African History – Backdrop to understanding the African Independence movement
There’s no simple way to tell Africa’s story in her relationship with the West but it will suffice to state that colonialism as we know it, the rule and occupation by Europeans, only took root in Africa in the late 1800s.
Many chronicles serve us with the knowledge that almost all African communities and states, from Ancient Egypt to present, stretching a period of more than 10,000 years, were Chiefdoms and Kingdoms by government.
This system understood in the context of Ancient Egypt for example, makes it abundantly obvious that Africans were religiously beholden to their Chiefs, Kings and Queen Mothers.
Until the late 1800s African Chiefs and Kings were largely in control with a few exceptions in Southern Africa. In West Africa, the Asante Kingdom, led by Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa I, fell to the British no later than 1909, and the menacing Dahomey with its war machinery had fallen to the French for the first time only 12 years earlier.
Ingloriously, colonialism in its infancy may perhaps be boldly termed a coalition with African Chiefs and Kings until the 1900s. And by the turn of that century due to the intensification of the scramble for world resources, the industrial revolution expanding, Europeans renewed a character of aggression – WWI and WWII – which did not exempt Africa’s resources.
The technological strides of that revolution and its concomitant implementation in the making of weapons of mass destruction changed the dynamic of European invasion of Africa States. In fact, it changed the dynamic of warfare the world over.
Almost all African States and Kingdoms that kept European influence in Africa to the fortes and castles on the coast were summarily defeated by the turn of the decade, 1910.
Hence, a truer depiction of Africa’s relationship with Europeans can be segmented into five periods – Trade (starting in the 1400s), Slave Trade (until the mid 1800s), Coalition (until 1910), Occupation (1890s – 1950s) and the Independence Movements (1940s – 1990s).
African Independence
African Independence, 2013, by Tukufu Zuberi, provides only the synopses necessary to reading African history spanning the periods from occupation through to African independence, culminating in the fall of Apartheid in 1990.
The documentary hits the skids in providing the historical context necessary to understanding the nature of Europe’s relationship to Africa and Africa’s unrelenting struggle for independence.
The film could have embraced that history and then its implication realized in the struggle of the African masses for freedom would have been not only without confusion, but without a sense of destitution and helplessness.
Some strong interviews from the surviving beacons of the African struggle shaped the documentary in large parts. The interview with the wife of Dedan Kimathi (a leader of the Mau Mau which led an armed military struggle against the British colonial government in Kenya in the 1950s), was awe-inspiring.
Mrs. Kimathi couldn’t have made a fact of freedom more abundantly clear – the importance of owning land as a vital aspect of freedom. Paraphrasing, “a being without a place is a nobody – that is no freedom.”
If that is not the sincerest criticism of the so-called American Emancipation, then I do not know what is!
However, with the exception of Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Samia Nkrumah of Ghana, and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Director Tukufu Zuberi’s interpretation of the African Independence movement could have been made stronger with interviews from notable historians.
For example, proven historians on the continent like Prof. Kofi Awoonor of Ghana, who just passed away, Cheikh Anta Diop, and many others would have beefed up the content of this film.
Even further, I feel, no serious documentary on African independence and progress can exclude the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame. How any film on African independence can fail to draw him into the struggle for emancipation, is notorious.
Here is an astute leader of a once devastated country whose achievements are indefatigable, and whose life experiences are a monument to the struggle of the African masses for self-government and self-determination – a supposed central message of the film.
More important, and it is necessary to appreciate this view that, the struggle for complete sovereignty in Africa is still as much a struggle of the masses against the ruling classes who seem to have re-emerged with new vigor. Africa today has more of its people in poverty than it did in 1980 according to The Economist (September 21st Issue on Growth and Safety).
It is in this light that the multifaceted approach to achieving true independence and self-governance in Africa is complicated, and it is in this spirit that Dr. Tukufu Zuberi’s documentary on African Independence needs to be understood.
Without this footing in African history, the complexity of the struggle for freedom in Africa is incomprehensible.
African independence in a film?? The subject itself is a stupendous undertaking but I think I can appreciate Tukufu’s take on it. Definitely interviewing those leaders gave the film a much needed allure of attention – not to say it wasn’t a good film!
I definitely think that this is subject that needs to be tackled in many more films. I enjoyed watching it and I enjoyed reading this biting critique of it. Hopefully this will be a real beginning for bringing discussions of importance into the domain of the mainstream.
I agree, many more films are needed to unearth the whole framework needed to understanding African culture, its struggles and its future.
Most definitely sis! Besides, I think Tukufu is about the only academic willing to explore new forms of engaging in fruitful discussions about issues of color. Rebranding himself as a director in order to invite this kind of critique from Ben Abukú is itself a bold step.
I wish Henry Louis Gates and co. could be this bold enough.
Bringing these discussions to the fore, to the mainstream, should be the important part of th task. There’s not bigger plate for serving change than a thorough education of the masses. To do that we also need to make it more fun, like Tukufu has done here. We have to continue.
Thank you for realizing that African independence movements across the continent differed from place to place. I understand a level of generality needs to be formed otherwise why even study it. But I also think with regard to your critique, Tukufu may have done a good job.
True, this documentary would have benefited from understanding that independence was a mass movement. I think your thesis on understanding Africa according to class is important if any real inferences are to be made on the composition of its independence struggles.
I had a chance to see this documentary at U.of Penn last weekend and I must say I was impressed with some aspects of it. I do agree with you that it definitely should have done more but the limited resources any documentary filmmaker has should be taken into consideration. On the whole it was a good film and I think your analysis is also insightful.
Your thesis on trying to figure a framework for understanding African independence is laudable but do you think it can be achieved in a single film?
I honestly look forward to the day the framework will be ironed out so that like you said, it can be used as a model for fighting all forms of imperialism on the African continent.
Definitely we need more documentaries and films on the African struggle for independence more than we need academic articles. I think that if we really hope to build a following and interest in this topic we need this kind of multifaceted approach.
Understanding the African struggle should be a continent wide effort and I agree we need to come to a significantly probable framework so that future African issues, challenges and problems can be confronted with such a model – a struggle of the masses, nothing can be further from that truth!
Every time I watch the film, it feels more and more like a sincere student of African history made the film. So much is missing that I can’t possibly give it the good grade you seem to accord it.
The film lacks perspective. It’s just raw history. Yes we know Ghana gained independence from the British, South Africa suffered from apartheid. But what else?
Perhaps, Ben, you should have been consulted for this film.
The film is watchable but as an African it fails to give me any new insight into the African struggle. But thanks for the review, very interesting read.
This is more like good History Detectives’ film than a sincere attempt at Documentary filmmaking. We learn that African countries have become independent. But alas, and so?
We see many pictures of the African landscape, stereotypical ones at that, like the villages, the bush, the poor, etc. nothing really inspiring.
I think a documentary film aught to make a point, give a perspective – a new one at that. This film offers none so I agree with Koplan that it is in fact a sincere student made film on African independence.
Yes! Do you also wonder how not one of those African leaders interviewed offered any fresh perspective on African independence? The thing is, Africans don’t think about their struggle, they barely remember it let alone become able to offer much needed fresher and fresher perspectives about it.
The lack of appreciation by Africans for their own history is nauseating. Many of them can tell you who the king of England was at 3:41 AM, June 26, in 1724, what clothes he wore on 4th July and even the carpenter who sculptured his armchair. But they can’t tell you when Kwame Nkrumah died or where he died.
Sad. Indeed.
I think Tukufu did a good job to summarize the struggle for independence on the continent of Africa. I enjoyed the film and the swagger or Dr. Zuberi. I thought some parts of the movie were funny, a needed humor for a film on such a dry subject.
Plainly put, African Independence, 2013, is an academic exercise at story telling. Sometimes this guerrilla approach works, sometimes it does not. But I think on a subject like African Independence, this is still a good effort. I wish it had its own story to tell because if any one would see this in any theater they would like to know what the director’s perspectives are towards the struggle for independence in Africa besides the plain history.
has it been all bad? what are the social, economic, and political effects that Africans still feel today?