Books by Kalamu ya Salaam

The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement  /   360: A Revolution of Black Poets

Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology  /  From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets

Our Music Is No Accident   /  What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self

My Story My Song (CD)

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Tarzan Can Not Return to Africa But I Can

A-B-C-D: PANAFEST 1994

By Kalamu ya Salaam

A: Why Did I Say That?

            "Tarzan, I have come to kill you."

            He laughs at my statement.

            "Why do you laugh? I am serious. My arrival means your demise. Your death."

            He chuckles, "Old boy..."

            I stiffen.

            "Oh don't take yourself so seriously."

            Pause. My eyes flare Ghanaian red as if cosmetically colored with the extract of a traditional root.

            Sensing my anger, Tarzan waves a manicured hand. Did you notice how Tarzan's hands are never dirty? "OK. 'Sir!' Shall I call you sir? I don't mean anything honorable by it. You know my contempt. I know my contempt. But I shall lie to you and call you 'sir' if that makes you feel better."

            I face him down. "Your last words?"

            He beats his chest.

            A lion roars. The elephants arrive. A blonde scurries in and adjusts his make up.

            "Do you think my right or my left side is better?"

            We pause as Tarzan poses, standing still until the director shouts "cut."

            Striding purposefully off the set, Tarzan takes me by the arm, "Come, let me show you something."

            We walk for a few days along the coast past twenty-eight castles. I keep him in front of me.

            "Well? You know, we couldn't have done all of this alone."

            I am not going to debate my history with him. "Are you ready to die?"

            "Oh, that again."

             "Tarzan, I've come to kill you."

            "You can't kill me."

            "Watch me."

            "You can't kill me because I am you and you are me. You are Tarzan, don't you get it? Of course you don't. You think you're free. You think you're African."

            Pause.

            I advance. Which weapon should I use. Maybe my bare hands. Yes.

            "I'm the only Africa you grew up knowing. Novels. Comic Books. Movies. Television. You can't kill how you grew up. Remember swinging on a rope and yelling like me?"

            He yells and beats his chest.

            "Remember the dumb spear chuckers? That was your Uncle Robert. I gave you two choices: you could be me or you could be them. You could be oog-la-boog-la or you could be Aaahh-Owwww-Ooooh-Ooooh!"

            Tarzan chuckles quietly.

            "Let's have a drink. Brandy would be nice, don't you think?"

            Pause.

            "How long did it take you to realize that you had no choices?"

            Pause.

            I don't know why I couldn't answer him. Why I didn't just kill him right then.

            "You know I've learned all of your languages and you've forgotten all of your languages. Dreadful, isn't it? All you have is my tongue."

            Tarzan takes his tongue out of his mouth and sits it on the table.

            "Go on, pick it up old man. Come, come now. Really it won't bite you. Teeth bite. Tongues don't. Oh, you know sticks and stones, and all that rot. Oh don't be a twit, go on try it. Give it a go."

            He nods at me. The tongue is wagging on the table.

            "Pick me up. Pick me up. Pick me up."

            Tarzan smiles. Nods to me again. Looks away.

            I raise my knife. Tarzan turns calmly, looks at me, smiles, raises his brandy  sniffer.

            "Cheers, old chap. And good luck. God knows, you will bloody well need it."

            Tarzan fades to dust. The brandy glass is empty. I am standing with the stupid knife in my hand and you enter the room.

            I hear my voice but not my tongue. I look on the table. Tarzan's tongue is gone. I turn to face you and break the silence of our communication with two words.

            "Me, Tarzan."

*   *   *

            "...no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion." said Booker T. Washington in his classic book, Up From Slavery. To which, it is both highly accurate and unfortunately necessary to add, "no Negro either." No Negro ever thinks he is wholly civilized until...

            In this regard, those of us who think of ourselves as human beings "just like Whites", who think of ourselves as capable of achieving civilization, have not arrived until we have ceased being ourselves.

            Except we never ever fully succeed at either arriving in civilization or leaving our selves. We are forever late, forever leaving. Never making a clean getaway and never able to recline in rest knowing that we have achieved the finished line.

            For the Negro there is no finish precisely because the Negro wishes to be other than what the Negro is. And no one can be that. No one can be other than what they are. No matter how much they master impersonation, they are still an imitation. Sometimes technically dazzling, even self-delusionally so. Sometimes able to fool all who witness them. But deep inside, no matter. Because at some point, the lights go down, the audience leaves, the stage is emptied of actors, and one is left to face the truth. We are what we are, regardless of what we want to be or what we pretend to be.

            Besides, there are no Black Tarzans. By definition Tarzan (the epitome of the "all knowing" and mythically powerful colonizer) is not a Negro. Not Black. Not African. And no mastery of language, no matter how elegant, will ever transform us into what we are not.

B: Going to Meet the Man 

            I am invited to participate in PANAFEST 1994 in Ghana. The official invite comes from John Darkey, the director. I had met Mr. Darkey at an October 1993 Cultural Groundings conference in New York City which was organized through the initiative of Marta Vega, Executive Director of the Caribbean Cultural Center. Marta Vega called me and asked me to stand in for her at PANAFEST. She felt that I could represent our efforts because I was one of the founding members of the Global Network for Cultural Equity and a contributor to Voices from the Battlefront, a book of essays on multiculturalism and the fight for cultural equity. Even though there is less than a month to prepare, I had been hoping to go. At that point I began seriously reorganizing my schedule and started the process of getting immunizations. The only catch was that other than the form invitation in the mail, I had received no direct contact. Would I be accepted as a delegate in place of Ms. Vega? Which of the two chartered flights? What specific time schedule? Would I present a paper?

            I want to go but it's difficult to get information. Communication is almost non-existent. More often than not we can't even get a fax through. There is a constant busy signal on the phone lines, even two in the morning.

            Calls to the Ghana Embassy in New York invariably result in a ten minute roundabout through a voice mail system with a prerecorded message that tells you how much the visa costs but neglects to supply an address. Finally, and after numerous and expensive efforts, in the "soon come" way endemic to underdevelopment, direct contact is made. I receive a comforting call from Julialynne Walker. Ms. Walker, a sister from the States, is the director for the Ghana division of the School for International Learning and volunteer coordinator for PANAFEST.

            Julialynne Walker tells me the time and date of my presentation, and confirms that all of the necessary information has been received. Her assurances and information fuel my fire—obviously this was meant to be.

            The first step of a long journey is made.

            Later, three days after I arrive in Ghana, I find out that from the logistics and administrative standpoint, Ms. Walker is the key person. Working with a staff of Ghanaians, Ms. Walker is the funnel through which most of the day to day colloquium related problems are triaged. In fact, we first meet by what initially seems accident. I'm sitting in the temporary secretariat office in Cape Coast waiting to find out where our housing assignment is and she strides through on a reconnaissance mission. "I was just passing through to see if anyone needed any help and spotted you." As the week wears on, I realize that she was not "just passing through," she was making sure that as much as possible every detail was nailed down and that whatever had come loose was at least noted.

            Julialynne Walker has been in Ghana for awhile and is easily the most skilled  administrator that we encounter during PANAFEST. Not the least of her skills includes dealing with African (continental and Diaspora) male egos which are threatened by her self-assured, efficient, and effective leadership. Over and over again, situation after situation makes clear that quiet-fire Julialynne Walker is the engine moving the train down the track.

            That a woman is at the center of the inner workings is no surprise, because in most of the African world, on the continent and abroad, in a cross-gender but not inaccurate sense, a central truth reigns: the woman is also "the man."

Source: WordUp

C: Foreign Exchange

            When Felicia opens the sea blue piece of kente with symbols woven into the fabric, Nia turns her back to the cloth. "I don't want to see. I don't want to see it." One of those moments so overwhelming that you turn away because you know you cannot resist.

            I am not a shopper. I don't buy much of anything that is not either a book, a recording, computer software, or a piece of equipment. I especially am not much on buying clothes and fabric. Nevertheless, as soon as it is fully open, I convince myself that it would be wise to splurge and buy this gigantic piece of kente. It's big enough to serve as a spread for a king sized bed and beautiful enough to hang in a museum or art shop.

            Marketeer Felicia Kissi is a quintessential vendor at the Accra Art Center Market. Originally from Kumasi, she makes her living selling fabric, mainly kente, in the bustling capital city marketplace. Before our trip is over both Nia and I will revisit Felicia's stall and buy other pieces from her. Tourists are the main customers for these vendors.

            The market work is hard. The vendors arrive very early in the morning, set up their stalls, hanging fabric, articles of clothing, accessories, artifacts, and whatnots as high as twenty feet. Items are layered one on top the other. They sell all day and then completely break down their stall at night. In general, families work together and it is the women who seem to be in charge.

            As you walk past stall after stall, down the narrow aisles, your eyes beguiled by the seemingly endless array of African textiles and artifacts, choosing what to buy and which stall to buy from is mostly happenstance and the vicissitudes of personal preference.

            Of course, the vendors call out to you, invite you to stand in their small six foot square stalls, and greet you as "brother," "sister," promising the best deal in the market.  And "deal" it is. There are no marked prices in the market. Everything is an amiable haggle. The vendors start high expecting that the customer will demand a reduced price. The negotiating is part of the buying process.

            Nia loves the exchange. It's exasperating to me. Just tell me the price and then I will decide if I want to pay it. Although haggling back and forth turns me off, the blue kente puts even me in the mood. Felicia on one side. Nia and I on the other. We begin the bargain dance.

            There is no way I would ever have bought this piece of kente in the United States even though I might have admired it and desired it if I had seen it. First of all, this is not a piece one would find in a bookstore or small boutique which are generally the places from which I buy African material. I have never bought material from a museum or art shop. Moreover, the Stateside price for a piece such as this blue kente would undoubtedly be prohibitive. It's hard to believe it's me about to spend over $100 dollars for fabric. But here I am on a dirt field in downtown Accra, Ghana at an open air market shopping at a level I've never before done in my life.

            We bargain and end up getting two small pieces plus the impressive, gigantic-sized piece for a total of US$200. Back in the states, one of the small pieces alone would cost more than we have paid for the whole lot.

*   *   *

            It is Wednesday, 7 December 1994, our first day in Ghana and we are shopping. There is nothing on the PANAFEST schedule until the formal opening on Friday in Cape Coast. Recalling my trip to Tanzania for the 6th Pan African Congress, I encourage Nia to shop today—which is a little like encouraging a fish to swim. I tell her how prices were actually cheaper when we first arrived at 6PAC than when we left. I suspect the influx of tourists for PANAFEST will be met with a similar rise in the prices that the market will bear. It's basic supply and demand economics. When there are lots of people with the money and the willingness to buy, you can charge more than when the number of people, the amount of spending money and the willingness to buy is less.

            We visit a number of stalls, including one recommended to us by Steve Bowser, a friend of mine from Atlanta who is chief of security at Spelman College and who was recently in Ghana. Our first day in Ghana, Nia and I do more shopping together than we have done in our almost four years together. And the vendors are waiting for us.

            We are shown masks, including some "old-looking" dusty masks which the owner invites us to view inside a small wooden enclosure. This is their living. The vendors know that the more "authentic" the sculpture looks, the higher the price they can demand. I am no authority on traditional African sculpture, so I can't even begin to identify styles and quality of workmanship. In cases like this I just go with my gut feelings. What I like, what I don't. We don't buy any masks.

            We are also shown some Asafo Flags. One set of three seems to be authentic. The fabric is worn. The embroidery and appliqués do not have a "finished" or "highly crafted" look. The lines are curvy rather than machine straight. Again, although I am no authority, these seem to be real. They are probably a very good buy for someone who is into art and knows the value, but they don't really appeal to me. I pass.

            After an hour or so of perusing the back end of the market where the sculpture and handicrafts stalls are located, we end up buying a leather grip which we get for US$24. We use it to carry the two outfits and a few smaller items which we had bought in the fabric section. The grip is a source of admiration everywhere we go. When we arrive back in the States, getting on the flight from New York to Atlanta, a group of three women ask Nia where she got it. They want to buy the bag, but Nia's not selling.

            After purchasing the bag, we return to the fabric area to bargain for two dress dashikis, one is a magnificent brown fabric with cowry shells. I end up paying US$80 for two shirts. The pricing started at $60 for just the cowry shell shirt. Throughout our two weeks in Ghana, in and out of various stalls, including making the rounds at the trade exhibition, we don't run into anything like the cowry shell shirt.

            We then look at a large bed spread sized piece of red wool-like fabric which has appliqués on it. It's starting price is well over $100. We like it but pass. Our last stop is back to the stall where we saw an impressive piece of kente for $60 when we first came in.

            We spent hours going through the entire market. We are now back to this beautiful piece of kente. Nia and I decide to get it. The vendor shows us another piece which is almost as impressive and offers us a deal if we buy both. I am debating on whether I'm ready to spend $110 for two shawl size pieces of kente.

            Nia thinks it's a sound investment. I don't know. We have a very limited amount of money and if we spend over $300 dollars the first day, it might prove to be a very big mistake. I'm on the verge of changing my mind. I start looking around. Rather than taking advantage of a great deal, this just might be the licking of a sucker, and it's simply my minute to be born.

            I start looking up and down and all around. I've never ever in my life spent this much for fabric. I really don't know how to act. Then I spy a piece of blue way up at the top. I can only see the color and a part of some design in bright golden yellow. Maybe the pieces we're about to buy aren't the best pieces. "May I see that blue piece?"

*   *   *

            One of our main activities in Accra was shopping! We joked that it was a contribution to the Ghanaian economy.

            The foreign exchange generated from shopping for Ghanaian produced textiles, handicrafts and artifacts is potentially a major piece of Ghana's economic puzzle. Many, many developing countries, who generally produce one or two crops for export, are trying to figure out how to use tourism to generate foreign exchange at significant levels without suffering the moral debilitation that usually accompanies tourism.

            When tourism becomes a main source of foreign exchange, inevitably, at best, the country becomes a family oriented amusement park. At worse—and unfortunately worse is the norm—as tourism grows the country spirals socially downward becoming a mixture of brothel, gaming den, and vacation spot for  moneyed people who cheaply "buy" natives to serve up and satisfy exotic/erotic fantasies.

            Over the past two decades, the island nations of the Caribbean have initiated numerous efforts to define and implement cultural tourism. Ideally, cultural tourism is benign in both its moral and material effects on the host society. Most cultural tourism efforts have centered around music festivals and national holiday celebrations such as jazz festivals in Aruba, Barbados, and St. Lucia, or "Crop Over" in Barbados and "Carnival" in Trinidad.

            In theory, groups of people who have an interest in the ethnicity and heritage of the islands will attend these events as participants and not just as "idle rich consumers." The sad truth is that cultural tourism has been a failure.

            In Cuba, cultural tourism has led to a massive reappearance of prostitution and to the commodification of Afro-Cuban religious rituals and artifacts. For a specific fee, a tourist can be initiated into the religion during their ten day visit. Or, for a specific fee, a tourist can fulfill an exotic/erotic fantasy with a readily available young Cuban woman.

            Fierce debates are raging between cultural activists and government bureaucrats. The activists see the crass commercializing and commodification of the culture as a death blow. The bureaucrats on the other hand encourage, if not demand, that every cultural activity that receives any government support must in one way or another pay for itself through attracting the tourist dollar. Moreover, overt negatives such as black market activities, prostitution, and drug trafficking are broadly tolerated. This is a sad, but true, state of affairs in a revolutionary, socialist country which has been economically squeezed well past the breaking point. To a greater or lesser degree the situation is the same all over the Caribbean.

            The worse part about this development is that the foreign exchange generated from cultural tourism is relatively modest, if not insignificant. We people of color wherever we are found literally sell ourselves, our flesh, our dignity, our human spirit and in return receive barely enough money to survive, and never enough money to develop. Moreover, the cruelest twist of the tourism trap is that, in an effort to build hotels, convention centers, upgrade roads, provide "first class" transportation and guides, install air conditioning and insure an abundant supply of hot water, plus keep on hand a broad array of succulent meals day and night, our developing countries end up going deeper in debt to the governments and corporations of the tourists to whom we sell ourselves.

            Other than a "good time," we produce little that the tourist wants to buy. Most of the money that is generated from this type of tourism is made by those who own and operate the capital intensive areas of the tourist economy: the international transporters, the hotels and resorts, and the management of exclusive tourist activities and events.

            Our governments posses neither the resources nor the skills required to compete with multinational corporations. The airline companies, for example, of small countries are severely limited in their ability to match price discounts and services offered by the major American and European airlines. Governments are completely out of their league in running hotels and resorts. Usually the results of such efforts are both wasteful of valuable resources and hopelessly amateur by comparison to the Hiltons, Marriotts, Meridians, and hundreds of other hotel and resort chains which operate internationally.

            Moreover, the cultural events which are produced to attract the tourists often end up alienating our own people. Local people are too poor to buy tickets to and participate in the very events which were setup to attract foreign exchange.

            Additionally, the actual cash return on investments in festivals and specially staged events has been far less than projected. I speak from the experience of helping to organize festival and special events in the Caribbean and also from my background of growing up and working in New Orleans, a city which is economically defined and sociologically influenced by tourism.

            In most of the Caribbean cases, we were unable to attract the quantity of tourists needed to sustain and profit from the events. Additionally, we ended up either importing culture that was alien to the host country or presenting commercialized replications of indigenous culture for the entertainment of tourists whose tastes are geared toward hedonism. In New Orleans we on the ground are unable to compete with the major tourist infrastructures. Thus, we end up filling service slots in the cultural tourism scheme.

            Moreover, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, competing for the foreign exchange of the tourist dollar becomes the major, if not sole, preoccupation of the managers of cultural tourism.

            PANAFEST exhibited some of the negative aspects outlined above, especially 1.)  the inability of government civil servants to plan and manage cultural activities and 2.) the alienation of local people from the performances and special events.

            This is the second, biennial PANAFEST. In 1992 it had been mostly in Accra. The secretariat decided, I suspect based on government suggestions, to decentralize PANAFEST 1994. Performances were held in five or six different cities. The colloquium was held at the University of Cape Coast except for one day of presentations in Kumasi. Opening and closing activities were held in Accra with an ongoing trade fair, exhibitions, film festival, and concerts in the capital city. Stevie Wonder, for example, was scheduled to perform in Accra.

            The idea seemed to be to spread everything around and also to figure a way to develop the Cape Coast area where the two main castles are located: Cape Coast and Elmina. The actuality was that it was almost unmanageable. In Accra many of the performances were sparsely attended because of the pricing structure and because the people who could have afforded the concerts and who were also most interested in PANAFEST were in Cape Coast attending the colloquium. 

             The planning committee found itself right up to and past opening day making "structural adjustments." The government guaranteed money was not received until two weeks before the event, meaning that there was very little hard promotion outside of Ghana. For example, even though Ghana Airlines offered a very reasonable $1200 dollar round-trip, direct flight from New York, we received the specific information only three weeks before our departure date.

            PANAFEST came into some fierce criticism from Ghanaians who felt that 94 was a step backward in comparison to the first one.

            In 1992 the first PANAFEST was more successful in organizing programs that encouraged and achieved major participation by locals in PANAFEST activities. But in the second year, most of the events were sparsely attended by Ghanaians. Ticket pricing was one major reason. But also the level of coordination with and involvement of local associations and organizations was minimized. The colloquium, for example, which was held at the University of Cape Coast had very little attendance from students at the University. There were no organized outreach activities to present the wide range of guests to the Ghanaian people through educational, religious, social or other indigenous institutions.

            In this regard, Ghana is neither unique nor even particularly bad at planning and administration. It's just that most of the people who were in charge of planning and administration were civil servants and tended to think in discreet, status quo, exclusive paradigms. They did what they had been trained to do. They did only what they knew how to do and what was acceptable to government superiors.

            Fortunately, the diversity of PANAFEST participants and the rural location of Cape Coast offered a great deal of informal interchange between visitors and villagers. Everywhere we walked, people welcomed us, talked to us.

            Perhaps in 1996, PANAFEST will build on the positives of people to people exchanges. Perhaps they will send us into schools and community centers to learn from and share our experiences with local people. Even on the level of peer to peer networking and workshoping, there were literally thousands of missed opportunities.

             On the other hand, part of the reason we were able to see the potential of these opportunities is because a large and diverse body of us had been invited to PANAFEST. This grouping is a critical mass which unavoidably sets off sparks, some of which will die out, but some of which will catch fire in the hearts and minds of one, two, twenty or however many participants. Some of us will not only be emotionally touched, we will also be motivated to action as a result of our PANAFEST experience in Ghana.

            Regardless of the numerous snafus and programmatic inadequacies, once in motion, PANAFEST brings literally hundreds of Africans from the Diaspora into direct contact with Ghana, a contact which is destined to produce long term impact important to future development of both the host and the visitors. Get enough of the Diaspora there, and we'll figure out for ourselves how to make something happen.

            The Pan African reintegration of the Diaspora is an experimental process; the results cannot be premeditated nor quantified, or even qualified, in advance. The raw experience of Africa, the rock of our Diaspora experiences: our ignorances and assumptions, our nostalgia and romanticism, our postmodern aggressiveness and Western temperaments. The rock of all of that hitting the hard realities of Africa will produce the spark required to resuscitate Pan Africanism.

            What is fired in the hearts and minds of PANAFEST participants no one can predict. But what is clear is that the PANAFEST experience will touch some in significant ways, and we will leave Africa burning with a determination to reclaim Africa within ourselves wherever we are. Possibly, a handful of us will even physically return to work temporarily, if not to live permanently.

            Ghana's main success with PANAFEST was that it invested in the cost to get us there. Sponsoring PANAFEST was an economic risk on the one hand, but, from another perspective, sponsorship was also a necessary step in Ghanaian national development, a step of healing, a step of re-completing, reuniting, rebuilding through embracing the diaspora. We in the diaspora have our own problems to sort out with the actualization of Pan Africanism and this sorting out process sometimes blinds us to the difficulties that continental Africa has with making Pan Africanism real.

            Because of its history and because PANAFEST seems as  though it will outlive FESTAC and similar efforts at Pan African cultural celebration, all of PANAFEST's deficiencies stood out in bold relief and were closely inspected by both friend and foe. Were Ghana not sponsoring PANAFEST, there would be nothing to criticize.

            There was a legitimate concern for the health and future of PANAFEST in the criticisms of participants. Some of the general criticism from non-participants, however, was not intended as a critique to help improve PANAFEST, but rather was an attack whose objective was to bury PANAFEST. Undoubtedly there are those in Ghana who would prefer that PANAFEST not exist at all. There are those who think it is a wasteful and unnecessary event. Such critics are particularly distrustful of involving large numbers of diaspora Africans. So, while we acknowledge the shortcomings, we must also resolutely support PANAFEST.

            Overall, PANAFEST is a good thing, and potentially could become a major, if not "the" major Pan African event. At the end of the colloquium there was even a criticism and suggestion session designed to elicit both honest assessment of the positive and negatives of the event, as well as to encourage participants to make suggestions for future PANAFEST activities.

*   *   *

THE GHANAIAN CHRONICLE

Monday, December 19 – Wednesday, December 21, 1994

Editorial

     *   *   *

FREE PRESS (Accra, Ghana)

December 16 to December 22, 1994

Editorial

*   *   *

            Part of what PANAFEST wanted to do was encourage capital investment in Ghana by people in the Diaspora. A number of Ghanaian officials were focusing in this direction rather than on raw tourism. Part of the reason is conditions: Ghana does not have a tourism infrastructure in place. In Cape Coast there was not one hotel which could offer the two hundred or so rooms required to house most of the colloquium participants and performers in one place. The new hotel complex which was scheduled to be completed and which would have been large enough to accommodate the participants, unfortunately was not ready.

            Ghana recognizes they need serious development. Fortunately, they also are proud of their own culture and social traditions. They are not looking for "fast food" development.

            At the newly opened theatre/cultural center in Cape Coast, there was a Taco Bell restaurant. It was toward the rear of the building. I sought it out because I wanted to see how Ghana was handling multinational corporate participation in the national developmental process. There was nothing Taco Bell about the restaurant. There was no quick anything. The food was Ghanaian for the most part. There was not one "Tex-Mex" item on the menu. No Taco Bell napkins, imprinted paper products, or the like. In fact, if a small sign on the door didn't say Taco Bell, there would have been absolutely no way to know that this was a Taco Bell. And then, maybe it wasn't a Taco Bell. Maybe somebody just decided to call the place Taco Bell.

            Throughout Accra and the Cape Coast area there are few Western fast food restaurants. I don't personally remember seeing any, although I'm sure some do exist. In fact, I saw more computer billboards and businesses than burger or chicken advertisements and businesses. Coca-cola, of course, is there but Ghana has an indigenous product which favorably competes. "Citro" is a lemon/lime beverage which I liked better than either "Sprite" or "7Up."

            In any case, rather than rely solely on a large influx of multinational franchises, Ghana is hoping to attract capital investment from the African Diaspora. Ghana has all kinds of developmental opportunities for those with modest (by Diaspora standards) amounts of capital who are willing to work at long term development. Opportunities abound in a numerous areas, from agriculture to retailing, medicine to tourism, transportation to compact disc manufacturing. Ghana has both the need and the desire to involve Diaspora Africans.

            Which brings us back to shopping. Nia and I bought quite a few items in Ghana which were far more substantial than tourist trinkets and souvenirs. Ghanaian textiles, particularly the kente cloth, has significant retailing potential. Unlike other examples of  "African print material," kente is actually manufactured in Ghana rather than merely designed by and for Africans but manufactured somewhere in Europe or Asia. Moreover, Africans in the Diaspora are predisposed to wearing the material as both a fashion statement and an expression of ethnic pride. Finally, kente is part of the traditional Ghanaian culture. Although tourist oriented kente (with Greek fraternity/sorority slogans, Christian quotes, and the like) abound in the marketplace, kente was not originally created to sell to tourists.

            The potential of cultural tourism will never bear fruit as long as the emphasis is on "selling" entertainment to tourists. Selling entertainment invariably leads to decadence and hedonism. Ideally, like some of the emerging industrialized Asian nations, we would also like for African countries to be in the business of exporting technical equipment, such as computers. But, at the moment, that's an unrealistic dream. What is within our grasp is the encouragement of capital linkages between continental and Diaspora Africans.

            For a number of reasons, ranging from the negatives of our deteriorating social conditions where we live to the positives of ethnic pride in our motherland, Africans in the Diaspora will increase our interaction with the continent. Moreover, when we go to Africa, we will also want to bring Africa back with us. As more and more of us go, that pool of those who have returned and immersed ourselves into Africa's reality will produce individuals and opportunities which will result in serious capital investment.

            As I travel around the United States, whether traveling by car via interstate, or especially when flying through various airports, two characteristics strike me: one, the enormous size and level of development of the United States, and, two, the fact that America is in no way willing, prepared or even minimally inclined to share the resources and material development built up in the 20th century.

            Look at a small town like Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, which doesn't even register as a major city by U.S. standards. In terms of physical infrastructure, Baton Rouge is light years ahead of Accra, the capital of Ghana. There are literally thousands of American cities the size of Baton Rouge with fully functioning airports, higher educational institutions, health and sanitation, communications and other industrial infrastructure. Although this density of development would be extraordinary in any other country in the world, most of we African Americans are blissfully unaware of the immensity and import of America's industrial infrastructure.

            In many, many ways, because all we really know about industrialism is consumerism, African Americans are unaware of what industrial development entails. We don't think about heavy machinery manufacturing, transportation concerns, sanitation, general utilities, medical services, and on and on. I remember reading one of the Sandinista writers who talked about the bewildering process of administering newly liberated Nicaragua.

            The mettle of any revolution is most severely tested not in the armed struggle phase, but rather in the reconstruction phase. This is where Africa needs the most help, and this is precisely where the bulk of we African Americans are deficient simply because we have not been in management and skilled labor but rather traditionally we have been relegated to being the brawn and brute strength of the American economy.

            On the level of material standard of living, we are, of course, very aware of being "better off" than most people in the world, and especially "better off" than Africa. Yet our "better off-ness" is both relative and solely material rather than absolute and social. As citizens of the U.S.A. we have some (depending on our particular financial wherewithal) access to the "good life" and some enjoyment of the material trappings of a modern industrial society manifested as a so-called high standard of living. Yet our relationships to the wealth and means of production, the infrastructure that makes all this possible, is tenuous at best. Whatever access we have is generally one of proximity or of being a "servant of the system" (whether as Joint Chief of Staff or Supreme Court Justice does nothing to change the ultimate reality that our participation in the affairs of the ruling class is to serve at their pleasure and to do their bidding).

            There is a big difference between being close to power or serving the interests of power and actually sharing power. Indeed, when looked at in detail and on an economic basis, those of us who live poor and Black in the inner cities of America have a standard of living (in terms of health care, life expectancy and other measures of social wellbeing) which is amazingly similar to our brothers and sisters in major cities throughout sub-Sahara Africa. We neither control nor produce, and therefore are dependents in relationship to America's industrial standard of living.

             Finally, to whatever degree we are better off, it is only in possession of material things. In terms of social wellbeing, in terms of individual and collective sanity, in terms of mental health and community, morals and ethics, well, let's just say things ain't what they used to be for African Americans at the end of the 20th century. Confronted by Africa's underdevelopment in an industrial sense combined with our own penchant for the material trappings of the so-called good life, Africa quickly teaches the Diaspora that African Americans in general are the "whitest" Africans in the world. Our up side is that we have greater access to "things." Our downside is that our proximity to American power and mores has bleached us spiritually and socially.

            My critique of African Americans allegedly being better off than continental Africans focuses not only on our relationship to U.S. industrial development and our adoption of an American consciousness, but also we should focus on and question the cost of that development—the whole world has suffered so that those of us in America can live as we do, even those of us who have limited access to and share very little of the wealth and power of America.

            The recent rise of the Republican Party in America is further reinforcement that there will be no sharing of this wealth. From coast to coast, border to border, I go into what is left of the "Black community" and I am saddened. While we were never in a position to compete, at least, during the first half of the 20th century, we African Americans were building an internal economic infrastructure. Today, with far more political freedom, we have regressed into a state of near peonage, into an economic serfdom which is most accurately measured by noting deficiencies and lacks.

            Those of us who try to start businesses find ourselves severely outclassed and hampered not just by a lack of expertise and capital, but also hampered by having to compete with fully developed multinationals who are becoming increasingly adroit at employing niche marketing schemes designed to sew up the African American market. If we are to develop and compete as a people, it just seems that there is so very little room for growth available to us in the United States. People talk about opportunity, but what kind of opportunity do we have when we are first generation business people going up against the major, minor and even bush leagues of Wall Street corporations? Africa is a much more sensible and level playing field in terms of competition and also in terms of need.

            In African developmental terms, a $50,000 project is serious and significant. In the USA, that amount barely qualifies as venture capital in business development. African Americans who want to develop businesses and make serious money, stand a much better chance at competing and succeeding in Ghana than they do in the home of the brave and the land of the free.

            While they are not discouraging or overlooking the tourist dollar, at this historical moment, Ghana is seeking African Americans to make venture capital, developmental investments in Ghana. There is both a genuine need and a genuine desire for an infusion of Diaspora African skills and capital. When it comes to foreign exchange, the Pan African potential is enormous.

             Some suggest that South Africa will be the new "promised land." My particular reading is that South Africa will see blood shed and rough times before it sees a real improvement in the lives of African people. The White controlled, industrial infrastructure which makes South Africa so attractive to investors is also the major obstacle for indigenous African development. Although I am not a prophet, the clash of Black expectations for a significant increase in their standard of living versus White determination to hold on to wealth and economic power is an obvious and unavoidable obstacle in the path of South African national development.

            Although Ghana is certainly not the only African country which is desirous of and could benefit from an infusion of Diaspora capital and skills, psychologically, Ghana is the most prepared to make use of the unique Diaspora configuration of foreign exchange. Some refer to this as the "Israel" model.

            The basic foundation of a large Diaspora able to offer capital and political support is a point we and Jews have in common, there are also significant differences, not the least of which is the fact that Israel is one state, while Africa is a continent made up of many states. More important than logistical questions is the fact that the Jews as a people have never had a serious inferiority complex about themselves nor have they, as a people, been brainwashed into believing that the White man's ice is colder, the White man's businesses are better, and the White man's brains are smarter. While individual Jews have displayed feelings of guilt and inadequacy, Jews as a people always cast themselves as "the chosen" ones. Yes, they might suffer disproportionately to others, but they never considered themselves the cursed tribe of "Ham."

            This was the underlying point of the movie Schindler's List. In terms of business acumen, the movie portrayed Schindler as a figurehead whose business was actually run by a Jewish accountant. Moreover, throughout the movie, every time a specific skill was needed a "persecuted Jew" was presented who, when given the chance, competently and admirably fulfilled the job.

            In fact, even when not given the chance, the Jews were portrayed as "more skilled" than their German persecutors. This was the point of the concentration camp scene in which a young Jewish woman steps forward to offer her architectural expertise. She speaks up to correct the construction methods used in erecting a building. The German commander listens to her, weighs her advice, cold-bloodedly shoots her dead, and then directs the soldiers and prisoners to follow the advice of the murdered architect. The point of the scene was not just the capricious cruelty of the German military officer, but also to portray the intelligence of the Jewish victim. Thus, Schindler's List reinforces the intelligence and skills of Jews and fights against any suggestion of Jewish inferiority.

            We Africans, both continental and Diaspora, have a much tougher battle to fight. By Western industrialized standards of education and skills, we are not only generally underdeveloped, we also have serious and deep-seated feelings of intrinsic inferiority. In short, we believe ourselves not just ignorant but fundamentally stupid. In this regard, the attraction of the Diaspora African is our access to and possession of Western education and capital.

            Regardless of how inadequate we in the Diaspora may feel within the nations of our birth, the fact is, in terms of education and skills, the Diaspora is the advanced sector of the African world. We are both an emotional and a material asset to African development. This is obvious. However, we are also a problem for African development because, to date, the continent has not fully faced the history or traumatic effects of the slave trade on all of Africa. Underlying every exchange at PANAFEST was a groping with the difficulty of settling the issue of Diaspora reintegration into the African family.

GHANAIAN TIMES

Monday, December 12, 1994

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            Ghana is beginning to face the full ramifications of the horror and trauma of the slave trade's devastating historic disruption, and through facing the truth, is beginning to welcome the return of the Diaspora. The fact that Ghana is actively courting the Diaspora is a major league statement in and of itself.

            When President Rawlings extends a hand of welcome, and when people on the street spontaneously do the same, the point is driven home in ways which are difficult to explain in rational terms but which are emotionally overwhelming.

            When we Africans need serious help, most of us seldom think of each other. In the midst of Ghanaian economic development deliberations, the push to expand Pan Africanism from romantic cultural concepts and nation bound political expressions to encompass international economic development is a bold move.

            The "feeling of self worth" that results from Black people struggling to live and work with each other across "tribal" lines is an unbelievably potent tonic. This invigorating brew gives a higher and healthier meaning to the phrase "foreign exchange."

D: Are You Here for PANAFEST?

            Angela Lee lives in Canada. She has been telling us she knows the mayor of Accra. Not bragging. Simply sharing information.

            I like Angela's enthusiasm.

            We are eating dinner. A man dressed in a batakari, a traditional Ghanaian shirt, and who looks like James Earl Jones' cousin, comes over to our table.

            This is Nat Amarteifio, the mayor of Accra.

            Before the night is over he drives us around the city. Treats us to a drink at a ritzy hotel after he has driven us through the various sections of town including the poorest sections that most politicians would try to hide.

            As we drive, we talk.

            I ask him what is the murder rate.

            Honestly. He doesn't know. Never had to think about that.

            In Ghana the policemen don't carry guns. The thieves—what few of them there are—don't carry guns either, not if they want to live. In Ghana they execute armed robbers. The second day we were there a newspaper headline trumpeted a murder—a crowd caught a thief and beat him to death.

            Do you have a drug problem?

            Nothing you would recognize as a problem. Ghanaians think marijuana makes you crazy. Ghana's major drug related problem is the increasing numbers of Ghanaians working as smugglers hired to carry hard drugs into Western countries.

            Crack is non-existent. In fact, most people don't even smoke cigarettes. It's refreshingly astounding to see thousands and thousands of Black, non-smokers.

            Do you have a health problem?

            Sanitation mainly. But no plagues or anything of that sort.

            What do you need most?

            Education.

            I comment on the walking variety stores. Almost every conceivable product hawked up and down the lanes between cars on crowded Accra main streets. Toilet paper. No problem. Batteries. Chain link fencing. Light bulbs. A moving Walmart of sandaled entrepreneurs giving a new meaning to retail marketing.

            Some people want us to shut them down.

            Some people who?

            Some people in government. But you know those young people stand there all day in the hot sun selling their wares. I'd much rather they're doing that, making honest money, than hitting people in the head.

            I have never been driven around by a mayor before.

             At the hotel when we stop for drinks, we run into Jane. We were going in. The mayor was first and then the four of us: Angela, Nia and me, and Norbusse Philip, a Toronto, Canada based Caribbean writer from Tobago, Trinidad. As we approached the door, a small party of people were coming out. One White woman spoke to us. Really, she spoke to the mayor. Pointing to his flowing, striped batakari which hit him mid thigh.

            "Oh, you're here for PANAFEST."

            The mayor was cool.

            "No. I live here."

            Leave it to Jane to assume that the Ghanaian mayor of Accra was visiting Africa on vacation.

            Where did she think she was, in the delusions of her mind?

            Who did Jane think she was?

            Who did she think we were: the American Negro extras come to audition for spear chuckers in Tarzan's next movie, the one starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, set in modern times where he battles the warlords who are creating more misery than the spear chuckers can carry?

            Why did Jane feel safe enough to handle up on us like that?

              Walking back to the car around eleven p.m. in a city of over two and a half million residents, the overwhelming majority of them poor. The parking lot was a long corridor lying parallel to the street. The car sat quietly. Untouched. A quarter block away a lone sentry with a simple, soft-white beamed, flashlight motions that all is well. We were safe. The car was there. Good night.

            I'm impressed, Nourbusse said. In the States, women out at night, for whatever reason, going to their car in the parking lot, in the parking garage, a block and a half away from the hotel, across the street, women in the States walking at night to their car— that's an ordeal. I'm impressed.

             Later, well after midnight, when we are at an atonement function, all of us feel safe. We don't speak the language. We are in the poorest part of town. Standing in crowds. No policemen around. Lights only on the periphery. When the camera people shut down the floodlights we are in semi darkness. Walking willy-nilly about without a clue to specifically where we are. We feel safe. Not just me in my burly male Blackness. But the sisters too: Nia, Norbusse, Stephanie. We all feel safe. Ghana feels safe.

            Back at the Novatel Hotel—a French oasis of material insolence offering a "continental" (as in "the" continent) cultural experience for US$120 a night—another Jane in painted face, spandex slacks, and jangling jewelry feels safe enough to walk her little unattractive pet dog through the lobby, out the front door, and who knows where from there.

            Later in Cape Coast, young European students will attend all the functions and walk safely away at night through the dark streets and on the pitch dark road sides.

            At one of the colloquium sessions May Ayim, an Afro-German (half Ghanaian / half German) talks about Germany's rising tide of racist attacks. About the two thousand people of African descent that Hitler put in concentration camps. About how a unified Germany is not the healthiest place for people of color. "With the collapse of the GDR, racism has erupted into open violence and became more strong in East Germany than in West Germany. Some people say that the open racist violence is a problem of the East which the West has been infected with. This is not true, and I am asking myself how West Germans would have reacted, if after the reunification their traditions, values, and ways of thinking would have been declared to be wrong and changed radically."

            Meanwhile back in the States—the United States is not the healthiest place for people of color.

            And even though Jane thinks the mayor is a tourist, Ghana is a safe place regardless of your color.

            Isn't that the way the world should be?

            Safe.

            Regardless of color.

Source: WordUp

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Ghana—Samia Nkrumah

hGhana became African's first country to gain freedom in 1957 and has since grown tremendously both politically and economically. Kwame Nkrumah is known as the country's founding father and we meet his daughter Samia Nkrumah in our next story -- who is determined to follow in her fathers footsteps.

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Cape Coast Castle. A Collection of Poems By Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang Forts and Castles of Ghana by Albert van Dantzig Dr Robert Lee passes on Dentist Championed African-American Community In Ghana Dr. Robert Lee Interview

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Ghana Music Video  / The Curse of Gold—Ghana  / Rice Farming in Afife, Ghana

Busy Internet Ghana  /  Africa Open for Business—Ghana

Business Incubation: a tool for enabling innovation and entrepreneurship—BusyInternet launched its Busy incubator program early 2005, with support from the infoDev Program. The first of its kind in West Africa, this small business incubation program is designed to increase the chances of survival of young companies by providing them with a good opportunity to grow in a supportive and nurturing environment. To date, 25 companies have been successfully hosted at BusyInternet. Currently, there are 10 companies located at the BusyInternet facilities, which provides connectivity solutions, software development, management consulting, entrepreneurship development, business process outsourcing, computer based test preparation, and administration and web-based applications development.

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African Slave Castle  / Coming Home—Ghana

Our next stop was Cape Coast and Elmina, towns on the coast with friendly people, laid back attitudes, beautiful palm lined beaches and unfortunately, a not so beautiful past. It was here where the start of the Gold Trade and eventually, the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade began. We stopped at Cape Coast Castle, a fort where slaves and gold were traded. Owned ultimately by the British, it is where many of the ancestors of Black Americans were held against their will, until being forced on the ships that would take them to North America. It is now a museum and a reminder of the horrors of slavery.

There's a display with grotesque reminders of this period of history, examples of branding irons used on men and women to identify them as property, chains worn by men and women as they were huddled in undescribable conditions in the hulls of ships that took them to the "New World". We received a tour of the castle and entered the former slave dungeons. Men and Woman were kept separate and forced in cramp, unsanitary conditions. People were forced in dungeons that were a foot high with hay and feces and forced to remain in these conditions for weeks at a time.

Many individuals died in these conditions and women raped by slave traders. In the dungeons are a multitude of flowers, wreaths and momentos left by the descendants of the men and women who were held here. Descendants of the African Diaspora come from around the world to see these sites. Notes written on pieces of paper and attached to wreaths of flowers dot the walls of the dungeons. It was a very emotional experience. We then headed across the coast to Elmina and Elmina Castle. Built in 1482, this is the very first fort built by the Europeans in West Africa and was owned by the Portuguese. They too, traded in gold and slaves. This is the place where many of the ancestors of Latin Americans of African descent were held before going on the ships that would take them to what is now Mexico, South America and the Caribbean.

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Basil Davidson obituary—By Victoria Brittain—9 July 2010—Davidson [(9 November 1914 – 9 July 2010) a British historian, writer and Africanist] was enthused early on by the end of British colonialism and the prospects of pan-Africanism in the 1960s, and he wrote copiously and with warmth about newly independent Ghana and its leader, Kwame Nkrumah. He went to work for a year at the University of Accra in 1964. Later he threw himself into the reporting of the African liberation wars in the Portuguese colonies, particularly in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. . . . In the 1980s, with most of the African liberation wars now won—except for South Africa's— Davidson turned much of his attention to more theoretical questions about the future of the nation state in Africa. He remained a passionate advocate of pan-Africanism. In 1988 he made a long and dangerous journey into Eritrea, writing a persuasive defence of the nationalists' right to independence from Ethiopia, and an equally eloquent attack on the revolutionary leader Colonel Mengistu and the regime that had overthrown Haile Selassie. Guardian

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Basil Davidson's  "Africa Series"

 Different But Equal  /  Mastering A Continent  /  Caravans of Gold  / The King and the City / The Bible and The Gun

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The State of African Education (April 200) / Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7

Dr Asa Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on Africans writing and accounting for their own history.

Dr Hilliard is A teacher, psychologist, and historian.

Part 2 of 7  /  Part 3 of 7  / Part 4 of 7  / Part 5 of 7 / Part 6 of 7  /  Part 7 of 7

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West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A History to 1850 By Basil Davidson This book is excellent as an introduction to West African history. It begins with a brief overview of region's history from earliest times but the focus of the book is on the thousand years between the 9th and the 19th centuries A.D. Comprehensive overviews of the political histories of both well and little known West African states and cities are recounted. These include the histories of the empires of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Kanem-Bornu, Oyo, Benin, Dahomey and Asante. Accounts of several other smaller states are also detailed such as the Hausa city states, the Wollof kingdom, the Bambara states, the Niger Delta trading states, the Fulani states of Futa Jallon and Futa Toro, the important cities of Timbuktu, Jenne and Gao and several others.

Apart from these political histories, Davidson also provides an insight into the social fabric of West Africa, especially at the dawn of the 17th century. He describes economic features (like trade items, routes, currencies etc), religion, arts and learning in the region, social stratification and dominant trends. These provide the reader with a real "feel" of the society at that time. Like all of Davidson's writings on this subject matter, this book dispels the myth that Africa had no history or civilization before contact with Europe. It is clear, concise and very easy to read. D. E. Chukwumerije

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African Slave Trade: Precolonial History, 1450-1850 By Basil Davidson The best general acount of the Atlantic slave trade. It is the story of one of the most enormous crimes in all human history. Basil Davidson states that by examining three important areas of Africa in the history of slavery 'against a general background of their time and circumstance' he was taking 'a fresh look at the oversea slave trade, the steady year-by-year export of African laborr to the West Indies and the Americas that marked the greatest and most fateful migration—forced migration—in the history of man. This book is about the course and consequences of this long African-European connection that endured from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth. It makes an answer to three vital questions: What kind of contact was this with Europe and  America? How did the experience affect Africa? Why did it end in colonial invasion and conquest?

music website > http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
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facebook > http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam

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The State of African Education (April 200) / Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7

Dr Asa Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on Africans writing and accounting for their own history.

Dr Hilliard is A teacher, psychologist, and historian.

Part 2 of 7  /  Part 3 of 7  / Part 4 of 7  / Part 5 of 7 / Part 6 of 7  /  Part 7 of 7

John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk

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The Slave Ship By Marcus Rediker In this groundbreaking work, historian and scholar Rediker considers the relationships between the slave ship captain and his crew, between the sailors and the slaves, and among the captives themselves as they endured the violent, terror-filled and often deadly journey between the coasts of Africa and America. While he makes fresh use of those who left their mark in written records (Olaudah Equiano, James Field Stanfield, John Newton), Rediker is remarkably attentive to the experiences of the enslaved women, from whom we have no written accounts, and of the common seaman, who he says was a victim of the slave trade . . . and a victimizer. Regarding these vessels as a strange and potent combination of war machine, mobile prison, and factory, Rediker expands the scholarship on how the ships not only delivered millions of people to slavery, [but] prepared them for it. He engages readers in maritime detail (how ships were made, how crews were fed) and renders the archival (letters, logs and legal hearings) accessible. Painful as this powerful book often is, Rediker does not lose sight of the humanity of even the most egregious participants, from African traders to English merchants.— Publishers Weekly

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The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness By Michele Alexander Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama's political success and Oprah Winfrey's financial success, legal scholar Alexander argues vigorously and persuasively that [w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control (More African Americans are under correctional control today... than were enslaved in 1850). Alexander reviews American racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the war on drugs. She offers an acute analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice: most Americans know and don't know the truth about mass incarceration—but her carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable book should change that.—Publishers Weekly

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The White Masters of the World

From The World and Africa, 1965

By W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois’ Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)

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Ancient African Nations

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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery / George Jackson  / Hurricane Carter

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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

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BLACK CLASSIC BOOKS   BCP Digital Printing

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posted  1 August 2010