1
From Northern Rhodesia to Zambia: creating culture in the post-colonial nation-state
Cynthia Caul
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for General University Honors
Professor Katharine Norris, Faculty Director
American University May 2008 2
On July 21, 1971 an article appeared in the London Times announcing the imminent Zambian expulsion of three men: University of Zambia’s Vice Chancellor Dr.
Douglas Anglin and lecturers Andrew Horn and Michael Etherton. Etherton, a British citizen, had been born on the Zambian copperbelt and held a Master’s degree from
Sussex University. Horn was a United States citizen who held a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Indiana. The government implicated both in a student protest at the French Embassy that had occurred the week prior.1 The two were not accused of being directly involved, but were blamed for supporting the students’ demonstration, which had prompted the first use of government firearms during a student movement and subsequently the first student protest against the Zambian government itself. The students’ opposition initially targeted France’s consent of South African manufactured
Mirage jet fighters, but it quickly evolved into an attack against Zambian president
Kenneth Kaunda for his attempts to suppress the demonstration. After the government’s fire quelled the protest, the executive of the University’s student union published a letter to Kaunda declaring him inconsistent and hypocritical and accusing him of
“commiserating with the enemy.”2
Student protests had practically been an annual event since the establishment of the University of Zambia in 1966. Each year the students assembled outside of the
British High Commission, voicing their concerns against the British government in favor of their own Zambian government and their leader President Kaunda.3 In July 1971, this ritual was turned on its head for the first time, and open fire was only the beginning of the
1 “Three Academics face Zambia explusion,” The London Times, 21 July 1971, col. F, p. 5. 2 Michael Burawoy, “Consciousness and Contradition: a study of student protest in Zambia,” The British Journal of Sociology 27, no. 1 (1976), 80. 3 Ibid, 79-80. 3 government’s response. Government party (United National Independence Party or
UNIP) officials initiated their own demonstration supporting the president’s action against the students, inciting more students to rally behind their student union executive in stride. The politically minded youth group, UNIP Youth, decided it was their duty to get involved and announced that they would invade the campus if the students did not back down. University students responded by barricading themselves into the campus.
UNIP Youth began their march, as promised, on July fourteenth. The march was halted, however, by UNIP officials who presented the University’s Vice Chancellor with demands from the president to close the University and expel the student union executive.
At four o’clock the next morning the military, para-military, and riot police bombarded the campus and ushered out 1500 students at gun-point. The university was officially closed and the student union executive expelled, just as the president had requested.
Students who wanted to return upon the university’s re-opening would have to re-apply and pledge to abstain from such political activity in the future. The government supported their stance by emphasizing the protest’s illegality and characterizing the university as a “hot bed of external subversion.”4
“External” was the key contention that lead to the expulsion of Anglin, Horn, and
Etherton—all men who had received their higher education outside of Zambia in external institutions. The University’s staff openly refuted Horn’s and Etherton’s deportation:
Here are two lecturers who have not only proved invaluable colleagues but who have in every way attempted to bridge the gap between the university and the community. This was manifested in their close relationships with students and their positive contributions to Zambian culture in the establishment of Chikwakwa Theatre.5
4 Ibid, 80-82. 5 “Anger of Expulsion of lecturers by Zambia,” The London Times, 2 August 1971, col. B, p. 4. 4
The government remained unaffected by the public statement. Six weeks later Horn and
Etherton left the country, the students made a half-hearted public apology, and the university re-opened. The government published a response to the staff’s resentments, claiming the expatriate lecturers clearly thought they still ran the country. Such thoughts were a threat to Zambian national government and culture. Kaunda subsequently addressed the students at the University, stressing the differences between “criticism” and
“opposition” and asserting that all foreign policy matters be left up to him from that day forth. 6
This student protest initiated against a foreign power, a seemingly non-existent threat to the national government, quickly escalated and evolved into precisely that; and in its resolution, the internal issues really at stake, far beyond South African- manufactured Mirage jet fighters, are illuminated. We see fierce and violent responses on behalf of the government against anti-Party sentiments, and we see external or foreign elites who supposedly think they still run the country targeted as agents of these sentiments—a bitter harkening back to the not so distant colonial past. We also see evidence of cultural undertones. The university staff makes particular mention of
Chikwakwa Theatre. As the only British expatriate and co-founder and director of
Chikwakwa, Etherton seems particularly under the gun.
The government’s singling out of Etherton is especially note-worthy, because
Etherton is the only Zambian citizen among the three deported men. He was born and raised in Luanshya on the copper-belt; and while his British heritage afforded him opportunities not afforded many other Zambian citizens (e.g. a higher education before such institutions even existed in Zambia), Zambia was presumably his home—certainly
6 Burawoy, “Consciousness and Contradiction,” 80-82. 5 where he spent the majority of his formative years. The foreign identification assigned him by the Zambian government points to the core of complexities inherent in the post- colonial nation-state—complexities primarily manifested in national culture and cultural identity, which are embodied by organizations like Chikwakwa Theatre. Comprehending these complexities requires a knowledge beginning with the colonial past and an acknowledgement of the society (ies) that pre-dated it.
The diversity within this region pre-dated the colonial period and was exacerbated by the colonial presence. Quality of life worsened for the native population under colonial rule, heightening pre-existing tribal tensions and fostering new colonial animosities. Eventually, nationhood appeared inevitable by the mid-twentieth century, as did the task of organizing and titling this disparate mass of people. Zambia’s government and newly elected president immediately approached the challenge from a cultural perspective, contending that a unified and homogenous national culture would be crucial in honing the region’s dissidence into a harmonious nation. Zambian citizens
(particularly urban elites) followed the government’s lead in this cultural endeavor to ensure their personal cultures’ resonance in the culture en masse. This civilian participation manifested itself in organizations like Chikwakwa Theatre. The events of
July 21, 1971, however, serve as a telling case study of the tensions that permeated the creation of a Zambian national identity, revealing the nation’s inherent fabrication.
Zambia had never before existed, nor had the idea of being Zambian. Disparate tribes and groups were suddenly expected to identify and communalize with each other under this new (and foreign for the natives) national persona. Many individuals within and outside of the government developed and promoted definitions and functions for this 6 national identity, creating a complicated web of potential realities. Diverging ideas about
Zambia’s past, present, and future flourished from expatriate, rural, and urban spheres of society. These ideas are continually re-hashed in the period’s historiography.
This thesis is an attempt to holistically examine the dynamics of creating a national culture in the post-colonial nation-state of Zambia, paying tribute to each individual’s role in the cultural fabrication (and each individual’s right to have such a role). There was a nation-wide push to create a cultural identity in Zambia after independence. The impetus was mutual for most; however, the definitions of such a culture were as varied as the people themselves. Zambia was comprised of seventy-two different tribes with different languages, customs, and traditions. Colonialism exacerbated their tribal differences, and, upon independence, left the region with a new
British expatriate demographic. The inability of the government and the citizens to reconcile their cultural ideals with the diversity of the whole society plagued the nation’s cultural endeavors.
The barriers and conflicts between these historical actors are reiterated by contemporary scholars who attempt to examine this period in definitive binaries, oversimplifying the nation’s diversity. They also fail to reconcile the individual cultural agendas with the holistic, national agenda. Instead, they attempt to promote the individual agenda of one over that of another, spiriting the historical debate into contemporary times. These historical and contemporary players showcase an interesting and complicated congruence of goals in the post-colonial Zambia. This thesis is an attempt to examine and reconcile these diverse perspectives, shedding new light on
Zambia’s failure to create an accessible national culture and the historiography’s attempt 7 to identify the causes of this failure. Both are arguably hindered by the assumption that
Zambian culture would or should have evolved into a specific homogenous ideal, which is simply illogical in a region as diverse as Zambia. A more inclusive and adaptive model must be adopted to fully understand Zambia’s cultural complications in retrospect; as was such a model necessary, but unfortunately never realized, to create a representative culture at the time. This thesis is an attempt at such a model.
The Exposition
Zambia (then called Northern Rhodesia) was colonized by the British in the early twentieth century, but was established as a protectorate in 1924, promising a higher level of autonomy for the region. The differentiation proved simply theoretical, however, as
Northern Rhodesia endured all the same hardships of colonization. British institutions of musonko (hut tax) and chibalo (coercive labor) were among the greatest and most detrimental atrocities. The two were complimentary in allowing the BSA (British South
Africa) Company to uphold their promise of a land apt for British commerce at no expense to the British tax-payer.7 Colonial officials arbitrarily taxed the natives and forced them to work on the mines and other developmental projects with little or no pay, practices which the colonials justified as the natives’ dutiful contribution to the development of the protectorate. Men were often forced to leave their families and travel over four hundred miles, crossing through foreign tribes who did not speak their languages, to work on these projects in twelve-month shifts. 8 Colonial officials also
7 Fergus Macpherson, Anatomy of a Conquest: The British Occupation of Zambia, 1884-1964 (Essex: Longman, 1981): 105-106. 8 Ibid, 147-149. 8 issued racial segregation laws to enforce their superiority and maintain cultural distinction between themselves and the natives. 9
Cultural distinction was established at the outset of the colonial period and was made especially clear in the theatre. The theatre cultures of the rulers and the ruled were intensely polarized, and both cultures’ internal diversity further complicated this polarization. European theatre was first brought to Northern Rhodesia in the latter nineteenth century by missionaries from the Church of Scotland who used dramatizations of bible stories and Passion plays in their churches, schools, and festivals to introduce various African tribes to their Christian ideology.10 The missionaries also utilized the story-telling traditions of each tribe to further tribal understanding of Christianity by substituting the stories’ African morals for their own Christian ideals.11
The church, however, was not the only European institution to use drama as an educational tool. British school teachers and health, agricultural, and community development workers used drama to inform Africans about the benefits of modernization, cash crop productivity, and financial prudence.12 Theatre was utilized by these foreign rulers in an attempt to convert the African natives religiously, culturally, politically, and economically. All of these societal components were integrated in to what the British deemed a necessary conversion process for the domestication of supposedly undomesticated and less evolved people. Historian Penina Muhando Mlama contends
9 Patrick E. Idoye, Theatre and social change in Zambia: the Chikwakwa Theatre (Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press: 1996): 65. 10 Anthony Graham-White, The Drama of Black Africa (New York: Samuel French Inc., 1974): 63. 11 Penina Muhando Mlama, Culture and Development: The Popular Theatre Approach in Africa (Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1991): 58. 12 Ibid, 68. 9 that Britain’s “cultural domination” over the Africans was particularly vital to their colonial success.13
This cultural success was two-fold. Cultural emphasis facilitated African subordination and acculturation, while simultaneously fostering colonial morale.
Historian and playwright David Pownall describes theatre as “a camp-follower of colonialism, classifiable as a ‘comfort for the troops’…It [theatre] gives life and spirit to the fantasy of being transportable…”14 Pownall portrays theatre as a vibrant solace for home-sick colonials.15 Theatre, within this colonial context, surpassed the accessorial entertainment function that it had back in Britain. In colonial Africa, British theatre became a requirement for the colonials’ peace of mind, as much as it did for his colonial agenda. The Copperbelt in Northern Rhodesia was fertile ground for these microcosms of English theatre, which the miners referred to as “Little Theatres.”16
The performances at these “Little Theatres” were formal affairs that required evening attire, and consequently excluded the African locals who could not afford such extravagances. The theatrical traditions of the rulers and the ruled developed separately during this period; and for most colonials, African theatrical traditions were non-existent.
In actuality, these African traditions were simply unrecognizable to the colonists, who were not accustomed to their unscripted, dance-heavy and audience-participatory performances.17 Whether or not these performance traditions can be classified as legitimate theatre is an ongoing debate in intellectual theatre discussions today.18 These
13 Ibid, 57-60. 14 David Pownall, “European and African Influences in Zambian Theatre,” Theatre Quarterly 3, no. 10 (1973): 49. 15 Ibid, 49-50. 16 Ibid, 49. 17 Ibid. 18 Mlama, Culture and Development, 1-5. 10 traditions were eventually, however, recognized by colonials as having some cultural merit. In 1948, the British colonial office publicly recognized and encouraged African performance practices, hoping that they possessed the same morale-boosting capabilities for the Africans as the “Little Theatres” did for the British. They hoped to create a safety- valve that would quell potential African opposition to the colonists.19 This strategic negotiation between African and British theatrical traditions secured English social superiority, as well as English political and economic control over the colony.
The 1950s copper boom, prompted by the post-WWII European metal shortage, created an economic boom in the colony and fostered a new dimension to theatre in
Northern Rhodesia. Mining companies had profited enormously, and, acknowledging the theatre’s therapeutic qualities, decided to invest a portion of their profits in elaborate theatre buildings in an attempt to decrease employee turnover.20 The new theatres coupled with the economic boom did more than maintain the colonials already settled on the Copperbelt; they instigated a surge of new British immigrants to the region.
Unemployed British theatre actors, whose job prospects severely declined with the onset of television, came to the colony in hopes of securing some of the copper profit for themselves. Many of these actors found their way to the “"Little Theatres"” and spear- headed contemporary movements that developed the colonial stages into a mirror of the current stage in Britain, as opposed to an out-dated, colonial tradition. The various colonial theatre celebrities were not recognizable to their counterparts in Britain, but they were of equivalent caliber.
19 Ibid, 57-58. 20 Pownall, “European and African Influence,” 50. 11
This contemporary Britain-inspired theatre eventually evolved into its own entity.21 It remained the same in practice; plays were still performed behind the proscenium arch with little audience participation. These “Little Theatres” were, by no means, adopting the performance traditions of the local Africans around them. The content of their plays, however, was clearly influenced by their environment, arguably making these new plays African in nature. After all, these plays were written and produced within and about the African context by people who were beginning to call
Northern Rhodesia home.
It is important, however, not to overlook the theatre of the African locals.
Alongside this partially imported, but questionably African theatre, the theatre of the
African locals continued to develop. The British colonials were playing an increasingly larger role in it—not as participants, but as subject matter. Natives developed protest dance songs contesting the legitimacy of their British rulers, and the theatre soon became a central force in the anti-colonial movement—a point, as elaborated on by Mlama, that is often overlooked or understated in African liberation and theatre studies.22 School teacher Chris Boa was one of the most influential African playwrights in the liberation movement. Boa wrote plays riddled with anti-colonial euphemisms and metaphors. He taught these plays to his students who would perform them for the rest of the school and the community. He was eventually arrested by colonial police in the 1950s at the height of the independence struggle, and he burnt most of his manuscripts to destroy the evidence for his incrimination. His plight became almost central to African demonstrations against colonization.23
21 Ibid. 22 Mlama, Culture and Development, 57-58. 23 Michael Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” Theatre Quarterly 3, no. 10 (1973): 46. 12
Northern Rhodesian became independent in October 1964, after a series of international talks that defined the constitution, government organization, and leadership for the new nation-state.24 This new nation would demand a new national culture—a necessity that President Kenneth Kaunda recognized from the outset in what has become known as his Watershed speech:
The whole issue, therefore, becomes one of identity in terms of culture. It becomes one of deliberately developing those cultural values which we recognize as good in our own past. It becomes one of rejecting and indeed fighting those cultural activities from other lands which may destroy our cultural values, thereby not only dehumanizing us, but also making us faint carbon copies of themselves.25
The power of culture, and consequently the power of theatre, was immediately recognized by British colonials as an efficient means for securing and maintaining their land claim in Africa during the colonial period, as well as enforcing their cultural and racial superiority. Likewise, President Kaunda recognized theatre’s ability to facilitate his own power consolidation, as well as its ability to unite this new nation comprised of seventy-two diverse tribes and four languages.26
Kaunda’s cultural and theatrical stance was governed by his national philosophy of Zambian Humanism. Culture was the hub of this strictly anti-capitalist philosophy that espoused to create a national culture out of many diverse pre-existing Zambian lifestyles.
27 Communalism was inherent to humanism, as were hospitality, self-reliance, and respect for human dignity. All were considered necessary components of a truly
24 Zambia’s independence can dually be attributed to the independence movement, as well as Britain’s whole scale abandonment of their African colonies (see citation 25). 25 Stewart Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology in Zambian Theatre,” Journal of African Studies 16, no. 2 (1990): 296. 26 Trevor Grundy, “Zambia: jigsaw puzzle,” The London Times, 18 January 1977, col. F, p. VIII. 27 David Kerr, African Popular Theatre from pre-colonial times to the present day (London: James Currey Ltd., 1995), 143. 13 egalitarian society, humanism’s final objective.28 It was a noble and even utopian ideal; and if successful, it could have created a durable and peaceful society. Humanism’s ideological components, however, were far more grounded in the theoretical than they were in the practical. Kaunda proposed to carve a homogenous culture out of a diverse nation that was now comprised of pre-colonial and new post-colonials Zambians. British settlers had started new lives in Northern Rhodesia; and more important for the sake of this discussion, they created families. They had children whose only home was Zambia.
They had familial ties to Britain, but they were Zambian. Independence did not change that. They had no intention of returning to a homeland with which they did not identify.
It is clear from Kaunda’s national philosophy and his Watershed speech that he did not take this British expatriate demographic into account, at least not publicly. He sought to promote a homogenous identity that would erase over half a century of colonial rule. This may have been the radicalism he needed to gain the support of black Zambians during the independence struggle, but this same ideology could not withstand the post- colonial era. By the end of the 1960s, Humanism’s imminent failure was evident, for which Etherton’s expulsion is a testament. The ramifications of such a failure resonated throughout the national policy’s hub—throughout culture, and most notably, throughout the theatre.
It is important to note before delving into the complexities of post-colonial
Zambian theatre that Zambian ties to Britain did not solely exist because of people who partially identified themselves with England. Zambia and Britain were linked not only culturally, but politically and economically as well. The British government, prior to the
28 Patrick E. Idoye, “Ideology and Theatre: The Case of Zambia,” Journal of Black Studies 19, no. 1 (1988): 71-72. 14 colony’s formal independence, supervised the presidential elections, limiting them to a
“secret ballot of members,” oversaw commission appointments, requiring British consent, and instituted financial programs and commonwealth membership for the new nation.29
England had also agreed to give Zambia £5,750,000 in financial aid.30 Incoming
President Kaunda publicly explained that Zambia would need to “lean very heavily on
Britain for technical and other forms of aid” upon independence.31 In the months leading up to independence, talks between Zambian and British officials lead to an agreement: the day of Zambian independence would also mark the day of Zambia’s induction into the British Commonwealth.32 On October 24, 1964, Zambia’s Independence Day, public statements from both nations’ leaders were published side-by-side in the London Times.
Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda commented, “We look forward to a strengthening of the old ties of friendship, cooperation, and good will which exist between Zambia and
Britain,” while the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson reiterated, “It is important to realize that Britain and Zambia are bound by many ties, and that our close and cordial relationship will grow deeper with the years.”33
Such ties were exemplified in planning for the national university. The British government fronted half of the building costs and spear-headed an international search for the University’s Vice Chancellor. The mining companies offered an additional
£20,000, and the BSA Company £100,000.34 Kaunda clearly viewed international
29“First Commissioner in Zambia,” The London Times, 22 July 1964, col. F, p. 8. “Republic of Zambia,” The London Times, 20 May 1964, col. A, p. 9. “Zambia to Join Commonwealth,” The London Times, 6 June 1964, col. E, p. 10. 30 “Needs of Independent Zambia,” The London Times, 8 July 1964, col. F, p. 6. 31 “Republic of Zambia,” The London Times, 24 October 1964, col. A, p. 9. 32 “Zambia to Join Commonwealth,” The London Times, 6 June 1964, col. E, p. 10. 33 “Messages from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the Republic of Zambia,” The London Times, 24 October 1964, col. E, p. ii. 34 “Plans for Zambia University,” The London Times, 16 May 1964, col. F, p. 6. 15 relations with Britain as inevitable for Zambia’s success; however, he failed to calculate how Zambia’s external affairs would influence her internal affairs. This oversight would prove fatal to national culture and identity.
Kaunda’s national ideology and subsequent national culture were hindered by binary terms that failed to represent Zambia’s complex identity. By polarizing his citizens and political ideals into categories such as Zambian and British, black and white, western and non-western, Kaunda over-simplified Zambia’s complex culture. He emphasized the traditional, communal, and arguably pre-colonial demographics of society, while ignoring the modern, post-colonial complexities—complexities that accounted for Zambia’s very existence. Ironically, it was those who identified with the traditional ideals (primarily rural peasants) whose livelihood often suffered at the whim of those who embraced more modern identities.35 Kaunda’s inability to achieve an egalitarian society in Zambia exacerbated the political, economic, and social stakes conflated with these binary constructs, and the ambiguous, ill-fitted homogenous culture he attempted to construct fell apart at the seams.
The Players Now
These same binary terms, and others of a similar nature, continue to hinder modern studies of Zambian culture today. Often, in more recent Zambian and other
African theatrical studies, historians seek to claim justice for “traditional” Zambian theatrical practices that have been belittled or entirely ignored by earlier Zambian cultural
35 Grundy, “Zambia: jigsaw puzzle,” VIII. Michael Etherton, “Plays the thing but demand for fertilizer comes first,” The London Times, 1 December 1977, col. A, p. XV. 16 studies. Many historians and intellectuals, such as Kees P. Epskamp, Mda Zakes, Penina
Muhando Mlama, have recently approached Zambian cultural studies as activists and revolutionaries seeking to free real Zambian traditions from the neo-colonialists who have suppressed them. This is a noble cause indeed. Mid-twentieth century studies often failed to address what contemporary researchers would describe as “non-western” theatrical traditions. Their research focused on the colonial “Little Theatres,” and these theatres’ development within the post-colonial state as the Theatre Association of Zambia
(TAZ). Rarely did they include portrayals of other Zambian theatre traditions embodied by groups like the University of Zambia’s student club UNZADRAMS, Chikwakwa
Theatre, or the Zambian National Theatre Arts Association (ZANTAA), which were growing in popularity throughout the new nation-state. The revolutionary approaches
(represented by the works of scholars like Epskamp, Zakes, and Mlama), however, often suffer from the same one-dimensionality as their predecessors. In an attempt to vindicate an oppressed tradition they seek to debunk the validity of the more “western” traditions found in Zambia. Yet in the process, they fail to accurately portray the diverse spectrum of Zambian culture, following in the footsteps of the researchers they seek to correct.
The confining binaries manifest themselves in juxtapositions such as ritual versus theatre,
Zambian or African versus British or European, western or modern versus traditional, text-based versus performance-based, art versus education, and black versus white-- each espousing a mutual exclusivity that is simply not evidenced in the case of Zambia.
The juxtaposition of ritual with theatre is at the heart of debate over the existence
(or non-existence) of pre-colonial African theatre. Historian David Kerr, on the one hand, argues that the comic sketches, dances, masquerades, narrative and funerary 17 dramas, as well as the initiation and spirit possession rites are clear examples of the existence of pre-colonial theatrical traditions in Africa.36 Dance is most widely accepted as an example of pre-colonial cultural traditions; however, many performance historians, such as Richard Schechner, categorize many of these pre-colonial African theatrical practices as a form of ritual, often religious in nature. Schechner also claims the two
(ritual and theatre) are quite similar in form, both functioning to restore a specified behavior. Ritual, however, is originary, while theatre is derivative.37
Historian Margaret Thompson Drewal refutes Schechner’s claim, pointing out that, while ritual and theatre may appear similar in practice, the two are perceived quite differently by participants and immediate spectators.38 Pre-colonial African theatrical traditions were, in Drewal’s view, the key to creating authentic post-colonial traditions, but the debate over their very existence hindered Zambian culture internally and the perceptions and historiography of Zambian culture externally. The ritual/theatre debate employs specific definitions for ‘theatre,’ ‘ritual,’ and ‘drama’ used when debating many of the other binaries. These definitions, as Kerr points out, are “loaded with meanings derived from European rather than African culture.”39 In one historian’s comment alone, the next binary is brought to light—Zambian or African versus British or European
The Zambian/European binary is exemplified in the works of many historians and unsuccessfully corrected as a western/traditional binary by the more revolutionary scholars. Graham-White, Crehan, and Idoye deem TAZ’s theatre and theatres like
Chikwakwa European and Zambian, respectively. Graham-White and Crehan unfairly
36 Kerr, “African Popular Theatre,” 1-15. 37 Margaret Thompson Drewal, “The State of Research on Performance in Africa,” African Studies Review 34, no. 3 (1991): 18. Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” 44. 38 Drewal, “The State of Research,” 18-19. 39 Kerr, “African Popular Theatre,” 1. 18 declare TAZ the superior of the two, evaluating both theatres in accordance with the
“loaded” terms ridiculed by Kerr. Graham-White contends that, while some African publishers had sprung up by 1974, the best theatrical works were still published in
Europe and were inherently European in style.40 Idoye, on the other hand, favors
Chikwakwa, but for reasons that are often idealistic, naively assuming that Chikwakwa successfully embodied all of its initial objectives. Mlama sought to rectify these works by dismissing theatres like TAZ as neo-colonial, demonizing their European or western nuances. Chikwakwa (and the subsequent People’s Popular Theatre movement), on the contrary, represented a theatre seeking traditionalism—true Zambian culture. At times this movement failed to achieve the desired traditionalism, which Mlama attributes to the ignorance of expatriates like Etherton and Horn who spear-headed the movement but lacked sufficient knowledge of African traditions to do so successfully.41 Historian
Lekan Oyegoke further clarifies the binary by creating a ternary: traditional performance
(oral traditions), indigenous language drama (scripted or unscripted in an African language), and African drama (scripted in the former colonial language).42 These historians have separated the formerly colonized from the descendents of former colonials, ignoring that both parties comprise the new independent nation.
The text-based versus performance-based binary is tightly linked to this
Zambian/European binary. It is also through this binary that we see historical players, such as Michael Etherton, transcend into contemporary historiography. As the cultural events of the 1960s and 1970s in Zambia become history, the conflicts that plagued the
40 Graham-White, Drama in Black Africa, 89. 41 Mlama, Culture and Development, 59-61. 42 Lekan Oyegoke, “Issues in the Criticism of African Drama,” Pre-Colonial and Post-Colonial Drama and Theatre in Africa, Lokangaka Losamba and Devi Sarinjeive, ed. (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2001), 152. 19 period maintain their relevance and remain contemporary. Delineating between past and present becomes difficult, and the contrivances of history-making are illuminated.
Scholars Graham-White and Crehan often validated European-inspired theatre’s superiority by utilizing this Zambian/European binary. Graham-White, as we have seen, measured Zambian theatrical successes by examining the published play-texts—a common practice Etherton strongly contested when founding Chikwakwa and writing his later work The Development of African Drama, published in 1982. Crehan attributes
Etherton’s attitude to a bitter resentment of racial segregation and a colonial education policy that promoted theatrical publication; however, more than expressing a bitter resentment, Etherton was actually attempting to defend what he believes was an inherent part of the Zambian theatrical tradition: an unscripted, improvisational, performance- based theatre.43 In Etherton’s words, “There is no written work to perform; therefore the work of art is the collective composition. This is a crucial concept for understanding how
African theatre will develop.”44 Zambian theatre would not develop as the literary form
Graham-White and Crehan, along with other foreign educated scholars like Michael R.
Ward, expected. Ward contended, “As of yet [1974], we have no complete identity for
Zambian literature, let alone Zambian drama.”45 Etherton claimed the two traditions were not and would not be interdependent in Zambia; in fact, literary publication can often be counter-intuitive to a work that is strongly improvisational and adaptable for various audience responses. There are often few scripted words to write, but instead general directions for the performers. These directions intentionally do not lend themselves to any literary merit. They are simply instructions for a performative work that are not 43 Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 303. 44 Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” 44. 45 Michael R. Ward, “Two Zambian Plays: Reworkng the Colonial Experience in the Context of Modern Theatre,” African Social Research, no. 18 (1974): 688. 20 intended for publication; therefore, examining the success of Zambian theatre based on the published-play texts is simply inadequate.46
Much of African performance, however, was studied as literature or relegated to the realm of folklore until the 1980s. Researchers attempted to translate and publish performance-based traditions in Africa in order to compare them with western or literary- based traditions. Drewal contends such practices only served to turn the performances into “things” and “artifacts” for study, and consequently de-contextualized them from the performative circumstances in which they were created.
Researchers seem unbothered by such de-contextualization, however, until the
1970s, when specific concern developed for these performances’ social and communal context and meaning. Re-contextualizing these traditions was slowly achieved and more often stunted by historians who simply sought objective and ahistorical descriptions of context, rather than the socially and communally situated meanings.47 Etherton accuses such objectivity-seeking historians of thievery, stealing foreign culture and traditions and presenting them in irrelevant objective categories that misconstrue African performances within the western tradition of “great works” or the Aristotelian theatrical conceptions
(i.e. unities of time and place, specific plot construction, character types, heightened language, etc.).48 The performance-based traditions were consequently stripped of their meaning, which inherently varied from performance to performance and audience to audience.49 “Live performances,” Etherton argues, “are the most ephemeral of all art.”50
It is consequently particularly difficult for an outsider to understand what s/he’s
46 Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” 44-46. 47 Drewal, “The State of Research,” 23-24. 48 Michael Etherton, The Development of African Drama (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1982), 23- 26. 49 Ibid, 37-38. 50 Ibid, 36. 21 watching, and any attempt at objectivity is often skewed towards the outsiders biased perceptions of what constitutes performance and theatre.51
Many of these perceptions are not only formulated around more well-known literary-based theatre, but also around theatre’s objectives as an art form and an educational tool. This is another issue that historical figures weighed in on after the initial decades of cultural innovation in Zambia. In 1980, Zambian playwright Kabwe
Kasoma reasoned that art for art’s sake is simply impractical in a new nation:
A theatre that is purely for entertainment and nothing else is a luxury for a nation that is in a hurry. This hurry is hear defined as an obsession for national development… While Paris, Moscow, and New York can afford to spend away an evening buried in the illusory ecstasy of the Aristotelian mode of theatre of pure entertainment, Lusaka, Bangui, and Rio de Janeiro can ill-afford to spend the few dollars they have on art for art’s sake.52
Kasoma also contends, however, “In Zambia, we believe that theatre can instruct as well as entertain…I firmly believe that it is inconceivable to call anything theatre which does not have the beauty characterized by a work of art.”53 This is a view that many researchers have come to share. Etherton concludes that artistic and/or educational theatre forms “are not alternative views or even mutually-exclusive discussions.”54
Crehan, similarly, maintains a similar conclusion.
The realization that social and personal relationships can be comprehended, criticized, and hopefully changed through their dramatic and theatrical representation is, in this case, profound. Hence, the falsity of the choice between ‘art and education’, ‘aesthetics and didacticism.’55
51 Ibid. 52 Kabwe Kasoma, “Theatre for National Development,” International Theatre Information, nos. 1-2 (1980): 90. 53 Ibid. 54 Michael Etherton, “Zambia—popular theatre,” New Theatre Magazine 12, no. 2 (1972): 19. 55 Stewart Crehan, “Fathers and Sons: Politics and Myth in Recent Zambian Drama,” New York Quarterly 3, no. 9 (1987): 34. 22
Therefore, while Zambian theatre requires a level of educational instruction, this educational merit does not limit its artistic merit. The two, rather, peacefully co-exist, and further discussion of the binary is irrelevant.
The final binary in discussion, black versus white, is further complicated and arguably debunked by Etherton’s statement, “It isn’t sufficient to take a play by a black writer [in Zambia] and say you’re doing African theatre.”56 This statement harkens back to Zambian/European and western/traditional binaries that attempt to define Zambian theatre. Etherton proposes that it is not a matter of race or nationality. It is, instead, a matter of style and content. He goes onto examine just what substantiates Zambian theatrical style and content, but the point at issue with this binary, as well as with the others, is an existing created culture for which these oppositions do no service. Each of these binaural arguments fails to illuminate the prevalent overlap of each category. Such an overlap is exemplified in the expatriate Zambians like Etherton who sought to create a more traditionalist theatre. They do not describe, but simply overlook the intrinsic complications of cultural development in a newly birthed nation. The binaries dismiss the diverse individuals who fall into each category (and sometimes both) regardless of their citizenship, nationality, race, social class, or political perspective by turning them into generalized concepts.
The process of understanding cultural creation in post-colonial Zambia is clearly complicated. The historical themes involving race, ethnicity, nationality, art, literature, theatre, and education cannot be defined in neat, mutually-exclusive categories; nor, can these themes be relegated as solely historical. These issues that surrounded Zambian
56 John Barnor, “Michael Etherton, Lecturer in English at the University of Zambia, is interviewed on Zambia’s Experimental Theatre,” Cultural events in Africa 64, (1970): ii. 23 theatre and culture during the 1960s and 70s continue to be relevant in the historiography today, as do historical figures such as Michael Etherton and Kabwe Kasoma. The contrivances of culture-creation, nation-building, and history-making are, consequently, illuminated in the case of Zambia, which is important to note when attempting to make sense of the series of events.
The Players Then
When Zambia achieved independence in 1964, the Northern Rhodesia Drama
Association (NRDA) remained entirely in the hands of Zambian citizens of British descent. Few attempts had been made to include the natives or their theatrical traditions.57 Upon official independence, NRDA changed its name to the Theatre
Association of Zambia (TAZ), but its reputation as an expatriate theatre remained unaltered. The newly titled TAZ continued to promote Shakespeare in the education systems and produce West-End hits on their main stages.58 Racial segregation laws were abolished upon independence, but TAZ continued to limit or altogether forbid the natives’ involvement.59 David Pownall, British expatriate, historian, and playwright, recalls writing two plays that required a black Zambian actor, but he admits his writing them was solely an attempt to satisfy the need for such scripts. The creative impetus was not present, and such theatrical creations were often visibly forced, the entire creative process artificial. “We wrote for both races, with overt intentions of getting both on stage together, but it seemed a lost cause, unsupported by both races.”60 Pownall, in 1973,
57 Pownall, “European and African Influences,” 51. 58 Ibid. 59 Idoye, Theatre and social change in Zambia, 65. 60 Pownall, “European and African Influences,” 51. 24 retrospectively comments on what he perceived as an increasingly prevalent impulse for
British theatre in Zambia, rather than an independent Zambian theatre itself.61
Pownall’s perceptions were undoubtedly propagated by TAZ’s annual national drama festivals. Participation was available to all Zambian theatres or theatre clubs from the secondary school level to the professional. These festivals promoted a national
Zambian culture in theory, but TAZ often flew in British adjudicators whose theatre perspectives varied quite drastically from that of the individuals who submitted their performances. The British adjudicators often focused on diction, delivery, timing, pauses, and overall clumsiness—theatrical criteria that were crucial to their theatrical traditions, but were far less relevant to many Zambians.62 After leaving Zambia in 1969 to become a British playwright, Pownall returned in 1971 to observe one of these festivals and was appalled to find the theatre culture had changed very little. He surveyed abysmal productions of outdated West-end comedies, Shakespeare, and newer West
African classics. His experience was much improved, however, when he saw two local productions of Kazembe and The Portuguese and Do You Love Me Master? by
Chikwakwa Theatre, a group that formed the year following his departure and was beginning to take Zambian theatre culture by storm.63 It is in the Chikwakwa theatre that we find the second player in Zambia’s cultural progression.
The idea for Chikwakwa originated in a course taught by Michael Etherton and
Andrew Horn at the University of Zambia in 1970. This course examined the style and function of a Zambian national theatre.64 Chikwakwa Theatre hoped to expand upon the student theatrical group UNZADRAMS formed in 1966 by creating a theatre workshop 61 Ibid. 62 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 109. 63 Pownall, “European and African Influences,” 51. 64 Idoye, Theatre and social change, 68. 25 in the region as part of the University’s Department of Field Studies, affording student’s with practical theatrical experience, and facilitating the development of Zambian culture, particularly in the rural areas.65 Chikwakwa is a Nayanja word meaning “grass- slasher”—a literal definition representing Chikwakwa’s grass-roots goals.66 Unlike TAZ,
Chikwakwa was a non-profit organization. It received some funding from the University, but the theatre primarily relied on private donations and the students’ and staffs’ free labor.
Chikwakwa’s performance space was strategically constructed to reach the organization’s grass-roots objectives. It was built two miles from campus near a working-class compound with the hopes of bridging the gap between the students (who represented an intellectual elite) and the working class.67 The performance space open-air theatre built with mud, stabilized earth, thatch, and eucalyptus. It was a temporary structure that was easily disassembled, but that also allowed room for Etherton’s vision of an additional dining room and recording studio. The theatre was rebuilt annually, furthering the theatre’s seasonality and communality in preparing the space for performance.68 The entire idea was supported by the students’ research into African theatrical traditions, as well as their desire to create a new Zambian popular theatre.69
Chikwakwa appealed to the urban masses by offering free tickets to the national newspapers based in Lusaka Daily Mail and Times of Zambia. They ensured media coverage in doing so, and subsequently spread the word about their theatre.70
65 Kees P. Epskamp, “Historical Outline of the Development of Zambian National Theatre,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 21, no. 2 (1987): 160. 66 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 142. 67 Ibid. 68 Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” 47-48. 69 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 142. 70 Idoye, Theatre and social change, 86. 26
However, they just as readily left their urban bubble to appeal to the rural masses.
Chikwakwa members organized tours to Zambia’s rural areas, living with locals in the bush for three days to learn and rehearse local dances, songs, and performance traditions.
They subsequently worked these practices into their plays, performing them for the locals in their native language whenever possible. Zambians who could not speak the local language substituted English or Pidgin English. This theatre was purposefully a strong juxtaposition of its counterpart TAZ, countering the popularly accepted notion among many Zambians (rural and urban) that the only true theatre was performed in English. 71
We want a theatre which stands as a sort of contradiction to the typical white bourgeois theatre that one has here which is so limited in its scope and when I say bourgeois theatre I mean theatre which observes the typical social behavior patterns of the bourgeoisie—people who dress up, and people who come in their cars and sit quietly, and do a number of conventional passive things during the production…We want instead to actually involve people in issues, to get them talking about what the play is…And also people who will come just as they are, with their families, after work.72
Etherton encouraged audience members to walk around during performance and feel free to interact with the actors and change the progression of the play. Etherton claimed rural peoples preferred a less stringent and stylized theatre.73 They wanted to watch people resembling themselves use their traditional performance props and methods to illustrate plots relevant to their lives. The objective—an event that involved the entire community as performers or spectators, or was at least accessible to the whole community beyond mere admission prices.74 Particular attention was also paid to President Kaunda, Zambian
Humanism, and anti/neo-colonialism.
71 Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” 46-48. 72 Barnor, John, “Michael Etherton interviewed,” i. 73 Ibid. 74 Etherton, “Zambia—popular theatre,” 19-21. 27
Etherton exemplifies all three of these concepts in a musical production note for his play Houseboy:
The [opening] song should be one which celebrates the normalcy of African life —either in the town or in the country, and which amply demonstrates, particularly to any whites in the audience, that there is a huge world of vibrant culture that lies beneath the colonial or neo-colonial veneer.75
Houseboy displays some of colonialism’s worst atrocities, idealizing traditional African culture as morally superior to that of the Europeans. When the white performers took their bow after the show at Chikwakwa, the voice of Toundi’s (one of the play’s African servants) was heard proclaiming through the theatre’s sound system, “Who claps the white man?”76
Similar ideals are portrayed in the works of one of Zambia’s most renowned playwrights Kabwe Kasoma. He wrote a trilogy of plays (one of which was published in
Britain) for Chikwakwa entitled Black Mamba, a derogatory name (after the lethally poisonous snake) often given by colonials to Africans involved in the independence movement. The trilogy outlined Kaunda’s life from boyhood, his instrumental role in
Zambian independence, and his eventual rise to power. Kasoma contends that the works are not political. Nonetheless, they depict President Kaunda as the protagonist and his anti-colonial and humanist ideals as the driving force of the independence movement.
Kasoma also maintains Chikwakwa’s objectives, articulating the primary goal as effective communication with the audiences; languages, songs, and dances should be chosen accordingly.77 Etherton celebrated Kasoma as the future of Zambian theatre, because of these works:
75 Ward, “Two Zambian Plays,” 682. 76 Ibid, 681. 77 Epskamp, “Historical Outline of Zambian National Theatre,” 159. Kabwe Kasoma, The Black Mamba Plays: a series of plays (Lusaka, 1970). 28
He is both theorist and activist; he is also dramatist and politician. If he can maintain his present impetus he is likely to the one person to bring about the development of a uniquely Zambian theatre, both in form and in content.78
Chikwakwa’s philosophy was manifest in Kasoma, and particularly in Etherton’s description of him. This philosophy was radically opposed to that of TAZ’s, but the objective to create and develop a Zambian theatre was mutual. Whether their diverging perspectives could co-exist, particularly under a president who sought a homogenous culture, would remain to be seen. The odds, however, were not in favor of such a peaceful existence.
The Plays
The stakes were high and embittered for creating an independent Zambian culture.
The president was propagating a singular, universal culture, and each party wanted to make sure that their cultural traditions were represented as part of that. This creative process was hardly homogenous or collaborative, and a rift between elitist and popular agendas was clear by the close of the 1960s. Crehan attributes this rift to lingering colonial tensions and the hands-on manner in which Zambia achieved her independence.79 Movements like Chikwakwa validated themselves with the newly found
African pride that had been suppressed for so long—a point clearly resonant with
Kaunda’s earlier Watershed speech.80 These popular movements often targeted theatres associated with TAZ as their suppression’s enforcers. It is important to note, however, as evidence by Etherton, Pownall, and Kasoma, that participants in each theatre tradition traversed the racial and ethnic gambit and both were initiated by social and intellectual elites, despite the elitist/popular juxtaposition.
78 Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” 46. 79 Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 302. 80 Mlama, Culture and Development, 63. 29
Neither side, however, claimed to have the final product; it was clear to all that defining Zambian culture would be difficult. Pownall recalls, “There was nothing clearly
Zambian in many ways because events were overtaking each other, changes flashing through society so quickly that writers and directors had no time to catch up.”81 London
Times journalist Trevor Grundy observed in 1977 that Zambians, in general, were using the term “culture” quite loosely.82 Even those who claimed the traditional African theatre recognized Zambia culture must be “dug for,” heavily researched, and developed.83 It would have to be fabricated and pieced together until it became a truthful reality.
TAZ and Chikwaka sympathizers alike ignored this inherent fabrication. The fabrication is, in turn, continually overlooked by researchers who attempt to prove the validity of one theatrical form over another, utilizing polarized binaries to define away the complexities and inconsistencies. TAZ and Chikwakwa (as well as subsequent movements) were both creating for the first time an altogether new culture for an altogether new nation. Their inability to recognize Zambia’s culture’s connate diversity would hinder their cooperation and cultural development in general. It was impossible to create a homogenous culture for such an eclectic group of people, just as it was impossible to prove one cultural interpretation’s validity over another’s. Building a
Zambian national culture was an original creative process—a fact with which TAZ and
Chikwakwa both needed to reconcile their cultural definitions. Unfortunately, this reconciliation never occurred.
81 Pownall, “European and African Influence,” 51. 82 Grundy, “Zambia: jigsaw puzzle,” VIII. 83 Ibid. Kasoma, “Theatre for National Development,” 90. Peter Chakulanda, “Towards a Zambian National Theatre,” Chikwakwa Review (1974-75): 14. Etherton, “Zambia—popular theatre,” 19. 30
Be this as it may, TAZ and Chikwakwa were not the only institutions fronting cultural development. Kaunda advocated the reassertion of a culture lost to colonialism from the outset of his rule. The government was always an overt force in the development and promotion of national culture, with particular regards to the theatre.
Government officials often attended the theatre, sitting conspicuously in the front rows and at times offering speeches once the performance concluded. In October 1967, the
Department of Cultural Services hosted a theatrical festival in honor of the third anniversary of Zambian independence; subsequently, the festival became an annual occurrence, strengthening the government’s ties to national culture and theatre. The government played an active rule in cultural construction from the beginning, and many theatre artists (regardless of political affiliation) sought its patronage and support.84
Chikwakwa was no exception to this universal interest in state patronage. The theatre’s initial relationship with the government was friendly. Chikwakwa embraced
Kaunda’s national policy and produced three plays (Kasoma’s Black Mamba trilogy) that sang the government’s praises. The height of the theatre and president’s kindred relationship was actualized when Kaunda attended Chikwakwa’s production of Che
Guevara in 1970. The friendship, however, was short-lived. The theatre’s founders
Etherton and Horn were deported the next year (after the student protest at the French
Embassy), and while the government still played a key role in cultural development, its demeanor was shifting from that of fostering paternalism to constricting totalitarianism.
Kaunda’s rhetoric about humanism and a universally accessible culture rang hollow.85
84 Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 296-297. 85 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 143-144. 31
He supported a nationalized culture, but a nationalized culture created in the state’s, not the peoples’, interest.
The Audience
Zambia’s theatre culture quickly became politicized, though that was never the primary intent of any involved party. Politics and culture became inextricably linked, and cultural accessibility was at the forefront of this political discourse. Popular movements, in particular, became increasingly concerned with the audiences—namely the unrepresented audiences. Chikwakwa’s most successful ventures, by far, were its theatre workshops based in the rural provinces.86 Etherton, from the outset in 1969, considered these workshops exceedingly more important than the work done in Lusaka.87
These workshops went beyond Chikwakwa’s paternalistic slogan of “bringing theatre to the people,” and involved the rural villagers in the creative process itself. They were an educational experience for both. Chikwakwa members were often surprised by villagers who applauded their production’s educational merit; they had never intended on being an educational theatre. Nonetheless, they adjusted their sights to the villager’s demands, pioneering new workshops focused on healthcare, cattle prices, and bridal dowries— issues relevant to the people, not just the ruling classes.88
Chikwakwa members simultaneously learned just how much many of these people still embraced their pre-colonial tribal traditions. In Loziland, the chief watched
Chikwakwa’s performances in a hut situated in front of villagers who were never to turn their back when the chief was in their presence.89 Etherton recollects a number of occasions when a tribe’s participatory traditions were fervently upheld. He was about to 86 Ibid. 87 Etherton, “Zambia—popular theatre,” 20. 88 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 143-145. 89 Epskamp, “Historical Outline of Zambian National Theatre,” 170. 32 enter the performance space to get “roughed up by thugs,” when audience members began the roughing up before he ever got there. On another occasion, village police arrested a play’s “criminal” character.90 These examples of enduring cultural customs illuminate the nature of African pre-colonial theatrical traditions. When Zambian Theatre belonged to the “bush,”
Theatre came out of man’s life, out of his lifestyles. Theatre came out of incantations, the rituals, the festivals and the celebrations of life in the communal society. It was communicated and articulated through man’s mode of expression.91
Large theatre houses and entertainment pressures were non-existent. Audiences could observe for free, and they often brought gifts for the actors as a sign of appreciation.
These ever-present ties to a traditional past indicate that not all Zambians have embraced modernization. People may not have changed as much as previously thought, perhaps requiring an adjustment in cultural policy.92
Chikwakwa’s initial objectives remained the same, but their tactics began to vary.
A larger number of traveling workshops were organized, furthering slogans coined by
President Kaunda like, “a country without a culture is like a body without a soul.”93
Every year during the 1970s, Chikwakwa members traveled to at least one rural province with new and increasingly relevant workshops and plays for the peasants. The students went on their own trip without staff leadership in 1973, solely performing Zambian scripts and reaching their destinations by public transportation (as opposed to University vehicles). Stolen money, broken-down transportation, lost props, and other accommodation inconveniences inhibited earlier trips. The 1973 tour quelled these
90 Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” 48. 91 Chakulanda, “Towards a National Zambian Theatre,” 10. 92 Mlama, Culture and Development, 61. 93 Epskamp, “Zambian National Theatre,” 161. 33 potential misfortunes by eliminating them, making the tours more modest and adaptable.
In 1975, none of the students could speak the chosen province’s language, Silozi. They instead organized an improvisational workshop with one of the provincial schools, making their Silozi-speaking students the workshop’s performers.94
In 1979, unfortunately, Chikwakwa’s funding bottomed out, and its role as an active player in Zambian cultural creation dwindled. Their traveling workshops, however, caught on and were adopted by political and developmental campaigns alike as educational tools for the rural masses that were often distanced physically and ideologically from the main-stream society.95 These campaign groups and other theatrical companies that developed in Chikwakwa’s wake increasingly sought more efficient and less pretentious methods of reaching out and relating to these masses. Such developments, however, soon received scrutiny from more progressive artists who were put off by such “parading of middle-class, urban-based theatre movements as examples of ‘African Culture’ ”—a reality that triggered the traveling theatre movement in the first place, but still continued to plague its success.96
The Climax
Cultural development was not stagnant back in Lusaka either. Chikwakwa
Theatre may have perished, but the cultural debate never faded. The battle persisted between UNZADRAMS and TAZ. UNZADRAMS bitterly withdrew from TAZ’s annual festival in 1973, enraged about British adjudicator Arthur Hodgson’s critique of their performance of Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed. A public debate between the two groups surged in the national newspaper Daily Mail. UNZADRAMS claimed 94 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 143-144. 95 Epskamp, “Zambian National Theatre,” 162-164. Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 299. 96 Mlama, Culture and Development, 64. 34
Hodgson did not understand the African play and could not comprehend why Zambian audience members laughed while their British counterparts cried. TAZ retorted with an equally vengeful accusation. “What they [UNZADRAMS] appear not to appreciate is that before being able to act or write plays one must study the theatre, the form of production, the limitations as well as the possibilities.”97 This was not the first altercation between the two companies. A similar instance took place in 1969 when David Pownall, a self-proclaimed Zambian theatre advocate, relegated UNZADRAMS’ entry Kasoma’s
The Fools Marry as one of the worst in the competition. The play was exceedingly popular at Chikwakwa, accruing audience of over seven hundred people per night.
UNZADRAMS contended Pownall was incapable of understanding the piece’s comedic nature and instead misinterpreted it as a poorly produced tragedy.98
Such differences in opinion led UNZADRAMS to create their own theatre association in 1975, which they named ZANTAA (Zambian National Theatre Arts
Association).99 The creation of ZANTAA inevitably led to further conflict between the two groups as each of their ideologies was increasingly formalized. Stephen Chifunyise,
Zambia’s Director of Culture, issued a public statement in 1978 lambasting TAZ:
We have an ‘inferior’ culture. They have a ‘superior’ culture. We have ‘no playwrights.’ They have playwrights, we have no ‘theatre’, they have theatre. We are even trying to make them realise that theatre is not only the British type which they want us to do. British theatre is what it [TAZ] has been doing for the last 75 years. They must select a ‘decent’ theatre and that is selected from British theatre. It is not selected from our own.100
Twelve years after independence those stifling binaries continue to rear their ugly heads. By 1979, however, ZANTAA was expanding rapidly and felt comfortable voicing
97 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 110. 98 Ibid, 109-110. 99 Ibid. 100 Stephen Chifunyise, “We have ‘no playwrights’,” Index on Censorship II, no. 2 (1982): 35. 35 such bold claims and evidently even bolder. They petitioned the government for recognition as Zambia’s single national theatrical organization, which only granted them a reduction in government funding during a period of increasing inflation. ZANTAA- associated theatres continued to flourish along the railroads in 1980, despite this minor setback.101 Bolstered by this theatrical renaissance, ZANTAA, again, called for TAZ’s dissolution and ZANTAA’s recognition as the nation’s official theatre in 1982.102
Kaunda’s response was telling.
Kaunda’s rule had become increasingly more conservative after the deportation in
1971. He outlawed all oppositional political parties in 1972 and began extensively banning theatre works in 1978.103 Kasoma’s Black Mamba trilogy was surprisingly forbidden for depicting Kaunda’s political rival Mwansa Kapwepwe. The period of theatre artists eagerly seeking their government’s support and patronage as a progressive act towards national culture had certainly ended. The need for more stringent policies was exacerbated by the conclusion of the neighboring civil war in Zimbabwe in 1980.
The war had long been the government’s scapegoat for explaining ongoing inequality and poverty in Zambia after 1964.104
Kaunda’s relationship with the theatre, however, was always paradoxical. Crehan refers to Kaunda’s theatrical and cultural policy as an “old-fashioned, mission-school approach,” attributing Kaunda’s lack of understanding towards Chikwakwa,
UNZADAMS, and ZANTAA to his upbringing, initial education, and return to a Church
101 Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 299. 102 Crehan, “Fathers and Sons,” 35. 103“Zambia move to suppress all opposition,” The London Times, 31 October 1972, col. F, p. 6. Idoye, Theatre and social change, 73. Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 299-301. 104 Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 301. 36 of Scotland mission in Lubwa where his parents both served as religious leaders.105
Etherton blames Kaunda’s mission-style perspective for Kaunda’s subsequent endorsement of the National Dance Troupe as well as televised productions strictly presented in English (all other languages forbidden), which, he argues, led to a commoditization of traditional practices. Etherton, furthermore, attributes cultural commoditization to the systematic evolution of African traditions into empty shells of their former selves.106 In other words, Kaunda supported a static, generic culture, which popular theatre affronted. Coupled with his mission background, Kaunda’s cultural perspective was undoubtedly favored by the British when supporting his initial election.
This is not, however, to underplay Kaunda’s radical role as the leader of Zambia’s independence movement, but simply illuminate the practical inconsistencies. The people initially favored Kaunda. A rift had not always existed between him and the popular theatre movements. He originally supported, funded, and publicly celebrated all three, and continued to do so in ZANTAA’s case (although at a reduced rate), despite their refusal to merge with TAZ. On the other hand, he was a fickle supporter. He praised some works, while lambasting others with seemingly little governing logic.107 His perpetually convoluted cultural stance continued as such, but with progressively tighter reigns, as evidenced by Black Mamba’s ban.
105 Ibid, 297. Kenneth D. Kaunda and Colin Morris, Black Government (Lusaka: United Society of Christian Literature, 1960), 7-10. 106 Etherton, Development of African Drama, 315-316. Etherton, “Indigenous Performance in Zambia,” 44-46. Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 182. John Conteh-Morgan, African Drama and Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 49. 107 For example, he publicly praised Dickson Mwansa’s The Cell, which was produced at Tikiwiza Theatre (ZANTAA affiliate) and notably won TAZ’s theatre festival in 1979-- the very work that three years later instigated threatening phone calls to Tikwiza from government officials. (Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 293-297.) 37
Kaunda’s strictly homogenous cultural policy resounded with new clarity while simultaneously maintaining a convoluted air. Therefore when ZANTAA appealed to the government again in 1982, it must not have been too shocking when Kaunda responded with a call for a TAZ/ZANTAA merger. He described the two groups as too divisive and hoped they could united, forming one unified Zambian cultural front.108 Two prominent theatre troupes did not fit into his vision for a homogenous culture. Such a merger would also dispel some of the binary rhetoric evident in his earlier speeches and manifest in these theatre movements. Perhaps he finally succumbed to the inevitability of diversity in a universal Zambian culture, or perhaps it was simply a political self-preservation strategy. Regardless of the reason, ZANTAA refused to comply. The government cut their funding by four-fifths, and the media immediately ridiculed them for such a subversive and treasonous act.109 Kaunda, contradictively, gave a speech the following year, proclaiming, “We need playhouses and theatres in our cities, towns, and villages.
Let us organize to provide these. Let us build”—a bold attempt to revitalize his role in cultural creation. The speech appealed to the masses, including all Zambian peoples from every region. Kaunda’s policy, again, appeared inclusive.
Signs of compromise were also on the horizon. Tripartite talks between the government, TAZ, and ZANTAA began successfully the next year. Many ZANTAA affiliates felt betrayed, but ZANTAA felt it was part of their national duty. ZANTAA was the ongoing defying agent during the talks, but they eventually agreed to a merger in
1986.110 TAZ and ZANTAA became one under the banner National Theatre Arts
Association of Zambia (NATAAZ).111 ZANTAA agreed to the arrangement with the 108 Crehan, “Fathers and Sons,” 35. 109 Ibid. 110 111 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 111. 38 expectation for better and less segregated theatre conditions. They also did not want to incriminate the University, with whom they were affiliated, which was already experiencing sufficient government scrutiny after a student protest against the newly formed Institute of Relations in 1982.112 The government severely minimized student activities, making it a puppet of Party politics with little individual autonomy.113
NATAAZ was the first collaborative step for a unitary culture; however, many more were in the trappings.
Kaunda had rallied for village and urban theatres alike; however, the practicalities, particularly for rural theatre, were still unclear. The Chikwakwa-inspired traveling theatre movement had already been abandoned by the close of the 1970s. The initial concerns of progressives who feared the consequences of middle-class, bourgeois elites parading through the villages with their theatre workshops proved valid. The movement failed to fully integrate the elites and peasants. It inherently implied that the peasants had no theatre culture of their own, often excluded them from the creative process, and ineffectively sought to disseminate a middle-class theatre among villagers who needed a theatre practice that stemmed from their own lifestyles. The workshops assumed they were not capable of doing this on their own, or that they hadn’t already done so.114 Etherton found during his short-lived experience with Chikwakwa’s traveling theatre that the villagers maintained a plethora of rich theatrical traditions. Attempts to include these villagers in the formative culture forming back in Lusaka were irrelevant to the rural individuals’ lives.
112 Students asserted the Institute was simply part of the government’s agenda to thrust its “bankrupt” bourgeois Humanism philosophy on the University in hopes of creating a pool of Party support. 113 Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 299. 114 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 147. Mlama, Culture and Development, 65. 39
The movement responded by shifting gears, and in 1979 a “Theatre for
Development” workshop was organized in Chalimbana. Theatre artists assembled with people from five different villages to assess the most efficient manner to utilize performance practices as a tool for development. The objective was to actively engage the villagers in discussion about the themes they would like to see represented in the performances. Unfortunately, the workshop was plagued with many of the same inadequacies as the traveling theatre. There was simply not enough time during the two week period to really involve the villagers who played no part in the workshop’s organization. They offered commentary, but were rarely able to actively participate in the action. It remained an urban-based, middle-class affair, and made little impact on the villagers’ lives once it had ended.115
Chalimbana, however, was not a complete failure. It promoted Theatre for
Development for the first time, and many groups attempted to perfect the process in later years (i.e. Brother of Man, The Ministry of Health, Target 200, etc.).116 Many of these efforts, unfortunately, lacked political support and bureaucratic efficiency.117 This, apparently, was not the type of village theatre Kaunda had intended.
Despite the lack of government support, the impetus was not entirely disregarded.
A search continued for a theatre relevant to all masses under the ensign of “People’s
Popular Theatre.” Etherton described it as performance that would attract each sect of
Zambia’s diverse population regardless of social class or education with the ability to teach and entertain.118 “The popular theatre movement may be seen,” Mlama explains,
115 Ibid, 172. Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 154-155. 116 Ibid, 155. 117 Epskamp, “Historical Outline of Zambian National Theatre,” 165. 118 Ibid, 160. 40
“as an effort to develop a type of theatre that is relevant to people’s life and struggle opposed to the theatre of entertainment and abstraction from reality of the dominant classes...a tool for improving life in its totality”—a statement akin to Kasoma’s initial lament of art for art’s sake.119 The People’s Popular Theatre was, in theory, quite similar if not exactly the same as Chikwakwa’s original mission statement and Kaunda’s inaugural humanistic ideals. It was an attempt to re-capture pre-colonial traditions for the national culture with a communal, rather than a commoditized, emphasis. The title and methods may have changed, but Chikwakwa’s revolutionary goals remained present.
Etherton, still in exile, founded a new organization in Nigeria, ABU Collective, for the development of a Peoples Popular Theatre.120
The Falling Action
While the methodology changed frequently, the People’s Popular Theatre movement encountered many of the same difficulties as its predecessors. The failure seemed inherent to the movement’s very structure, which still possessed an air of pretension. Popular theatre artists were not able to achieve their objectives, nor were they able to identify the root of their demise. Their perspectives were clouded by categorical binaries that pigeon-holed the nation’s cultural complexity. They had separated themselves into rural and urban, black and white, Zambian and British, traditional and developed. Such divisions hindered their inherent diversity, and stifled the necessary relationships for a collaborative and creative cultural process.
The elite administrations combined with the students, often representing a naïve, leftist elite, and the peasants made for complex and unconsciously loaded relationships.
119 Mlama, Culture and Development, 66. 120 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 161. 41
These relationships often read as patronizing— a “scape-goating of the poor,” as scholar
David Kerr has called it. Scape-goating the poor implied that their poverty and under- development was the product of their own devices, rather than the hierarchical system they survived in.121 Etherton published an article in 1977 in the London Times about
Chikwakwa’s traveling production about the lack of fertilizer in rural provinces. “The farmers replied that they would prefer the fertilizer, but if the plays were the only thing on offer than at least let them be about the farmers not getting the fertilizer which they were promised.”122 These peasant farmers also asked for the student’s aid in organizing themselves to obtain what was owed them. The students, unfortunately, were not trained to do this. The farmers also wanted more performances dealing with a number of other topics, which Chikwakwa had not allotted time for.123 It was these types of issues that continually stunted the People’s Popular Theatre movement. There was simply not enough time or means to cover all the necessary themes with sufficient follow-up.
Language barriers continued to be a problem as well, as many of the productions and workshops were still organized and funded by English-speaking urban elites.124 The leaders were often white British expatriates.125 It was difficult for all involved to overlook these oppositions and successfully relate to one another on a more fundamental level.
The movement was faltering in Lusaka as well. Crehan contends in 1987 that many of the ZANTAA-affiliated (by this time, a part of NATAAZ) entries in the annual festival did not embrace Chikwakwa’s principles. They were often, instead, pretentious
121 Ibid, 148-171. 122 Michael Etherton, “Plays the thing but demand for fertilizer comes first,” The London Times, 1 December 1977, col. A, p. XV. 123 Ibid. 124 Kerr, African Popular Theatre, 154-160. 125 Mlama, Culture and Development, 91. 42 and extravagant. They utilized elaborate stage lighting, curtains, make-up, sound effects, costumes, and technical props, and only one of their entries in the preceding three years was in the vernacular.126 This change in tradition was apparent in the scripts as well, and a decrease in state censorship developed accordingly:
It is remarkable how many plays at the ZANTAA and TAZ festivals portray corrupt and selfish bureaucrats, dictatorial chiefs, and selfish hypocritical fathers, while no one involved in the festivals will ever utter one word in public against the actual leadership.127
Kaunda appeared an impenetrable force, and during a time of high youth unemployment and limited job prospects it was not he who was attacked or the socio-economic (and arguably neo-colonial system) he employed. Instead, resentment was initiated on the stage against fathers and forefathers.128 This occurrence arguably alluded to revolutionary pre-colonial familial and tribal responsibilities, but the reference was one of a failed tradition that mirrored the failed peoples’ theatre.
Kaunda maintained his figurehead role as a cultural facilitator. The Department of Cultural Services issued its first handbook in 1988, filled with promises for clearer, pro-active goals in the future (i.e. disseminating cultural policy and preserving Zambian culture by recording and organizing national cultural affairs). These promises, however, never came to fruition.129
Theatre artists continued to grapple with this ineffectuality, blaming the government, colonialism, and other theatre artists—a blame game that is perpetuated by contemporary scholars as well. Mlama attributes the movement’s failures to the involvement of Euro-centric expatriate who could not look outside of their cultural
126 Crehan, “Fathers and Sons,” 35. 127 Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 300. 128 Crehan, “Fathers and Sons,” 34-40. 129 Cosmos Chibanda, Zambia Department of Cultural Services Departmental Handbook (Lusaka: 1988). 43 backgrounds to acknowledge the theatrical practices already in existence in Zambia. He admits that their broadened world view may have positively influenced the movement with an objective perspective, but in most cases this power was misunderstood and abused.130 Crehan claims the faults are inextricably linked to the movements ties to
Zambian independence and nationalism—a stagnant force after the nation’s formative years. Had the movement been affiliated with a more transitional and progressive cause, it may have faired better.131 Crehan’s explanation rings truer, steering clear of Mlama’s ethnic and racial juxtapositions that do not recognize the expatriates’ expected subjectivity when creating a national culture to represent themselves as well as the peasants. It was not merely a culture for the peasants, but for a nation of which both groups were citizens. What Crehan fails to recognize, on the other hand, is that Mlama’s historiographical failure was also a contemporary and universal failure at that time.
Theatrical and cultural development was not stunted because of its national ideals; the ideals were ever-evolving—reinvented twice after Chikwakwa’s initiation. Theatre artists continually worked to perfect their cultural ideals for a holistic benefit, fabricating and re-fabricating performance traditions and creative processes. Where they failed, however, was in the collaboration. They were stifled by terms that separated them as a national people (however seemingly contrived) into races, ethnicities, and international regions, and separated their cultural practices by levels of development, traditionalism, and educational and artistic merit. All the while, they were ignoring the individual merit each citizen had in the composite and subsequently largely diverse culture inherent from
Zambia’s Independence Day. This quandary was only exacerbated by political rhetoric
130 Mlama, Culture and Development, 91. 131 Crehan, “Patronage, the State and Ideology,” 302. 44 promoting a homogenous culture. Kaunda claimed that culture was the soul of the country, but failed to acknowledge that culture began with the souls—souls that in
Zambia’s case were fundamentally ignored.
The Denouement
The potential successes of a Zambian national culture were plagued individual exclusivity. In many ways, the personal biases of the colonial period undermined the egalitarian ideals, promoted by the president himself, of the post-colonial era. Zambian citizens did not identify within their new national community, but rather in opposition to one and other. These oppositions are, furthermore, embraced by historians when attempting to objectively understand the period and identify the causes for cultural failure. Dispelling these oppositions, however, provides a more accurate portrayal of the nation’s complexity. We can, by doing so, better understand the inherent conflicts and contrivances of culture-creation and nation-building, as well as the imminent difficulties and failures.
The scientific analysis of semiotics, originated in a 1931 Czechoslovakian publication, provides the necessary momentum to move past these oppositional binaries evidenced in the case of Zambian culture and theatre. Semiotics examines how meaning, signification, and communication are produced between a given source and its receiver.
In the case of theatre, semiotics recognizes the performer-spectator relationships as primarily communicative; under such a definition, the formally discussed binaries disintegrate.132 The universal and all-inclusive key becomes theatre’s communicative production of meaning. Such a definition also advocates cultural relativism, permitting
132 Zakes Mda, When People Play People: Development Communication through Theatre (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993), 81-90. 45 less specific and exclusive theatrical definitions.133 It is through this lens that debunks scholars’ oversimplified binaries, which we must look at cultural creation in the post- colonial nation-state of Zambia. Through this lens we can better understand the individually unique and equally heightened stakes for Zambian citizens who were grappling with their new identity in very different ways. We can also better understand the political and personal magnetism of culture and, particularly, theatre.
Theatre is often endowed with the power to empower, as articulated by the
Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o:
The theatre and the cinema are an expression of the drama in the lives of the people, that is an expression of their struggles, their conflicts, their hopes and fears. Their aspirations can make people view themselves positively and even by the beginning of an awakening of the slumbering powers within them. 134
It possesses communicative means, as well as cultural—vital components of post- colonial nation-building and particularly influential in Zambia. In studying this particular historical phenomenon, as well as any other, the researcher begins to grapple with historical and artistic truths and, within that quandary, finds yet another insufficient binary.
Writing history is akin to writing a play with a specific beginning, middle, and end—a specific event and that event’s causality. Such a construction is not as untruthful as it may seem. It is a mirror of the life it portrays. Michael Etherton, Kenneth Kaunda,
Kabwe Kasoma, David Pownall and Dickson Mwansa represent a diverse cast of characters who, in the case of Zambian culture, achieved (or failed to achieve) their cultural agendas by searching for what Zambian culture was, what it had been in the pre-
133 Lokangaka Losambe, ed., Pre-Colonial and Post-Colonial Drama and Theatre in Africa (Trenton: African World Press, 2001), viii. 134 Mlama, Culture and Development, 62. 46 colonial past, and what they felt it should become in the future. Their perspectives tainted by the interests of a particular populous. They sought to achieve a national culture representative of the whole, but were often faulted by their own rhetoric.
The Chikwakwa movement was stunted by its pretentiousness, as well as its ambiguous traditionalism. Traditions were logically difficult to define in a new nation with such a complex history. It was TAZ’s lack of traditionalism, however, that arguably fostered is inaccessibility. Oversimplification, facilitated by an idealistic state policy that promoted a homogenous culture, was the penultimate ailment of both parties. A contemporary cast of characters comprised of such scholars as Kees P. Epskamp,
Anthony Graham-White, Patrick E. Idoye, Penina Muhando Mlama, Zakes Mda, and
Lekan Oyegoke maintain this historical simplification as they devise their own period
Zambian histories. Each history is organized with a clean beginning, middle, and end— interpretive play-scripts of actual events. We find ourselves in the midst of a cyclical movement, of which this thesis is just another part. Life and the historical study of life becomes nothing more than variations of theatrical productions. Of course, the intention is not to minimize either. 47
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