Kenyans' Elusive Search for a Cultural Identity,Black Sahibs

Kenyans’ Elusive Search for a Cultural Identity

By Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru

Sometime back, Kenya was presented with several designs of what was envisaged as the “national dress”. A team of eminent persons in the culture scene had been tasked by the Ministry of Culture to search, identify and come up with designs that would help us finally resolve the longstanding issue of “What is a Kenyan national dress?” This debate was not happening in isolation; it was replicated in many other art genres in Kenya, such as the culinary arts (What is the national dish?) but it was particularly prominent in the music scene.

Artists and experts continue to dialogue on whether we have what can be described as a truly Kenyan beat. Is it benga? Is it kapuka? Or do we stick with the beats that have come to be identified with our communities like omutibo in Western Kenya, mwomboko amongst the Gikuyu, sengenya, bango and chakacha at the Coast?

Do we have a beat (read music), such as mbalax from Senegal, kwaito or kwela from South Africa, juju music from several countries in West Africa, or rhumba from the Democratic Republic of Congo, that if heard out there could rightly be claim to be from Kenya? Do we need a beat that gives the country a distinct musical identity? Is this the same in other countries like Senegal, DRC, South Africa, Tanzania and globally? In Senegal, mbalax is identified with Wolof in the same way that Lingala and Kiswahili are identified with the DRC and Tanzania, respectively. However, would singing in Kiswahili or in any other Kenyan language give the country a distinct beat? Most experts argue and agree that it takes more than language to give music a national identity. It takes more than just singing in Kiswahili, Dholuo, Gikuyu or Sheng.

Some industry players argue that Kenya has indeed achieved a similar feat with benga and that benga is not confined to Kenya alone; it has been exported to other African countries, notably Zambia and Zimbabwe. Shades of Benga, a book detailing the origin and growth of benga, makes a case for this beat as a truly Kenyan musical sound that has also had an impact beyond Kenya. Benga aficionados argue that this is the most distinctive sound to have come out of Kenya’s 70 years of creating urban guitar music.

In Senegal, mbalax is identified with Wolof in the same way that Lingala and Kiswahili are identified with the DRC and Tanzania, respectively. However, would singing in Kiswahili or in any other Kenyan language give the country a distinct beat?

“It may still not be considered an upmarket genre, but it has managed to establish its hold as a definite Kenyan style and beat,” the experts at Ketebul Studios, who put together a booklet, an audio CD and documentary DVD dubbed Retracing the Benga Rhythm note. “Sprinklings of it are to be found as far south as Zimbabwe and it has been borrowed, repackaged and offered in big-name music countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon. From its humble rural beginnings, this music has been nurtured into a club circuit affair in numerous urban areas in East, Central and Southern Africa.”

Identity struggles beyond the arts

The musical discourse is not about to wane and the success or failure of the national dress experiment is still up for debate. However, this search, whether in the music scene, fashion, film or even the culinary arts, is without a doubt one of the clearest illustrations of our collective struggle with the complex issue of identity that also manifests itself in every other aspect of our national psyche in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres.

When we gained independence in 1963, the constitution prescribed a Westminster-model where the governor and the prime minister had their roles spelt out. However, immediately after independence, the KANU political elite sought to dismantle the independence constitution in order to implement a theory of a singular executive authority vested with the presidency. The elite wanted something akin to the American presidency but they fell short because they did not put in place other stronger institutions that would provide the necessary checks and balances. This resulted in a political struggle that culminated in a new constitution that is now faced with reverberations from this past era.

Eighteen months after Kenya attained independence, the government of the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta published the African Socialism Sessional Paper No 10 that contained the basic tenets of what the founding fathers termed as the concepts and philosophy of a Democratic African Socialism that would guide their future planning. “We rejected both Western Capitalism and Eastern Communism and chose for ourselves a policy of positive non-alignment,” Jomo Kenyatta wrote in his opening remarks.

However, just like in politics, the economic blueprint was strong in rhetoric but failed miserably in its implementation. We gravitated towards Western capitalism and even became very hostile to countries and neighbours like Tanzania that had adopted socialism through Ujamaa. Alexander Chagema, in an article aptly titled “Kenya, the Epitome of the Capitalist State”, described the country as “the epitome of the capitalist system of governance”.

David Himbara pointed out the same in his article “Myths and Realities of Kenyan Capitalism”. Other writers and experts have written about this dual existence. They all demonstrate how we have been struggling with economic identity. The political and economic identity struggles and the resultant machinations are reflected in the tussle on whether to support the nation or “my community”.

This struggle is often exhibited during elections when the political elite whip up ethnic emotions over national issues as they seek political office that is often associated with the economic rewards they are bound to reap or protect.

“The marriage of ethnicities in Kenya was arranged by the colonialists,” noted Prof. Kimani Njogu, a former Professor of African Languages at Kenyatta University and director of Twaweza. “During the struggle for independence, a spirit of nationalism was ignited, but this vision was not pursued by the new leadership. Instead, ethnic affiliations have been stimulated and perpetuated by the political elite to acquire or maintain power. Ethnic cleavages continue to undermine national consciousness, often over competition for resources and access to political power. They undermine Kenyan nationhood.”

Ethnic affiliations have not only played out during elections and campaigns; the linguistic connections and differences are also a great indicator of the identity struggles that we experience. Broadly, noted Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi in Linguistic Realities in Kenya: A Preliminary Survey, “There are three language groups in Kenya, namely Bantu which includes Kiswahili, Gikuyu, EkeGusii, Luhya and Kamba; examples of Nilotic languages are Kalenjin, Luo, Turkana and Maasai, and Cushitic includes Rendile, Somali Borana and Gabra. Each group includes more than five dialects, which makes Kenya a multilingual country with nearly over forty-two languages.”

Ethnic affiliations have not only played out during elections and campaigns; the linguistic connections and differences are also a great indicator of the identity struggles that we experience.

The languages have been recognised by the Constitution of Kenya 2010. Besides these languages, the constitution also made Kiswahili the national and official language of Kenya. English, a colonial legacy, has been recognised as an official language. However, this has not helped to stop the wrangles on identity and recognition that have persisted between Kiswahili and English, given the historical context they stem from.

“The colonial language policy in Kenya is important putting into consideration that it impacted greatly on post-colonial language policy,” notes Dr Wendo Nabea, a lecturer in linguistics and the Director of Laikipia University, Naivasha Campus, in his seminal article “Language Policy in Kenya: Negotiation with Hegemony”. The article states:

Contrary to the long-held postulation that it was the objective of the colonial government to promote English language in the colony, the colonial language policy was always inchoate and vacillating such that there were occasions that measures were put in place to promote or deter its learning. However, such denial inadvertently provided a stimulus for Kenyans to learn English considering that they had already taken cognizant of the fact that it was the launching pad for white collar jobs. This can be said to have been the genesis of English’s hegemonic and divisionary tendencies, between the elite (those who could use it) and the masses (those who could not use it).

Identity struggles within culture and the arts

Political and socio-economic identity struggles in Kenya are taking place with such intensity because our cultural identity has also not been addressed. Observers note that we fought for political and economic emancipation, and while we might have scored some victory on these fronts, we did not sufficiently consolidate it through a well thought-out cultural policy that took note of our diversity and grounded our aspirations on the strengths that these diversities presented. We defined ourselves clearly as Africans when we wedged the political war through fronts such as the Mau Mau but failed to develop similar clear identities when it came to our culture that would be explicitly defined through our artistic impressions and expressions.

Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms, notes:

For a full comprehension of the dynamics, dimensions and workings of a society, any society, the cultural aspects cannot be seen in total isolation from the economic and political ones. The quantity and quality of wealth in a community, the manner of its organisation from production to the sharing out affect, and are affected by the way in which power is organised and distributed. These in turn affect and are affected by the values of that society as embodied and expressed in the culture of that society…the wealth and power and self-image of a community are inseparable…culture gives that society its self-image as it sorts itself out in the economic and political fields.

The first cultural policy for Kenya was launched in 2009 – 46 years after the country had attained her independence. Before it could even be implemented, the country gave itself a new constitution a year later and that necessitated a further review of the cultural policy to align it to the new constitution. There was an intensive process to align the policy to the constitution but the subsequent document has never seen the light of day. The country went back to its default mode of trying to define itself and realising matters to do with culture and producing artistic expression and impressions without grounding these on an official policy.

There is no doubt that culture and cultural identity are at the centre of the quest to resolve identity issues in Kenya’s arts scene. This quest certainly includes our continued obsession with a national dress. It also includes a desire to identify a beat that can be called truly Kenyan.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

By Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru

We all know Kenyans who, after a short stint in the United States, come back home with a mangled American accent – the kind you know is put on or forced and which makes you cringe because you know how much effort it has taken for the speaker to develop it.

It makes you wonder what it is about America that makes people quickly put on accents that are not theirs. Is it lack of self-esteem, or is it a fervent desire to fit into White America? Do people who adopt American accents believe they have a better chance of being assimilated into American society? Or do they believe that they can only move ahead in their careers if they are better understood by their American audiences? Is changing one’s accent a route to career advancement?

The Sri Lankan journalist Varindra Tarzie Vittachi wrote about this phenomenon in his book The Brown Sahib, in which he describes post-colonial Indian administrators and top-level civil servants who became mere caricatures of the British and Britishness when the colonialists left India. Eager to please their former masters, they went to great lengths to adopt British accents and mannerisms – not realising that: a) they could never pass off as British no matter how hard they tried, and b) by denigrating their own language and culture, they generated even more contempt for themselves among the British, who viewed them as mimicking buffoons who had no dignity or respect for their own culture and identity.

I lived in the United States for five years when I was a student there, but did not come home with an American accent. I think it’s partly because I am multilingual (I’ll explain why this matters later) and also because I don’t like the loud nasal screechy tone of American accents. I find the accent off- putting. It lacks the subtle sensuality of French, the lyricism of Urdu or the sophistication of coastal Kiswahili.

Later on, when I worked in the diverse multicultural environment of the United Nations, I realised that American accents were the minority, and had very little to do with career advancement, so there was no need to put them on. Though race and gender mattered when it came to getting the top management jobs, it was not rare to have a Senegalese with a heavy French-Senegalese accent heading a department or a Russian with very little knowledge of English running an IT section. Most UN staffers are valued not for their knowledge of English, but for their fluency in a variety of languages. So speaking English with an American accent is hardly a plus point.

Kenyans who develop American accents overnight remind me of something Sharmila Sen, an American writer of Indian origin, wrote. In her recently published book, Not Quite Not White, Sen talks about how she used to rehearse speaking with an American accent when her family migrated to America from their native India when she was a child. Her family had moved to Boston from Calcutta and she was afraid that her Indian Bengali accent would be mocked by her classmates. So she spent hours watching American television, learning to speak like the characters in Little House on the Prairie and Dallas (probably not realising that accents vary across America; Texans speak with a specific drawl that is quite distinct from the speech pattern of someone born and raised in New England).

When the twelve-year-old Sen arrived in America with her immigrant parents, she was fluent in three languages: Bengali, Hindi and English. But in her almost all-white school, she pretended that she did not know any Indian language and did not even watch Indian movies, even though she loved them. She was afraid that her classmates might find out that Bengalis eat with their hands and that she would be the laughing stock of the entire school, so she never invited friends home. Her parents, keen to assimilate in their new country, insisted on using forks and knives, even though they had little desire to use them. She says she and her family didn’t want to be associated with “fresh off the boat” people in America, who fail to assimilate into American society, and live cocooned lives in ghettoes. Most importantly, she didn’t want to appear “threatening, unnatural, or ungrateful”.

She also smiled a lot, which she says is common among brown and black people living in America. As an African American man, a fellow doctoral candidate, explained to her, “We smile because it is the only face we can show. If we stop smiling, they will see how angry we are. And no one likes an angry black man”.

Going native

Sen says that as she grew older and understood white privilege, she decided to “go native” and not smile too much because she was tired of being the entertainer, the storyteller, the explainer of all things Indian to white audiences. She also did not want her sons and daughter to be viewed as “people of colour” (a designation she resents).

Another writer who decided to go truly native is our very own Ngũgi wa Thiong’o. In Ngũgi’s case, not only did he not adopt an American accent when he went into self-imposed exile in the US, but he decided to abandon the English language altogether in favour of his mother tongue, Gĩkũyũ. Perhaps that is why his acceptance speech for an award he received recently was entirely in his native tongue.

Ngũgi believes that when you erase a people’s language, you erase their memories. And people without memories are rudderless, unconnected to their own histories and culture, mimics who have placed their memories in a “psychic tomb” in the mistaken belief that if they master their coloniser’s language, they will own it. Because erasure of memory and culture is a condition for successful assimilation, the burial of African languages by Africans themselves has ensured their total immersion into colonial culture. He calls this phenomenon a “death wish” that occurs in societies that have never fully acknowledged their loss – like trauma victims who resort to drugs to kill the pain.

Many people of my generation are multilingual because they were encouraged to speak their mother tongue at home. While I was taught in English in school, I learned to speak and understand Hindi and Punjabi at home and picked up Kiswahili on the streets. Later, I picked up a bit of French in high school, and Urdu as well, because my father loved Urdu poetry and ghazals.

All these languages have enriched my life in ways that would not have been possible had I not learned them. Without them, I would have never been able to understand the subtle meanings and nuances embedded in certain Punjabi words. I would not have been able to communicate with my grandmother or watch and enjoy Bollywood films. Nor would I have realised that President Moi’s speeches in English were very different in meaning and tone from his speeches in Kiswahili. I would not have developed an understanding of my own and other people’s cultures or developed empathy and tolerance for other races and ethnic groups had I not been multilingual. Language is the pathway to a culture’s soul.

Sadly, the generations that come after me have abandoned their native tongue in favour of English. Some parents even encourage their children not to speak their mother tongue at home because it might “contaminate” their English accent.

At a public lecture he gave at the University of Nairobi a few years ago, Ngũgi derided Kenyan parents for discouraging their children from speaking their mother tongues, a phenomenon that has led to what he called a “linguistic famine” in African households. This would never happen in countries such as Germany or France, where German and French children learn their own language before they learn English. Nor would it happen in China, India or Brazil, all of which are emerging economies. (I have yet to meet a Chinese person who feels ashamed about not knowing English.)

Even in neighbouring Tanzania and Somalia, people become fluent in Kiswahili and Somali, respectively, before they learn other languages. A few years ago, I participated in a two-day local government meeting in Dar es Salaam which was conducted in just in one language – Kiswahili. Like many Kenyans who visit Tanzania, I became painfully aware of the fact that my mastery of this beautiful language was woefully inadequate. My only (lame) excuse for this is that in my school days, Kiswahili was not a mandatory subject.

Knowledge of many languages promotes inter-cultural dialogue and understanding, and is essential in a globalising world. If Kenyans are to be successful citizens of the world, they must learn their own and other people’s languages. And we should stop putting on accents just to impress others. Putting on an accent that is not natural is not just silly and painful to watch; it is also a sign that those who feel compelled to change their accents have a large amount of self-loathing going on, which is just plain sad.

The late Wangari Maathai said that “culture is coded wisdom”, and must be preserved. Language is one of the vehicles through which that culture is transmitted. We must preserve our languages for the sake of present and future generations.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant. The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Kenyans’ Elusive Search for a Cultural Identity

By Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

By Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru

When Charles Bukeko attended Jogoo Road Primary School in the 1970s, it was a bastion of sporting, athletic and academic prowess in an era when the emerging Eastlands urban spaces were orderly, neat, well-tended, and provided a quality environment In which to live.

Bukeko lived in Lumumba Estate, the council estate where many civil servants lived in the 1970s and 80s, and where he developed a love for football above all else.

To be fair though, the football frenzy of the seventies had a psychological grip on the national psyche, and provided the safety valve for a nation that was still reeling from the political mistakes of the mid-to-late 60s. The Abaluhya Football Club (AFC), in particular, enjoyed a winning streak year- on-year despite the cancellation of the 1971 national league halfway into the season.

The national team, Harambee Stars, had qualified for the Nations Cup finals in 1972 and at the City Stadium, Gor Sirkal had secured a big win in 1975. At the same time Kenneth Matiba had become the Kenya Football Federation chairman. The likes of the double-foot dribbling wizard Chege Ouma, the all-rounder Jackson Aluko, and maestro Livingstone Madegwa were harassing African soccer giants Cameroon, Mali, and Togo in their qualifiers group, and setting new precedents in Kenyan football.

It was inevitable then that, Papa, who had schooled just down the road from the then Jogoo Road Stadium (now City Stadium), would give football a shot, just like many youths from Mbotela, Maringo Estate, Lumumba, Jericho and along Jogoo Road. ”I’m an ardent fan of AFC Leopards. My dad took me to the field to watch AFC Leopards when I was 4 years old,” Bukeko once remarked. This love for football, a legacy from his father, would grow through the decades and he became an ardent fan of the local leagues, while throwing his support behind clubs like Sofapaka and AFC Leopards.

Bukeko was born in Buhalarire in the central Marachi region of Mumias, in Kakamega. The eldest son of Valeria Makokha and Cosmas Wafula, Bukeko first lived in Lumumba Estate before he was transferred to Mumias School, as an unsuccessful last-ditch effort by his parents to dissuade him from focusing too much on football. He still went on to play central midfield for Mumias FC in Kakamega, Nzoia FC and Pan Paper FC in Webuye, and for Congo boys in Mombasa. It’s during his stint at the coast that he earned the name Champezi, a transliteration of champion, given to him by former president Moi’s political kingpin at the coast, the late Shariff Nassir.

Bukeko eventually hang his boots and exchanged the sea and football for a life back in Nairobi, moving to a house in Uhuru Estate next to Kisimenti Building, and right around the corner from where he grew up in Lumumba Estate. Neighbours describe him as an affable man who took over the estate’s security affairs in the 1990s as crime rates rose in tandem with the negative economic impact of the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the early 90s. Together with his wife Beatrice Ebbie Andega, Bukeko had three children – Anthony, born in 2006, Charlie in 2007 and Wendy in 2009. He was also man of quiet faith, an ardent teacher of the scriptures and a church leader.

Bukeko stumbled onto the stage by sheer fate when working as a halls custodian at the University of Nairobi; the set of a theatre play that his friend was staging, fell apart, the actors bailed out and Bukeko stepped in and saved the day. That act in the late 1990s marked his first appearance at the Kenya National Theatre and sparked a flame that became a burning ambition. His friend Patrick Kanyeki recalls Bukeko’s laser-focused, borderline obsessive approach to acting; Papa would write his own scripts, master and rehearse his lines and start his morning trek into the city so that he would arrive at the KNT early in the day.

And so, long before he became Papa Shirandula, Charles Bukeko had established a name for himself at the Kenya National Theatre, working in the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside the likes of David Kinyua, Ben Kivuitu, Fred Muriithi, Patrick Kanyeki and Peter Mudamba, under Pambazuka Productions. He later moved to the French Cultural Centre to work alongside such emerging young talents as Nice Githinji and Shiko Mburu.

Bukeko’s first big break came when he acted in playwright JPR Ochieng’ Odero’s The Film Doesn’t Film, earning Sh30,000 for a minor role at a time when cast members regularly took home Sh300 at the day’s end.

The veteran ecologist and thespian Ochieng’ Odero would become Bukeko’s first director before he moved on to the Phoenix Theatre and met producer Ian Mbugua, the man who introduced him to the legendary Scottish ex-serviceman and sailor-turned-thespian, James Falkland. Falkland, had just founded Phoenix Theatre with his partner Debonnaire. Bukeko spent the next three years at the Phoenix working with Falkland and his friends James Ward and Kenneth Mason. It was also around this time that he started putting together his own shows under Mbalamwezi Productions in collaboration with producer Peter Mudamba. Faces for TV

Enter the celebrated filmmaker Bob Nyanja of Cinematic Solutions who had been a literature undergraduate at the University of Nairobi when Bukeko was employed there as a Halls custodian. Bob had returned from South Carolina with a Master of Fine Arts in film in the late 90s ready to transition Kenya’s stuttering creative arts onto the screens.

Nyanja first featured Bukeko as a night guard in the 2007 film Malooned! in which Peter Ndambuki aka Churchill played the role of a street urchin. “We walked all over town looking for a guard’s uniform that would fit Papa”, Nyanja remarked in a tribute to Bukeko. Bob Nyanja was also the muscle behind the massive TV comedy hit Redykulass.

It was during the opening of Malooned! at the Junction Mall that Royal Media Services director Wachira Waruru proposed the idea of expanding the role of the guard into a television series. Bukeko, sensing the opportunity to do something remarkable, wrote the first scripts of what went on to become this hugely successful show, and Papa Shirandula was born.

There was a visionary zeal to try out new programming for local audiences in the mid-2000s pioneered by Wachira Waruru, Bob Nyanja, Catherine Wamuyu and a band of local directors, filmmakers and producers. This risk-taking paid off and released a tide of relatable content that beat back the dominance of foreign soap operas.

For Bukeko, Papa Shirandula was the culmination of nearly 12 years of stage productions at the Kenya National Theatre, Braeburn Theatre, Phoenix Theatre, and dozens of screen productions. When asked about his big breaks Papa remarked, “My breakout role was when I was cast as Herod for the play, Nativity at the Braeburn Theatre”.

The name Shirandula is made up of the Wanga word khurandula which loosely translates as tenacity. It’s clear why Bukeko would go for that moniker given his own personality. The name’s resonance with the public also spoke to his impressive ability to transform seemingly mundane acts and phrases into social currency.

As a thespian, Bukeko embodied a dogged determination and constantly decried the youth’s desire for quick success. While he often spoke about the urban youth’s predicaments, he also didn’t shy away from criticising their impatience and the effect it had on their young budding careers. As a testament of his belief in the youth, Bukeko, now Shirandula, was the first guest at the Churchill Show set up by his contemporary Peter Ndambuki to show-case emerging talent.

His own show, Papa Shirandula, fed into the emerging classist posture of Kenya’s viewership at a point where Mexican soaps like La Mujer De Lorenzo, Cuando Seas Mia, the South African TV series Reflections, and Asian acts like Kyunki and Kahaani had dominated the screens. By the early to mid-2000s, the Vioja Mahakamani, Vitimbi, Sokomoko and Tausi had long been edged out, while the Boomba Train youth culture of the early 2000s, was demanding for a yet-to-be figured out screenplays.

At the outset, Papa Shirandula’s viewership was limited to its blue-collar origins and brand but soon developed crosscutting audience appeal, partly because of Bukeko’s performance where his persona and his alter-ego blended deeply as both fed off each other. On screen, Bukeko would give way to Papa Shirandula, this security guard who had three wives and a white girlfriend and who manages to hide his true profession from them all. Bukeko seamlessly morphed into Papa Shirandula, a burly guard in a red uniform; an impostor who sustained his double life as a patriarch, polygamist, elder, doting father, and scheming character across a series that ran for 13 years. As Kazungu Matano (Captain Otoyo) recalls, outside his inner circles, Papa’s weight was a sensitive topic and something he privately admitted to struggling with and, indeed, the 1990s build of an athletic man had changed drastically as the years progressed.

In South Africa, Papa was well known through the viral Vodacom ad in which he played the role of a dictator, evoking the role of Joseph Olita, the man from K’ogelo who had played Amin in The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin (1981). The ad is hilarious, comical and very relatable across the continent, a feat only matched by his signature Brrrrrr! moment in the 2007 global Coca Cola advert. Papa went on to feature in the internationally acclaimed Fernando Meirelles book-to-film adaptation, The Constant Gardener (2005), in Malooned! (2007), and in The Captain of Nakara (2012).

The Cultural Phenomenon

In losing Shirandula we have lost something more than a thespian of great prowess and an industry trailblazer. He also mainstreamed a kind of Kenyan blue-collar masculinity which previously had little representation in our popular imagination, where the preacher and the politician are the epitome of masculinity. Out of these two flow all the sub-archetypes that dominate the public imagination of what it means to be a Kenyan man and, therefore, Shirandula’s blue-collar, masculine sub-archetype rarely received the kind of visibility that a lot of other urban sub-archetypes in this country do.

And so, throughout the 80s and 90s, we see a masculinity where the man would comfortably live in the tea estates of Kericho, or Kaloleni—as Marjorie Oludhe chronicled in Coming To Birth —while his family lived on the land in Whisero, or Kanyadhiang. Guess who had done that decades earlier?

Bukeko played into the paradoxical stereotype of the Luhya man as a potbellied guard which fits a little too well with the all too familiar portrayal of Luhyas as dominating the private security sector, Kalenjins the police, Luos the handicrafts sector, Kikuyus trade, and Kambas as loyal civil servants and juniors to Asian bosses.

Ethnic stereotypes range from the funny to the downright disrespectful; a trope which papa had to fight as he exemplified the stigma associated with the job of a security guard. Shirandula gently managed to almost single-handedly give voice, representation, and nuance to the talented, pragmatic, modest, blue-collar masculine sub-archetypes that work in the shadows of capital and its structures. He explored the struggles of that type of man to fit in, the black tax that those men paid, and their complicated relationship with the Juma Andersons (his boss) of capitalist racketeering.

Papa made the careers of many along the way, famous of them all Felix Odiwuor (Jalango), his counterpart, Kazungu Matano (Otoyo), Papa’s onscreen wife Jackie Nyaminde (Wilbroda), Daisy Odeko (Naliaka), William Juma (Juma Anderson), Jackie Vike (Awinja) and Kenneth Gichoya (Njoro), all of whom have also had significant success on radio, on YouTube, as MCs and as comedians.

So when the news of his demise reached the Kenyan newsrooms, a strong sense of loss engulfed the public, a rare occurrence in this age of post-humous flagellations. We haven’t just lost Bukeko, we’ve lost Shirandula, the embodiment of the work ethic of the blue-collar worker, his tenuous relationship with the city—the tough underbelly of capital—and his struggle for dignity and identity.

In a country where the most dominant masculine sub-archetypes are inadvertently generated by the idealized preacher and the politician, Shirandula succeeded in giving voice and nuance to a whole masculine sub-archetype, and to working-class families, and that’s no mean feat. Go well Charles Bukeko. Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Kenyans’ Elusive Search for a Cultural Identity

By Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru

Compared to the children growing up in affluent households of the global North, the African child faces unique challenges when it comes to mental growth and development. Statistics, though contested, have rated the African child as having a lower IQ (at about 60 per cent) than that of the average child of the same age in the West.

Others, however, claim that the fact that African children can speak roughly two languages (their first language or mother tongue, together with an inter-tribal trading language) by the time they enter school, they have a considerable advantage. The fact that they soon after start to learn a third official language in school (in Kenya’s case this would be English, the medium of instruction) they develop higher cognitive abilities. On the other hand, their compatriots in the West will have mastered only one or two languages.

At face value, being multilingual appears advantageous. However, its drawback is that it taxes the African child with the additional burden of mastering a language of instruction at a stage when his compatriot in the West will have already started receiving practical knowledge. This means that this African child will always play catch-up, however adept he is at mastering instruction.

Even worse, the concepts he is being taught in class will always come in a foreign language, with examples and references that in some cases are not familiar to him, leaving the African child trying to grasp what he is being taught. This probably, I would argue, is one of the reasons why world- changing innovations, especially in science, rarely emanate from Africa, not necessarily because the African child is less gifted, but because the operating environment is stifling right from the first day of school. The situation compounded by a poor learning environment.

A quick survey of all the tech and industrial giants in the world indicates that all school-going kids in these regions receive their elementary instruction in their first language. This includes North America, Western Europe, Scandinavian countries, Japan, China, Korea and Asian and South American powers, such as India, Brazil and Malaysia, which have muscled their way into this league in the past century. These countries fight to retain a hold on their indigenous languages and cultures by jealously promoting and preserving them, even as they interact with and trade with foreign cultures. This is most evident in Scandinavian countries, where lots of resources are directed at promoting the production of literature in the indigenous languages which, otherwise, would become extinct, given that numerically, the indigenes are far outnumbered on the world stage.

In Africa, vast differences appear between urban and rural school-going children. There still exists a wide gap between urban kids and those from the countryside when it comes to formal schooling. According to research conducted in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the findings of which were published in 2003 in Etienne Benson’s article “Intelligence across Cultures”, kids born and raised in urban households, and who have early access to television, film and video games, are more likely to score highly in Western-style Matrix-based visual intelligence tests than those born and raised in the countryside. They also do better in verbal tests. These tests acknowledge the existing cultural bias that makes it difficult to come up with a test that can be applied across the board to both kids from a rural setting in Africa and those from an urban Western setting because the two cultures perceive intelligence differently. Which further compounds the challenges the average African faces when it comes to asserting his place on the global stage.

In Africa, vast differences appear between urban and rural school-going children. There still exists a wide gap between urban kids and those from the countryside when it comes to formal schooling.

In this modern age of easy transport and communication between cities, it is cheaper and faster for people to communicate across borders and do business. While these changes in technology have opened up previously inaccessible places on earth for commerce, they have also ushered in a new era in which less developed economies and cultures are likely to be overshadowed by the more developed ones. It is one reason why UNESCO has been identifying and protecting more cultural heritage sites across the globe that are under threat of extinction by real estate developers as populations swell and prime land gets scarcer.

The dizzying rate at which the economies of the East African region have been transforming since the turn of the millennium in terms of infrastructure development is not only opening up the fragile hinterland to global commerce, but is also proving to be a serious challenge when it comes to preserving indigenous heritage, especially that which isn’t properly documented, as is the case across most of Africa, where the arts and culture are still not perceived as a bankable asset that can generate revenue.

If there are any lesson to be drawn from the global North, it is that African countries should strive to promote learning in their indigenous languages if they hope to make the leap into the club of newly industrialised countries. This is because language is the key to unearthing and exploiting indigenous knowledge and wealth. History has shown that there’s no world power that has exerted influence and control using a foreign language. We also know that imported technologies and knowledge rarely work unless they are adapted and customised for the prevailing local environment.

The case for Kiswahili

That said, the problem with Africa is that it is not homogenous linguistically. There are an estimated 2,000 languages spoken on the continent. Colourful as this may appear, it also poses a challenge in marshaling all these diverse cultures into thinking and working towards a collective goal, which necessitates the creation and promotion of a lingua franca that can be used seamlessly across political and administrative borders, and which can ultimately allow the African people to speak in a single voice. Kiswahili has proved to be a useful tool in unlocking the potential of this sleeping giant in the regions south of the Sahara.

Derived from the Pokomo, Taita and Mijikenda languages of the East African coast, alongside other Bantu languages of the interior, Kiswahili has borrowed heavily from Arabic, English, Greek, Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Latin, Portuguese, Turkish and Indian languages and cultures in the course of its development.

There are an estimated 2,000 languages spoken on the continent. Colourful as this may appear, it also poses a challenge in marshaling all these diverse cultures into thinking and working towards a collective goal, which necessitates the creation and promotion of a lingua franca that can be used seamlessly across political and administrative borders…

From its origins on the East African coast in the AD 1200 period, the language was largely spread inland by the adventurous Swahili and Arab traders, reaching as far north as Barawa in Somalia where a dialect known as Chimiini is spoken, the Great Lakes to the west where a dialect known as Kingwana is spoken, and further south as far as Mozambique, where a dialect known as Kimwani is spoken.

Along the East African coast itself there are various dialects spoken, with the Kiamu spoken in Lamu and Kingozi further north being amongst the oldest. The Kibajuni dialect is spoken north of Lamu up to Kismayu in Somalia and Kimvita in Mombasa. To the south are Kimtang’ata as spoken in the Tanga region of Tanzania, Kimrima spoken in Mrima and parts of Dar es Salaam and Kimgao in Kilwa further south and in parts of Mozambique.

The islands off the coast have a whole stew of dialects, among them Kimakunduchi as spoken on Zanzibar island, Kipembaas spoken in Pemba, Kipate spoken in Pate, Kitumbatu spoken on Tumbatu island, Kingazija spoken on Ngazija island, and Kivumba as spoken in Vumba, Vanga and the northern Tanga region.

Although it started out as a lingua franca, Kiswahili has over the years grown in stature as the speakers seek to assert their identity in global geopolitics and break away from the dependence signaled by the continual use of colonial languages, especially in official circles. The language has increasingly received official status in diverse regional bodies, signaling its growing importance.

Of late, Kiswahili experts have been grappling with terminology relating to the rapid changes taking place in information technology, which have to be incorporated into the language. It is a task that has rested squarely with the Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa (BAKITA) in Tanzania, who are charged with sieving the emergent vocabulary in order for it to gain acceptance for use in standard Kiswahili widely used in schools in East Africa. Dar es Salaam University’s Taasisiya Taaluma za Kiswahili (TATAKI) is playing a crucial role in the “Swahilisation” and standardisation of this new vocabulary. The other factors shaping the direction the language takes are political, legal, administrative and trade; all of which impact the language’s development.

In July 2004, Kiswahili was declared the official language of the 55-member African Union (AU), with the then chairperson, Joaquim Chissano, delivering his entire speech during the AU Heads of State and Government Summit in the language. It is also the official language of the 6-member East African Community. Kiswahili was also adopted as one of the official languages of the South African Development Community (SADC) in 2019, alongside English, Portuguese and French.

By 2012 Kiswahili had an estimated 150 million native speakers spread across East Africa, and stretching south as far as parts of Zambia, Malawi, Madagascar and the Comoros islands. It enjoys official status in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, DR Congo and Rwanda.

In January this year, South Africa became the first southern African country to offer Kiswahili as an examinable subject in its schools, in addition to German, French and Mandarin. Piloted in 90 schools across the country, Kiswahili became the first African language from outside southern Africa to be taught in the country. This was partly in a bid to stem the rising xenophobia attacks perpetrated on other African nationals living in the country since the mid 1990s, which had resulted in up to 600 deaths by then. The government believed that teaching the language was one way of encouraging cohesion between black South Africans and other African nationals living within South Africa, and ultimately integrating South Africa – which had endured economic and social isolation during the long Apartheid era – fully into the trading blocs of the region.

Although the growth of Kiswahili has been phenomenal in the regions south of the Sahara, penetration in the north has been slow. Even though Kiswahili is heavily shaped by Arabic and Arab culture, the Sahel countries have preferred using Arabic. One of the reasons could be cultural. The northern peoples are mostly pastoral, and their Cushitic languages are distinctly different from Bantu, which forms the root of Kiswahili, and which is steeped in the Bantu people’s background as farmers and iron-workers. So in order to gain wider acceptance there, Kiswahili might have to adapt more to Cushitic language forms and structures, and incorporate more of its vocabulary. The same applies to the Nilotic peoples, whose uptake of the language has been equally slow, partly because of the phonetic dissimilarities between Kiswahili and, say, Lang’o or Nuer. To the immediate north is the Amharic culture that is as old as the continent itself, and which culturally has always remained distinct.

However, the growth south and westwards has been steady, thanks to the huge swathe of Ngoni- speaking people who populate most of southern and central Africa from the Cape upwards into modern Tanzania, Congo and Kenya, thanks to the migratory patterns of the seventeenth century occasioned by the expansionist Mfecane wars, the slave trade and the arriving settler communities from Europe. Westwards, Kiswahili found fertile ground in the vast Congo interior because of trade in ivory, slaves and gold, and also thanks to the close cultural ties between the Congo and the East Coast.

For a while Rwanda, a former colony of Belgium, together with her neighbour Burundi, operated from an awkward position as French-speaking nations in a region that was predominantly English- speaking. This came with its complications when the East African Community started taking shape. There was also the effect of the Rwanda genocide of 1994 that dispersed a considerable number of Rwandan and Burundian refugees into neighbouring East African states. This meant that by the time Rwanda had stabilised enough to welcome them back home, a sizeable number of the refugees had not only been born in exile, but had attended English- and Kiswahili-speaking schools in neighbouring Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, with very few of them speaking French.

It was only a matter of time before French was dropped in favour of English, thanks in part to the awkward diplomatic falling-out between Kigali and Paris in the aftermath of the genocide. And as the East African Community took shape, it soon became apparent to the leadership of the member countries that the only language that cuts across their borders was Kiswahili in its various dialects. The little charcoal and banana traders at the Goma and Uvira border crossings were not communicating in English or French but in either their native tongues, or the lingua franca: Kiswahili. It is only the trade conferences in Nairobi, Arusha and Kigali that were being conducted in English and French. It is little wonder that Kigali officially made the switch to English and Kiswahili, alongside Kinyarwanda, in 2017.

A large trading bloc

There is no doubt that Kiswahili has the potential to forge strong trading ties between the people of eastern, central and southern Africa and to promote cultural cohesion that already exists amongst them. If widely promoted in these regions, the language can single-handedly break the barriers imposed on the people by imperial European powers at the Berlin Conference in 1884. Instead the language will remind the people of sub-Saharan Africa that they share a common heritage, and encourage them to look at their neighbours as partners and family, and not as foreigners. It succeeded in doing this in Nyerere’s Tanzania in the 1960s, so it can be replicated elsewhere if the political will is there. If this works, then the existing national boundaries will be reduced to administrative boundaries, more or less like states within a larger confederacy. A currency and a universal passport will naturally follow, introducing the seamlessness that is crucial for commerce in a large trading bloc, as has been the case lately in the European Union.

Enough man-hours have already been expended by politicians and bureaucrats at forums in the region’s cities to try and knock together trading blocs in the wake of the realisation that it is the only way to go for African countries if they hope to catch up with the newly industrialised countries, especially in Asia, which were at par with them barely 50 years ago. And although they realise the urgency of building these blocs, in most cases the member countries have foot-dragged and even made surprise about-turns, mostly occasioned by deep-seated suspicions carried over from previous attempts.

This foot-dragging may end up being very costly for the region in the near future; especially so after the giant infrastructural projects currently underway are completed and the interior is suddenly opened up fully to products churned up by Chinese mills. Unless the plan is to turn the region into a market for imported industrial and other goods from across the seas down to the matchstick used to light the breakfast stove in the morning, then the only option is to speed up inter-country collaboration in industry and commerce and to forge a well-trained workforce that can serve anywhere within the region to spur growth. The best and easiest tool to help the region towards this goal is a common language and a standardised schooling system across the bloc. The only language I can foresee playing this role in sub-Saharan Africa right now is Kiswahili.

The push to do away with the borders drawn up by the colonial powers may seem alarmist to those holding onto patriotic sentiments embodied in their individual national flags and anthems, but the truth is that the Pan-Africanist ideals envisioned by Nkrumah, Nasser and Nyerere, among others, in the early 1960s will simply not go away; and they are especially relevant at this time when Africa is standing at the precipice. The migratory patterns of the African peoples over centuries, especially during times of crises — both natural and man-made — attest to this.

The same is still happening today, even with the borders in place. It is the reason that eventually forced the Kenyan government in 2017 to grant citizenship to the Wamakonde people who had lived along the Kenyan coast for decades after relocating there in the 1930s from Mozambique to work on British-owned sisal farms. Industrial developments in other economies elsewhere in the world leave the region – and by extension the continent – with no choice but to forge a working relationship or be eclipsed. It is time for the continent’s leadership to pay attention to the role that Kiswahili can play in determining the face of the continent in the immediate future.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

By Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Kenyans’ Elusive Search for a Cultural Identity

By Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru

What was South Korea in the late 1970s? Say around 1979, during the first year of Daniel arap Moi’s presidency? It was a military state, run by a soon-to-be-assassinated autocratic leader, General Park Chung-hee, and still eight years away from becoming a presidential republic. It was a state in flux: the killing of Gen Chung-hee left a power vacuum, with political factions vying for superiority amongst the ruins of his toppled dictatorship. By any stretch of the word, South Korea entering the 1980s, and for much of that decade, could be described as a nation in turmoil, politically, economically and developmentally. It was a state at risk of falling back into chaos and becoming a cautionary tale.

Kenya, on the other hand, had new leadership. At the beginning of the 1980s, it was viewed by the international community as a shining example of a post-independence African state that looked set to be an economic powerhouse of the future. At that time, Nigeria was still under a military junta and South Africa was regressing into the bloodiest period of anti-apartheid action.

Yet, by the tail end of the decade, Seoul was hosting the 1988 Olympics, and less than four decades on, in 2016, South Korea had the 11th highest GDP on earth, behind Canada and ahead of Australia. According to the United Nations, in the same year Kenya was ranked 75th, just behind Uzbekistan and ahead of Guatemala.

What happened? A major factor is South Korea’s investment in the creative economy versus the Kenyan government’s approach of letting the entire sector be deprioritised and left to flounder alone.

In the case of South Korea’s film industry, one major shift occurred in 1994. At the time Hollywood films controlled most of the market while locally produced films controlled less than one-fifth. The government took a decision to invest in and emphasise locally-made films. Since then, the South Korean film industry, when coupled with K-Pop, has seen the rise of the “Korean wave”, a globally influential and massively profitable enterprise. It remains the modern model of the need for government support for the local creative industries.

With regards to K-pop (the Korean brand of bubble gum-style pop songs), the Government of South Korea played a direct hand in sustaining the momentum of this global musical force. A Ministry of Culture was formed in 1998, including a specified department exclusively overseeing the development of the nation’s music, with millions of dollars pouring in. Where the difference is further highlighted was the government’s targeting of music as a potential cash cow for the languishing economy. Much of Asia had been sucked into a whirlwind of economic turmoil in the late 90s, and the government needed alternatives for employment, taxable revenue and global influence. The government also ensured protection through effective policies and engaging with music industry members. Fast-forward two decades, and K-Pop is a US$ 5 billion industry.

In the case of South Korea’s film industry, one major shift occurred in 1994. At the time Hollywood films controlled most of the market while locally produced films controlled less than one-fifth. The government took a decision to invest in and emphasise locally- made films. Since then, the South Korean film industry, when coupled with K-Pop, has seen the rise of the “Korean wave”, a globally influential and massively profitable enterprise.

The creative economy has been defined as the ultimate economic resource within a nation. It’s the umbrella under which art, architecture, film, television, music, poetry, sculpture and writing exist. Kenya’s creative sector is a vibrant one, brimming with talent and possibility, especially when looked at through the opportunities it affords to the youth of the country.

Such opportunities are not exclusive to the Kenyan economy as the world is becoming modernised, and the creative sector is often an accompanying industry to modernity. In fact, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has stated that the economic potential of the global creative sector was worth more than US$ 2.2 trillion in 2015. The creative industry has undeniably massive impact upon a nation’s potential GDP and can offer a built-in solution to lingering questions of “development”. A 2013 report from UNESCO outlines that the cultural sector is a vital aspect of the sustainable development of a nation, as the creative sector is not only one of the fastest growing sectors in the world, but also can be highly transformative in terms of income generation, job creation and a nation’s earnings through export. A 2010 policy statement released by the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) further reflects this, stating that culture is the fourth pillar of sustainable development for any nation.

So with all of this potential, why does the creative sector in Kenya languish? Why has Kenya not taken the leap into the void of the sector, that same leap that has produced billions for other nations, including within Africa?

The state of Kenya’s creative industry

An all too common complaint among artists within Kenya is that the creative industry is simply not a “serious” entity to be pursued as a path to a successful and lucrative career. This “lack of seriousness” has resulted in one of the worst policy frameworks for the arts in the developing world. Concerts go unattended, books are not bought (if they can be published at all), grants are not delivered, artistic facilities remain unfinished and draconian regulations are imposed on the content that can be produced. Radio stations play music from abroad and theatres show foreign films. As Nairobi-based singer-songwriter, Tetu Shani says of the current situation, “The day that Kenyan artists start living like politicians is the day you’ll see a shift in public perception and consumption.”

This issue is exemplified by the lack of policy and effective implementation of regulations surrounding the creative industry. When examining the music industry, the crux of the issue comes down to copyright. Most casual fans of Kenyan music are familiar with the story of the band Elani, which had a smash album and multiple hits in 2013 and 2014 after the release of their record Barua ya Dunia. The airplay was steady and the singles very successful. In 2016, Elani criticised the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK), stating that the organisation had only paid them royalties totaling Sh31,000. MCSK has been embroiled in constant legal and legislative turmoils, and had its capacity to collect, track and distribute royalties to Kenyan artists revoked due to a court order in 2018. MCSK has since been replaced by the Music Publishers Association of Kenya (MPAKE) in the role, yet the headlines and legal issues remain.

The ones who seem to get lost in the shuffle are the artists. The example of Elani is at the core of the problems that face the creative industries in Kenya; while there might be growth of the sector on paper, the artists or creators themselves don’t see the benefits materialising within their wallets. At an even more micro level, take the example of the National Environment Management Authority of Kenya (NEMA) enforcing noise pollution regulations against DJs in Kenya; security forces routinely go into clubs, arrest DJs for exceeding “noise restrictions”, even as they spin on the decks, and haul them off to jail. Such enforcements were not communicated effectively to the members of the music industry.

Again, the issues surrounding the enforcement of regulations continue when examining the burgeoning film industry in Kenya. Some estimates contend that over 90 per cent of films in Kenya are pirated, with the heavy-handed punishments outlined by legislation being rarely enforced.

On top of this, the head of the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB), Dr. Ezekiel Mutua, has made free expression through film and television markedly more difficult. Beyond his public criticisms of “gay lions” and cutting the release timeframe of Rafiki, the highest profile Kenyan film since 2011’s Nairobi Half-Life, down to less than a week (just enough time to qualify for the Academy Awards), Dr. Mutua has enacted steep license fees that have reduced the industry’s ability to operate independently, including the hoop-like requirement of filmmakers needing multiple licenses to film in multiple counties. It has become common for Kenya-based films and content to be filmed in South Africa. Indeed, Mutua’s attempts to enforce his dictates on theatre as well as the film industry have led content creators to further eschew any connection with the government.

Kenya had a booming fashion industry in the 1980s, which contributed 30 per cent to the manufacturing sector. Since the 1980s, the continual influx of mitumba (second-hand clothes) has cut this employment severely. The change was brought about by the government cutting regulations and import tariffs in the late 1980s, cutting down on the cotton and garment sectors. This led to an increase in the jua kali nature of the sector, with members of the garment industry having to find their own work after the majority of the cotton production mills shut down. In turn, this contributed to much of the textile industry being a separate entity from that of the clothing production industry – an issue exacerbated by the lack of a unified industry body to advocate for the fashion sector.

This last point regarding the fashion industry of Kenya is truly a key issue that swirls around the creative sector in Kenya. Much of the industry remains fragmented, splintered and run by independent individuals and micro-organisations operating unofficially outside of government taxation or influence. The lack of a structured unified body is reflected in other creative industries, which lessens the sector’s ability to engage in any sort of meaningful dialogue with the government. These issues of associational divide were echoed by HIVOS in 2016, which stated that “the current state of associations in East Africa is that they are fragmented, disunited and lack a consistent agenda on how to engage the government and different industries to ensure the standards of the industry consistently improve”.

So what does all of this amount to? There is one commonality: the utter lack of possible taxable revenue as a result of obtuse and inadequate policy. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the entertainment industries are growing across the board; revenues are up, as is Internet access and the number of viewers within the Kenyan market. However, Kenya is trailing far behind other nations that have capitalised on the bolstering of income from the creative sector.

Kenya vs other major African markets

The stagnant creative sector in Kenyan becomes apparent when examining the state of other African creative sectors. When looking through the lens of the two other leading sub-Saharan African markets (Nigeria and South Africa) the differences and gaps becomes stark.

Both South Africa and Nigeria have music industry infrastructure that focuses on the regulations of the industy. This includes promoting local artists while protecting their ability to garner revenue from their work and punishing those who take advantage. Within Nigeria, artists are promoted, DJs play the latest local tracks and help to encourage grassroots growth of new musical artists.

The most glaring example of a creative economy’s potential is the constant streaming of Nollywood movies on Kenyan televisions. How exactly did the Nigerian film industry become so massive in recent decades, dominating the African market and influencing global media beyond the continent? It is a remarkable story of growth, with Nollywood’s early roots tracing back to the colonial era of the early 20th century.

The independence of Nigeria from British rule in 1960 resulted in further expansion of the film industry. The key moment came in 1972, when the Indigenization Decree was issued by Yakubu Gowon, the Head of the Federal Military Government. The original intent of the decree was to reduce foreign influence and pour wealth back into the hands of Nigerian citizens. The international business community publicly complained, threatened to pull out, and in some cases reduced their investment. The Indigenization Decree led to hundreds of theatres having ownership transferred from foreign hands to Nigerian ownership.

In the years that followed, widespread graft was discovered in multiple industries (much due to foreigners paying for corporate “fronts” while secretly maintaining control). Gowon was deposed while abroad in 1975 and the film industry continued to grow. New theatre owners started to show more and more local productions, with the result being Nollywood experiencing a further expansion across the next decade as Nigerian citizens were suddenly directly involved in not only the control of the theatres, but also in what Nigerian audiences were more likely to buy a ticket to see, buy a VHS of, and later buy a DVD or stream: local content. Out of the ashes of colonialism, a bloody civil war and a military junta rule, Nollywood grew organically, hand over fist, year after year.

By the mid-1980s, Nigeria was producing massively profitable blockbusters and revenues grew to over US$11 billion (Sh1.1 trillion) by 2013. The industry also employs an eye-popping one million people, estimated to be second only to agriculture in terms of number of employees within Nigeria.

In the 21st century, the Government of Nigeria has taken further notice, mostly through the recognition of the massive benefits to the nation that the local film industry provides. Currently the government is working in conjunction with the National Television Authority of Nigeria to expand the industry, offering grants, expanding infrastructure and constructing a production facility. Perhaps most notable was the 2010 signing by former President Goodluck Jonathan of a US$200 million “Creative and Entertainment Industry Intervention Fund” in order to encourage the growth of Nollywood and other creative industries. Put another way, Kenya’s GDP is approximately one-fifth that of Nigeria’s, but there has been no US$40 million fund signed by the government towards the nation’s creative sector.

This is the point where naysayers to the potential of the creative economy will argue that corruption is endemic in Kenya, and therefore, reaching the heights of Nollywood is inherently impossible. This is a fallacy: Transparency International in 2017 ranked Kenya 143 out of 180 in terms of corruption and Nigeria came in at 148. Despite obvious governmental and corruption shortcomings in Nigeria, when it comes to the film industry, one thing has certainly been recognised: that money talks.

South Africa took a different route towards becoming a creative sector powerhouse on an international scale. This is best exemplified when examining the music industry of the country. Once again, the roots of the explosion of South African musical influence can be traced back to a government development programme – the Bantu Radio initiative, which, it must be stated, was put into place in 1960 by the apartheid government in what can best be described as a campaign to further segregate the country. The aim of the programme was to promote tribal music in the hopes that it would reinforce pre-colonial cultural barriers between different communities. It also had the not-so-subtle goal of establishing what black South Africans enjoyed in order to aid the apartheid government in further profiting off of them. The regime believed that the radio stations would play exclusively folk music, but the result was somewhat different. Bantu Radio began broadcasting more than a dozen different genres of music, among them Afro-jazz, kwela and isicathamiya. These genres exploded in popularity, bringing fame, recognition and influence to many South African music industry figures.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation was soon brought in to monitor and regulate the music being produced to ensure that the messages of the music didn’t criticise the apartheid regime or its policies of systemic racism. Further regulatory bodies were established to control the music being played. They did so effectively on the Bantu Radio network, but had also inadvertently “let the cat out of the bag”. There had been a long history of rebellious action through music in South Africa, but now there was an audience of millions who had several genres in mind on what to pursue. Popular artists who were censored on the radio took their messages directly to their audiences. There was an exodus of musicians who left South Africa in order to make music against the apartheid regime without censorship or reprisal. In 1982, the Botswana Festival of Culture and Resistance was held with much of the attendance made up of South African exiled musicians. At the conference, it was decided that the primary weapon of the struggle against apartheid would be culture.

Accidentally, through an attempt to further exploit and divide, the regime had laid the groundwork for both widely popular musical genres with a captive local audience. By 1994, when the last remnants of apartheid were finally thrown aside, the music industry grew massively and continues to be a dominant presence into the 21st century.

Anti-apartheid films, rising from South African independent cinema experiencing a boom in the early-80s – the same period when there was a proliferation of video cassette recorders – allowed the viewing of “subversive” productions. Some of these same anti-apartheid films (banned by the regime), such as 1984’s Place for Weeping, gained international traction and helped to establish South Africa’s film industries as influential outside of the borders of the apartheid regime.

What the creative industry has done for other nations

A UNESCO convention in 2005 stated that there is still a need for governmental frameworks that focus on “emphasizing the need to incorporate culture as a strategic element in national and international development policies, as well as in international development cooperation”. By this standard, the example of South Korea once again stands out. Just how did South Korea springboard its culture into a massive entertainment and creative sector in such a short period of time? The answer is fairly straightforward: the progress of South Korea’s entertainment sectors centres around heavy governmental support, funding and infrastructural management. The government designed and implemented a multi-stage plan towards increasing the profile, impact and economic viability of its entertainment industries.

With the example set, it becomes all the more glaring that the Government of Kenya has turned its back on its own creative industry. The Korean problem of foreign influence is a Kenyan one; foreign acts are flown in and given top billing, foreign media houses dominate the telling of Kenyan stories, and the latest Marvel films always find themselves on movie-house posters. Ask yourself, when is the last time you saw a Kenyan-made film on an IMAX screen playing to a packed audience? The lines are there, but who are there to see? The state of regulation and progress within the creative sector in Kenya reflects an acute failure of the state to implement the very policies it has outlined. One needs to look no further than the Kenyan Constitution of 2010 and the Vision 2030 Development Goals to find evidence of this.

In Kenya, a nation that jailed poets and playwrights only two decades ago, the promotion of the creative arts is evolving too slowly. While the Constitution included the mandatory promotion of the arts and cultural sectors, it has taken close to a decade to pass legislation regarding these industries. The government itself has acknowledged these disconnects: the National Music Policy of 2015 states that the Government of Kenya has not adequately enacted policy relating to the creative sector, which in turn has promoted a disconnect in communication and stymied the potential for growth within the industry.

Addressing the state of the creative industries in Kenya, UNESCO contends that there is no facilitative policy framework regarding the creative sector. Or, more bluntly: talk is cheap. The Government of Kenya is definitely aware of the potential impact of growing these specialised industries; it just avoids enacting any meaningful regulation surrounding them. Take the film industry for example. While the talk has been big, there has been no sign of the promised public investment.

The creative sector has long been associated been with the employment of youth. The United Nations has released a series of reports contending that a key path towards combating youth unemployment is through the promotion of the creative industries. Unfortunately, it seems that the Government of Kenya is yet to take heed of creative-driven solutions. The country is currently mired with massive youth unemployment, with rates of over 20 per cent, dwarfing the levels of unemployed young people elsewhere in the East African region. It is clear that from an economic standpoint, the policies of industrialisation have long since proven themselves to be insufficient in terms of impacting the youth of Kenya in any sort of meaningful way.

One reason why the government is reluctant to promote the arts is because of its delicate sensibilities: it fears supporting creative minds that may turn out to be critical of it. This is evident across the archaic policies of the KFCB, the exodus of locally produced textiles for fashion, the lack of funding for the National Theatre, the government stake in Safaricom, which is currently facing a backlash for the low rates of compensation given to musicians streamed on its ring-back tunes application, Skiza.

On the basis of the examples given, the lessons to be learned from South Africa can only be to lean harder into criticism of the government. While this seems to be an oft-visited theme throughout the creative sectors in Kenya, the apartheid era of South Africa’s music industry remains a solid reminder: that there’s no point backing off if the government refuses to change.

This rings doubly true in cases such as that of Ezekiel Mutua, who seems hell-bent on smothering the Kenyan film, theatre and television industries to death through self-claimed piety. His crusade against homosexuality and what he describes as “immorality” must be viewed as a neocolonial one; its aim is to kill off grassroots Kenyan enterprising creative expression. The efforts against him should focus on his willful draining of the Kenyan economy’s untold economic and cultural potential.

The best long-term solution in Kenya’s case is a sort of middle-ground between the policies of localised emphasis of the 1970s and the government of South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s. Ideally, the Ministry of Sports, Culture and the Arts would be divided towards being specialized; the government would either put in or find real public and private funding for the arts and then actually implement and regulate the policies, such as the National Music Policy of 2015, which outlines a mandated quota for Kenyan-made content to make up 60 per cent of the music aired by the media within the country. They would enforce the regulations but let artists do their own thing as a private enterprise, as they know the ins and outs of the industry. When grievances arise, representatives from the creative sector would have a meaningful seat at the table to dialogue with the government. Unfortunately, none of these solutions are being sought.

This rings doubly true in cases such as that of Ezekiel Mutua, who seems hell-bent on smothering the Kenyan film, theatre and television industries to death through self- claimed piety. His crusade against homosexuality and what he describes as “immorality” must be viewed as a neocolonial one; its aim is to kill off grassroots Kenyan enterprising creative expression. The efforts against him should focus on his willful draining of the Kenyan economy’s untold economic and cultural potential.

The issue remains that while Kenya’s creative industry is at par with nearly any other in the region, the continent or the developing world in terms of potential, it is being systemically held back from reaching the heights of its peers. Both South Africa and Nigeria’s situations can be viewed as the regimes having stumbled into a goldmine of creative industry potential during brutal regimes, but in both cases there was at least an initial search for the vein (racist though South Africa’s was). In the case of South Korea, there was almost a resolute desperation to never return from whence they came. They were willing to try outside-the-box solutions to get there and to put their money where their mouth was. All three situations in 1979 stood on a precipice, and all three could have easily changed course into further crackdown or lack of interest and being left devoid of a cultural sector. Kenya’s creative sector situation is dire. This constraining of creativity must be viewed in the light that it is impeding Kenya’s progress in the opening decades of the new millennium.

The artistic industries in Kenya are currently at a crossroads. Though ideas, products and creativity coming from the country are only growing in terms of influence and quality, without support, all potential is destined to languish in obscurity. Seventeen years since the transition out of the Moi regime, there has been no golden age of the arts, no explosion of international influence and possibility. The talent is there; the infrastructure of community radio, self-starter production houses and subversive literary talent is pervasive in Kenya. However, the government is simply too afraid or too obtuse to put anything behind these efforts.

What will the economy of Kenya 40 years on into the future look like? As things stand, without the government at least trying something different, South Africa, Nigeria and South Korea will continue to lap Kenya, toasting to their home-grown billions of dollars and expanded economic influence. Will Kenya’s government officials continue to pretend to scratch their heads in search of “new solutions” when the answer is literally painting the picture before them?