07 September 2004

Thank You Vice Chancellor,
Members of the Faculty,
Your Honour, the Deputy Mayor,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

What we are performing today is an act of restitution. It is most appropriate that this ceremony takes place during the first week of heritage month, a heritage month which we have dedicated to the celebration and recognition of the Living Heritage of the People of this country.

The archive which is being unveiled today is probably one of the larger collections of Modern African Literature in the world. I want to commend the University of KwaZulu-Natal for having taken the initiative to ensure that it is returned to the shores of this continent. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Lindfors who so diligently collected this material over forty years. On behalf of the government and the people of South Africa, we say thank you. Indeed I should thank him on behalf of the continent as a whole..

Afro-Pessimism and Afro-Denial.

"Afro-pessimism" is a term used to express the view that Africa has gone into deep decline over the past three decades. That opinion is usually coupled with another, that our continent has produced little of value for humanity, let alone for its own people. Yet what Africa and its peoples have contributed to humanity is evident in virtually every part of the world.

After the opening up of Tutankhamun's tomb in the 1920's, the art, design and decor of ancient Egypt inspired a host of movements in style and decor. Sub-Saharan Africa's sculptors also inspired the movement known as Cubism among western artists. Writers, artists, painters and musicians from Africa and of African descent have a continuing impact on contemporary sensibilities and aesthetics. Since the 1920's, African and African- American music came to dominate the popular idiom of the twentieth century. Today its influence is felt even in parts of the world where there are very few or no Africans at all.

Not surprisingly, much of what humanity has accomplished is built on the achievements of many civilizations from all six the continents. During the last four centuries, some continents might have contributed relatively more than others and have consequently come to be the principal purveyors of human accomplishments, sometimes to the neglect of others.

Our African heritage is comparable to that of other continents, yet African achievements, ancient, medieval and modern, remain unacknowledged, regrettably, in Africa itself. It is the as yet untapped potential of our diverse African humanity that has to be harnessed for the renewal of our continent.

One of the most telling indications of our achievements is that a hundred years ago, none of the leading statesmen of Europe, Japan or even the USA, would have blushed at the term "imperialist". It is an index of the manner in which the struggles of former colonial peoples, not least those of Africa, have transformed the political vocabulary of the modern world that the term "imperialist" is regarded as a term of political abuse in our day.

The Challenge of Modernity.

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was feared that modern education might alienate African intellectuals from their past and create distance between them and the majority of their own people. But as they turned away from the familiar symbolic universe of the family, the clan and the ethnic group, the most progressive African intellectuals adopted the more inclusive concepts of the nation, of the African continent as part of an international community. They also embraced as worthy compatriots others, drawn from the most recent immigrant communities from Europe and Asia, who identified with Africa's struggles and aspirations of her people.

The concerns of Africa's intellectuals remain those that moved them a century ago. Today, as then, Africa’s intellectuals continue to wrestle with the challenge of securing African sovereignty, defending the rights of the African people and sustaining their dignity as members of the human family in a rapidly changing world.

The Odyssey of the 20th century African intellectual was characterised by an agonising existential dilemma that posed the alternatives of either confidently confronting the uncertainties of progress and the future or clinging to the dubious comfort of a disintegrating past. In all of colonial Africa, racist policies of the not too distant past, aimed to mercilessly exploit the natural resources of our continent and the labour power of its people, while brutally excluding Africans from the body politique. It remains true even today that while Africa produces leather, most Africans are barefooted. While Africa produces sugar and cocoa, most African children do not eat chocolate. While Africa produces the most beautiful and highly priced gemstones, our continent is the home of the poorest people in the world. The oil wealth of Africa, rather than being a blessing, seems to be a curse that invites every stripe of adventurer, wannabe exploiter and rogue to meddle in African affairs.

African writers, poets, artists, sculptors and leaders of thought, thus experienced the modern era as highly ambiguous, with extremely destructive elements, interwoven with very constructive ones.

These excruciating ambiguities of modern times grew as urbanization on the continent accelerated. They peaked in the post-colonial era when Africans were now free to govern and mis-govern themselves. In their distress, a few among the intellectuals were tempted to lend an ear to the siren songs of a backward-looking nativism, which was frequently presented as "authenticity" by its adherents. "Authenticity" subsequently descended into gross depravity in the regime of Seso Seko Mobutu of Zaire (present-day D.R. Congo), where a post-colonial indigenous elite shamelessly plundered the national wealth in an orgy of cheap debauchery and cleptocracy.

Ambivalence, obliquity and dissonance are consequently at the heart of the artistic idiom evolved by Africa's modern artists, especially its musicians. Our continent's anguish has found its most poignant expression in their works.

Many modern African writers have portrayed the dilemma posed by modernity as tragic. But the most far-sighted among the generation of writers, artists, poets and playwrights who came into their own immediately before and after the Second World War, demonstrated how to resolve this contemporary riddle of the sphinx. Rather than wallowing in their alienation or seeking refuge in the past, they reintegrated themselves with the common people by active engagement in political and social struggles for freedom, independence and progress.

As we march into the third millennium, that is the object lesson that African intellectuals must derive from our 20th century experience.

Black Orpheus Exiting from Hades.

We are still in the first decade of a new millennium. The realization of Africa's potential requires the promotion of political stability and peace as the preconditions for her economic growth and the prosperity of her people. It also requires the cultivation of a capacity for unsparing, rigorous introspection, that recognises both our achievements as well as significant under-performance in a number of areas.

We therefore expect the intelligentsia of the continent, where necessary, to unsparingly, and rigorously criticize our recent past and the performance of our leadership and statesmen. We expect them also to become keen advocates and defenders of tolerance, rooted in an appreciation that truth is elusive and that it can only be sought in an environment of untrammeled contestation and debate among differing opinions. The best in the modern African political tradition has preferred secularism and advocated pluralism, not only to nurture diversity, but also for their intrinsic value.

The African creative artist has often been referred to as "Black Orpheus". Indeed Ulli Beier, an early chronicler of modern African creative arts, dubbed his literary journal “Black Orpheus”. If our Orpheus is ever to win back his Eurydice, who was swallowed up by the darkness of slavery, colonialism and apartheid, like his classical namesake, he must march forward and upward into the light of the 21st century. He would be wise also to heed the admonition against looking back in nostalgic longing; lest, as in the classical tale, Eurydice is called back, and is reclaimed by the darkness of Hades.

Conclusion.

The art of the story-teller is essentially about memory. It was by developing and building on our capacity as humans to memorise, recall past experience and to transmit it from one generation to the next that we have been able to create what we have today. Orature was – the oral transmission of information – was probably the first means by which we did this. Once the art of writing had been mastered, human beings acquired an even more flexible means of transmitting information from one person to the next. Since the first hieroglyphic was inscribed, humanity has evolved amazing ways of recording, storing and transmitting information.

Today’s event would not be taking place had it not been for a handful of dedicated scholars, writers and researchers who kept alive an African Studies Centre in Austin, Texas and the journal Research in African Literature over the years. There are a number of others whom we have to tank for making today possible.

The Atlantic Philanthropies;
The University of KwaZulu-Natal Development Foundation;
The Anglo-American Chairman’s Fund;
And of course our government, acting through the Department of Arts and Culture,
All of whom made financial contributions towards the acquisition of this archives.

We regard this as one of many heritage projects which will not only restore to the African continent scholarly work done by Africans and about Africans, but will also restore to Africa and its people those aspects of our continent’s rich past which have been lost to us and to humanity. Our government has made a commitment to rescuing the Timbuktu manuscripts and to ensure that they are restored and the information they contain preserved for posterity. There will be other projects, not necessarily from beyond our borders, but from within our region and South Africa itself that we shall be embarking on. We trust that our scholars and out universities will be prepared to play their role in the realization of those. The Department of Arts and Culture is already cooperating with a number of tertiary institutions in our endeavours to preserve our cultural treasures, but also to metaphorically excavate what has been lost or misplaced.

It is through memory that we have made and re-made ourselves as a human race. It is through memory too that we will scale the heights of achievement and create a better world.

back to top