german colonial heritage in africa – artistic and …

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GERMAN COLONIAL HERITAGE IN AFRICA – ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

GERMAN COLONIAL HERITAGE IN AFRICA – ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

CONTENTSAbout this report ..........................................................................................Page 1 Daniel Stoevesandt and Fabian Mühlthaler

German Colonial Heritage in Burundi: From a Cultural Production Perspective ...................................................Page 5 Freddy Sabimbona

The Correlation Between Artistic Productions in Cameroon and the Discourse on Decolonisation ........................................................Page 11 Dzekashu MacViban

From Periphery to Focus (and Back Again?) The Topic of Colonialism in Cultural Productions in Germany ...............Page 21Fabian Lehmann

Critical Reflection on Cultural Productions Regarding German Colonialism in and Around Namibia ...........................................5Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja

Cultural Productions with reference to Colonial History ........................Page 47Ngangare Eric

German Colonial Heritage in Tanzania: A Survey on Artistic Productions ................................................................Page 53Vicensia Shule

Cultural Productions with Reference to German Colonial History in Togo:Overview and Perspective ..........................................................................Page 63Kokou Azamede

This publication is commissioned by the Goethe-Instituts in Sub-Saharan Africa

edited byEdited by Goethe-Institut Kamerun www.goethe.de/kamerun andGoethe-Institut Namibiawww.goethe.de/namibia

cover image Maji Maji Flava, © N. Klinger

graphic design and layoutTuripamwe Design, Windhoek, Namibiawww.turipamwedesign.com

printingKerndruck, Germany

2German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural Perspectives

Colonialism has caused much pain and injustice, standing for the delusion of superiority by one culture over many others and unequal power. The fact that Germany also appeared as a formative colonial power in history was forgotten and repressed for decades. In the crosshairs of the confrontation with their own history were the Holocaust and the partitioning of Germany. In many African countries that experienced German colonial rule, and that would not exist today as states without having lived through that colonial rule, the memory of the German colonial era is strong, and in most cases also painful. How do cultural actors on the African continent deal with this? How do you handle the colonial era?

Often, it is the means of artistic expression that can sensitise, enlighten, bring to light and stimulate open debate across cultural boundaries and different models of thought. Cultural creators have a very special antenna for themes of this kind, and at the same time use their products to depict the current situation of society in a country.

The Goethe- Instituts in Sub-Saharan Africa have been supporting the cultural confrontation with (German) colonial times in their host countries. Now that local initiatives have been promoted for years, projects have been made possible and debates have been accompanied, it is time to look beyond national borders and systematically take stock of the past. In what form does the conflict with the colonial era take place in the various countries? Which artistic formats and forms of discourse dominate? What are the differences between the individual countries?

In Germany, artistic and academic engagement with the German colonial era has intensified considerably in recent years. A significant part of this is likely to be the introduction of the TURN Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, which has been

DANIEL STOEVESANDT AND

FABIAN MÜHLTHALER

are directors of Goethe-Instituts

in Namibia and Cameroon.

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ABOUT THIS REPORT

BY DANIEL STOEVESANDT AND FABIAN MÜHLTHALER

promoting co-productions with actors on the African continent since 2012. In addition, the growing social debate since the German Federal Parliament condemned the Armenian genocide and the decision to build the Humboldt Forum have contributed to the topic coming increasingly into focus. Increasing awareness and intensified debate are also clearly reflected through cultural work in Germany.

The situation in African countries affected by the German colonial era varies widely. In the spring of 2018, the Goethe-Institut commissioned seven authors to examine the cultural perspective of the German colonial era on the basis of the films, books, plays, performances, etc. produced in the past ten years. The experts come from the six African countries that used to be German colonies and were at the centre of the probe:

Burundi

Cameroon

Namibia

Rwanda

Tanzania

Togo

Theatre piece Schädel X by Flinnworks

© Alexander Barta

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The Resonance

© Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth

“HOW DO CULTURAL ACTORS ON THE AFRICAN CONTINENT DEAL WITH THIS? HOW DO YOU HANDLE THE COLONIAL ERA?”

From a comparative perspective – without claiming to be exhaustive – Germany was also included in the study.

Our aim was not only to better understand which on-site subjects are considered particularly important in this broad field; which actors initiate, implement and finance these productions; and where such an examination of German colonial history occurs

– but also, in particular, what fundamentally distinguishes the discourse in the different countries; which influence the colonial period has on the respective national feeling; in which form identities were shaped; and what place the colonial period holds in the collective memory.

For the Goethe-Institut, this first systematic examination of artistic positions on the subject of German colonial past is also a basis for its future commitment to this topic.

Without prejudging the experts, the first fundamental results can be stated:

VERY DIFFERENT, BROAD APPROACHIn principle, the German colonial era is received in very different ways in the various countries affected by it. This is closely connected with how intense the interference of the German colonial power in the territories were at that time, which traces were left behind, and what significance the German colonial period had on the subsequent founding of nations. Particularly painful are the memories of the German colonial era in Namibia and Tanzania, where the genocide of Nama and Herero as well as the Maji Maji War claimed thousands of lives that are still mourned to this day.

How the German colonial period was evaluated in the social discourse of these countries also depended to a large extent on what experiences with foreign rule ensued after the withdrawal of the Germans. French, English or Belgian rule – whatever its political form – has often left its own traces, perhaps more strongly shaping the national narrative and superimposing or distorting the memory of German colonial rule.

In Cameroon and Togo, the subsequent time of French mandate is perceived among the general public as more formative – and probably more painful as well. Cameroon, with its complex ethnic structure, has probably become a nation only through German colonial rule and it’s quite arbitrary demarcation; a somewhat transfigured view of large parts of the population on German colonial rule up to nostalgia may thus be explainable, which nonetheless, of course challenges cultural practitioners to raise awareness and debate.

Today, in Rwanda and Burundi, the German colonial era is barely visible. 20th-century Belgian rule and the genocide of the 1990s override any discourse; the German reign is shown only through some buildings or industrial monuments.

Namibia certainly takes a special position, not only since at the time countless families were directly and personally affected from the genocide, but also because the country – in contrast to the other former colonies – was settled by German civilians whose descendants to this day are a significant ethnic group that exert great economic influence. The German redistribution of land and the decimation of two other groups of people in particular still characterize today’s Namibia. Therefore, it may come as a surprise that a broader debate about this period only started in the last decade. However, the overarching and much more important political event for Namibia is still South Africa’s struggle for freedom.

ART IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE AND PUBLIC LIFEAnother important factor is the different role of art and culture in social discourse and public life, varying from country to country. This is not only closely linked to the general framework conditions of artistic work – such as the availability of space, funds from state or private hands – but also with social freedom. The influence of the state, its control as well as socially or religiously shaped norms and the boundaries they thereby set are decisive factors that significantly influence an artistic examination of the German colonial era or questions about colonial rule.

All these factors show massive differences between the countries studied.

WHO ARE THE ACTORS?The initiative to artistically explore the past in African countries is mostly based on actors in civil society and the independent scene. Only in Germany are there established actors of the cultural scenes that are involved here, too. This may be the reason that most productions on our subject are to date very small, limited to the location of their origin and therefore of little range. All experts we commissioned initially reported difficulties in finding material on this topic. Comparable studies do not exist; the knowledge about books, films, plays, etc. during the German colonial era had to be collected piece by piece through painstaking research and personal interviews with actors in the cultural scene.

Larger cultural productions dealing with the relevant topic here are mostly financed by German means, which in most cases are collaborations with the local Goethe-Instituts or projects that were made possible in the recent years by the TURN Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

WHAT‘S NEXT?The present study shows us how different cultural workers in seven countries deal with a formative part of history. We understand a little better what effects former colonial rule has on contemporary societies and which cultural scene actors are dealing with this topic in the first place. With the aim of developing new and more comprehensive African artistic positions, the Goethe-Institut in Sub-Saharan Africa will for the first time bring together the various actors and forms of discourse, and help to redevelop and realize not only local but international artistic positions as well. With this project, the Goethe-Institut wants to make a contribution to sensitizing people in dealing with Germany’s colonial past and how to emphasize the relevance of the subject in the 21st century via free artistic expression.

Our thanks go to the seven authors who, with their studies, have laid the foundation for dealing with this topic in the future across national borders and from an African perspective.

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesAbout this report

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FREDDY SABIMBONA is an actor, director, producer – as well as the founding Director

of the satirical comedy group Troupe Lampyre – was born in Washington DC in 1982,

Freddy studied at the Lumière University Faculty of Law before turning to a career

in the performing arts. He started directing in 2007 with a play entitled “Le retour

d’un jeune homme responsable qui s’abstient” de Patrice Faye after working for

five years as an actor in Bujumbura, Burundi. Since founding Troupe Lampyre, he

has participated in numerous international festivals and various programs focused

on resolving ethnic conflict, including travels in the Democratic Republic of Congo,

Rwanda, L’Ile de La Réunion and France, Germany, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso.

In July 2011, he directed Mr. President, a play which talks about politics in Burundi

from 1988 until 1993.

INTRODUCTIONBurundi is a country located in the Great Lakes region of East Africa and is surrounded by the Democratic Republic of Congo in the West, Rwanda in the North and Tanzania in the East.

Its colonial history with Germany dates back to the first missionaries, who settled there in the 19th century (1896) before it lost all its colonies after its defeat in World War I (1918). Belgium inherited its new colony commonly called Ruanda Urundi at the time. Germany officially occupied Burundi following the treaty of Kiganda, where King Mwezi Gisabo signed his surrender.

BURUNDIAN IDENTITYOur national identity is a subject that keeps coming back in most Burundian artistic works whether in music, theatre or literature. Indeed, Burundi is composed of three ethnic groups namely Hutu, Tutsi and Twa.

The first two following political manipulations that began especially under the Belgian colonization (divide and rule) have since struggled to consider themselves primarily as Burundians and have been tearing each other apart for decades.

We dream and imagine of being one again, just like a loving couple that was separated for years and wish to be together again.

The difficulty is that every Burundian tends to have a selective memory of their country’s history according to what happened to each.

Burundian artists should change their message and focus on finding words that could reconcile Burundians to their history,

rather than pointing fingers at the problems our country is facing.

For that to happen, we must speak a common language, a language through which we all find ourselves to know Kirundi. The mistake was to focus only on Bujumbura as the country’s capital, while Burundi has 17 provinces.

As artists and for our work to bear lasting fruits, we must produce pieces that talk about the daily life of Burundians.

Music has a real impact within the Burundian population because most singers sing in Kirundi, the national language of Burundi. We must produce more works in Kirundi to touch more people - the majority of whom are up-country (outside Bujumbura).

ARTISTIC CREATION IN BURUNDIIn spite of the difficulties artists face to make a living, their creations are rather abundant in Burundi. For some years, we have held festivals that have increased the visibility of artists to the public and opened horizons between neighbouring countries. Events such as the Festival of Cinema in Burundi (Festicab), the theatre festival “Buja without taboo”, the Michel Kayoya literary prize, the Gospel festival “Pamoja” and many more have exposed local artists internationally. Often perceived as for the country’s cultural elite, these festivals are concentrated in the capital city, Bujumbura.

All these festivals are recent and less than 10-years-old, but what makes them more interesting is that they contribute to the emergence of new talents.

GERMAN COLONIAL HERITAGE IN BURUNDI: FROM A CULTURAL PRODUCTION PERSPECTIVE

BY FREDDY SABIMBONA

5 German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural Perspectives

Kampala International Theatre Festival

© Daniel Gilbert Bwette

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Les années avalanches by Juvénal

Ngorwenubusa, which focuses on ethnicity

and politics in Burundi.

La bataille de Ndago, 2012, painting by Clovis Ngoy. The scene depicts

the battle and subsequent defeat of the King of Burundi, Mwezi Gisabo,

against the Germans.

Ezechiel Ndayizeye performing his slam poetry

piece titled Revolution.

(In) Dépendance is a collection of novels, slam

poetry and theatre performances, which

focuses on the 50th independence of Burundi.

The documentary film Burundi 1850 - 1962,

details the German and Belgian colonisation

of Burundi.

“...AS ARTISTS WE MUST PRODUCE PIECES THAT SPEAK ABOUT THE DAILY LIFE OF BURUNDIANS SO OUR WORK CAN BEAR LASTING FRUIT.”

PRODUCTIONS, PUBLIC AND MEDIAThe Burundian cultural scene is rich in many ways and produces many shows in terms of traditional dances, plays, films and exhibitions.

One of the biggest challenges is having spaces to express ourselves because there are none strictly for the production and distribution of Burundian shows, except the French Institute of Burundi that’s task is to spread the French language throughout the country.

On the other hand, we are witnessing an awakening of Burundian artists’ independence, which enables them to take of themselves and not depend on anyone else.

To overcome the worries of the rooms, the third edition of the “Buja without taboo” festival took place, for example, in popular bars of Bujumbura which brought the artistic works to the public instead of having the public go to the theatre as the elitist generally do.

It is with the same perspective that artists decided to gradually move into neighbourhoods for them to share their works with the inhabitants. Their quest is themed on debates specific to shows between the public and artists.

The idea is to break the codes, go to the people and not have them wait for invitations so that in the end, as the public goes to church on Sundays, they also have the option to attend the theatre on weekends.

The media in Burundi is doing well and present to relay information in the news, on the radio, and on social media as well. We are fortunate to have journalists who are passionate about their profession and produce blog articles to report on the artistic activities taking place.

It might be wise that in the same way that art in Burundi is growing, journalists can also be as skilled in the art of criticism by precisely knowing how to criticize a play, a film, a song etcetera.

THE GERMAN HERITAGE IN BURUNDIOne of the first major signs to evaluate the German colonial heritage in Burundi is unequivocally reflected in one of its greatest cultural manifestations specific to Burundian culture: the drum.

Indeed, King Mwezi Gisabo who reigned from 1850 to 1908, opposed a fierce resistance to German colonization for more than seven years. He was forced at one point to flee his royal palace, fearing his life, and was hidden by the drummers in Gishora in northern Burundi.

The King thanked the drummers by giving them two cows, “Ruciteme and Murimirwa”. The drummers took the skins of the cows and made two drums, which they named after the cows. The drums could later be played only during royal festivals, like the festival of umuganuro.

An important pact was established between the monarchy and the drummers. There is a dance step famous Burundian drummers do as a reminder: they pass the finger to cut their throats as a reminder of this pact, which means that at the risk of their lives, they will never deliver King Mwezi Gisabo.

Subsequently, the very place where they hid the King in Gishora is currently not only an important creation site for the drummers of Burundi but also for tourism. The drums, Ruciteme and Mwirimirwa, are still exposed at the Gishora site.

Its heritage is also reflected in the architecture of some buildings, including the so-called Bauhaus style that can be found in the capital of Bujumbura and Gitega.

It is also said that Tanzanian music was introduced to Burundi under the German occupation. The slaves who transported the colonisers’ luggage came from Tanzania. The Germans in the region of the great lakes settled first in Burundi in a popular neighbourhood of Bujumbura called “Buyenzi”; a neighbourhood that has strong Tanzanian influences such as the Swahili language.

CONCLUSIONThe study of artistic works that speak of colonisation, German decolonisation or its heritage has enlightened me on several questions such as what does it mean to be Burundian? What are our roots? Our values? Who are we? Where do we come from? As Burundians, do we all share the same story?

These are questions that I find relevant and that challenge me about the role of the artist. As an actor and director, I want to rediscover the history of my country and share it with a large audience, not to impose my point of view but to talk to the public and see if we have the same benchmarks so that we can perhaps get together and be able to build together again ... all together.

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesGerman Colonial Heritage in Burundi: From a Cultural Production Perspective

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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, BURUNDI

TITLE GENRE DATE LOCATION OF PRODUCTION / PRESENTATION

PRODUCER THEMES LINK

(in)Dependance Collection of poetryNovelsTheatre production

2012 Bujumbura / Musée vivant de Bujumbura Sembura Ferment littéraire What does independence mean for a Burundian in a world that has become a “global village”, in which communities are in constant interdependence, thanks to the prowess of technology?

http://samandari-litterature.blogspot.com/2011/04/umuriro-wa-gihanga-declaration-du.html

http://www.arib.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5405

Burundi 1850–1962 Documentary film 2010 Burundi Ngabo Léonce et Nicolas de Borman

History of Burundi before colonisation until to the independance

Dechirement Theatre June 2010 Institut français du Burundi Freddy SabimbonaCompagnie: Troupe LampyreDate of birth: 14/09/1982Actor and director

Histoty of Burundi until the colonization

Colonial History of Germany and Belgium

History of the independence of Burundi and the consequences in a long term process.

La bataille de Ndago Painting May 2012 Burundi / Bujumbura, ifb Clovis NgoyDate of birth: 28/08/1990

Mwezi Gisabo’s resistance against German settlers

Le Rêve du Rêve Novella 2009 Institut français du Burundi Talks about a young man living in dual world: one in his real life, and another one in a dream.

Les années avalanche Novel September 2015 Belgium / Brussels, Editions des Archives et Musée de la Littératue

Juvénal NgorwanubusaYear of birth: 1953

Hutu-Tutsi ethnic division in Burundi, plea for wanting to live together

https://www.fnac.com/livre-numerique/a9015395/Jubenal-Ngorwanubusa-Les-annees-avalanche

La littérature de langue française au Burundi

Essay and anthology July 2012 and 2013 Belgium / Bruxelles, Editions Monde est-ouest (MEO) et Archives et Musée de la littérature 2014

Juvénal NgorwanubusaYear of birth: 1953

French in Burundi, literary genre https://www.decitre.fr/livres/la-litterature-de-langue-francaise-au-burundi-9782871680703.html

Revolution Respect A L’afrique Ces Enfant D’afrique

Slam poetry 2011 Bujumbura / Institut français du Burundi Ndayizeye EzéchielCompagnie: Generation Slam BurundiDate of Birth: 18/09/1984

Colonization in Africa and its impact, neocolonialism, economic slavery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NcoNO73be8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pRXpNCfJKU

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesGerman Colonial Heritage in Burundi: From a Cultural Production Perspective

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DZEKASHU MACVIBAN is a writer, journalist

and editor based in Yaounde. In 2011, he

published a collection of poems titled Scions

of the Malcontent and founded Bakwa

Magazine. His writing and research focuses on

the intersection between art and technology.

His work has been translated into Japanese,

Spanish, French and German.

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN ARTISTIC PRODUCTIONS IN CAMEROON AND THE DISCOURSE ON DECOLONISATION

BY DZEKASHU MACVIBAN

INTRODUCTIONThere is no single Cameroonian history – with six different maps between 1911–1972, multiple narratives, and fluid notions about who national heroes are, dichotomies become inherent on almost every discourse related to Cameroon. By looking at artistic productions which focus on (mostly) Germany’s colonial past in Cameroon, as well as how these are related to broader questions about decolonisation and nationalism, this research attempts to understand the correlation between artistic productions in Cameroon and the discourse on decolonisation.

The “birth” of Cameroon in the 19th century is inescapable when pinpointing the evolution of the country. Faced with increasing French interest, German traders decided to appeal to their government to annex Cameroon; however, Otto Von Bismarck, the German chancellor, was not initially interested in colonies. After much pressure from German traders, coupled with British and French manoeuvres in North Africa, Bismarck decided in 1883 to negotiate treaties with the chiefs of Douala.1

Adalbert Owona establishes the birth of Cameroon, when he says “Cameroon, as it is known today, that is, as a territorial, human and political entity with well-defined contours and frontiers did not exist before 1894” 2. The usage of the word “Kamerun” for the whole territory is the result of a German decree of January 1, 1901.

In May 1916, after the defeat of Germany in Cameroon, Britain and France signed the treaty of London partitioning the country amongst themselves.3 This transition, coupled with the different cultures and systems that came with it, added a layer of complexity to Cameroon’s already complex matrix.

Ngam Confidence Chia4 points out both Germanophile and Germanophobia in post-German Cameroon, and observes that the Germanophile sentiment survived the latter. While she mentions a number of reasons responsible for this, Léonard I. Sah5 and Harry R. Rudin6 point out the important role played with German propaganda under the Deutscher Kolonial Dienst in the growth of Germanophile sentiment in Cameroon. Today, many Cameroonians still look back at the German era with nostalgia.

East Cameroon gained its independence from France on 1 January 1960, while West Cameroon, administered under British mandate and governed jointly with Eastern Nigeria, became independent on 1 October 1961 in a UN-sponsored plebiscite, which joined the latter to the former in a two-state federation. This historicity is inextricably linked to the discourse on decolonisation in that it shows the circumstances around which notions of identity in Cameroon were shaped over the years.

COLONIZATION, NEO-COLONISATION AND IDENTITYA comparative analysis of the catalogued cultural productions, as well as interviews with selected artists, reveal the following observations:

Despite an overall tendency to glorify the German past in the public sphere in Cameroon, cultural productions – from cinema to performance art – are much more distant and philosophical, and approach the past in a way that is more explorative of its complexity, rather than recriminatory or nostalgic. This is the case with productions such as “Our Wishes”, “Tenacity”, and “Fin de Mission. The former is a TV show directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, set in the 19th century and relaying the circumstances

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural Perspectives

Fin de Mission / ohne Auftrag leben

© Bisse Essomba

1413

this further by using ‘shit’ as a metaphor.17 Multi-disciplinary productions such as “Les Sequelles de la colonisation” and

“Demythologize that History and Put it to Rest” are much more abstract and philosophical, as they interrogate Cameroon’s colonial past and present in an attempt to decolonise the mind.

DECOLONISATION IN ART

A comparative analysis of 30 Cameroonian artistic productions which feature Germany’s colonial past, reveal the following approaches to decolonisation: the decolonisation of public space and conversations around the colonial past. These approaches inherently form the way artists contribute to the discourse on national identity in relation to the colonial past.

But before getting to these, we need to ponder what decolonisation is, as well as consider its limits. If we approach decolonisation as the undoing of colonisation, we should also consider Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s words in Decolonising the Mind, where he says “The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people’s definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe.”18 The fact that we are having conversations around decolonisation in English says a lot. While talking about the proletariat, Horace Campbell distinguishes between Marxism and Black Marxism when he says “whereas Marxism focuses heavily on the activism of a vanguard proletariat, black freedom struggles have revolved around a collective, albeit contested identity shaped by racism. In reaction, black Marxist thinkers have argued for a position that emphasises ‘materialism over idealism’ and acknowledges the centrality of race in the black experience”19

THE DECOLONISATION OF PUBLIC SPACEIs public space a philosophical or judiciary notion, or both? Neil Smith and Setha Low point out that “connections between public space and political and cultural economy deserve closer scrutiny because public spaces are simultaneously an expression of social power and a force themselves that help shape social relations.”20

This explains the choice of public space as a recurrent ‘notion’ in the decolonisation process in Cameroon.

Luc Moutila Beni points out that urban planning in Cameroon dates back to the German colonial period between 1884 and 1916, “with the creation of the very first colonial towns – notably Douala, Buea, Yaounde, Edea, Ebolowa, and Lolodorf.” 21 This raises questions about the decolonisation of public space and urban spaces in Cameroon, as part of the decolonisation process.

Public space in Cameroon is one of the areas where decolonisation comes to the forefront of everyday life. Names of streets and statues reference Cameroon’s colonial past, thus, confrontation is almost inevitable. Nevertheless, while it may be easy to observe this, the way it is dealt with is more complex than it appears. Jacey Fortin notes this complexity in opposing positions in the debate around monuments, when she questions

“whether the statues should fall because they commemorate those who fought to uphold slavery, or stand because they remind us of a history that cannot be erased.”22

Andre Blaise Essama, an activist and artist is a major figure with regards to the decolonisation of public space. Recently, after elders from the Bell chiefdom destroyed a site intended for a statue in memory of Reuben Um Nyobe (leader who fought for the independence from French colonial rule), Andre Blaise Essama went to the site in question and stood in lieu of the statue of Reuben Um Nyobe, wearing a garment with Um Nyobe’s face and name on it. Last year, in December 2017, Essama destroyed an installation by French visual artist Sylvie Blocher titled “Bien que je n’en aie pas le droit, je vous présente mes excuses” (“Although I do not have the right, I apologize”)23 which was set up within the framework of the Salon Urbain de Douala. Before all that, he was prevented from erecting a statue of John Ngu Foncha, a former president of federal Cameroon, and has been arrested several times for defacing colonial statues.24 These episodes already hint at the complicated relationship Cameroon has with its history, as can be seen in the following observations: in Cameroon, there is the destruction of statues that honour colonial figures, as well as the destruction of statues that honour national heroes. “J’ai détruit cette performance artistique avec

around the signing of the Germano-Douala Treaty. The latter, directed by Musing Derrick, examines Cameroon through two fictional families, across multiple timelines from the 16th to the 20th century, showing how manipulation and self-interest led to conflict. Other popular topics addressed in the catalogued productions in Cameroon range from decolonisation in a much broader sense, the nebulous nature of Cameroon’s past, the failure of the post-independent state and disillusionment, among others.

So far, out of the catalogued artistic productions which focus on German colonial past in Cameroon, an important part have been organised in partnership with a German institution or German individual, and most of them are funded by Goethe-Institutes, the TURN Fund for Artistic Cooperation between Germany and African Countries, among others. The amount of cultural productions in the past ten years which reference the German colonial past in Cameroon surpass those which mention other former colonial powers.

This is closely linked to a major issue faced by Cameroon, which is the lack of cultural infrastructures, leading artists to seek funds and partnerships elsewhere. Furthermore, the national museum, which is supposed to be symbolic of Cameroonian history, exemplifies the double standards that exist with regards to the official narrative on Cameroon’s past.

The most prominent genres in which Germany, Britain and France’s colonial past in Cameroon have been addressed are performance art, cinema and literature. Nevertheless, this remains a sensitive topic, especially what is referred to as France’s “dirty war”7 in Cameroon. A recent book titled Kamerun! Une guerre cachée aux origines de la Françafrique (1948 - 1971) by Manuel Domergue, Jacob Tatsitsa, and Thomas Deltombe sheds some light on this. Between 1957 and 1960, France supressed the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (an independence movement founded in April 1948), in what many refer to as a

“secret war”8 or “dirty war”. Most of the fighting, and the ensuing atrocities committed in the name of “decolonisation” unfolded in Bassa and Bamilike villages in the region’s plantation belt.9 According to Kamerun!, about 300,000 or 400,000 Bamilikes

were massacred during this period.10

Furthermore, an important issue which dominates second generation Cameroonian literature in English is what Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi refers to as the “postcolonial malaise of a union that for some never was and therefore in need of dissolution; a union that for others is fragile, diseased, in dire need of healing and reconciliation. Anglophone Cameroon literature is as such obsessed with what is known as the ‘Anglophone Problem’”11 This breaks away from first generation Cameroonian literature, which mostly explored colonialism. According to Piet Konings and Francis B. Nyamnjoh the root of the ‘Anglophone Problem’ can be

“traced back to 1961, when the political elites of two territories with different colonial legacies – one French and the other British – agreed on the formation of a federal state. Contrary to expectations, this did not provide for the equal partnership of both parties, let alone for the preservation of the cultural heritage and identity of each…”12 This, as well, is a very sensitive topic in Cameroon, especially given the current insurgency with ever-evolving movements and ideologies.

Ethnicity and nationalism are important concepts that shed light on the way post-independence Cameroonians interact with each other, and relate to the past. While Thomas Hylland Eriksen says nationalism “can be aggressive and expansionist – within and outside state boundaries; and it can serve as a truly peace-keeping and culturally integrating force in a nation-state or a region.”13, Francis B. Nyamnjoh argues that Cameroon is a country united by ethnic ambition and difference.14 A major way in which questions relating to colonisation, nationalism, and the nation are approached in artistic production in Cameroon – especially literature – is through the use of metaphor. Achille Mbembe says, “There is the question of the grotesque and the obscene being used as means of erecting, ratifying or deconstructing particular regimes of violence and domination.”15 He further goes on to show how in Togo and Cameroon, “people developed ways of separating words or phrases off from their conventional meanings and using them in quite another sense.”16 Inter-textual metaphors such as ‘Baba Toura’ and ‘Ewawa’ populate Cameroon literature, as writers fictionalise reality, creating recognisable metaphors that represent people and places. Bate Besong takes

“BEYOND THE COLONIAL HISTORY THAT WE GET FROM ARCHIVES AND OTHERS, WE SHOULD ALSO CREATE A NEW IDENTITY FOR OURSELVES, AND NOT RELY ON THIS INHERITED IDENTITY.”

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesThe Correlation Between Artistic Productions in Cameroon and the Discourse on Decolonisation

1615

le soutien des chefs traditionnels et des populations de Douala qui n’en veulent pas. C’était une manipulation, une escroquerie. C’était une œuvre d’auto-glorification” (“I destroyed this artistic performance with the support of traditional chiefs and the people of Douala who do not want it. It was a manipulation, a scam. It was a work of self-glorification”), Essama told a journalist from de l’Agence France Presse regarding his actions.25 Another key person with regards to the decolonisation of public space in Cameroon is Mboua Massock, who was arrested for the destruction of a monument dedicated to Général Leclerc in Bonajo, Douala. 26

CONVERSATIONS ON CAMEROON’S COLONIAL PASTMost of the cultural productions in question aim at fostering conversations around German colonial past as well as contributing to conversations on national identity. These productions, like Jean Pierre Bekolo’s Our Wishes, a TV show that recreates the Germano-Douala treaty of 1884, and Musing Derrick’s Tenacity, a movie set in pre-colonial Cameroon, as well as multi-disciplinary performances seek to create public awareness which can lead to conversations about the past, present and future. Bekolo says in an interview “Our Wishes, is therefore a form of reinvention. Beyond the colonial history that we get from archives and others, we should also create a new identity for ourselves, and not rely on this inherited identity. There the idea of bringing back history in the public place, of creating a dialogue that can only enrich us, lead us to good decisions.” 27 This quote highlights the open-end nature of approaches to decolonisation which present situations, both historical as well as fictionalised, without passing judgment or taking sides, and pose more questions than provide answers.

Two performance artists whose work can be situated at the intersection of the discourse on the decolonisation of public space and conversations around Cameroon’s colonial past are Christian Etongo and Raoul Zobel Tejeutsa of la compagnie Zora Snake. Etongo’s “After Tears” and his performance within the framework of “Demythologize that History and Put It to Rest” (an art project by Marcio Carvalho in collaboration with the art space SAVVY Contemporary and its archive project Colonial Neighbours,

Hangar – Centro de Investigação Artística and the Gabinete de Estudos Olissiponenses), as well as Snake’s “Les séquelles de la colonisation” and “Transfrontalier” are important productions. These are research-based performances enacted in public places from Yaounde to Berlin (mostly on the street) because of the participatory nature of their concepts. Both performances are heavily laden with allusions to slavery, colonisation, religion, and metaphysics. Their performances, which seek to explore the relationship between the past, the present and future, aim at creating awareness on the consequences of colonisation, as well as the challenges of decolonisation.

CONCLUSIONConversations about decolonisation in the public sphere are not unrelated to the on-going approach in art, which in turn informs the wider discourse on nationalism in Cameroon. Navigating Cameroon’s nebulous history – albeit complex – is crucial towards understanding these notions, as well as the role played by public space in the decolonisation process. Beyond the relevance of the interconnectedness of notions such as public space, Cameroon’s colonial past and nationalism, their contribution to the decolonial process cannot be ignored. By placing public places at the centre of performances, artists like Etongo and Snake invite audiences to be part of the interpretation of their work, which reflects the open-ended approach adopted by film makers such as Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Musing Derrick. Nevertheless, the role of public spaces and audiences is hardly exclusive to Cameroon, especially when one considers the ripple effect of movements like Rhodes Must Fall in South Africa, and its contribution to decolonial discourse.

END NOTES

1. Ngoh, Victor Julius. The Political Evolution of Cameroon, 1884–1961 (1979). Dissertation.

2. Owona, Adalbert. “La naissance du Cameroun (1884–1914) (1973).” Cahiers d’Études africaines, No 49, pp. 16–36.

3. Ngoh, Victor Julius. The Political Evolution of Cameroon, 1884–1961 (1979). Dissertation.

4. Chia, Ngam Confidence. “The Workings of the Germanophilia and Germanophobia Concepts in Post German Cameroon.” Afro Asian Journal of Social Sciences, vol. VIII, No I, Quarter I, 2017, pp. 2–6.

5. Sah, Léonard I. “Activités allemandes et germanophilie au Cameroun (1936–1939) (1982),” Outre-Mers. Revue d’histoire, No 255, pp. 129–144.

6. Rudin, Harry R. (1938). Germans in the Cameroons, 1884–I914: A Case Study in Modern Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

7. Tande, Dibussi. “France’s Dirty War in Cameroon (VI): The French Expeditionary Force,” Scribbles from the Den, 29 November, 2006, http://www.dibussi.com/2006/11/frances_dirty_w_3.htm

8. Deltombe, Thomas. “The Forgotten Cameroon War,” Jacobin, 12 October, 2016, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/cameroon-france-colonialism-war-resistance/

9. Wakai, Kangsen Feka. “#WhiteHistoryMonth: Dr. Pierre Messmer, France’s Dirty War General,” Africa is a Country, 3 June 2015, https://africasacountry.com/2015/03/the-general-who-was-in-charge-of-frances-dirty-war-in-cameroon

10. Deltombe, Thomas et al. Kamerun! Une guerre cachée aux origines de la Françafrique (1948 - 1971). Editions La Découverte, Paris, 2011.

11. Nfah-Abbenyi, Juliana Makuchi. “Anglophone Cameroon Poetry”, Free Verse Journal, 13 Nov 2013. http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/freeverse/Archives/Spring_2012/prose/CameroonPoetry_JulianaMakuchiNfahAbbenhi.htm

12. Konings, Piet, and Francis B. Nyamnjoh (1997). “The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 207–229.

13. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. “Ethnicity versus Nationalism.” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 263–278.

14. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. “Cameroon: a country united by ethnic ambition and difference.” African Affairs, 1999, 98, pp. 101–118.

15. Mbembe, Achille (1992). “Provisional Notes on the Postcolony.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 62, no. 1 (1992), pp. 3–37.

16. Ambe, Hilarious N (2004). “Shit and Stench as Dramatic Strategy: Bate Besong’s Beasts of no Nation,” The Literary Criterion, pp. 185–197.

17. Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey.

18. Campbell, Horace G. and C. L. R. James (1995). “Walter Rodney, and the Caribbean Intellectual,” In C. L. R. James: His Intellectual Legacies, ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain, pp. 405–431. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

19. Neil Smith and Setha Low (2005). “The Imperative of Public Space.” The Politics of Public Space, eds Setha Low and Neil Smith. Routledge.

20. Beni, Luc Moutila. Planification Urbaine au Cameroun: Nature, Origine et Defis. https://moutilageo.hypotheses.org/17

21. Fortin, Jacey. “Toppling Monuments, a Visual History” The New York Times, 17 August, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/world/controversial-statues-monuments-destroyed.html

22. “Cameroun : l’œuvre d’une artiste française demandant pardon pour la colonisation a été détruite”, Observateurs France 24, 8 December 2017, http://observers.france24.com/fr/20171208-cameroun-art-francaise-colonisation-pardon-detruite

23. “La Police empêche l’activiste André Essama de placer la statue de John Ngu Foncha, ancien vice-président du Cameroun” Le Bled Parle, 28 December 2016, https://www.lebledparle.com/societe/1101896-la-police-empeche-l-activiste-andre-essama-de-placer-la-statue-de-john-ngu-foncha-ancien-vice-president-du-cameroun

24. “ ‘Œuvre d’auto-glorification’: l’installation d’une artiste française au Cameroun détruite,” RT France, 9 December 2017, https://francais.rt.com/international/46367-oeuvre-dauto-glorification-installation-artiste-francaise-cameroun-destruction-colonisation

25. Malaquais, Dominique, “Monumental Failures,” Chimurenga Chronic, 19 July 2016, https://chimurengachronic.co.za/monumental-failures/

26. Liatou, Merinos, “Our Wishes: A look on colonial Africa” Goethe-Institut Kamerun, https://www.goethe.de/ins/cm/en/kul/sup/ffa/21010975.html

“BEYOND THE COLONIAL HISTORY THAT WE GET FROM ARCHIVES AND OTHERS, WE SHOULD ALSO CREATE A NEW IDENTITY FOR OURSELVES, AND NOT RELY ON THIS INHERITED IDENTITY.”


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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, CAMEROON



Crossing Boundaries of Doubt

Multidisciplinary Germany, Cameroon Astrid S. Klein Colonial histories, memory, http://crossing-boundaries-of-doubt.net/

Fin de Machine Theatre performance Germany, Cameroon Fabian Lettow / Mirjam Schmuck & Martin Ambara

History, slavery

Fin de Mission Theatre performance Germany, Cameroon Fabian Lettow / Mirjam Schmuck & Martin Ambara

Slave trade, colonialism

Our Wishes Cinema Cameroon Jean Pierre Bekolo History, colonisation

Tenacity Cinema Cameroon Musing Derick History, colonisation

Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon

Cinema Cameroon Musing Derick, Bole Butake History, colonisation

Boundless Literature Cameroon Kefen Budji Love, conflict, colonialism

Les Sequelles de la colonisation

Theatre performance France/Germany Zora Snake Religion, colonisation

Footprints of Destiny Literature Cameroon Azanwi Nchami

La Resistance des Malimba a la traite negriere et la colonisation

Literature Cameroon

Demythologize That History and Put it to Rest / Colonial neighbours

Performance Germany, Portugal Marcio Carvalho, Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock etc

Colonial histories, memory

Camerun and Congo: In Search of traces and phanton Geography

Exhibition Germany Andreas Lang etc


2019

LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, CAMEROON CONTINUED



December Rain (published in Winter Shorts. eds Clementine Burnley & Sharon Dodua Otoo)

Short Story (Literature) Germany Elsa Mbala https://bakwamagazine.com/2016/01/25/fiction-december-rain-by-elsa-mbala/

Giving Contours to Shadows

Multidisciplinary Germany Bonaventure Ndikung etc

Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art

Multidisciplinary Germany, USA https://independent-collectors.com/collections/the-walther-collection-recent-histories/

Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon

Literature Cameroon Bolo Butake

Mount Pleasant Literature France Patrice Nganang

Africa Conference Multidisciplinary Germany http://www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/cms/en/programme/Afrika/archiv/africa_conference.html

The Meddling Age Painting Nzante Spee

ca-me-dit martyr Multimedia installation Herve Youmbi / Ruth belinga (Curator)

Afrik Politik Music Lady B Colonialism, neocolonialism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6HEEiAz9OY

The New World Climax - Colonisation Imperialism

Multidisciplinary USA Barthélémy Toguo https://emuseum.nasher.duke.edu/objects/20142/the-new-world-climax--colonisation-imperialism;jsessionid=2E412C422B9DAC221E07E4ED78B67B3F;jsessionid=2E412C422B9DAC221E07E4ED78B67B3F?ctx=7d904c4e-0206-4ff7-bd31-902fc9563c84&idx=30

Footnotes / audio Walk

Multidisciplinary Germany, Cameroon Zora Snake/Michael (Post-) colonial traces https://dieflanerie.com/fussnoten-audio-walk-2016/

Njoya the Reformer Literature Denys Ferrando-Durfort Colonial histories, memory

Once upon a time, Ahidjo

Literature Colonial histories, memory


SOME INTRODUCTORY WORDSWhen it comes to the attention colonial history receives in the cultural field, the situation in Germany differs from that in most of the African countries with whom Germany shares a colonial history. The body of cultural productions that make colonial history a topic is unmanageable, due to the size, complexity and diversity of the German cultural scene. To list an actual number of productions related to the topic of colonialism developed by visual artists, writers, performers, photographers, film makers, theatre directors or curators within the last ten years is therefore impossible, and it would be presumptuous to claim one knows them all. The following compilation presenting 42 cultural productions can therefore only be a subjective sample of works instead of a complete survey. Nonetheless, it will allow for an overview of the topic.

I tried to make the sample as broad and diverse as possible, including various artistic formats like film, photography, video installation, painting, performance, stage play, spoken word, dance, music recording, novel, essay or comic. However, during the research it became obvious that some genres are more difficult to grasp than others. The ephemeral character of spoken word performances or interventions in public space makes it more difficult in retrospect to understand the work properly and obtain the information needed to integrate it into the compilation. Additionally, because of my own research background in visual arts, I am biased in the way that I am much more familiar with graphics, paintings, film and photography than with theatre or dance. Nonetheless, I have tried to create a balanced selection that is not limited to works that gained the most attention in the media or allocated the greatest interest from the audience but which address the topic of German colonialism substantially.

In this essay, I will not only stick to the 42 productions from the compilation, but also list events like exhibitions and festivals

that are not single cultural productions and that speak about the contexts the cultural productions have been presented within.

THE WHEN AND WHERE OF COLONIALISM AS A TOPIC IN GERMANYThe research focuses on cultural productions in Germany within the

last ten years. For this reason, it has to be stressed that an important

year for the commemorative culture in Germany lies before that

period. In 2004, the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the

colonial war in Namibia (1904–1908) – or German South West Africa

at the time – allowed for first important moments of recognition.

Thanks to initiatives like the famous speech by federal development

minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul in August 2004 in Namibia

or the historical exhibition “Namibia – Deutschland: eine geteilte

Geschichte” (Namibia – Germany: A shared history) at Rautenstrauch-

Joest-Museum für Völkerkunde in Cologne, the year brought a rise

in the awareness of the then still widely unknown history of German

colonialism. Nevertheless, these singular events in the sphere of

politics and historiography should not obscure the fact that it was not

yet the time for the plurality of artistic interventions one finds within

the last three years.

One of the few cultural productions already published in 2004

was Jean-Marie Téno’s documentary Das koloniale Missverständnis

(The Colonial Misunderstanding), making the interconnection of the

Rhenish Mission and colonialism in Namibia a topic. The first visual

art exhibition at a prestigious German institution followed only a

few months later with William Kentridge’s Black Box/Chambre Noire

that opened in October 2005 at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin.

There are more artistic works released before the focus period of

that research that could be named here. For practical reasons, I will

only mention Uwe Timm’s famous novel Morenga from 1978. To date,

the book has been printed in more than ten editions. It uses historic

documents as well as the writer’s imagination to tell about the skills

of Jakob Morenga, a successful military leader of the Nama who

2221

FROM PERIPHERY TO FOCUS (AND BACK AGAIN?) -

THE TOPIC OF COLONIALISM IN CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS IN GERMANY

BY FABIAN LEHMANN

FABIAN LEHMANN is a PhD student at the

Bayreuth International Graduate School of

African Studies (BIGSAS). His research is on

contemporary visual art that addresses the

remembrance of the German colonial period in

Namibia. Before starting his PhD, Lehmann was

a research associate at Iwalewahaus

in Bayreuth.

Them and Us

© Jochen Roller


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“WHEN IT COMES TO THE ATTENTION COLONIAL HISTORY RECEIVES IN THE CULTURAL FIELD, THE SITUATION IN GERMANY DIFFERS FROM THAT IN MOSTOF THE AFRICAN COUNTRIES WITH WHOM GERMANY SHARES A COLONIAL HISTORY.”

fought against the German troops. The novel Morenga demonstrates

that the history of cultural productions on German colonialism goes

back as far as to the 1970s1. But then it was only singular works

and it took until the second decade of the 21st century that the topic

was addressed in a broader artistic context. The last ten years saw a

strikingly increasing number of productions. The years 2016 and 2017

have been particularly fruitful, making up half of the productions in

my compilation.

The already-mentioned importance of the year 2004 that saw the

100th anniversary of the war in Namibia – which by the way was

also the 120th anniversary of the infamous Berlin Africa Conference

from 1884/1885 – points to another noticeable feature in the German

commemorative culture: It is Namibia that became the main point of

reference for German memory practices. Even though the German-

Namibian War (1904–1908) was particularly cruel and caused the

first genocide of the 20th century, the Maji Maji War in Tanzania

(1905–1907) – then German East Africa – lead to the death of no less

than 100,000 people. As there are enough reasons to commemorate

the victims of war and scorch earth policy in Tanzania, this colonial

war is forgotten in today’s Germany.

This unequal distribution of awareness for the benefit of Namibia

is reflected in the foci of the German cultural field. From the body

of cultural productions in my sample, the most productions by far

directly concern Namibia (12 productions in total). The other former

colonial territories in Africa: Cameroon (6), Togo (2), Tanzania (1),

Ruanda (0) and Burundi (0) gain much less attention from the cultural

scene. The same is true for the former German colonies outside

Africa. I only found three works that create a link to former Pacific

colonial territories and did not come across any productions that

deal with German history in China’s Kiautschou. Of course, not all

productions explicitly referred to a particular former colony but to

German colonialism in general. Once again, it needs to be stressed

that this observation is far from being a representative survey.

Albeit, the relationship between Namibia and the other countries is

still striking.

But why is it like that? There are several factors that at least partly

explain Namibia’s prominence in Germany’s cultural scene. Namibia

was the only colony propagated as a settler’s colony and there still

is a German-speaking minority present that makes up about one

percent of the overall population. What sounds very small in number

becomes incomparably weighty when it comes to the distribution of

farm land still in the hands of the German-speaking or white minority

in general. The German influence in Namibia is also strikingly visible

1 Here I focus on works after the Second World War. As Kea Wienand shows, one could also start this overview on German productions with works by Dadaist artists like Hannah Höch, who already in the beginning of the 19th century reflected on ethnographic objects in Ger-man museums. See Wienand’s article „‚Deutsche’ Kolonialgeschichte als Thema postkolonialer Kunst“ In Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst and Joachim Zeller (eds.): Deutschland postkolonial: Ende und Nachwirkungen des deutschen Weltmachtstrebens. Berlin: Metropol Verlag.

when it comes to German culture like historical buildings, beer, or

German schools. This exceptional German influence in an African

country has become a focal point for some cultural productions as,

for example, in Christoph Schlingensief’s film The African Twin Towers

(2005–2009) or Evelyn Annuß’ exhibition and publication Stagings

Made in Namibia (2009).

Another factor for Namibia’s visibility in the German discourse on

colonialism is the German-Namibian War that caused the long-

forgotten genocide of mainly the Herero and Nama people. The 100th

observation in 2004 of the beginning of the war, and more recently

also the media coverage of the ongoing negotiations between

representatives of the Namibian and German government, helped to

bring back Germany’s colonial history to public attention. Significant

interest also received the German government’s decision to apply

the term “genocide” to the context of the German-Namibian War,

which was only taken in July 2016. As this decision does not address

reparations for the descendants of the victims, representatives

of Herero and Nama groups filed a class-action suit in New York

in January 2017. Again, German newspapers reported extensively

over the proceedings. Hence, Namibia is by far the most prominent

protagonist in Germany when it comes to the topic of colonial

history. Works that particularly address the matter of genocide and

its aftermath are Ingrid LaFleur’s installation The Resonance (2015),

Ludwig Fels’ novel Die Hottentottenwerft (2016) or the stage play

Remains (2016) by the theatre collective anne&ich.

One work that does not fit to the mentioned former colonial

territories of the German Empire is the ongoing project Eagle Africa

by Philip Kojo Metz, started in 2011. Eagle Africa deals with the

colonial and pre-colonial German history in a multifaceted way, but

the focal point of the project is the German fort Großfriedrichsburg

erected in the end of 17th century by Brandenburg-Prussia. The

fort’s ruins can still be visited in Princes Town at the coast of today’s

Ghana. If the colonial history in Germany is a marginal topic in public

debate, the pre-colonial history of Brandenburg-Prussia at the coast

of West Africa is virtually unknown and lost in German collective

memory.

WHAT ABOUT THE INSTITUTIONS?After these considerations concerning the artists and their works,

I will now shift the focus to the institutions that fund and exhibit

works of art and also shape the discourse on Germany’s colonial

heritage. During the last years a number of festivals at theatres,

art institutions and museums have raised attention to the matter

of colonialism. Between 2014 and 2016, in three festivals titled

“Afropean Mimicry & Mockery”, the artist space Mousonturm in

Frankfurt am Main invited productions by black artists that use

strategies of appropriation, demonstrate a subversive potential and

I have heard many things about you

© Syowia Kyambi

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesFrom Periphery to Focus (and Back Again?) -The Topic of Colonialism in Cultural Productions in Germany

2625

Café Togo

© Gregor Kasper

create counter-narratives to the white majority in Germany. The

theatre and performance space Kampnagel in Hamburg presented the

three festivals “This Ain’t Africa” in 2014, “We Don’t Contemporary”

in 2015 and “That Around Which the Universe Evolves” together

with Berlin gallery SAVVY Contemporary in 2017, focussing on

Africa from a post-colonial perspective. Also, the Berlin theatre

Hebbel am Ufer did a festival in 2015 titled “Return to Sender” that

introduced artistic positions from various African countries. Between

November 2014 and March 2015, three institutions in Berlin invited

artistic and academic positions on occasion of the 1884/1885 Berlin

conference 130 years ago: Ballhaus Naunystrasse held the festival

“We are Tomorrow”, SAVVY Contemporary developed a discursive

programme under the title “Wir sind alle Berliner: 1884–2014” (We are

all Berliners: 1884–2014) and the Volksbühne had an alternative, post-

colonial “Afrika-Konferenz” (Africa Conference).

Despite the fact that amongst these postcolonial festivals not all

explicitly raised the topic of colonialism, it was a recurrent matter

in various productions in each of the festivals. Interestingly, most

of the above-mentioned festivals were funded by the Kulturstiftung

des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) through their

programme “TURN Fund for Artistic Cooperation Between Germany

and African Countries”. The reason for the presence of the programme

in the festivals might be due to the minimum funding of € 50,000,

which festivals inviting artists from all over the world easily reach.

In this regard, the goal of the TURN programme to initiate artistic

collaborations with African partners works quite successfully – even

for institutions like the Volksbühne, that are more known for their

distinguished productions in German Sprechtheater than for post-

colonial festivals.

Interviews with employees and directors from these institutions

show that the TURN programme, initiated in 2012, came at the

right moment in time. Before, artistic cooperation between German

institutions and artists and institutions in Africa had been quite rare.

It must be mentioned that also the audience interested in matters

of post-colonialism still had to be built up, which is indeed an

ongoing process. Activists from the civil society helped problematise

questions of representation, prejudice and tendencies of racist

mindsets as seen, for instance, in the protests accompanying the

practice of blackfacing at some German theatres. That is why only in

the first decade of the 21st century did the awareness towards Africa

and its colonial interconnections with Europe slowly evolve. Still,

in an interview in 2010, the director of the transcultural institution

Werkstatt der Kulturen in Berlin, Philippa Ebéné, mentioned the

difficulties in raising a budget for the music project titled 1884,

dealing with the Berlin Africa Conference. As she explained, it was

the lack of interest that made it so difficult to finance the project with

external resources. Now, after the seventh and last application round

for the TURN programme in April 2018, the question again is how

ambitious projects like 1884 can be financed in the future.

Another institutional influence has to be mentioned when it comes to

the topic of German colonialism. The contemporary discourse cannot

be understood properly without referring to the rebuilding of the

Prussian Berlin Palace in the centre of the capital and the founding

of the Humboldt Forum that will be housed in the palace from 2019

onwards. Within the last ten years, a large debate developed around

the idea to move the ethnographic collections from the outskirts of

Berlin to its very centre. The debate around the Humboldt Forum,

initiated by critics from the civil society, focusses, amongst others,

on objects within the collections that were brought to Germany from

the colonies in the 19th and early 20th century. The provenances of

these objects and the circumstances of their acquisition often remain

unknown and assumptions are expressed – in some cases evidence

is already available – that parts of the collections were brought to

Europe under deceptive circumstances, including robbery and fraud.

The critique does not stop at the city borders of Berlin but radiates

to institutions that take care of similar ethnographic as well as art

collections. That is why during the last years a number of German

museums presented self-critical exhibitions that explicitly addressed

questions of provenance and responsibility towards the cultures the

objects originate from. The Landesmuseum in Hannover did exactly

this in a temporary exhibition called “Heikles Erbe” (delicate heritage)

between September 2016 and February 2017. Since November 2017,

the Museum im Ritterhaus in Offenburg presents its ethnographic

collection in a newly arranged permanent exhibition titled “Ein

Fenster zur Welt” (a Window to the World). The objects collected by

the museum’s founder during the time of German colonialism are now

presented in a critical way and the museum offers special guided

tours that make the object’s provenances a topic. The Kunsthalle in

Bremen presented an exhibition from August to November 2017 that

dealt with the town’s role as an important trade port during German

colonial times. Objects in the collection of the museum have been

questioned as manifestations of exotic, colonial and post-colonial

European fantasies. From June to December 2017, the Altonaer

Museum in Hamburg asked visual artist Joe Sam-Essandoh for an

intervention in the rooms of the permanent exhibition that show

models of ships that have been used to transport enslaved Africans

to the Caribbean to work on plantations.

Already from October 2013 to February 2014, the town museum of

Munich presented “Decolonize München“, an exhibition that searched

for colonial traces in the city of Munich. From November 2014 to

February 2015, the ethnographic museum of Leipzig together with

the institute of ethnology at the University of Leipzig tried out new

ways of presenting ethnographic objects in the exhibition “Vom

Wissen der Objekte“ (the object’s knowledge). Another institution

is the museum of local history of Treptow in Berlin. Since October

“... A NUMBER OF GERMAN MUSEUMS PRESENTED SELF-CRITICAL EXHIBITIONS THAT EXPLICITLY ADDRESSED QUESTIONS OF PROVENANCE AND RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS THE CULTURES THE OBJECTS ORIGINATE FROM.”


2827

2017, it critically addresses the first German colonial exhibition from

1896 and deals with colonial history in a permanent exhibition.

Also, in 2017 the Federal Archive together with the Goethe-Institut

in Cameroon developed the touring exhibition “Was treiben die

Deutschen in Afrika?!” (What Brings the Germans to Africa?!) based on

historic photographs from the former colony of Cameroon stored at

the Federal Archive. The exhibition “Gefangene Bilder – Wissenschaft

und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg” (Imprisoned Pictures – Science

and Propaganda during the Great War) was shown in 2014–2015 at

the Historic Museum in Frankfurt am Main. It took the occasion of

the 100th observation of the beginning of the Great War to show

historic photographs of African soldiers from North and West Africa

who fought for the colonial powers. However, the most important

exhibition in this regard is the exhibition “German Colonialism –

Fragments Past and Present” at the Deutsches Historisches Museum,

Germany’s national historic museum in Berlin. Between October 2016

and May 2017, this major show for the first time presented German

colonialism as a substantial historic period to the public. Museums

and archives in particular have a responsibility to address the history

of colonialism as they either hold objects from the colonial context

within their collections or deal with historic topics.

Referring to important anniversaries, programmes by potent funders

or political negotiations between Germany and protagonists from

its former colonies, it is easier to find reasons for the occurrence

of the topic of colonialism in the cultural field than to state to what

extent the artistic productions, in turn, influence the public debate.

At least, the re-naming of streets in Berlin in other towns that still

honour colonial agitators is a proof for a strengthened awareness

concerning Germany’s colonial history – a development activists and

artists fought for, for many years now. But even though the diversity

and the absolute number of cultural productions is remarkable, in

relation to the German cultural field as a whole, the topic of German

colonialism is still a niche addressed mainly by institutions with

an interest in post-colonial discourses. This is even more true for

the world “outside” the cultural field. German colonial history is

insufficiently or not taught in schools at all, which must be seen as

a main reason why few people will be able to name former German

colonies in Africa. Even many Germans will not at all be aware of the

fact that the German Empire had its own colonies.

The arts surely help to transfer the topic from political and historical

debates to a wider public and reach out to other audiences. But these

audiences are characterised by their cultural interest. People not

interested in cultural productions with a post-colonial impetus will

hardly be affected – at least not directly. Still, it can be expected that

the cultural field works as a driving force that helps to keep a public

discourse on German colonialism alive. Nonetheless, it is difficult

to measure this process, and only rarely do prominent persons like

German former foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier refer to

artistic initiatives or stress the importance of cultural productions

that make German colonialism a topic2.

GERMAN COLONIALISM… BUT WHICH TOPICS EXACTLY?On the previous pages, I already introduced some main subtopics

the cultural productions centre around. One of them is the German

Empire’s bloody history in Namibia. Due to Namibia’s particular

history as a settler’s colony and the site of colonial genocide, the

colonial history and current society in Namibia is much more visible

in cultural productions than that of Togo or Burundi, for example.

A second major approach that became especially important

during the last three years is the questioning of the museum’s and

collection’s history and the (lack of) knowledge concerning the

provenance of particular objects in the collections. Then again, this

questioning of the museums is often connected to the role of the

towns that house the institutions and profited from their status as

a harbour with economic connections to the African continent, such

as Hamburg or Bremen. Lastly, I listed festivals that chose a post-

colonial perspective and provided a stage for productions from Africa

and its diasporas. This, however, cannot be called a topic in its own

2 See his interview with Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle from 1st September 2016: https://www.dw.com/de/steinmeier-kunst-kann-kolonialgeschichteaufarbe-iten/a-19518256.

“SUCH A JOINED ENDEAVOUR OF ARTISTS AND RESEARCHERS ON THE TOPIC OF COLONIALISM IS UNIQUE IN GERMANY. IT DOES NOT ONLY SUPPORT THE NEEDED STUDY OF HISTORIC DOCUMENTS FROM THE COLONIAL ERA BUT WITH THE HELP OF THE ARTISTS, IT WILL ALSO CREATE APPROACHES DIFFERENT TO THE ONES OF HISTORIANS.”

right but an approach that favours topics of historic intercontinental

relations and post-colonial interconnections in a globalised world.

This being said, there are more subtopics to be identified if one tries

to categorise the plurality of the numerous productions. One field

surely is the highlighting of the Africa Conference from 1884 to 1885

in Berlin, which helped shape the imperial European influence in

Africa in the late 19th century and created the basis for colonialism

in the first half of the 20th. Artistic productions to mention here are

Dierk Schmidt’s series of mixed-media pictures titled Die Teilung der

Erde (The Division of the World, 2007–2010); the music project 1884

at the Werkstatt der Kulturen (2010); or Márcio Carvalho’s Berlin

performance within the performance series Demythologize That

History and Put it to Rest (2018).

Another body of works centres around perspectives of Afro-German

approaches that explicitly address black positions in a white German

majority. Fatima Moumouni’s spoken word text Back to your Roots

(2015) speaks about prejudices based on a colonial racist tradition,

while Simone Dede Ayivi’s Performing Back (2014) presents black

German activists with whom she discusses ways of dealing with the

colonial heritage. Furthermore, the exhibition Gesichter der Afrika

Rennaisance (Faces of the Africa Renaissance, 2012), produced by

the initiative AFROTAK TV cyberNomads, presents a black German

perspective on post-colonial activism in Germany.

AND THE FUTURE…? Today, in mid 2018, one can have the impression that the topic of

colonialism in the German cultural field already has reached its

peak in the time between 2016 and 2017 – with 21 productions in

my sample of 42 productions within the last ten years – and now

experiences a decline in importance and publicity. Except for a first

peak around 2004, it was mainly within the last three years that

German colonialism received substantial attention from influential

institutions in the cultural sector of Germany. This year, only few

productions have been announced to date. Therefore, it looks like

the development of colonialism as a topic within the diverse field

of cultural production could disappear once again into the mist of

topics not present enough to influence the cultural discourse. This

does not necessarily mean that the topic will also disappear from

political and historical debates. Instead, the upcoming years will show

if the artist’s – and also the audience’s – interest is strong enough to

establish German colonialism as a lasting topic in the fields of cultural

and artistic production.

However, there is at least one major project that was started in

January 2018 and that is currently running in Hamburg. Professor

Jürgen Zimmerer at the Department of History at the University

of Hamburg initiated the project “Visual History of the Colonial

Genocide”. For its realisation, he put up a team of three Namibian

artists as well as one German historian who are conducting research

on more than 1,000 photographs taken in colonial Namibia between

1900 and 1918. The photographs are part of the collection of the

Hamburg Museum of Ethnology, a cooperation partner in the project.

The team, consisting of visual artists Vitjitua Ndjiharine and Nicola

Brandt, performance artist Nashilongweshipwe Sakaria Mushaandja

and historian Ulrike Peters, will have the presentation of their results

by December 2018. The aim is to show historic photographs that do

not present African people as victims of colonial oppression but as

active protagonists within the colonial setting. The historic material

shall then be supported with contemporary productions by the

involved artists. Such a joined endeavour of artists and researchers

on the topic of colonialism is unique in Germany. It does not only

support the needed study of historic documents from the colonial

era but with the help of the artists, it will also create approaches

different to the ones of historians. Instead of an academic analysis,

the focus will be on the visual and performative and by this

potentially raise more public interest in the role of Hamburg as a

historic centre of German colonialism.


3029

LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, GERMANY



Via Intolleranza II Theatre May 2010 Burkina Faso, Germany / Bruxelles, Kunstenfestivaldesarts

Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010), German, famous filmmaker, theatre director and action artist

European colonial history, Racist stereotypes, development aid, African Opera Village

http://www.schlingensief.com/projekt.php?id=o003

1000 Pages Video Performance June to August 2015, June to July 2017

Princes Town, Ghana / Goethe Institut Accra, Ghana

Philip Kojo Metz (1971), Germany, performance and conceptual artist based in Berlin

Pre-colonial German history in West Africa, German involvement in Slave trade

http://www.philipkojometz.de/www.philipkojometz.de/works_3.html

AHOOBAA - den Ahninnen und Ahnen gewidmet

Room installation 22nd of June to 31st of December 2017

Altonaer Museum, Hamburg Joe Sam-Essandoh (Ghana) visual artist living in Hamburg

Involvement of Denmark and Altona in trans-Atlantic slave trade

http://www.sankofa-altona-vi.de/index.html

Café Togo Film Screening 21st of June 2017 Germany / Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth

Musquiqui Chihying (1985), Taiwan, artist and filmmaker, lives in Berlin and TaipeiGregor Kasper (1986), Germany, artist and filmmaker, lives in Berlin

Colonial street names in African quarter in Berlin Wedding, famous colonial protagonists

http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/berlinale-forum/programm-forum-expanded/kuenstlerinnen-expanded/musquiqui-chihying.html

Crossing Boundaries Of: A Fragmentary Narrative in Nine Chapters

PhotographyVideoLiterature

2013–ongoing Germany, Togo Astrid S. Klein (1964), Germany, is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist based in Stuttgart

relations between Europe and Africa, shared history of Europe and other continents

http://crossing-boundaries-of-doubt.net

Der Blinde Fleck. Bremen und die Kunst in der Kolonialzeit

Installation 5th of August to 19th of November 2017

Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany Exhibition curator: Julia Binter (1984), Germany, PhD student at University of Oxford

The role of Bremen as an important trade port during German colonial time

https://www.kunsthalle-bremen.de/view/exhibitions/exb-page/der-blinde-fleck

Der Blinde Fleck. Bremen und die Kunst in der Kolonialzeit

Literature (Novel) 2016 Germany / Salzburg Ludwig Fels (1946), German, novelist since 1973

Colonial history in German South West Africa, German Namibian War, Genocide, Love between a German and an African

http://jungundjung.at/content.php?id=2&b_id=225

Die Hottentottenwerft Literature (Novel) 2016 Germany / Salzburg Ludwig Fels (1946), German, novelist since 1973

Colonial history in German South West Africa, German Namibian War, Genocide, Love between a German and an African

http://jungundjung.at/content.php?id=2&b_id=225


3231

LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, GERMANY, CONTINUED



Imperium Literature (Novel) 2012 Germany / Cologne Christian Kracht (1966), German, highly decorated novelist, other famous novels by author: „Faserland“, „1979“, „Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten“

German colonial history in South Pacific, true story of August Engelhardt, German Youth Movement as answer to industrialization

https://www.kiwi-verlag.de/buch/imperium/978-3-462-04131-6/

Kamerun und Kongo PhotographyVideoExhibition

16th of September 2016 to 26th of February 2017

Cameroon, Congo / Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

Andréas Lang, German, lives in Berlin, well known for his landscape photography, Artist in Residency 2016 at Auswärtiges Amt

German colonial history http://www.dhm.de/de/ausstellungen/archiv/2016/kamerun-und-kongo.html

Kolmanskop Dream Room installation 31st of March to 11th of June 2017

Ifa Gallery Berlin Pascale Marthine Tayou (1967), Cameroon is an internationally celebrated visual artist who took part in documenta and Venice Biennial

Diamond mining in former German South West Africa (Namibia)

https://www.ifa.de/kunst/untie-to-tie/kolmanskop-dream.html

Der lange Schatten Literature (Novel) 2015 Germany / Berlin Bernhard Jaumann (1957), German, novelist for crime novels since 1997

Reconciliation of historical colonial atrocities in today’s Namibia

https://www.rowohlt.de/taschenbuch/bernhard-jaumann-der-lange-schatten.html

Beyond Wagner’s FutureS / A Leitmotif for Conquest

ExhibitionPublication

6th to 28th of April 2017

Bayreuth, Germany / Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth, Germany

Philipp Khabo Koepsell (1980), German, dramatic advisor, poet, editor based in Berlin

German Zeitgeist at the time of colonialism, Richard Wagner as a contemporary composer during time of German colonialism

https://favt.blog/projects/beyond-wagners-futures/

Maji Maji Flava Theatre 30th of September to 22nd of October 2016

Germany, Staatstheater Kassel / Staatstheater Kassel, Sophiensaele Berlin

Flinn Works (Kassel/Berlin) and Asedeva (Dar es Salaam)

German colonial history in East Africa, (Remembrance on) Maji Maji Wa

http://www.flinnworks.de/en/project/maji-maji-flava

http://www.asedeva.com/projectszetu.html

Performing Back - Eine zukünftige Erinnerungsperfor-mance zur deutschen Kolonialgeschichte

PresentationPerformance

22nd of September 2014

Sophiensaele, Berlin, Germany Simone Dede Ayivi (1982), Germany, theatre director and performer based in Berlin

colonial monuments in German cities, post-colonial activism in Germany, narration of history

http://www.ballhausnaunynstrasse.de/stueck/performing_back

Raus Rein. Texte und Comics zur Geschichte der ehemaligen Kolonialschule in Witzenhausen

Comic May 2016 Germany / Berlin, Comic Salon Erlangen, Germany

Hendrik Dorgathen (1957), Germany, Professor for Illustration and Comic, Kunsthochschule KasselMarion Hulverscheidt (1970), Germany, research fellow at DITSL Witzenhausen

The stories in this anthology focus on the historic colonial school in Witzenhausen that trained young farmers for their new live in the colonies.

http://www.avant-verlag.de/comic/raus_rein


3433

LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, GERMANY, CONTINUED



Remains. Eine Rede Theatre 17th of February 2016

Cammerspiele Leipzig, Germany Theatre collective anne&ich (Anton Kurt Krause, 1986, Germany / Anne Rietschel, 1986, Germany / Sibylle Wallum, 1979, Germany / Michaela Maxi Schulz, 1985, Germany)

Dealing with human remains, current political relation between Germany and Namibia, apology and restitution

http://www.cammerspiele.de/remains-eine-rede/

Hommage à Sara Bartman

Exhibition 8th to 17th of November 2013

Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands / 1. Berliner Herbstsalon, Berlin, Germany

Teresa María Díaz Nerio (1982), Dominican Republic, visual and performance artist based in Amsterdam

Historic colonial exhibitions in Europe, Exotic gaze, making of the colonial other

https://teresadiaznerio.wordpress.com/hommage-a-sara-bartman/

Schutzgebiet Literature (Novel) - Germany / Frankfurt am Main Thomas von Steinaecker (1977), German, decorated novelist, also wrote „Wallner beginnt zu fliegen“, „Das Jahr, in dem ich aufhörte, mir Sorgen zu machen, und anfing zu träumen“

German colonial settlement in Africa, characters who settled over to the colonies

https://www.fischerverlage.de/buch/schutzgebiet/9783596033065

Shit Island Theatre 18th of November 2017, 31st of January to 4th of February 2018

ORANGERIE – Theater im Volksgarten, Köln, Germany /

Futur 3 (André Erlen, Stefan H. Kraft, Klaus Maria Zehe), free theatre collective in Cologne

imperialist hunger for natural resources, history of Pacific island Nauru

http://www.futur-drei.de/shit-island

Stagings Made in Namibia: Postkoloniale Fotografie

Photography 28th of March to 19th of April 2009

Namibia / Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, Germany

Dr. Evelyn Annuß, guest-professor at Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Free University of Berlin

afterlife of German colonialism in Namibia, history of colonial photography in Namibia

http://www.b-books.de/verlag/stagings/index.html

https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/TVOK66CSOGJGI5UOJ75G53N6JL7B3T2U

Die Teilung der Erde – Tableaux zu rechtlichen Synopsen der Berliner-Afrika-Konferenz

Visual arts 16th of June to 23rd of September 2007

Germany / documenta 12, Kassel, Germany Dierk Schmidt (1965), Germany, studied art history and visual arts in Düsseldorf and Amsterdam. Develops the genre of history painting

European colonialialism, Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884/1885, European division of Africa, borders of African states, colonial legal systems

http://documenta12.de/index.php?id=1215&L=1

https://www.amazon.de/Dierk-Schmidt-Division-Earth-Afrika-Konferenz/dp/3865608027

The Resonance PerformanceVideoInstallation

- Bayreuth, Germany / Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth, Germany

Ingrid LaFleur (1978), USA, is a visual and performance artist and founder of AFROTOPIA, a research project that uses Afrofuturism as a social engagement practice

colonial history in German South West Africa, Genocide, concentration camp on Shark Island (Lüderitz), racial research on human skulls

https://favt.blog/projects/the-resonance/

Das Feuer, der deutsche Pfennig und des Kaisers Funkstation

Filmscreening 26th of July 2017 Germany / FESFICA – Festival du Film Court d'Atakpamé, Togo

Jürgen Ellinghaus (1956), Germany, studied political studies, other films: „Der versiegelte Brief des Soldaten Döblin“ (2005), „Glaube Sitte Heimat“ (2010)

Contemporary memory on German colonialism in Togo

http://www.andanafilms.com/catalogueFiche.php?idFiche=1246&rub=Court-m%C3%A9trage%20documentaire

Towards Memory FilmMusicTheatre PerformancePhotographyVideoLiterature

15th to 25th of February 2017

Namibia, Germany / Berlinale FORUM Expanded, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany

Katrin Winkler (1983), Germany, studied photography, as a filmmaker she focuses on the interconnection of history and present

Shared history of Germany and Namibia https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/Details/Index/2995481


36

This is a photo caption and image credit.

NASHILONGWESHIPWE MUSHAANDJA

is a performer, educator and writer with practice and

research interests in the role of embodied and spatial

archives in movement formation. His recent project

‘Odalate Naiteke opo Kegonga kuye Oshigongoti’ at the

University of Hamburg, Germany is mapping African queer

archives to suggest social justice and healing. Mushaandja

is also a PhD artist at the Centre for Theatre, Dance and

Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town,

researching resistance culture in Katutura.

35

GENERAL OVERVIEWThis project is a collection, documentation and brief critical reflection of over 40 cultural productions that have been created to speak to multiple themes, particularly referencing the heritage of German colonialism in Namibia. It is rather interesting to observe the trends, entanglements and patterns in these productions from themes to forms of cultural expressions. The cultural productions referenced in this study spread widely and beyond the forms of literature, music, theatre, dance, performance, film-making and visual art. This work that is engaging in multiple ways on the discourse of (post) colonialism and genocide memory emerges from both urban and rural contexts of Namibia. The art and cultural work is generally historicising and memorialising the brutal events, experiences and effects of German colonialism and genocide. It speaks to a variety of issues such as rape, extermination order, forced labour and the theft of land that were main instruments of German colonialism. Some of it also refers to the entanglements of Apartheid and present-day culture. Some work takes activist approaches of suggesting healing and calling for reparations, repatriation, restitution and restorative justice. Colonial discourse and histories are always gendered. In Namibia, like in many parts of the world, a lot of discourse on colonialism is written from racist, patriarchal and heteronormative perspectives. I recognise these issues as my research approach relied on multiple lived experiences and documentary sources which I critique through a decolonial school of thought.

This research only references artwork and cultural productions that look at the historic and contemporary relationship between Namibia and Germany, particularly colonialism and the effects thereof. There was an opportunity to include other local artwork that references Apartheid and post-Apartheid situations but due to the limited time and the high volume of selected artwork, I could only engage with these focused selected works. This particular project was restricted to documentation and discourse

of cultural narratives on colonisation, leaving out other work that lean towards themes of ownership, self-determination, futurism, identity and movement formation, which are not necessarily and directly referencing German colonialism. These productions can be found in intersecting art forms at events such as the newly-established Nama Festival, as well as other traditional and queer-feminist cultural makings. This research is not broad enough to give us a clear understanding of how local culture is being used to understand the context at hand. This is to say that local culture is more plural and complex than colonisation. It can be problematic to research culture in the linear order of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial because it limits us to frame of colonialism1. This cross-national research project needs to see itself beyond the documentation of this kind of work and commit itself to genuine decolonial responsibility of holistic transformation. It is not enough to document and enable discourse because it still largely remains accessible to privileged groups instead of reaching grassroots communities.

This study is not done and surely requires extensive time and resources. It is process-based because new data keeps unearthing and new productions are on the rise, given the increased public attention around the 1904-1908 genocide conversation. This documentation and analytical work must continue and be made more accessible to local communities with interests in this subject matter.

CHALLENGESThere are several challenges that researchers often encounter when it comes to doing documentation work. One common challenge is that archives are often full of gaps. These are gaps of information and knowledge about the objects being 1 In book Chapter ‘Gathering Scattered Archives’ Margie Orford (2018) states that the terms pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial are not always appropriate and convenient for studying history, especially from feminist perspectives. She argues that these neatly packed terms do not only put colonialism at the center but also ignores other continuities that have existed before. This Chapter is part of ‘Writing Namibia: Literature in Transition’ edited by Helen Vale and Sarala Krishnamurthy, UNAM Press.

DOCUMENTING AND REPRESENTING LEGACIES OF VIOLENCE: (DE)COLONIALITY?

BY NASHILONGWESHIPWE MUSHAANDJA

The Mourning

© Vilho Nuumbala


3837

dealt with. I found this challenge to be a fundamental part of this study. One reason for this is that very little research has been done on rigorous archiving and documenting cultural productions in Namibia. In fact, this study is one of the few detailed projects that I have encountered, interested in rigorously capturing, collating and analysing information regarding cultural productions in Namibia.

Due to the limited time and accessibility to important information, I relied a lot on conversations with local cultural workers and scholars, libraries, the Internet, and my own experience for information on the subject matter at hand. I found these sources very useful although this research experience would have been made more fruitful if it could rigorously engage with all the artists, audiences, discourses and work on a deeper level. The biggest gaps were often around the figures and details on the audiences that have engaged with these artworks. It is even challenging to provide estimates of how many people have experienced and engaged with these works because some venues and production organisers do not keep strict accounts of these figures and if they do, these figures are constantly changing and inaccessible.

I have made it a point to include grassroots and traditional community arts practices that are not necessarily considered part of the mainstream and central contemporary art world. These sacred rituals are such as Otjiserandu of the Ovaherero people and the /Khowesen Heroes Day Festival2 in Gibeon. These rituals are context-specific and it is culturally inappropriate to reproduce them in spaces of contemporary art. There is, however, an opportunity to engage the makers of these rituals through reflective talks or storytelling, should this project wish to. These community-based performances are also characterized by their material and spiritual aspects of memorialising and historicising early resistance against colonial violence. The performativity of war histories can also be traced in their costumes, food, language,

2 Memory Biwa’s (2012) extensive PhD research Weaving the past with threads of memory: narratives and commemorations of the colonial war in Southern Namibia. gives insight into the community performances of war memorial rituals performed in Southern Namibia and Northern Cape, South Africa. The /Khowesen Heroes Day Festival of 2004 is one of these events. http://etd.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/11394/2991

historic sites and expressive work such as Omitandu 3.

Omitandu is praise poetry that memorialise and historicise certain sites and figures in history. The OvaHerero and Nama communities have storytellers, musicians, scholars and oral historians who can assist with how to negotiate the engagement and artistic imagination of aspects of these rituals between intersecting ‘contemporary art spaces’. I also believe that more research and documentation can be invested in tracing and capturing these productions in the regions, as they seem to be forgotten in dominant arts scholarship– given the dominance and centralisation of urban and industrialised productions.

Due to time and geographic constraints, I particularly found it challenging to access more artists from the regions that have historically produced work in these regards. Urban-based work has a larger and dominant presence on the Internet and libraries making it more accessible compared to work that is found in rural contexts. Perhaps this is because art is indigenously part of the everyday functions of the people and that it is not separately found in museums, theatres or archives. Again, this intervention would go further if there was more time during the research process.

An interesting observation is that a very small percentage of the Namibian artists referenced in this study are trained at local formal art and cultural institutions. Most of them studied at foreign institutions, are self-taught or educated by their communities. The rest are originally from or based in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Germany. This is interesting, because it reveals the restrictions of Namibia’s education system and its shortcomings in critically dealing with colonial heritage and the post-colonial condition. It is not new to say that very little is taught about German colonialism and the genocide on all levels of our education. This reflects deeply in the cultural production as evidently presented in this research. This therefore calls for a rigorous engagement with local institutions of learning and culture including government. This significantly reflects

3 Larissa Förster. (2005). Land and landscape in Herero oral culture: Cultural and social aspects of the land question in Namibia. Published by the National Institute for Democracy. Also see: Kavari, Jekura U. (2002). The form and meaning of Otjiherero praises. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Office of the Surveyor General. 1994. Republic of Namibia: Map. Windhoek: Office of the Surveyor General.

both German and Namibian governments’ failure in post-colonial responsibility of social justice. This included monopolising the anti-Apartheid struggle over the anti-German colonialism. It will be very useful for this project to connect and network with stakeholders in local educational spaces by making this data available in order to encourage more critical engagement and artistic response to the subject of (German) colonialism and post-colonialism at large.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS There is something to be said about problematic productions or artwork with parts that are troubling and ethically questionable. The data provides evidence on how productions such as Exhibit B has been previously criticised and protested for its controversial and troubling representations. Arts and culture like other disciplines of representation can run the risk of perpetuating harmful ideas – intentionally or unintentionally. Critical theory and post-colonial thinking has offered us a variety of vocabulary to help us unpack all kinds of cultural and academic problems. In the case of Exhibit B, which is very relevant to the subject of German colonialism in Namibia, there are enough critical reviews that will inform curators how to go about engaging with this kind of work, should they choose to. One of the main questions that has been asked about this work that re-enacts human zoos is, “Is this a racist cultural production?” In my view, it is a racist piece of work because of how it depicts black bodies and its hierarchal structure of production. It is therefore a violent piece of work. A question that arises from this thought is therefore, what the ethical implications of promoting, re-staging or re-producing this particular production are. This is an important question that cannot be overlooked should this project choose to engage with this particular production.

Given that the subject of (post)colonialism has violence and trauma at its core, we have to be honest about cultural productions and their potential of re-traumatising both makers and consumers. While this is a complicated and contested issue, we must question the meanings and intentions of healing, reconciliation, justice and freedom if at all such productions wish to make valuable contributions of this nature. Productions such as Dead River employ and make use of derogatory words such as the ‘K word’. Again, this is an ethical implication. While this might not seem problematic to the filmmakers or other audiences, there is still something to be said about reproducing images and moments of trauma. For some of us, it is incredibly triggering and traumatising to re-encounter these images and moments. The work of reconciliation, remembrance and healing require safety and sensitivity especially for the communities that inherited the

pain and long-lasting trauma of colonial violence.

Creativity and technology offers makers infinite, intuitive and imaginative approaches of dealing with intergenerational trauma and violence. Today, more than ever before, cultural workers and scholars are equally confronted with this idea of finding new, inclusive and creative approaches of storytelling that are not necessarily about realist re-enactment, shock or ‘showing as it is/was’. In the dance production The Mourning, archival images of the genocide are projected in the background. While many believe it is important for the nation to see such images, I would once again reiterate that artists can do better than merely showing such images.

Especially when work is themed around ideas of mourning and memorial rituals, how can revisiting those gruesome images really enable healing? And if they choose to represent these troubling representations, shouldn’t they take us through the process of dealing with the future since mourning has to do with moving into the future? This particular work is not suggestive, it merely re-enacts and narrates a particular history. These are all questions that I have raised with the producer of the work and I feel should be raised should this project engage with this production.

Less than 35 percent of the artists covered in this study are women. This is not new since arts and culture in Namibia is dominated by men and patriarchal narratives. This is an obvious limitation in the sense that women’s narratives continue to be erased and overlooked because of patriarchal dominance. This is also not to say that feminist cultural narratives have not been active, they have been hard to access given the erasure and under-representation. What is also missing are queer narratives and points of view which are also generally erased from both colonial and nationalist archives. It is less than one percent of the data that references queer narratives in relation to German colonialism. The feminist and queer perspectives in this regard are important because they offer alternative and valuable insights, especially in how to respond to the legacy of colonialism in Africa.

All of these ethical implications raise a fundamental question for artists and cultural workers dealing with issues of (post)colonialism: What are the decolonial responsibilities of artists today? As stated in the early parts of this paper, majority of the work produced is more concerned with the past and ‘divorced’, and not directly dealing with the present and future.

The work by young Namibian artists is pointing to fresh, futuristic and innovative ways of looking this difficult subject at hand.

“ARTS AND CULTURE LIKE OTHER DISCIPLINES OF REPRESENTATION CAN RUN THE RISK OF PERPETUATING HARMFUL IDEAS – INTENTIONALLY OR UNINTENTIONALLY. ”

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesDocumenting and Representing Legacies of Violence: (De)Coloniality?

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I can reference the promising collages and paintings by Vitjitua Ndjiharine; the performance and photographic work Ma Ndili by Nelago Shilongoh and Shomwatala Shivute; Isabel Katjavivi’s installation They tried to bury us; Veronique Mensah’s site-specific theatre work in the making Remember me Namibia; Keith Vries’ upcoming poetry anthology dedicated to the 1904-1908 genocide Innudated. All of these are very new and important because they take the discourse to complicated and intersecting points of view, in thinking of the subject at hand as part of the larger issues of both cultural invasion and resistance in contemporary Namibia. This is an important point to note as Namibian art which has been depoliticised after independence, hardly deals with decoloniality, as it is often concerned with nationalising, traditionalising, memorialising and historicising.

This could be a generalisation from my side and I am very aware of how flawed this observation might be. What I am trying to get at is the discourse of decolonisation in art and culture. The notion of decoloniality in Namibia is generally under question marks as the data suggests. In my view, this is what future artistic productions need to invest in, the ideas of unpacking, (de)constructing and dismantling these fragmented and contested legacies of colonialism, while suggesting sustainable, inclusive and viable futures.

RECOMMENDATIONS1. This research project must be sustainable and continue

mapping these works as they continue to be produced. This documentation offers a lot for stakeholders in cultural and scholarly work; it fills a gap in knowledge. The study as a whole makes a valuable contribution to the area of documenting cultural productions in general, which is underexplored, especially in Namibia.

2. The research findings must be made accessible to the artists, educators and cultural leaders (including corporates, traditional authorities, and governments) who are related and not related to the project. This work is useful for academic spaces as well as inspiring other artists to create work around and beyond colonialism as well as post-colonialism. This includes audiences and communities that do not have access to centralised ‘contemporary art spaces’, nationally and internationally.

3. The research must encourage and enhance the mapping and tracing of cultural narratives of women, queer people and differently abled people. As highlighted in this research, these narratives are often undermined and excluded. This

also includes enhancing research in the regions, especially those of the affected communities. The research project has an ethical and decolonial responsibility of enabling future artistic encounters to enhance black, feminist, youth, rural, queer and anti-ableist perspectives in the discourse of German colonialism and coloniality. Analytical mapping is not enough to make an all-round meaningful contribution to cultural exchange, given Germany’s oppressive role in the history referenced here. By allowing the research to look beyond what has been done and accessed in terms of this documentation, it opens itself up to productions that are between the margins and beyond conventional borders.

4. The curatorial processes must facilitate and broaden collaboration and critical engagement as it shows these works. The recommendations around decoloniality4 are urgent and must therefore be considered alongside the exhibiting of these artworks. Moreover, it is important to note that it will be utterly limiting for the future of this project to dwell on this subject without actively responding to the needs in the broader context.

4 Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decolonility by Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2016). https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/58031476/outline-of-ten-theses-on-coloniali-ty-and-decoloniality/3

“GIVEN THAT THE SUBJECT OF (POST)COLONIALISM HAS VIOLENCE AND TRAUMA AT ITS CORE, WE HAVE TO BE HONEST ABOUT CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS AND THEIR POTENTIAL OF RE-TRAUMATISING BOTH MAKERS AND CONSUMERS.”

The Mourning

© Vilho Nuumbala


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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, NAMIBIA



Mama Namibia Novel 2013 Namibia / United States Mari Serebov Genocide and colonial histories, gender, Invasion, collective memory,

https://books.google.com.na/books/about/Mama_Namibia.html?id=kZzx5Dky0e8C&redir_esc=y

Perspectives Documentary film screening Windhoek / Goethe-Institut and John Muafangejo Art Gallery

Free Your Mind Comedy Colonial histories, contemporary German-Namibian relations, collective memory culture, reparations and restorative justice

The Mourning Dance theatre, site specific work Alte Feste Museum, Windhoek Damai Dance Ensemble at College of the ArtsChoreographer: Trixie Munyama (1978), Namibian, dancer and educator.

Colonial histories, Invasion, collective memory, healing and cleansing

https://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13181:fin-de-mission-das-kainkollektiv-und-das-ensemble-othni-loten-am-ringlokschuppen-muelheim-die-kolonialgeschichte-kameruns-aus&catid=38:die-nachtkritik-k&Itemid=40

They tried to bury us Installation 2018 Gallery of NamibiaJohn Muafangejo Art Centre

Isabel Katjavivi Namibian, visual artist. University of Namibia graduate

Genocide and colonial histories, body politics, Invasion, collective memory

https://99fm.com.na/revealing-healing-past/

The Skulls of My People

Film screening Namibia, South Africa Vincent Moloi (….) South African, film maker and screen writer

Repatriation, colonial histories, Invasion, collective memory, reparations, decoloniality

http://genocide-namibia.net/2017/09/skulls-of-my-people-deutschlandweite-auffuehrungen-im-oktober-2017/

Rider without a Horse Drama film 2008 Namibia Tim Hebschule Colonial memory and post colonialism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orC-5Du9jDk

Ancestral CD rack Mixed media installation 2011 Namibia Erik Schnack Colonial memory

Namibia: The Forgotten Genocide

Documentary film 2012 Namibia Anne Poiret, Production by Bo Travail!

Colonial memory

Hamakari Visual art - oil on canvas 2013 Namibia Nicky Marais Colonial memory

Waiting to Receive, Visual art-cardboard print on paper 2013 Namibia Ndasuunje ‘Papa’ Shikongeni Colonial memory http://www.nagn.org.na/index.php/component/k2/item/74-artwork-of-the-month

Indifference Triptych video installation 2014 Namibia Nicola Brandt Colonial memory and landscapes

Waterberg to Waterberg – in the Footsteps of Samuel Maharero

Documentary film 2014 Namibia Andrew Botelle Colonial memory https://vimeo.com/125135708


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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, NAMIBIA, CONTINUED



Dead River Drama film 2014 Namibia Tim Hübschle and Collective Production

Colonial entanglements

Everyday People Visual art mixed media 2014 Namibia / Zimbabwe Chikonzero Chazunguza Colonial memory

1904 Music track 2015 Namibia Big Ben Colonial memory

Portrait of Hendrik Witbooi

Visual art, acrylic 2015 Namibia Inatu Indongo Colonial memory

The Unseen Docu-drama film 2016 Namibia Perivi Katjavivi Intergenerational trauma https://vimeo.com/125135708

Okakambe Visual art 2016 Namibia Lok Kandjengo Colonial memory

The Scattering Literature, novel 2016 Botswana Lauri Kubuitsile Colobanal tetory

Vitjitua's collection Mixed media 2017 Namibia / United States Vitjitua Ndjiharine Colonial memory

1904 Mixed-media (visual arts) 2017 Namibia Ismael Tjijenda Colonial memory

The Lie of The Land Literature (novel) 2017 Namibia Jaspar David Utley (Unam Press)

Colonial memory / post-colonialism

Prince Kamaazengi Marenga poetry collection (A Trail of Bones (an adieu to 1904) and Land)

Literature poetry 2017 Namibia Prince Kamaazengi Marenga Colonial memory http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/the-lie-of-the-land

Ma Ndili Performance art 2018 Namibia Nelago Shilongoh Colonial memory


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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, NAMIBIA, CONTINUED



US NOW Mixed media visual arts 2018 Namibia Hildegard Titus Post-colonialism

Under The Hanging Tree

Film 2018 Namibia Perivi Katjavivi Colonial memory

Remember me Namibia

Theatre and performance (site-specific)

2018 Namibia Veronique Mensah Colonial memory

Echoes: where do we speak from?

Visual and performing arts 2018 Namibia / Germany Vitjitua Ndjiharine, Nicola Brandt and Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja

Colonial memory


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CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS WITH REFERENCE TO COLONIAL HISTORY

RWANDA: A PAST ALMOST FORGOTTEN IN THE ARTS

BY NGANGARE ERIC

NGANGARE ERIC also known as 1Key is a multi-lingual

hip-hop poet, spoken word artist, blogger, performer and

actor from Rwanda. Between November 2014 and February

2015, 1Key created his debut album

Entre 2 (“Between Two”) a reflective of complex

contradictions and dichotomies in his own life, in which he

addresses subjects related to identity in 11 carefully crafted

tracks. He is very vocal on social media about societal

issues where he fearlessly shares his ideas and opinions to

spark conversations that bring about positive change.

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OVERVIEWRwanda is two degrees south of the equator, at the heart of Africa, and shares borders with Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda is hardly noticeable on the world map but its history is too important to be ignored. The history of Rwanda has been preserved for centuries through oral poetry.

Rwanda was ruled by an organised monarch before and at the time of the German colonial period (1884 - 1916). Together with Burundi and Tanganyika (Former Tanzania mainland) Rwanda was administrated as one colony known as German East-Africa with its office in Tanzania.

After the First World War, Germany weakened and Rwanda became mandated by Belgium until it gained its independence in 1962. It was the end of the long rule of Tutsi monarch and the beginning of The First Republic headed by the Hutu elite. This regime seized property of the previous rulers and forced a number of Tutsis to exile. Some were transported in trucks to Zaire (today’s Democratic Republic of Congo), Burundi, and Tanzania, while many walked to Uganda. The exiled Tutsi never ceased to claim their right to return to their country but they were denied entry and were rejected as aliens.

In 1973, a coup was organized and a new regime, still Hutu, ruled the country. In 1990, generations of the exiled Rwandans created a coalition to return to Rwanda with armed forces. In retaliation, the government resorted to violence by conducting systematic massacres of local remaining Tutsis. This escalated into the genocide of 1994.

Twenty-four years later, Rwanda’s identity is shaped by these events. Testimonials, researches, plays and commemoration music

gravitate towards the genocide. Pre-colonial music - especially drumming and dances -aim to restore the connection between Rwanda’s present and its past. The current government’s focus lies on reconstruction and fosters unity through cultural events and activities. Traditional drumming and dancing is a nation-wide enterprise, practised even in schools.

Rwanda’s History and therefore its contemporary society has taken, since the post-colonial period, a very different path from most of other states on the continent, which is key when approaching how colonialism is portrayed through cultural productions.

There is currently almost nothing that shows traces of German colonial powers in Rwanda today. In fact many people do not even know Germany colonised Rwanda. Today’s only physical reminders of German colonial past is the Kandt-Haus museum, on the former compound of the German resident Richard Kandt. After the genocide, the remaining building was transformed into the Natural History Museum. Only last year, it was converted into a History museum with a permanent exhibition about the German colonial past. This small museum is the only visible interaction with the German colonial past through pictures, artefacts and its physical location.

When it comes to cultural productions, the sector has been dominated by returnees who grew up (and sometimes trained) outside Rwanda, mainly in Belgium and France, keeping up the French-speaking link. To note, Rwanda is English-speaking since 2008. All Rwandans speak Kinyarwanda as mother tongue. Nevertheless, artist productions are rarely created in this language. “Home” is a predominant subject in films, music and literature. Productions mostly start outside of the country, Rwanda becomes a location part of ongoing productions. 1Key

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Performances generally happen in Kigali, designated for the small society’s elite and arts consumers.

Local culture producers suffer mostly from lack of physical space to create and perform and lack of funding. When cultural events happen, they are produced inside hotels, which becomes very costly for both the producers and the public. Eventually there are less cultural productions taking place.

Rwanda’s colonial past is evoked at most during the commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi between April and July. “Abazungu batubibyemo amacakubiri turamarana” which translates as “White people sowed division in our hearts, and we ended up exterminating each other” is a concept that is repeated when referring to the root cause of the 1994 genocide.

It is hard to gather data related to cultural productions in Rwanda due to a lack of media coverage. Cultural production houses are usually small companies run by a small number of staff. When the main actor travels, it’s hard to get information. In a number of cases when artists travel to Europe or America, they stay there in search for greener pastures.

Data collection on this project has been through personal connections with artists and friendly recommendations.

Here are five cultural productions that deal with colonial past as main topic:

Rwanda94 (Performance, Theatre, book and documentary) Rwanda94 was produced by Groupov (a Belgian production company) as a play, a documentary and text. Rwanda94 is a compilation of genocide survivals’ testimonials embodied by actors with Rwandan diaspora, mainly. The topic is centered on the root of the genocide, identity and dignity.

Mboka (Play/Musical) Mboka is Rwanda’s first musical which follows the story of a book store specialised in the history of the black people that is threatened to close in order to give the space to a hair salon. It’s an inter-generational conflict that puts in perspective the question of the past versus the future. It also examines from individual and collective memories the effects of colonialism and what independence means. At the same time, protagonists have to choose whether to cling to the past or move with capitalism

and its culture.

Bloody Niggers(Performance)Bloody Niggers was created, written in French and directed by Dorcy Rugamba (Rwandan poet, playwright and producer), and Younouss Diallo. It is about History; but not just any history. It’s the History that is not told in classrooms. The History of the vanquished, the massacred, the victims. Even those missing. The history of those who are no longer present to testify. On an open stage, three actors get involved in the political arena just the same way two people get into a physical fight - by taking position, by scanning the opponent and by hitting them in a ongoing quarrel over the role of colonization.

Expericment(Performance and documentary)Between March and October 2016, Rwandan poet Eric 1key decided to explore various formats and platforms of music and poetry performance around Kigali, where many artists were finding it hard to thrive due to the abolishment of public spaces. The process of producing this series of performances dubbed The Expericment was captured on camera and released as a documentary after 12 months of close following.One event of the series was dedicated to storytelling in which the artists shared his views about current politics, colonisation and untold history.

The Future Is Now (Performance)The project was initiated by Yule Burlefinger, a German poet, and brought about the collaboration of about 15 young Rwandans and a couple of Kenyan performers to discuss through a workshop the effects of colonisation and correlation to current labels black people carry, even in Africa. From the name Afrofuturism, the objective of the workshop was to interest the Rwandan youth in writing their own future through poetry.

“PHYSICAL EVIDENCES OF THE COLONIAL PAST WERE DESTROYED DURING THE GENOCIDE. TODAY’S ONLY REMAIN OF THE GERMAN COLONIAL PAST IS THE KANDT-HAUS MUSEUM, ON THE FORMER COMPOUND OF THE GERMAN RESIDENT RICHARD KANDT.”

Based on the relevance and through how much focus the topic of colonialism is dealt with, the following works did not make it to the top five list but still deserve a bit of our attention.

CNLG Café Littéraires For the last two years the Centre National de Lute Contre le Génocide has been organizing annual book cafés and debates that focus on Rwanda’s history of the genocide. Attended by at least a thousand people, mostly youth, historians, researchers, scholars, and authors indulge in discussions about their literary works that have mentions of colonial heritage of division.

Antoine Mugesera in the presentation of his book reminded Les conditions de vie des Tutsi au Rwanda de 1959 à 1990 stressed “The interests of the Belgian colonist were fundamentally different from those of the Rwandan nation, […] the “Divide and Rule” of Jean Paul Harroy, then colonial Governor (1955-1962) and Logiest (Special military Resident 1959 to 1962) supported by the Catholic clergy, the White Fathers of Africa, reached the unprecedented abyss in the annals of the world.”

Seconded by Dr. Jean Paul Kimonyo, author of Rwanda, un génocide populaire and Rwanda demain, une longue marche vers la transformation, both books mention Rwanda’s colonial past because one cannot write about the history of the genocide in Rwanda without tackling its roots: colonial division.

This year, CP Dr. Daniel Nyamwasa was hosted as a panellist to present his book Le mal Rwandais, de la racine au paroxysme du

Génocide des Tutsi which has references to colonial past.

Antoine Mugesera also presented in 2017, in a self-funded small launch of his anthology called Rwanda 1896-1959: Destruction d’une nation in which he talks about the dismantling of Rwanda from the time of the Berlin partitioning of Africa.

Sky Like Sky Although there is no explicit mention of Rwanda’s colonial past, using movement, dance, poetry, puppets, personal testimony, and wits, performers explore questions of nations, bodies and borders, of what it means to be local in this messy, global world. Sky like sky pokes fun at difference, even as we search for the questions that bring us back to the human.

The play analyses traumatic experience of crossing borders, borders that were imposed by colonizers.

Elizabeth Spacman, American poet and playwright, who co-wrote on Sky Like Sky had explored the notion of borders in another contemporary performance in Rwanda that combined dance, poetry and theatre. The play is Frontières. The question of borders is tackled through various angles (religion, social classes, race…). Here she performs an excerpt for Journal.

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesCultural Productions with reference to Colonial History Rwanda: A Past Almost Forgotten in the Arts

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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, RWANDA



Bloody Niggers Theatre performance Belgium / Belgium, France, Germany, Martinique, Mali, Senegal

Dorcy Rugamba, born in 1969, is an actor, playwright and director from Rwanda.Younouss Diallo, (1968 - 2014) was an actor and director from Senegal. Groupov

French colonial history, German colonial history, Spanish colonial history, English colonial history, Portuguese colonial history, Crusades, History of the World, World War I, World War II, Dehumanization, Genocide, Mass Massacres, Crimes Against Humanity, Slavery, Injustice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qErepasxPXQ

Expericment Documentary film 8 of February 2016 Kigali, Rwanda Isumbabyose Ismael, Ngangare Eric

Identity, universality, colonization, decolonization, neo-colonialism, black history, colorism, democracy, freedom, freedom of speech, borders, power, leadership

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SubZxCPNOK4&t=248s

Mboka MusicTheatre performance

11th and 12th August 2016

Kigali, Rwanda Ishyo Arts Centre Independence, in-dependence, colonization, decolonization, cultural appropriation, diaspora movement, democracy, pan-africanism, quest for roots, home, exile, capitalism, mixed races, anti-colonialism, social revolution, archives, past, present, future

Mboka full https://vimeo.com/172900091

Rwanda 94 TheatreDocumentary filmBook

April 2014 Belgium / Kigali, Rwanda Dorcy Rugamba, born in 1969, is a Rwandan actor, playwright and director.Jacques Delcuvellerie, Belgian playwright and director.

Turquoise, role of Catholic church in the genocide, French implication in the genocide, creation of “races” by Belgian colonial powers, Hutu, Tusti

Full film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO06-qa1ffc

About Rwanda94 http://groupov.be/index.php/spectacles/show/id/9

The Future Is Now WorkshopPerformance

25th May 2018 Kigali Yule Burlefinger, 1993 Rwanda, young artist from Germany: poetry, writing, painting and photography.

Eric 1Key, 1981, multi-lingual hip-hop poet, spoken word artist, blogger, actor

Box of Beatz KE, mixture of funk, hip hop, jazz and classical

Angel Mutoni, 1994, Poet/Rapper/Singer-Songwriter, based in Kigali, Rwanda, genre: mix of Poetic Afro-HipHop/Soul/RnB/Pop

Afrofuturism, being African, being black, colonization, decolonization, gender, pride, future, revolution, stereotypes, inferiority complex

https://www.goethe.de/ins/rw/en/kul/sup/oca.html https://www.gofundme.com/mrfm9-the-future-is-now

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesCultural Productions with reference to Colonial History Rwanda: A Past Almost Forgotten in the Arts

INTRODUCTIONTanzania is rich when it comes to art and artistic productions. Since its inception arts have played a greater role in shaping communities before colonialism, during and in the post-independence period. In the post-neoliberal era, art and artistic productions can be divided into two main categories: Artistic activities happening in the urban areas and those rural and peri-urban settings. Depending on the nature of the creativity, the audience also is divided accordingly. While it might be seen as there are not many theatre activities going on in urban areas, for example, a lot of theatrical performances are taking place in the rural and peri-urban ones. Moreover, in the recent years many theatrical performances have been occurring in many parts of the country. A good example is the mushrooming of traditional music festivals, including the Cigogo Music Festival in Chamwino, Dodoma, an event for the past ten years; the up-and-coming Tulia Traditional Dance Festival happening for the past three years in Tukuyu, Mbeya; as well as the Bagamoyo Art Festival, which has taken place for nearly four decades in Bagamoyo, Pwani.

These artistic festivals bring together both music, dance and at some point visual arts represented through musical instruments, costumes, makeup and props. While this is happening in the rural and peri-urban areas, urban centres enjoy big musical festivals. These include the famous Fiesta Music Festival which goes across the country for almost two decades, Sauti za Busara Music Festival which has been happening in Zanzibar for the past decade and the Msama Gospel Music Festival, to mention a few. In cinema, there have been ongoing festivals, such as the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) and the newly created Sinema Zetu International Film Festival (SZIFF), which started in 2018.

One can argue that in Tanzania, artistic productions appear to focus on both the traditional and new digital art forms. Themes which cut across such productions are mainly those that the market is interested in. For example, almost 70 percent of the

films produced in Tanzania focus on love themes. Most of the music – and even traditional dances – captures love, religion (mostly Christianity and few in Islam) and political themes. The type of art produced in Tanzania recently is more audience and market-driven than commissioned or donor-initiated events. Few artistic performances have remained for the elite. Such events are mostly happening in the higher learning institutions, particularly universities and in the urban-created theatre and cinema houses. Generally, a big number of art related audience resides in the rural and peri-urban areas and come from the middle and lower classes.

DECOLONIALITYIssues related to colonialism have been discussed using various theories including post-colonial, decolonisation and post-modernity amongst others. In order to capture the evolving issues surrounding colonisation it is important to not only focus what happened after or during but also what was there before colonialism. Decoloniality is one of the theories used to focus on issues related to colonialism from the colonised perspective. Even though the concept of decoloniality evolved and is used more when discussing issues from ‘South’ America, the nature and impact of colonialism is more or less the same, according to Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2011, pp. 1-2)

Decolonial thinking has existed since the very inception of modern forms of colonization – that is, since at least the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries –, and, to that extent, a certain decolonial turn has existed as well, but the more massive and possibly more profound shift away from modernization towards decoloniality as an unfinished project took place in the twentieth century and is still unfolding now.

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GERMAN COLONIAL HERITAGE IN TANZANIA:

A SURVEY ON ARTISTIC PRODUCTIONS

BY VICENSIA SHULE

VICENSIA SHULE is a filmmaker, creative artist and a

designer with knowledge in strategic communication,

crowd pulling and branding. She has bachelor and

master degrees in theatre and film respectively form the

University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and PhD in theatre

studies from Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz,

Germany. Vicensia has been lecturing at the University of

Dar es Salaam since 2005 in theatre and film. Apart from

lecturing, she works as a consultant in the areas of art

policy, culture and communication.

Maji Maji Flava

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“ACTORS HAD POWER TO RESTRUCTURE AND DELETE SCENES ACCORDING TO THE NATURE OF THE AUDIENCE, WHILE IN FILM IF THIS HAD TO BE DONE RE-EDITING WOULD BE REQUIRED. THEREFORE, BASICALLY BOTH STORIES WERE CREATED FROM THE OPPRESSED PERSPECTIVE.”

There is a direct link between the cultural productions produced in the colonised countries and colonialism itself. According to Elke Zobl and Elisabeth Klaus (2012 p.1), cultural production can be defined as “an intervention in the process of producing meaning”. This definition goes beyond, arguing that discussing cultural production is similar to debating “doing culture”. In this process it becomes quite important to address questions such as, “Where and when did a cultural artefact originate? Which legal, economic and political forces govern and restrict it? How does it express the existing power relations in society? Why was it produced and by whom? Who consumes and appropriates it, and for what reason?” It is from this framework that it becomes important to discuss cultural productions but not in isolation with nature of the events, epoch and rationale for the productions.

GENRES AND PRODUCTION PROCESSESThere are specific artistic works focusing on German colonialism in Tanzania, but it is not a topic of wider discussion. Only eight cultural productions were identified and mapped in the process. The mapped cultural productions came from various genres, including films like The Skull of Mangi Meli (2018-19), Skull X (2016), and Mkwawa (2011); theatre performances Maji Maji Flava (2016), MV Liemba (2015) and Nkhomanile (2006); in photography via Now and Then (2014,) and architecture with Global City – Local Identity? (2011).

Tanzania – as in other East African countries – reported fewer artistic productions compared to Namibia and Cameroon. There are many reasons, one being the generation of majority of the Tanzanians have read about German colonialism in their country but hardly experienced it. Stories revolving around German colonialism are documented in most of the primary, secondary and higher learning institutions’ curricula. Two, after the WWI Tanganyika was colonized by the British and Rwanda and Burundi by Belgians. The British stayed in Tanganyika for over

four decades compared to three decades Germans had.

The colonial legacies between the two were different, with British ‘indirect rule’ seen as better compared to German rule, which was considered as ‘direct and brutal’. Such discussion always revolves around romanticising British colonial rule and resentment over German occupation. It should be noted that, many colonised countries have kept relations with their last colonisers and identified the shared history, compared to the former colonialists for many reasons; economic and political being key factors. The links between the colonised and the colonisers have been challenged over time. Having few mapped cultural productions in Tanzania, enabled a deep analysis of the collected data. Perhaps this could not be easy if the mapped productions were many in numbers.

The Skull of Mangi Meli is a project examining Tanzania’s colonial past under German rule through the events of one leader in Old Moshi, Kilimanjaro region called Meli. The Skull of Mangi Meli comprises a short-animated film and exhibition installation telling the story of this valiant freedom fighter using archival sources and oral historical accounts from the Old Moshi community and the Tanzanian Diaspora. Different from other cultural productions which have been produced, The Skull of Mangi Meli Exhibition will be shown in Berlin, Germany (November 2018 to January 2019), Dar es Salaam (February/March 2019) and Old Moshi, Tanzania (from March 2019) where the exhibition will remain.

Skull X is a post-colonial lecture performance narrating a story which occurred on the 2nd of March in 1900, whereby Mangi Meli was arrested. He was hanged from a Mgunga tree (Acacia tortilis/Vachellia tortilis), behind the Germany military station. The tree is still there today. The Germans chopped off his head and shipped it to Germany, the skull never being returned. It is a story which

narrates a trauma many Africans had to endure, whereby their relatives’ skulls are laying in Euro-American museums.

The film story Mkwawa revolves around the notable African leader during colonial times in Tanganyika, known as Mtwa Mkwawa. Mkwawa was a leader of the ethnic group known as Hehe. Mkwawa fought several battles with Germans. In one of the major attacks, Germany lost its commissioner, Emil von Zelewski. After a series of German-instigated fights, Mkwawa ‘shot himself’ rather than being captured, tortured and killed by them. The film Mkwawa was done to reflect such story based on research.

Maji Maji Flava is the story of Africans’ revolts against Germany occupation in the former Tanganyika. The war lasted two years, from 1905 to 1907. It is reported that in Maji Maji is where Africans managed to defeat Germans. Germany lost most of it soldiers, and after two years of war many Africans started to die of hunger as they could not produce food while involved in the war. Maji Maji Flava created an imaginative and generative artistic space in which language slipped between German, Swahili and English, abstract theatre clashes with driving rhythms, magic confounds science, and contemporary dance co-existed with satire.

MV Liemba is a documentary theatre production narrating a story of over 100 years, which still operates under the name MV Lihemba, between Tanzania and Zambia. In 1913 the Lower Saxony Ship builder Meyer-Werft obtained a contract to build a ship to be used in Lake Tanganyika. Single units of the ship were transported in 5,000 boxes from Germany to Kigoma. A 100 years after the odyssey of the ship a team of artists from Germany and Tanzania looked for its wreckage. The performance brought out what remained from the colonial era including the ship, the stations and prison. By linking what is happening in Kigoma currently, the performance questioned people about their

knowledge on German colonialism. From the research findings a documentary theatre production was developed about the German Colonial occupation in East Africa.

The production Nkhomanile has been inspired by the historical Nkhomanile and some aspects of her life have been depicted

– albeit with artistic license. One of the areas where Maji Maji wars were fought was in the current Ruvuma region around Songea area. The Maji was brought to the area through Nduna Nkhomanile, who was the only woman Nduna (sub-chief) and able to convince the other chiefs to accept the ‘Maji’ and use it as a weapon against the Germans. Nkhomanile was the only female leader and citizen among the 67 who were brutally hanged by Germans on 27th February, 1906. The research was done as part of the Maji Maji centenary, revealing the magnificent role Nkhomanile played.

Now and Then explored the photography of Walter Dobbertin (1883–1961) who lived in Tanzania (then Deutsch Ostafrika) between 1900 and 1919. This German colonial photographer took specific pictures and he was recorded as the only photographer who captured WWI images in from the German side. The project Now and Then involved the photographer Charles Kayoka, who compared the photography of colonial sites by Walter Dobbertin and his photography of the same sites. The project also presented additional photographs displaying what German East Africa had achieved by the time their 34-year stay in Tanganyika ended in 1918.

Global City – Local Identity? is an architectural project shading light on pre, during, and post-colonial urban heritage. It focussed on the local identities in a global post-colonial environment and ongoing urbanisation and the loss of history in the process. The project which apart from conferences, artistic curation, workshop and exhibition resulted in a magazine and book entitled Global

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesGerman Colonial Heritage in Tanzania: A Survey on Artistic Productions

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Cities-Local Identity? by the Goethe-Institut, Tanzania. Apart from tracing the story revolving around the historic Ebrahim Building 1937 on Mosque Street in the city of Dar es Salaam, it provides a space for discussion on colonial heritage.

THE WAR THEME IN CULTURAL PRODUCTIONSAlmost all of the documented productions have war as their main theme, except the photography exhibition Now and Then and Global City – Local Identity? Even though the photographer Walter Dobbertin covered events in WWI, Now the exhibition was limited to the German sites in former German East Africa. According to Annika Seifert, who developed the project concept and curation of Global City – Local Identity? colonialism was not the main theme of the event series but referenced throughout as part of Tanzania’s more recent history.

The concept of the war as depicted in many productions clearly shows that there was a constant struggle between Tanganyikans and the Germans throughout the encounters. Many productions took the Maji Maji War (1905–07) of Tanzanian resistance against German colonial rule as its point of departure. These productions even though they were focussing on the war element from various directions, one of the fundamental issue which has been brought out is the fact that the German occupation in Tanganyika was brutal and unaccepted. Regardless of all attempts to silence the oppressed, Tanganyikans did not sit back and watch their land being seized and their people being humiliated and killed; they resisted the illegal occupation of Germans on their land.

Skull X and The Skull of Mangi Meli brought the contestations between the human bodies and the spirituality embodied. The questioning on the essence of why such memories should be treated as part of tourism attractions in various museums in Germany is historical. A significant numbers of skulls are laying in the basements of German universities and museums particularly the Berlin museum. Some of them were taken from the corpses of killed by Germans. These skulls were brought to Germany as trophies, a symbol of victor of the German armies. Scientists examined them in order to substantiate theories of race where the ‘blackness’ was subdued. 100 years later, more and more demands are being made for their restitution to their descendants. In these productions (Skull X and The Skull of Mangi Meli), which clearly symbolise the war and the death resulting from such

occupation, a different approach compared to other colonial occupations (e.g., British) in Tanganyika (today's Tanzania) is taken. The process of killing leaders and their people by hanging and chopping off their heads was uncommon. Taking the skulls and installing them in various Germany museums for tourism and research has brought up more questions, such as, if the war was over then what was the reason for keeping those skulls rather than returning them to the owners. What about traditions whereby people are considered dead when they are fully buried? There are varied opinions on restitution of human remains and artefacts. Arguments based on whether they should be brought back and if Tanzania has the capacity to take care of them are imperialistic. After a century of being on display these skulls need to rest in their land as families have waited to receive them for a long time. The decision to bury or put them in the museum should be left for the families to decide. The tradition of putting human skulls in the museum is not popular in many cultures – even in Euro-America. Hence, even thinking of returning skulls in Tanzania and restoring them in the museum is not decolonization but neo-colonialism. This is what Mignolo and others have argued to be Western epistemological perception of history which has nothing to do with colonised. It should be noted that individuals have no recourse under international law. The family of Mangi Meli has learned that if they want his skull of to be returned, they can only advance their claims through the government of Tanzania. It is the obligation of the state to represent individuals and individual claims at international levels.

The content of the production was basically anchored on the past, due to the past German colonial history. Some productions challenged the existing history while some reproduced the history. For example, in Maji Maji Flava we see change in narrating the story of the Maji Maji War. We see the characters’ mix, having Tanzanians playing as colonialists and Germans as the oppressed. Regardless of the good intention of the director, the enactment did not necessarily change the perceived dynamics; ‘blacks’ Tanganyikans were colonised and brutally treated by ‘white’ Germans.

During interviews, it was observed that there were several limitations on what was to be presented in the Maji Maji Flava performance and the presented content varied from one audience to the other. During the production, the director insisted that the performance should not evoke emotions by showing how Africans were killed under brutal German colonialism. The assumption was the presentation would turn the audience off. Maji Maji Flava

© N. Klinger


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It is reported that regardless of toning down the content, some audience members – mainly in Germany – walked out of the performance when Germans colonial brutality was depicted. Even some German actors used to walk off the stage during the performance as well. Walking off the stage was allowed to enable actors to stabilise their emotions.

In the Mkwawa film, the producer/director tried to depict the famous story of the Hehe leader Mkwawa from the perspective of the Tanzanians. The director made sure that the story was narrated to empower the Tanganyikans who fought fiercely in the war of liberation. One of the interesting aspects of the film is how the director showed the contrast between ‘black’ and ‘white’. The Africans, the majority represented in the film, were those whose skins were darker. Hence, with the ‘whiteness’ of those who played German characters, the contrast was obvious. Not only the issue of skin colour, which was presented in the film, but also the ‘blackness’ was associated with power, energy and fearlessness, as opposed to the presentation of poverty, sickness and violence.

If one is to compare the film Mkwawa and theatrical performance of Maji Maji Flava (which I happened to attend the screening and performances, respectively), one could clearly see how both directors were telling the same story from a different perspective. Perhaps this can be partly caused by the methodologies used to arrive to the final products whereby the film was led by a Tanzanian scriptwriter while the theatrical performance was the result of a collaborative work whereby actors from both sides collaborated on the development of the story. In Maji Maji Flava, actors had power to restructure and delete scenes according to the nature of the audience, while in film if this had to be done re-editing would be required. Therefore, basically both stories were created from the oppressed perspective.

PRODUCTION, AUDIENCES AND MEDIA Most of the productions were created and performed in Tanzania as well as in Germany and a few other places. The Nkhomanile theatrical performance, Mkwawa film, Now and Then photographic exhibition and MV Liemba were produced in Tanzania. Others were partly produced in Tanzania and in Germany, such as Maji Maji Flava, Skull X and the soon-to-be-released The Skull of Mangi Meli. Exhibitions and performances where mainly done in Dar es Salaam at the University of Dar es Salaam Department of Creative Arts and at the Goethe Institute in Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaam plays a crucial part in exhibiting most of the cultural productions because – apart from being the business capital city and having many artists – it is a home for many art organisations and funding agencies. With the political

efforts to make Dodoma the capital city, perhaps the dynamics will change in the coming decade.

Bagamoyo and Zanzibar are well-known tourists and artistic centres. Having TaSUBa (formerly Bagamoyo College of Arts) and its annual Bagamoyo Art Festival makes it easy for performing artists to access both rehearsal and performing venues with ready-made audience in Bagamoyo. The same holds for Zanzibar. With several international art festivals, such as Sauti za Busara (an annual international music festival) and the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), the audience and performing space – particularly Ngome Kongwe/Old Fort amphitheatre – make Zanzibar more conducive for bigger productions like Nkhomanile, which was performed in Dar es Salaam, Bagamoyo and Zanzibar.

Performances created by German directors had the opportunity to tour various cities in Germany. This has its own advantage as the audience from both collaborating sides had a room to watch the performances, discuss and even shape performances or productions in the future. None of the performances developed by Tanzanians made their way to Germany, apart from Nkhomanile, which was first performed in Cape Town, South Africa in 2007. Nkomanile made a stride to South Africa because not only was it presenting the history of women freedom fighters in Tanzania but also the untold and undocumented stories of women leaders who fought fiercely side-by-side men against the oppressors, but their stories were less covered in HIStory documentation, which makes many HERstories as non-existent. Some South Africans saw the story of Nkhomanile through the lens of their own anti-apartheid movement, whereby many stories told by men are more known, documented and praised than those from women.

Most audiences in many productions were unique and not the general variety. In many cases, the audience for such productions was pre-defined - except for the few like MV Liemba. Since the MV Liemba performance took a travelling theatre approach, it reached a general audience as compared to other productions that targeted a unique audience of art lovers/sympathisers, students and tourists in the art or cultural centres. Even though actual numbers for performances such as MV Liemba and distribution of films such as Mkwawa is not known, generally speaking, most of the productions in Tanzania did not reach a mega audience. Nkhomanile was performed in festivals and conferences with ready-made crowds and managed to attract audiences of beyond 5,000.

The type of audience for productions done in arts venues does not share the same characteristics with the general audience,

which perhaps implies that art is not of their interest. The audience for MV Liemba, for example, cannot be compared to the audience for Maji Maji Flava or the Now and Then photography exhibition. The same can be said about the audience for Global City – Local Identity?, which included local and international professionals and students from the fields of planning, architecture, conservation and history. The audience that will go to watch the productions behaves differently from the audience which the production has been sent to – hence they have no option rather than watching it. If the idea of more reach and more impact is upheld, there is a need to strategize more on how to broaden the target audience, including exploring how to capture the general audience rather than the current focus of using pre-defined and pre-organised audiences alone.

Most of the productions in Tanzania were covered by both mainstream and social media. Information obtained during the study shows that very few productions used social media effectively. Notable productions, which at least got social media attention and visibility, are those whose directors were from Germany. Most of the Tanzanian lead productions were not covered or documented well on social media. This means social media is not part of the strategy for many productions to reach new audiences. Finding information or images regarding such productions was not easy, unless the director or a key partner in the project decide to provide some. There is a need to invest more on audience reach.

Moreover, artists’ involvement in such projects is divided. Some are involved because of income, while others are interested in documenting the historical past and sharing it through their creativity. It is imperative to research further on the impact of artists’ involvement from the colonial versus colonised perspectives. It is well known that people are willing to get

involved in an activity if it is beneficial.

WORKS CITEDZobil, E. & Klaus, E. (2012). Cultural Production in Theory and Practice. Participate: Kultur Activ Gestalten, 10 (1), 1–19.

Bourdieu, P. (1983). The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed. Poetics , 12, 311–356.

Fanon, F. (2008). Black Skin, White Masks. London: Get Political.

Nyerere, J. (1966). Freedom and Unity/ Uhuru na Umoja. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press.

Maldonado-Torres, N. (2011). Thinking through the Decolonial turn: Post-continental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique - An Introduction. Transmodernity, 1–15.

Mignolo, W. (2009). Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom. Theory, Culture and Society, 26 (7-8), 1-23.

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Napantla: Views from South, 1 (1), 533–580.

“ACTORS HAD POWER TO RESTRUCTURE AND DELETE SCENES ACCORDING TO THE NATURE OF THE AUDIENCE, WHILE IN FILM IF THIS HAD TO BE DONE RE-EDITING WOULD BE REQUIRED. THEREFORE, BASICALLY BOTH STORIES WERE CREATED FROM THE OPPRESSED PERSPECTIVE.”


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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, TANZANIA



Maji Maji Flava Theatre Performance 30th of September to 22nd of October 2016

TaSUBa Bagamoyo, Tanzania, Staatstheater Kassel, Germany

Flinn Works (Kassel/Berlin) / Asedeva (Dar es Salaam)

Resistance against colonialism, colonial history, neocolonialism, Tanzanian-German relations

https://vimeo.com/172138436

http://flinnworks.de/de/projekt/maji-maji-flava

Then and Now! Photography 2014 Dar-es-Salaam, Goethe Institute Dar es Salaam

Charles Mustapha Kayoka: Tanzanian photographer, lecturer on media and photography at the Department of Creative arts, University of Dar es Salaam

Colonial Photography and German Colonial Legacy

The Skull of Mangi Meli

ExhibitionFilm

Oct 2018 - 2019 Berlin, Germany Old Moshi, Bagamoyo, TanzaniaDar es Salaam, Tanzania / Tieranatomisches Theater (Humboldt University Berlin), GermanyOld court building, Old Moshi Dar es Salam, Tanzania

Flinn Works (Kassel/Berlin) Resistance against colonialism, Skull collections in Germany, colonial history

www.flinnworks.de

MV Liemba Tanzanian-German about a Colonial Steamboat

Documentary Theatre Performance

2015 Dar-es-Salaam / Several train-stations in Tanzania

The German theater production company, das letzte Kleinod in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Tanzania and TaSUba

Colonial Legacy

Nkhomanile/Nkomanile

Theatre Performance 2016 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania / Department of Creative Arts, University of Dar es Salaam - Tanzania

Amandina Lihamba The overlooked role of women in the Maji Maji war 1905-1907 led by female leader Nkomanile

Mkwawa: Shujaa wa Mashujaa

Film 2011 Dar es Salaam – Tanzania / the New World Cinemas in Dar es Salaam

Producer Seko Shamte, Managing Director of Alkemist Media

German colonial history, Decolonialism, Slavery, Restitution of Art objects, modern society, Gender, etc. (several possible)

http://www.chicamod.com/2011/12/14/seko-tingitanas-movie-mkwawa-debuts-in-tanzania/


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INTRODUCTIONThe contact of African societies with the diaspora of German Mission society on the West African coast dates from the end of the first half of the 19th century. From 1847, the first German missionaries of the North German Mission Society settled on the West African coast among the communities that stretch mainly between Ghana and Togo. It is with them that German missionaries maintained and developed more relations in West Africa. Then came the merchants and especially the German administrators in 1884 to make Togo a colony of exploitation. Therefore, one can affirm that the contact between Germans and the Togolese societies lasted approximately 70 years before the First World War.

Memories of the politically, economically and culturally diverse relationships between Germans and indigenous populations on the West African coast are still present in the daily lives of Togolese people today. They consist of tangible and intangible traces in Togolese society, or in the geographical area of the former German colony of Togo1. This presence is reflected, among other things, in various cultural productions in Togo that deal with the German-Togolese past, which recalls the relations of various kinds between the Togolese and German peoples. Given the complexity of these historical relationships, it should be noted that activities are diversified and put people back into memories that are both distant and close depending on the empirical, scientific or emotional perceptions of the actors or producers of this past. In cultural productions about the German-Togolese past, there are genres such as theatre, cinema, literature, music, art exhibitions, photography and encounters, etcetera. This paper is a collection of cultural activities produced on the German-Togolese past. Its aim is not only to list these

1 Following the defeat of the German empire during the First World War, German Togo was divided into two parts occupied by the British colonial power of the Gold Coast and the French colonial power of Dahomey. The British part was later attached to the Gold Coast and the French part became independent in 1960 under the name of the Republic of Togo.

productions, but also to analyse the way Togolese confront this past in their daily lives. Hence, about twenty have been identified and the results of their analyses are presented.

The variety of productions on the German past in Togo ranges from simple school activities to large meetings that attract not only a general public but also intellectual, religious, political and diplomatic personalities. The audience varies.

OVERVIEW OF CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS RELATED TO GERMAN PAST IN TOGO

Theatrical productions1. One Coup for Kaiser presented by "La compagnie Louxor" in

2016. The play deals with power relations between German colonial officials wand native workers. It concerns especially power/punishment issues.

2. Regard sur le Togo ancien by Francis Kwasivi Amegan in 2011. The play deals with the way German traders and Togolese natives lived with each other in the German Togo colony. The same piece was performed many times.

3. Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis. Brecht-Adaptation by Alfa Ramsès in 2006. The play deals with the adaptation of cultural issue from the German society in the local context of Togo. In a revolution, the fleeing governor's wife leaves her baby behind. Her maid finds the child and thinks for one night whether she can save a small child as a single woman in the war. She chooses the child. On the run, she runs into ever-increasing difficulties, ultimately, she is brought to court because the governor's wife wants her child back.

DR. KOKOU AZAMEDE received his doctorate in

2008 in Historical anthropology at the University of

Bremen. He is lecturer in the Department of German

Studies of the University of Lome. He is research

fellow of the DAAD (German Office of academic

exchanges) and the Hanns Seidel, Volkswagen

and the Fritz Thyssen Foundations. His research

interests include transcultural studies, Colonial

photography, German colonialism and German

mission societies in West Africa.

CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS WITH REFERENCE TO GERMAN COLONIAL HISTORY IN TOGO:

OVERVIEW AND PERSPECTIVE

BY KOKOU AZAMEDE


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Exhibition1. Tableaux d’information sur les sites allemands au Togo

(Information boards on German sites in Togo). It is organised in 2017 by the Goethe-Institut of Lomé and financed by Alexander Beckmann, and shows identification and information boards on historical sites from the German colonial period in Togo.

2. Regards croisés sur le Togo. Photographie des 19è et 20è siècles (Crossed views on Togo. Photography of the 19th and 20th centuries) is an exhibition organised in 2006 together by Goethe-Institut Lomé & French Cultural Centre and financed by the French-German funds. It shows a collection of colonial pictures from the 19th and 20th centuries.

3. Vestiges allemands au Togo (German remains in Togo) is a production by the Goethe-Institut Lomé that shows a collection of 20 identified and pictured sites of the German colonial period in Togo.

Books1. Si le Togo m’était dessiné. (If Togo was drawn for me. First

contacts 1884–1900) is a comic book written by a group of Togolese writers and directed by Paul Assem. It was published in 2018 and presents the circumstances in which different social groups in Togo entered in contact with German people, either at the coast or inland.

2. Regards sur le passé germano-togolais. Mélanges en l’honneur du Prof. Valentin A. Y. Ahadji (Views on the German-Togolese past. Commemorative volume in honour of Professor Valentin A. Y. Ahadji) consists of 15 papers written either in French or in German. It presents the experiences of native people with the German colonial past; with German Mission societies in many domains in Togo; various rivalries on the Slave Coast, underside of the protectorate treaty; and complex relationships between natives and Europeans. The book was edited in 2018, Kokou Azamede.

Mixed productions in form of like presentations, symposiums, workshops and conferences1. Remix: Africa in Translation is a symposium organised

in 2016 by German journalists, and Educator and French Reporter with Ghanaian Academic. Discussions with Togolese people and academics concern the way Togolese deal with the German colonial history, and which role does this past play in the current life of the Togolese people.

2. Kamina - la station transcontinentale de l’empire allemand au Togo 1911-1914 : Un projet de haute technologie présenté sous forme de 100 photos. (Kamina - the transcontinental station

of the German empire in Togo 1911-1914: A high-tech project presented in the form of 100 photos.). The paper, presented in 2009 by German academics Reinhard Klein-Arendt and Peter Sebald, deals with the history of the constructions project of the radio station in Kamina, a locality of the Togo colony. The discussions show the goal of the project, its strategic importance and meaning in the imperialist ideology of the German empire in Africa. The presentation is illustrated by 100 pictures that show the process of the construction of the station, the utility of the station and different actors of the project (native workers, European engineers, German colonial officers, etc.).

3. 100 ans de pratique de football et d’autres sports au Togo 100 years of practice of football and other sports in Togo) is a paper presentation of the German academic Peter Sebald published in 2007. The author reveals how sports activities were practised in the German colony of Togo and the way certain sports such as football were reserved exclusively for Europeans. It shows the circumstances in which the Togolese founded their first football team in the history of sport in Togo.

4. De Togoville à Sinkassé. Les chefs traditionnels à l’ère coloniale allemande au Togo 1884-1914 (From Togoville to Sinkassé. Traditional leaders in the German colonial era in Togo 1884-1914) is a paper presentation of Peter Sebald in 2008 at Goethe-Institut Lomé. He shows the complex relationships between traditional authorities of different parts of the Togo colony from the south to the upper North and German colonial officers. The colony of Togo could not have been founded without involving the traditional chiefs. The colonial administration conferred effective power on chiefs who had so far held honorary office and established chieftaincy between the Kabye and Konkomba. It deposed the rebel leaders and enthroned others in their place.

5. Le récit de Dr. Richard Doering (1868–1939), médecin de la « Deutsche Togo Hinterland » (The story of Dr. Richard Doering (1868–1939), physician of "Deutsche Togo Hinterland") is a paper presentation of the German academic Janos Riesz in 2006. It is an unpublished text from Dr. Richard Doering on the Togo Hinterland-expedition. It provides further information on the Expedition, the exchange between Togolese and Germans, and the mutual appreciation and knowledge they gained.

Radio station Kamina in Togo.(C) Unknown

“THE COLONIAL PAST OF GERMANYIN TOGO IS A LIVING REALITY IN THE MEMORY OF TOGOLESE, BUT OFTENCOMES IN THE FORM OF EMOTIONAL MEMORIES THAT SOMETIMESCONTRAST WITH THE FACTS RECOUNTED IN LITERATURE.”

German Colonial Heritage in Africa – Artistic and Cultural PerspectivesCultural Productions with Reference to German Colonial History in Togo: Overview and Perspective

6867 68

the construction of the station mobilised enormous investments - material and human. What is often retained in the presentations and images are the German achievements and the authorship of the German empire in this project. However, the Togolese public is more and more questioning the contribution of its ancestors in the construction of these great works. These questions are answered in cultural productions based on documentary sources from German colonial history in Togo. The information boards on the German remains in Togo (2017), the lectures and debates on Kamina (2009), the comic book (2018) and mixtures published on the German-African past (2018) show how the Togolese natives were willingly or forcibly involved in the construction of the German sites. The Togolese are increasingly aware that their ancestors were forcibly displaced from their places of residence to carry out forced labour for the construction projects of railways, roads, buildings, wharfs, etcetera... for the benefit of the German colonial project. This is why critical views in the public see the so-called German achievements or sites in Togo rather as a common legacy from colonisation. In this perspective, the KARP – Kamina Artists and Researchers Residency Platform

– project (2016–2016) aims to rehabilitate the Kamina site by building residences for artists and organising various annual international meetings between artists and intellectuals, and then to promote tourism on the site as a place of German-Togolese memory.

PERSPECTIVE OF GERMAN-TOGOLESE COLONIAL HERITAGEThe various cultural productions and the debates they provoke in the public lead the Togolese State to take into consideration the question of the conservation of historical sources in general and of the colonial heritage in particular. For several years, the project of rehabilitation by the Togolese State of the Governors' Palace built under the colonial rule of the German Governor Graf von Zech in 1905 has been topical. During a presentation of the site on February 6, 2018 by the project's director, Sonia Lawson, the latter explained that the project aims to make the former Governors' Palace a “House of Arts and Culture”. The presentation of the project at the University of Lomé on November 2nd, 2018 by the coordinator Bernard Müller and his collaborator Gaetan Noussouglo indicates that the space of arts and culture could house all kinds of cultural activities such as artistic encounters, theatrical performances, exhibitions and frames for discussion, and eventually conservation of historical remains or colonial artefacts. It is therefore a place of memory where the colonial heritage among others can be visited and discussed. The realisation of this project could thus serve as an important framework for cultural exchanges between artists, museum curators, historians and anthropologists from Togo and those from Germany for example, as German museums undoubtedly have countless materials such as artefacts, photographs, and

archival documents from former German colonies. For instance, the Overseas Museum of Bremen contains religious objects from the Ewe communities in Togo and Ghana collected by the missionaries in Bremen, archival and ethnographic documents on the same communities in the archives in Bremen and in Berlin, other artefacts from the people of Togo in the Dahlem Museum of Berlin or in the Ethnographic Museum of Hamburg. It should be pointed out that discussions, that I personally took part in (Goethe-Institut Johannesburg 2016, Goethe-Institut Berlin 2016, Ethnographic Museum Hamburg 2018) are under way between German and African experts to define arrangements for the circulation and restitution of certain historical objects of African communities, since the idea that these artefacts represent, on the one hand, a large part of the identities of African peoples, and on the other constitute a common colonial heritage between German society and African societies formerly colonised by the German Empire. The “House of Culture” will thus take advantage of this initiative to promote a better knowledge of Togo's colonial history among Togolese youth as well as intercultural dialogue between the Togolese and German people.

CONCLUSIONIt is obvious that the memories of the German colonial past in Togo are appreciated and that the discourse on the same past is rather nostalgic in relation to the French mandate after the departure of the Germans from Togo. The history of the French colonial empire in Togo (1918–1960) left a taste of unfinished business and frustration, while the German Mission Societies (1847–1914) and colonial past in Togo (1884–1914) is generally more present through material and immaterial traces that can be observed here and there in the Togolese population. However, one can observe that the current living conditions of the Togolese and outside interference in the socio-political life of Togo force the Togolese public to take refuge in a past, giving them the illusion that the sudden break with the German colonial past is responsible. The dream therefore takes the place of reality. Nevertheless, cultural activities such as discussions on the colonial past or study visits to German sites in Togo gradually lead to a critical look at German-Togolese history.

Film1. The fire, a fowl and an (un)forgotten past - Togoland 2015 is

showed in Togo in 2017 by its producer Jürgen Ellinghaus. The film presents the memories about German Togoland during the first world. "Togoland", the later Togo and the eastern part of today's Ghana, experienced the first German capitulation in the early days of the First World War.

Considering the exhaustive descriptions made in the cultural productions tables, it can be seen that cultural activities and productions related to the German-Togolese past are very regular and diversified, and attract as much the Togolese public in all its socio-professional diversity. The colonial past of Germany in Togo is a living reality in the memory of the Togolese, but often comes in the form of emotional memories that sometimes contrast with the facts recounted in literature. The results of these cultural productions highlight socio-cultural, political and economic themes in the Togolese public that deserve to be analysed.

RESULTS OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND ANALYSES

Education as colonial heritageOne can see how theatrical performances, series of exhibitions or film screenings on the German past in Togo give emotional reactions in the public and later lead to many discussions in the audience, while meetings of reflections on the same past lead rather to an awareness on the socio-political realities and the misdeeds of colonisation. The theatrical play "One Coup for Kaiser", the photo exhibition of the 19th and 20th centuries and the symposium "Remix: Africa in translation" prove it. In view of all these varied productions, the Togolese people believe that certain social and cultural habits or values that missionaries, traders or colonial officials have passed on persist in the memories or even influence the Togolese people's habits today. Examples include school education, transcription of the local Ewe language, Christianity as a way of life and etcetera. Both Evangelical and Catholic denominational education centres and schools from German Mission Societies continue to be reference

institutions for vocational education and training to this day. The Evangelical and Catholic schools and colleges in several towns in Togo are concrete examples. Many of the parents who enrol their children in these educational centres consider that the Togolese contact with the German Protestant and Catholic mission societies was positive in terms of the social and educational values that the latter transmitted through evangelisation during the German colonial era. Therefore these institutions are considered as colonial heritage related to social values of education to Christian life, discipline, work and punctuality as in the German colonial era. Thus, this position would be considered as the perpetuation of a colonial tradition by a Togolese social group inheriting the social and Christian habits resulting from the German Protestant and Catholic missions.

Exhibitions or presentations relating to contact with German missionaries still lead to emotional reactions that question the traditional religious practices in the local societies. Pictures of the catholic cathedral or the evangelical temple built by the Steyler mission (in Togo since 1892) and the North German Mission Society (since 1847) respectively are much appreciated in Catholic and Evangelical Christian communities founded at that time. For these communities, the presence of German missionaries in Togo has influenced the religious life of the Togolese and opened their eyes to the benefit of Christianity in relation to certain local religious beliefs.

Power and dominationIt is clear that the German traces give memories linked to large-scale German achievements that show the technical and intellectual greatness of the German people. Colonial images showing schools, public buildings, hospitals, temples and cathedrals give the feeling that the German colonial past in Togo is not only a period of bullying and abuse or racism. These were also times of great technological projects in the former colony. The presentation and exhibition on “Kamina - the transcontinental station of the German empire in Togo 1911–1914: A high-tech project presented in the form of 100 photos” is one of the examples. It should be noted that Kamina's memories are present in the discussions on the German colonial power, because

“IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE MEMORIES OF THE GERMAN COLONIAL PAST IN TOGO ARE APPRECIATED AND THAT THE DISCOURSE ON THE SAME PAST IS RATHER NOSTALGIC IN RELATION TO THE FRENCH MANDATE.”


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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, TOGO



One Coup For Kaiser (Street) Theatre 19th of November to 16th of December 2016

Lomé- Baguida (Togo) / Lomé City: Agoe Zongo; Akasime; Katanga; Inland town: Tsevie.

“Compagnie Louxor” represented by Amah Joël AJAVON, Kokouvi Dzifa GALLEY, Marie-José GBEGBI, Jean KANTCHEBE, Séli KODJOVI-NUMADO, Ayao Edem MODJRO Theater Konstanz represented by : Rafael David KOHN from Luxemburg,

Relationships at work between German colonial officers and native workers (concerning especially Power / Punishment issues etc.)

https://compagnielouxor.wordpress.com/

http://www.theaterkonstanz.de/tkn/news/08196/index.htmlics

Erinnerungstafeln (Informations boards in Togo)

Photography 9th of February 2017

Lomé (Goethe-Institut) Alexander Beckmann (born 1955, German, sponsor of the project) and Goethe-Institut

German colonial sites in Togo http://www.togoportail.net/2017/02/togo-le-gothe-institut-expose-sur-les-panneaux-didentification-et-dinformation-sur-les-vertiges-allemands-au-togo/

Si le Togo m’était dessiné. Premiers contacts 1884-1900

Literature 2018 Lomé Koffivi ASSEM (born in 1980, Togolese, writer and editor)

German colonial history in Togo


Literature 2018 Koffivi ASSEM (born in 1980, Togolese, writer and editor)


Regard sur le Togo ancien

Theatre 25th of February 2011

Lomé (Université du Bénin) /Lomé (Goethe-Institut)

Francis Kwassi Amegan (born in 1938, from Togo, dramatist and lecturer)

The life of German traders and Togolese natives in the German Togo colony

Remix. Africa in translation: Togo

Film: Documentary series from the former German colonies

22nd of July 2016

Lomé, Agbodrafo, Togoville und Aného / Goethe-Institut Lomé

Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard (German journalist), Nicolas Grange (French Film maker)

German colonial history, Slavery, Postcolonialism

http://www.bpb.de/mediathek/254151/remix-africa-in-translation-togo

Exhibition: German traces in Togo (Vestiges allemands au Togo – Auf deutschen Spurensuche in Togo)


Lomé, Togo / Goethe Institut Lomé Goethe-Institut (Edem Attiogbe)

German colonial history https://www.goethe.de/ins/tg/de/kul/sup/dsi.html

Togo-KARP ‘Kamina Artists and Researchers Residency Plateform’

Variation of artistic productions (Theatre, Performance, Photography, Video, Litearture, exhibition)

November 2016, November 2017, July 2018

Kamina Samuel Olou (Togolese, living in Sweden), plastic (visual) artist

Kamina, German colonial history, arts, centre for artistic training)


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LIST OF PRODUCTIONS, TOGO, CONTINUED



The fire, A Fowl and an (un)forgotten past - Togoland 2015

Film, video July 2017 to June 2018

France and Germany / Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, Germany, Chile, Mexico, Angola, Cameroon, Benin, Uruguay, Austria,

Jürgen Ellinghaus, Born in Germany in 1956, studied Political Science; film producer and director.

German colonial history http://www.andanafilms.com/catalogueFiche.php?idFiche=1246&rub=Court-m%C3%A9trage%20documentaire

Regards croisés sur le Togo: photographies des XIXè et XXè siècles

Photography 14th of November 2006

Lomé (Goethe-Institut & Centre Culturel Français)

Goethe-Institut Lomé & Centre Culturel Français

German colonial history http://www.panapress.com/Des-photographies-historiques-du-Togo-en-exposition-a-Lome--13-640717-17-lang4-index.html

Kamina - la station transcontinentale de l’empire allemand au Togo 1911-1914 : Un projet de haute technologie présenté sous forme de 100 photos

Literature Photography

March 2009 Lomé – Togo / Goethe–Institut Lomé Peter Sebald, German, born 15.05.1934 academic & Dr. habil Reinhard Klein-Arendt, German, born on 03.12.1959, academic

German colonial history http://www.namibiana.de/namibia-information/who-is-who/autoren/infos-zur-person/reinhard-klein-arendt.html

Regards sur le passé germano-togolais. Mélanges en l’honneur du Prof. Valentin A. Y. Ahadji

Literature 28th of May 2018 Togo Kokou Azamede, from Togo, academic, [email protected]

German colonial history


Literature 2018 Lomé, Togo Koffivi ASSEM (born in 1980, Togolese, writer and editor)


German vestiges in Togo


Lomé (Goethe-Institut) Alexander Beckmann (born 1955, German, sponsor of the project) and Goethe-Institut

German colonial sites in Togo http://www.togoportail.net/2017/02/togo-le-gothe-institut-expose-sur-les-panneaux-didentification-et-dinformation-sur-les-vertiges-allemands-au-togo/

One Coup For Kaiser (Street) Theatre 19th of November to 16th of December 2016

Lomé- Baguida (Togo) / Lomé City: Agoe Zongo; Akasime; Katanga; Inland town: Tsevie

collective artists from Togo: “Compagnie Louxor” represented by Amah Joël AJAVON, Kokouvi Dzifa GALLEY, Marie-José GBEGBI, Jean KANTCHEBE, Séli KODJOVI-NUMADO, Ayao Edem MODJRO Theater Konstanz represented by : Rafael David KOHN from Luxemburg,- Artists are between 25 and 35 years old

Relationships at work between German colonial officers and native workers (concerning especially Power / Punishment issues etc.)

https://compagnielouxor.wordpress.com/

http://www.theaterkonstanz.de/tkn/news/08196/index.htmlics

Regard sur le Togo ancien

Theatre 25 of February 2011 Lomé (Goethe-Institut) Francis Kwassi Amegan (born in 1938, from Togo, dramatist and lecturer)

The life of German traders and Togolese natives in the German Togo colony


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Goethe-Institut www.goethe.de

german colonial heritage in africa – artistic and …

Documents