African Art as Hegemony Olajide Olagunju

African art is a myth. I define myths, “not as falsehoods, but as deeply meaningful and

resonant accounts that illuminate profound enigmas.”1 African art is the tool of elite

hegemony. African art is also a tool for the transformation of hegemony, to entrench new

elite. To complete the cycle, and to begin it, African art is a tool for political resistance,

for countering existing hegemony and overthrowing incumbent elite.

Hegemony evokes domination, supremacy, dominion, power and authority. However,

given its subtlety, it is best expressed as control: hidden, subconscious, auto-control.

Beyond and within its hegemonic functions, African art has independent aesthetic value.

But, devoid of its socio-political foundation, the worth of African art is diminished.

Kifwebe association mask

_________________

1 Attributed to Mark Auslander in AccidentalSlaveowner.com

2

“We don’t just do it that way.

We just don’t sit down one day

And decide to tell the secrets.”

-Baga elder

In this paper, I examine the operations of hegemony as well as ideology and resistance in

the context of African cultures with a focus on tradition-based arts and aesthetics. The

Congolese mask I have reproduced above speaks to the theme of my study at several

levels. The mouth of the mask is open and opened in such a way that it speaks of

revelation. The beaky mouth, which echoes the parrot, aptly captures the fact that the

mask is revealing a secret. But it is a mask, which speaks of concealment. This mask

must therefore be covering a secret. According to its curator, this mask is full of signs,

meanings and significations, the secret knowledge of which sets the boundary between

the mask’s initiates and outsiders (Hersak 1990 in Nooter 1993:56). The idea of “initiates

and outsiders” resonates thousands of miles with Yoruba secret art which clearly

separates its Ogboni2 (initiated/insider) from the public mass of Ogberi

(uninitiated/outsider). Knowledge is power: the initiate by the fact of membership and

initiation, gets power over the mass of uninitiated ‘outsiders’. This is the encapsulation of

African Art: concealment and revelation for hegemony.

Simmel (1906) defines secrecy as a condition in which one person is intentionally hiding

something while another person is seeking to reveal what is being hidden. He examines

various forms of social relationships from the point of view of reciprocal knowledge and

secrecy. According to him, the level of knowledge of the secrets of one person by another

is in varying degrees. The attendant confidence one has based on one’s knowledge of

2 highest ranking corps of Yoruba elite, membership of which is secret

3

another is therefore an intermediate state between knowledge and ignorance about the

person. He went on to describe these grades of knowledge between the knower and the

known. The first kind of relationship is acquaintanceship. This is a relationship in which

there is far more discretion and secretiveness than there is among intimates. The second

kind of relationship is friendship. Friendship is not based on total intimacy, but rather

involves limited intimacy based on common intellectual pursuits, religion, and shared

experiences. The third kind of relationship is marriage. This form of relationship is the

least secretive form of relationship.

Simmel sees the secret as one of man's greatest achievements because it creates a strong

solidarity among those who know the secret. But the secret is always accompanied

dialectically by the possibility that it can be discovered. Simmel’s idea of knowledge of

secret as measure of relationship also resonates deeply with what is known of the Ogboni

fraternity or brotherhood. One ogboni would say to another ogboni “omu iya dun,

gbogbo wa la jo n’mu” (“mother’s breast is sweet, we all suckle it together")3, meaning

“we share a secret which unites us”. Brotherhoods and fraternities like marriage are

places of deep revelation. And this space of revelation separates the brothers with all their

perks and privileges from the non-brothers.

Writing on the nature and purpose of secrecy as embedded in African Art, Nooter [citing

Bok (1982:281), Bellman (1984:4), Fernadez in Bellman (1984: ix), Quarcoompome

(1993), Roberts, Abimbola and Hallen (1993) and Simmel (1950:352)] argues that

everyone knows the powers and values of secrecy because it permeates the cultures in

which we live, there being no culture in the world that has not discovered secrecy’s

secret. She lambastes Eurocentric biases that portrayed African secrecy in bad light,

3 Reconfiguration.blogspots

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particularly European missionaries and functionaries who, for economic reasons,

deliberately projected an image of a ‘primitive’ Africa. She asserts that no discussion of

knowledge and power in Africa of the 19th and 20th centuries can be complete without

an emphasis on the role of secrecy. Secrecy, she says, must be credited with the very

survival of esoteric forms of philosophy and religion (Nooter 1993:55-56). She does not

spare ethnographers in her relentless accusation of international desecration of African art

because, as she argues, [citing Murphy (1992), Gotlieb and Drewal (1977) and

MacGaffey (1975)] African art is not for intellectual voyeurism; in fact some art forms

have their aesthetic values specifically in their not being seen at all (Nooter 1993:56). For

her, therefore, writing about African art is fundamentally disruptive and deeply damaging

of African local practices.

I agree with Nooter that there is more to African art than meets the uninitiated eye. But I

also interpret her as saying, and concur with her, that traditional African elite use secrecy

to protect their power over their people and against the rival powers of foreign religion

and power. African elites do this through the secrecy of the art of which they are the main

patrons: the arts serve to maintain African elite in power through the interplay of

concealment and revelation. Nooter began her paper with a 1982 beautifully loaded quote

from Sissela Bok: “We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy” (Nooter 1993:55). Neither

Bok nor Nooter of course mean that we all know the secrets of power since one’s degree

of comprehension depends upon how far one has progressed through the initiation cycle

(Nooter 1993:59). To know the secret of power is to either become powerful, or become

dead. However, we are all experts in Africa because we know our limits and potentials

[(Nooter 1993:56 citing Bok (1982: xv; 57 citing McNaughton 1982a:501; 59)]. We

5

know that life is livable, at least bearable, only if we have great respect and admiration,

nay, awe, for all that attracts our discrete attention: when we pay attention to power, nay,

to secret, we pay attention, nay, loyalty to the ‘powerful’, that is, to the secretive. And to

pay attention is to pay homage. To pay homage is to succumb to the whims and caprices,

as well as labour for the perks and privileges of the controllers of the secret, the

‘powerful’. Indeed, this submission to and travailing for the merchants of secret, the elite,

makes the elite powerful in the first place, and, because it is a habit, it entrenches them in

their powerful position.

The secrecy of the art with which African elite maintain their hold on the vast majority of

the population belongs to the realm of hegemony, which is Antonio Gramsci's expository

contribution to Marxian thought. Hegemony is a concept that explains how the state or

political institutions, backed by and benefiting a specific economic class, uses the law,

police, army and prisons to coerce various strata of society into consenting to the status

quo which supports its beneficiaries, the ruling class or what I have been referring to as

the elite. More importantly, an understanding of hegemony helps us to see, not only how

the ruling class coercively uses state apparatuses, but how political society, especially

civil society, with its institutions, ranging from education, religion and the family, to the

microstructures of the practices of everyday life, contribute to the production of meaning

and values which in their turn produce, direct and maintain the usually spontaneous

consent of the various strata to that same status quo. This makes hegemony akin, in the

first analysis, to both civil and political society (that is, the state and the people), and

ultimately, to economic relations and production (Holub, 1992). The secret nature of

African art is important because embedded in the notion of hegemony is the notion of

6

secrecy. It is hegemonic only because it is subconscious. We “follow the rules”, from

cradle to grave not ever questioning the ultimate legitimacy of those rules in terms of

their relevance to our individual well being.

Jean Comaroff studied hegemony in the colonial world with a focus on Southern Africa.

He realized, as I do, that long before colonialism, there were existing hegemonies in

Africa. And colonialism itself held sway only because, in spite of its lack of more

conventional, more coercive tools of domination, it succeeded in transforming the

consciousness of Africans, establishing new hegemonies that facilitated European control

of Africa (Comaroff 1991:6). Local African elite themselves appear to have copied this

colonial hegemonic-transformation-strategy, in order, first, to maintain their own local

hold on the polity within the confines of colonialism; second, to engage colonial

‘masters’; and, third, to entrench themselves as ‘leaders’ of independent Africa. I believe

the colonial era Reformed Ogboni Fraternity (ROF), founded in 1918 by English-trained

Yoruba clergymen and professionals, led by Rev. T.A.J. Ogunbiyi, did this to ancient

traditional Ogboni in Nigeria. They retained elements of the old; cut out worship of

multiple orishas4 and replaced it, first with Christianity and later, as they opened it up to

non-Yoruba, any religion that accepts ‘non-idolatrous’ belief in God. It is noteworthy that

the officiating personnel at the first ROF series of initiations were drawn from both

Christian and traditional Ogboni elites, notably, Chief Fagade, the then Apena5 of Ile-Ife

and Venerable Archdeacon Ogunbiyi6.7 I consider ROF a successful transformation of

4 gods

5 A traditional high chief and the high priest, going by current practice, of Obatala and Ogun both topmost

Yoruba orishas (deities). 6 A high ranking Anglican priest and prominent member of traditional Ogboni groups in Lagos, Ijebu and

Abeokuta. 7 See: reformedogboni.com; rof-worldwide.com; Ogboni–Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; sacred-

7

hegemony for its benefiting elites. And they clearly did it through the manipulation of art

and existing hegemonies.

My scrutiny for the hegemonic in Africa’s all encompassing art and aesthetics is

important because it explains how a few people in the society can have a total hold on

whole populations and for long periods, maintaining a degree of order and stability and

getting people to agree with dominant values?8 I am not able to see the oba

9 possessing

unquestionable control of the otherwise ‘freedom’-loving and gregarious Yoruba people

outside of the people’s conception of the oba as adjunct to orisha, and carrier of àshẹ10

-

the spiritual conveyor of power and authority; the critical divine force for all-purpose

vitality in any human.

I however agree with Comaroff reading of Gramsci, that the hegemonic must not be

interpreted to mean static, muted or eternal. Otherwise, of course, African hegemonies

would not have been undercut by European colonialists, the same way European

hegemonies were undercut by Arab colonial ‘masters’ of Spain in the 1st and 2

nd

millenniums. Hegemony is realized through the balancing of competing forces, not the

crushing calculus of class domination (Comaroff 1991:20). I also agree with him that

culture is not subsumed by hegemony (Comaroff 1991:21). But I insist that particular

cultures and their driving force, art, are vehicles of specific hegemonies and those

cultures and their art, to support new hegemonies, must be transformed.

Comaroff also correctly argues that culture, whose handmaiden, I add, is art, is an order

texts.com and Obateru in nasarawastate.org. ROF asserts that it is not a secret society. This however runs

contrary to popular perception as the fraternity itself readily admits.

8 See Comaroff 1991:17-18

9 Yoruba and Edo word for king.

10 Àshẹ is spiritual power. Most beautifully portrayed by Abiodun (1994), Àshẹ is evocative of power and

authority. Àshẹ confers the ability to be, to become and to be relevant and is akin to the Jewish anointing –

the instrument for the ordination of kings and priests in ancient Israel.

8

of values, norms, beliefs, and institutions that, being reflected in language and being also

profoundly historical, expresses a common conception of the world embodied in a

cultural social unity and common conception composed of a stock of shared dispositions

and popular mentality that hegemony could hang on (Comaroff 1991:21). The

establishment of British colonial hegemony on the cultural heritage of Hausa-Fulani elite

of Northern Nigeria fits into this explanation. Once the Sultan of Sokoto was subdued by

them, the British, through indirect rule, simply rode on the back of that cultural heritage

and, therefore, hegemony that makes a critical mass of Northern Nigerian elites and

peoples look up to the seat of Uthman dan Fodio. This system has assured British

influence in Nigeria up till today. The continued hold of Britain via neo-colonialism is

because the country is indeed a very long road, from the dawning of an anti-hegemonic

consciousness, which the country's independence signified, to an ideological struggle

won (Comaroff 1991: 26). The fact that our young and sometimes old are now

‘worshippers’ of British Premier League, which is a veritable art form, can only tighten

this hegemonic stranglehold of Britain over Nigeria.

Culture and art have form and content; they are born in action as well as in thought; they

are products of human creativity as well as mimesis; and, above all, they are empowered

(Comaroff 1991:22). Art is the way we live, as Drewal so clearly demonstrates in Object

and Intellect (1988). And this is what makes art a tool of power, first as ideology and,

ultimately, as hegemony. When the oba, through his iwofas (messengers), lays a claim to

ishakole (ground-rent) he is exercising power. When the people see the oba as orisha, in

which case ishakole becomes a 'voluntary' appreciation of the oba, he is still exercising

power, but with more subtlety, the king’s right to such privileges having been

9

internalized, either negatively as constraints, neutrally as conventions or positively as

values. Whichever form it takes, the silent power of the sign, the unspoken authority of

habit is as effective as the most violent coercion in dominating social thought and action

(Comaroff 1991: 22). This is hegemony. And I emphasize again that the core of Yoruba,

like most African art, which I argue births this hegemony, with all its deep spirituality

and otherworldliness, is secrecy. The socially gripping, compelling, sustaining power,

effectiveness and affectability of mainstream Yoruba art is its ability to attract people to

the secret and, therefore, sacred. And this power to conceal and to reveal (Nooter

1993:55) is the reason why leadership is addicted to the arts. Leadership thereby shapes

social consciousness and action. As I have mentioned, I agree with Drewal (1988:72) that

African art encapsulates the essence of Africa. In Africa, we live the art and art is our life.

Everything that we do is artistic: a display and a celebration, albeit internalized, of one art

form or the other. This explains the covering of the oba’s face during his installation, as

well as all the other paraphernalia of kingship: art is used to identify ruler-ship with the

sacred: power is made to hold a secret access to the spirit realm of the ancestors who

determine our existence on this other side of creation. The lesson is simple, albeit all-

powerful: keep the oba in power, provide for all his flamboyancy and it will be well with

you; challenge his authority and you will see the secret wrath of the ancestors; the caveat

for the latter being that you would not live to recount what you saw of the wrath of the

ancestors because when the uninitiated perceive the other world, they lose their residency

of this world.

This power of secrecy was brought home to me while negotiating a locus for my

fieldwork in legal anthropology among my Yoruba kinsmen. It seemed certain that a

10

particular major Yoruba city would provide a perfect site. This was because traditional

conflict resolution performance in its ‘pure’ form is still practiced there. But there was a

snag. While it is true that I can claim sanguine affinity with the Yoruba, I am not ogboni.

Only an ogboni has access to the full spectrum of traditional conflict resolution in that

ancient town. Why? It is the Ogboni that constitutes the ‘supreme court’ of the town. So I

may witness some local practices of conflict resolution at the street and ward levels. But

to see the full blown Yoruba conflict resolution in all its jurisprudential display,

membership of the Ogboni is a sine qua non. The Ogboni, which is made up of the chief

patrons of the art, is of course rooted in deep Yoruba traditional spirituality, which

consists of worships of orishas that my own Christian spirituality would not align with. I

therefore needed to look elsewhere for fieldwork. The secrecy shrouding Ogboni power

thus remains intact. Concomitantly, the power and monopoly of the Ogboni over Yoruba

conflict resolution and, per force of consequence, over the Yoruba people, is preserved.

By secrecy tied to the ritual of conflict resolution. Also, as a member of the legal

profession, I know for a fact that many people often assume that success at the Nigerian

bar, which largely follows English legal practice, is a function of membership of the

Ogboni where, people allege, initiated judges and lawyers decide the fate of litigants. I

cannot of course prove this, not being ogboni. However, I have no reason to doubt it: the

English legal system, being antagonistic and adversarial, allows for human manipulation

of ‘justice’.

The sacred is manmade. This echoes Barber (1981) who argues that the Yoruba orishas

are both man made and mirror of the power hierarchy among the Yoruba: the orishas’

existence, like other works of art, is entirely dependent on the social functions they serve

11

in their patron’s struggle for continuing relevance. Barber argues clearly that the world of

the orishas is simply a projection of the world of the Yoruba: it is essential to maintain

the otherworld because it is a mirror of this world (Barber 1981:724). Hence Abiodun

(1994) argues that the orishas themselves must be attentive and responsive, to maintain

relevance: no one goes to an orisha that cannot enhance one’s relevance on earth. The

prominence of the orisha is not sui-generis. People make the orisha popular by the

number of its devotees which is itself a function of favors received from the orisha;

because the Yoruba would not hesitate to go on orisha-shopping until they find the one

that meets their need (Barber 1981:725). This point that Barber brings out is very

important for my argument for the presence of hegemony in African art because it shows

the beginning of the formation of the hegemonic underpinnings in religion. Without

Barber’s insight one could think that the Yoruba orishas are similar to the fixed ancestor-

gods of the Tallensi of Northern-Ghana that she compares with orishas (Barber

1981:725). With the Tallensi, the possibility of shopping from one altar to the other has

become impossible. While it may be argued, as Barber indicated, that religion is more of

structural upholder of hierarchy, that is, hegemonic among the Tallensi than among the

orisha devotees (Barber 1981:725), I would add that the situation among the Yoruba

today is more synonymous with the Tallensi than with the picture painted by Barber. My

perspective on the Ogboni in this paper, especially the more modern Reformed Ogboni

Fraternity (ROF) bears this out. It would appear that a critical mass of the modern

British-educated professional Yoruba who currently run Yoruba society, having found

other, that is, non-feudal, means for self-aggrandizement, namely, industry, politics, and

the professions, have now transformed the orishas into constants - as fixed, just like the

12

Tallensi, where the attitude to the gods has become passive acceptance (Barber

1981:725). This goes to show that the seeds of hegemony are never scattered on barren

ground. They might establish themselves at the expense of prior forms; they seldom

succeed in totally supplanting what was there before (Comaroff 1991:25).

I am aware that my approach in this study is essentially Marxian. I must therefore

consciously situate it within the context of a determining base and a determined

superstructure, or the notion of social being determining social consciousness. This is in

line with Raymond Williams’ argument in ‘Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural

Theory’ (1993), to wit, that in the transition from Marx to Marxism, and in the

development of mainstream Marxism itself, the proposition of the determining base and

the determined superstructure is the key to an acceptable Marxist cultural analysis

(William1993:3). It follows, therefore, that I must clearly delineate what or who is

determining who and what in the traditional African political landscape; for indeed I

argue that underneath ‘our’ art, ‘our’ culture, ‘our’ tradition, and ‘our’ religion as

ordinary African men and women is ‘their’ art, ‘their’ culture, ‘their’ tradition, and ‘their’

religion. I admit that the concept of determination is complex (Williams 1993:4). I

however argue that the ensemble of the political elite’s religion, art and culture is what

has become attributed to the general public, even though it only serves the ends and

purpose of the elite for power. The Yoruba babalawo11

is not just a representative of the

spirits of the ancestors: he is indeed an astute politician in the arsenal of the political elite

group led by the oba. I argue that behind the mask and egungun (masquerade) is a

powerful political gamesmanship of popular manipulation. This is hegemony. And it is

11

Chief priest and diviner

13

here that Alfred Gell is relevant to my analysis: let us go beyond aesthetics, let us get

behind the religion; we must begin to look behind and beyond the mask. We must begin

to ask: why is the egungun's patron the oba and other elite? What are the privileges

conferred on members of the elite? Why are they so secretive? What are they doing in

secret? Why must they operate in secret? And what is the relevance of orishas to

colonized and anglicized elite? In any case, why must they monopolize governance?

In arguing for the class base of African art, I must and indeed cannot ignore Gramsci’s

caution about ignoring the concomitant power of the superstructure over the base. In

other words, about the impact of social consciousness and indeed consciousness generally

on the social being that throws it up. We must see in our consciousness the possibilities

that it carries, the essential one being the tool to overthrow the base, especially by acute

consciousness that education brings. And it is very simple to cite examples here. How

could colonialism, an offset of capitalism have been overthrown with colonial education

which was meant to undercut the development of the colonized? How can modern and

contemporary intellectuals have turned to Marxian tools of analysis and its ‘dangerously’

progressive thought that seeks to overthrow capitalism, if they had not been exposed to

capitalist education, which was set to achieve the exact opposite of what they are giving

back?

The ultimate reason for my placing value on African art must of course be a

revolutionary one: its ability to be used by its subjects to overthrow aspects of traditional

African leadership that use it for domination. Where then is this ultimate value of African

art as the death knell of retrogressive hegemony? Vestiges of it can be seen in modern

African practices. For example, among the Ngoni people of Zambia, the king is required

14

by the culture to seek people’s affirmation to rule.12

Implicit in this scenario is the very

likelihood of the people rejecting him! But this might not be immediately revolutionary,

because, as Max Glauckman would argue, it is usually just the incumbent that is

overthrown and not the system. My own study of militancy during oil-related conflict in

the Niger Delta seems to point to a more far-reaching way of using African art to fight an

oppressive status quo. As we approached one militant camp, the men in my study-group

were separated from the women. The men were made to go through an archway; they

were sprinkled with gin; they were then made to offer money. Thereafter, both the men

and the women were reunited and heartily entertained. It looked like a rite of transition

and initiation, from potential foe to ally, from outsider to insider. The point I am making

is that these young militants seemed to have gone back to ancient local art to create

solidarity in their battle against the Nigerian state and oil companies. I must add that they

are getting relatively positive results as I would have envisaged.13

The Nigerian state

subsequently conceded ten percent of equity in oil and gas production to the militants’

communities as part of an amnesty program that has brought relative peace to the region

and the country.1415

12

Information given by Mark Auslander who has worked with the Ngoni for decades. 13

It is relative success because their oppression is ultimately tied to Section 44 (3) of Nigeria’s constitution

which legalizes the alienation/theft of their oil and gas by the Nigerian nation. Giving them 10% is tokenism.

Their wealth should be returned to them, with of course a caveat that they contribute a percentage to the

federation. It is of course clear that the development of Nigeria as a whole is tied to this ultimate justice. At the

moment, Nigeria’s elite all live on the oil and gas loot from these ex-militants’ region. When Section 44(3) of the

Nigerian constitution is repealed and each community is allowed to keep what is generated from its land, be it

mineral oil, animal or plant produce, justice would have come to Niger Delta and development to Nigeria. At the

moment, all the industries created before 1969, when that law was first passed via General Gowon’s Petroleum

Act, are folding up in thousands across the country: you cannot use free money exclusively to maintain

development. You would only grow corruption, not industries or infrastructures, as Nigeria demonstrates clearly. 14

That was before the Boko Haram crisis, which latter conflict I am still studying but which I am sure

would lend itself to similar analysis as I am attempting to make in this paper. What is germane for now is

that the term Boko Haram (literally meaning “book is evil” i.e. Western education corrupts) speaks

volumes to the idea of art and culture’s interface with hegemony. If not Western, what? Why? How?

Where? And by whom?

15

I think what ultimately constitutes the revolutionary in African art is its appeal to truth

and integrity. Two examples from sites separated by thousands of miles would suffice.

Ogun16

adherents among the Yoruba touch their teeth to the symbol of their worship, the

iron, to vouch for their integrity. Mikisi17

adherents among the Kikongo do a similar thing

by driving pieces of iron into the nkisi18

. I argue that what is needed to confront elite

flamboyancy in Africa is truth and integrity. African positive change agents can rally

their people around the virtues and values of truth and integrity. These popular values

cannot support exploitation. Lessons can be drawn from apartheid South Africa and racist

southern USA. In both cases, the ruling classes purported to base their exploitation of

blacks on Judeo-Christian literature/principles. But Judeo-Christian tenets cannot sustain

exploitation of people, irrespective of their colour. And so, grounded in the same

literature and principles, revolutionary Christian leaders like Rev. Martin Luther King,

Jnr. and Archbishop Desmond Tutu successfully undercut racial oppression in their two

countries.

The argument on the use of art for the overthrow of oppression and transformation of

hegemony is better put by Comaroff: the ideologies of the subordinate may give

expression to discordant but hitherto voiceless experience of contradictions that a

prevailing hegemony can no longer conceal: the hegemony is constantly challenged by

15

Ogoni usage of the mass foot-tap also readily comes to mind. As narrated to me by an acquaintance, from

time to time, the Ogoni nation gathers at one location. They sit down. At a signal, they all stamp their feet

on the ground at once and in perfect unison, creating an imperial sound that can best be described as awe.

The unity this signifies, symbolizes and evokes, particularly in their adversaries and oppressors, which,

again, are the Nigerian State and oil corporations, is best imagined. No wonder Ogoni issues remain on the

front burner in the Nigerian polity. No wonder no one, Oil Company or government can get any more oil,

not even a drop, from Ogoni-land, for twenty years running. 16

God of iron. 17

See: Kabolo Iko Kabwita. 2004. Le royaume Kongo et la mission catholique 1750-1838: du declin a

l’extinction; and Yombe Nailed Power Figures, Nkisi Nkone in Africa Direct 18

A statue.

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the vitality that remains in the forms of life that it thwarts; the hegemonic is not static but

constantly being made and, therefore, can be unmade by an increase in contradictory

consciousness which, while being capable of reinforcing hegemony, can also propel

oppressed peoples to penetrate the mask of hegemony and react against their

subordination and dehumanization (Comaroff 1991: 25-26).

African feudal elites’ privileges were upheld through the art. The situation in Africa is

not any different from elsewhere. Feudalism is everywhere tied to royalty and nobility.

However, the fact that we still have royalty in parts of capitalist Europe should not fool

us that royalty is eternal. King Henry VIII cannot be compared by any stretch of the

imagination to Queen Elizabeth II. As feudalism lost its hold to capitalism which is tied

to the machine as opposed to the land, the royal elite of feudalism gave way to or were

absorbed by capital and they only retain their royalty largely nominally. We could see the

same thing happening in Africa in the 18th

and 19th

centuries. As colonialists introduced

capitalism to Africa, feudalism began to give way to capitalism. African art supported a

certain system of economic reproduction and as soon as that system died, traditional

African art essentially went with it. There is therefore nothing sacred or eternal about

African art. In a classic on African art, Chinua Achebe’s novel, ‘Things Fall Apart’, the

principal character, Okonkwo, knew that the day he lost his mask to go into exile was the

end of his position among his erstwhile fellow elites. The moment the mask is removed,

the power of the elite is taken away. In other words, the mask served only as an

instrument of class perpetuation. In essence, the mask was determined by the class, and

by the mode of production which needed it to maintain the status quo. If the reverse were

the case, if the mask created the class, if the mask was eternal and sacred, then it would

17

not have lost popular relevance to capitalism, as it has done over the last two hundred

years of capitalist growth in Africa. It is of course true that just as we can say that the

mask is transit, we can equally say that class is transit; for once we had feudalism and

now it is capitalism. But there is something unchanging in class structure to date: labour.

Both the feudal lord or king or oba and the capitalist barons seek to appropriate the

product of labour. The oba uses visual art to do this. The capitalist is more subtle in his

fetishization of labour. He uses the abstract ‘dignity of labor’ to tie the worker to the

machine. The capitalist cannot use the mask because the mask is tied to ‘mother earth’, to

feudal and ‘communal’ living. The capitalist must ‘free’ the exploited laborer from the

hold of the lords of the land in order to enslave him to the lords of the machine. Capital

cannot therefore use the tool of hegemony that its rival, feudalism, uses. It must tear or

take off the mask; it must replace its own religion for the religion of the mask, of

feudalism.

I recognize that the mask is now being rehabilitated by capitalists, hence their willingness

to pay fortunes to acquire it. But it is no longer a danced mask. It is not yet clear to me

what precisely capitalists are seeking in the ‘new’ masks. Could it be the soul they have

lost to their factory machine and system of oppression? Could this be the announcement

of the final end of capitalism as it begins to go back to the past to find relevance, that is,

new tools of hegemony? May be capital, now imperial, is experimenting with a

disembodied past to find an anchor for modern hegemony. In other words, is capitalism

exposing a weak underside? The fight in Iraq and other places where capital is engaged in

a suicidal dance points to this. The fact that capital has in the past degenerated into

massive internal manslaughter inside and amongst its weakest states also points in the

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same general direction: capitalism is no longer able to maintain its stranglehold by old

methods. Its hegemony has been compromised. And the terrible breaches it suffered in

South Africa as well as its relentless lost to and compromise with welfarism in the West

over the last seventy years since after the second world war, also point to this demise of

capitalism. One can therefore understand the capitalist class’ experimentation with the

mask that had proved so effective in Africa because of the mask’s tie with the ‘ancestors’.

After all, religion remains a powerful opium: if capitalist religion would not work, why

not try, by necessary adaptation, the religion of the rival. This experimentation would of

course fail, because, as I have argued, capital cannot use the tool of mother earth

(feudalism) to tie people to the machine.

In conclusion, I see an African art of the future. It will birth a new hegemony. One based

on truth and integrity. Truth and integrity means standing for and fighting for what is

right: human rights and justice. The new African art will promote truth and integrity until

these two concepts achieve the status of hegemony, a new African hegemony. The pace

for this has been very clearly and ably set by African leaders at the Organisation of

African Unity on June 27, 1981 when they adopted the African Charter on Human and

Peoples’ Rights. In giving the rationale for the charter, the leaders help one see what the

Africa of the future would look like. It will promote and protect human and peoples’

rights in order to achieve freedom, equality, justice and dignity and the legitimate

aspirations of the African peoples. It will eradicate all forms of colonialism from Africa.

It will intensify and coordinate cooperation. It will take into consideration the virtues of

the historical tradition and values of African civilization. It will recognize that

fundamental human rights stem from the attributes of human beings, which justify their

19

national and international protection. It will demonstrate that the reality and respect of

peoples’ rights should necessarily guarantee human rights. It will require that in exchange

for the enjoyment of freedoms and rights, everyone performs their duties. It will pay

particular attention to the right to development realizing that civil and political rights

cannot be dissociated from economic, social and cultural rights. It will do all this to

restore the importance traditionally attached to these rights and freedoms in Africa.19

I see the myth in the new African art mirroring this fresh vision of truth and integrity. I

trust that the new African elite and the new African artist will rise to the occasion. Our

people all over Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town, deserve a new beginning.

Bibliography

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19

See the Preamble to the charter.

20

*Holub, R. 1992. Antonio Gramsci. London: Routledge

* Karin Barber. How Man Makes God in West Africa: Yoruba Attitudes towards

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*Mary H. Nooter. Secrecy: African Art That Conceals and Reveals. African Arts,

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* AccidentalSlaveowner.com

* afraf.oxfordjournals.org

*Georg Simmel. Sociological Theory (2004) - McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

* hrcr.org

Manifestations of Aje in Africana Literature - Google Books

*Max Glauckman in jstor.org/stabe/668269

* Nairaland.com

* Obateru - nasarawastate.org

* Ogboni – Wikipedia

* Oyeronke Olajubu. 2003. Women in Yoruba Religious Sphere. Google books

* Reconfigurations- blogspots

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*rof-worldwide.com

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*Yombe Nailed Power Figures, Nkisi Nkone – Africa Direct