Arts, Artists and the Flowering of Pan-Africana Liberated Zone
By Micere Githae Mugo
Published by Mkuki na Nyota Publishers (2013)
ISBN: 978-9987-08-226-1

FIVE-AND-HALF centuries of foreign domination of the black people led to Africans inheriting a colonial system of education whose objective was to destroy African personality and culture.
It is against this background that various pan-Africanist writers and thinkers have made propositions for mental decolonisation, especially of the African child.
The book under review this week highlights the concerns of writers and pan-Africanists campaigning for the creation of what they term ‘liberated zones’ that seek to help emancipate the mind of the African.
The book titled Art, Artists and the Flowering of Pan-Africana Liberated Zones is based on a lecture delivered by Professor Micere Mugo at the fifth Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival held at the University of Dar es Salaam in 2012.
In her lecture, Prof Mugo appreciates and pays homage to the contribution of the late President of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.
She brings out a powerful pan-Africanist voice that questions the role of the artist in society.
She calls on Africans to emulate Nyerere who played a very important role in promoting African pride.
Nyerere, as a fighter who strove for the emancipation of Africa, denounced the thriving of neo-colonialism which leads to ‘greed, corruption, power mongering, materialism and capital accumulation at the expense of the poor’.
“Mwalimu did not even mince words about this because to him, so-called ‘capitalistic development’ was nothing short of the perpetuation of what he called a ‘a man-eat-man society’,” writes Mugo.
“We honour this country for defying colonial borders that were imposed on Africa after the Berlin Conference in 1884-85. These imposed borders remain antagonistic dividers.”
Prof Mugo highlights how Mwalimu fostered unity through accommodating freedom fighters from other African countries seeking independence.
“…. what the people of Tanzania did by opening up their homes to liberation movements and to refugees facilitated the mushrooming and spreading of Kiswahili across a huge chunk of the African continent and ultimately, the International scene.”
The book emphasises the need to preserve African culture and identity, citing it as critical to sustainable development.
The artist is identified as one of key figures in shaping the thinking of people in society and the perpetuation of culture.
Prof Mugo quotes Mwalimu: “Culture was the soil and spirit of any nation, a country that lets its own culture die is no more than a collection of people without the soul that makes them as nation.”
Art, Artists and the Flowering of Pan -Africana Liberated Zones is a book that also talks of language as a tool that can be used to create a ‘liberated (mental) zone’.
Stories, according to the writer, must be presented in local languages to be easily accessible to the masses.
Prof Mugo stresses that Africans must be the pioneers in efforts to free themselves from neo-colonialism through creating stories, poems and artifacts that celebrate and tell the African story.
“Today I want to suggest that the art of language is the passport we need in Africa and Global Africa for ‘border crossings’ and yes, yes even ‘border transgressions’ if we are to pave the way for Pan-Africana connectedness and consciousness,” writes Prof Mugo.
The African thinking of future generations is yet to be destroyed by Western values which unfortunately some African artists still perpetuate in their work.
“The majority of today’s scholars seem to be too busy perfecting incomprehensible modernist jargon and tired, recycled, Western theories to become inventors.”
To avoid perpetual colonisation of the mind, Prof Mugo suggests that African artists make use of forms of art that conscientise fellow Africans to appreciate their own culture.
“Because art and artists have a healing power, they are obligated to cultivate and nurture visions that inspire human beings to not reach their highest potential, but strive to humanise the world they live in.”
Prof Mugo’s lecture is an eye opener and calls for African artists to assume and maintain the role of teachers of African heritage.
The lecture takes a cue from African writers who include Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o who urge novelists to play the role of teacher in recreating the world of dominated people who have been historically misrepresented, abused and demonised by foreigners.
The power of creativity, according to the lecture, must be to expose negative forces and other injustices that perpetuate neo-colonialism.