I am going to question these three dimensions of time merely by way of provocation. Let us begin with the past, that we may finish by concluding that the past has not yet passed.
What We Were: A Portrait Made by Borrowing
Colonialism didn’t die when countries became independent. There was a change of shift and of crew. Present-day colonialism has dispensed with colonials and has become indigenized within our territories. Not only has it been naturalized but it has come to be jointly administered by a partnership between former colonizers and the formerly colonized.
Much of the vision we have of our country’s and our continent’s past is dictated by the same presuppositions that went into constructing colonial history, or rather, colonized history. A positive sign was placed over what had been negative. The idea persists that pre-colonial Africa was a world beyond time, without conflict or disputes, a paradise made only of harmony.
This romantic image of the past feeds the reductive, simplistic notion of a present condition in which all would be good and function marvellously if it weren’t for outside interference. Those to blame for our problems should only be sought outside, and never inside. The few insiders who are bad, are so because they are the agents of outsiders.
This vision was already present in the discourse of the armed struggle, when the enemy were referred to as “infiltrators.” This happened in spite of the poet Agostinho Neto’s warning, which stated “it is not enough for our cause to be just and pure, but justice and purity must exist within us.” Our ranks, in those days, were seen as being composed exclusively of pure folk. If there was a stain, it emanated from outside, the place where the enemy dwelt.
This simplifying, Manichaean approach to “the time that has passed” had another consequence: it perpetuated the idea that sole and exclusive responsibility for slavery and colonialism fell to Europeans.
When the European navigators started to fill their ships with slaves, they weren’t the first to traffic in human beings. Slavery had already been invented on all continents. The Americans practised it, as did the Europeans, Asians and even Africans. Slavery was the invention of the human species. What happened was that the slave trade was converted into a global system, and this system was developed in order to enrich its centre: Europe, and later, North America.
I’m going to tell you a curious episode involving an African lady called Honoria Bailor-Caulker, which occurred while she was visiting the United States. Honoria Bailor-Caulker is the mayor of the coastal town of Shenge, in Sierra Leone. It’s a small town, but one that’s full of history. Thousands of slaves left from there to cross the Atlantic and work in the American sugar plantations.
Honoria was invited to give a speech in the United States. Before a distinguished audience, the lady stepped up to the podium and insisted on exhibiting her vocal resources. To the astonishment of those present, she sang the hymn Amazing Grace. At the end, Honoria Bailor-Caulker allowed a heavy silence to descend. In the eyes of the Americans, she seemed to have lost her train of thought. But she began her speech and said: the composer of this hymn was born into the slave system, a descendant of a family from my little town of Shenge.
It was like a stroke of magic, and the audience was split between tears and applause. Those present got to their feet, and possibly out of fellow feeling mixed with a modicum of guilt, they acclaimed Honoria.
“Are you applauding me as a descendant of slaves?” she asked those listening.
The answer was a resounding “yes.” That black woman represented, after all, the suffering of millions of slaves to whom America owed so much.
“Well,” said Honoria, “in fact I’m not a descendant of slaves. Neither I nor the composer of the hymn. In fact, we are descendants of those who sold slaves. My great-grandparents grew rich selling slaves.”
Honoria Bailor-Caulker had the courage to assume, with all honesty, the role opposite to stereotype. But this is such an isolated case that it risks being lost and forgotten.
Colonialism was another disaster, whose human suffering cannot be alleviated. But just as in the case of slavery, colonial domination also had inside help. Various African elites connived in and benefited from this historical phenomenon.
Why am I talking about this? Because I believe that the official History of our continent has been subject to a number of distortions. The first and most heinous was that formulated to justify exploitation for the enrichment of Europe. But other distortions ensued and some of these sought to conceal internal responsibility, to assuage the guilt of certain African social groups that participated from the outset in the oppression of the peoples and nations of Africa. This twisted reading of the past is not merely a theoretical diversion. It ends up giving sustenance to an attitude of eternal victimhood; it suggests false enemies and unprincipled alliances.
It is important that we shine a new light on our past, because what is happening now in our countries is nothing other than a modern recasting of old connivances between interests, internal and external. We are reliving a past that we receive in such a distorted form that we are incapable of recognizing it when it reaches us. We are not far removed from those university students who, when they journey outside of Maputo, do not recognize themselves as the inheritors of the elders.
What We Are: A Mirror in Search of Its Image
If the past reaches us in a state of deformity, so the present flows into our lives, its form incomplete. Some experience this as a drama. And they rush off nervously in search of that which they call our identity. In the vast majority of cases, this identity is a house furnished by ourselves, but the furniture and the house itself were constructed by others. Others believe that the affirmation of their identity stems from denying the identity of others. What’s certain is that our affirmation of who we are is rooted in countless misconceptions.
We must affirm that which is ours, some people say. And they are right. At a time when we are all invited to be Americans, such an appeal has every justification.
It therefore makes absolute sense for us to affirm that which is ours. But my question is this: what is truly ours? There are some misunderstandings here. For example: some believe that the capulana is a mode of dress that originated here, that is typically Mozambican. On various occasions, I have posed this question to university students: which fruits are ours, as opposed to strawberries, peaches and apples? The answers are once again curious. People believe that the following originated in Africa: cashews, mangoes, guavas, papaya. And so on and so forth. Now, none of these fruits are ours, in the sense that they are native to the continent. Other times, people suggest that we should affirm what is ours by citing the vegetables used in our cuisine. At this point, our Mozambican emblems would include coconut, cassava, sweet potato, and the peanut. All products that were introduced into Mozambique and into Africa. Yet these things end up being ours because, independently of their origins, we have transformed them, refashioned them in our own way. The capulana may have originated elsewhere but it is Mozambican in the way that we fasten it. And in the way this cloth now speaks to us. Coconut is Indonesian, cassava is more Latin American than Jennifer Lopez, but the dish we prepare is ours because we have always cooked it our way.
Concepts must be vital implements in our search for our own image. But much of the conceptual framework we use to look at Mozambique is based on catchphrases which, because they have been repeated so often, have ultimately failed to produce any meaning at all. Let me give some examples. We talk a lot about the following: