Renaissance isn't the right word

This is yet another article that is quite old, but still very very relevant. Its relevance stems from its nature.

I have read several arguments for and against the ideal of an African renaissance. Of the arguments against, a large number is unworthy of notice. There is a category however that consists of letters and articles that are well thought out, and quite believable. Some are so good that they convince a large percentage of the less critical. I picked the following because it stands out among those that are written by erudite, articulate minds capable of misleading.

To be fair, I will not make comments on the article beforehand. I invite you to read through this article, and then here I will tell you what I think of the article.

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Like "rainbow nation" we are now stuck with "African renaissance", both of them admittedly catchy phrases, but that's about as far as they go. The former is, thank heavens, starting to evaporate now that everyone's realized that access to the promised pot of gold has turned out to be on a strictly reserved basis. The latter term has now become the latest cant-phrase to which any manner of things may be attached.

Last week one of those typical SABC news department dimbos, reporting on the recent telecommunications exhibition, spoke of the urgent necessity for every corner of Africa to be connected to the "Information Highway". In her own simperings, "without which it will be impossible for the African renaissance to come about". I often wonder what psychometastatic drug it is they secretly include in the female white news reporters' lipstick up at Auckland Park. Every time they lick their lips to make them gleam on camera, the drug kicks in, sends their brains dribbling down their spines into their botties. As usual this particular one's terminology and analysis were dream-world material.

For a start, the term "African renaissance" - notwithstanding the ideals the term is intended to denote - is a misnomer. The accepted, the virtually unequivocal meaning of the word "renaissance" refers to the great flowering of the arts, architecture, letters and politics which took place in Europe between the late 14th and early 16th centuries, and which is regarded as having formed the cultural transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world.

Renaissance does mean rebirth, but it is now always used in reference to the European renaissance and little beyond that. "Renaissance" does not describe social reconstruction, political reform, balanced economic cadences, industrial and technical interlinkings, better telephone lines, medical services, all the rest of it. Unless these and other accounts are seen as sequential to aesthetic resolutions.

A better term for African ambitions would be "revival" or perhaps "establishment". You don't give rebirth to a hospital that was never there or was burnt down. You build or rebuild it. You don't "renaissancise" (yes, that verbal horror has already sprung from SAfm lips) new electronic lines of communication or more economic corridors, improved transport systems, you establish them.

I am not saying Africa does not qualify for a cultural "renaissance", in fact it sorely does. Short of devoting an entire academic discipline to the theme, there is no adequate way to quantify the philosophical, artistic and most especially humanist loss that has been a consequence of the last few hundred years of colonised Africa. In its true sense "African renaissance" would be a resuscitation of the prodigious and extraordinary compass of African musical forms and traditions, graphic arts, ideas.

Such an effort - to retrieve the original integrity of African arts, would not of certainty be doomed. But it would be phenomenally difficult. In some places the wrecking has been too utter. The better hope is for more of the kinds of African and European fusion which produced the 20th century's most remarkable new music, jazz.

But a new political and socio-economic construction of Africa - mainly along ensconced First World lines - is a quite different thing. What Mr Mbeki and many others should be doing is acknowledging that "renaissance" is not only the wrong word, but a borrowed one, to boot. When looking for a word to describe the optimistic revitalisation of Africa, why choose a European term, anyway?

Surely there is an African word to describe a confident link between things past and things to be. Something to describe an ebullient and sanguine African reconstruction. A word which eventually will enter the global lexicon as something uniquely of this continent. The world has already had "renaissance", they know what it means. To use it for this continent is to be second-hand.

The other part of the SABC reporter's statement, that the success of the "African renaissance" is wholly dependent on the continent being swamped in telecommunications, specifically that access to "The Information Highway" is a vital prerequisite, is just plain silly. The sheer simplistics of the notion don't stand up to examination. The Internet is a new facility, by intention an electronic reference library, however crudely it is often misused. Albeit an important part of what is necessary to African reconstruction, it is not the linchpin.

No matter what acquisitive salesmen and slick politicians argue, the Internet is no magic wand. Tantalising slogans like "Global Village" and "Information Highway" are the jabberings of marketing men. To hang absurd promises on these is not only futile, it is cruel.

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Knowledge is power. Knowledge comprises jagged but coherent pieces of information, the free and abundant dissemination of which is absolutely essential for such empowerment of a person or group, and this is absolutely essential for a group like ours (Africa) which has lagged behind more by lack of information, a condition that was earlier forced on Africans by colonizers, and later by structures they left in place. The truth of the above is verified when one visits the past and discovers that the subjugated were not allowed to learn to read and write. There is no accident to this, and Mr. Kirby is well aware of this fact.

Mr. Kirby starts off well. Despite his intentions, he gives a befitting description of the word renaissance, but when he suggests "revival" or "establishment" as alternatives for the word renaissance, he is already blatantly off line. If revival it is, then revival from what? Which stage and state does he have in mind? There has never been an Africa to which Africans would like to return in the context of our modern world. Certain aspects of the past maybe, but not the whole. Africa wants to move on, to change for the better, to exist on a humanly acceptable level in this time and beyond. This means acquiring in full the "ways of the new world" and mastering them. Coping, even doing very well, within this and the next world is the aim of all.

The appreciation of aesthetic phenomena that Mr. Kirby hints at with his idea of the original meaning of the word renaissance can only be arrived at by minds and mentalities mature enough to do so. No person, or group is always automatically ready for this state. This awareness is usually a fluke occurrence in an individual which is relayed to a group. It has to be consciously put in place and maintained, hence the need for educational institutions.

If you are just coming out of the belly of a whale, as is the case with Africa after subjugation, education doesn't work because the subjugator ordained it so. The state where a group is able to actualize the potentialities of individual members, to push them to a level where they will start looking out for themselves in a competitive world, cannot be reached because the awareness that this requires is only a result of a functional, successful education system. The encumbering factors caused by the subjugator, which worked well to aid in his subjugation, need to be removed, hence the need to change and make congenial the education system, nutrition, language of instruction, social-economic structures, etc. This is precisely what Africans are trying to do now. By instituting such changes, they will elevate the physical and intellectual level of the masses and bring about a situation where a renaissance is set in motion, and rolls of its own accord. A renaissance is not an end in itself. It is rather a process when a society becomes better, when a culture goes through changes, when it blossoms, as it were. A renaissance usually leads to social change, or revolution, as the people become mature enough to see the need for change, and the possibilities. The people acquire a new way of looking at reality, a more mature way of knowing, and take positive action knowing where they stand.

Mr. Kirby forgets that the talent for jazz, or the blues has to be nurtured. This same truth is true for all the other losses he rightly says Africa has suffered in the area of art, but I doubt whether it would be phenomenally difficult to "revive" as he suggests. Let us not forget that jazz depends largely on talent. Art requires talent. Talent can be expressed, but if not, it can be lost. Talent is a potential. This is to say that it is inherited. It exists in a person, but has to be exited out of its physical recesses to be expressed. Fortunately for me, the science of genetics has made this household knowledge.

Here is the equation: Art requires talent. Talent has to be nurtured to be fully expressed. Thousands of years ago, this equation was fulfilled when the first Africans made the first forms of art. If this potential is indeed inherent in the African, then there is no saying what he can create in he is freed of all the encumbering forces around him in these times. This is the aim of the African renaissance, i.e., to provide the African with those conditions that arouse and extract the talents he has in him, freely, what Mr. Dladla calls the "wealth of knowledge" (see archives).

The Kirbies of this world are afraid of this eventuality because they know where they will stand once such a situation arises. They have led the world for so long and, even though they have pioneered this clever technological culture, have also given mankind odds he doesn't need, odds that reflect on the actual shortcomings of the Kirbies. This is the truth they want to keep veiled. Consequently, to be on the safe side, the ambition of the Kirbies is to see Africans enriching the western experience some more, exploiting the dormant wealth of knowledge within the sleeping masses, advancing their cause while the African degenerates all the time.

Mr. Kirby goes on to claim that renaissance is a borrowed word, that the African would be better off finding a term that is more African. If this is so, then almost every word I have used in this article is borrowed. Borrowed is a borrowed word, and so is this sentence too. Let me see... Perestroika would be a borrowed word too. It is not western. It is Russian, and Russia is not Africa. Hmm... Language of instruction... You figure it out!

Enlightened self interest is what I see in Mr. Kirby's letter. This is what enlightened self interest has to offer the world in general, and the African in particular (things like Jazz or the Blues maybe... Yeah right!). Compare this article with the article by Mr. Nhlanganiso Dladla in our "archive" section. Click here to be taken there now.

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