Conversations with a continent - Congo, South Africa & Angola
by Ron Singer
[ politics | places - may 08 ]
This Spring, under the joint auspices of the Museum for African Art and The 92nd Street YM/YWHA, a series of panels of experts called 'Conversations with a Continent' is being held in New York, NY. As a way for readers to get some sense of Africa today, we present summaries of these panels.
Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo)
Professor Herbert F Weiss
Professor Weiss is a Woodrow Wilson Center Senior Policy Scholar, and Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.
In the last 12 years, Congo has suffered the greatest losses of life from conflict-related death (mostly ancillary, not killed) since World War Two: five million plus. As in the Belgian era, the events of this period constitute a tale of cynicism and perfidy in which it is hard to find heroes.
What made Congolese leadership so weak and thin at Independence in 1960? The Catholic Church had emphasized primary education, so few Congolese had any higher education. The Church had also weakened traditional rulers, regarding them as cultural and religious foes
Belgium acceded to demands for Independence very fast (1958-60), thinking to 'retain' good will. Not only did this plan fail woefully, but the lack of resistance to Independence meant there was no forging of even temporary unity within the disparate groups that comprised the Independence movement. At Independence, the army mutinied, Belgian officers fled, the whole army collapsed, and Belgian civil servants and business leaders fled.
Within the Independence movement was a very radical element, e.g. Patrice Lumumba, 31, a fiery leader with no international experience other than having (skilfully) played off various Belgian factions against each other during the Independence drive. As soon as he was elected, Lumumba tried this tactic with the US and USSR/China. The effect was disastrous, because the US under President Eisenhower didn't countenance neutrality. So our covert agencies went after him, not actively trying to assassinate him, but assisting (as did Belgium) the Katangan secession that ultimately led to his murder. Katanga and Kasai, in eastern Congo, have 60% of the nation's mineral wealth, and this region has remained the center of chaos in Congo since the 60s.
After he realized that the US would not back him, and that the UN (which did have troops on the ground) would not actively oppose the secession (because of the "no meddling in internal affairs" policy then in effect), Lumumba turned to the USSR. Ironically, JFK would very likely have backed him, but JFK's was not elected until two days after Lumumba's murder.
The next round of violence in Congo came in 1963, when USSR- and China-connected revolutionaries rose against the central Kinshasa government and their European and American allies. This revolt was crushed by US-backed mercenaries and secret air force units. One million died, and we put Lumumba's erstwhile lieutenant, (then Joseph) Mobutu, into power, where, over the next thirty-two years, he ruined the country.
[As part of his Africanization campaign, Mobutu re-styled himself "Mobutu Sese Seko" (short form for "the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake").]
Throughout his long reign, there was very little vigorous opposition to Mobutu, whose principal talents proved to be massive theft and adroit retention of power. Opponents correctly saw him as the West's man, and, as such, they felt that he was impossible to bring down. From 1960-90, the people of Congo suffered a 95% loss of income. After stealing many millions, Mobutu finally fell, pushed out by the Clinton administration only when his fall became inevitable, and when we were getting into bed with a new regime in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
[In reaction to the cynical role of the Clinton administration in these events, at this point there was a bitter anti-Hillary Clinton interjection by panelist Lubangi Muniania. For our relations with African governments, see French, Howard W , A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope for Africa (Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2004. 280pp, $25).]
In 1996, after the genocide, the government of Rwanda formed by Tutsi exiles back from Uganda, together with several African allies (Uganda, Burundi and Angola), attacked still-armed elements among the one million Hutu refugees in UN camps in eastern Congo, who had been raiding into Rwanda. To make this invasion seem a war of liberation, invaders put Laurent Kabila into power, an old Congolese revolutionary leader left from the 60s who quickly became a divisive presidential dictator.
The unpopular Kabila was seen (correctly) as a puppet of foreign armies. Boldly, however, as soon as he felt secure, he kicked these armies out. In reaction, Rwanda re-invaded from the east, leading to another round of war, this time against Kabila, who was now supported by Angola, Zimbabwe and others. This invasion led to a stalemate by which Congo essentially became two countries, the East and the rest. Initial carnage was followed by a treaty and elections - and then a new war.
[Kabila was murdered, reportedly by a bodyguard, in 2001.]
In the East, resentment of Rwanda and its Congolese allies led to popular uprisings, principally by the newly created Mai-Mai militia, who began by fighting "the invaders" - and gradually switched over to anyone they could catch. The Mai-Mai are now random murderers and rapists. This last round of violence is the worst yet. Once again, UN "peacekeepers" are impotent. The Rwandans have left, succeeded by rampaging, non-ideological chaos. Meanwhile, a fairly democratic election in 2006 gave 58% to the party of Kabila's son and successor, Joseph, the US and EU's current client, who is currently consolidating a new democratic dictatorship.
Godé Iwelé
A Catholic Priest who was tortured by Mobutu, Father Iwelé is Executive Director, Lamala Center, Kinshasa, Congo. Ordained in Belgium and educated in philosophy and æsthetics at American universities, Father Iwelé is on his way back to Kinshasa to start up the Lamala Center, which will draw children from the streets into a school that will care for them and teach them arts and philosophy.
[This sounds like a Jesuit mission.]
Exchanges such as this panel need to be deeper than just "conversations" if their central goal, for outsiders to learn about Africa, is to be met.
Congo is a society of artists: the arts give this multi-national colonial construct its common identity. The arts also keep hope alive: if the politicians ever got their act together, Congo, rich and creative, could lead the world.
From their formative influence on modern European painting and sculpture, to the beautiful poetry of writers like the great Lutumba Simaro, to their place at the center of world music today, Congolese art and artists are worthy of the greatest pride. True Congolese art represents a stark contrast with the ersatz, bogus, self-serving 'Congo-ness' formulated by Mobutu. Compare, for instance, his 'native' dress with the gorgeous traditional wraparound of a Congolese woman.
African artists find meaning in the continent's "dark night." Christians in Africa, especially after Rwanda, seriously questioned their belief, and are now engaged in their own quest for meaning. Traditional Congolese art thus has in common with Catholicism the depiction of life struggling within the coils of death. The shared, central goal is to keep the old gods alive. Too often, however, as Congo suffered, art has stood aloof from both church and state, limiting the transformative power of the church. A central goal of the Lamala Center will be to forge this natural, potent alliance.
[Thus, Iwelé, ordained in Belgium, sees a radically different relationship between Catholicism and traditional culture than did the old Belgian priests, just described by Weiss as having tried to quash that culture. It is no wonder African artists feel alienated from the Catholic church, and it promises to be a hard task that Father Iwele has set for himself, in effect to undo a big part of Congolese history.]
Lubangi Muniania
Art critic and educator, Muniania is a longtime associate of the Museum for African Art. The son and grandson of soldiers who served in the two World Wars. he runs a cultural arts center in Kinshasa.
It was the Congolese soldiers who served in the World Wars that initially brought the tribes together. Lingala, the national language, began as an army language. Traditional music in Congo was ethnic, connected with specific tribes, or nationalities, such as the Kongo and Mongo. Rather than an entertainment, this music was a cultural form, defining the worldview of a nationality - not a nation.
For those who wished to live in cities under the Belgians, passes were needed, and these were only given to the western educated. So urban life became detribalized. Under the Belgians, in response to the endangerment of cultures, a new form of music called agwaya evolved. Music became a second wellspring of national cultural unity.
International elements soon joined in - e.g. Congolese musicians felt a cultural kinship with the Cubans, and it was a Greek and a Belgian who first started recording non-ethnic Congo music in the 1940s and 50s. Right before Independence, the new Congo music was brought to Belgium, and the Belgians were amazed at the sophistication and appeal of what these "savages" had wrought. It became another great source of Congolese pride when their national music evolved, merging with other musics from all over Africa
Since Independence, Congolese musicians have continued trying to meld the various tribal musics. In the 1980s, with the Congo collapsing politically and economically, musicians once again went to Europe, only to find their music passé. They adapted by creating another new music known as soukous, which ascended to become the African music throughout Europe.
Today, music is the soul of Congo, and (as Father Iwelé said) the center of its identity, the basis for this UN of nationalities. Side by side with soukous, traditional music has resurfaced in Kinshasa, where it is now a popular art form admired across tribal lines. People dance to bands outside bars, give the musicians money, and buy drinks from vendors. By now soukous has merged with several newer trends. But some of these trends, such as rap, have not really caught on in Congo.
[Watch a video of Lutumba Simaro on YouTube and you'll see how little the vital music of Congo is influenced by rap, hip hop, etc. Lubangi Muniania recommends as the best book on Congo music: Gary Stewart, Rumba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos (Verso 2001). In answer to my question, he said that, yes, the nationalities in Kinshasa now dance to each others' traditional music.
The overarching theme of this panel, as articulated in his Introduction by moderator Jerry Vogel: the arts and religion of Congo have acted as a counterbalance to its terrible history. These cultural elements both keep the people going and keep the outside world's attention - such as it is. Congo is seriously underreported in the world's press. Compare the loss of life in, and newspaper column inches for, the Congo and Darfur. ]
South Africa
Professor Sean Jacobs
Professor Jacobs, originally from Capetown, resides in Brooklyn, NY, and is Assistant Professor of African Studies and Communication Studies at the University of Michigan.
SOUTH AFRICA SINCE THE END OF APARTHEID
The opening in 2007 of a four-star hotel in Soweto is emblematic of South African history since the end of apartheid in 1994. The hotel is in the center of the district in which occurred the rallies of the 1950s that marked the dawn of the Independence movement. The cheapest room costs $210, the average weekly wage of South Africans today.
Fourteen years after the election of Nelson Mandela as President, it is not easy to assess change in South Africa. There are three main schools of thought regarding the question of whether democracy has or has not delivered.
1. Liberal journalists and political scientists rate the period as a qualified success. They applaud the extremely liberal South African constitution and the uniquely productive Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
[The Commission brought together thousands of victims of apartheid (1948-1994) and their victimizers in an attempt to wipe the slate clean - as clean as possible, anyway.]
In 1999, power passed democratically to Thabo Mbeki. A black economic elite has already been created, including the world's first black billionaire, and there has been a reduction - slight - in economic disparity by race.
2. Left-wing elements, including trade unionists, answer the question negatively. Since 1994, there has been only three per cent per annum economic growth. There are actually fewer jobs today and more poverty. Unemployment is probably about 40%. Crime and AIDS are rampant. The new guard has too often gotten into bed with the old.
3. Social and cultural researchers centered around the University of Wittswatersrand see progress in the structural and cultural arenas. They point to kwaito music as one example of the healthy, extensive self-fashioning of new identities by young South Africans.
Johannesburg may be said to encapsulate modern South Africa's struggles. By now, the population is 8-10 million, depending whether you include the suburbs. What is life like for these millions?
The municipal government has thus far privileged economic growth over redistribution. A black middle-class is thriving in 'Jo'berg'. The city's 13 districts have also been unified. There has been some movement away from the heavy industries (especially steel and mining) dominant in the old economy to services (tourism, information services, etc.).
The results of social policies are spotty. New housing is going up in the inner-city, but for the middle classes, not the poor. There are more ersatz slums and gated communities than ever. New housing for the poor is very scarce all over the country, and what there is around Jo'Berg is 20-30 miles out of the city. Even in those new low-cost housing developments, no services exist.
As in the old days, public transport still exits mainly to move the poor to and from their jobs and to and from shopping centers. A very unreliable mini-bus system runs only during the day. Among the newly enfranchised, only the small black middle-class can get where they need to get easily. (They have cars.) Improving the infrastructure is a big issue.
Public spaces (parks etc) are very important to public order in Jo'Berg. Public space is very scarce. Bridges, a court building, and luxury apartment buildings have gone up, and, in a few cases, the poor do benefit from these changes. For instance, what housing there is for the poor includes parks. However, the principal public spaces open to everyone are casinos and mega-malls.
The result of the slow, uneven pace of change in South Africa has been a new groundswell of dissent, including both legal and extra-legal activities. In response to government failure to address the HIV crisis, for instance, there have been massive protests, as there have been regarding economic and housing inequality. Illegal means have been used to protest poor availability of utilities. For instance, Trevor Ngwane, leader of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, turned off the Mayor's electricity.
In December, 2007, using protest movement tactics, in an internal party vote Jacob Zuma defeated Mbeki, who had become very unpopular, and took over ANC leadership.
People compare South Africa's problems with Zimbabwe's. A big difference: Zimbabweans have been very slow to protest; South Africa averages 16 protests a day! The people of SA insist on the progress and rights promised by the ANC.
Yvette Christianse
Having emigrated from South Africa at age 18, and come to the US via Swaziland and Australia, she is a poet, novelist (Unconfessed, 2007), and Associate Professor of English at Fordham University, in New York City.
SOUTH AFRICAN WRITERS TODAY
For South Africa's writers, Independence brought jubilation and panic. A very interesting account of the changeover, from the Afrikaner perspective, is Antjie Krog's A Change of Tongue (2003).
During the 1970s, the contravening of the 1967 agreement to use dual languages in schools, in favor of an Afrikaans only policy, sparked the massive protests leading to the end of apartheid. There are now 13 official languages in South Africa; these were the 'unofficial' languages people used before 1994.
Books of historical influence:
Sol Plaatje, Nhudi (1913)
RRR Dhlomo, An African Tragedy (1928)
Peter Abrahams, Mine Boy (1946)
Fort Hare was a Quaker university. Its educational philosophy was based on that of Booker T Washington. Fort Hare was tolerated during the apartheid era. Today, this University is the keeper of the nation's literary archives, and a center of new approaches to education, especially writing. Fort Hare now sponsors a nationwide undergraduate writing network in English, which the ANC originally accepted on the grounds that "English is the language we have to speak."
The archive, mostly in English, includes the narratives of slave women never before heard. Unlike American slave narratives, which tend to follow the form of the sentimental novel, and to be modeled after European forms, these are new, unfamiliar kinds of writing that may provide models for a future South-African literature which could be based in English, but could include passages in other, native languages, without glossaries.
[This sounds like the current Kwani literary movement in Kenya.]
By banning books and plays, the apartheid regime tried to control the stories that defined their nation, and to suppress narratives of how people really lived. The extremes to which the regime went are exemplified by the apocryphal banning of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty - for its title. (This may or may not have happened.)
Silencing never worked. From the first decades of apartheid, there was considerable protest writing. Among protest books/writers from the onset of apartheid to today are:
Bessie Head
Dennis Brutus
K Sello Duiker, The Quiet Violence of Dreams
Zakes Mda, Thirteen Cents.
Gary van Wyk
Having participated in the visual arts' protest movement, then emigrated to the US via Zimbabwe, he is an art historian and curator of South-African art at the Axis Gallery, in New York City.
SOUTH AFRICAN CONTEMPORARY AND HISTORICAL VISUAL AND PLASTIC ART
South African art history can be divided into five major periods:
1. from pre-history through the pre-colonial (to 1650)
2. African art through the colonial era (19th and 20th century)
3. 20th century art and photography
4. anti-apartheid resistance art (mainly 1980s)
5. contemporary art (since 1991).
The earliest extant human art, 80,000 years old, comes from South Africa, a small fragment of engraved ochre from Blombos Cave. There are ostrich-shell beads from 30,000 years ago that are similar to those of the San [bushmen] today. Even where San people have disappeared from South Africa, their ancient rock art survives. This art is shamanistic, not (as previously thought) simply descriptive, of hunting scenes and such. Bushmen art traditions have been revived in San communities in Botswana and South Africa. During the Iron age, from around 500-700 CE on, terracotta heads were sculpted in the Lydenburg area of South Africa. These have inspired contemporary artists, including Malcolm Payne. From circa 900 CE comes a famous little gold-foil coated rhino and other gold art from Mapungubwe, a settlement connected to the culture of Great Zimbabwe, which, from around 1200-1450, produced magnificent art and architecture centered around sacred kingship.
Sanctions against South Africa [1986-1993] meant outside ignorance and neglect of South African art. The small size of many pieces and the absence of a mask-making tradition meant this art did not conform to stereotypes of African art, which also made SA art slow to spread.
From the colonial period until today, ethnic (i.e. "tribal") art has combined function, spirit, and decoration: e.g. a sleep headrest in the shape of a bull, made by a culture in which cattle are regarded as the group's connection with ancestors.
Among many groups, such as the Zulu, there was no figurative art before the 20th century. Instead, there were beautiful pots, again linked to the ancestors, and items of personal use. Extravagant costumes distinguished Zulu regiments in pre-colonial times. After European beads were imported, beadwork costuming became an important indigenous art among the Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and other South African peoples. (See axisgallery.com/). With the release of Nelson Mandela and the introduction of democracy in South Africa, there has been a resurgence of pride in the African past, expressed through the incorporation of traditional beadwork into the pageantry of gala occasions, among other things.
South Africa has gorgeous architecture. On Basotho houses, symbolic architecture and design, including murals, are connected to fertility rites and to the ancestors.
Photography has forged a remarkable record of modern South-African history, including iconic photos of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the Soweto Uprising of 1976, and the mid-1980s state of emergency and resistance thereto. Outstanding photographers include Ian Berry, Jurgen Schadeberg, Sam Nzima, Peter Magubane, Paul Weinberg, Gideon Mendel, and Greg Marinovich. (see axisgallery.com/ )
Fine arts played a major role in the Independence struggle, beginning in the 1970s with such works as Paul Stopforth's figures of torture victims in South African prisons. The 1982 Culture and Resistance Symposium in Gaberone, Botswana, played a formative role in the resistance art movement. There has been a great deal of propaganda poster-making, street art and graffiti, and painting. In the mid-1980s, the government banned from newspapers photos and writing about resistance. The papers left blank spaces, which made a point until the government banned the spaces. An especially great political painting is Sfiso ka Mkame's 'Postcards to God'. William Kentridge, the South African artist now globally famous, emerged from this period as a printmaker influenced by German Expressionist artists from the Weimar period.
Beginning in the 1990s, there was a burst of interest in defining self-identity that drew upon repressed black self-images from history. For instance, the Cape of Good Hope was initially occupied for the spice trade that inaugurated the age of capitalism. Berni Searle, who recently had a one-person show at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), has created a work depicting her own body in relation to spices(see www.axisgallery.com/ ) South African art is now firmly on the world map.
Some notes from the Q & A
Recently, there has been renewed interest in writers like Fugard and Gordimer from the agitprop era of the 80s.
Post-apartheid art has struggled to find subjects as dramatic as those of the Independence struggle.
Mbeki still adheres to "quiet diplomacy" with Mugabe; Zuma has called for Mugabe to step down. Zuma was the default anti-Mbeki candidate in the December 2007 elections. Zuma is himself ethically compromised.
"Why do so many African leaders refuse to surrender power?" asked an audience member.
1. cultural patterns - e.g. sacred kingship.
2. you can't generalize about "democracy" in Africa.
The absence of public space and transport in South Africa is a major impediment to democratization.
The area around the University of Wittswatersrand, already a very well-integrated area in terms of race and class, offers a model for all of South Africa.
For an excellent play on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that goes beyond agitprop, read/see the actor John Kanés Nothing But The Truth.
Angola
Linda Heywood
Professor of History and African-American Studies, Boston University. Co-author, with John Thornton, of Central Africans, Creoles, and The Foundation of the Americas, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Inspired as a young woman by the Independence struggle in Angola, she has visited the country often and watched it go through three phases: from colonialism, to civil war, to reconstruction and the beginnings of democracy. This year is the 200th anniversary of the end of the Atlantic slave trade, a good year to look back.
Recent research reveals hitherto unsuspected ties between Angola and the United States. The first group of slaves in Virginia, for instance, came from Angola. A new database is about to be put on line that identifies 34,000 slave ships, and lists their destinations and origins, including the ethnicity of some of the captives. From the 1580s-90s to the 1640s, 90% of the known slave ships bound for the Americas came from "West Central Africa" - i.e., what is now Angola and the two Congos.
This trade was called the asiento trade, named for a contract the Spanish/ Portuguese rulers made with slave traders. The European governors in Luanda (now the capital of Angola) fomented war with native populations, leading to massive displacement and capture of both the defeated and displaced peoples. On the [small] other hand, the Portuguese brought some foods, such as cassava, to Africa. They may also have brought tobacco, or it may have been cultivated indigenously.
Meanwhile, English and Dutch pirates robbed some of the slavers of their cargo and carried off these people to captivity in places such as Delaware, New York and New England.
This period was marked by intense conflict in Angola, some started by the Portuguese, some internal - e.g. the civil wars between the kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo. (The modern name of the country, Angola, comes from the ruler's title in Ndongo.) Kongo had already been Catholicized, so the Kongo were allies of the Portuguese in these wars. Many Kongo rulers had been babtized. From 1618-22 alone, about 50,000 residents of Ndongo became refugees or slaves. In Kongo, the Prince of Soyo sold slaves to the Dutch and British. Westernized people in West Central Africa, mostly Kongo, became known as "Atlantic Creoles."
From the 1660s on, the wars spread to Lunda, in eastern Kongo, a new source of slaves. The British and Dutch shipped slaves from Cabinda [now a northern exclave of Angola]. During the middle passage, 35-40% of Angolan captives died. The degradation and sufferings were awful, yet when they got to North America the captives kept their sense of identity, reconstituting their communities. The later influx of West Africans (Ibos, Ghanaians, etc) was much larger than the Angolan one. Identities became diluted, and slavery became a less flexible institution.
Many of the slaves from West Central Africa wound up in the mid-Atlantic and southern states. Some came to New York State, including what is now Westchester. Some of these slaves, Christianized and literate, obtained their freedom, married indentured servants, and even became landowners. Many retained their sense of origin, naming themselves "---- de Angola." Towns in several states (New York, Florida, e.g.) are still named Angola, after these people.
The Battle of Mbwila (1665) eroded the power of Kongo's rulers, leading to the kingdom's division and even more slave-taking. The jagas were young men enlisted by the Europeans who brutalized the population, at various times fighting both for and against the Portuguese. Their depredations accelerated the total destruction of order in Kongo.
There was a notable exception to the acquiescence of Kongo rulers. The heroic Queen Njinga, whose name has passed into folklore in Africa and Brazil, was a most interesting and independent woman whom the Portuguese could neither subdue nor outsmart. The sister of the King of Ndongo, she would accept Christian ornaments from the Portuguese, then discard them in favor of her own amulets. Saying that only slaves paid tribute, she refused Portuguese entreaties and ignored their threats. Often pictured as a woman warrior with a battle ax and bow and arrows, Njinga fought to free illegally taken slaves, and maintained an independent kingdom within the Portuguese domains.
Much later, the Angolan Independence fighters and leaders were educated by missionaries, some of them Black Americans returned to their home continent.
Nelson Da Costa
This artist is about to receive an MFA from Boston University. (To see his work, go to www.gallerynaga.com. Then go to Artists, then to Nelson Da Costa.)
SLIDE SHOW OF HIS VISUAL ART WITH A NARRATIVE OF ITS GENESIS
Born in Angola in 1970, Da Costa's work is based on his youth in that country during the tumultuous years of the Independence struggle, which was followed by the civil war between UNITA, backed by South Africa and the U.S., and the ultimately triumphant MPLA, backed by the USSR and Cuba. To the common people, both forces spelled displacement and death. Da Costa states that the purpose of his art is an effort to interpret these years in ways that open the way to a better future.
During the Independence struggle, his entire family was killed, and he was himself badly injured. Several of his images depict amputation. UNITA, principally, sowed land mines, to punish enemies and to destroy the land so no food could be grown. Today, Angola has the second-most unexploded land mines in the world. [Cambodia is first. According to a UN report, over 110 million land mines remain unexploded.]
DaCosta uses traditional images and forms (masks, figure carvings) with contemporary themes. For instance, some images depict starvation and poverty, ubiquitous in Africa today He also incorporates traditional Angolan motifs, especially ones that are universally recognized, such as mothers attempting to protect and support their children during war. Ancestor veneration is another theme, which sees people through current horrors by giving them a sense of connection with a loving past. When he was badly injured as a child, DaCosta welcomed death, which would have meant being reunited with his parents and siblings. The world imagined in his art owes a lot to the stories his grandfather told him. Now he sees the fact that he survived as an opportunity for him to try to create this, his transformative, political art.
Some of the work is about memory and thought, itself. Imagery depicts physical memory, synapses and neurons in the brain as it reflects upon the themes of his early life. There is a portrait of Njinga that celebrates her agile mind. Two other images, 'Africanathinker' and 'Eurothinker', depict contrasting mental landscapes. These 'mind' pictures also speak to the ways in which lost memories live on in the brain. A lot has been lost: DaCosta has only one photo of his father; none, of his mother.
[DaCosta's work can be characterized as agitprop completely embedded in a coherent, semi-abstract pattern of images.]
In Angola, the richest artistic tradition is among the Tchokwe. [See http://www.rrtraders.com/Masks/chokwesd.htm for a supremely beautiful mask.] Today, the visual arts are flourishing in Angola.
[Much of Africa today appears to be in the midst of a great artistic flowering that comprises visual art, music, and literature.]
After medical treatment in Rwanda and Cuba, he remained in Cuba. He attributes the exuberance and color of his work to his youth in this Caribbean nation. Since his family had been coffee-growing land owners (they were murdered for their land), and since he was sent to Cuba under the auspices of the side that prevailed in the war, the Marxist MPLA, he kept his history and identity quiet. When children were sent letters and money from their parents, he wrote himself a letter from his father. (There was, of course, no money.) It was a doctor from Medecins sans Frontieres who first gave him paper and crayons.
By the time of Hurricane Katrina, he was living with his wife and children in Boston. That event prompted him to create images of Angolan displacement. No one except Catholic priests and nuns helped the Angolan displaced.
Q & A
Jerry Vogel: the war for Angolan independence was so long because small, weak Portugal, under dictator Salazar, clung to Angola and its other African colony, Mozambique. In 1974, when the Socialists drove Salazar from office, Independence quickly followed. Rich in diamonds and oil, Angola became the site of a surrogate Cold War conflict. During the Clinton presidency, the US announced that it would not give any aid to countries at war. This edict finally helped end the Angolan civil war. But the MPLA was did not kill/execute UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, at first because they feared US repercussions, and later, because they feared being brought before an international tribunal. [Savimbi (1934-2002) ultimately died in battle.]
Professor Heywood: At Independence, one per cent of Angolans were literate.
Mr Da Costa: A lot of education under the MPLA was really just indoctrination, make-believe history and mythology.
During the 80s, scholars in Portugal and elsewhere began to describe Angolan history more realistically, but there were still far too few teachers and other educated people in Angola, itself. Deterred by misgovernment, including massive corruption, Angolans in the Diaspora rarely return home.
Today, Angola belongs to OPEC and is a major oil producer, probably China's greatest supplier. The cash-rich Chinese have now pushed the IMF [International Monetary Fund] aside in places like Angola because the Chinese trade infrastructure for oil. instead of proferring strings-attached loans and grants. Angola suffers from what is called "the oil curse": immense corruption and economic inequality.
[For Angola's oil boom, see, for example, 'Nowadays, Angola is Oil's Topic A', The New York Times, March 20, 2007, ppC1, C4.]
