#138: Connection and Hope
The letter was born watching Gina Prince-Bythewood and Viola Davis’ The Woman King. The film’s joy is witnessing a Pan-African cast create magic together. Its pain is the history it reminds us of. Nevertheless, I left hopeful. Bythewood and Davis created a story of connection and hope and its production ensured connection and hope. They show us what is possible.
Our continent is filled with beauty. This week ceramicist Zizipho Poswa’s solo show, uBuhle boKhokho (Beauty of Our Ancestors), opens at Southern Guild. If you haven’t seen her work, you should. Poswa’s work is a celebration of the continent and its diaspora. She weaves together different traditions and generations; each work, an embodiment of connection. Like Bythewood, she shows as what can be achieved through curiosity, connection, and openness to the rich flow of the continent’s history and culture.
Their work reminded me of Pan-Africanism’s landmark speeches; Robert Sobukwe’s 1959 speech at the Pan African Congress’ inaugural conference, Kwame Nkrumah’s 1963 speech at the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). Both speeches hold a damning analysis of the oppressive forces that shaped and shape the continent’s history and they are a call to connect, cooperate, and take intentional, principled action.
There is sadness in reading them – knowing that Sobukwe endured multiple years of solitary confinement, his voice imprisoned and oppressed and then mostly ignored in a democratic South Africa, knowing that Nkrumah’s call for cooperation did not land on fertile soil, that narrower interests prevailed. Nevertheless, they left us with a vision of possibility, with a dream, a dream that Poswa and Bythewood take forward, sixty years later.
/strategy
South African Pastoral is one of six essays in a collection entitled Mongrel written by William Dicey. It grounds us in the persistence of inequality. Inequality that persists because of both local and global forces.
Dicey is an incredible intellect who embeds his astute observations in the context of wide-ranging reading. He moves effortlessly between Pickety’s economics, van Onselen’s histories, Czesław Miłosz’s reflections; J.G. Ballard’s short stories and more, all the while giving his reader astute observations on everything from trade policy to the ironies that emerge when the finalists of the Miss Meat Festival cross paths with the winners of the ‘Ram’s Head Abattoir Carcass Competition’ (yes, it happened).
In his address, Nkrumah observed that “Our capital flows out in streams to irrigate the whole system of Western economy”.
South African Pastoral is ostensibly about Dicey’s fruit farm, yet he slips easily beyond its borders to address wider themes.
Did you know that in 2011 European retailers took 42% of the sales price of South African fruit, SA fruit distributors 32% and farmers received 18%?
For South African wine sold in Sweden, 64% of the sales price is retained by the Swedish state in the form of tax, and the wine farmer gets 5% of the sales price.
Nkrumah cautioned that “So many blessings flow from our unity; so many disasters must follow on our continued disunity”.
Dicey takes us into the world of South African finance houses, hire purchase agreements, and short-term loans.
A worker defaults on a $4 debt payment, with legal and administrative costs it escalates to $140. Another, Adam, buys a cheap car; he will pay three times the purchase price because of the high interest charged. Another buys a freezer; she pays 3.6 times the cash price. A fourth is enticed to surrender an endowment policy for a cash payout at a quarter of the policy’s value.
Dicey writes, “STOP THE PRESS. Adam’s bank has just released its annual report. Their results have been sterling for several years now; enabling the chief executive to exercise share options to the value of R80 million. Just to be clear, this means that he earned R80 million last year, in addition to his salary of R10.8 million”.
It’s in the details that you see strategy come alive.
/self
The Pan-African thread took me to Namwali Serpell’s Paris Review conversation with celebrated African author and intellectual, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
A 42-year-old Zambian interviewing an 84-year-old Kenyan, in a New York-based, Paris-founded magazine, is the creative connection that Nkrumah and Sobukwe pleaded for.
Serpell starts the interview by asking Ngũgĩ how he names his novels.
He responds, “A funny thing is that I tend to give all my novels the same title to begin with – Wrestling With God. Then, while I’m writing, I realize, oh, that’s not quite it …”
I laughed. It turns out that even when you hold ten honorary doctorates and multiple international awards, hard work is hard work.
They reflect on Martinican intellectual and poet Aimé Césaire’s formulation that “cultural contact is like oxygen”.
Ngũgĩ explains that when he became the founding director of the International Centre for Writing and Translation (based at the University of California, Irvine), he thought that he’d begin by inviting Kenyan authors. He changed his mind and started instead with Native American and Hawaiian authors, then focused on African American authors, and then widened out to the rest of the world.
He comments that the experience led him to conclude that one should “Start where you are and then connect to the world”.
It wasn’t an obvious choice for Kenya’s most celebrated author. It was a powerful one.
/soul
The Woman King is a historical drama about the Agojie; the women warriors of the ancient Kingdom of Dahomey (in what is today Benin).
The film’s cast is from Nigeria, Benin, Uganda, South Africa, and the diaspora. A West African story it was filmed in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal and Cape Town.
In every respect, it is an embodiment of the power that can be unlocked by continental collaboration.
South Africans will be thrilled to see Thuso Mbedu in the role of Nawi and Siv Ngesi’s transformation from his day job as a comedian, into king’s advisor and powerful ally to Viola Davis’ General Nanisca is wonderful.
Director, Prince-Bythewood was intentional that the film should create possibilities.
In this Hollywood Reporter interview with her and Davis, she comments, “The thing is for women and people of color, often the résumés are not long because it’s about lack of opportunity, not lack of talent, so when you’re in my position, it’s important to look past that résumé. There were a couple of people who’ve never done a film of this size before, but what they brought into that meeting, I knew that they were going to bring something extra.”
The film has had some controversy, but I felt that anthropologist Dominique Somda put it best, writing that “The Woman King should be seen. For its spectacular celebration of the Agojie’s strength and its invitation to explore their meaningful, public, and intimate lives. And also, for – rather than despite – the political and ethical conundrums it occasions.”
Read her article to learn the complex history behind the film.
I leave you today with Sobukwe’s invitation, “Here is a tree rooted in African soil, nourished with waters from the rivers of Afrika. Come and sit under its shade and become, with us, the leaves of the same branch and the branches of the same tree.”
All the best
Karl
PS: I am fully booked for the remainder of the year. If you’d like to start your year working with me, I have a few places open.