Hamadi,
Nice piece! I do attend gigs organised by the Association of Students
of African Decent (ASAD) at Simon Fraser University. I live only a
half hour drive from the University campus.
Like Yus, I agree with you that the "Kankurangs" should have beat the
daylights out of the dude.
Cheers,
Madiba.
On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Hamadi Banna wrote:
> "One huge fellow, ridiculously dressed up in skins, was beating on a
> gigantic xylophone, which he carried slung round his neck; he was the
> conductor of the women's dance; these, singing and uttering savage yells,
> swept the ground before us, waved great stalks of manioc or broke them under
> our feet by beating them noisily on the ground; it was a scene of delirium.
> The children, too, leapt and danced", (Andre Gide, Travels in the Congo, p.
> 69).
>
> That is how the French traveler/writer, Andre Gide, described one of the
> many social occasions he witnessed in 1927 on his way to the Congo. The
> Swedish Academy still saw it fit to award him the much coveted Nobel Prize
> in 1947.
>
> Western literature about Africa is replete with such racist references to
> Africans and their civilization. From Hegel, through Conrad, to the recent
> publication of Brigit and Joel Samuels, we constantly see dirt thrown on us
> by people who cannot live up to a simple fact: black people are here to
> stay. Against such a barrage of insults and negativity, we ask ourselves
> "what are we going to do? what form of protest are we going to adopt?"
>
> In 1975, Chinua Achebe delivered what was considered a stunning lecture at
> the University of Massachusetts on an issue captioned "An Image of Africa:
> Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness". He tried to set the record straight
> by debunking Conrad's picture of an Africa of uncouth savages and tall
> impenetrable forests.
>
> About three years ago, at a public lecture delivered to the Association of
> Students of African Descent at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada,
> Professor Olufemi Taiwo attacked, in the same vein, Hegel's "The Philosophy
> of History". As quoted by Professor Taiwo, this is what the precursor of
> der Fuhrer had to philosophize about Africa:
>
> "Africa proper, as far as history goes back, has remained for all purposes
> of connection with the rest of the World shut up;it is the Gold - land
> compressed within itself - the land of childhood, which lying beyond the day
> of history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of Night" (Hegel, The Philosophy
> of History, p. 91)
>
> It therefore falls back on us Gambians, and Africans collectively to redeem
> our image; to discard the "dark mantle" of ignorance that envelopes most
> corners of Western society and institutions through publications, public
> lectures, symposia, even manifest cultural pride.
>
> Or maybe sometimes a good beating from a "kankurang" or "pakin" to some
> recalcitrant would suffice.
>
> Hamadi.
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