship of village life – ‘authentic initiatives’ (I2) – are not normally visually documented because they do not result from NGO or governmental interventions. People who have normally been represented by others (if at all) can become agents of their own images rather than being subjects of the photography of others. They may also help change Western perceptions of Rwanda that are to a large extent dominated by the 1994 genocide, reinforced by stereotypical representations in popular culture.61 The pictures of the late photographer David Jiranek are especially important in this connection because Jiranek did not take these pictures himself. As such, they fundamentally disrupt traditional Western conceptions according to which everything is photographable and

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Western photographers rightfully take pictures of everything and everyone, including people in pain. In the words of one of our interviewees, Western photographers often ‘show up and start taking pictures without asking for the permissions or even saying who they are, assuming that in Africa things are just open. The youth today [ . . . ] have started to ask why the pictures are taken and even when they get answers, it is difficult to trust, especially when Westerners are taking pictures.’ The same interviewee rightly asks: Why would you take a picture of someone in terrible trauma during genocide commemoration? Is it right? Or, how about taking pictures of people being killed, or people bleeding after being beaten or wounded? Do you rescue first and take the picture afterwards? Do you take the pictures and rescue them afterwards? Or [do] you take a picture and continue? (I2) Such questions have often been articulated in connection, for example, with James Nachtwey’s photography. Nachtwey is said to have answered that he considers himself ‘a journalist rather than an aid worker, doctor, soldier or Good Samaritan’.62 Jiranek’s answer to these questions was not to take pictures but to enable other people, especially orphans, to represent themselves photographically.63 Operating with donated cameras, the children capture the living conditions in today’s Rwanda from the point of view of those who have to cope with these conditions in their everyday lives. Rather than depicting Rwanda as a place of misery and hopelessness, these photographs ‘are much more lively, responding to colour and light and their neighbours with considerable wonder’, thus ‘refus[ing] to be the symbol of their people’s tragic history’.64 The views expressed by our interviewees exemplify that, by means of discussions focussing on art, an open debate on such a complicated issue as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath is possible among Rwandans. We are not suggesting that art in general and photography in particular should be seen as the main means by which to cope with the challenges the Rwandan society is currently facing. However, art can make a small but important contribution to building a functioning political community in Rwanda.

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Notes 1. Jones, Jonathan, ‘Art of Africa’, The Guardian, 28 December 2005, http://www. guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5363350–110428,00.html, accessed 2 January 2006. 2. This chapter is based on interviews conducted by Rafiki Ubaldo in Rwanda in summer 2010. The interviews were conducted in Kinyarwanda and French and translated into English. Passages from these interviews are marked in the text with I(nterview)1, I2, I3 and I4. We are grateful to our interviewees, who wished to remain anonymous, for generously sharing their insights and thoughts with us. We also gratefully acknowledge Henning Melber’s famous skills in networking and connecting people. 3. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a post-conflict society as social conflict is an integral component of human life; see Coser, Lewis A, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York, 1956). 4. Throughout the text, we use the terms ‘West’ and ‘Western’ in a rather generic manner referring to dominant forms of knowledge production and their translation into politics. 5. Danchev, Alex, On Art and War and Terror (Edinburgh, 2009), p.4. 6. LaCapra, Dominick, History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca and London, 2004), p.43. 7. Rancière, Jacques, The Emancipated Spectator (London and New York, 2009), p.103. 8. MacDougall, David, Transcultural Cinema (Princeton, 1998), p.246. 9. Peress, Gilles, The Silence (New York, 1995); Salgado, Sebastião, Africa (Cologne, 2010). 10. These films are two different films with the same title. Spottiswoode’s film (2007) is based on the autobiography of Roméo Dallaire, the force commander of the 1994 United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda, UNAMIR [see Dallaire, Roméo and Brent Beardsley, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (London, 2004)]. Raymont’s film (2004) documents Dallaire’s return journey to Rwanda ten years later. 11. For Anne Aghion’s work, see www.anneaghionfilms.com; for Eric Kabera’s work, see rwandacinemacenter.wordpress.com, both accessed 8 February 2012. 12. For a discussion of Jaar’s work, see Reinhardt, Mark, ‘Picturing violence: Aesthetics and the anxiety of critique’ in Mark Reinhardt, Holly Edwards and Erina Duganne (eds), Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (Chicago and Williamstown, 2007), pp.32–35; Blocker, Jane, Seeing Witness: Visuality and the Ethics of Testimony (Minneapolis and London, 2009), pp.51–57; Rancière: The Emancipated Spectator, pp.95–100. For a discussion of Peress’ work, see Blocker: Seeing Witness, pp.57–60; Linfield, Susie,

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13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Art and Trauma in Africa The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (Chicago and London, 2010), pp.245–251. Sontag, Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York, 2003), p.105. Jacques Rancière disagrees. He argues that the dominant media intentionally reduce the number of atrocity images, ‘taking good care to select and order them’ (The Emancipated Spectator, p.96). Campbell, David, ‘Cultural governance and pictorial resistance: Reflections on the imaging of war’, Review of International Studies vol.29 (2003), pp.57–73, p.67. Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others, p.105. Dean, Carolyn J, The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust (Ithaca and London, 2004), passim. Danto, Arthur, ‘The body in pain’, The Nation, 27 November 2006, http:// www.thenation.com/doc/20061127/danto, accessed 13 November 2006. Strauss, David Levi, Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (New York, 2003), p.81. Berger, John, ‘Photographs of agony’ in Liz Wells (ed), The Photography Reader (London and New York, 2003), pp.289–90. Dean: The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust, p.6. Sontag, Susan, On Photography (London, 1979), p.17, argues: ‘Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one – and can help build a nascent one.’ Sliwinski, Sharon, ‘A painful labour: Responsibility and photography’, Visual Studies vol.19, no.2 (2004), p.154. Despite the considerable amount of footage produced during the genocide by both Rwandan and foreign cameramen and photographers, pictures of real killings are rare; see Thompson, Allan (ed), The Media and the Rwanda Genocide (London and Ann Arbor, 2007). Quoted in Hatzfeld, Jean, The Strategy of Antelopes: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide (London, 2009), p.99. Hatzfeld: The Strategy of Antelopes, p.100. Ibid. Ibid, p.99. On the commentary track of the DVD of his film Shake Hands with the Devil director Peter Raymont discusses the inclusion in the film of original footage from the genocide, including scenes of people brutally killing their victims with machetes. According to Raymont, UNAMIR commander ‘Dallaire felt strongly that we should use [this footage], that it was important for people to see the horror – if you can’t even watch the archival footage ten years later, how can you possibly imagine anything of what these people must have felt’ (31:08–31:42).

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30. See ‘Anger at BBC genocide film’, The Observer, 19 March 2006, http://www. guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/mar/19/media.film, accessed 1 June 2011. 31. See Möller, Frank, ‘The looking/not looking dilemma’, Review of International Studies vol.35, no.4 (2009), pp.781–794. 32. Reinhardt: ‘Picturing violence’, p.17. 33. Bal, Mieke, ‘The pain of images’ in Mark Reinhardt, Holly Edwards and Erina Duganne (eds), Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (Chicago and Williamstown, 2007), pp.93–115. 34. Saltzman, Lisa, ‘What remains: Photography and landscape, memory and oblivion’ in Jennifer Blessing and Nat Trotman (eds), Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance (New York, 2010), p.129. 35. Cotton, Charlotte, The Photograph as Contemporary Art, New Edition (London, 2009), p.167. The ‘decisive moment’ is photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s term signifying the moment ‘when aesthetic composition and subject matter come together’ [Wells, Liz (ed), The Photography Reader (London and New York, 2003), p.253] and result ‘not [in] a dramatic climax but [in] a visual one’ [Szarkowski, John, The Photographer’s Eye (New York, 2007), p.10]. 36. Duganne, Erina, ‘Photography after the fact’ in Mark Reinhardt, Holly Edwards and Erina Duganne (eds), Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (Chicago and Williamstown, 2007), pp.57–74. 37. Cotton: The Photograph as Contemporary Art, p.167. 38. Lyons, Robert and Scott Straus, Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide (New York, 2006). 39. Torgovnik, Jonathan, Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape (New York, 2009). 40. See www.krcphoto.com/#/they-once-were-children/Rwanda_014 for Kathryn Cook’s photographs of orphans, accessed 8 February 2012. 41. Strauss: Between the Eyes, p.9. 42. Lyons and Straus: Intimate Enemy, pp.99–156. 43. Fujii, Lee Ann, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Ithaca and London, 2009), p.8. 44. Möller, Frank, ‘Rwanda revisualized: Genocide, photography, and the era of the witness’, Alternatives vol.35, no.2 (2010), pp.124–128. 45. Blocker: Seeing Witness, p.59. 46. For the complete exhibition, see www.templesofmemory.org/about.html, accessed 8 February 2012. 47. Jaar, Alfredo, Let There Be Light: The Rwanda Project 1994–1998 (Barcelona, 1998). 48. Van Alphen, Ernst, Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought (Chicago and London, 2005), p.8. ‘Damisch puts the signifier /cloud/

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49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59.

60. 61.

Art and Trauma in Africa between slashes to indicate that he deals with clouds as signs that have different meanings in different pictorial contexts rather than clouds as realistic elements’ (Van Alphen: Art in Mind, p.5). Reinhardt: ‘Picturing violence’, p.33. Before and during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda the radio was a more important vehicle with which to propagate an anti-Tutsi ideology and instigate crimes. See the contributions of Darryl Li, Thomas Kamilindi, Mary Kimani and Charles Mironko to Allan Thompson’s book (The Media, pp.90– 142). Nowadays, photographs of the genocide are less apparent than films in Rwanda’s popular culture and people often find it difficult to distinguish between television footage and still images. See Hariman, Robert and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago and London, 2007). Bennett, Jill, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art (Stanford, 2005), p.3. LaCapra: History in Transit, p.43. Möller: ‘Rwanda revisualized’, pp.128–31. Kinzer, Stephen, A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It (Hoboken, 2008), p.267. See Mamdani, Mahmood, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton and Oxford, 2001), pp.103–31. Nine months after the liberation of Kigali, 750,000 ‘former Tutsi exiles’ are said to have moved back to Rwanda. See Gourevitch, Philip, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York, 1998), p.230. See Hirsch, Marianne, Family Frames: Photography Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge and London, 1997). Gilgen, Peter, ‘History after film’ in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Michael Marrinan (eds), Mapping Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Digital Age (Stanford, 2003), p.54. The survivor Reverien Rurangwa has the following to say about a photocopy of a photograph: ‘This modest leaf of paper is the only family photograph that I own. It is the only document I have by which I can cherish those faces lost to me, and maybe one day, show my children the images of their murdered forebears’ [Rurangwa, Reverien, Genocide: My Stolen Rwanda (London, 2009), p.16]. Zerubavel, Eviatar, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Change of the Past (Chicago and London, 2003), p.40. See, for example, Episode 19 of Season 10 of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, ‘World’s End’.

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62. Linfield: The Cruel Radiance, p.219. Linfield (p.218) also notes that Nachtwey ‘has on occasion stepped in (specifically, to confront lynch mobs and take famine victims to feeding stations)’. 63. http://www.rwandaproject.org, accessed 8 February 2012. 64 Ritchin, Fred, After Photography (New York, 2009), p.127.

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CHAPTER SEVEN ‘IT WAS A TERRIBLE TIME TO BE ALIVE’: NARRATIVE RECONCILIATION IN CONTEMPORARY WEST AFRICAN FICTION Tobias Robert Klein

The traumatic experience of violence and human rights abuses in an African context is predominantly associated with the exceptional situations created by freedom struggles, civil wars or genocides. This chapter focuses on the literary mediation of the struggle for survival under an oppressive military dictatorship, the emotional stress of family rifts, or the prospects of life-long poverty, in two recent West African novels. On the one hand, in Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2003), the strain of life mirrors the political and social decay of Nigeria during the 1990s. Traumatic incidents such as imprisonment, senseless cycles of violence and political oppression coincide with the personal agonies and disappointments of the novel’s chief protagonist. The works of Benjamin Kwakye, on the other hand, establish a social panorama of postcolonial Ghana in which the ever-widening gap between haves and have-nots appears as the underlying cause of crime, human insensitivity and ignorance. Kwakye’s second novel, The Sun by Night (2006),

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also touches upon forgiveness and reconciliation, which beyond their private dimension gained considerable prominence in the political discourse of Ghana’s post-1992 democracy. A critical reflection on the artistic reconciliation of such factual and fictitious experiences in relation to recent discussions of narrative ambiguities and an ‘ethics of reading’1 forms the main focus of this article. From the particular vantage point of the abovementioned and other reader-response-based theories, a reconciling reading experience must be understood as a multi-faceted dialogue between author, text and reader: within ‘a transactive theory of reading [ . . . ] texts shape reader, and reader shapes text’.2 The encounter of the storyteller’s ethos with the reader’s expectations, hopes and interpretative strategies occasionally entails a major artistic challenge. The task of a novelist is to create a plot that is sufficiently powerful to effect compassion and emotional involvement, and yet not so painful as to provoke the reader to dismiss the artistic mediation of traumatic and tantalising experiences. (Onyemaechi Udumukwu, among others, identified the dissemination of the writer’s ‘social commitment’ as the raison d’être behind postcolonial Nigerian literature.)3 From an aesthetic point of view, the desire for a happy ending is strongly associated with light genres such as the romance4 and does not go along with the undisguised portrayal of social vices and narrative ambiguity that has become a trademark of contemporary writing. The resulting dilemma was candidly addressed by the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood: When you are a fiction writer, you’re confronted every day with the question that confronted, among others, George Eliot and Dostoevsky: what kind of a world shall you describe for your readers? The one you can see around you, or the better one you can imagine? If only the latter, you’ll be unrealistic; if only the former, despairing. But it is by the better world we can imagine, that we judge the world we have. If we cease to judge this world, we may find ourselves, very quickly, in one which is infinitely worse.5 In the two novels discussed in this chapter, textual and narrative inconsistencies that are usually considered typical devices of (post)modern

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writing challenge the distressing impression of a merely sad and tragic ending. Dwelling on the widely debated issue of the ‘unreliable narrator’, Ansgar Nünning argued that ‘ascriptions of unreliability involve a tripartite structure that consist of an authorial agency, textual phenomena (including a personalised narrator and signals of unreliability) and reader response’.6 Besides and beyond the recognition of a novel’s ‘authoredness’,7 textual gaps and places of indeterminacy serve as a complement to the description of factual events and enable both author and reader to retain a ‘sense of agency’ that is, according to Michael Jackson’s inter-psychic view of storytelling, ‘equally vital to the illusory, self-protective, self-justifying activity of individual minds’.8

Waiting for an Angel (of history): Narrative agency, trauma and the ‘postcolonial incredible’ Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel is an excellent case in point for these narrative and interpretative strategies. The novel’s para-textual afterword opens with a rather grave statement: ‘It was a terrible time to be alive.’ Describing the ordeal of surviving under Sani Abacha’s ruthless military regime it continues: ‘Now imagine yourself, young, talented and ambitious, living in such a dystopia [ . . . ] The weight on the psyche could be enormous, all Nigerians became stigmatized by their rulers’ misdeeds.’9 While these final comments (albeit belatedly) seem to trigger the novel’s perception towards a factual and even autobiographical reading, various features of the foregoing storyline subtly blur this impression. Already the novel’s religiously toned title overtly refers to the Angel of Death introduced to young Lomba by a soothsaying marabout, but also carries with it the longing for divine intervention and a highly gendered notion of an ideal woman that Lomba is desperately chasing in his various disintegrating relationships. Moreover, the temporal arrangement of the novel’s seven chapters is not, as one would expect, from one to seven. Large parts of the book originally appeared as a collection of loosely interlinked short stories.10 On the wings of their success – the story Love Poems which now forms the first chapter of Waiting for an Angel was awarded the Caine Prize for African Fiction in 2001 – Habila rephrased parts of the stories,

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strengthened their interconnectedness, and added one chapter (‘Alice’), while another piece pointing to the control over Nigeria’s oil resources as a major cause of the political misery is conspicuously omitted. The (re)construction of the novel’s chronological timeframe (fabula) requires the reader to ‘include in a configuration certain related events and not others [ . . . ] – a relation that is illuminated by gaps’.11 The beginning of the plot turns out to be chapter two, followed by Lomba’s individual traumatisation in chapter three, four and five. His roommate Bola is tortured and beaten to death in the wake of a student demonstration, while his girlfriend Alice decides to marry a high-ranking military officer in order to be able to afford her mother’s medical treatment. The hopeful ending of chapter seven is immediately disputed both by its ominous opening passage and the preceding chapter’s (‘Kela’) detailed account of the violent disruption of a demonstration. However, the introduction of additional voices that supplement Lomba’s first-person narrative keeps the flame of hope burning: we experience a condensed version of a Bildungsroman in the account of the 15-year-old Kela, who ‘met people like Joshua, Brother, Nancy, Auntie Rachael, Lomba, Hagar and all the others who through their words and deeds touched my life and changed it irreversibly’.12 The character of Kela is a sort of generational counterpart to James, Lomba’s employer and a battle-tested proprietor of an independent newspaper. Their visit to a former slave fort with its dungeons, shackles and mouth gages is one of the most memorable passages of the novel that aptly puts the fight for freedom of expression into a larger historic perspective. Chapter one, which turns out to be the last in temporal order, sees Lomba in a dilapidated prison, compiling love letters and poems on behalf of its semi-literate governor. It closes with a simultaneously factual, quixotic and dreamlike passage that takes up the motif of survival, a term that has recently been described as an epistemic experience of the twentieth century’s political catastrophes:13 The above is the last entry in Lomba’s diary. [ . . . ] But somehow it is hard to imagine that Lomba died. A lot seems to point to the contrary. His diary, his economical expressions, shows a

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very sedulous character at work. A survivor. The years in prison must have taught him not to hope too much, not to despair too much – that for the prisoner, nothing kills as surely as too much hope or too much despair. He had learned to survive in tiny atoms, piecemeal, a day at a time. It is probable that in 1998, when the military dictator Abacha died, and his successor, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, dared to open the gates to democracy, and to liberty for the political detainees, Lomba was in the ranks of those released. This might have been how it happened: Lomba was seated in a dingy cell in Gashuwa, his eyes closed, his mind soaring above the glass-studded prison walls, mingling with the stars and the rain in elemental union of freedom; then the door clanked open, and when he opened his eyes Liberty was standing over him, smiling kindly, extending an arm. And Liberty said softly, ‘Come. It is time to go.’ And they left, arm in arm.14 On the first encounter with this romance-like ending, the reader is not yet aware that this passage – as if to defy the ‘divinatory realization of the meaning of life by writing “finis”’ that, according to Walter Benjamin’s classic essay on storytelling, bestows authority on the narrative15 – marks the temporal closure of the entire text. Having read the remaining chapters, one inevitably stumbles over the unresolved ambiguity, created by the sudden narrative shift from Lomba’s diary notes to a third speaker. Is it the author, who is addressing us in advance of his account of the historical circumstances of Lomba’s life in the afterword?16 Whoever this interfering voice belongs to, there is – although the incapacity of knowledge is readily conceded – hope in this narrative projection, since ‘it is hard to imagine that Lomba died’. This ostentatiously withheld information prompts similar discussions as in the case of the textual lacunae towards the end of Kafka’s Prozeß, the ambivalent doubt about Hans Castorp’s fate in Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg, or in particular the presence of two narrative voices in the storyline and appendix of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.17 From a more parochial perspective, however, Waiting for an Angel must chiefly

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be understood as a result of traumatic experiences and the utter disillusionment with the ‘crisis as norm’-like ‘postcolonial incredible’18 that together with the irrational violence of the disintegrating state has gripped several generations of Nigerian writers and critics.19 The almost uninterrupted chain of economic mismanagement, corruption and inter-ethnic and religious tensions that has characterised Nigerian politics since the nation’s independence in 1960 prompted one of its leading writers, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, to describe the country as the ‘open sore of a continent’. Not all of the novels written after the heydays of the genre in the two decades of the ‘oil boom’ and its tumultuous aftermath20 abandon a straightforward and realist mode of narration – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s touching novel Purple Hibiscus, which also contains a narratively not-fully-resolved incident, comes to mind. A text such as Biyi Bandele-Thomas’ Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams21 both anticipates the confrontation of a young intellectual with the powerdrunk antics of a ruling kleptocracy and the subtle distortion of a linear narrative. Only the novel’s final sentence assures the reader that various foregoing experiences were a nightmare, a dystopian vision of things to come, but not (yet) the last word on the fate of his generation, after the first-person narrator suddenly turns out to be the very person (Rayo) whose life and times he claims to record. I was falling to pieces, disintegrating, my limbs sticking to doorknobs and refusing to come off. And I just couldn’t be bothered. My head swirled round and round and the vultures circled overhead, trailing me like a halo of locusts. But I just couldn’t be bothered any more. I went to the cemetery. Everyone there was dead. It took me a long time to realize that my feet were not crossed. My left foot hit a bedpost as I ran breathlessly into the dawn.22 In light of Waiting for an Angel’s textual complexity – which clearly exceeds the temporary narrative gaps of Sympathetic Undertaker – it is surprising to note that critics (both in writing and personal

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conversations) extensively dwelled on the novel’s factual conjectures rather than its equally significant fictional designs. In the view of Akingbe the novel ‘is a documentation of the atrocities of the military in all facets of Nigerian life between 1990 and 1998’ and ‘in line with its status as a work of faction [ . . . ] weaves a narrative that reflects actual practices and events during the Babangida/Abacha regimes’.23 The author’s afterword, which from his particular perspective also appeals to the collective memory of several decades of postcolonial Nigerian history, refers to the novel as historical fiction but at the same time underlines his primordial ‘concern for the story’.24 In spite of the inclusion of factual events such as the attempt of Sani Abacha’s government to wipe out student protests or independent journalism,25 the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa or the descriptions of particular locations in Lagos,26 various other narrative devices serve as a subtle hint to desist from a merely autobiographical or documentary reading of the novel. Shifting narrative perspectives and the inclusion of a meeting of Lomba with Helon Habila, who turns up as a sort of cameo character, affirm an authorial agency that supersedes the plain historical facts. Lomba’s above-quoted release from captivity equally moves along the thin line separating a happy ending from a cynical parody that carries with it the sexual reunion with yet another (female) angel. One needs to keep in mind, however, that ‘while a text invites particular ethical responses through the signals that it sends to an authorial audience, our individual ethical responses will depend on the interactions of those invitations with our own particular values and beliefs’.27 Readers who lack first-hand experience of Abacha’s henchmen might be particularly sensitive to the novel’s repeated references to the power of learning and literature. Even though Lomba’s urge to complete a novel has for a long time prompted him to stay away from direct involvement in politics, the ability to produce love poetry enables him to survive in a grimy prison cell. Young Kela’s success in his remedial exams (A1 in literature) or the repeated allusions to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Marx’s Das Kapital and Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died28 further underline the importance of reading and education in the struggle for intellectual survival. The aesthetic experience of the novel’s artistic subtlety therefore provides another instance of hope that reconciles a reader willing

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to indulge in its wit and complexity with its occasionally dreadful and tragic plot. An attempt to reduce its contrived artistry to a mere representation of factual events, however, undermines the capacity to elicit social compassion, which it overtly sought to stress.

Revolution and repentance: Benjamin Kwakye’s The Sun by Night and the reconciliation of the past in Ghana’s Fourth Republic Ghana’s literary scene and political development differ in many aspects from the stifling atmosphere of Babangida’s and Abacha’s Nigeria. In spite of the earlier achievements of authors such as Ayi Kwei Armah, Kojo Laing or Ama Ata Aidoo, the country cannot boast an equally diverse and uninterrupted novelistic tradition, even though novels continued to be produced in the years of the Rawlings regime and the subsequent Fourth Republic. Since Benjamin Kwakye’s The Sun by Night is the first Ghanaian novel that has gained wide international recognition for about two decades, it appears particularly appropriate to compare it to Kwakye’s debut The Clothes of Nakedness (1998), which portrays the attempts of various characters to escape from a vicious cycle of poverty, exploitation and intellectual narrowness.29 Kwakye mostly employs a rather reticent mode of free indirect discourse, although a narrative elevation occurs during the unjust execution of a chief character, which is accompanied by a visionary appearance of his deceased wife. Kwakye’s second novel, awarded with a Commonwealth Writer’s Prize in 2006, reveals an even broader picture of Ghanaian society. An influential business tycoon finds himself in the dock of an Accra High Court framed, as he claims, for the murder of a prostitute. An overwhelmed and exalted Diderot once praised the veracity and variety of nuances in the domestic novels of Samuel Richardson. In quite a similar vein The Sun by Night complements the contrasting life stories of characters like Koo Manu, an ambitious social climber and workaholic, or Akwele, a young prostitute, with numerous sharply observed details of social life in modern Ghana. The importance of friendships made in the boarding house, the social connotations of dance movements, the role of cars as an expression of social prestige, and the obtuse diction of

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members of the upper class all feature prominently. Kwakye’s comprehensive panorama of the post-Nkrumah society further includes the rapid spread of charismatic churches as well as the persisting relevance of traditional marriage arrangements, a meticulously translated Akan libation prayer or the bloodthirsty atmosphere during the 1979 coup, and the ludicrous proceedings of revolutionary kangaroo courts. In an in-depth survey of its complex plot and characters, Eustace Palmer has aptly placed The Sun by Night into various strands of African writing and pointed to the huge number of issues covered in its plot: In actual fact the trial merely serves as a framework within which Kwakye proceeds to explore a vast multiplicity of issues in postcolonial Ghana and Africa as a whole that the African novel has been concerned with: the post-independence African malaise; the causes of prostitution; the role and position of women; tradition versus change; the gap between the rich and the poor; the gap between generations; the insensitivity and corruption of the ruling classes; marriage, love and polygamy; the father/son relationship; and, most importantly, the individual’s determination to break with tradition and convention, follow his or her own instincts and impulses, and achieve true selfhood.30 Other than in The Clothes of Nakedness, the role of the narrator is passed on among various characters that are lurching between different identities and their search for social self-realisation. In one of the novel’s most striking passages, Ama Badu tries to grasp human behaviour while observing and joining a group swimming against the ocean waves, both as individuals and a non-self-conscious collective. The novel therefore owes much of its appeal to the combination of symbolic images, the filmic tension of a courtroom drama and its power of observation with a masterfully arranged cluster of individual narrators, each of them rendering the events surrounding Akwele’s murder from a particular perspective. There is Nii Lamptey, chief reporter of the Accra Chronicler, who opens each of his notebooks with a mischievous reflection on the journalist’s trade. Another narrator is Nii’s former wife Ama Badu, who in spite of her white-collar job leads an equally odd and exciting second

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life as a lady of the night. Her split identity is emphatically underlined through the introduction of a special form of second-person narrative, which dominates throughout her part of the storyline.31 There is the accused Koo Manu – an almost prototypical example of what it takes to become a man in Ghana – 32 his wife Akua Nsiah and Kubi, their neglected and troublesome firstborn. And finally there is Ekow Dadzie, Manu’s light-hearted yet strenuous lawyer who recounts his own life as well as that of prosecutor John Amoah. The latter, Dadzie’s former friend and now bitter adversary, returns from the United States – postcolonially designated as the advent of snow in the land of the sun – as a newborn and holier-than-thou part-time pastor. A first attempt of Koo Manu to reconcile the two foes turns into a heated argument. Besides the twist between the two lawyers there are more strained relations: between father and son, husband and wife (the issue of polygamy becomes a major bone of contention between Koo Manu and his family) and society at large. After the initial whodunit, tension returns in the last quarter of the novel. The entire epilogue of Kwakye’s ‘tale of social meanings, political shenanigans, economic strain and spiritual jests’33 is a liberating attempt to reconcile various characters of the novel. Kubi confesses to his father that he is the true murderer of Akwele and looks forward ‘to spend every day in penance’ and ‘to pay redemptive tribute to those whose lives I’ve so corrupted’.34 John Amoah, the uncompromising prosecutor and part-time pastor, admits to having impregnated a member of his church – a public avowal of sin that is recounted in the form of an obvious biblical allegory: Pastor Amoah paused to wipe sweat off his face. He was only human, he said. He wasn’t God. He would keep striving to get closer to God. But our best deeds are like filthy rags before God. He said all have sinned. All have fallen short of God’s glory. So as a human being, he would make his mistakes. That he’d betrayed us, he asked for our forgiveness. It was a surprising but refreshing sermon. There was mixed reaction after church. There were those who blasted Pastor Amoah. A pastor should be above us. This was beyond pardon. Then there were those who thought we should move on. A pastor

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was like anybody else. We ought to admire his courage. For confessing in church. A huge section of the congregation gathered outside the church. One member of the congregation turned to me. He asked what I thought about the matter. I picked up a stone and held it out to the gathering. I heard neither hue nor cry for the stone. No frenzy to reach for a slab.35 In the character of Colonel Duah – a politician turned military brute and Kubi’s accomplice – an element of Ghana’s past military governments is uncomfortably present in the novel’s plot. The general spirit of Kwakye’s novel can to a certain extent be related to the politically embattled efforts to come to terms with several decades of human rights violation in Ghana. In January 2002, John Agyekum Kufour, the nation’s then president, signed into law a bill creating the National Reconciliation Commission. The following year a panel with nine members began to hold public hearings during which more than 4,000 people submitted statements about killings, disappearances, sexual violence, torture and other forms of abuse. The exercise was undertaken ‘with the hope that incorporating some measure of justice [would] catalyze a national conversation about the political dynamics of governance and citizenship in Ghana’.36 In a similarly retrospective vein The Sun by Night follows a number of its characters through five decades of Ghana’s turbulent postcolonial history. The military coups of 197937 and 1981, as well as the gross violations of human rights that occurred in their aftermath, are directly inserted into the novel’s plot: I must step back in time to the day of the coup that toppled the Military Council and replaced it with the Revolutionary Council. It began with an early morning broadcast (preceded by a spate of thundering gunfire) of a voice over the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation radio airwaves, announcing the overthrow of the Military Council and the dismissal of all members of Government with the refrain: ‘We have suffered for far too long.’ The coup leader, who would become the new Head of State, requested members of the toppled government to report to the nearest police station immediately, with an entreaty for Ghanaians to stay calm.

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He warned all resisting military regiments to surrender in order to avoid further bloodshed. Marshall music followed.38 In an overall perspective Kwakye’s prose is, in spite of his almost Achebian use of West-African metaphors and similes (for example, ‘smoother than the back of a calabash’, ‘perfect precision of a percussionist’), probably not as dense as that of Ayi Kwei Armah. The ancestral voices of Akua Nsiah’s grandmother and Koo Manu’s grandfather – an apparent attempt to reconcile their heritage with the shattered worlds of their offspring – nevertheless add another element of consolation and textual intricacy to the novel’s multi-layered narrative network. The advice they have in store for their descendants is enigmatic, but definitely not void of hope: Her faults bemoaned I too will weep. But today let me recite sweet verses like shining stars in bleak nights of despair. Even if it belies her crimson sweat. In her, I see a belly laden with wealth. A Road of Hope. I will not let strained motions becloud a mammoth potential. I want the rhapsody of the monsoon winds to trumpet sweet dreams. To foretell progress. Yes, I will write verses to her in hands of gold. Even if her path becomes a medley of thorns I will see the silhouette of hope in it. So let me go on then and sing songs in voices of gold.39 On other occasions both the poetic and stream of consciousness-like interventions of the ancestors employ the classic trope of the road and stellar allegories such as the ‘eclipse of the mother’ and the ‘sun by night’ in order to negotiate the challenges of a meaningful life, marriage and the upbringing of children or – as in the sagacious speech of the old man to the puzzled journalist – as an appeal to nationalist and anti-colonial sentiments. The visionary appearances of both characters exercise little if any influence on the chain of events in the textual/ actual world of the novel, but its perception is considerably shaped by the reader’s cultural and ethical interpretation of the ancestor’s presence, the symbolic content of their oral poetry-like discourse, and the

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textual hints that point to their identity. Even though their innuendos imbued with hope serve as an authoritative and stabilising contrast to the split identities that some of the novel’s contemporary characters are grappling with, their comments contain the most enigmatic and fragmented language of the entire novel and add considerably to its twisted narrative complexity. The combination of meticulously realistic descriptions with the use of narrative time shifts and multiple points of view are characteristics that The Sun by Night shares with Habila’s novel in spite of considerable differences. Both novels, however, use a certain degree of poetic licence in their inclusion of actual events: while the letter-bombing of the newspaper editor Dela Giwa occurred several years before some other historical events alluded to in Waiting for an Angel, a military coup which clearly resembles the mutiny of junior ranks on 4 June 1979 in The Sun by Night occurs only a few pages after the text mentions an at that time still unknown HIV/AIDS infection. In spite of strong individual characteristics all of these novels share a staggering combination of a meticulously realistic mode of description with the extensive use of narrative time shifts and multiple points of view. Psychological symptoms of traumatic experience, such as temporal flashbacks or haunting memories, therefore simultaneously function as sublime narrative devices that generate literary complexity and as a means to establish the artistic value of these contemporary novels. Visions, flashbacks and (haunting) memories, which are often described as symptoms of traumatisations, are useful devices on a narrative level to reconcile past and present, as well as to maintain the aesthetic standards of contemporary writing. The ambiguities they insert into the novels’ factually shaped textual/actual world, simultaneously uphold the possibility of hope and reconciliation in the mind of the reader.

Notes 1. See Attridge, Derek, ‘Innovation, literature, ethics: Relating to other’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America cxliv (1999); Davis, Todd F and Kenneth Womack (eds), Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory (Charlottesville, 2001).

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168 2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

Art and Trauma in Africa Schwartz, Daniel R, ‘A humanistic ethics of reading’ in Todd F Davis and Kenneth Womack (eds), Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory (Charlottesville, 2001), p.6. Udumukwu, Onyemaechi, The Novel and Change in Africa (Port Harcourt, 2006). Pape, Walter, ‘Happy endings in a world of misery: A literary convention between social constraints and utopia in children’s and adult literature’, Poetics Today xiii, no.1 (1992), pp.180–181. Keefer, Janice Kulyk, ‘Hope against hopelessness: Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man’ in Colin Nicholson (ed), Margaret Atwood: Writing and Subjectivity (New York, 1994), pp.172–173. Nünning, Ansgar, ‘Reconceptualizing the theory, history and generic scope of unreliable narration: Towards a synthesis of cognitive and rhetorical approaches’ in Elke D’hoker and Gunther Martens (eds), Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel (Berlin/New York, 2008), p.31. Attridge: ‘Innovation, literature, ethics’, p.25. Jackson, Michael, The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity (Copenhagen, 2002), p.15. Habila, Helon, Waiting for an Angel (London, 2003), p.223. Habila, Helon, Prison Stories (Lagos, 2000). Kafalenos, Emma, ‘Not (yet) knowing: Epistemological effects of deferred and suppressed information in narrative’ in David Herman (ed), Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis Theory & Interpretation (Columbus/ Ohio, 1999), p.48. Habila: Waiting for an Angel, p.120. See Schmieder, Falko (ed), Überleben. Historische und aktuelle Konstellationen (München, 2011). Habila: Waiting for an Angel, p.32. Benjamin, Walter, ‘The storyteller: Reflections on the work of Nikolai Leskov’ in Hannah Arendt (ed), Illuminations (New York, 1969), p.100. The chapter’s earlier version in Prison Stories equally contains a conspicuous shift from the diary to an unknown first-person narrator pondering over Lomba’s future fate. See Anderson, Richard, ‘The two narrators and happy ending of Nineteen Eighty-Four’, Modern Fiction Studies xxxiv/4 (1988), pp.587–595. Olayinan, Tejumola, Arrest the Music! Fela and his Rebel Art and Politics (Bloomington, 2004), p.2. See Nwagbara, Uzoechi, ‘State violence and the writer: Towards the dialectics of intellectual militancy in transcending postcolonical Nigerian contradictions’, Nebula vi (2009), pp.122–141.

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20. Griswold, Wendy, Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers and the Novel in Nigeria (Princeton, 2000). 21. Bandele-Thomas, Biyi, The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams (Ibadan, 1991). 22. Habila: Waiting for an Angel, pp.200–201. 23. Akingbe, Niyi, ‘Saints and sinners: Protest in Waiting for Angel’, Uluslararasi Sosyal Arastirmalar Dergisi (Journal of International Social Research) xi, no.3 (2010), pp.27–28. 24. Habila: Waiting for an Angel, p.228. 25. See Olutokun, Ayo, ‘Repressive state and resurgent media under Nigeria’s military dictatorship, 1988–1998’, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet Research Report no.26 (Göteborg, 2004), pp.60–77. 26. See Ndomim, Rita, ‘City, identity and dystopia: Writing Lagos in contemporary Nigerian novels’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing xliv, no.4 (2008), pp.321–332; and Dunton, Chris, ‘Entropy and energy: Lagos as city of words’, Research in African Literatures xxxix, no.2 (2008), pp.68–78. 27. Phelan, James and Mary Patricia Martin, ‘“The Lessons of Weymouth”: Homodiegesis, unreliability, ethics, and the remains of the day’ in David Herman (ed), Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis Theory & Interpretation (Columbus/Ohio, 1999), pp.88–89. 28. A copy of Soyinka’s prison diary The Man Died, which Lomba requests from the prison’s governor, is ironically replaced with A Brief History of West Africa. 29. See also Yitah, Helen, ‘Tiring the naked: Benjamin Kwakye’s allegory of the nation in The Clothes of Nakedness’, Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora viii, no.2 (2007), pp.94–112. 30. Palmer, Eustace, ‘African Jekylls and Hydes: Benjamin Kwakye’s study of double personalities in The Sun by Night’, Journal of the African Literature Association (2007), p.127. 31. See also Palmer: ‘African Jekylls and Hydes’, p.130. 32. See Miescher, Stephan F, Making Men in Ghana (Bloomington, 2005). 33. Kwakye, Benjamin, The Sun by Night (Trenton, 2006), p.3. 34. Kwakye: The Sun by Night, p.304. 35. Ibid, p.306. 36. Nesiah, Vasuki, ‘Foreword’ in Valji, Nahla (ed), Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission: A Comparative Assessment, Occasional Papers International Center for Transitional Justice (New York, 2006). 37. For a contemporary account see Oquaye, Mike, Politics in Ghana 1972–1979 (Accra, 1980), pp.133–163. 38. Kwakye: The Sun by Night, p.73. 39. Ibid, p.279.

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CHAPTER EIGHT TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE: IMPLICATIONS OF A CREATIVE NARRATIVE FOR THE ‘OFFICIAL’ DISCOURSE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION Robyn Leslie

. . . the retina learns to expand daily because by a thousand stories I was scorched a new skin I am changed forever. I want to say: forgive me forgive me forgive me you whom I have wronged, please take me with you. Antjie Krog1

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For many transitional societies, uncovering the truth about past abuses forms an important part of a national paradigm shift that rejects oppressive political practises and strives for the acknowledgement of human rights that apply to all citizens.2 This is a goal sometimes sought through the process of restorative justice in the form of truth commissions, a path that South Africa chose as it moved away from a racially discriminatory minority rule and towards a democratic ideal.3 The result of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) was an official narrative in the form of the seven-volume final report, a document highlighting a search for ‘truth’ as a means of fostering national identity through catharsis, healing and reconciliation.4 In contrast to this official discourse, a creative narrative can also be found, spun from a collection of creative output addressing the SATRC as a process and institution. Such a creative narrative, demonstrated in this chapter through an examination of two creative works addressing the SATRC, is shown to complicate the ideas of truth, healing and reconciliation in the official discourse. Creative literature manages to highlight silences, gaps and ambiguities contained within the official narrative of the SATRC.5 These ambiguities can be seen as a way of inviting an individualised response to the SATRC: while the official SATRC narrative accepts the existence of silences and ambiguities highlighted by the creative narrative, this chapter argues that the official narrative refuses to allow these ambiguities to affect its end goal of catharsis and reconciliation on a national level.6 The creative narrative, however, through encouraging an individual response, allows ambiguities to profoundly affect the end goals of its project, disrupting the teleology of the official report’s linear trajectory from hatred to forgiveness and reconciliation.7 Both narratives can be shown to have an ideal of catharsis through a re-working of identity as their goal – either through national reconciliation, or through a validation of the intensely personal nature of truth. This chapter acknowledges the importance of each narrative project, and suggests that recognising and validating both of these supposedly dichotomous ideologies allows a deeper insight in and understanding of the complexities and inevitable contentions involved in truthtelling processes. Truth-telling in transitional societies can be better

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understood as part of a dual project exploring transformation through official as well as creative narratives.

Ways of interpreting a creative narrative: Relativity, re-imagining, and new forms of truth The combination of creativity and the practical-political – such as the combination of storytelling and justice-seeking in a truth commission – has stimulated the interest of a variety of scholars. Vivienne Jabri, writing specifically about art, states that to see politics within creativity allows the removal of the ‘sublime’ element from art. This places art into the realm of ‘language and representation’.8 The implication of this is that creativity cannot be seen as removing a subject from the arena of debate and contestation; rather, creative enterprise introduces a narrative that comments on and demonstrates the boundaries and complexities of its subject and itself.9 But if the creative sector can be seen as a way to vocalise alternative identity and experience, then it must also be seen as validating different accounts of the same event.10 A creative narrative therefore suggests that all output is subjective, in which case the audience and the subject are defined in relation to each other.11 So a creative narrative is openly complicit, enmeshed in both that which it wishes to interrogate and that which renders it possible.12 The explicit recognition of this relativism becomes a crucial narrative resource when examining historical state narratives – such as the report of the SATRC – that are used to consolidate ideas of identity, thereby excluding the possibility of subjectivity and alternative readings of identity and self(nation-)hood.13 With the luxury of ambiguity, creative discourse allows the imagination to entertain alternatives that official narrative, through its need for consensus, cannot.14 Deleuze sees literature as the ‘physician of culture’, able to identify symptoms of health and disease, as well as possibilities of new life. Creative narrative thus becomes a ‘symptomologist of social structures of power’.15 Gallagher echoes these ideas by calling the creative output dealing with the SATRC processes an inscription of apartheid violence, the repetition of which (through creative output) eases the trauma of such violence and allows for the separation of trauma from memory.16

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She suggests that the re-inscription of violence through re-telling can deaden the link between traumatic event and memory: the narrativisation of violence becomes medicinal. By placing trauma in the public consciousness, it becomes a product separated from individual memory, part of a repository that is used to motivate for forgiveness and a break with the violent apartheid past.17 Gready agrees to a certain extent, also claiming that creative output has the potential to recontextualise its subject matter. Looking at truth-telling in South Africa, he claims that creative responses have allowed new forms of truth to emerge, and new contemplations on what words associated with the SATRC – such as forgiveness and reconciliation – actually mean.18 It is the idea of new forms of truth that Njabulo Ndebele, a prominent South African intellectual, embraces, making a powerful statement about the importance of creativity to recover from South Africa’s apartheid past. He states that reference to the imaginary is crucial because the atrocities of apartheid were so cruel that they themselves seem unreal or unimaginable. The power to imagine allows one freedom to explore and confront the horror of a system that seems closer to theatre of the absurd than government policy.19 Thus, Ndebele argues that stories stemming from the SATRC may be able to contribute more to understanding South Africa’s past through imagination than through their factual content.20 He states that by reclaiming the narratives of those who have been silenced (or simply not listened to), South Africans are exposed to the complexity and diversity of voices in their country, allowing new material to feed the imagination, which allows the development of ‘new thoughts and worlds’ in a time when South Africans need to be able to imagine a country as different from its past as possible.21 This idea links to Thomas and Rappaport’s argument that the creative sector is a powerful way to ‘index’ events, happenings and stories that help to craft identity.22 Thus, the creative sector becomes a way to resist narratives that subsume or occlude individual experience – a way to articulate and express alternative identities and expose power relationships.23 André Brink, a critically acclaimed South African author, also sees the value of stories and creativity for imagining a new South Africa. He writes that ‘unless the enquiries of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are extended, complicated and intensified in the imaginings

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of literature, society cannot sufficiently come to terms with its past to face the future’.24 Brink suggests that the overt and acknowledged narrativisation of the creative sector is one of the key benefits of using creativity to confront the issues raised by the SATRC; while the SATRC was searching for truth as a means to acquire national unity, creative output works towards presenting a version of truth without a specific ending in mind.25 Creativity can lead to a variety of truths that allows for diverse appreciations of the truth and its impact or representations. Thus, creativity can counter the teleology of historical narrative and it can paradoxically better confront the reality of confusion, complicity and multiple identities that made up SATRC testimonies.26 Brink therefore agrees with Gallagher’s premise that storytelling about the SATRC can pave the way to re-imagining, but he emphasises the fact that this re-imagining is individual and the truths it creates are diverse. While Gallagher seems to assume a removal of the personal through re-telling, and a clear and preferential path (towards forgiveness) from the re-inscription of trauma through creativity, Brink deepens this argument by stating that responses need to be individualised to be effective in offering an alternative to teleological historical narrativisation.27 Brink allows for the creation of truths and for identities that are complicit in violence, and crucially allow the possibility of non-repentance and non-forgiveness. Creativity offers the option to explore these important aspects of truth-telling experiences. Combining Brink and Gallagher’s arguments, we begin a complex process of narrativising trauma through creative output and thereby allowing a re-individualisation of truth. Brink’s argument risks classifying teleological history as pejorative; this is not the aim of this chapter. Indeed, as Ingrid de Kok, a successful South African poet, writes, South Africa in 1994 needed a coherent foundation to base the future on. She argues that because the South African transition was negotiated, the cultural and social overturn/ replacement that is a consequence of revolution was absent.28 Attwell and Harlow express sympathy with the South African predicament – the new dispensation had to struggle again, for a reconstructive project looking towards the future and a similarly deconstructive project to understand the past: society had to change when the relationships

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among its members and their ideological orientations were not subjected to revolutionary re-education.29 De Kok claims that this ideological direction was fulfilled with the idea of consensus and national identity-building. The term ‘rainbow nation’ was coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1994 – an implication of diversity unified through a common understanding.30 The SATRC was an attempt to create a context that would allow the narrative of reconciliation to permeate South African society.31 The idea of truth being subjective can be found in the writings of Michel Foucault.32 Foucault states that truth, far from being neutral and transcendental, is a ‘thing of this world’.33 Foucault’s apparatus of truth and his suggestion that truth is productive bring the everpresent issue of power to light. Foucault claims that truth is circulated through dominant social institutions and thus becomes subjective: a tool of power relations.34 He believes that power attaches to (and also produces) what is deemed true and thus truth has an economic and political value, what he calls a circular ‘regime of truth’.35 But while he suggests truth can be a tool of power relations, he does not suggest a project of emancipation, as he does not believe that the manipulation of truth consequently results in the corruption of truth.36 Rather, he suggests that the power of truth be separated from hegemonic systems.37 This can be seen as the key goal of the SATRC: a desire to remove and separate truth – or an idea of it – from the apartheid state in the form of exposing the various truths that were protected and manipulated by the security forces and agents of the state.38 By doing so, the power of truth can no longer be used as a means to victimise and terrorise the population who suffered under minority rule. I argue that a creative narrative attempts to re-perform this separation of the power of truth from hegemony, by allowing multiple truths to not only be acknowledged (as the SATRC report acknowledges versions of truth) but to effectively alter discourse, outcomes and endings. Albeit hotly contested by a variety of political forces, the SATRC report remains the official story of the life and times of the SATRC, with truth performing a defined role as a tool to create conditions of reconciliation and nation-building.39 The creative narrative strives to make the official narrative relative so that truth does not remain useful only in terms

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of a singular goal of nation-building. Through creative output, truth becomes contested once again and in doing so, the power of the SATRC’s truth can be seen not only as a force to implement nation-building, but as a contested concept that can result in a variety of outcomes. The creative narrative’s truth tempers a discourse of nation-building by a discussion of its incompleteness, ambiguities and alternative identities.40 While De Kok respects the need for a narrative of nation-building, she also cautions against allowing the creative sector to be subsumed under the powerful discourse of a common understanding. De Kok sees the creative sector as a fundamental expression of the ‘contradictions that form part of the truth’, with the imagination being best equipped to deal with the absences and silences that are inevitable in truth-telling processes.41 Steven Robins also cautions against a grand narrative in the name of nationalism, stating that the SATRC was at times guilty of soliciting personal memories and then reconfiguring them for the purposes of nation-building.42 Creativity in South Africa must walk a knife-edge, a fact eloquently expressed by Michael Chapman when he writes that the South African creative sector lies in between a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ and a ‘humanism of reconstruction’. This means creativity must negotiate a spectrum with a conviction of relativism and the subjective notion of truth and identity on the one side, and understanding the valid political project of constructing a singular ideology of identity on the other.43 A creative narrative addressing the SATRC can therefore be seen to have multiple projects. It can be seen as complicating a simplistic teleology of historical trauma developing to national catharsis, and re-imagining ways in which to individualise the narrativising of history - thus stimulating alternative and diverse identities. Creativity can also work towards validating personal ideas of truth allowing space for catharsis based on a variety of factors - not relying purely on a SATRC slogan: ‘The truth will set you free.’44

Truth-telling as theatre: Ubu and the Truth Commission The SATRC has been the (direct and indirect) subject of a variety of creative output in South Africa. Novels, memoirs, poetry, film,

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documentaries, art installations and theatre have been produced that reflect on the SATRC as a process in a variety of ways.45 Ubu and the Truth Commission (UTC), written in 1998 by Jane Taylor, is a play that showcases the machinations of Pa Ubu, an agent of the apartheid state, and his subsequent appearance at the SATRC. The play also follows the actions of his wife, who is in the dark about his night-time deeds and thinks Ubu is cheating on her, although she ultimately finds him out and turns him over to the SATRC. These are the only characters portrayed by human actors; the rest of the cast is made up of puppets and their manipulators.46 The play is an intricate and prop-intensive production, using multimedia and a diverse range of theatrical devices to hold the audience’s attention.47 In UTC a conscious decision was made to have the SATRC witnesses as puppets, through whom the handlers speak.48 The puppets act as a metaphor for witnesses who were immobilised through the oppression of apartheid and have been ‘activated’ through the support of the commission.49 However, UTC deepens this insight by placing the handlers alongside the puppets, in full vision of the audience. Thus, UTC suggests an idea of guidance and control of proceedings that, while not sinister, implicates the SATRC in leading and framing the way in which stories can be told, implying that narrative is never neutral.50 The use of puppets also forces another interpretation to light: What does using wooden figures manipulated by a second force really suggest to the audience about the role of the survivors and witnesses in the SATRC? The extreme contrast between the perpetrator Pa Ubu – a loud, colourful and human personality in the play – and the victims – wooden and unable to act without assistance – suggests to the audience that there is an unfair fascination with the ‘doers’, while the victims merely facilitate exposés.51 This emphasises the issue of representation: in her introduction to the play, Jane Taylor calls the SATRC a place where ‘individual narratives come to stand for the larger national narrative . . . history and autobiography merge’.52 What UTC suggests then is that as individual narratives come to represent history, victims remain individual survivors no longer. Victims’ stories become representations of South Africa’s past, as opposed to individual human tragedies. Victims and survivors lose their individuality and become the

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vehicles through which truth is uncovered and national reconciliation sought.53 This can be seen when Pa Ubu, testifying before the SATRC, is drowned out by the sounds of a large choir singing Nkosi Sikelele,54 with images of huge crowds projected onto a stage screen. While these visuals and sounds succeed in overwhelming Pa Ubu’s insincere testimony and serve to silence him, it is also clear that apartheid’s victims and survivors have ‘merge[d] into one faceless lamentation’.55 Ideas of truth and reconciliation are equally highlighted through the complexity of Ma Ubu’s character.56 Her dialogue constantly throws the audience into confusion. As a jealous wife suspicious of her husband’s nocturnal activities, her angry questioning of Ubu reflects a right and desire for judgment: Pa Ubu: Damn you, Madam. We will not be accused by you! Ma Ubu: Who has more right to accuse than I?57 The power of this statement by Ma Ubu is thrown into stark relief as further on in the play she takes on the character of translator for a witness, narrating a harrowing account of a mother going to identify her murdered son at the morgue.58 As Ma Ubu shows divergent sides of her character, her dialogue becomes duplicitous.59 In her character as Pa Ubu’s wife once more, she admonishes Pa Ubu for his cowardly nature as she finds him huddling on the floor after contemplating the horror of being caught out by the SATRC: Ma Ubu: What’s going on here, in the dark? She switches on the lights. ... Ma Ubu: What is this feeble display of cowardice? Did I give up my life for this?60 The audience cannot be sure whether this is Ma Ubu in her role as vigilant wife, or Ma Ubu as an angry victim, furious with the cowardice of those who perpetrated acts of horror on victims’ lives and their families.61 But Ma Ubu’s complexity is also present in her complicity: while she is a key exposer of truths throughout the play, her

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motivations and thought processes are not altruistic at all. She cannot be seen as a character that provides an uncomplicated path to the truth. She is only interested in selling Pa Ubu to the SATRC as a means to secure a financially safe future for herself. Encountering the evidence he has tried to dispose of, she states: while the overstuffed dummy is out of the way, I will seize this little stash of daring tales and sell them, to secure my old age, which is of course a long way off.62 So while Ma Ubu forces Pa Ubu to apply for amnesty and testify at the SATRC, she is by no means a neutral and trustworthy source of truth – a sober reflection valid for all participants of the SATRC.63 It is Pa Ubu, in his status as an agent of the state and a grotesque character, who highlights the valuable input that the creative sector can offer a context such as the SATRC. As the discussion and negotiation leading up to the creation of the SATRC had been through delicate talks, there was a focus on how all parties had acted in ways that compromised human rights.64 There was a concerted effort to avoid the vilification of the National Party and the Afrikaner, clearly shown by the composition of the SATRC’s commissioners.65 Indeed, as ex-police chiefs and state torturers came to testify, they too proclaimed themselves as victims, some purportedly suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder.66 At the SATRC, victims and survivors who had experienced the crimes were often faced with denial, amnesia and statements along the lines of those made by Jeffrey Benzien, a well-known torturer, when he stated in his amnesty hearing: ‘I have also suffered. I may not call myself a victim of apartheid, but yes Sir, I have also been a victim.’67 In UTC, however, we see the figure that could not be acknowledged by those in negotiations, the personality that South Africans, for the sake of an inclusive national identity, could not inscribe on any of those who committed gross human rights abuses. Pa Ubu’s burlesque absurdity creates, through the imagination, a creature of depravity that South Africans need to see – Pa Ubu becomes the personification of apartheid evil.68 The creation of a character such as Pa Ubu allows the South African conscience to express its desire to witness petty and

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devious characters – characters that the SATRC, by its nature and its nation-building project, had to deny; as Marx writes: ‘The obscene becomes the seen.’69 What UTC fundamentally offers a South African audience is agency, through demanding engagement.70 This is amply demonstrated by the various characters of Ma Ubu: from a white wife ignorant of her husband’s job to the translator of a black testimony, Ma Ubu is summed up by the puppet Niles the crocodile, when he responds to Ma Ubu’s request to see what Pa Ubu has stuffed into his stomach (represented by a briefcase): Ma Ubu: I only want to see what lies he been feeding you. Niles: Well, perhaps in the scheme of things, you’re one of the ones who Needs to Know.71 Whether Ma Ubu needs to know as a victim, a survivor, or a member of the white population who were guilty of ignorance and apathy under apartheid, is up to the audience to decide. Depending on the individual point of view, the ending of the play – when a reconciled Ma and Pa Ubu sail off into the setting sun – implies consensus between all involved in the TRC on its outcomes, and a ‘clean slate’, or simply the re-inscription of politics of domination and subjugation. From the character of Ma Ubu, to the happy ending for a criminal, to the deep and complicated identity given to witnesses through the use of manipulated puppets, UTC forces the audience to decide and reflect on what their evaluation of the play (and the SATRC) should be.72

Identity challenged, not reassured: Country of My Skull Another illustration of how creative narratives complicate official SATRC discourse is the novel Country of My Skull, a document that traverses one woman’s experience of being intimately connected to the SATRC through her work as a journalist. Antjie Krog was responsible for reporting to the state radio company, which broadcast SATRC news bulletins heard by a wide cross-section of South African society.73 It is a work difficult to classify: part reportage, part fiction, part

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memoir, Krog’s collection of writings on the SATRC has been widely acclaimed and honoured.74 Through her presentation of witness and perpetrator testimony, Krog suggests the idea that narrative is a representation, a spectacle. She interprets the amnesty hearings as impressions, designed to fulfil narrative conditions (amnesty requires political motivation for the act, and full disclosure).75 She embeds different testimonies in her text that describe diverse interpretations of the same event, highlighting the subjectivity of the SATRC’s narrative truth.76 Her point is that telling can never be neutral in South Africa, and must always be decoded; Krog emphasises that ‘every narrative carries the imprint of its narrator’.77 As such, she is unwilling to use the word ‘truth’, foregrounding the term’s subjectivity by writing that lies are ‘where the truth is closest’.78 Thus Krog postulates that the true role of the SATRC can not be reconciliation or uncovering a definitive record of the truth, but rather, when differing narratives are heard, the possibility to truly believe one’s own denial is made more difficult; acknowledgement takes centre stage.79 Krog’s authorial voice in this book is constantly unsure of her position, constantly displaced – uncomfortable in the South Africa she is learning about through the testimonies of brutality brought to light by the SATRC and yet out of place in her conventional (Afrikaner) family settings.80 Not only does her Afrikaner heritage disgust her with its complicity in apartheid, but the security and stability of her close family circle become foreign to her as she witnesses testimonies that speak of a country torn apart and brutalised, particularly through the abuse and degradation of its women.81 Krog then elaborates on a SATRC that is the cause of displacement, of a shift, of a change in the goals and ideology of South Africa.82 While the SATRC was marketed as a place of healing, restoration and a source of morality on which to base a new South African identity, Krog complicates this narrative by showing us a SATRC that in fact turned identity and selfhood upside down; rather than providing a foundation, the SATRC illuminated how displaced and disconnected South Africa’s peoples are, and how their situation is transitional rather than progressive.83

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Through fictionalisation of her text, Krog plays with the idea of a single author – a single narrator. In doing so she destabilises the idea of a single truth and straightforward accountability.84 From the start of the book, we expect a reliable and honest witness from the voice of the author, identified as Antjie Krog (a famous and well-liked Afrikaner poet) on the front cover.85 However, between testimonies we are introduced to another author, Antjie Samuel (Krog’s married name), the name Krog reported under while working on radio programmes that disseminated SATRC news.86 Further, we encounter a woman using our author’s voice, engaged in an illicit love affair, escaping into the arms of someone who can help her deal with the trauma associated with reporting on the SATRC. Krog’s fictitious love affair is dominated by strong emotions of frustration, relief, a desire for explanation – but also violence: after one encounter, she writes ‘it is only when he cries out that I realise I’ve sunk my teeth deep into his left shoulder’.87 Taking up Mark Sanders’s suggestion of reading the fictional affair as an allegory for South Africa’s affair with the SATRC, Krog’s romantic encounters demonstrate how the SATRC should not be seen as one informing reconciliation and forgiveness, but rather as providing a dangerous and difficult passage, for those involved and those witnessing, to express their stories.88 This reading of the fictional love affair as an allegory to the SATRC becomes an interesting reflection on the SATRC when Krog confesses her affair to her husband. His reaction is predictable: ‘I will never forgive you – you have destroyed everything.’89 The discussion continues with her husband demanding information: ‘I need to know everything . . . I need detail . . . I want the truth.’ He closes the conversation with: there is always a basic truth – you cheated on me . . . from when to when – all of that is negotiable with the things I already know. So the more I know, the more you will tell me. What truth I don’t know, you will never tell me.90 Once again, Krog highlights the incomplete nature of a truth gained from confession, and foregrounds the idea of truth providing an

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acknowledgement of actions, rather than a definitive knowledge of all actions.91 Krog believes that the real power of the SATRC lies not in reconciliation, but in the opportunity for South Africans to redefine their identities through acknowledgement. As Krog highlights: ‘Redefined identity makes a new kind of relationship possible.’92 So for Krog the power of the SATRC lays not in truth but in the possibility to allow for a personal narrative to express individuality – no longer simply as an agent of the state or part of the oppressed black majority. As Krog writes, her tone almost unbelieving: ‘The voice of an ordinary cleaning woman is the headline on the one o’clock news.’93 The examples illustrated above reject the linearity of truth, healing and reconciliation. By questioning the validity of truth as definable concept, the creative narrative effectively disempowers truth as a force of change towards national identity and unity. Although devaluing it, this could also be seen as an example of reperforming the separation of the power of truth from a grand narrative of reconciliation. The creative examples highlighted here can be seen as a removal of truth from its role as a cornerstone and guiding light of national unity, and rather seeing it as a non-neutral tool to allow an individual expression of coming to terms with South Africa’s past – an individual identity search through which a form of catharsis is made possible.

SATRC report as the path to a unified national identity In the case of the SATRC report, disallowing ambiguities and complexities to alter the grand ideology of national unity through reconciliation results in a clear focus on the need to set the record straight and ascertain not one truth but one trajectory towards healing and catharsis.94 Chinapen and Vernon note the importance of a truth commission issuing a final statement and seeking a verdict through its processes.95 They argue that a truth commission’s role is to emphasise the ‘equal moral worth and agency of individuals’ and thus lay the groundwork for a democratic society that fosters these ideals. Indeed, these authors argue that without a resolution within a truth commission, democracy (as a system that stimulates diverse views, debate and disagreement)

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could falter: a firm and publicly acknowledged judgement on baseline morality (provided by a verdict from a truth commission) would provide the foundation that allows for consequent debate in a democratic dispensation.96 There is abundant evidence for this viewpoint in the lifespan of the SATRC report: seen as one of the most definitive records of abuses and violations under apartheid, it was put under immense pressure so as to conform to what all those involved could agree on as a fair representation of proceedings.97 This was no case of allowing alternative narrative truths to co-exist: it was a clear case of providing one story – one record.98 In a flurry to adjust this official record to reflect its own views, the African National Congress (ANC) attempted to block the publishing of this public record a few hours before it was to be handed to President Nelson Mandela.99 Ironically, the ANC’s political rival, in the form of former president FW de Klerk, also attempted to have certain parts of the report removed; both parties claimed to have been misrepresented by the SATRC findings.100 The determination from both sides of the political divide to set the record straight can be interpreted as a key indicator of the SATRC report’s conception as the document that reflected a definitive view of the past and therefore a unified path to the future.101 Within the commission itself, the need to have a definitive record and a justified story came to light in an interesting turn of events. While the SATRC report was a consensus between all seventeen commissioners, one Afrikaner commissioner, Wynand Malan, submitted a minority opinion to the report. His minority position raised pertinent points such as doubt about the use of subjective truths for making binding findings, and he also refutes the logic and utility of a ‘new national myth’ of reconciliation.102 This divergent opinion questioned the very foundations of the Act that created the SATRC (the idea that all commissioners be impartial) and the SATRC was obliged (as much for the historical record as for the SATRC’s reputation) to respond.103 The response was an attempt to impose a unified ending to a process that had been ruptured by an individual response, a re-inscription of Fasching’s sacral rhythm involving the protection of meta-narrative and the rejection of relativism to preserve identity.104

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Different trajectories to catharsis: Different interpretations of truth The analysis arrives at a point where both the creative narrative and the official discourse have been shown to have valid and important projects. While official discourse seeks to uncover history and truth, creative narratives pose further questions and expose subjectivity and complicity.105 To move beyond the impasse suggested by the apparent mutual exclusivity of narratives that espouse solidarity on the one hand and relativism on the other, a different perspective is needed. To find an alternative perspective, it is useful to revisit the goals of each narrative as explicated in this chapter. It is clear that the SATRC report is striving for consensus and a new national identity through reconciliation – what can ultimately be called a cathartic experience for the nation as a whole, essentialised in the SATRC slogan: ‘Revealing is healing.’106 The SATRC was mandated with the task of catharsis based on the impression that truth could lead to acknowledgement and healing.107 Catharsis was the envisaged result of the SATRC’s mix of historical truth and the humanist goal of validating the victims of apartheid abuses, producing a South African identity that is morally and mentally redeemed.108 By revealing the scenes of violence (either on the body or on the landscape of South Africa’s communities) the acknowledgement of a transgression would hopefully allow for catharsis and the creation of new national identity.109

Individual and national identity formation: Cathartic moments of two narratives The goal of a creative narrative that references the SATRC is arguably one that strives to stimulate an individualised response to the notion of truth itself, allowing diverse expressions thereof. To return to Brink’s argument, the creative narrative can be seen as a unique opportunity to individualise the idea of truth and thus promote an individual cathartic experience, one that does not have to live up to the identity implied by the SATRC’s emphasis on catharsis of a nation.110 While the SATRC’s catharsis is a linear trajectory of truth, healing,

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nation-building, reconciliation and ultimately a new national identity, the creative narrative makes identity an individual project. Ndebele’s idea of creativity giving life to ‘new thoughts and worlds’ implies the reformulation of personal identity, which can be seen as a cathartic moment.111 While the development of a new national identity was a requirement for the SATRC, it has been proven that this was a requirement in light of the contribution of identity formation to catharsis and healing. Creative narrative has also been proven to utilise the potential of alternative identities to begin a process of individualisation of truth and consequent catharsis. Therefore, both narratives have an end goal of catharsis – one focused on individual identity, the other on national identity. It can be suggested that the SATRC narrative and the creative narrative, ostensibly oppositional, can be viewed as partners working towards a shared goal, providing solidarity and ambiguity where its opposite force cannot, by its very nature, admit such factors. The SATRC narrative and the creative narrative can be seen as part of the same process of catharsis that transitional societies need to undergo to begin a transformation that acknowledges traumatic histories. Creative narrative demonstrates how complex and flawed a teleological process of re-inscribing national identity through truth-telling and catharsis can be. However, the validity of the ideological project of solidarity and the construction of a new national identity after violence, conflict and discrimination cannot be contested. New dispensations need the solidarity of storytelling to build new national identities that embrace liberty, freedom and forgiveness.112 Neither can the need for the validation of individual interpretation and experience be refuted, as creativity demonstrates how crucial acceptance of personal stories is in order to arrive at acknowledgement and catharsis on an intimate level. Both the official and creative narratives have been shown to provide catharsis, through a re-working of identity as a key output, on different levels. It would be limiting to imply that one level is more important than the other. Both are equally necessary if past conflicts and abuses are to be addressed in a holistic and truly restorative manner. While one could view a creative narrative as antagonistic to official discourse,

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I have attempted to show how a creative narrative can work in tandem with official narrative and deepen the crucial discussion around identity and reconciliation. Looking at official narrative and creative narrative as part of a dual process of transformation adds understanding and insight to the debate on truth-telling in post-conflict societies – a debate that, in transitional societies, must not be underestimated.

Notes 1. This is an excerpt of the poem written by Antjie Krog. It appears as the ending of her book Country of My Skull, p.279. 2. Dyzenhaus, David, ‘Survey article: Justifying the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, Journal of Political Philosophy vol.8, no.4 (2000), pp.470–496. 3. Posel, Deborah and Graeme Simpson, ‘Introduction: The power of truth: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in context’ in Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson (eds), Commissioning the Past: Understanding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Johannesburg, 2002). 4. Young, Sandra, ‘Narrative and healing in the hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, Biography vol.27, no.1 (2004), pp.145–162. 5. Titlestad, Michael and Mike Kissack, ‘The secularization of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Mike Nicol’s The Ibis Tapestry’, Research in African Literatures vol.37, no.4 (2006), pp.48–67. 6. Ibid, p.51. 7. Ibid. 8. Jabri, Vivienne, ‘Shock and awe: Power and the resistance of art’, Millennium - Journal of International Studies vol.34, no.3 (2006), pp.819–839. 9. Ibid. 10. Thomas, R Elizabeth and Julian Rappaport, ‘Art as community narrative: A resource for social change’ in M Brinton Lykes, Ali Banuazizi, Ramsay Liem and Michael Morris (eds), Myths About the Powerless: Contesting Social Inequalities (Philadelphia, 1996). 11. Onega, Susana, ‘Introduction: “A knack for yarns”: The narrativisation of history and the end of history’ in Susana Onega (ed), Telling Histories: Narrativizing History, Historicizing Literature (Amsterdam, 1995). 12. Heyne, Eric, ‘Toward a theory of literary nonfiction’, Modern Fiction Studies vol.33, no.3 (1987) pp.479–490. 13. Thomas and Rappaport: ‘Art as community narrative’, p.325. 14. Gready, Paul, ‘Novel truths: Literature and truth commissions’, Comparative Literature Studies vol. 46, no.1 (2009), pp.156–176.

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15. Bogue, Ronald, Deleuze on Literature (New York and London, 2003). 16. Gallagher, Susan V, ‘“I Want to Say: / Forgive Me”: South African discourse and forgiveness’, PMLA vol.117, no.2 (2002), pp.303–306. 17. Ibid. 18. Gready, Paul, ‘Culture, testimony, and the toolbox of transitional justice’, Peace Review vol.20, no.1 (2008), pp.41–48. 19. Ndebele, Njabulo, ‘Memory, metaphor and the triumph of narrative’ in Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (Cape Town, 1998). 20. Ndebele: ‘Memory, metaphor and the triumph of narrative’, p.21. 21. Ibid, p.27. 22. Thomas and Rappaport: ‘Art as community narrative’, p.325. 23. Ibid, p.320. 24. Brink, André, ‘Stories of history: Reimagining the past in post-apartheid narrative’ in Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (Cape Town, 1998). 25. Brink: ‘Stories of history’, p.38. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid, p.39. 28. De Kok, Ingrid, ‘Cracked heirlooms: Memory on exhibition’ in Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (Cape Town, 1998). 29. Attwell, David and Barbara Harlow, ‘Introduction: South African fiction after apartheid’, Modern Fiction Studies vol.46, no.1 (2000), pp.1–9. 30. De Kok: ‘Cracked heirlooms’, p.57. 31. Taylor, Jane, Ubu and the Truth Commission (South Africa, 1998). 32. Racevskis, Karlis, ‘Edward Said and Michel Foucault: Affinities and dissonances’, Research in African Literatures vol.36, no.3 (2005), pp.83–97. 33. Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, Colin Gordon (ed), (London, 1980). 34. Racevskis: ‘Edward Said and Michel Foucault’, pp.86–87. 35. Foucault: Power/Knowledge, pp.132–133. 36. Foucault, Michel, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, Paul Rabinow (ed), (London, 1994). 37. Foucault: Power/Knowledge, p.133. 38. Posel, Deborah, ‘History as confession: The case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, Public Culture vol.20, no.1 (2008), pp.119–141. 39. Posel: ‘History as confession’, p.121. 40. Gready: ‘Culture, testimony, and the toolbox of transitional justice’, p.42.

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41. De Kok: ‘Cracked heirlooms’, pp.61–62. 42. Robins, Steven, ‘Can’t Forget, Can’t Remember: Reflections on the cultural afterlife of the TRC’, Critical Arts vol.21, no.1 (2007), pp.125–151. 43. Chapman, Michael, ‘The problem of identity: South Africa, storytelling, and literary history’, New Literary History vol.29, no.1 (1998), pp.85–99. 44. Slovo, Gillian, Red Dust (Great Britain, 2000). 45. Other examples of creative output dealing with the SATRC include a range of documentary films that address a diversity of issues, for example, Long Night’s Journey Into Day, as well as fictional films addressing repentance/ vengeance, such as Forgiveness. Fiction dealing with identity and complicity include The Ibis Tapestry; fiction addressing sexuality and apartheid abuse can be seen in Bitter Fruit; theatre pieces include work from the Khulumani Support Group such as The Story I am About to Tell and The Bones are Still Calling; and the widely acclaimed art installations of Sue Williamson, such as Can’t Forget, Can’t Remember, take the TRC as their subject matter. Critically successful poets such as Antjie Krog and Ingrid de Kok have also produced work on the topic of the SATRC. 46. Graham, Shane, South African Literature After the Truth Commission: Mapping Loss (United States, 2009). 47. Ibid. 48. Taylor: Ubu and the Truth Commission, p.vii. 49. Marx, Lesley, ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem: Ubu and the Truth Commission’, African Studies vol.57, no.2 (1998), pp.209–220. 50. Ibid. 51. Marx, Christopher, ‘Ubu and Ubuntu: On the dialectics of apartheid and nation building’, Politikon vol.29, no.1 (2002), pp.49–69. 52. Taylor: Ubu and the Truth Commission, p.ii. 53. Graham: South African Literature After the Truth Commission, p.47. 54. South Africa’s national anthem. 55. Marx: ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’, p.218. 56. Ibid, p.215. 57. Taylor: Ubu and the Truth Commission, p.5. 58. Ibid, pp.11–13. 59. Marx: ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’, p.215. 60. Taylor: Ubu and the Truth Commission, p.15. 61. Marx: ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’, p.215. 62. Taylor: Ubu and the Truth Commission, p.45. 63. Marx: ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’, pp.215–216. 64. De Lange, Johnny, ‘The historical context, legal origins and philosophical foundation of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ in

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65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

84. 85.

86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92.

Art and Trauma in Africa Charles Villa-Vicencio and Wilhelm Verwoerd (eds), Looking Back Reaching Forward: Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (South Africa, 2001). Boraine, Alex, A Country Unmasked (Oxford, 2000). Truth And Reconciliation Commission Amnesty Hearing for Jeffery T Benzien, 14 July 1997, http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/amntrans/capetown/capetown_benzien.htm, accessed on 1 August 2009. Ibid. Marx: ‘Ubu and Ubuntu’, p.53. Marx: ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’, p.217. Graham: South African Literature After the Truth Commission, p.48. Taylor: Ubu and the Truth Commission, p.37. Marx: ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’, p.214. Graham: South African Literature After the Truth Commission, p.49. Ibid. Krog, Antjie, Country of My Skull, second South African edition (South Africa, 1998). Graham: South African Literature After the Truth Commission, p.52. Krog: Country of My Skull, pp.85–88. Ibid, p.36. Ibid, p.89. Graham: South African Literature After the Truth Commission, p.50. Krog: Country of My Skull, p.49. Graham: South African Literature After the Truth Commission, p.50. Spearey, Susan, ‘Displacement, dispossession and conciliation: The politics and poetics of homecoming in Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull’, Scrutiny2 vol.5, no.1 (2000), pp.64–77. Graham: South African Literature After the Truth Commission, p.53. Coetzee, Carli, ‘“They never wept, the men of my race”: Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull and the white South African signature’, Journal of Southern African Studies vol.27, no.4 (2001), pp.685–696. Ibid. Krog: Country of My Skull, p.165. Sanders, Mark, ‘Truth, telling, questioning: The Truth And Reconciliation Commission, Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull, and literature after apartheid’, Modern Fiction Studies vol.46, no.1 (2000), pp.13–41. Krog: Country of My Skull, p.196. Ibid, p.197. Ibid, p.89. Ibid, p.292.

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93. Ibid, p.32. 94. Young: ‘Narrative and healing’, p.146. 95. Chinapen, Rhiana and Richard Vernon, ‘Justice in transition’, Canadian Journal of Political Science vol.39, no.1 (2006), pp.117–134. 96. Ibid. 97. Villa-Vicencio, Charles and Wilhelm Verwoerd, ‘Constructing a report: Writing up the “truth”‘ in Robert I Rothberg and Dennis Thompson (eds), Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton and Oxford, 2000). 98. Titlestad and Kissack: ‘The secularization of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, p.51. 99. Scott, Colleen, ‘Combating myth and building reality’ in Charles VillaVicencio and Wilhelm Verwoerd (eds), Looking Back Reaching Forward: Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (South Africa, 2000). 100. Boraine: A Country Unmasked, pp.304–306. 101. Posel and Simpson: ‘Introduction: The power of truth’, p.2. 102. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report (1998), volumes 1–5, http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/report/, accessed on 1 August 2009. 103. TRC Final Report vol.5, p.458. 104. Fasching, Darrell J, ‘Stories of war and peace: Sacred, secular, and holy’ in Sara Munson Deats, Lagretta Tallent Lenker and Merry G Perry (eds), War and Words: Horror and Heroism in the Literature of Warfare (Oxford, 2004). 105. Gready: ‘Novel truths’, p.164. 106. Humphrey, Michael, ‘From terror to trauma: Commissioning truth for national reconciliation’, Social Identities vol.6, no.1 (2000), pp.7–27. 107. Villa-Vicencio and Verwoerd: ‘Constructing a report’, p.290. 108. Titlestad and Kissack: ‘The secularization of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, p.51. 109. Humphrey: ‘From terror to trauma’, p.15. 110. Brink: ‘Stories of history’, p.33. 111. Ndebele: ‘Memory, metaphor and the triumph of narrative’, p.27. 112. Bilbija, Ksenija, Jo Ellen Fair, Cynthia E Milton and Leigh A Payne, ‘Introduction’ in Ksenija Bilbija, Jo Ellen Fair, Cynthia E Milton and Leigh A Payne (eds), The Art of Truth-telling about Authoritarian Rule (Wisconsin, 2005).

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CHAPTER NINE RE-FATHOMING THE DARK OF HEARTNESS: CONTRAPUNTAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE John Masterson

Reconciliation, assuming it can ever be achieved, requires that the past be confronted, not obliterated. René Lemarchand1 By looking at the different experiences contrapuntally, [I will] formulate an alternative both to a politics of blame and to the even more destructive politics of confrontation and hostility. Edward W Said2 In April 1994, global media used coterminous events to present the African continent through two striking images. The first was that of soon-to-be President Nelson Mandela, waving a defiant fist aloft as he posted his ballot in South Africa’s first democratic elections. The second was of the anonymous dead of Rwanda’s genocide, their hacked bodies lining Kigali’s streets. If continental hope for reconciliation was symbolised in the former, it seemed the realities of postcolonial African despair were enshrined in the latter. This chapter is born from a desire

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to challenge homogenising discourses that have attended events surrounding ‘the third terrible genocide of the century’.3 It shares the conviction of Antonius Robben’s epilogue to Genocide – Truth, Memory, and Representation. In praising its contributors, he argues that each demonstrates a commitment to ‘disclosing ambiguous relations to undermine Manichean analyses [by] introducing concepts delivered in other historical contexts’.4 In the interest of foregrounding these ambiguous relations when analysing representations of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, I have drawn inspiration from the qualified contrapuntalism that informs Edward Said’s work. As with texts, individuals, nations and their geo-political events can only be more sensitively understood in relation to, rather than in isolation from, one another. Said’s long-term collaborator, the celebrated Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, argues that this contrapuntal vision enables us to ‘learn to see the other as something more complex than the monster [we] had imagined’.5 This provides an enabling way of considering the events of 1994 and its aftermath. When it comes to trying to fathom the true complexity of a conflict which, at the most conservative of estimates, claimed eight hundred thousand lives in approximately one hundred days, certain hegemonic narratives have undoubted appeal. In the interest of interrogating these more fully, I explore how comparative discourses might at once correspond with and challenge some of the dominant preoccupations of trauma studies.6 It is imperative to acknowledge the contentious issues surrounding comparative genocide studies and how these impact upon writing about and representing the events of 1994 and beyond. Scholarship concerning collective trauma inevitably uses the Holocaust as a discursive touchstone. More recent interventions have posed different questions. In his robust foreword to Is the Holocaust Unique?, Israel Charny accuses certain contributors of complicity with the ‘disquieting pattern of claims of the “incomparable uniqueness” of the Holocaust’, thus forestalling a more enabling comparativism. The subsequent caveat, however, is equally revealing: ‘No less disturbing, many of the counterclaims – however justified in epistemological and moral intent to place the genocides of all peoples on the same level of tragedy and evil – go on to minimize the horror of the Holocaust and display a nasty lack

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of reverence for the victims of the Holocaust.’7 While this chapter has neither the intention nor scope to engage with these ongoing debates, it appears telling that, having received only a fleeting reference in the second edition of Is the Holocaust Unique?, the Rwandan genocide is subject to closer analysis in its third edition of 2009. While the postgenocide period has spawned a host of sophisticated treatises on the events of 1994, in both national and, more recently, transnational and comparative contexts, much work still needs to be done.8 In this spirit of comparativism, I discuss American journalist Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998). His recent collaboration with Errol Morris produced a book and film (Standard Operating Procedure, 2008), offering forensic analyses of the abject images that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison. I will explore how the decision to foreground stories about the genocide and its aftermath compels readers to look more closely, posing those discomfiting questions often paralysed by images of atrocity. The second text I discuss in this chapter is Surviving the Slaughter (2000) written by Marie Beatrice Umutesi, a Rwandan Hutu. It is an excoriating recreation of her journey from the genocide and its violent reprisals, through squalid Congolese refugee camps, to eventual sanctuary in Europe. While working in the spirit of Said’s ‘fortified need for links and connections’, I pursue a contrapuntal approach that takes into account the multiple clashes between two seemingly contrary non-fiction works.9 If it encourages us to read the genocide’s aftermath in a more nuanced manner, it also resonates with some of the key debates taking place in comparative trauma and genocide studies today.10 This immediately raises concerns about the ‘politics of pronouns’. The use of ‘us’ prompts the question: who is being referred to? I consider the burdens of these pronominal tussles in relation to discourses about the genocide and its representation, whether reportage, testimony or films, and their intended audiences.11

Writing and/as righting representations of genocide Produced for and consumed by a predominantly Western audience, We Wish to Inform You traces Gourevitch’s various journeys into and

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out of post-genocide Rwanda. Certainly valid on one level, it does not take into account the complexities of accounting. If Umutesi’s and Gourevitch’s work can only be understood in relation to the wider geopolitical context in which Rwandans and the international community hold complicit parties accountable, they are also grounded by the sense that the peculiar ways in which individual and collective accounts are fashioned, are irretrievably bound up in these processes. Once readers get to grips with the book’s title, being sensitive to the particular incident it refers to, it is arguably the Stories from Rwanda adjunct that is most critical. In an otherwise perceptive piece, it is revealing that René Lemarchand omits this: ‘We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families is not just a masterwork of travel writing but a chilling account of the individual tragedies endured by genocide survivors.’12 Those familiar with the text might contest the accusation that Gourevitch has ‘little to say on the impact of the colonial and pre-colonial past on Hutu-Tutsi relations’. If We Wish to Inform You’s dearth of footnotes is unsettling for Lemarchand, he in turn pays little attention to those sections where the colonial administration’s policies are explored and critiqued. This is particularly striking when Gourevitch discusses the legacy of the Belgian-issued identity cards of the thirties, which were exploited by genocidaires and others before, during and after the events of 1994.13 Lemarchand’s unease may stem from his inability to place We Wish to Inform You within clear generic boundaries. Yet, what for him is discomfiting can be seen as one of the book’s manifest strengths. That Gourevitch’s own narrative is afforded such prominence from the outset is strategic and effective. Early rhetorical manoeuvres, revealing a certain voyeurism, are designed to disturb. As readers, our discomfort is intensified both by the subject matter and also by the suggestion that his reaction might be the norm, rather than the exception, to which most outsiders, in similar circumstances, might succumb. This section corresponds with those politics of perception arguments so central to writing on Rwanda. Texts from Shake Hands with the Devil to We Did Nothing to Complicity with Evil have been preoccupied with how and why various international bodies turned a blind eye to the events of 1994 and beyond.14 Similarly, Lemarchand relies on an

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optical repository when offering his diagnosis fifteen years on: ‘To this day, Hutu and Tutsi view the same historical reality through radically different lenses.’15 As my emphases suggest, the following citation can be read in terms of these wider discourses: Like the young Athenian in Plato, I presume you are reading this because you desire a closer look, and that you, too, are properly disturbed by your curiosity. Perhaps, in examining this extremity with me, you hope for some understanding, some insight, some flicker of self-knowledge – a moral, or a lesson . . . but when it comes to genocide, you already know right from wrong. The best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda’s stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it. The horror, as horror, interests me only insofar as a precise memory of the offense is necessary to understand its legacy. The dead at Nyarubuye were, I’m afraid, beautiful. There was no getting around it. The skeleton is a beautiful thing. The randomness of the fallen forms, the strange tranquillity of their rude exposure, the skull here, the arm bent in some uninterpretable gesture there – these things were beautiful, and their beauty only added to the affront of the place.16 While the spectre of Conrad hangs heavily over the ‘horror, as horror’ reference, it is the notion of the skeleton as beautiful that unsettles, foregrounding key issues around spectatorship, power and the largely unreturned gaze. Keepers of Memory, a film produced by the Rwandan filmmaker Eric Kabera in 2004, features interviews with and eye witness accounts from those tending memorial sites to the dead.17 One pair of respondents denounces the parasitic media for trading off the bones of genocide victims. The film explores how, once writers, journalists and directors depart, the position of those on the ground remains largely unchanged. Two of Kabera’s respondents resemble Waiting for Godot’s Vladimir and Estragon. While Gourevitch references Endgame throughout We Wish

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to Inform You, Godot’s existential meditation on the meaning of life is apposite when reflecting on the interviewees’ testimony. Like Beckett’s characters, they seemed unsure as to who or what they were waiting for in this post-traumatic context. They spoke of how they could no longer see what was, from a non-Rwandan perspective, the stunning natural beauty surrounding them. For them, beauty had its remnants among the skeletons they occasionally discovered when harvesting their crops. When reading Gourevitch’s description contrapuntally with the film, it lingers in the mind precisely because of its defamiliarising intensity. Gourevitch’s decision to foreground his own situatedness as non-Rwandan remains crucial. The book is peppered with intertextual references. The Plato allusion, for example, recalls Susan Sontag. She uses the same citation in Regarding the Pain of Others, which also considers how the Rwandan genocide was presented and consumed within an image-saturated marketplace.18 While the rhetoric used to pillory We Wish to Inform You draws on optical motifs, with some seeing his pro-Kagame vision as blighted by blind spots, it can be checked by attending to the complex relations between ‘I’ and ‘eye’. Jostling pronouns assume peculiar burdens of significance as Gourevitch rends the veil of journalistic detachment, confronting his reader with the loaded ‘I’ followed by the similarly implicated ‘you’.19 The result is a profound destabilisation of the collective pronouns ‘them’ and ‘us’. If fraught debates about the ‘right to write’ dominate discussions of Gourevitch’s book, they also invite provocative comparisons with Umutesi’s. For Aliko Songolo, Surviving the Slaughter ‘personalizes history or historicizes the personal’.20 Like Gourevitch, Umutesi attempts to fix her reader’s attention on complexities and complicities between ‘I’ and ‘eye’: When you haven’t yet heard the sound of a shell landing a few meters away, when you haven’t heard the sound of heavy artillery and Kalashnikovs, when you haven’t yet seen your friends, neighbors, or even your own family members torn apart by a grenade, when you don’t know what it feels like to walk over dead bodies or even hide under them to save your own skin, you think it would be possible to stay bravely in your house or even

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pick up a stick or some stones to fight soldiers who are armed to the teeth.21 Umutesi’s politically charged pronouns are directed outwards, beckoning to a non-Rwandan readership as well as against reductive thirtysecond news bites. The narrative is a prolonged attempt to encourage fathoming the unfathomable, in terms of trying to understand and plunging deeper under the surface of things to make more profound connections with the small politics of the individual. This can be developed by considering Umutesi’s descriptions of how, through the complex process of piecing narratives together both within the Zairian refugee camps and afterwards in Belgium, she tried to creatively and critically inhabit an Other position in Said’s sense of hospitality.22 This effort to imagine beyond the self, particularly in a context where differences appear intractable, becomes a prerequisite for trying to comprehend another’s actions. Critically, Umutesi focuses on the redemptive power of inscription. ‘One day when I was on the verge of cracking, I took a pen and began to write down everything that was in my heart.’23 Here, writing is not only memorialisation, but also resistance. Throughout, references to named individuals and places are juxtaposed with the kind of images commonly associated with limited media coverage. This juxtaposition is critical. Foregoing Gourevitch’s intertextual flourishes, Umutesi describes how she tried to imagine herself into the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) soldier’s story. The hammering intensity of her first person singular is thus modulated by an intimate, politically imaginative gesture outwards. The result is that those moments where she reflects on the centrality of telling her own narrative assume broader significance. Umutesi’s productive struggles with the pen provide inspiration for expressive models developed in the camps. Away from postcolonial theorising, the reader is confronted with a flesh-and-blood account of writing as resistance. ‘[Little] by little, many [of the women] had the courage to express their views, either by writing articles themselves or by giving us interviews.’24 Umutesi details how women-centred groups made themselves heard rather than waiting for listeners. While taking place within the camp’s confines, this is a symbolic precursor to those

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interventions on national and transnational levels that lay foundations for the more nuanced work demanded by comparative trauma and genocide studies.25 The pronounced gendering of the often-overlooked dislocation of Hutu civilians emerges as one of the account’s most striking features. ‘A refugee suffers, not only from having been torn from her land, her house, her work and her country, but also from having to beg to survive . . . Feeling useless is the worst thing imaginable.’26 This problematises some of the rather more passive models of subalternity used in certain postcolonial discourses.27 Ngwarsungu Chiwengo productively situates Surviving the Slaughter in relation to other ‘narratives of violence, which speak and record the tragic events experienced by the marginalized, the oppressed, and the silent dead’.28 The suggestion is that, for a Rwandan audience, they are ‘memorial narratives that invite the kind of remembrance’ necessary for dealing with the true traumas of aftermath, in turn opening up space for individual as well as collective reconciliation. However, questions concerning the production, dissemination, consumption and reception of these texts are foregrounded, taking into account the politics of the wider marketplace. ‘Yet how do some narratives of violence receive empathetic identification, political advocacy, and calls for redress while others receive apathy? How do hegemonic narratives silence counter-narratives of violence such as those of the rape of the Congolese women and men of the Hutu genocide?’29

Imagining the real Reading contrapuntally illuminates the frequency and different inflections given to ‘imagine’ and ‘imagination’ in Surviving the Slaughter and We Wish to Inform You, as well as a host of other texts concerned with ‘the genocidal imaginary’.30 In both We Wish to Inform You and Surviving the Slaughter, raising rather than evading questions of imagining is central to the textual encounter. In conversation with Gourevitch, President Kagame ascribed the international inertia over the events of 1994 to a more systemic failure of imagination. To seriously countenance that this landlocked central African country, equivalent in size to Vermont, contained people with a shared stake in the commonwealth

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of humanity, seemed, for some, a leap too far. ‘Kagame said, “Some people even think we should not be affected. They think we are like animals, when you’ve lost some family, you can be consoled, given some bread and tea – and forget about it.”’31 Using this as a touchstone, Gourevitch argues it is symptomatic of more longstanding notions concerning taxonomies of the human. He explicitly demonstrates how the legacy of nineteenth-century eugenics left its murderous mark on events in the mid-nineties. This illustrates how ‘imagination’ is used to frame the ‘bigger’ geo-political picture. What shapes the reading experience, however, is the way Gourevitch complements this with more detailed references to the ability and/or failure of certain individuals to imagine. This again relates to his burdened yet, I maintain, vital decision to invoke Conrad from the outset: [This] is a book about how people imagine themselves and one another – a book about how we imagine our world . . . All at once, as it seemed, something we could only have imagined was upon us – and we could still only imagine it. This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real . . . I was repeatedly reminded of the moment, near the end of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, when the narrator Marlow is back in Europe, and his aunt, finding him depleted, fusses over his health. ‘It was not my strength that needed nursing,’ Marlow says, ‘it was my imagination that wanted soothing.’ I took Marlow’s condition on returning from Africa as my point of departure.32 Conrad’s novella provides Gourevitch with a suitably ambivalent frame of reference, immediately challenging the reader to confront questions of complexity, context and truth.33 As Mel McNulty insists, much of the genocide’s coverage reproduced tropes of ‘colonial predecessors who rejoiced in the unfathomable mysteries and the exotic thrill of horror provoked by “the dark continent”. Apolitical invocations by sub-editors and leader-writers of “the horror, the horror” of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) have been legion.’34 As she suggests, the very aspects that make Conrad’s text so profound when thinking about representations of the Rwandan

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genocide, are studiously circumvented by news anchors. By strategically re-visioning himself through Conrad’s lens, Gourevitch attempts to offer more searching questions about where this darkness really lies. It morphs into a nuanced, retrospective way of trying to make sense of his own spatial and psychological journeys. If questions concerning power relations and the return of the camera’s neo-imperial gaze haunt We Wish to Inform You’s reader, they must also be balanced against those moments where Gourevitch subjects his own motives to closer scrutiny. In doing so, he offers pertinent reflections on his complicity, and thus that of his largely non-Rwandan readership, bringing more intertwined narratives into sharper relief. If the text is peppered with moments where pronouns jostle with the intensity that destabilises ‘them/us’ dualisms, it is also critical to acknowledge instances where the dividing lines are reaffirmed. When considering his description of an encounter with a key informant, Gourevitch’s decision to include rather than remove certain testimonial fissures is key: Odette sped ahead, skipping over the years to her graduation and her marriage. She was keeping everything that was not about Hutu and Tutsi to herself . . . When we met in the garden of the Cercle Sportif, Odette spoke as a genocide survivor to a foreign correspondent. Her theme was the threat of annihilation, and the moments of reprieve in her story . . . came, if at all, in quick beats, like punctuation marks.35 Gourevitch’s subsequent reflections on how this might correspond with his own situation, personally and professionally, serve as one of the points where he offers the kind of qualified interconnections between events in Rwanda and those of the Holocaust central to much of the most provocative work in contemporary trauma and genocide studies.36 Critically, he avoids crude comparativism by focussing on the precise detail of a family story: We are, each of us, functions of how we imagine ourselves and of how others imagine us [ . . . ] Listening to Odette, it occurred

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to me that if others have so often made [ . . . ] your life into a question, really, and made that question their business – then perhaps you will want to guard the memory of those times when you were freer to imagine yourself as the only times that are truly and inviolably your own.37 This section showcases certain stock rhetorical devices. Most striking is how the moment Gourevitch is forbidden entry into Odette’s most intimate recollections obliges him to reconsider his own narrative, making some provisional connections. This corresponds with the overarching questions posed and most provocatively not resolved by We Wish to Inform You: what can be told, by whom, when, for what purpose, who will listen? What is the relationship, parasitic or otherwise, between informant and reporter? How does this in turn correspond with much larger, more subjective debates about the dialectics of revelation and concealment? While I have been concerned with the potential benefits of contrapuntal readings, this demonstrates the necessity of attending to those moments where the melody of one clashes quite profoundly with the other. For many commentators, Gourevitch’s is a narrative built from materials provided by the Kagame regime, whereas Umutesi’s draws a counter-hegemonic urgency, being written against the RPF grain. A closer reading of a particular episode concerning the Zairian refugee camps in which Umutesi lived, and Gourevitch saw from a distance, is revealing. The reliance of both authors upon an optical repository is significant. Towards the beginning of his account, Gourevitch recalls how a particular scene witnessed after the genocide led him to speculate on, as he tried to imagine, what might have happened during its intense bloodshed: [In] Bukavu, Zaire, in the giant market of a refugee camp that was home to many Rwandan Hutu militiamen, I had watched a man butchering a cow with a machete [ . . . ] The rallying cry to the killers during the genocide was: ‘Do your work!’ And I saw that it was work, this butchery; hard work. It took many hacks – two, three, four, five hard hacks – to chop through the cow’s leg. How many hacks to dismember a person?38

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The first person singular beckons non-Rwandans to try and envisage what might have happened while various agencies turned a blind eye. It is Gourevitch’s shift from his own experience of watching to a wider speculation on what may have occurred that is notable. As he observes the butchering, he recalls the command issued to the interahamwe throughout the genocide: ‘Do your work!’ From this he extrapolates that, for those intoxicated by the Hutu Power invective equating Tutsis with contagion-carrying cockroaches, the imaginative leap from cow to enemy would not have been too vast. The alliterative prose emboldens the question with which Gourevitch concludes. As it challenges the reader to imagine how and why this conflation took place, it also demands that they consider how it might have drawn from earlier eugenic discourses incubated in Europe and the US. While the writing’s effectiveness might be gauged by the reader’s revulsion, it can be balanced against Umutesi’s testimony. Being on the ground, hers is a more understated description of the relationship between archetypal images of camp life and the more complex reality of those forced to flee. Rejecting rhetorical hyperbole, Umutesi shows how the emergence of alternative testimonies becomes a prerequisite for expanding ways of seeing and comprehending. ‘[A] large part of the world saw all Hutu as genocidal, from the old woman who could hardly walk to the baby still nursing at its mother’s breast. As we saw it, this negative perception explained, in part, the lack of urgency manifested by the humanitarian NGOs and the international community in coming to our aid.’39 While Gourevitch’s work is not crudely reductive, there are moments where he calls upon sweeping generalisations. These might be framed in terms of what Burnet calls ‘globalizing blame on Hutu’.40 That Umutesi chooses to focus on the old woman and the baby is revealing when considering the gender concerns that underpin Surviving the Slaughter and reading it against Gourevitch’s conflation of refugee camp with refuge for militiamen. Similarly, it is significant that Umutesi shifts from these generic images to proclaim a more collective identity forged in the camp’s dystopian environs. Here, ‘we’ and ‘our’ take on different valences from those ‘them’ and ‘us’ discourses habitually associated with 1994. As Lemarchand

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demonstrates, however, it is often difficult to divorce these tried, arguably tired, motifs from an optical repertory: Once filtered through the prism of ethnicity, entirely different constructions are imposed on the same ghastly reality . . . Not only is the past seen through a different ethnic lens, but there are also major differences among Hutu and Tutsi in the way in which it is remembered or forgotten.41 This might seem to sound the death knell for potential reconciliation, either at the level of competing individual narratives, representations of the genocide and its aftermath in reportage and films, or those clashing stories within communities that contest official discourses. Yet, much ink and blood have been spilled over the creation of spaces in which these contending versions can be heard in the interest of Rwandans. Reconsidering the potential benefits of a contrapuntal approach that seeks to negotiate rather than negate divergences may yet prove constructive. Gourevitch’s multiple literary references correspond with the geopolitical and philosophical discourses he urges his readers to look at anew. If the opening descriptions unsettle, the carefully judged final sections are just as effective: After only a few days in Kigali, I experienced the sense of total exhaustion that on previous trips had taken weeks, sometimes months, to overwhelm me . . . I escaped into a hundred-year-old novel about a dentist in San Francisco . . . McTeague, by Frank Norris . . . I put the book down and went to have a beer with a Rwandan friend. I told him the story I had just read . . . ‘Novels are nice,’ my friend said. ‘They stop.’ He waggled his fingers to make quotation marks in the air. ‘They say, “The End.” Very nice. A marvellous invention. Here we have stories, but never “The End”.’42 With overtones of the Odette exchange, tensions between foreign reporter and native informant are built into the narrative. Gourevitch’s

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decision to place this near the book’s conclusion captures the sense that, for those not witness to the material reality, a hunger for alternative or hyper-realities can take over. As his Rwandan friend points out, stories can provide an ideological balm, offering false resolutions denied beyond the covers of books. As texts concerned with the complexities of aftermath, in individual and collective senses, both We Wish to Inform You and Surviving the Slaughter are written against the grain of the ‘full stop’ discourse championed by certain political scientists.43 The manner in which they close is revealing in several ways. Drawing from the testimony of a genocidaire involved in incidents at schools, where the female pupils were ordered to separate themselves into Hutu and Tutsi, Gourevitch ends: But the students had refused. At both schools, the girls said they were simply Rwandans, so they were beaten and shot indiscriminately. Rwandans have no need – no room in their corpse-crowded imaginations – for more martyrs. None of us does. But mightn’t we all take some courage from the example of those brave Hutu girls who could have chosen to live, but chose instead to call themselves Rwandans?44 Gourevitch draws his reader’s attention to the complexities of pronouns, both in terms of the textual encounter, but also in relation to broader discourses, at national and international levels. Commentators have framed We Wish to Inform You as a protracted blame game, where the easy targets of European colonialism, American neo-imperialism and intransigence, alongside the unremitting cruelty of Hutu power, are attacked. As I have suggested, however, it is a much more nuanced, problematic exploration of wider webs of complicity. That Gourevitch chooses to conclude with a verifiable act of resistance, an ultimately fatal refusal to define identity along internecine lines, is critical when thinking of Rwanda and beyond.45 For my contrapuntal purposes, We Wish to Inform You’s closing question mark enables a final comparison with Surviving the Slaughter.

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Referring to the relative safety she felt on Belgian soil, Umutesi concludes her text with a question similarly designed to blur lines dividing the personal and political. ‘Even if I still dream from time to time about soldiers from the RPF, the fear I feel is less intense. Is this the end of the nightmare?’46 As with Gourevitch’s friend, answers remain inconclusive, both individually and collectively. Provoking different reactions from readers, the similar rhetorical devices used by Umutesi and Gourevitch correspond with broader geo-political discourses. Both invite predominantly non-Rwandan readers to look a little more closely at stories behind those filters that often petrify rather than promote greater critical thinking. Umutesi continues to work with women’s collectives, dedicating herself to construction projects that provide spaces where reflection and memorialisation can take place. Alongside these on-the-ground commitments, her account constitutes a cornerstone in the vast edifice of memory that cannot be allowed to crumble. Likewise, I believe We Wish to Inform You seeks to shore up the foundations of a transnational monument against amnesia. Lemarchand’s provisional question and answer provides a useful way of closing: Can [Rwanda] ever reach across the Hutu-Tutsi chasm and chart a new path toward national reconciliation? The first step is not to ethnicize guilt and innocence but to seek the truth, however uncomfortable . . . all of us [must] deal with the more ambivalent truth of why the genocide happened in the first place . . . [This] needs to be established if Rwanda is to move forward.47 (emphasis added) These urgent debates continue within and beyond Rwanda’s borders. Yet, it is the commitment to grappling after a more ambivalent truth that overlaps with the contrapuntal, perhaps even reconciliatory vision outlined in Edward Said’s Music at the Limits. Towards the end of his foreword, Barenboim discusses how Said used ‘his musical experience and knowledge as a base for his convictions about politics, morality, and intellectual thought’. In this chapter, I have re-appropriated Said’s notion of counterpoint to talk about two seemingly opposed representations of what many

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consider unrepresentable. To this end, I place greater faith in the propensity of a musical discourse that alerts us to the importance of clashes and discord, as well as harmony, than in some of those optical repositories referred to above. As Cathy Caruth maintains in relation to trauma studies more broadly, ‘[the] task of learning to listen anew calls for different ways of thinking about what it means to understand and what kinds of truth we are looking for’.48 Increased sensitivity to the true resonance of these issues remains as vital today as ever.

Notes 1. Lemarchand, René, The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (Philadelphia, 2009), p.100. 2. Said, Edward W, Culture and Imperialism [1993] (London, 1994), p.19. 3. Shawcross, William, Deliver Us from Evil – Warlords and Peacekeepers in a World of Endless Conflict (London, 2001), p.104. 4. Robben, Antonius, ‘Epilogue: The imagination of genocide’ in Alexander Laban Hinton and Kevin Lewis O’Neill (eds), Genocide – Truth, Memory and Representation (Durham and London, 2009), p.322. 5. From interview between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Stourton. BBC Radio 4, ‘The Today Programme’, 21 August 2009. See http://www.bbc. co.uk/proms/2009/whatson/2108.shtml, accessed 8 February 2012. 6. See, for example, ‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction’ in Cathy Caruth (ed), Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995) where she talks of examining how ‘trauma unsettles and forces us to rethink our notions of experience, and of communication, in therapy, in the classroom, and in literature, as well as in psychoanalytic theory’, p.4. 7. Charny, Israel W, ‘Foreword’ in Alan S Rosenbaum (ed), Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Colorado, 2000), p.x. 8. For instance, Rwanda only merits a single mention in Weitz, Eric D, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton, 2003). 9. Said: Culture and Imperialism, p.xxiv. 10. See Kiernan, Ben, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Virginia, 2007). 11. For an effective overview of scholarship, see Straus, Scott, ‘The Historiography of the Rwandan Genocide’ in D Stone (ed), The Historiography of Genocide (Hampshire, 2008), pp.517–542. 12. Lemarchand: The Dynamics of Violence, pp.88–89.

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13. Gourevitch, Philip, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda [1998] (London, 2000), pp.56–57. 14. Dallaire, Roméo and Brent Beardsley, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (London, 2004); Polman, Linda, We Did Nothing: Why the Truth Doesn’t Always Come Out When the UN Goes In (London, 2004); and Lebor, Adam, ‘Complicity With Evil’ – The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide (New Haven, 2006). 15. Lemarchand: The Dynamics of Violence, p.93. 16. Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You, p.19. 17. Kabera, Eric, Keepers of Memory: Survivors’ Accounts of the Rwandan Genocide (Rwanda, 2004). 18. Sontag, Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others (London, 2003), p.86. 19. Consider Gourevitch’s reflections on Nyarubure in relation to the following description from a tourist following a visit to a school in Murambi where thousands were slaughtered: ‘You are told it is ok to take photographs. You do, feeling slightly sick and disgusted with yourself . . . You think you should be crying. You think you should smash things. You feel you should be feeling something, anything, but instead, feel dazed. A thick numbness fills your skull as room after room is opened, and body after body is seen.’ Cited in Sharpley, Richard and Philip R Stone (eds), The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism (Bristol, 2009), p.220. 20. Songolo, Aliko, ‘Marie Béatrice Umutesi’s truth: The other Rwanda genocide?’, African Studies Review vol.48, no.3 (2005), p.113. 21. Umutesi, Marie Béatrice, Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire [2000] (Wisconsin, 2004), p.64. 22. ‘Rather than alienation and hostility to another time and different culture, philology as applied to Weltliteratur involved a profound humanistic spirit deployed with generosity and, if I may use the word, hospitality. Thus the interpreter’s mind actively makes a place in it for a foreign Other.’ Said, Edward W, ‘Preface’ to Orientalism [1978] (London, 2003), p.xix. 23. Umutesi: Surviving the Slaughter, p.78. 24. Ibid, pp.86–87. 25. See, for instance, Provost, René and Payam Akhavan (eds), Confronting Genocide (Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice), (Heidelberg, 2011). 26. Umutesi: Surviving the Slaughter, pp.82–83. 27. See Morris, Rosalind (ed), Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea (New York, 2010). 28. Chiwengo, Ngwarsungu, ‘When wounds and corpses fail to speak: Narratives of violence and rape in Congo (DRC)’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East vol.28, no.1 (2008), p.80.

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29. Chiwengo: ‘When wounds and corpses fail to speak,’ p.80. 30. Hinton, Alexander Laban and Kevin Lewis O’Neill (eds), Genocide – Truth, Memory and Representation (Durham and London, 2009), p.20. 31. Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You, p.337. 32. Ibid, pp.6–7. 33. ‘Public revulsion over the Rwandan genocide has all but overshadowed the far greater scale of the human losses suffered in Eastern Congo. The death toll between 1998 and 2004 was estimated to be nearly 4 million. If one adds the killings in Rwanda and Burundi since 1994, one reaches the staggering figure of approximately 5.5 million. To this day as many as 38,000 die every month of war-related causes. In many parts of the country, rape has become commonplace. This in itself is a sufficient reason to devote serious attention to an area that is all too often dismissed as a latter-day version of the Heart of Darkness, entirely beyond redemption.’ Lemarchand: The Dynamics of Violence, p.ix. See also the Preface to Odom, Thomas P, Journey Into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda (Texas, 2005), p.xiii. 34. McNulty, Mel, ‘Media ethnicization and the international response to war and genocide in Rwanda’ in Tim Allen and Jean Seaton (eds), The Media of Conflict – War Reporting and Representations of Ethnic Violence (London, 1999), pp.272–274. 35. Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You, pp.70–71. 36. See, for instance, Bauer, Yehuda, ‘Comparison of genocides’ in Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian (eds), Studies in Comparative Genocide (Hampshire, 1999), pp.31–42. In relation to Rwanda, it is intriguing to consider the contrapuntal objectives that seem to be behind the design of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, where over 250,000 victims are buried: ‘The Centre offers not only displays on the Rwandan genocide but also of other genocides throughout the world.’ Sharpley and Stone: The Darker Side of Travel, p.219. 37. Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You, pp.71–72. 38. Ibid, p.17. 39. Umutesi: Surviving the Slaughter, p.73. 40. Burnet, Jennie E, ‘Whose genocide? Whose truth? Representations of victim and perpetrator in Rwanda’ in Alexander Laban Hinton and Kevin Lewis O’Neill (eds), Genocide – Truth, Memory and Representation (Durham and London, 2009), p.89. 41. Lemarchand: The Dynamics of Violence, p.101. 42. Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You, p.347. 43. For an enabling alternative, see Humphrey, Michael, The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation: From Terror to Trauma (London, 2002).

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44. Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You, p.353. 45. Consider, for instance, Taylor, Christopher C, ‘The cultural face of terror in the Rwandan genocide of 1994’ in Alexander Laban Hinton (ed), Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide (Los Angeles, 2002): ‘Much of the violence, I maintain, followed a cultural patterning, a structured and structuring logic, as individual Rwandans lashed out against a perceived internal other who threatened, in their imaginary, both their personal integrity and the cosmic order of the state. It was overwhelmingly Tutsi who were the sacrificial victims in what in many respects was a massive ritual of purification, a ritual intended to purge the nation of “obstructing beings”, as the threat of obstruction was imagined through a Rwandan ontology that situates the body political in analogical relation to the individual human body,’ p.139. 46. Umutesi: Surviving the Slaughter, p.246. 47. Lemarchand: The Dynamics of Violence, p.97. 48. Caruth: Trauma – Explorations in Memory, p.viii.

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CHAPTER TEN RECONCILING THE AFRICAN NATION: FANTA REGINA NACRO’S LA NUIT DE LA VÉRITÉ Lizelle Bisschoff

Films, in particular Western-produced films, about African conflicts and atrocities are not uncommon. In fact, one could discern the development of a genre that could be termed the ‘African atrocity film’, as demonstrated by the plethora of films on, for example, the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The best-known of these is no doubt Terry George’s Oscar-winning Hotel Rwanda (2004); indeed, dozens of fiction and documentary films have been made on the genocide, at first mostly by outsiders, but more recently also by Rwandan filmmakers.1 Other highprofile examples of this genre would include Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond (2006), featuring Hollywood heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio playing a white Zimbabwean, and Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener (2005), set in Kenya. These types of films generally present many ideological problems when viewed from an African perspective: often the main protagonists are white and male, in line with mainstream Hollywood character types, and African characters are merely peripheral to the narrative and do not possess much agency. One could also critique the exploitation of African atrocities, often historically real and recent, for the entertainment of Western audiences. At best, these

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films raise awareness of African issues, which are often marginalised within international political discourse; at worst, they perpetuate the stereotypical image of an impoverished, corrupt and war-torn continent, thus flattening the whole of Africa into a monolithic entity and ignoring the vast cultural and historical diversity of the continent. I present these statements merely as context, as it is not the purpose of this chapter to discuss these challenging representational issues. Rather, I am concerned with the representation of African atrocities by African filmmakers themselves, and interested in how African filmmakers represent models of reconciliation in their work. As a case study I have chosen the fiction feature film La Nuit de la Vérité (The Night of Truth, 2004) by female director Fanta Regina Nacro from Burkina Faso. The Night of Truth is a plea for a plural and multi-faceted understanding of the nation where tolerance and respect for diversity would lead to peaceful notions of national identity and belonging. Set in a fictional African country, the film deals with the process of seeking truth and achieving reconciliation after a decade-long brutal interethnic conflict, and depicts the attempts of two factions to consolidate a peace agreement during one night’s festive gathering. Though the film’s conclusion is optimistic in its hope for a better future in which differences would be resolved and peace and unity achieved, the film also depicts the fragility of such attempts at reconciliation, a process fraught with difficulties. Before I proceed with the analysis of the film, a brief description of filmmaking in Burkina Faso, and specifically of the career of Nacro, provides the context in which the film was made, while a theoretical outline of notions of African nationalism provides background information to the challenges inherent in creating representations of reconciliation in the hugely diverse and often anomalous African nation-state.

Filmmaking in Burkina Faso A mention of the small, landlocked West African country of Burkina Faso is often followed by the appellation ‘one of the poorest countries in the world’, as it has one of the lowest GDP per capita figures

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worldwide. With the majority of the working population of Burkina Faso involved in agriculture, and widespread poverty and unemployment, it might come as a surprise that the country is a prominent force in the Francophone West African film industries, and has been central to the development of indigenous West African filmmaking in the post-independence period. Indeed, Burkina Faso is one of only a handful of African countries that can lay claim to a ‘national cinema’. Burkina Faso has created a prolific film industry with some of the most developed production and distribution facilities in Africa. The country has hosted the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou or FESPACO) since its inauguration in 1969, today the biggest and most important African film festival in the world, taking place biennially in the capital city. The Burkinabe government supports filmmaking activity and as a result of this, Burkina Faso has delivered some of the most prominent filmmakers from Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, including Gaston Kaboré, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Dani Kouyaté (son of the well-known actor-griot Sotigui Kouyaté who passed away in April 2010), Fanta Regina Nacro and Apolline Traoré. The success of the Burkinabe film industry is due to a number of related reasons, including the existence of FESPACO and access to film training in the country itself – previously INAFEC (Institut Africain d’Education Cinématographique) and currently Imagine, a film school founded and funded by Gaston Kaboré – as well as a cultural policy that supports cinema and promotes the centralisation of diverse components of the audiovisual field. Fanta Regina Nacro is part of a new, or second, generation of African filmmakers (the first generation being the pioneering postindependence filmmakers of the 1960s) and one of the best-known female filmmakers in sub-Saharan Africa. She initially wanted to become a midwife, but decided to study filmmaking out of a desire to tell stories, with storytelling gatherings being a fond memory from her childhood growing up in rural Burkina Faso.2 She studied at INAFEC in Burkina Faso in the 1980s where she came into contact with fellow Burkinabe directors, most notably the director Idrissa Ouedraogo. She worked as a television announcer at the National Television Centre

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in Burkina, and also as an editor on Ouedraogo’s first feature film. Nacro has directed a number of fictional short films, made in a realist style and often employing humour and parody. After the success of her first short films, Nacro received several offers to make films on subjects specific to women, such as female circumcision. She states, however, that she did not enter filmmaking to take part in the fight for women’s freedom, but simply because she likes the cinema and wanted to tell stories. ‘This may seem something of a paradox,’ she states, ‘but I refuse to be typecast as a director who makes films about women, even though I willingly tackle feminist issues. It’s the social side that interests me most, aspects of society such as male/female relationships, love, the problems of AIDS, education for girls or financial independence.’3 Nacro said in an interview with Beti Ellerson that she planned to make her first feature film based on the acclaimed novel So Long a Letter, by female Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ, but this project was not carried through and her feature directorial debut, La Nuit de la Vérité, was completed in 2004 and presented in the official competition at the 2005 FESPACO.4

The African nation-state: An unstable concept African artists, including filmmakers, often actively take part in discursive processes analysing and critiquing the suitability of an individual and social identity built around assumed ‘natural’ categories within the African nation-state. Given the many civil conflicts that have occurred in African countries since independence, nationalism and national identity are highly disputed notions within contemporary Africa. The nationalist optimism of the anti-colonial struggle has given way to many uncertainties, including recognition of the instability of set categories defined around national identity, gender, class and ethnicity. Therefore, African filmmakers are taking part in the process of redefining and questioning national identity in contemporary Africa, which I argue is also Nacro’s aim with The Night of Truth. According to postcolonial theorist Robert Young, the radical reorganisation of African political space into various forms of the territorial colonial state had a profound impact upon cultural self-definitions in

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these societies.5 The policies pursued in establishing the colonial state dramatically changed the existing cultural geography of these regions and impacted on them through the ideology and practice of classification, the establishment of colonial administrative frameworks, and the unequal provision of opportunities for social promotion available to the colonial subject. Within the colonial state, Africans were generally conceived of as a single implicitly racial category of subjects and the racial consciousness dimension of African nationalism clearly arises in response to this categorisation.6 National identity cannot be viewed as a singular notion in African countries, which are generally made up of multiple ethnic groupings with their own languages, customs, traditions and histories. The colonial state had a pervasive impact on patterns of postcolonial cultural identification and subsequent conflicts through its policies of racial classifications and unequal development of territorial space. Historical examples of these racial and ethnic conflicts can be found in many African countries such as South Africa, Rwanda, DRC, Uganda, Sudan, Liberia, Chad, Somalia and Sierra Leone. It is significant to note that, despite the large number of African countries that have fought liberation wars and suffered subsequent civil conflicts, very few national wars have been fought between different African countries. Turshen proposes three main causes of the continuing conflicts in African countries: the effects of the policies of Western powers, the interests of transnational corporations, and the demands of international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.7 Although these three reasons were postulated more than a decade ago, they still ring true today, with the increasing involvement of China in Africa being described by some as a contemporary form of economic colonisation. The idea of the nation-state is thus a problematic and unstable concept in postcolonial Africa. Nationalist ideologies, often inadequately and insufficiently conceptualised, developed and were disseminated swiftly in the struggle towards independence. Paul Willemen argues that the West invented nationalism, initially in the form of imperialism, as nation-states extended their domination over others.8 This simultaneously created the hegemonic sense of national culture and the problem of national identity for the colonised territories. Willemen argues further that the issue of a national-cultural identity arose

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primarily in response to a challenge posed by the oppressor, which gave rise to an often oppositional and contradictory discourse. The notion of nationalism in Africa could be regarded as much more complex than in more homogenous Western societies, since the formation of nation-states after independence involved a process of joining diverse ethnicities and regions on the one hand, and partitioning regions in a way that forced regional redefinition on the other hand. Therefore, contemporary African nation-states emerge as highly artificial and contradictory entities, by nature multi-ethnic and hugely diverse.9 African nationalism has been variously and contradictorily described as a return to the traditional values of pre-colonial Africa as proposed by Léopold Senghor’s concept of negritude; as the progress of Africa from the dark ages of traditionalism into the era of modern technology; as the hegemony of one ethnic group over others; or as the overcoming of ethnic differences as a way of countering imperialism.10 The early African statesmen and nation-builders operated in an era where nationalism had become a major ideology – Africa’s leaders consciously aimed to build nations on the foundation of the existing states. All African leaders are part and parcel of the nationalist era, and in the postcolonial era they often attempt to accelerate a process that took hundreds of years to develop in a country such as Britain. The nationalist ideals of Africa’s first presidents are affirmed by, for example, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda who said ‘our aim has been to create genuine nations from the sprawling artefacts the colonialists carved out’.11 Partha Chatterjee argues that ‘[t]he most powerful as well as the most creative results of the nationalist imagining in Asia and Africa are posited not on an identity but rather on a difference within the “modular” forms of the national society propagated by the modern West’.12 As depicted in The Night of Truth, national identity is formulated not through sameness but through difference, where cultural and historical specificity becomes crucial. The notion of national identity will always be contested terrain, particularly challenged by those on the margins of society. Shohat argues that any definition of nationalism must take class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality into account and must allow for racial difference and cultural heterogeneity to emerge.13 Within this dynamic

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movement, the fabricated and static idea of the nation becomes an evolving, imaginary construct rather than an originary essence. The negotiation of national identity thus becomes a very complex process that has to take into account the multiplicity of subject positionings that exists in all contemporary African states. Shohat claims that in film such a perspective would result in cinematic forms that expose the fissures in essentialist views of gender, class, ethnicity and race.14 Film thus plays a role in the process of forging the national imaginary and questioning dominant versions of national identity, contradictory and antagonistic as this process may be. With reference to Francophone West African cinema, Akudinobi states that African filmmakers, as part of a ‘cultural elite’, are crucial to the formulation of specific nationalist discourses due to the unique position they occupy in producing cultural products for public consumption.15 As such, it is not surprising that the various manifestos on African cinema that were formulated shortly after independence have clear nationalist preoccupations, emphasising the need to create alternative forms and styles of representation. Francophone West African directors, such as Ousmane Sembène and Souleymane Cissé, show in their films a concern for the regeneration of African cultural heritage, framed within the immediate post-independence era of the 1960s and 1970s, a concern which Akudinobi terms ‘cultural nationalism’. The pioneering Francophone West African directors thus contributed to the formulation of post-independence nationalism and the ideological construction of the newly formed nation-states. This process of negotiating national identity still continues in the contemporary era with films such as The Night of Truth. These films, however, do not see the nation-state as a monolithic and unchangeable construct, but show how the multiple social, political, ethnic, cultural, and class identities existing within a single African nation constantly need to be scrutinised and negotiated, thus leading to a plural understanding of national identity.

Truth through fiction: La Nuit de la Vérité The preceding outline of the origins and some of the problems inherent to notions of African nationalism indicates the challenges faced by

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African filmmakers dealing with issues of national identity in their work. As the main preoccupation of The Night of Truth is to deal with issues of past conflicts and trauma and to present a model for reconciliation within the African nation-state, Fanta Nacro takes on this challenge of renegotiating concepts of national identity in the film. The Night of Truth is dialogue-driven and melodramatic, and the acting style is reminiscent of African theatrical performance traditions, with different acting and narrative conventions at work than in realist or naturalist filmmaking. In addition, Nacro has stated that the film’s structure has been influenced by the Shakespearean model of theatre with regard to its unity of place and time, confined to 12 hours and a single setting, except for the prologue, flashbacks and epilogue.16 The film deals with the attempts at reconciliation between two ethnic groups, the controlling Nayaks and the rebel army of the Bonandés, during one night’s gathering to celebrate and consolidate a truce. Nacro attempts to universalise genocide, inter-ethnic and intranational conflicts by creating a fictional plot and setting the film in an unidentifiable African country, making the film reminiscent of many conflicts and atrocities the world over – not only in African countries such as Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Sudan, but also Yugoslavia, Israel, Northern Ireland, Armenia and Chechnya. Although the film does not refer to a specific historical event, the plot invokes the Rwandan genocide, as well as Burkina Faso’s conflict with neighbouring Ivory Coast and the murder of a Burkinabe journalist who spoke out against the government.17,18 In addition, Nacro dedicated the film to the memory of her uncle, a soldier, who was brutally tortured and killed in exactly the same way as one of the main protagonists in the film. All these references are indicative that the film is intended to recall any and every atrocity anywhere in the world. Indeed, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and the reports and testimonies of the atrocities that took place served as the overriding inspiration for the film; Nacro has stated that Yugoslavia reminded the world that African countries do not have a monopoly on horror.19 This fictional approach to historical events takes a different perspective from documentaries on atrocities. Some Western-produced documentaries on African conflicts have been criticised for reinforcing the

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‘otherness’ of African social realities. This type of documentary, with its assumed direct access to ‘truth’ and historical reality, runs the risk of failing to acknowledge the partiality of all attempts at representation. It could be argued that something as complex as genocide is not directly representable or at least demands a strategy that attempts to move beyond a mere documentation and supplementation of history. Fiction, metaphor and allegory could thus be regarded as particularly effective approaches in the sense that these types of creative representation take the alterity of historical events into account. However, bigbudget feature fiction films made for mainstream Western audiences, such as Hotel Rwanda, perhaps violate the very real and painful memory of atrocity to an even greater extent, in their attempts to subjugate historical fact to the demands and expectations of Western cinematic tastes. The Night of Truth’s fictionalisation of atrocity treats violence and trauma with much more complexity and seems to suggest that evil does not reside within individuals, but is cultivated by a system which dictates individuals’ actions. In the film this hunger for violence is referred to by some characters as the demons inside them: ‘War opens our souls, and demons move in,’ states one character, and this becomes a metaphor for the unseen and often inexplicable force that inhabits people in a time of atrocity. Since the cause and perpetuation of atrocities such as genocide are often so difficult to pinpoint, fiction and metaphor as representational strategies seem to be particularly effective. The main protagonists in the film are Colonel Theo, leader of the Bonandés, and his wife Soumari, and the Nayak president, Miossoune, and his wife Edna. The film does not allow the viewer any clear-cut distinctions between good and evil through the subtle narrative interplay between the four main characters – the pragmatist and pacifist Soumari and Miossoune, and the emotional and charismatic Edna and Theo. In the opening scenes Edna is seen sitting at the grave of her son, Michel, mourning his premature death. Both couples have suffered loss during the conflict – Soumari’s father, a pacifist, was tortured to death and Edna’s son, Michel, was gruesomely murdered by the Bonandés in the town of Govinda. Edna in particular is very reluctant to attend the gathering and repeatedly tries to persuade her husband that she does

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not have to accompany him. The attempts at reconciliation are soon shown to be rather tenuous and fragile: Theo and his brother receive a last-minute message that the president decided his soldiers should attend the gathering armed, a contravention of the original arrangement, and the colonel retaliates by re-arming his soldiers as well. The division between the two groups is emphasised by the fact that they speak different languages, Dioula and More, the two main languages of the director’s native Burkina Faso, while when communicating across ethnic borders they use French, the language of the former colonial power. This separation is further emphasised when both groups dehumanise the other, as often happens in a conflict of this nature.20 The Bonandés refer to the Nayaks as cockroaches and tell stories of the Nayaks being half-human, half-snake.21 The differences between the two ethnic groups are reflected in a scene where Theo and Soumari reluctantly nibble on braised snake, a Nayak speciality, while President Miossoune and Edna cautiously try out roast caterpillars, a delicacy of the Bonandés. However, the desire for peace and unity is captured in this scene as well, with the president’s comment: ‘Our cooking differs but it all comes from nature.’ The character fulfilling the role of ‘village idiot’, a Bonandé called Tomoto, unknowingly feasts on snake thinking it is fish, and his disgust at finding out he has been conned comes much to the amusement of the women who tricked him into eating the snake. The preparation of food, slaughtering, eating and feasting are significant motifs in the film, which is clear from early on when the women start their preparations for the reconciliation feast in the kitchen, which centres around the cooking of meat. This links with the flashbacks of severed body parts, women painting graffiti relating to the atrocities on the walls of the compound, and child amputees gathered together relating horrifying tales of their mutilations. The symbolic significance of meat and butchering foreshadows the fatal inevitability of the death of Colonel Theo – after Theo attests to slicing off Edna’s son’s testicles at Govinda and begs her forgiveness, Edna persuades the captain of the Nayak soldiers, who is in fact Michel’s real father, to capture Theo and roast him over a fire away from the celebrations, in a grotesquely harrowing and macabre scene. Demented

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with grief over the death of her son, she bastes his burning body with marinade while screaming hysterically and calling him ‘king of the marinade’. This point marks the dramatic climax of the film, audiovisually reinforced by the explosion of fireworks in the compound to mark the highlight of the evening’s celebrations. When this horrific scene is discovered by the others, it compels the president to shoot his wife in a literal and symbolic sacrifice to instill the message of peace and reconciliation. Edna needed a blood sacrifice to overcome her bereavement, and another sacrifice is necessary to reset the balance. In a further symbolic gesture demanded by the president, Colonel Theo and Edna are buried in the same grave as a symbol of unity. This message of reconciliation and unity is further reinforced when, towards the end of the film, six months later, Tomoto is seen sitting on the grave of his beloved colonel, telling him about the peace now reigning in the country, and that there are not even two separate ethnic groups anymore, but only the Bonandyakas, an amalgamation of the names of the two ethnic groups. Even Tomoto, a somewhat ignorant and simpleminded character who makes many racist and discriminatory statements throughout the film, is seen as embracing the peace and unity between the two groups in the film’s conclusion. The importance of remembering atrocities as a preventative force for the future is emphasised throughout the film. The film is interspersed with imagery such as murals and graffiti representing the atrocities – painted by the women on the walls of the compound possibly to serve a therapeutic and cathartic effect – as well as flashbacks of the massacres and bloodshed that took place during the ten years of conflict. Characters relate horrifying tales of witnessing their families being murdered, as well as the torture and rape they have been subjected to. The presence of the revolutionary slogan La patrie ou la mort nous vaincrons (literally meaning ‘Country or death, we will succeed’) references the socialist logo and motto adopted by Burkina Faso in 1984 under the governance of prime minister Thomas Sankara, a former revolutionary and a charismatic and radical leader. However, the remnants of the imagery of war and revolution are counterbalanced by the reconciliatory imagery such as a depiction of a Bonandé and Nayak shaking hands in a poster promoting reconciliation. Symbols and imagery such

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as these are part of the mythologies created in imagining the nation, in the sense of Anderson’s description of the nation as an imagined community.22 Memory, however, is represented as a doubled-edged sword, since the traumatic and potentially cathartic process of testimony and recollection of painful memories could also perpetuate a desire for revenge, as in the case of Edna. She recognises some of the Bonandé soldiers as the men responsible for her son’s death, triggering her memory and prompting flashbacks of the massacre at Govinda. As the night progresses, it becomes increasingly important for her to know the truth of what happened to her son, and who was responsible. Colonel Theo recalls his experiences of the brutalities he carried out and authorised. Edna’s reaction to learning the details of her son’s gruesome murder directly from the main perpetrator shows some of the problems inherent in processes of truth-telling. Although it is now a widely accepted idea that exposing the truth about past atrocities would contribute to reconciliation and enable societies and individuals to work through and move past these events – as indicated by the growing number of countries worldwide opting for the establishment of truth commissions to address past brutalities – there is also the danger that truth-telling can lead to re-traumatisation and a desire for revenge. For Colonel Theo, his recollections and confessions are intended to lighten his burden of the knowledge of what he has done and to invoke forgiveness in Edna, but instead it intensifies Edna’s desire to avenge her son’s murder in order to gain closure, as she states to Theo: ‘Forgiveness is God’s business, not mine.’ However, the ending of the film re-establishes the notion that memory and truth-telling can aid healing. Soumari is shown in a classroom giving a dictation about peace to her students, symbolising the notion that the younger generation will play a crucial role in facilitating peace in the future. As the end credits roll, she recites: ‘I won’t forget you. Your pain is my pain because the same memories live within us.’ Significantly, the film makes no reference to the role of colonialism or colonial violence and oppression as a cause of the civil conflict, and places the responsibility of reconciliation firmly in the hands of Africans. Simultaneously, through its fictional setting and universal statements about trauma and reconciliation, the film avoids notions of

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violence and barbarism as an inherently African characteristic created in the colonialist imaginary and perpetuated in much of mainstream Western media and politics. Possible explanations of the causes of the conflict, and ways to achieve reconciliation, are negotiated within an African ontology, imbued with a mythical and spiritual understanding of the world. The film depicts this in various ways, for example through Colonel Theo’s explanation of what caused him to murder Edna’s son as a temporary visitation by a demonic force, the references to the spirit of the dead wandering the blood-stained earth, the highly symbolic and metaphorical use of language, and the emphasis on ritualistic gestures such as drink offerings. Nacro’s vision of national reconciliation and a productive national consciousness gives prominence to the role of women, through the depiction of the two female characters central to the film’s narrative. Strong female characters are not uncommon in West African cinema, and women are often represented as the backbone of their society as a progressive, pacifying and conciliatory societal force, while men are depicted as traditionalist, conservative and chauvinistic. Soumari fulfils this traditional role since she is the main reconciliatory force in the film, repeatedly stating that the country needs peace and that the bloodshed and killings must end. Even though her father has been tortured and killed, she accepts the fact that his murderer will not face prosecution, acknowledging that at some point the cycle of revenge and retribution must end.23 She threatens to leave with the children when Theo decides to arm his men, stating to her husband: ‘Men make peace, men make war. It’s nothing to do with me and the children.’ Her efforts to facilitate the reconciliation are tireless – she bans drumming at the gathering, fearing it would invoke and awaken the memories of the massacre at Govinda where drumming lead the Nayaks, including Edna’s son Michel, into a trap that cost their lives. The musicians are baffled by her demand that no drums are to be used, telling her that drums are the spices of music. Soumari welcomes the president and his wife with the traditional calabash of millet beer, and when some of the Bonandé and Nayak soldiers later claim that the spirit of the dead is preventing them from participating in the festivities, she pours out a libation on the ground to appease the dead

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on both sides. It is extremely difficult for the soldiers to deal with the memories of the atrocities they committed and experienced; they distrust each other and continuously fear betrayal. When drumming inevitably starts, with Tomoto as the main instigator, the soldiers on both sides become agitated and take up their weapons. Once again, it is Soumari who calls on the president to support her in persuading the soldiers to disarm. After the discovery of the horrific sight of her tortured husband, she throws herself in front of the approaching armed soldiers, even in this moment of immense trauma refusing to repay violence with more violence. Edna is Soumari’s antithesis. She is unable to accept the brutal murder of her beloved son and needs a blood sacrifice to overcome her grief. However, this is not a simplistic opposition as Edna is a complex character, fluctuating between her desire for revenge and her attempts to accept the peace-making process. The build-up of tension and suspense in the film is masterfully handled by Nacro, as the viewer increasingly realises there is a chance that the reconciliation process will fail miserably, but is unable to tell what the catalyst will be for violence to erupt. In the end, the eruption of bloodshed is not directly caused by the soldiers but facilitated by Edna. The fact that women are capable of violence enables us to see that women’s views are not monolithic and that they do not necessarily bear essential qualities such as kindness and compassion.24 Violent acts by women are often deliberate acts of resistance against abusive husbands and partners, and can be retributive in the face of a threat to or disruption of the family unit, as in the case of Edna. According to African feminist writer Obioma Nnaemeka, women have the desire and ability to respond to violence with violence, and she states that female violence is often a symptom of or reaction to male violence.25 In reference to violent acts by female characters in female-authored African literature, but highly applicable to the character of Edna too, Nnaemeka writes: ‘[t]he concern for freedom and survival is the impetus for the actions of these desperate women for whom the end justifies the means and for whom extreme situations demand extreme measures.’26 With the characters of Soumari and Edna, Nacro succeeds in creating a rich and varied tapestry of female and human experience

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and emotion, rather than a simplistic representation of women as the temperate and moderating forces in African societies, or an idealised womanhood often employed in African nationalist discourse, through for example notions such as ‘Mother of the Nation’. The female characters neither simplistically adhere to normative nationalistic models of womanhood nor reinforce stereotypes of the African woman either as silent victim, or as backbone of her society. This disruption of oppositional binaries shows that women can be both benevolent and malevolent, both victim and agent, both traditional and modern, with these roles treated as complementary rather than oppositional. Agency and victimhood are not mutually exclusive, as victims are also agents who can change their lives and affect other lives in radical ways.27 The characters of Soumari and Edna thus symbolise a range of human experience, and are in this sense a pair of character types that fulfil certain symbolic and mythical roles, which, together with the two main male characters, aid the imagining of national identity and belonging. There is complementarity between the female characters and their male counterparts, rather than a depiction of the subordination of women, which shows an equal interrelationship rather than a hegemonic dichotomy between male and female. Both women are mothers and wives, and the importance of the family structure is emphasised in the film through Soumari’s protective relationship with her children and Edna’s despair at losing her son. Family and nation are interlinked, as Edna’s loss could be read symbolically as the loss of nationhood too, which has to be rebuilt through reconciliation and an acceptance and tolerance of difference.

Conclusion When considering the dramatic theatrical acting style in the film and Nacro’s decision to set the film in a fictional African country, it becomes clear that the film should be read in a symbolic rather than literal or realist way. Inter-ethnic and intra-national conflicts are played out through this symbolic tale in order to promote the notion of national unity and peace. By setting the film in a fictional African country, The Night of Truth resists simplistic notions of representing

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history. Although Nacro’s strategy of fictionalisation serves to universalise atrocity, the narrative is firmly situated in an African world-view and told from an African perspective. As opposed to many Western films about African atrocities, The Night of Truth becomes an autonomous work of art, not linked to a specific historical moment, which succeeds in crystallising history internally through its own dynamic structure. At the film’s screening at the 2005 FESPACO film festival, the audience’s reaction was particularly interesting, and it could be claimed that there are certain moments in the film designed to rouse audience interaction. The comic scenes, especially those featuring Tomoto, played by Rasmane Ouedraogo, a well-known and much-loved comedic Burkinabe actor, caused wild outbursts of laughter, while a much more subdued response followed the violent and dramatic moments in the film. The distressing scenes of violence caused some controversy among audiences and the film created quite a stir at its first screening at FESPACO, since the wife of President Blaise Compaoré was also in the audience. African filmmakers often express their rejection of the sensationalist depictions of graphic violence in Western films and in this sense the film might be seen to challenge conventional perceptions of the type of films African directors, and in particular female African filmmakers, might choose to make. However, Nacro’s decision to depict violence and atrocity in this film is not gratuitous or sensationalist, but rather an incisive symbolic representation and condemnation of violence and brutality, ultimately hopeful in its resolution. ‘All humans have their dark side and their human side,’ Nacro stated in an interview, ‘and if one is not vigilant then the dark side can easily take over.’28

Notes 1. Further examples are: Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton-Jones, UK/Germany, 2005); Sometimes in April (Raoul Peck, France/USA, 2005); A Sunday in Kigali (Robert Favreau, Canada, 2006); Shake Hands with the Devil (Roger Spottiswoode, Canada, 2007); 100 Days (Nick Hughes, UK/Rwanda, 2001); Keepers of Memory (Eric Kabera, Rwanda, 2004).

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2. Quoted in Verschueren, Bernard, ‘Fanta Nacro: Hope in female form’, The Courier (Jan-Feb 2002), ec.europa.eu/comm/development/body/publications/ courier/courier190/en/en_002.pdf, accessed 20 April 2011. 3. Ibid. 4. Ellerson, Beti, Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television (Trenton and Asmara, 2000), p.217. 5. Young, Robert, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London and New York, 1995), p.225. 6. Ibid, p.230. 7. Turshen, Meredeth, ‘Women’s war stories’ in Meredeth Turshen and Clotilde Twagiramariya (eds), What Women Do in Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa (London and New York, 1998), p.4. 8. Willemen, Paul, ‘The Third Cinema question: Notes and reflections’ in Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (eds), Questions of Third Cinema (London, 1990). p.18. 9. Shohat, Ella, ‘Gender and culture of empire: Toward a feminist ethnography of the cinema’ in Anthony R Guneratne and Wimal Dissanayake (eds), Rethinking Third Cinema (London, 2003), p.57. 10. Cobham, Rhonda, ‘Misgendering the nation: African Nationalist fictions and Nuruddin Farah’s Maps’ in Andrew Parker et al (eds), Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York, 1992), p.46. 11. Quoted in Neuberger, Benyamin, ‘State and Nation in African thought’ in John Hutchinson and Anthony D Smith (eds), Nationalism (Oxford, 1995), p.235. 12. Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993), p.5. 13. Shohat: ‘Gender and culture of empire’, p.54. 14. Ibid, p.55. 15. Akudinobi, Jude, ‘Nationalism, African cinema, and frames of scrutiny’, Research in African Literatures vol.32, nr.3 (Fall 2001), p.124. 16. Allardice, Lisa, ‘The dead are everywhere’, The Guardian, 5 September 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/sep/05/1, accessed 20 April 2011. 17. The civil war that broke out in Ivory Coast in 2002 was in part due to ethnic tensions and xenophobia, in particular towards people from Burkina Faso, as huge numbers of Burkinabes have migrated to Ivory Coast attracted by better economic prospects than in their home country. 18. Political freedom and freedom of speech is severely repressed in Burkina Faso under the presidency of Blaise Compaoré, who has been in power since a military coup in 1987. The specific incident that Nacro invokes in her film refers to the murder of journalist Norbert Zongo. As one of the most

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19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Art and Trauma in Africa outspoken critics of the government, Zonga used The Independent, the weekly newspaper he founded in 1993, as a platform to denounce corruption and promote human rights. In December 1998 the bodies of Zongo and three companions were found in their burnt-out vehicle. They have been shot at close range before their car was set on fire. The killings mobilised Burkina Faso and led to months of strikes and protests against the government. Quoted by Allardice: ‘The dead are everywhere’. Kemp, Philip, ‘Blood meridian: The Night of Truth’, September 2005, www. bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/2526/, accessed 20 April 2011. This appears to be a direct reference to how the Tutsis were dehumanised by extremist Hutus as ‘cockroaches’ in the run-up to the Rwandan genocide. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983), p.6. Kemp: ‘Blood meridian’. Turshen: ‘Women’s war stories’, p.10. Nnaemeka, Obioma (ed), The Politics of (M)Othering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature (London & New York, 1997), p.19. Ibid. Nnaemeka: The Politics of (M)Othering, p.3. Quoted by Allardice: ‘The dead are everywhere’.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN CLOSED WINDOWS ONTO MOROCCO’S PAST: LEILA KILANI’S OUR FORBIDDEN PLACES Stefanie Van de Peer

Moroccan filmmaking is a child of the nineties. There has been a production boom in Morocco over the last decade that culminated in over 20 productions in 2010. An acknowledgement of this boom came when the prize for best feature at FESPACO 2011 went to Moroccan Mohamed Mouftakir for his film Pegasus. Most, if not all, Moroccan films are supported by or made in collaboration with the Centre Cinematographique Marocain (CCM). Leila Kilani’s film Nos Lieux Interdits (Our Forbidden Places, 2008) is one of those films made with the support of the CCM. What was new, however, was that the production of the film was also supported by the Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission. The ERC gave Kilani – a journalist as well as documentary maker – special permission to film the testimonies of several families and individuals during the hearings and in the Commission’s offices throughout the country. Throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties, during King Hassan II’s rule, Moroccans experienced repression, kidnappings and murders. This era is a little-known period in Moroccan history, and was later named Les Années de Plomb, or Years of Lead. At the beginning of her

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film, Kilani inserts text on the screen: Just a few years after independence, the Moroccan authorities resorted to torture and forced disappearances to silence all opposition movements and paralyse society out of fear. The repression started at the beginning of the 1960s and worsened in the 1970s and 1980s. Thousands of political opponents, trade unionists, but also anonymous victims, were often illegally kept in police custody in secret detention centres: barracks, farms and villas, airport hangars were used as detention centres for periods of time varying from a few weeks to years . . . Four decades after independence, in January 2004, the new King announced the setting up of the ‘Equity and Reconciliation Commission’ and declared that ‘Our aim is: Moroccans should be reconciled with each other and with their history.’ In this chapter, I will discuss the response of the filmmaking industry to the repressive measures taken by the government during the three decades of the Years of Lead. I will go into the details of the repression through an in-depth analysis of Our Forbidden Places, Kilani’s documentary. In Our Forbidden Places, Kilani treats the process and the outcome of the ERC as a significant but ultimately inconclusive solution to years of fear and paranoia. She follows four families, each affected in different ways by the repression and the Commission, as she shows the individual’s uncanny and incomplete ability to express suffering and torture. Kilani is not alone in her scepticism about the Commission. Many human rights organisations and activists criticised the Commission as the number of crimes against human rights was much higher than those that were admitted, and well-known cases were ignored. Most controversially, and unlike similar commissions across the African continent, the ERC granted full amnesty to those responsible for disappearances and torture while refusing to name the persons actively involved in the random prosecutions during the Years of Lead. Not named nor identified, perpetrators did not need to admit to their crimes in order to gain amnesty. There was a platform for victims

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who wished to testify in order to gain justice, but this justice was only defined in financial terms and there was no tolerance of direct accusations. Compensation was only offered once the truth had been established and could only be in the form of material gifts (usually money) from the state. Whether this establishes satisfactory justice for the victims is highly doubtful, and victims had to accept the general ignorance and the state’s ambiguous attempts to establish the truth. The truth then was established by means of a team of commissioners interrogating witnesses and victims, collecting archival material available but never undermining the government’s policy of general amnesty. The Commission therefore arguably condoned the criminal actions of the Hassan II government, while ostensibly offering compensation to victims.

King Hassan II and the Years of Lead One of King Hassan II’s many repressive measures was to take complete control over the media: the Ministry of Information gained the right to suspend and close newspapers with the 1965 Press Law. After independence in 1956, Hassan II grew increasingly authoritarian and suspended parliament in the mid-1960s. Repressive measures were not limited to culture and the arts. Political repression was powerful as well. Throughout the sixties and seventies, Hassan II took harsh repressive measures against suspected dissenters: the police state organised forced disappearances, extrajudicial murders and imprisonment of all political opponents. Moreover, while Islamists were consistently kept out of the government, their pressure and influence on the government did not alleviate religious limitations for the poor and women. The Years of Lead were years ‘of forcible disappearances and farcical mass political trials, large numbers of people representing various political persuasions served long prison sentences for voicing opposition to the regime. By international standards, they were prisoners of conscience.’1 The scare tactics of the Moroccan government during those years included imprisonment of everyone who was suspected of non-official views on government and politics. ‘The Moroccan state, in effect, criminalized all political activity and [ . . . ] political acts such as writing tracts,

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holding meetings and attending demonstrations.’2 Only in the late 1980s, under pressure from the UN and the EU, was Hassan II forced to resolve the issue of political prisoners. Driss Ben Zikri, the president of the Conseil Consultatif des Droits de l’Homme (CCDH), was, however, also an instrument of the government and his initial report on the Years of Lead revealed little information outside of a limited number of confessed disappearances and deaths. While it officially recognised the Years of Lead, the Commission implicitly confirmed the remaining power of the king to cover up deeds against basic human rights. It was not until the nineties that Hassan II became more lenient, and made the first steps towards a general enlightenment: he took the initiative to set up a commission that would investigate the human rights abuses in Morocco, and a royal Advisory Council on Human Rights (Conseil Consultatif des Droits de l’Homme or CCDH). In 1993, a new Ministry of Human Rights was formed, and that same year Morocco endorsed the United Nations Convention against Torture. With Mohamed VI, Hassan II’s democracy-oriented son, the first oppositionled government came to power in 1999. In August 1999 the king activated an independent Indemnity Commission (Commission d’Arbitrage). Mohamed VI encouraged political prisoners and exiles to come back to Morocco, newspapers gave wide coverage of truth commissions in other parts of Africa, and news coverage was also allowed on individual cases where previously imprisoned or tortured activists could testify about crimes against humanity. The dominant theme of films under the rule of the new King Mohamed VI was the Years of Lead.3 The sub-current of unrest and economic and social problems was exactly what the Moroccan youth wanted to see on their cinema screens, and a new audience was born.

Documentaries in Morocco During Hassan II’s rule between 1961 and 1999, censorship featured as a large obstacle to freedom of expression and filmmaking in Morocco. For a long time, the CCM was the only official body that had power over which films were made and whether they were exhibited. Until the seventies, the CCM produced newsreels, educational films

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and propaganda films that sporadically travelled to the remoter areas of the country in cinema clubs and caravans. Filmmaking was much more limited in Morocco than in any of the other Maghreb countries. The censorship regulations in Morocco were and still are dependent on the king and the Ministry of Information. For a long time, the CCM remained the only source of funding for filmmakers in Morocco, and the Centre had power over the content and style of what was made.4 Filmmaking in Morocco has always been subjected to government censorship, regulated by the CCM. Strict rules included a prohibition to contradict or sully the king, his family or the idea of the monarchy; any ideas expressed against Islam were strictly forbidden; and anything to do with a questionable morality, sexuality and poverty was not allowed on cinema and television screens. The lack of state support for films exploring the contemporary social and political issues in Morocco was a consequence of years of media oppression. During the seventies, more than eight newspapers were closed and due to the instability of the monarchy and government (there were two failed military coups in 1971 and 1972 respectively), censorship ruled all arts and media. Throughout the decades following independence, CCM regulations kept changing, censorship was executed inconsistently, and production money was divided unequally. The films produced during the seventies and eighties were described as disappointing and ineffective, and they lacked the ability to ‘effect change in the highly censorial and censored environment.’5 In the eighties, the CCM clamped down on more films than before due to the relative rise in social and political concerns by some filmmakers. Artists supporting revolutionary ideas such as Marxism, or any other anti-monarchical movements, were arrested continually during the Years of Lead. The end of the 1980s constituted what Carter calls the last ‘gasp’ of documentaries.6 The few documentaries that were made emphasised the very same issues the first propagandistic documentaries immediately after independence did: development issues such as health, education and political participation. I argue that documentaries were daunting for the CCM as they portray reality, and thus that which the censor forbade on screen: the social reality of poverty and unemployment, the oppression of women, and especially the

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consequences of the Years of Lead. It is only logical that filmmakers would have been cautious about making realist films or documentaries and self-censorship would have been the main reason for the lack of these kinds of films. However, the role of the CCM changed in 1995: it became a cinemathèque or national film archive. As Valerie Orlando insightfully argued, since the nineties ‘issues of what language to use (Arabic, French, Berber), budgets, funding and distribution have replaced the former malaise over censorship of any subject deemed taboo by the monarchy.’7 Nevertheless, there is still no complete audiovisual and press freedom. Journalism and television are censored heavily, while cinema has earned slightly more freedom to touch on previous taboos such as female sexuality and the Years of Lead, mainly due to artistic liberties. Nevertheless, Moroccan cinematic discourse has in recent years ‘forced open a Pandora’s Box of societal taboos. Filmmakers confront socioculturally and politically sensitive topics in order to analyze the transitions taking place in their contemporary culture.’8 Recent changes in the attitude towards art as an effective tool to overcome the traumas of the past has given rise to films analysing and challenging the past and its effects on victims of the Years of Lead.

Trauma studies in film / in Morocco The study of the collective trauma of Moroccans has seen a significant rise since the middle of the nineties, as a consequence of the change in the king’s politics and as a direct result of the artistic explorations of previously taboo subjects. Several specialists in Francophone Moroccan literature and film have started to publish more analytical work dealing with the effect of the Years of Lead on the artistic productions in Morocco in the last decade. One such example is Susan Slyomovics’ book The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco9 and her many articles on the same topic, a theoretical treatment of the historical and political facts of the Equity and Reconciliation Process and its representation in the media. Valerie Orlando’s recent study Francophone Voices of the New Morocco in Film and Print: (Re)presenting a Society in Transition

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more specifically reveals artistic representations of the Years of Lead. Orlando argues that art is instrumental in aiding Moroccans to study socially, culturally, and politically the abuses of the past in order to transition toward a positive future. [Artists] seek to expose the skeletons that lurk in the closets of the past. The documenting of life stories in their works has become essential in the country’s national project to contextualize the Lead Years in order to remember all those effaced in the annals of Moroccan history. [Art] will continue to remind readers and audiences of the importance of remembering, so that the injustices of earlier periods will not be repeated.10 In order to remember, people – especially the younger generations – need to be aware of the misconduct of the government. The film discussed in this chapter illustrates how, if elderly people neglect to remember out of fear for the authorities or fear of the past, the younger generations will more urgently need to be reminded of the past in order to be able to build their future in the ‘new’ Morocco. Ranjana Khanna, postcolonial film theorist, has studied this selfimposed amnesia of the older generations in the Maghreb. She indicates that it is a consequence of repression inherent to the independence governments, but also of colonial repression. Propaganda throughout the North African region has had a major impact on filmmaking and on how the national filmmaking industry defined its own relevance. Due to the traumatic pasts and the ensuing amnesia, Khanna states, ‘there is a moment in which the self cannot simply speak the memory of trauma but can enact a space in which silence – nonspeech – is recognized as a symbolic space of political nonrepresentation.’11 As John Berger has said, seeing comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them.12 The reciprocal nature of looking and being seen, as well as the empathy it brings out in the spectator, are crucial aspects of watching films and watching the people in films watching each other. Berger claims: ‘Fear of the present leads to mystification of the past.’13 I would like to add that fear of the past in turn equally obscures the present. As words are often not adequate to express

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suffering and trauma, images could arguably outlast the accompanying words. Visual representation gains importance, and therefore signals the breakdown of the voice’s representative power of a traumatic past. Gaps in history cannot be filled by stories and testimonies exclusively. Unrepresentable atrocities may only be expressible in images: ‘the uncanny could become reified on the screen.’14 A visceral effort is required from both filmmaker and spectator: empathy is instrumental in approaching and understanding the non-verbal expressions of pain on screen.

Our Forbidden Places Our Forbidden Places (2008) is a documentary that follows four families through their journey alongside the Equity and Reconciliation Commission in Morocco. For four years, between 2004 and 2007, Kilani followed the lives of these families as they went through the consecutive steps of the Commission. She filmed them at four stages: in April 2004 (introduction to the ERC), January 2005 (public hearings), January 2006 (published reports) and April 2007 (aftermath). The families she filmed represent different aspects of the political repression during the Years of Lead, and diverse views of the Commission. The Abdesalem family consists of an elderly woman, whose husband was abducted and never seen again, her daughter and granddaughter. The film records their conversations about the developments of the Commission and reveals their individual take on the past and the present. The second family, Said (formerly Bouchta), consists of a mother and son who lost their activist husband and father as he died in prison. A third family consists of a Marxist Leninist activist tortured in prison, who speaks with his two young cousins. Lastly, a political activist, Marzhen, who survived prison, talks to his grandmother. Kilani further structured the film into four chapters: ‘The Disorder of Origins’, ‘Fire on the Mountains’, ‘The Hunger of Utopia’ and ‘The Missing Link’. These titles cryptically explain the development of the experience of the ERC for the families and the individuals. As the film follows four families who experienced completely different circumstances and therefore reflect the reach and

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effectiveness of the Years of Lead, it also illustrates various ways of dealing with abduction, torture, repression and death. The generational differences within the families moreover touchingly illustrate how the young and old have different attitudes towards the past and towards each other, and different coping mechanisms and communication systems. The generational clashes become a vehicle for the filmmaker to make more information available to the spectator, and the dialogue also gives the filmmaker the chance to provoke reactions to the development or non-development of the cases at the ERC. Diverse historical facts evoke various contemporary reactions and consequences. The film thus aims to represent to spectators, Moroccan as well as otherwise, a variety of people who react in similar and opposing ways to the outcomes of the Moroccan ERC.

Words and testimonies To bear witness to a traumatic event in the past has been proven to be difficult, if not impossible. Notions of truth, objectivity and reality have come under scrutiny since the era of postmodernism. To testify, to narrate a testimony, encapsulates the implication of truth, yet a testimony is invariably subjective and given from a specific, personal point of view. Felman and Laub write about the complex relationship between language and life. They assert that finding words to describe the past and listening to these testimonies require methods and techniques of listening to truths that are unspoken – or unspeakable – yet are inscribed in texts.15 The official declarations of the ERC then are vastly different from individual versions of the truth of what happened to individuals, their family members, or to people who experienced trauma. Moreover, individual experiences of torture and trauma have been shown to often be imperceptible by the victim. Cathy Caruth has shown that there is latency in the experience of a trauma, causing the victim to distance him or herself from the event as it is taking place, and thus not being there when the traumatic event actually happens.16 When the memory of the event returns it has been influenced by mediation and context. Narrativising trauma therefore is highly problematic. This ambiguity between official and

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individual reports on the one hand, and between words and images on the other, is challengingly explored by Kilani in Our Forbidden Places. A news bulletin on TV announces the launch and the intentions of the ERC. Kilani films it in a café, a public space where activities cease and everyone watches the television attentively. The official narration of the ERC goes: ‘Twenty thousand files have been opened by the ERC since it has been in action since January 2004. This figure was disclosed tonight by the President of the Commission Driss Ben Zikri. He says: “The ERC is in charge of the following missions: 1 – establishing truth, 2 – reparation and integration of victims, 3 – recommendations to prevent repetition of crimes and 4 – reconciliation. As well as solving the fate of people missing, the proposition of adequate solutions for those whose death has been established.”’ Establishing the truth then is the first step in the legal process, and as I have indicated before, there is no real engagement with the perpetrators: no individual will be persecuted, instead the state will organise reparation and reconciliation. In reaction to the clarity with which Driss Ben Zikri states the goals of the Commission, an elderly man, a torture victim in the film states: ‘Those are no memories, just words, holes, silence, mending.’ It accentuates the constructedness of the narrative the ERC wants to hear. He goes on: Reconstructing some kind of self, where to start? No memories, just words I keep on repeating, dishevelled words. What really happened in Morocco? A contained, underground struggle. Bitter and ongoing fights. An ever-changing snake. Thirty years, forty years! Then the implosion. People died, disappeared, went missing, people talked, there were rumours. Dusts of words that swirled around. With these words he expresses and embodies the insecurity, the fear and the inability to speak and make sense of a past that consisted of violent oppression and torture. He also exemplifies the fear of not being believed. His consideration for the listener impedes on his ability

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to express himself. He never speaks directly to the camera, barely ever speaks when the camera is turned on him, but is mostly heard in voice-offs: ‘I was incarcerated in 1976. I came out in 1989. A frozen lapse in time. All throttled up, sealed throat. Only past events find their way out. Absolute silence. Or too many words. I want to speak but words won’t come out. The box of the past is reopened but I don’t know how to react.’ He does not want to speak of it, and feels unable to do so: his throat is sealed. His fragmented, short sentences refuse to mention the specificities of what happened, while they also leave considerable gaps in his narrative. For him, the gaps need to remain present as they are the only form of truth and the only proof of his past. He says: ‘I have no chronology in mind. I never went over the events in my mind. There are steps that I grasped, steps that escaped. Scansions repeating themselves.’ Once again, gaps in his memory are acknowledged and even appreciated. Kilani shows photographs of the prison he was in, or still frames of him standing aimlessly on a street corner, illustrating his frozen being. When Kilani offers him images of the televised testimony hearings, he expresses disbelief and says: ‘I wouldn’t know how to talk this way. What would I say? I went to jail, I was tortured . . . words not feelings. I have come to the point that, narrate to someone . . . no. I’d be boring. Truth is the property of no one.’ Even though his cousins protest and accuse him of silencing himself, he insists that his silence expresses his experience better. His wisdom and resignation simultaneously inform his inability and unwillingness to speak about his past in detail. According to him, he has failed as a Moroccan Marxist Leninist activist, and accepted that failure a long time ago. The discord between generations is also illustrated by the discussions between Marzhen, an activist who survived prison, and his ancient grandmother. He is actively involved in the ERC, and is a member of the board who continue the work of the ERC after its official reports have been published. His grandmother fears his involvement with these official and unofficial bodies. The way she expresses herself is – as in the case of the Leninist activist – riddled with symbolism and metaphors. She cannot or will not listen to her grandson’s experiences in prison. She refuses to allow him to speak of it openly on

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camera when she is around. She silences him with her fear of the truth. She is happy she did not know what her grandson was doing back then. She preaches straight to the camera, with the body language of a strict teacher, that ignorance can be bliss: If I had known back then, I would not have let you. I would have disowned you and leave my heart in peace. But at that time I knew nothing . . . why tease the dragon? The system, Marzhen, is like a stream. It nurtures some and breaks others under its floods. But the Makhzan, to be fair and honest, let you be unless you come looking for trouble. The Makhzan are like bees. When the sun is high and you stay away from the hive, you have no trouble. But if you pick on them, they will come after you, and cover you until you are down on the floor. The symbolism in her language is arguably a consequence of the metaphors so prevalent in the Arabic language, especially in Morocco. Equally however, it reveals the mysterious air surrounding the Makhzan and the secrecy the grandmother wishes to maintain. She repeatedly states ‘I knew nothing’, ‘I know nothing of his activism’ and she obviously wishes to maintain the distance between herself and the knowledge that her grandson is gathering. But the self-imposed amnesia is merely a mask enforced by the mantra of not knowing: she does have opinions and knowledge that are revealed when she describes what the Makhzan are like, even if it is described metaphorically through the images of dragons and bees. The Abdesalem family further illustrates this discord between generations and the difficulty to express oneself in the context of an incapacitating fear and repression. Grandmother Abdesalem’s husband disappeared in 1972 and was never heard of again. No one spoke of him or asked about him, and the terrifying notion of being associated with his anti-government activism lead to a self-imposed amnesia on the part of the grandmother. The dialogue between grandmother and granddaughter is revealing to the point where the granddaughter insists on finding out more but the grandmother refuses to attempt to remember or speak of it:

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Grandmother:

Granddaughter: Grandmother:

Granddaughter: Grandmother: Granddaughter: Grandmother:

Granddaughter: Grandmother: Granddaughter: Grandmother:

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So many people went away, little one, there is no way to speak of it, I have no idea what was going on. No idea what was going on . . . one day he got up, got dressed and went to the Union and that’s it, he was gone. He never came back. But you behaved as if he was a criminal. We hid him in our hearts and held our tongues. We felt humiliated and guilty because something shady had happened. We kept quiet. 20 days later they came and searched the flat and we were ordered out. Just forget it. Why did you never tell us? Why? It was our shame, what is there to say? What more can I say? But you must have imagined, thought things. No, never, we were scared. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to say? Zaynab? The truth! What do you want me to say? But you said he was dead! He is!

This dialogue illustrates the different attitudes towards the past between young and old. Those who experienced the repressive regime seem so traumatised by it that they refuse to or are unable to speak of it. The constant repetition of ‘I don’t know . . . What do you want me to say?’ is frustrating for the granddaughter as she wants to hear her grandmother’s version of what happened. But her grandmother finds it impossible to speak of it. The silence that follows arguably says even more than the words they exchanged. It is, according to Felman and Laub, equally difficult to listen to human suffering and traumatic narratives. ‘The experience of [ . . . ] listening to the extreme limit-experiences, entails its hazards and might equally suddenly shake up one’s whole grip on one’s experience and one’s life.’17 The granddaughter is inexperienced in listening, as her frustration shows, but empathises in

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The Abdesalem family. Photograph: courtesy of Leila Kilani

as far as her experience allows. Felman and Laub acknowledge that the ‘listener has to learn how to recognise hazards, how to integrate these pitfalls of the witnessing into the fulfilment of their human task, and how to bond with the narrator in a common struggle to release the testimony, which, in spite of inhibitions on both sides, will allow the telling of the trauma to proceed and reach its testimonial resolution’.18 While this success of the testimony is not reached on screen between grandmother and granddaughter, it is the empathy between them and their attempts to work with the Commission that eventually lead to a few breakthroughs: a photograph is found from the Union workers with Mr Abdesalem on it, and a few witnesses eventually come forward who are willing to speak to the Commission about Mr Abdesalem. The short episode where they find a photograph of the grandfather with his Workers’ Union excites Zaynab tremendously and reveals her optimism and her belief that this will help them to establish what happened. She says: ‘You want to know about what happened to granddad? You and this picture can tell. There isn’t anything else!’ But once again, her grandmother expresses her inability to narrate the events: ‘I can’t read or write, so how would I know anyone? I don’t know anything.

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Don’t ask for trouble or you’ll get trouble.’ The grandmother’s inability and unwillingness to testify are matched with her body language and facial expressions: she waves her hand as if to dismiss everything that comes out of her mouth, and turns away from her granddaughter and from the camera, leaving the room on two occasions. Once again, these silences say much more than the words could about pain and reconciliation. The grandmother has reconciled herself to the fact that amnesia is more comfortable than reliving the pain of thirty years ago.

Silence on camera Within the many silences in Our Forbidden Places, Kilani portrays the lost nature of words and individuals making an effort to come to terms with the traumatic past. Frustrations are expressed in words, but also in body language and facial expressions. The patience of Kilani when she is present during conversations is illustrated by instances where silences take over the conversations and illustrate the internal struggle between remembering and forgetting. Some of the older people in this film clearly indicate a wish to forget. Khanna described this as a forgetting to remember, a self-imposed amnesia that is potentially also a way to deal with the painful past. Downward looks and refusing hand gestures towards the camera reveal it as an instrument that interferes in a highly personal moment, but seeing this is necessary for the listener or the spectator in order to reach the level of empathy needed for understanding. The camera’s gaze – in close-ups as well as long shots – offers gaps within the attempted testimonies that represent the latency Caruth mentions, and the difficulty to narrativise trauma analysed by Felman and Laub. These gaps include a near-complete drowning out of sound (a soft buzzing sound or bruit covers all that is said) and a moment of absolute pause. The camera stops, frames an image and focuses on it in order to provide the spectator a moment to reflect on the pain the words have caused and the severity of the events that have taken place. The motif that Kilani uses most strikingly in this film is the window and door. Windows and doors are indicators of access through walls. They are portals towards insight and they have the potential to offer new, enlightening points of view. There is an option of opening the

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doors or windows and walking or looking through them. Yet the windows in the film form a mosaic that is filmed from so close that the bigger picture remains obscure to the spectator. If there is a meaning to this mosaic of doors and windows, it is that while the door has been slightly put ajar for truth to be dealt with in the past and to illustrate a willingness to move forward towards a new Morocco, these doors and windows refuse to be completely open and traversable. They remain an obstacle, thus signifying the commentary on the ERC: that while there is an attempt at reconciliation, the compensation is ineffective as no perpetrators are brought to justice. At the same time, windows and doors bring attention to the camera as an intruder in a situation that is in essence very intimate. After the frustrating dialogue between granddaughter and grandmother Abdesalem, there is a moment where the editing cuts to the outside of the house and frames the many windows. The light is on in one of them. The film then cuts back to the inside of the room, and grandmother and granddaughter are entwined in an intimate embrace, their dialogue is not translated and made incomprehensible by the soft bruit in the soundtrack. The camera has thus self-reflexively illustrated that it recognises its own intrusions into the private life of this family, but it has also shown film’s ability to take distance and offer participants as well as spectators a pause in demanding dialogues. Young Mr Said, who lost his father after he was imprisoned for three years and never returned, is completely incapacitated by his loss. He is not only unable to speak; he is also almost completely immobile. His voice is so silent that the spectator of the film can barely hear him, and his body is so motionless that at times one wonders whether the shot is actually a freeze: he barely moves at all during the whole film. He is petrified in both senses of the word. Kilani here emphasises the ability of the camera to analyse body language and facial expression, and make these non-verbal expressions speak of trauma and fear. Mr Said has a constant look of terror in his eyes. He is an adult but unable to act as one. He often acts like an undeveloped teenager, withdrawn and confused, as he has never had the chance to get to know his father, whom he never saw. He represents the constant stupor of silence and fear inherent to the repression of the Years of Lead. Close-ups of

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Mr Said and his mother. Photograph: courtesy of Leila Kilani

his face reveal a constant pout and eyes are wide open, almost like a deer caught in headlights. He feels on display throughout the film. He is also under constant duress from his male family members. He is stuck in a one-way dialogue with his mother and male family members who do not succeed in letting him speak, or in listening to him. He is unable to utter his grief. He has one wish, which is to give his father a proper Muslim burial once his body is found near the secret detention centre of Tazmamart. His family members protest, and so do the committee people as it is far too complex a process (the body has been in a mass grave for more than a decade) that could set unmanageable precedents. He is told off for his histrionics, although we do not witness it. Only once does he give an insight into his predicament. He says: ‘I try to broaden my mind but my imagination cannot follow. I believe I will never grasp the reality of Tazmamart.’ Throughout the film he lets the words of his family members slide off his back like drops of water as he turns his back on them and turns towards the camera, with a very hurt and angry look on his face like that of a chastised child. His silences tell of his own suffering, not necessarily the trauma of torture that his father has gone through.

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His inability to become an adult and to deal with the pain he feels, his stubbornness about his wish to bury his father, have become ways for him to freeze time. He is stuck in a stifling state of inertness and is never understood by either his mother or the committee. Only the camera and Kilani are able to reveal, in his body language and facial expressions, the trauma of growing up without a father and without knowing precisely what happened to his father.

Conclusion For the Abdesalem family, the ERC proves a difficult and re-traumatising institution. Grandmother Abdelsalem does not want to or is unable to speak of the disappearance of her husband, while her granddaughter insists on knowing the truth. However, the grandmother consistently shuns conversations about the past and her interaction with the commissioners is very painful: she leaves the room where the interrogation is going on, turns her back towards the camera, refuses to speak to the commissioners and generally refuses to cooperate with the investigation. Her daughter and granddaughter force the Commission’s actions forward, searching for witnesses and photographic proof. The relationship between the grandmother and her granddaughter therefore comes under strain. This reflects the difficulties of coming to terms with the past after such a long time. Memory is no doubt partial while the truth is defined differently by different generations. Young Mr Said equally seems unable to speak of the trauma he underwent as a young boy realising his father was absent from his life. His silence says more than words could, but he does attempt to assist the commissioners in their search for his father’s bodily remains. He is frustrated with the institutionalised and impersonal approach the commissioners take towards his case and breaks down in front of them on several occasions. His mother attempts to speak to him rationally about the events, but once again their relationship comes under strain because of the re-traumatisation after years of forced forgetting. Our Forbidden Places then does what the ERC in Morocco could not do successfully for the four families on screen: it offers a platform for

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a selected number of victims of the Years of Lead to attempt to speak about their suffering. In very diverse circumstances, different families deal with the past in a different way. Nevertheless, the conclusion of the film is the same for all four families: words do not offer the possibility to truly and freely express grief and pain. But the medium of film offers more than words. The visual quality of the documentary offers possibilities for a broader understanding of trauma. The camera’s intimate observation of the families, of body language and facial expressions, adds a crucial layer to the expression of truth and trauma. Testimony is not limited to narrativisation of the past. Visual art offers a new layer to testimony: through empathy and subjectivity, a relationship can be established between subject, director and spectator – and in this triangle of communication, unspoken words may express more than words could. The closure of the film asserts, in the words of the tortured man: ‘I am aware that nobody understands me. Compensation? Of those lost years? That is impossible. I have accepted that.’ This revealing statement counts for Abesalem and Said as well. Compensation is impossible, testimony is impossible, narrativisation of trauma is impossible. But the attempt of Kilani to go beyond words to open up other means of communicating the pain of others non-verbally, makes of this documentary a tool that works towards an understanding of pain, and empathy for its victims.

Notes 1. Slyomovics, Susan, ‘A Truth Commission for Morocco’, Middle East Report, http:// www.merip.org/mer/mer218/218_slymovics.html, accessed 27 May 2009. 2. Ibid. 3. Carter, Sandra Gayle, What Moroccan Cinema? A Historical and Critical Study, 1956–2006 (Lanham, 2009) p.17. 4. Ibid, p.52. 5. Ibid, p.166. 6. Ibid, p.226. 7. Orlando, Valerie Key, Francophone Voices of the New Morocco in Film and Print: (Re)presenting a Society in Transition (Basingstoke, 2009), p.xvi. 8. Ibid, p.xix. 9. Slyomovics, The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco (Philadelphia, 2005). 10. Orlando: Francophone Voices of the New Morocco in Film and Print, p.217.

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11. Khanna, Ranjana, Algeria Cuts. Women & Representation, 1830 to the Present. (Stanford, 2008), pp.124. 12. Berger, John, Ways of Seeing (London, 1972), p.7. 13. Ibid, p.11. 14. Khanna: Algeria Cuts. Women & Representation, p.124. 15. Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York and London, 1992). 16. Caruth, Cathy, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995). 17. Felman and Laub: Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, p. xvi. 18. Ibid, p. xvii.

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CHAPTER TWELVE BEYOND ‘VICTIMOLOGY’: GENERATING AGENCY THROUGH FILM IN EASTERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO Chérie Rivers

Every October at the foot of Volcano Nyiaragongo, in the centre of a town suspended in the crossfire between rebel militias and UN blue helmets, even the least interested observer will hear the chant of ‘Yole!’1 competing with the roar of military helicopters. In October, thousands of people – Congolese and international guests alike – descend on Goma, many openly defying armed forces, all intent on participating in the Salaam Kivu International Film Festival (SKIFF). Despite the official signing of peace treaties in 2003, the war in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues in 2008.2 In the face of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s3 threat that his soldiers would seize control of the region, Goma witnessed a spectacle on par with the most celebrated moments in ‘revolutionary cinema’. International reports on Eastern DRC depict a terrorised region in which women are more likely than not to be gang-raped, and child soldiers carry out unimaginable atrocities at the bidding of corrupt warlords. Viewed in this light, the spectacle of more than nine thousand people potentially

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endangering their lives to participate in a film festival is perhaps surprising. Yet, if we consider this event in the context of the ‘film act’ of Third Cinema, in which the viewer is ‘no longer a spectator [but] . . . from the moment he decide[s] to attend the showing . . . by taking risks and contributing his living experience . . . [becomes] an actor, a more important protagonist than those who appear in the films’,4 participation in SKIFF provides a window onto a community whose engagement with cinema is transforming them into agents of social change. It is necessary to emphasise that their agency is evident not only in their critical participation in screenings and discussions of films but also in the films themselves, some of which are authored by the growing population of youth in Goma, who are beginning to recognise the role of art in consolidating peace. The DRC’s troubled history has been well-documented – from the slave trade, King Leopold II’s reign of terror, Belgian colonisation, to the rapid disillusionment of ‘independence’ during which the corruption, looting and violence of today gained momentum. Both the historical and psychological results of these events stand out even among the most fraught postcolonial African nations. I summon these historical spectres solely to draw attention to the inordinate duration of conditions that clearly situate the population of the Congo in a context of prolonged trauma, whether we preference Freud’s definition of trauma as a cataclysmic event that shatters the individual or collective’s prior frame of reference,5 or Erikson’s amendment to the ‘social dimension’ of trauma, in which ‘the tissues of the community can be damaged in much the same way as the tissues of mind and body . . . creat[ing] a mood, ethos – a group culture, almost – that is different from (and more than) the sum of the private wounds that make it up’.6 Within this context, this chapter examines one project of restorative cinema – which includes a production company, Alkebu Productions, a cultural centre, Yole!Africa, and SKIFF – founded by filmmaker and activist Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. Through a close reading of Ndaliko’s films and an analysis of his activist initiatives, this chapter draws attention to the emerging trend of peace through film in the face of violence and conflict in Eastern DRC. Specifically, I am reading Ndaliko’s films and

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Yole!Africa’s programmes as efforts to contribute to agency through art – both with regard to the content of artistic production and to the potential for empowerment inherent in the practice of expression. I also argue that they facilitate the complex process of working through individual and collective trauma and restoring agency to a population whose measure of ‘normalcy’ has been displaced for generations. Having invoked the DRC’s ethos of trauma, I prefer, in the remainder of the chapter, to leave King Leopold’s ghosts lie, and emphasise instead the ways in which art, and specifically cinema, are emerging as media of potential healing.

Framing Eastern DRC Both through Alkebu Productions and Yole!Africa, Ndaliko’s activities as a militant filmmaker fall squarely within the ideology of Third Cinema as put forth by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, who define the genre as ‘the cinema that recognizes . . . the most gigantic cultural, scientific, and artistic manifestation of our time, the great possibility of constructing a liberated personality with each people as the starting point – in a word, the decolonization of culture’.7 These facets of Ndaliko’s work situate him within a Fanonian framework and in a network of African artists intent on continuing the project of establishing a ‘National Culture’ – read as an impulse toward decolonisation – which remains a relevant project in the face of neo-colonialism’s pervasiveness in the present ‘global’ moment. In this context, Yole!Africa offers youth populations training in a number of art forms, including music, dance, visual arts and cinema, with a central focus on the latter, in efforts to facilitate peace, reconciliation and rehabilitation. Of the numerous reasons for cinema’s success with these objectives, this chapter examines three. First, film is a commemorative medium that safeguards personal and communal experience against threats of omission, erasure and forgetting. Second, in instances of collective trauma, where cultural mores limit verbal processing of events, film can break the silence by speaking the ‘unspeakable’, creating both a model and a space for conversation and healing. And third, the expressive/reflective process of cinematic creativity itself emerges as a tool of self-discovery

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and rehabilitation, especially for youth. This rehabilitation not only takes the form of enhanced self-esteem and confidence from learning valuable new skills, but it also highlights the power of art as a way of pulling productivity out of conflict. In short, I would like to look at the commemorative, the generative, and the regenerative potential of film. These three analytical categories often overlap – and in fact, I will ultimately suggest that it is the interrelation between them that yields film’s tremendous success as a means of realising peace in Eastern DRC. These categories also reflect the theoretical framework of this chapter, which seeks simultaneously to address the ‘activist aesthetic and critical spectatorship’,8 to borrow Teshome Gabriel’s words, as well as the cinematic aesthetic of Ndaliko’s works. Parallel to Ndaliko’s dual occupation with militant activism and avant-garde film, this analysis mediates between critical theories of Third Cinema, that foreground ‘the relationship between the work [film], the society, and the popular memory that binds them together’,9 and less polemic modes of criticism on African cinema. Central to the project of reconstituting agency in Eastern DRC is the necessity of combating dominant media representations with their immense ‘power to make [African subjects] see and experience [themselves] as “Other”’.10 A long history of images advancing negative stereotypes, generated by colonial and neo-colonial powers and internalised by their former subjects, has led to a condition Stuart Hall refers to as the ‘inner expropriation of cultural identity [which] cripples and deforms’.11 Therefore, it befalls the militant filmmaker to assemble images that ‘constitute new subjectivities’ to combat the ‘miserabilist and victimological approach’12 of Western media, whose depictions of Congo invoke contemporary reiterations of the savage images that were central to strategies of dominance and terror in DRC’s unique history of colonisation.13 In the best of cases, these current media images use shock value to incite outrage about the atrocities taking place in conflict regions in order to raise funds. But in alliance with ‘a certain kind of left colonialism which scans a vast and variegated third world horizon to find only passive victims’14 they risk minimising the complexities of the stories they tell and collapsing vibrant individuals into stereotypes whose significance is circumscribed by their status

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as victims. In an effort to subvert film’s power to normalise conditions of victimhood and immobility, Ndaliko has developed cinematic strategies that underline characters that retain their strength, agency and vibrancy despite their experiences of violence and suffering. He employs these strategies to confront the vast divergence between the realities of war, violence and rape, and the (predominantly foreign) films that ostensibly depict these events.15 Nowhere is this more evident than in his efforts to address two of the most contentious issues in global depictions of DRC, namely sexual violence against women and child soldiers. Rape – systematic, excessively violent gang-rape – is among the most widely broadcast atrocities in DRC. It is the subject of reports and statistics, dire travel warnings and human rights efforts; victims of rape are the subjects of documentaries and photography campaigns, their stories of violation the subject of outrage. But where are the stories in which these women’s lives – not only their rapes – are the subject? In an attempt to resolve the self-imposed mission to make a film about violence against women that does not re-violate them either in the making or the viewing, Ndaliko himself puts it best: We can’t remain insensitive. We have to react to the atrocity of sexual violence against women. But how to convey what I see, what I hear, what is lived around me without falling into the cliché of voyeurism? Must a horrific story be told in a horrific way? Must a bloody story be written with blood so that people understand?16 Ndaliko’s efforts to move beyond the clichés of voyeurism have led to a number of films grappling with the lived realities of suffering and violation while simultaneously countering dominant representations of sexual violence against women by commemorating their dignity and ingenuity. These films include multi-genre short, documentary, fiction and avant-garde films of which Twaomba Amani (2004), Jazz Mama (2010), True Story (2008), Hakika (2007) and Lamokowang (2004) are among the best known. One common theme that runs through these films is a reminder of the esteem in which tradition dictates women ought to be held.

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Gestures – such as the anthropomorphising of Kinshasa as a beautiful woman whose body becomes the map and rhythm of daily life (in Jazz Mama) – insist that viewers recognise, or remember, the central role of women in traditional and contemporary societies. The films cite systematic violence against the bearers of life as the most extreme perversion of a sacred social structure and the ultimate weapon with which to unravel life. By examining the repercussions of unravelling lives, and placing their stories in controversial political contexts, Ndaliko’s films position rape not only as a violation and destruction of the physical body, but as violation and destruction of the mind, the community, and the land as well. An analysis of all of the above-listed films is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, despite the difficulty of quantifying the impact of film – or indeed any art – on society, I would like to examine both the power of art to catalyse internal and personal transformation on an individual (psychological) basis, and the power of art to catalyse larger-scale change, including social and political policy and practice, by looking at True Story and Twaomba Amani.

Imagining possibilities In DRC, where people regularly grapple with profoundly traumatic experiences, film potentially generates change in individuals and groups by breaking socially sanctioned silences through the creation of characters and spaces to speak the unspeakable. In recognition of this, Ciné Club, a program of Yole!Africa, regularly screens films (Ndaliko’s and others’) in critical public spaces – general urban settings, classrooms, remote military camps, hospitals for victims of sexual violence – using deeply moving stories to facilitate relevant, if unprecedented, discussions. Like the ‘film act’, the objective of Ciné Club is not only to expose the public to powerful films, but also to generate critical thought and reflection, and ‘provoke with each showing . . . a liberated space, a decolonised territory . . . a kind of political event, which, according to Fanon, could be “a liturgical act, a privileged occasion for human beings to hear and be heard”’.17 An example of the transformative power of this ‘liberated space’ took place at a Ciné Club screening for victims of sexual violence18

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when one woman, who had refused to speak for years following her rape and the killing of her husband and children, decided to share her story. To everyone’s shock, her connection to the heroine in the featured film compelled her to stand up and speak what had until then been unspeakable for her. As such, she embodied Stuart Hall’s assertion that ‘cinema is not a second-order mirror held up to reflect what already exists, but . . . that form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover places from which to speak’.19 Furthermore, the featured film highlighted the solidarity of women as a source of strength, a solidarity that was easily transposed onto the community of women present at the screening.20 In this way the film provided a model that inspired at least one viewer to reposition herself in relation to her own reality and ‘reconstitute’ herself and those around her, transforming them from fellow victims to a potential community of support. Let me not represent this moment in a more grandiose light than it warrants, for clearly it is only one of the elements necessary in the complex process of rehabilitation. However, this incident demonstrates ‘[t]he capacity for synthesis and the penetration of the film image, the possibilities offered by the living document, and naked reality, and the power of enlightenment of audiovisual means [which] make film far more effective than any other tool of communication’.21 It is precisely this juxtaposition of extreme realism and imagination, inherent in film as an art form that invited deep associations with a cinematic heroine whose encounter with violence ended very differently from her own, that generated an alternate response to a traumatic situation in this spectator’s imagination and thereby began to catalyse healing. In addition to the experiential level on which cinema can generate ‘new kinds of subjects’, the above example was also generative in a material sense, for this woman’s speech became the inspiration for Ndaliko’s short film True Story. True Story does not attempt to recreate literal events, but, in drawing influence from and interpreting lived experience, is self-consciously ‘both constructivist and empirical’.22 This film, which defies temporal continuity, is a near collage of images without dialogue, exhaled through the incessant smoke of a soldier, as memories – or fantasies – of his experiences in the army haunt him.

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He relives the moments that transformed his intention of protecting the women in his family into disillusionment with the complexities and corruptions of the state. Interspersed with the soldier’s memories are the stories of two women. The juxtaposition of flashbacks, which are shot with documentarian dynamism, and the cinematic realism of the depictions of the women, blur distinctions between ‘reality’ and its filmic representations, offering the viewer ‘multiple points of view . . . in the delivery of the subject matter [which] thus stands in for a memory deferred by official history, and demands of us [the viewer] a new form of political awareness’.23 The memories of this lone soldier indeed fall among those ‘deferred by official history’, yet their content exposes the very multitude of perspectives – individual and partisan – that underlie the current iteration of DRC’s conflict. Furthermore, the choice to represent these tensions specifically through the medium of film references the long history of images in and about DRC and their role in determining local and international opinion and policy.24 With this gesture True Story insists that the viewer recognise both the complexities of the underlying political and economic situation in the conflict in DRC as well as the role of media representations therein. Simultaneously, images of the women, one African, presumably Congolese, the other white with blond hair and blue eyes, confront the viewer. The camera isolates a series of parallel activities and body parts of these two women, starting with an extreme close-up that pans slowly across their mouths, then their eyes. Later they are shown in a bathtub cleaning blood from unidentifiable body parts smearing it repeatedly against the side of the tub. The film finally shows them walking down a street in a shot that alternates between eliciting fear that they are being followed – as if they are prey in a dangerous world – and celebrating the confident sensuality that defines their gait. Implicitly, these shots critique and offer alternatives to trends of representing women in films on rape in DRC, offering double meanings in lieu of the well-worn images that risk collapsing Congolese women into clichés of what they tell, what they see, and how they look. These alternative representations are evident in (at least) two specific forms. First, the continuous panning of the camera across lips and eyes suggests, in cinematic language, a continuity of image across

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time. Although the isolation of facial features (specifically the mouth) is a common practice in films on sexual violence – sometimes to draw increased attention to the act of ‘speaking out’, other times to veil the identity of the speaker – in Ndaliko’s words, the addition of constant movement of the shot suggests that: the camera (meaning time) passes and keeps moving, but these eyes and mouths are ever-present. They are not going to close, they don’t end with time, or even with the end of an individual’s life. Being endless means no matter what we are going to keep speaking out because we see what is happening and we know we are responsible to contribute to changing it. Second, the representation of violence (i.e. washing off of blood) indirectly implies rape without depicting images that risk (re)violating viewers who have experienced sexual violence. Through abstract representations of violation rendered increasingly urgent by their ambiguity and by the close proximity of the camera, the viewer experiences the devastation of sexual violence without specific (or lingering) images that carry the potential to generate trauma in and of themselves. Furthermore, the parallel shots – which overlap to the extent that the viewer begins to wonder if these two women are in fact the same character – offer powerful commentary on the intrinsic value of women and their power to contribute to ending the conflict. This aspect of the film expands the cinematic metaphor of the endless continuity of images across time to include the simultaneous, trans-generational, multi-nation presence of vigilant women who refuse to look away in the face of violation. True Story thus becomes an ‘autobiographical narrative’ which, in Gabriel’s words, is ‘a multi-generational and transindividual autobiography, i.e. a symbolic autobiography where the collective subject is the focus . . . this extended sense of autobiography (perhaps hetero-biography) is more than an expression of shared experience; it is a mark of solidarity with people’s lives and struggles’.25 True Story offers a hetero-biographical scrutiny of ‘people’s lives and struggles’ and ultimately insists that the worth of women – African, white or otherwise – is based on their humanity, which transcends colour

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and time and is therefore a viable foundation upon which to generate a new collective biography. However, True Story, like many of Ndaliko’s films, is non-narrative and avant-garde (occasionally to the point of esotericism), which betrays an underlying tension with the more didactic stylistic practices of most activist filmmakers. Furthermore, the cinematography and the dominant parallel of African and white women deviate from aesthetic practices often associated with ‘African’ cinema. Solanas and Getino account somewhat for this apparent contradiction when they caution against ‘those tendencies which are always latent in the revolutionary artist to lower the level of investigation and the language of a theme, in a kind of neo-populism, down to levels which, while they may be those upon which the masses move, do not help them to get rid of the stumbling blocks left by imperialism’.26 Stephen Zacks offers further contextualisation when he points to the marginalisation that inevitably results from ‘the constitution of Africa . . . as a unity essentially in opposition to, or separable from, the West and its stylistic, thematic, and industrial characteristics’. For even in an oppositional stance the West still emerges as the centre against which all else is defined and ‘African cultural products [are reduced] to the status of something secondary and servile’.27 Finally, Trinh T Minh-ha and Julianne Burton (among others) suggest a relevant (re)appropriation of Western critical practices that resists Euro-centrism but does not thereby deny African cinema the potential benefits of some of the scholarly/artistic contributions of the West. In this context I suggest that, in its self-conscious non-conformity to the stylistic practices that delineate ‘African cinema’ as a genre based in an original or authentic – and, according to Zacks, ‘misleading’28 – Africanity, True Story’s cinematic aesthetic pro-actively confronts the ‘blocks left by imperialism’, and its stylistic principles of abstraction and narrative discontinuity effectively further the project of ‘National Culture’. Furthermore, while its depictions oppose dominant practices, True Story’s style is not defined by opposition alone, but by genesis as well, aiming to provide a space in which characters – and by extension viewers – can renegotiate and recreate themselves on their own terms. In other words, the very rejection of didacticism and fixed conceptions of African identity become potent tools of activism that contribute to eradicating traces

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of mental colonisation. This is particularly evident in the climax of the film, when the soldier sneaks up on his commanding officer in the bath and shoots him. This moment represents layered meanings that prod viewers to raise the level of investigation and look beyond acts of vengeance to more comprehensive issues of structural corruption and mental colonisation. Beyond its intrinsic value, True Story provides a powerful example of the cyclical nature of self-realisation, articulation and artistic expression that combine to form what I call the generative potential of cinema. In this example, one woman’s decision to give voice to her experience, to ‘share . . . responsibility in the construction of the text, where both the filmmaker and the spectators play a double role as performers and creators’,29 became manifest in cinematic form. True Story not only validates her suffering and strength, but also ‘enters the [future] spectator’s own autobiography, awakening a reconstituted identity which allows for the sharing in and acknowledgment of the collective struggle’30 and thereby empowers others who see themselves in her story. In contrast to True Story, which alludes to sexual violence without openly depicting a rape scene, Twaomba Amani takes a more direct approach. Twaomba Amani is an example of both the commemorative power of film as well as its potential to effect larger-scale social transformation. The footage at the beginning of the film, which depicts women demonstrating against sexual violence in Beni, North-Kivu,31 was shot by an anonymous young man whose actions reflect the growing regional influence of ‘those filmmakers . . . who see a community under threat, for whom the very idea of identity is an indispensable tool for liberatory mobilization, [and who] speak with urgent voices of the need to nourish and stimulate the memory and activism of the community’.32 Later, a coalition of women’s rights organisations brought this footage to Ndaliko, requesting that he make it into Twaomba Amani, a film that ‘stands as both a representation of popular memory and as an instance of popular memory itself’.33 Twaomba Amani begins with black-and-white images of the rally organised by the women of Beni, who are outraged by years of systematic rape and abuse. The opening shots portray their anger at the lack

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of social or legal recourse available to them in the aftermath of such devastating violation, especially as it is often perpetrated by members of the police force, the military and UN troops. In protest, hundreds of women marched through the streets to the Police, Army and UN headquarters carrying their mattresses on their heads – some tearing their clothes off – challenging the men who prey on them in secret to come have sex with them in public if they dare: We have to talk, they are saying that we are in democracy, but we don’t have the right to say anything. We are underestimated. Enough is enough. They wanted to have sex with us, that’s why they have killed our sister. Let them come and fuck us then. Let them come and fuck. We are so despised.34 Propelled by a sparse yet faintly military rhythm, close-ups of the women’s faces as they speak directly into the camera alternate with medium-long shots of their progression through the city, always fading back to black, in a repeated metaphor of erasure and reification. The directness of sound and image, as well as the carriage of the protestors, combine to constitute these women as dignified subjects even as they speak openly of the violation perpetrated against them. There is nothing in these women’s presentation that indicates that they accept themselves as merely powerless victims. Rather, they speak forcefully and articulately into the camera, insisting not that the world unite to send them tokens of pity, but embodying their commitment to changing their reality. One particularly striking example of the dignity of these women occurs with a close-up shot of a woman speaking into the camera.35 We cannot hear her words, nor do we get a translation. However, the expression on her face as, eyes half closed, she holds her head high, swaying to an inaudible rhythm as she march-dances down the street, leaves us to wonder whether she is singing or speaking, whether her message is one of dignity or suffering, or whether the distinction for her is perhaps in a slightly different place.

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Twaomba Amani does not only depict an outspoken response to rape, but, following the specifications of the organisations that commissioned the film, also shows the brutal act itself.36 Their choice to depict a rape scene accords with Berger’s assertion that ‘only if traumas are remembered can they lose, gradually but never entirely, their traumatic effects’.37 The second half of this short film shows a woman washing dishes in the river when a man attacks her from behind, and despite her struggle, overpowers and rapes her. As she fights him in the grass, the image (which was in full colour until this moment) begins to dissolve, first losing clarity as it becomes jumbled and superimposed upon itself in numerous iterations, then losing colour as it becomes a negative of itself. Simultaneously, we hear her inhale in a large gasp, then the sound becomes stifled and dull, pulsing like a muffled, distant heartbeat, until she suddenly gasps for air and erupts into a piercing moan which lasts well beyond the dissolution of the image to black. Following this, the film cuts to short sequences of documentary footage of women lying dead in the streets after attacks, but the footage is seeped in a deep indigo colour, which prevents us from either distinguishing exact content or objectifying the scenes. The final images of the film return – in black and white – to the rally, first showing the women from behind in their determined march, then with them facing the camera en masse, as if to challenge the viewer, who, having even glimpsed their daily reality, becomes implicated in their efforts, whether through action or through silence. Analysis of this film is pertinent on two levels, namely the implications of the rally itself, and the cinematic techniques with which Ndaliko assembled the images. In looking at sexual violence and rape as sources of trauma, this rally is noteworthy as it proactively confronts the potential for shock to stun victims – individuals as well as the collective – into a state of inaction. Instead, these women, whose lives rarely contain a lived index of pre-traumatic conditions, cite their own humanity and dignity as the ‘source’ to which they turn in their project of regaining agency.38 Furthermore, in a metaphoric continuation of the original rally, the organisations that commissioned the film have literally walked, cycled, driven and flown Twaomba Amani to villages throughout Eastern DRC, sharing it with

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women in rural areas and increasing the momentum and the numbers of those who join this march against paralysis and inaction. Their efforts propel the effects of Twaomba Amani beyond its evident commemorative function into the realm of social and political change as these organisations cite Twaomba Amani as central in their successful effort to pressure parliament to recognise rape as a war crime. As such, Twaomba Amani is a powerful example of self-determined representation that reflects the centrality of strength and dignity in the strategies of Congolese women as they confront sexual violence, as well as the cinematic metaphor of a growing movement capable of realising real world change.

Regeneration: Engaging the child not the soldier The previous examples demonstrate cinema’s generative and commemorative contributions to peace and rehabilitation efforts, which brings us to the third aspect of film’s engagement with these endeavours, namely the ways in which the process of creativity itself is emerging as a powerful means of regeneration. In Eastern DRC, where the colonial occupation, Mobutu’s dictatorship, recurrent secessionist wars, and two large-scale international conflicts define reality, generations of young people have grown up in a lasting environment of violence, fear, inherited and compounded trauma. Furthermore, the educational systems, which were implemented by the colonial government as a means of maintaining psychological control over African subjects, retain many of the ‘severe distortions in the cultural sphere, the systematic . . . self-inferiorization of the colonized’39 and have not been adequately modified to foster self-esteem and awareness. Finally, the animosity between rival ethnic groups, that has its roots in early European-African encounters and the slave trade, continues to escalate, preventing neighbouring groups from recognising shared history, cultural practices, aspirations and ideals. Yet, precisely in this region, where ‘it is easier to hold a gun than a camera’,40 Ndaliko insists on the power of art as an alternative to the Fanonian violence cited by Homi Bhabha in the ‘struggle for psychoaffective survival and [the] search for human agency in the midst of

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the agony of oppression’.41 To this end, Yole!Africa offers programmes designed to foster the self-esteem and critical thinking necessary to transform youth populations from perpetuators of colonial values and violence into self-aware social agents with access to the knowledge and training to realise dreams that extend beyond violence, war and revenge. The remainder of this chapter examines a project called Alternative to TV [ALT2TV], which is in many ways a culmination of Yole!Africa’s offerings, as it both cultivates practical skills and recognises that restoring agency requires – as a precondition – working through and acknowledgement of trauma. ALT2TV combines technical and creative workshops that provide youth populations with the skills to produce short films, taking them through a three-month cycle of pre-production, production, and post-production that culminates in public screenings of their films. Within their larger mission of ‘contribut[ing] to the lasting peace of the Great Lakes region through capacity building in filmmaking and through the development of alternative opinions and critical debate’, Yole!Africa lists two specific objectives: namely to train young people in filmmaking and communication skills, and ‘to create awareness and critical mind in the community about peace and human rights’.42 This project introduces youth – from those with upper-class privilege to street children and former child soldiers – to social activism. The project also includes in its leadership local and regional activists, who ‘through their commitment [to activism], are the spokespersons of the communities [and] the mechanism for widespread change, capable of transcending the traditional ethnic and cultural barriers by speaking with a voice that carries to all sectors of the population’.43 Central to the mission of ALT2TV is the practice of positioning potential rivals as collaborative partners in creative production. This creates a social microcosm in which youth begin to recognise the necessity of prioritising cooperation over ethnic rivalry, and where victims of abuse – former child soldiers or otherwise – are not singled out for select treatment, but reintegrated into the community as equal participants in creativity. First it is important to recognise the enhanced self-esteem youth populations gain by developing creative and technical skills in

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filmmaking. In the present historical moment, digital media increasingly appear to youth as requisites for participation in a global dialogue. Therefore, learning skills associated with video and film production is directly equated with attaining the access and education necessary for self-representation in dominant media forms, which has profound implications in postcolonial settings. In this context, mastering sound-engineering, video- and audio-editing, lighting, camera techniques, etc. yield not only the expected self-confidence of exciting new skills, but also allow youth to carve for themselves a viable role in ‘the “dialogic” relation between intellectuals and “the people” as jointly engaged in bringing about social change’.44 Next, there is the element of empowerment: ALT2TV begins the process of empowering Congolese youth by exposing them to the connection between film and social accountability. One example that illustrates this point took place during a production workshop where participants were filming in Goma when a motorcyclist hit a child in the street. The presence of the camera at the scene of the accident forced the driver to pull over, stop, and, seeing the condition of his victim, take the child to the hospital – a series of actions he would not otherwise have taken, statistically speaking.45 In a city where crime and punishment are not typically causal, and where attempts to report violations are often met with official disregard or worse, participants cite this incident and other examples of the increased accountability resulting from the presence of a camera, as the beginning of a profound shift in their recognition of their own potential to effect local activity. Though not yet indicative of a complete transformation, this subtle psychological shift is an essential element in the process of the actualisation necessary to transform individuals from subject to agent, from voicelessness to profound awareness of the power of their voice. However, this internal experience, in which one might easily recognise Fanon’s celebrated psycho-affectivity becoming activated in relation to the camera, is, like violence or nationalism, ‘only ever mobilized into social meaning and historical effect through an embodied and embedded action, an engagement with (or resistance to) a given reality, or a performance of agency in the present tense’.46 Thus, ALT2TV pushes participants beyond the initial realisation of the power of the camera,

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to an active engagement with the critical thought and creativity necessary to transform themselves and their community through embodied performances of agency on a regular basis. Clearly, there remains a large gap between the embodied performance of introducing cameras into public spaces and the process of creating art. In recognition of this, and in conjunction with Ndaliko’s conviction that ‘emancipation rests in changing the education system shaped by the construction of a critical new media through films and literature’,47 ALT2TV’s workshops supplement educational offerings and introduce young people to independent thought by teaching them to discuss, analyse and critique existing films, as well as develop ideas and scripts for their own productions. The result is that, at least in North-Kivu, Congolese youth have begun to associate art with activism as evidenced by 15-year-old Balume’s observation, ‘the artist must recover his role; his role is to act as spokesperson of his community’.48 This quote comes from a short film profiling the life and aspirations of Balume Fonkodji Eric, a Congolese youth who has chosen to pursue his dreams of becoming a musician and producer instead of joining the army or a rebel militia. The film opens with a shot from one of Yole!Africa’s weekly jam sessions, in which a young singer calls attention to the failings of the state, denouncing politicians and encouraging his fellow citizens to recognise the corruption of Congolese politics. The remainder of the film introduces viewers to the private and public ambitions of one young person from Goma whose dreams were transformed by access to art. The camera work, the content, and the overall style of this film indicate a deep understanding of issues of representation and subjectivity that extend beyond the technical skills necessary to simply shoot and edit film footage. This example suggests that the analytical and creative training offered by ALT2TV successfully propels participants beyond simply equating the presence of a camera with agency, to an understanding that while technology can provide a real medium of social intervention, they themselves as thinking human beings must become the real agents of change. In other words, in an attempt to effect both psychological and material metamorphosis, ALT2TV recognises both the external condition (as represented by the fixed outward gaze of the camera) and the internal

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condition (accessing the psyche through creativity) as equal components of the agency necessary for transformation. The final component of ALT2TV is the public screenings of films. In local settings, international festivals and television programmes, youth projects are screened as part of the process of bringing critical awareness to the entire community. Local screenings are followed by discussions that challenge both viewers and producers to articulate their responses to the films. This process is both formative and validating, simultaneously generating excitement on the part of the community when they see films that are relevant to their lived experience, and offering aspiring filmmakers meaningful feedback and content for future films. In this way, the combination of enhanced self-esteem, empowerment, and critical artistic skill contributes to regenerating the lives and dreams of youth whose realities might otherwise continue to be shaped predominantly by violence.

Conclusion This chapter has highlighted examples of the generative, the commemorative and the regenerative potential of film as a means of healing, rehabilitation and reconciliation in DRC. In conclusion I would like to point out that it is in fact the interrelation between these categories that leads to films’ transformative social presence. For what emerges as a moment of generation in which a rape victim finds her voice, may coincide with the commemoration of another woman’s story, and the regeneration of the young person whose film is the intimate product of burgeoning healing. I do not want to draw artificial distinctions between elements of a process that exist in an organic continuum, as the beauty of creation and success in art – as in life – is complex. And if we return to the foot of Volcano Nyiargongo, we will not see faces branded by analytic categories, but multi-dimensional human beings engaged in an ongoing process of self-realisation. If we look beyond dominant representations of victimhood and failure, we will see stories of agency broadcasting themselves on the sides of Goma’s buildings, sleuthing through YouTube, insistently inserting themselves into global dialogues on what it means to be Congolese, to be African, to be

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human. If we, too, have the courage to risk our lives to participate in celebrating the power of art as an alternative to violence, we might catch a glimpse of the growing movement accompanied by the cry of ‘Yole!’ as it march-dances through North-Kivu Eastern DRC, leaving dreams and experiences of peace in its wake.

Notes 1. Yole! is a call used by cattle herders and shepherds in North Kivu meaning ‘come together’. 2. After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, rebel forces fled Rwanda into Eastern DRC instigating the First Congo War (1996–1997), at the end of which Kabila overthrew long-time dictator Mobutu. The First Congo War laid the groundwork for, and was shortly followed by the Second Congo War (1998–2003), also known as Africa’s World War, the largest war in modern African history, and the deadliest conflict since World War II. 3. Laurent Nkunda is a former general in DRC’s armed forces, and was the renegade leader of a rebel faction in North Kivu and the founder of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) until his capture in early 2009. The threat referenced here refers to the 2008 Nord-Kivu fighting, which began on 27 October 2008. 4. Getino, Octavio, and Fernando Solanas, ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, Cineaste (New York, 1971), p.16. 5. In Freud, Sigmund, Moses and Monotheism (New York, 1955), Freud gives the definition of trauma from the psychoanalytic perspective that informs its current use. See also Caruth, Cathy, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore, 1996), pp.3–4; and Caruth, Cathy, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995), pp.151–157. 6. Erikson, Kai, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Maryland, 1995), p.185. 7. Getino and Solanas: ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, p.3. 8. Gabriel, Teshome, ‘Third Cinema as guardian of popular memory: Towards a Third Aesthetics’ in Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (eds), Questions of Third Cinema (London, 1989), p.60. 9. Ibid, p.62. 10. Hall, Stuart, ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’ in Jonathan Rutherford (ed), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London, 1990), p.226. 11. Ibid. 12. Stam, Robert, ‘Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism, and Polycentrism: Theories of Third Cinema’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video vol.13, no.1–3, (1991) p.225.

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13. Unlike other African colonies, which were under the rule of European governments, present-day DRC was originally colonised under the name ‘the Congo Free State’ as the personal possession of King Leopold II, who coveted its wealth and was at liberty to exercise uncensored brutality in his quest to extract Congo’s vast natural resources. Under Leopold II the Congo Free State experienced the most savage form of colonisation during which the population was ultimately reduced by half. Among other tactics Leopold II created the ‘Force Publique’, a commission that openly dismembered African workers, regularly cutting off their limbs as ‘motivation’ to fulfil their quotas. 14. Stam: ‘Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism, and Polycentrism’, p.225. 15. Western-generated depictions of Congo in literature, illustrated texts and film have a long history. Among the earliest examples is Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1902), which, in many ways, ignited Western fascination with the perceived exoticism and ‘savagery’ of the Congo. Subsequent examples include, among others, the comic book Tintin au Congo (Hergé, 1931); Congorilla and Baboona (Johnson and Johnson, 1932 and 1935); King Solomon’s Mine, based on Haggard’s 1885 novel of the same name is largely shot in Congo despite being ‘set’ in South Africa (British film version: Stevenson, 1937, American film version: Bennet, 1950, American film remake: Thompson, 1985, Australian animated version: 1986, American television mini-series: Hallmark Entertainment, 2004); the comic film series Matamata & Pilipili (Van Haelst, 1950); and Kwaheri (also known as Kwaheri: Vanishing Africa, or Kwaheria: The Forbidden, Chudnow and Brooks, 1964). More recent examples include the Italian ‘shockumentary’ Africa Addio (Jacopetti and Prosperi, 1996), and its US and UK versions Africa Blood and Guts, and Farewell Africa respectively; Kisangani Diaries, (Sauper, 1998); Joshua Dysert and Alberto Ponticelli’s comic book series Unknown Soldier (2008) as well as such films as Pushing the Elephant (Davenport and Mandel, 2010), and The Greatest Silence (Jackson, 2007). 16. True Story film treatment (italics mine), and Clermont Ferrand Film Festival catalogue. 17. Getino and Solanas: ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, p.15. 18. This screening took place at the Hospital Heal Africa in Goma, DRC in May 2007. 19. Hall: ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’, p.237. 20. The featured film was Moussa Sene Absa’s Madame Brouette (2002). 21. Getino and Solanas: ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, p.8. 22. Berger, James, ‘Trauma and literary theory’, Contemporary Literature vol.38, no.3 (Fall 1997), pp.569–574.

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23. Gabriel: ‘‘Third Cinema as guardian of popular memory’, p.58. 24. For a thorough discussion of the history of images and their political repercussions in DRC, see Guido Convents’ Images & Démocratie: Les Congolais Face au Cinéma et à l’audiovisuel, Guido Convents and Afrika Film Festival (2006). 25. Gabriel: ‘Third Cinema as guardian of popular memory’, p 57. 26. Getino and Solanas: ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, p.10. 27. Zacks, Stephen A, ‘The theoretical construction of African Cinema’, Research in African Literatures vol.26, no.3 (Autumn 1995), pp.14. 28. Ibid, p.7. 29. Gabriel: ‘Third Cinema as guardian of popular memory’, p.62. 30. Ibid, p.59. 31. Beni is approximately 350 kilometers north of Goma. 32. Stam: ‘Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism, and Polycentrism’, p.236. 33. Gabriel: ‘Third Cinema as guardian of popular memory’, p.59. 34. Ndaliko Katondolo, Petna, Twaomba Amani (Alkebu Productions, 2005), 00:00:40. 35. Ibid, 0:01:15. 36. These organisations include La Synérgie des Femmes pour les Victims de Violences Sexuelle (SFVS) and others. 37. Berger, James, After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse (Minneapolis, 1999), p.212. 38. Fanon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 2004), pp.206–248. 39. Stam: ‘Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism, and Polycentrism’, p.4. 40. Ondego, Ogova, ‘Using cinema to say no to exploitative forces in Africa’, Art Matters (2005), http://www.artmatters.info/petna.htm, http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/books/ 32591, accessed 22 September 2010. 41. Bhabha, Homi, ‘Foreword’ in Fanon, Franz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 2004), pp.xxxvi. 42. Yole!Africa Alternative2TV project proposal, www.changemakers.com, accessed 8 February 2012. 43. Ibid, p.4. 44. Stam: ‘Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism, and Polycentrism’, p.226. 45. This incident was recounted in an interview with Petna Ndaliko (unpublished), conducted as part of my fieldwork in May 2003 in Goma, DRC, as a Sheldon Traveling Fellow of Harvard University. 46. Bhabha: ‘Foreword’, pp.xix. 47. Ndaliko cited in Film and Education, http://www.yoleafrica.org/#/news/?aid=71, accessed 19 October 2010. 48. Ndoto Yangu (My Dream): http://www.metropolistv.nl/en/correspondents/ petna-goma/ accessed 20 October 2010.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN TRUTH, RECONCILIATION AND CINEMA: REFLECTIONS ON SOUTH AFRICA’S RECENT PAST IN UBUNTU’S WOUNDS AND HOMECOMING Cara Moyer-Duncan

As South Africa transitioned from apartheid to a multiracial democracy during the mid-1990s, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was implemented as a mechanism to document the atrocities of the past while promoting national healing. At about the same time, the newly elected government identified cinema as an important component of the nation-building process and several changes in the local film industry began to occur. No longer confined by rigid laws that promoted censorship and limited black participation, the industry has become increasingly more inclusive and several filmmakers have used cinema as a way to reclaim history and consider the challenges of rebuilding a nation with a contentious past. The TRC quickly became a popular subject for narrative film, and a spate of local productions focussing on the role of memory and truth in the reconciliation process began to emerge. The best known among these, In My Country (2005) and Red Dust (2005), are international co-productions directed by

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English filmmakers that feature white protagonists, Hollywood stars and plotlines that are accessible to global audiences. They endorse the mainstream discourse on the TRC by focussing on its ability to elicit the ‘truth’ and the cathartic nature of the process. Two lesser-known films by up-and-coming black South Africans, Sechaba Morojele’s Ubuntu’s Wounds (2001) and Norman Maake’s Homecoming (2005), offer a more critical and complex look at this moment in recent history. Unlike their mainstream counterparts, these films consider the lack of justice, the legacy of inequality and the lingering impact of psychological trauma that have left many South Africans sceptical about the efficacy of the TRC. Using Robert Rosenstone’s theorisation of the ‘new history film’, this chapter examines how Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming challenge ‘traditional’ history, and in particular more mainstream representations of the TRC, by privileging a black perspective and ‘contesting, visioning and revisioning history’.1

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Since the mid-twentieth century, truth commissions have become a significant aspect of transitional justice as nations move from authoritarian rule to democracy.2 Countries in Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia have established truth commissions following episodes of ethnic cleansing, genocide and war to deal with gross human rights violations. During this period, two models have emerged for handling this form of transitional justice. The Nuremberg Model, used to prosecute the leaders of Nazi Germany, is a punitive approach in which those charged with committing human rights violations are tried. More recently, this model has been used in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The Latin American Model, associated with proceedings in nations such as Argentina and Chile, forgoes punishment. Instead, this model aims to document the atrocities of the past so that they become part of a nation’s official history, and at the same time advance healing and unity in the new national dispensation.3 The TRC emerged as a negotiated compromise during South Africa’s transition to democracy. Shaped after the Latin American

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Model, it was intended to ‘gather evidence of atrocity in the name of the nation,’ as well as to promote national healing.4 Thus the TRC had both historical and social functions. In order to secure cooperation from the National Party and ensure a peaceful transition, the TRC was not retributive in nature. Rather, those who participated in the hearings by providing full disclosure of their participation in human rights violations, whether in support of or against the apartheid state, would be granted amnesty. This allowed ‘the TRC to formulate itself as a proceeding motivated by forgiveness, reconciliation and nationbuilding’.5 It had three branches, which included: The Human Rights Violations Committee, in which victims recounted the types of atrocities that occurred; the Reparations Committee, charged with developing a reparations programme; and the Amnesty Committee, which accepted applications from perpetrators who were hoping to gain legal immunity. Applicants that provided full disclosure of their crimes were granted amnesty. The TRC in South Africa is considered one of the most successful of any such proceedings. This success is signified by the ‘remarkably little bloodshed, retribution, and vengeance’ that occurred during the years following the first democratic election and its ability to ‘apportion blame to all sides’.6 It was also commended for providing a venue for ordinary people to publicly confront their oppressors by voicing their stories. With the charismatic Archbishop Desmond Tutu at its helm, the TRC became a national and international media spectacle. Recaps of the proceedings were aired regularly on local radio and television stations, as well as international news outlets, and worked to reinforce the nation’s commitment to fostering the spirit of ubuntu.7 Nevertheless, such proceedings have significant limitations. For the most part, the TRC overlooked the politicians, high-level bureaucrats and business and industry leaders who designed, implemented and most directly benefited from apartheid. This left lower-level officials, like police officers, who perpetrated acts of violence in the name of the state, to bear the brunt of the legal process.8 Since whites and blacks on both sides of the struggle were called on to testify to the crimes they committed, the even-handedness of the proceedings prompted many to ask whether it was appropriate to blame those who were fighting

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against an oppressive regime.9 For many, the TRC lacked the crucial component of justice. Individuals who admitted to committing heinous crimes were allowed to escape punishment.10 By focusing exclusively on gross human rights violations, the TRC failed to scrutinise what Mahmood Mamdani has termed ‘the entire project of apartheid’.11 The day-to-day humiliations that black South Africans were subjected to were not included in the scope of the commission. And, perhaps most significantly, the Reparations Committee was largely deemed a failure since it was not able to redistribute land or wealth in a society plagued by economic inequality inextricably linked to the policies of apartheid. This failure prompted Thabo Mbeki to describe South Africa as ‘two nations’ – one white and relatively prosperous, the other black and poor.12

Truth, reconciliation and cinema in South Africa Due to the government’s significant role in regulating and funding films during the apartheid era, the South African film industry largely operated as a mechanism of the state. Although there was a great deal of material for films about the condition of the nation, especially as it related to race, class, social strife and political repression, a strict censorship board obstructed the development of a vibrant local cinema and discriminatory policies prevented black participation in the local industry. As Peter Davis has so adeptly noted: When Africans did appear on screen it was as adjuncts to whites; in that role they told us more about whites – how whites saw themselves, how they reinvented and re-enacted mythologies of white supremacy – than they ever revealed about African lives.13 Under these conditions, cinema became a tool used to control the black population, justify apartheid at home and abroad, and perpetuate racial and economic oppression. With the onset of a multiracial democracy, laws blocking access to the film industry and censoring the content produced have been

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eradicated. As South Africa embarks on a new path, the government has identified cinema as playing an important role in the nation-building project.14 The first generation of post-apartheid filmmakers have the potential to use cinema as a tool to promote healing by serving as a site for reclaiming and re-visioning history, as well as exploring the challenges of reconciling and rebuilding a nation with a divisive past. With an increase in film schools, affirmative action policies, and the allotment of state resources through scholarships, grants and tax breaks, there has been an increase in film production and a handful of black filmmakers have emerged using the camera as a tool to confront the past by recasting the gaze. Truth commissions have become a popular subject in films emanating from nations recovering from violent pasts.15 These proceedings, which are closely linked to themes of truth, memory and reconciliation, are often at the forefront of national consciousness even decades after such events occurred. As Martha Evans notes, ‘the suspense of judicial processes, the testing of old loyalties, the fluid identities of victim and perpetrator, and the uncovering of past abuses lend themselves to various film genres’.16 Given the changing landscape of the South African film industry and the national imperatives of fostering unity and understanding, it is not surprising that several years after the start of the TRC in 1996, the truth and reconciliation film has become something of a national genre. Additionally, South Africa’s ‘truth-for-amnesty model’ offers an abundance of material for filmmakers to weigh the controversial issues regarding transitional justice.17 Beginning with Sechaba Morojele’s Ubuntu’s Wounds in 2001, more than half a dozen narrative films that directly address the TRC have been released, including Ian Gabriel’s Forgiveness (2004), Ramadan Suleman’s Zulu Love Letter (2004), John Boorman’s In My Country (2005), Tom Hooper’s Red Dust (2005), Norman Maake’s Homecoming (2005), and John Kani’s Nothing but the Truth (2008). There have also been several documentary films produced on the TRC, most notably Deborah Hoffman and Frances Reid’s Long Night’s Journey Into Day (2000) and Mark Kaplan’s Between Joyce and Remembrance (2003). Many more narrative films have taken up the quintessential TRC themes

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of memory, trauma and redemption, including Gavin Hood’s Oscarwinning film Tsotsi (2005).18 Despite the government’s professed commitment to advancing national healing through cinema and the emergence of several films that take up the work of the TRC, the legacy of racial inequality and segregation has posed a significant challenge in terms of the accessibility of local film. Although South Africa has a population of over 48 million, it is estimated to have a cinema-going audience of only 5 million.19 At present, there are very few movie houses in the townships surrounding city centres and rural areas. Most movie theatres are located in the formerly (and still predominantly) white suburbs. The cost of tickets, ranging between 20 and 60 South African Rand, is also prohibitive to many. This leaves the majority of blacks without access to their national cinema and many films without access to their target audience.20 This, of course, diminishes the ability of cinema to contribute to the nation-building process.

Truth and reconciliation cinema and the new history film Among the black filmmakers that have surfaced in post-apartheid South Africa, several have turned to events in recent history, and in particular the TRC, for inspiration. The films included in this group – Ubuntu’s Wounds, Zulu Love Letter, Homecoming and Nothing but the Truth – stand in stark contrast to their better-known counterparts In My Country and Red Dust. These South African films give voice to perspectives historically denied by apartheid and in many ways still stifled by the legacy of inequality, which limits black access to the training and resources needed to produce narrative film. Although black voices are essential to understanding the outcomes of the TRC and the current state of South Africa, with the exception of Zulu Love Letter, they have been essentially overlooked in the literature on TRC films.21 The remainder of this chapter will focus on the alternative visions of history advanced in two of these films, Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming. Robert Rosenstone describes the ‘new history film’ as one that in intent, content and form is distinct from historical films produced in

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the mainstream with the effect of contesting, visioning and re-visioning history. New history films are less concerned with entertaining audiences and box office receipts and more concerned with ‘understanding the legacy of the past’.22 Rosenstone explains: Certainly it is no coincidence that such works tend to grow out of communities that see themselves in desperate need of historical connections – postcolonial nations; long-established countries where political systems are in upheaval; societies recovering from totalitarian regimes or the horrors of war; ethnic, political, social, or sexual minorities involved in the search to recapture or create viable heritages.23 Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming contest the dominant cinematic discourse on the TRC by aligning themselves with the black community that was politically marginalised and socially oppressed during apartheid. These films focus almost exclusively on tensions within the black community surrounding the need for individual and national reconciliation. They also ask incisive questions regarding the shortcomings of the TRC, in terms of not only enacting justice and redressing economic inequality, but also preparing ordinary South Africans to adjust to and flourish in the new democracy. After so many years of institutionalised violence and racial inequality, how do you recover from the effects of trauma? How do you cope with feelings of fear, guilt, anger or resentment? In line with the characteristics of the new history film, Morojele and Maake effectively employ nonlinear narratives to vision and revision history. Both films feature protagonists afflicted with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and have narratives punctuated by flashbacks to give viewers a sense of the trauma that occurred in the apartheid past, and the lasting impact of these events. Plagued by nightmares, guilt and depression, these characters are unable to function despite the new national dispensation or the work of the TRC. With this approach, Morojele and Maake vision history in a way that leaves spectators with a profound awareness of ‘how individual lives are altered by larger events’.24 But Morojele and Maake also re-vision

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history by using innovative cinematic techniques to create more than a mere ‘window onto a “realistic” world’, reminding viewers that history, whether written or on film, is a construction and that it is experienced in different ways.25

Ubuntu’s Wounds: An allegory for the nation’s recovery Released in 2001, Morojele’s short film Ubuntu’s Wounds focuses on one man’s psychological struggle to heal from the wounds of apartheid. As an actor, writer and director for local television, Morojele is well known throughout South Africa. He began work on Ubuntu’s Wounds while training at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. This film has received a number of awards, including Best Short Film at the 2002 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and it was acquired and broadcast by HBO Films in the United States. Ubuntu’s Wounds was featured at several South African film festivals, but it only became accessible to large audiences in 2010 when it made its debut on local television.26 As the first narrative film to examine the role of the TRC, Ubuntu’s Wounds represents a significant moment in South African cinema. Unlike many of the TRC films that followed it, Ubuntu’s Wounds highlights the frustration felt by black South Africans regarding the scope of the TRC. Morojele was motivated by what he perceives as a ‘sense of injustice’ in the TRC process and the desire to link South Africa’s present circumstances to the centuries of violence and oppression that preceded it.27 In explaining the film’s title, he says ‘ubuntu’ translates to ‘humanity’ and ‘it relates to an individual not being a person without a link to other people, to society’.28 After enduring trauma as a detainee during apartheid, the film’s protagonist, Lebo Manaka, ‘has become a wound’.29 Lebo is living in exile in Los Angeles, and has thus become disconnected from his daughter, his family, and his community. Invoking the indigenous African tradition of ancestor worship, Morojele has the ancestors communicate with Lebo through his deceased wife. They encourage him to return to South Africa in order to heal. Morojele uses Lebo’s struggle as an allegory for the nation’s recovery and the film attempts to reconcile the limitations of the TRC

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in terms of the individual desire for justice and the national need for reconciliation. Ubuntu’s Wounds moves chronologically between four temporal spaces: the distant past, the recent past, a fantasy world, and the present. By blurring the representation of reality and fantasy, as well as making extensive use of darkness and shadows, the film offers a jarring encounter with the legacy of apartheid. Morojele30 chose this format, over a more conventional or ‘realistic’ approach, in order to disorient the viewer so that they could better understand Lebo’s pain. The film begins in the distant past where we witness Lebo lying on the ground naked with a white man holding a gun to his head. Lebo was detained along with his wife and two others by the South African Police. When the gun malfunctions, the prisoners break free. Lebo escapes and watches from a distance as his wife and the others are recaptured and brutally murdered. The film then moves to the recent past, seventeen years after Lebo escaped from detention. While living in Los Angeles, Lebo encounters Danie Venter, the man who killed his wife. Through voiceover narration we learn that this encounter initially pushes Lebo ‘into a darkness never before experienced’. Lebo becomes obsessed with following Venter as he leads what appears to be a normal life, despite the horrific pain he inflicted on others. This enrages Lebo and he becomes fixated on enacting revenge. However, this encounter ultimately serves as a catalyst for change as it restores Lebo’s faith in his ancestors when they intervene in his life to help him heal his wounds. Still in the recent past, we enter Lebo’s apartment where for the first time we understand how deeply the trauma he experienced has impacted on his psyche. Lebo awakens frantically from a nightmare and immediately swallows pills kept by his bedside. The film then cuts to Lebo eating breakfast in the kitchen when his late wife appears before him. Although he seems startled at her presence, through voiceover he states that he stopped taking his pills so that he could be with his wife. She is displeased with his behaviour and discourages him from seeking revenge. These hallucinations suggest Lebo is delusional, however, his wife serves as a representative of the ancestors attempting to temper his anger and encourage a return to his homeland.

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Lebo attempts to justify his rage by screening a video of the TRC hearing in which Venter testifies. Based on the first scene of the film recapturing events in the distant past, we know that Venter has not provided an accurate account of Lebo’s detainment and his wife’s murder. Moreover, during his testimony he did not display any indication of remorse. Nevertheless, he received amnesty. Venter’s lack of emotion and deceitfulness, coupled with his resumption of a normal life when juxtaposed with Lebo’s continued emotional pain, seem incredibly unjust. Although it is not initially apparent to the viewer, Lebo’s first confrontation with his torturer occurs only in fantasy. In this scene, Lebo meets up with the TRC commissioner, Vuyani Masondo, presiding over Venter’s hearing. Masondo gives Lebo a picture of his daughter and encourages him to reconnect with his family. Lebo takes the picture but continues on with his plan. He takes Masondo to a remote area where he has Venter hanging upside down from a tree. Lebo demands to know why Venter was given amnesty. Masondo responds by saying: ‘I thought he spoke the truth . . . If you kill Venter we will lose everything we fought for.’ He then tells Lebo to ask Venter what he said to him in the lawyer’s chambers at the TRC. Lebo dismisses Masondo’s plea, shouting ‘So what, they are still in control!’ and then calls him a ‘sell-out’. Lebo gives voice to those who are disappointed with the results of the struggle by condemning the new black elite who have failed to substantially alter the power structures promoting inequity that were in place prior to the fall of apartheid. Lebo proceeds to shoot Masondo and then kill Venter in the same manner his wife was killed: a blow to the head with a hammer. Following this gruesome scene, we return to Lebo’s apartment where he awakens from another nightmare. Lebo sees the image of Masondo who is again insisting that Lebo should ‘ask him [Venter] what I said’. This apparent hallucination is in actuality another intervention from the ancestors. Lebo realises that he did not kill Venter and that he had simply imagined it. Armed with a loaded gun, he then decides he must confront Venter in reality. Lebo approaches Venter and his wife inside their church. Venter has assumed a new identity as Pete du Toit and denies any

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knowledge of Masondo or the TRC. In an attempt to replicate the fear, humiliation and powerlessness he felt when he was held captive, Lebo orders Venter and his wife onto their knees and insists that his wife remove her blouse. Out of desperation, Venter admits to his old identity by stating that Masondo died in a car crash. This revelation is at first confusing, as Lebo mistook his hallucinations of Masondo for reality. As he holds a gun to Venter’s head, he asks what Masondo told him at the TRC. Venter replies: ‘Respect your ancestors or your gods and they will look after you.’ At that moment Lebo realises that his ancestors, through Venter, were intervening. As a result of this intervention, Lebo is unable to carry out the violent act. Instead, he responds by grabbing a statue of Jesus and interrogating both Venter and Christianity. Lebo asks: ‘Is this your God? Does he visit you? Does he tell you what to do?’ Morojele effectively aligns Christianity with the evils of the apartheid state. In contrast, he aligns traditional African belief systems with forgiveness and understanding. Two weeks after the confrontation, Lebo returns to South Africa where he is reunited with his daughter. The film is now operating in the present, and it is from this space that Lebo narrates to his daughter the events we have just witnessed. In voicing his story, Lebo hopes to find forgiveness from his daughter whom he has neglected, and move forward into a new South Africa. While Lebo pledges to resume taking his pills to control his psychosis, the ending is rather ambiguous. Just as it is unclear if Lebo will actually take his medication, recover, and forgive, to date the fate of South Africa remains unclear as inequality and violence continue to plague the nation. Morojele successfully examines two approaches for dealing with the evils of apartheid: retribution and forgiveness. Ubuntu’s Wounds clearly illustrates the inadequacies of the TRC in terms of rectifying horrific wrongs through the redistribution of wealth, enacting punitive measures against those who committed horrific crimes, prompting whites to acknowledge the pain they caused, and healing wounds that lie deep within the psyche. Although Lebo initially rebukes the TRC, ultimately he enacts its underlying principles in his own life. Lebo cannot let go of his past until he confronts his oppressor. Additionally, in

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attempting to repair his relationship with his daughter, he voices his story and asks for forgiveness.

What happens after the conflict? Coming to terms with the past in Homecoming Norman Maake is one of South Africa’s most promising young filmmakers. As a graduate of the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance in Johannesburg, he has already directed a number of films examining life after apartheid, including Home Sweet Home (1999) and Soldiers of the Rock (2003). Maake’s most recent release, Homecoming (2005), is based on the SABC miniseries of the same name that aired in 2003. This feature-length version was screened at film festivals in South Africa and abroad, but never released in theatres.31 Homecoming was written by acclaimed director Zola Maseko and is based on his experiences as a soldier in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK or Spear of the Nation)32 who returned to the ‘new’ South Africa after spending several years in exile. Homecoming is a political thriller that follows the reunion of three friends who belonged to the MK and have recently returned from exile. Thabo is a taxi driver, Peter has risen into the new black elite as a bureaucrat, and Charlie dreams of opening his own club while confronting the demons of his past. The celebration of their reunion is short-lived when faced with the complexity of repairing personal relationships fractured by the struggle, limited economic prospects for the majority of blacks, and information that tests the strength of their friendship. Maake effectively uses flashbacks and extensive dialogue between these three men to explore what happened after the conflict. The film begins with Charlie’s return from exile in 1996 the last of the three men to come home. Upon his arrival, he is labelled a ‘returning refugee’ by an immigration agent and delayed for having expired documentation. Charlie vehemently resists being labelled a refugee, insisting that he is ‘returning from exile’. The term refugee can be defined as a person in exile; however, it implies a state of victimhood. Conversely, the concept of living in exile implies a sense of political agency and dedication to the struggle. Charlie’s outright rejection of

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being labelled as a ‘refugee’ suggests an insecurity with his credentials as an honourable veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle. This incident foreshadows the difficulty he will have coming to terms with his troubled past and readjusting to life in the new South Africa. Next, we are introduced to Thabo, who after returning from exile invested the 44,000 South African Rand he received for his military service in a vehicle and started a taxi business. Thabo is chided by his friend Charlie who states: ‘This job doesn’t suit you.’ While it is clear this is not the occupation Thabo hoped to have, he brushes off the remark, saying: ‘At least it pays the bills.’ Thabo is more concerned with repairing his relationship with his ex-girlfriend and their son who have recently returned from the United States. Finally, we meet Peter who has benefited materially from the struggle. He lives in a luxurious home with a swimming pool and drives a BMW. With the start of the TRC hearings looming in the near future, Peter is responsible for uncovering African National Congress (ANC) members who were covertly working for the apartheid regime. During the course of his investigation, Peter uncovers Charlie’s secret past as a traitor. This revelation tests their friendship and the power of forgiveness. Through the struggles of Charlie, Thabo and Peter, Maake reflects on the meaning of independence, the tension surrounding the return of exiles, the effects of trauma, and the need for reconciliation. The start of the TRC coincides with the men’s return, and while it does not figure as prominently in Homecoming as in Ubuntu’s Wounds, there is a discussion about its significance. Thabo is quick to mock the process, sarcastically stating: ‘White people are always sorry for apartheid and black people cry and then they forgive and we must live happily ever after.’ Peter, who as a government bureaucrat is the most invested in the TRC, defends the process, claiming: ‘It’s a compromise, there is no other way.’ Charlie sides with Thabo, saying: ‘I’m not for this compromise.’ Despite their disapproval, Peter reminds his friends that they will have to testify before the TRC if they are to receive amnesty. Although Charlie’s past has not yet been revealed, this interjection serves to remind the men and the audience that both sides committed atrocities during the struggle. In addition to this discussion, the

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themes of confrontation, confession and forgiveness, which are synonymous with the TRC, run throughout the film. The tension surrounding the return of liberation fighters living in exile and their reintegration into society is at the forefront of Homecoming. Through Thabo’s relationships with his past and present girlfriends, Maake focuses on the conflict between those who remained in South Africa during apartheid and those who left. With Thandi, Thabo’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child, Maake looks at how Thabo’s involvement in the struggle caused extended absences from loved ones and a culture of secrecy. Although Thabo’s dedication to the struggle fractured his relationship with Thandi, now that she has returned to South Africa he is committed to reconciling their relationship. Hoping for a future with Thandi, Thabo breaks up with his present girlfriend, Nana. Because Thabo is not upfront about his motivation for ending their relationship, she chides him for embracing ‘a wounded war hero’ mindset focusing exclusively on the sacrifices he made for the movement, while overlooking the violence and oppression those who remained in South Africa faced. Charlie also has difficulty adapting to life in post-apartheid South Africa. Although he eagerly discusses his plans to open a club called The Veterans in honour of those who fought against apartheid, his frequent trips to a mysterious home suggest a secret in his past. Through flashbacks, we learn of Charlie’s coercion by the South African Police and his involvement in compromising ANC attacks against the white minority government. In order to prove his loyalty to the apartheid state, protect his family and save his own life, Charlie killed his comrade Boetie. He is plagued with nightmares of both the violence he committed and the violence he endured. Now that he is back in South Africa, Charlie is overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and remorse and he visits the home of Boetie’s family with the intention of making amends. Having witnessed the events prompting Charlie’s ‘turn’ through flashbacks, spectators are encouraged to sympathise with him. Peter and Thabo are not initially privy to this information and are thus enraged and devastated by Charlie’s betrayal. Nevertheless, they try to consider how they would have reacted had they been in Charlie’s

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position. Disappointment in the results of the struggle, as well as difficulty adjusting to life in post-apartheid South Africa prompts Thabo to ask: ‘What we fought for, was it worth it?’ As Peter pursues the details surrounding Charlie’s disloyalty, he learns of a plot among the top ranks of the ANC to supply the apartheid government with information. The revelation of a larger system at work contextualises Charlie’s involvement and prompts Thabo and Peter to make amends with their friend. Charlie was not a traitor, he was a pawn used by high-level ANC officials acting in collusion with the white minority regime for their own personal benefit. While Peter’s revelation creates a space for Charlie to voice his story and receive forgiveness from his friends, it comes too late for broader social reconciliation. Charlie learns of the plot only after he has paid a visit to his white torturer. Though the results of this visit are a bit ambiguous, viewers are left to believe that he killed his former torturer. Having already enacted revenge, there is no turning back. Charlie breaks into the responsible ANC official’s home where there is an exchange of gunfire resulting in Charlie’s death. The shame and anger Charlie feels are so entrenched that he is unable to forgive himself or anyone else. South African director Ramadan Suleman33 describes cinema as a kind of ‘therapy’ in a nation that, despite the implementation of the TRC, failed to develop a programme to help South Africans readjust and live ‘normally’ following a traumatic and violent history.34 It is in this context that a film like Homecoming serves as an important intervention in the mainstream discourse on the TRC. As in Ubuntu’s Wounds, the fate of South Africa is unclear in Homecoming. Economically, little has changed. The rifts between whites and blacks, as well as among blacks, are great. The ability of the TRC to effect true understanding and real forgiveness is also questioned as it is exposed as a compromised process. Moreover, Charlie dies because he is unable to handle the pain and remorse he feels, despite this official process of truth and reconciliation. Maake affirms the frustration endured by so many South Africans who ‘felt that the TRC robbed them of any sense of personal justice since perpetrators went free, without any moral or material compensation for the victims’.35 But he also points out how

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little the new government did to prepare ordinary people, many who endured psychological trauma like Charlie, to cope with life after the struggle was over. Although Maake is sceptical of the TRC as a source of healing for the nation, he does not leave his viewers without hope. As exemplified by the friendship between Peter, Thabo and Charlie, Maake privileges the articulation of memory and the offering of forgiveness as a crucial aspect of moving forward in the new South Africa. It is in this sense that he endorses the concept of truth and reconciliation in individual healing.

Hollywood and the TRC By empowering black voices through truth and reconciliation narratives, both Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming can be placed into the rubric of the new history film. Morojele and Maake offer no easy answers or nicely packaged endings. Although both films ultimately embrace truth and reconciliation as the only feasible option for moving forward, their examination of the TRC is decidedly different than what is found in the mainstream. These distinctions are evident when compared to In My Country and Red Dust, both of which adopt the codes and conventions of Hollywood films in order to access the international market. Based on Antjie Krog’s memoir Country of My Skull, English director John Boorman’s In My Country foregrounds the impact of the TRC on the psyche of a white South African, Anna Malan (Juliette Binoche), and centres around her affair with Langston Whitfield (Samuel L Jackson), an African American reporter whose character was invented for the movie. Boorman attempts to capture the grief of victims as they confront their perpetrators and the great hope for national healing offered by the TRC. However, in her review of In My Country Melanie Unruh captures the limitations of the film stating: As in so many films involving white or Western complicity in crimes against the ‘Other’, Anna’s experience of guilt and forgiveness so eclipses the stories of black South Africans that, even though spoken with great power during the emotionally charged hearings, their testimony of genuine suffering provides merely a

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backdrop against which Anna’s ‘more significant’ journey toward self-discovery and redemption is played.36 Not only is it worrying that Anna’s transformation is foregrounded at the expense of black characters, the notion that Anna’s relationship with Langston signifies reconciliation between whites and blacks in South Africa is also problematic in that Langston is not South African. Moreover, the overarching themes of the film, namely ubuntu and forgiveness, are undermined as the film’s only prominent black South African character, Anna’s assistant Dumi, is murdered for being a traitor. This leaves the viewer to conclude that the spirit of reconciliation applies only to vicious white policemen, not to blacks who were coerced into informing.37 English director Tom Hooper’s Red Dust is a courtroom thriller based on the novel of the same name by Gillian Slovo. The film follows Alex Mpondo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a black politician who is plagued by traumatic memories. Alex was arrested, along with his comrade Steve Sizela, in the 1980s for his involvement with the MK. Through flashbacks, we learn of the brutal torture he endured in prison, and of Sizela’s disappearance. His torturer, Dirk Hendricks, submits an application for amnesty to the TRC. Alex contests Hendricks’s claim for amnesty and is called on to testify. Alex is initially reluctant to testify because he is having difficulty remembering the events that occurred, due to PTSD, and he does not want to jeopardise his political career. Hendricks, under pressure from his former superior officer, refuses to admit his knowledge of Sizela’s disappearance. Sarah Barcant (Hilary Swank), a liberal white South African who fled the country, is now a human rights attorney in New York. She has returned home to represent Alex at the request of her mentor. With Sarah’s help, Alex uncovers the truth, reconciles with his former torturer and is almost instantly healed from the trauma of the past. Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming feature South African actors and are attuned to the needs of South African audiences, especially black South Africans who are disappointed with the results of the TRC. Conversely, both In My Country and Red Dust are hampered by their quest to reach a global audience and turn a profit. In My Country features

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international stars and assumes a ‘didactic tone’ as a way of appealing to and ‘educat[ing] the ill-informed American audience at whom the film is aimed’.38 Juliette Binoche is unconvincing as an Afrikaner who teaches a sceptical African American about the TRC. While Samuel Jackson is believable as Langston, his role serves no real purpose for South African audiences who presumably do not require a basic history lesson about their own nation. Although Boorman maintains his South African friends convinced him ‘that only a foreigner could find their way through the complexities’39 of the TRC, Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming suggest otherwise. Where Morojele and Maake speak to the very real tensions surrounding the role of the commission and its effectiveness, it is clear that Boorman is first and foremost concerned with ‘teach[ing] the world a lesson in healing’.40 Red Dust presents a more complicated understanding of the TRC than In My Country, and it succeeds in raising important questions about justice, memory and life in the new South Africa. However, it also relies upon star power to draw international audiences and this detracts, at least for some reviewers, from the authenticity of the film.41 Film critic Shaun de Waal says: Red Dust is credible and creditable in many respects, but those accents do rather get in the way. South Africans, particularly filmmakers, are keen on telling everyone about our wonderful plethora of national stories that are begging to be told. Unfortunately, for financial reasons, we usually employ Americans or Brits to help us tell them . . . to stand in for us, as it were. God forbid we should play ourselves. I suppose that’s simply one symptom of globalisation. It means, though, that a cultural product selling itself on the basis of ‘authenticity’ is compromised before it gets off the ground. 42 Perhaps even more problematic is that the film ‘reinvents the buddy system’ in that Alex exists only as an adjunct to Sarah. It is Sarah who is sceptical of the TRC, not Alex or other black characters, and the film fails to properly contextualise the conditions facing blacks under apartheid and the legacy of those conditions in contemporary South Africa.43

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Ultimately, In My Country and Red Dust propagate the dominant historical narrative by rather uncritically accepting the notion that the TRC is the solution to overcoming the apartheid past and that it alone has the power to heal a nation and its people. In so doing, they appear more concerned with capitalising on this historic moment than with encouraging reflection and debate within South Africa. Perhaps this explains, at least in part, why In My Country and Red Dust performed so poorly at South African box offices.44

Conclusion Both Morojele and Maake have created innovative truth and reconciliation films that privilege black perspectives and produce what Rosenstone refers to as ‘a serious encounter with the lingering meaning of past events’.45 In contrast to In My Country and Red Dust, Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming give voice to black concerns regarding the scope and effectiveness of the TRC. Black characters do not appear as appendages to whites, but rather exist independently as complex figures struggling to cope with their traumatic pasts and retain their humanity during a period of immense social change. The extensive use of flashbacks works to document the violence endured by black detainees and activists under apartheid and encourages spectators to identify with black protagonists who were victims of an oppressive regime. While both films ultimately embrace the truth and reconciliation process as the only viable way of moving forward in a nation with a troubled past, they do not do so uncritically. Morojele and Maake reveal black cynicism regarding the lack of justice in the process, as well as the TRC’s failure to meaningfully address the legacy of economic inequality and heal emotional scars. By turning the gaze inward to explore the complex realities of life after the struggle, Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming document an alternative version of history and thus make an important contribution to our understanding of the reconciliation process. It is difficult to assess what, if any, tangible impact films like Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming have had on the reconciliation process within South Africa. Although they were screened at several film

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festivals around the nation, Ubuntu’s Wounds and Homecoming, unlike their mainstream counterparts, were never released theatrically or critically reviewed in local papers. Maake has said that while he is committed to making films about apartheid, many South Africans are not interested in watching them.46 Nevertheless, he is hopeful that ‘twenty years from now, there will be space for [this] type of films’.47 Morojele, on the other hand, suggests there is a space now. In 2008, he screened his film to students in Grahamstown and found their response ‘quite amazing’.48 These young people asked: ‘How come there weren’t films like this before?’49 Ubuntu’s Wounds gave them an opportunity to talk about the legacy of apartheid and the work of the TRC. If this response is any indication, cinema can promote discussion and debate, and perhaps even contribute to national healing. However, if local cinema is going to play a part in the nation-building process as envisioned by the government, it must become more accessible.

Notes 1. Rosenstone, Robert, ‘Introduction’ in Robert Rosenstone (ed), Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (Princeton, 1995), p.8. 2. Philips, David, ‘Looking the Beast in the (fictional) eye: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission on film’ in Vivian Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn (eds), Black and White in Colour: African History on Screen (Athens, 2007), p.303. 3. Philips: ‘Looking the Beast in the (fictional) eye’, pp.303–304. 4. Herwitz, Daniel, ‘The future of the past in South Africa: On the legacy of the TRC’, Social Research vol.72, no.3 (2005), p.531. 5. Ibid, p.541. 6. Gibson, James L, ‘The contributions of truth to reconciliation: Lessons from South Africa’, Journal of Conflict Resolution vol.50, no.3, (2006), pp.409–411. 7. Posel defines ubuntu as a ‘recognition of the humanity of the other’. See Posel, Deborah, ‘The TRC Report: What kind of history? What kind of truth?’ in Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson (eds), Commissioning the Past: Understanding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Johannesburg, 2002), p.149. 8. Bell, Terry, Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth (New York, 2003), pp.1–3; and Verdoolaege, Annelies, Reconciliation Discourse: The Case of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Philadelphia, 2008), p.20.

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9. Campbell, Patricia J, ‘The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC): Human rights and state transitions - The South Africa model’, African Studies Quarterly vol.4, no.3 (2000), http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v4/v4i3a2. htm, accessed 25 February 2011. 10. Verdoolaege: Reconciliation Discourse, p.19. 11. Mamdani, Mahmood, ‘Amnesty or impunity? A preliminary critique of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC)’, Diacritics vol.32, no.3–4 (2002), p.39. 12. Mbeki, Thabo, ‘Reconciliation and nation building’, Statement of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki at the Opening of the Debate in the National Assembly (1998), National Assembly, Cape Town, http://www.dfa.gov.za/ docs/speeches/1998/mbek0529.htm, accessed on 26 October 2010. 13. Davis, Peter, In Darkest Hollywood: Exploring the Jungles of Cinema’s South Africa (Athens, 1996), p.3. 14. See Department of Arts and Culture, Film Strategy Document (South Africa, 1996); Republic of South Africa, NFVF Act (South Africa, 1997); and NFVF, ‘About the NFVF’, http://dev.nfvf.co.za/about-nfvf, accessed 20 July 2010. 15. Some examples include State of Fear (2005), Sometimes in April (2005), and The Lamb of God (2008). 16. Evans, Martha, ‘Amnesty and amnesia: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in narrative film’, in Martin Botha (ed), Marginal Lives and Painful Pasts: South African Cinema After Apartheid (Parklands, 2007), p.257. 17. Evans: ‘Amnesty and amnesia’, p.257. 18. Other examples include Cry, The Beloved Country (1995), Fools (1998), and Promised Land (2002). 19. Botha, Martin, ‘Post-apartheid cinema: Policy, structures, themes and new aesthetics’ in Martin Botha (ed), Marginal Lives and Painful Pasts: South African Cinema After Apartheid (Parklands, 2007), p.42. 20. Saks, Lucia, Cinema in a Democratic South Africa: The Race for Representation (Bloomington, 2010), p.146. 21. For more information on TRC films, see Evans: ‘Amnesty and amnesia’; Maingard, Jacqueline, South African National Cinema (New York, 2007); Marx, Lesley, ‘“Cinema, glamour, atrocity”: Narratives of trauma’ in Martin Botha (ed), Marginal Lives and Painful Pasts: South African Cinema After Apartheid (Parklands, 2007); Philips: ‘Looking the Beast in the (fictional) eye’; Peterson, Bhekizizwe and Ramadan Suleman, Zulu Love Letter (Johannesburg, 2009); and Saks, Cinema in a Democratic South Africa. 22. Rosenstone: ‘Introduction’, p.4. 23. Ibid, p.5.

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24. Ibid, p.10. 25. Ibid, p.7. 26. Ubuntu’s Wounds was acquired by MNET and aired on Mzansi Magic, a DSTV channel featuring African films, available through subscription. 27. Morojele, Sechaba, Interview on 7 November 2008, Johannesburg. 28. Morojele, Sechaba, ‘Interview with Sean Jacobs and Andre Vladmimir Pinard’, Chimurenga Online (n.d.), http://www.chimurenga.co.za/modules. php?name=News&fine=article&sid=27, accessed 20 November 2006. 29. Morojele: ‘Interview with Sean Jacobs and Andre Vladmimir Pinard’. 30. Morojele: Interview on 7 November 2008. 31. According to the film’s producer, David Max Brown, the feature film version is ‘quite a bit different’ than the original miniseries and has a different ending. See ‘Homecoming goes international’, Screen Africa vol.18 (October 2006), p.2. 32. The MK was the armed wing of the African National Congress. 33. Suleman, Ramadan, Interview on 9 October 2008, Cape Town. 34. Suleman: Interview on 8 October 2008, digital recording, Cape Town. 35. Verdoolaege: Reconciliation Discourse, p.19. 36. Unruh, Melanie, ‘In my country’, Cineaste (2005), p.80. 37. Evans: ‘Amnesty and amnesia’, pp.280–281. 38. Philips: ‘Looking the Beast in the (fictional) eye’, pp.307–308. 39. Boorman, John, ‘Director’s statement’, The Writing Studio, http://www. writingstudio.co.za/page849.html, accessed 24 February 2011. 40. Ibid. 41. See Philips: ‘Looking the Beast in the (fictional) eye’ and De Waal, Shaun, ‘Kicking up dust’, Mail and Guardian, 6 May 2005. 42. De Waal: ‘Kicking up dust’. 43. Evans: ‘Amnesty and amnesia’, p.270. 44. In My Country was released on seven screens nationwide and earned just ZAR155,840, while Red Dust was released on fifteen screens and earned only ZAR309,738. See NFVF, SA Films (n.d.), http://www.nfvf.co.za/policyresearch/statistical-information, accessed 20 July 2010. 45. Rosenstone: ‘Introduction’, p.5. 46. McCluskey, Audrey, ‘Interview with Norman Maake and Tongai Furusa’, in Audrey McCluskey (ed), The Devil You Dance With: Film Culture in the New South Africa (Chicago, 2009), p.92. 47. McCluskey: ‘Interview with Norman Maake and Tongai Furusa’, p.92. 48. Morojele: Interview on 7 November 2008, Johannesburg. 49. Ibid.

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FILMOGRAPHY

A Duty to Protect: Justice for Child Soldiers in the DRC, produced by Witness (2005). A Guerra do Kuduro (The War of Kuduro), directed by Henrique ‘Dito’ Narciso (2009). Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1979). Assaltos em Luanda (Assaults in Luanda), directed by Henrique ‘Dito’ Narciso (2007). Assaltos em Luanda II (Assaults in Luanda II), directed by Henrique ‘Dito’ Narciso (2008). Between Joyce and Remembrance, directed by Mark Kaplan (2003). Blood Diamond, directed by Edward Zwick (2006). Carnaval da Vítoria, directed by António Ole (1978). Casa Nayda, directed by Farida Banlyazid (2007). É Dreda Ser Angolano, directed by Radio Fazuma (2008). Ezra, directed by Newton I Aduaka (2007). Forgiveness, directed by Ian Gabriel (2004). Hakika, directed by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (2007). Homecoming, directed by Norman Maake (2005). Home Sweet Home, directed by Norman Maake (1999). Hotel Rwanda, directed by Terry George (2005). In My Country, directed by John Boorman (2004). Jazz Mama, directed by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (2010). Johnny Mad Dog, directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (2008). Keepers of Memory, produced by Eric Kabera (2004). Kuduro, Fogo no Museke, directed by Jorge António (2007). Lamokowang, directed by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (2004). La Nuit de la Vérité (The Night of Truth), directed by Fanta Regina Nacro (2004). Les Anges de Satan (The Satanic Angels), directed by Ahmed Boulane (2007). Long Night’s Journey into Day, directed by Deborah Hoffman and Frances Reid (2000).

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Filmography

317

Mãe Ju, directed by Kiluanje Liberdade and Inês Gonçalves (Lisbon, 2007). Nos Lieux Interdits (Our Forbidden Places), directed by Leila Kilani (2008). Nothing but the Truth, directed by John Kani (2008). O Ritmo dos Ngola Ritmos, directed by António Ole (Luanda, 1978). Pegasus, directed by Mohamed Mouftakir (2010). Red Dust, directed by Tom Hooper (2004). Roses in December, directed by Ana Carrigan and Bernard Stone (1982). Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, directed by Peter Raymont (2004). Shooting Dogs, directed by Michael Caton-Jones (2005). Soldiers of the Rock, directed by Norman Maake (2003). The Constant Gardener, directed by Fernando Meirelles (2005). True Story, directed by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (2008). Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood (2005). Twaomba Amani, directed by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (2004). Ubuntu’s Wounds, directed by Sechaba Morojele (2001). Zulu Love Letter, directed by Ramadan Suleman (2004).

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INDEX

A Abacha, Sani, 157, 159, 161, 162 Adedeji, Femi, 30, 47 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, xx–xxi, 19, 160 Adorno, Theodor, 4 Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival, xviii, xix, xx, 4, 6 African National Congress (ANC), xxii, 114, 115, 184, 284, 285, 286 Afrikaner, 115, 179, 181–182, 184, 289 agency, 11, 16, 19, 51, 131, 136, 141, 157, 161, 180, 183, 213, 227, 251–255, 263–268, 283 Aghion, Anne, 133, 147 Aidoo, Ama Ata, 19, 162 Alkebu Productions, 252–253 Alternative to TV [ALT2TV], 265–268 Amani People’s Theatre, 34 Amnesty Committee (South Africa), 274–275 amnesty, xxii, xxv, xxxii–xxxiii, 46, 100, 179, 181, 232–233, 274, 276, 281, 284, 288 Anderson, Benedict, 82, 116, 224 Anges de Satan, Les, 70 Anglo-Boer War, 113

Index.indd 318

Angola, 15–17, 50–68, 100, 107 Apartheid Museum, 119 apartheid, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvii, xxxi, 3, 15, 18, 22, 110–111, 114–116, 118, 119, 124, 126–127, 172–181, 184–185, 272, 274–286, 290–291 Apocalypse Now, 200 Arendt, Hannah, xix, xx, xxvii, 168 Argentina, 273 Armah, Ayi Kwei, 162, 166 Armenia, 220 Assouli, Fauzia, 72 Atwood, Margaret, 156 Auschwitz, 4

B Bâ, Mariama, 216 Bandele-Thomas, Biyi, 19, 160 Barenboim, Daniel, 193, 206 Batida, 55, 59–60 Belghazi, Taieb, 78 Belgium, 3, 195, 198, 206, 252 Benchemsi, Ahmed, 72 Bennett, Jill, 51, 141 Benzien, Jeffrey, 179

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Index Between Joyce and Remembrance, xvii–xxx, 276 Biko, Steve, xxv–xxvii, 19, 58 Blocker, Jane, 137 Blood Diamond, 213 Bloom, Harold, 9, 24 pleasure principle, 9–10 Boorman, John, 276, 287, 289 Bosnia, 220 Boulane, Ahmed, 70 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 92 Brink, André, 173–174, 185 Burkhalter, Thomas, 52 Burkina Faso, 15, 21, 214–216, 220, 222–223, 228, 229–230

C Caine Prize for African Fiction, 157 Campbell, David, 133 Caruth, Cathy, 9–12, 111, 124, 207, 239, 245 Casablanca, 17, 69–76, 83–84 Caton-Jones, Michael, 133 censorship, 45, 71, 115, 234–236, 272, 275 Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM), 231, 234–236 Chapman, Michael, 176 Chatterjee, Partha, 218 Chechnya, 220 child soldiers, xx–xxii, 68, 251, 255, 265 Chile, 273 Chissano, Joaquim, 101 Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM), 94–95 Church World Services, 106 civil war, xx, 7, 136, 155, 229 in Angola, 17, 52–55, 60–62, 64, in Mozambique, 18, 91, 92, 93, 100, 101 Cissé, Souleymane, 219 Cold War, 53

Index.indd 319

319

collective memory, 7, 17, 58, 71, 73, 118, 126, 161 colonialism, 17, 53, 54, 140, 195, 205, 224–225, 254 colonisation, 11, 217, 252, 254, 261, 270 commemoration, 3, 11, 14, 18, 23, 73, 101, 127, 141–142, 146, 268 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, 162 Compaoré, Blaise, 228, 229 Complicity with Evil, 195 Conrad, Joseph, 3, 196, 200–201, 270 Conseil Consultatif des Droits de l’Homme (CCDH), 234 Constant Gardener, The, 213 Constitution Hill, 113 Constitutional Court (South Africa), 18, 111, 114–115, 120, 125, 127 Cook, Kathryn, 132, 136 Coombes, Annie E, 126 Country of My Skull, 20, 180–183, 287

D Dallaire, Roméo, 133, 137, 147, 148 Damisch, Hubert, 138 dance, 15, 17, 33–34, 50–51, 55–63, 67, 68, 72–73, 83, 162, 253, 262, 269 Das Kaptial, 161 Day of Peace (Dia do Paz, Mozambique), 100 De Klerk, FW, 184 De Kok, Ingrid, 174–176 Dean, Carolyn J, 134 Deleuze, Gilles, 172 Democratic League for Women’s Rights (Morocco), 72 Democratic Republic of the Congo, xxi, 22, 217, 251–258, 263–264, 268, 269, 270 Derrida, Jacques, 78, 88 Dhlakama, Afonso, 101, 107 Diamondog, 54, 56, 62–63

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320

Art and Trauma in Africa

documentary, xviii, xxi–xxiv, xxviii, 5, 15, 22, 57, 63, 161, 177, 189, 220–221, 231, 234–236, 249, 255, 258, 263, 276 dos Santos, Fiel, 98–99 Duty to Protect: Justice for Child Soldiers in the DRC, A, xxi

E Edwards, David, 13 Ellerson, Beti, 216 empathy, 6, 11, 14, 51, 62–63, 123, 126, 133–134, 137, 199, 237–238, 243–245, 249 Equity and Reconciliation Commission (ERC), 21, 231–232, 236, 238 Essaouira Gnawa Music Festival, 17, 77 Estevão, Cristóvão, 99 Ezra, xx

F Felman, Shoshana, 12, 239, 243–245, Festival of World Sacred Music, 77, 80, 88 Festival panafricain du cinema et de la télévision de Ouagadougou (FESPACO), 215–216, 228 festivals, 3–4, 6, 15, 17, 69–86, 215, 228, 251–252, 268, 279 Forgiveness, 276 Foucault, Michel, 175 Freire, Paulo, 36 Freud, Sigmund, 9–10, 65, 111, 252, 269 Front for Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), 91, 94, 96, 101 fundamentalism/ists, 70–71, 74, 79

G Gabriel, Ian, 276 Gandhi, 40, 114, 127

Index.indd 320

General Peace Agreement (Rome, 1992), 94 George, Terry, 133, 213 Getino, Octavio, 253, 260 Gevisser, Mark, 117 graffiti, 34, 88, 117, 222–223 Ghana, 15, 20, 155–156, 162–167 Gnaoua Festival, 77–78, 82 Goma, 251–252, 266–268 Gourevitch, Philip, 20, 150, 194–206 Great Lakes, 265 guerrilla, 96 Guinea-Bissau, 51

H Habila, Helon, 19, 155, 157, 161, 167–169 Hakika, 255 Half of a Yellow Sun, xx Hayner, Priscilla B, xx, 8, Heart of Darkness, 3, 22, 200, 209, 270 Heritage, Education and Tourism (HET), 115, 117, 123 hip hop, 15–16, 29–49, 55–57, 63, 66, 83, 85, 88 HIV/AIDS, 167, 216 Hoffman, Deborah, 276 Hollywood, 5, 21, 213, 273, 287 Holocaust, XXVIII, 4, 8, 63, 112, 116, 193–194, 201 Home Sweet Home, 283 Homecoming, 22, 272–278, 283–291 Hood, Gavin, 277 Hooper, Tom, 276, 288 Hotel Rwanda, xx, 133, 213, 221 Howe, Marvine, 71 Human Rights Violations Committee (South Africa), 274 human rights, xxi, 22–23, 29, 39, 115, 155, 165, 171, 179, 232, 234, 255, 265, 273–274, 288 Hyden, Goran, 92

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Index

I imagined communities, 82, 83, 224 In My Country, 23, 272, 276–277, 287–290 Institut Africain d’Education Cinématographique (INAFEC), 215 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 217 Islamophobia, 75 Israel, 220 Ivory Coast, 220, 229

J Jaar, Alfredo, 132–133, 137–138 Jazz Mama, 255–256 Jiranek, David, 145–146 Johnny Mad Dog, xx Jones, Jonathan, 131 Jorge Jose’ Munguambe (Makolwa), 101–102

K Kabera, Eric, 133 Kaboré, Gaston, 215 Kafka, Franz, 159 Kagame, Paul, 197, 199–200, 202 Kani, John, 276 Kapchan, Deborah, 76 Kaplan, E Ann, 5, 9, 11, 13 Kaplan, Mark, xxii, xxvi-xxix, 276 Kaunda, Kenneth, 218 Keepers of Memory, 196 kidnap, 29, 32, 39–41, 45, 231 Kigali, 150, 192, 204, 209 Kilani, Leila, 21, 231–232, 238, 240–241, 244–249 King Hassan II, 72, 231, 233–234 King Leopold II, 252, 253, 270 King Mohamed VI, 71–72, 234 King, Martin Luther, 40 Kopytoff, Igor, 93, 97, 107

Index.indd 321

321

Kouyaté, Dani, 215 Kouyaté, Sotigui, 215 Krog, Antjie, 20, 170, 180–183, 189, 287 Kruger, Paul, 113 Kufour, John Agyekum, 165 Kwakye, Benjamin, 19–20, 155–156, 162–167, Kwame, Nkrumah, 58, 163

L LaCapra, Dominick, 63, 123 Laing, Kojo, 162 Lamokowang, 255 landmines, 53, 59, 62 Latin American Model, 273 Laub, Dori, 12, 239, 243–245, Lebanon, 52 Lemarchand, René, 192, 195–196, 203–104, 206 Levi Strauss, David, 133 Liberia, xx,217, 220 Lisbon, 55, 60 Long Night’s Journey Into Day, 189, 276 Luanda, 17, 50, 53–57, 61–62, 67 Lubar, Steven, 112 Luis, Nicolao, 96 Lyons, Robert, 132, 136–137

M Maake, Norman, 22, 273, 283–291 Macbeth, 161 MacDonald, Sharon, 124 Madikizela-Mandela, Winnie, 114 Malan, Wynand, 184 Mandela, Nelson, 3, 5, 114, 127, 184, 192 Mann, Thomas, 159 Maputo, 91, 98, 107 Marley, Bob, 58 Marx, Karl, 161, 180, 235, 238, 241 Maseko, Zola, 283

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322

Art and Trauma in Africa

massacres, 7, 223, 224, 225 Mawazine Festival Rhythms of the World, 77–78, 80, 88 Mbeki, Thabo, 275 Meirelles, Fernando, 213 memorialisation, 18, 92–93, 106, 111, 198, 206 Merhari, Mohamed, 74 Ministry of Human Rights (Morocco), 234 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 93 Mobutu, Sese Seko, 264, 269 Morocco, 15–17, 21, 69–88, 231–249 Morojele, Sechaba, 22, 273, 276–291 Morris, Errol, 194 Mouftakir, Mohamed, 231 Mozambique Resistance Movement (RENAMO), 91, 94, 96, 101 Mozambique, 15, 18, 51, 91–107 museums, 15, 18–19, 99–100, 110–113, 117–120, 123–127, 138, 141309–313 Music at the Limits, 206 music, 3, 12, 15–17, 25, 27, 30–88, 166, 168, 206–207, 225, 253, 267 musseque, 17, 53–56 Mwanankabandi, Berthe, 134

nationalism, 82, 176, 214, 216–219, 229, 266 Nayda, 71 Ndaliko Katondolo, Petna, 22, 252–264, 267 Ndebele, Njabulo, 173, 186 new history film, 23, 273, 277–279, 287 Ngoyi, Lilian, 114 Niger Delta, 16, 29–47 Nigeria, xx, 15–16, 19, 29–47, 66–67, 155–162 Night of Truth, The, 21, 214–221, 227–228 Nineteen Eighty-Four, 159 Nkrumah, Kwame, 58, 163 Nkunda, Laurent, 251, 269 Nnaemeka, Obioma, 226 Northern Ireland, 220 North-Kivu, 251, 261, 267, 269 Nos Lieux Interdits, see Our Forbidden Places Nothing but the Truth, 276, 277 Ntarama Church Genocide Memorial, 138–139 Núcleo de Arte, 98, 100–103 Number Four Prison Museum, 18, 110–127 Nuremberg Model, 273

N Nachtwey, James, 146, 151 Nacro, Fanta Regina, 21, 213–216, 220, 225–228 Nafali, Hassan, 80 national identity, 21, 116, 171, 175, 179, 183, 185–187, 214, 216–220, 227 National Party (South Africa), 114–115, 179, 274 National Reconciliation Commission (Ghana), 165 National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), 53–54, 60

Index.indd 322

O O Abraco da Paz/Embrace of the Peace, 101–102 oil, 17, 29–30, 31–33, 36–41, 46, 158, 160 Old Fort (Hillbrow, Johannesburg), 18, 113–115, 125, 127 Orwell, George, 159 Ouedraogo, Idrissa, 215, 216 Our Forbidden Places (Nos Lieux Interdits), 21,-22, 231–232, 235, 239, 240, 245, 248

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Index

P palimpsest, 115, 120 Peace and Reconciliation Commission (Mozambique), 94, 97, 106 Peace Art Project Cambodia (PAPC), 100 Peace Monument, 101 Peck, Raoul, 133 Pegasus, 231 Pentonville Prison Project, 100 People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 53–54 Peress, Gilles, 132–133, 137 perpetrators of violence, xxi–xxii, xxv, xxviii, xxxi, xxxiii, 7–8, 54, 58, 112, 135, 136–137, 143, 145, 177–178, 181, 224, 232, 240, 246, 262, 274–275, 276, 286–287 photography, xix, xxv, 5, 15, 19, 119, 131–146, 150, 241 Plato, 196, 197 Portugal, 17, 51, 53–55, 60, 64–67, 91 postmodernism, 11, 75, 239 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 16, 51, 64, 65, 179, 278, 288 prisons, 15, 18, 43, 100, 110–127, 158–161, 194, 233–234, 238, 241 Prozeß, 159 Psychoanalysis, 9, 11, 65 Purple Hibiscus, 160

R Rainha Ginga, 58, 60, 67 rape, xxxiii, 7, 37, 64, 123, 136, 199, 209, 223, 251, 255–261, 263–264, 268 Raymont, Peter, 133, 137, 148 Red Dust, 23, 272–277, 287–290 Regarding the Pain of Others, 197 refugee/s, 15, 54, 62, 194, 198, 199, 202, 203, 208, 283–284, 312,

Index.indd 323

323

Reid, Frances, 276 Reinhardt, Mark, 138–139, 147 Reparations Committee (South Africa), 274–275 Richardson, Samuel, 162 Robben Island, 111, 118, 123 Robins, Steven, 176 Rusesabagina, Paul, 133 Rwanda, xx, 15, 19–20, 33–34, 54, 131–146, 150, 192–210, 213, 217, 220–221, 228, 269, 273 Rwanda Project, The, 138 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), 198, 206 Rwililiza, Innocent, 134, 135

S Said, Edward, 192–193, 206–208 Salaam Kivu International Film Festival (SKIFF), 251–252 Salgado, Sebastião, 132 Samuels, Jane, 100 Sanders, Mark, 182 Sankara, Thomas, 223 Saro-Wiwa, Ken, 161 Savimbi, Jonas, 53, 60 sculpture, 15, 95, 101, 122, 123 Sembène, Ousmane, 19, 219 Senghor, Léopold, 218 Sengulane, Bishop Dom Dinis, 94–98, 100–101, 107–109 Shake Hands with the Devil, 133, 137, 148, 195 Shakespeare, William, 161, 220 Shooting Dogs, xx, 133, 135 Sierra Leone, xx, 51, 54, 217, 220 Sisulu, Albertina, 114 Sisulu, Walter, 114 Sitoe, Silverio Salvador, 95–96, 102–106 Slovo, Gillian, 288 Slovo, Joe, 114 So Long a Letter, 216

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324

Art and Trauma in Africa

Sobukwe, Robert, 114 Solanas, Fernando, 253, 260 Soldiers of the Rock, 283 solidarity, 5, 118, 185–186, 257, 259 Sometimes in April, 133 Sontag, Susan, 5, 112, 119, 125, 197 South Africa, xxii, xxiv, xxix, 3, 15, 18, 20, 21, 53–54, 110–127, 171–187, 217, 270, 272–291 South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance, 283 South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), 53 Soyinka, Wole, 19, 160, 161 Spottiswoode, Roger, 133, 147 Spring, Christopher, 99 Standard Operating Procedure, 194 Sudan, 217, 220 Suicide attacks, 70–72, 79, 83–85 Sun by Night, The, 20, 155, 162–167 Suleman, Ramadan, 276, 286 Surviving the Slaughter, 20, 194, 197, 199, 203, 205 survivors, xx, xxviii, 4, 8, 10, 12, 132, 134–137, 139–142, 144–145, 150, 159, 177–180, 195, 201 Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams, 19, 160

therapy, 13–14, 16, 23, 30, 50–51, 62–63, 75, 80, 92, 207, 223, 286 Third Cinema, 252, 253–254, 264 Throne of Weapons, 100–101 toques, 56 Torgovnik, Jonathan, 133, 136, 141, 143 torture, xxii-xxvi, xxx-xxxi, 7, 22, 72, 124, 158, 165, 179, 220–221, 223, 225, 232, 234, 238–241, 247, 249, 281, 286, 288 Transforming Arms into Ploughshares/ Transformação de Armas em Enxadas (TAE), 18, 91–107 Traoré, Apolline, 215 trauma studies, 4, 8–9, 14–15, 23, 91, 92, 207, 236–238 Tree of Life, 99–100 True Story, 255–261 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa (TRC or SATRC), xxii-xxiii, xxv, xxviii, xxx, 20, 23, 116–117, 170–187, 272–291 Tsotsi, 277 Tutu, Bishop Desmond, 98, 116, 175, 274 Twaomba Amani, 255–256, 261, 263–264

U T Taylor, Jane, 20, 177 Tazmamart, 247 TelQuel, 72 terrorism, 17, 69–86 testimony, xxii, xxxi, 8, 11–14, 23, 80, 116–119, 125–126, 174, 180–182, 194, 197, 201, 203, 205, 220, 224, 238, 239–245, 249, 287 Thackrah, John Richard, 74 theatre, 15, 20, 56, 70, 79–81, 173, 176–180, 220, 227, 277, 283

Index.indd 324

Ubu and the Truth Commission, 20, 176, 177–180 Ubuntu, 22, 272–274, 276–291 Ubuntu’s Wounds, 22, 272–291 Udumukwu, Onyemaechi, 156 Umkhonto we Sizwe, 283 Umutesi, Marie Beatrice, 20, 194–195, 197–198, 202–203, 206 United Nations Convention against Torture, 234 United Nations (UN), xix, 6, 44, 46, 95, 234, 282 urbanisation, 53

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Index

V Van Alphen, Ernst, 138 Van den Berg, Clive, 119, 127 Van der Watt, Liese, 51, 112, 123 victims, xx, xxxi, xxxiii, 4–8, 10–11, 14, 19, 23–24, 54, 58–59, 62–63, 112, 116, 123, 133, 135–139, 142–143, 148, 175, 177–180, 185, 194, 196, 209–210, 227, 232–233, 236, 239–240, 249, 251–269, 274, 276, 283, 286–287 Volcano Nyiargongo, 268 voyeurism, 5, 195, 255

325

Willemen, Paul, 217 witnesses, xxi, xxiii–xxiv, xxx, 3, 5, 23–24, 112, 132, 138, 177–182, 196, 202, 205, 223, 233, 239, 244, 247–248, 280, 282, 285 World Bank, 217

Y Years of Lead, 22, 231–239, 246, 249 Yole!Africa, 251–253, 256, 265, 267, 269 Young, Robert, 216 YouTube, 56–58, 268 Yugoslavia, 220, 273

W Waiting for an Angel, 19, 155, 157–162 167 Waiting for Godot, 196, 197 war on terror, 75 We Did Nothing, 195, 208 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, 20, 194–195, 197, 199, 201–202, 205–206

Index.indd 325

Z Zauberberg, 159 Zikri, Driss Ben, 234, 240 Zita, Boaventura, 96, 107 Zulu Love Letter, xxix-xxxi, 276–277 Zwick, Edward, 213

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