THE Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) came to an end last week.
It flourished even against the prevailing cash crunch and Bond note background that logically could not have sustained it.
It was interestingly dubbed ‘staging an intervention’ and one feels that for the first time, the theme of the international festival has been aptly named.
HIFA is one festival that always changes the face of the Harare business district.
Of course, all festivals change the usual environment, but this one is different.
In the almost two decades HIFA has been celebrated, it has become rare to see more than 10 white people in any part of the central business district.
They have since moved away from central Harare to ‘quieter’ European-styled malls like Sam Levy’s Village.
It is only during HIFA that they brave the ‘noise’, ‘the filth’ and the rush of black faces to ‘stage’ the image of an ‘open society’. ‘Liberal’ white women cling to the arms of ‘wild’ Rastafarian men.
Black women, speaking in exaggerated Anglo-American nasal accents tow rugged white men.
It is the perfect image of an open society!
However, those in the know, know that all art is propaganda.
They know that all art carries meaning and that no meaning is neutral. Meaning can be staged.
And, the meanings staged by HIFA should be understood from the background of the funders.
HIFA is predominantly funded by the US and her allies (Britain, France, Australia and the Netherlands, among other countries), the UN (of which they are the chief funders) and the EU.
It is, of course, needless to say that the funding is neither neutral nor innocent.
It is a ‘staged intervention’ coming with a big brother attitude.
American billionaire George Soros dominates American funding through his Open Society of Southern Africa (OSISA).
OSISA is run by Soros Open Society Institute (OSI) which runs three similar organisations in Africa.
These are the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA); the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and the Open Society Foundation – South Africa (OSF-SA).
The Open Society initiative’s objective is purportedly to, ‘build and strengthen the values, practices and institutions of an open society throughout Africa, to promote open markets and free enterprises where governments are pursuing programmes of economic indigenisation’.
However, the Zimbabwean experience testifies to how this is just a ‘staged intervention’.
Apparently OSISA was conspicuously absent among those supporting the equitable redistribution of productive agricultural land to landless indigenous black people.
OSISA’s stance has been that taking the land from white people was a trampling of human rights regardless of how the same white people trampled on indigenous human rights to possess it.
OSISA has vigorously contested indigenisation of the Zimbabwean economy.
The Mashonaland Irish Association comes across as a very interesting sponsor of HIFA.
The association’s history in Zimbabwe dates back to as early as 1891, just a year after colonial invasion.
Their history makes them active participants in the dispossession of indigenous Zimbabweans for whom they are now ‘staging an intervention’ to save.
One is left wondering exactly who they are saving and from whom?
Clearly, these are fishermen and we have an African proverb that reminds us that: “The mission of the fisherman is not to feed the fish.”
When an intervention is staged, it is not real.
It is simply staged.
It says ‘art is a lie’.
The definition of art as a lie is not an African, but Western art definition. The African definition is that art is utilitarian.
There is no art for art’s sake and this means that real interventions are not staged.
Our Chimurengas stand as real interventions that were not staged.
To survive as a race, we must study patterns in history.
This is how other races have survived.
The Jewish will never accept Nazi intervention no matter how much funding it puts on the table.
So yes we should continue to doubt those that come bearing gifts or representing them.
Remember in 2012 when HIFA’s founder and artistic director Manuel Bagorro took to Serbia some Zimbabweans to be schooled in the art of effecting ‘change’ through social networks?
Those who accompanied him were offered courses in strategic communications, mobilisation, advocacy and social media skills to the tune of US$40 524 sponsored by Michael Straresinic of Casals and Associates, a chief proponent of regime change that The Patriot exposed a few years ago.
So we should continue to squint our mental eyes with skepticism when HIFA comes to town.
After all, chakatanga ndicho chakachenjedza.
Forewarned is forearmed.