Scarcity and Bifurcated Fandom in Africa: An Apartheid Studies Perspective
/Scarcity and Bifurcated Fandom in Africa: An Apartheid Studies Perspective
By Nyasha Mboti
University of the Free State
In 2000, Africa’s share of global manufacturing stood at 1%. In 2021, as I write this, Africa’s share of global manufacturing still stands at 1%. It was 3% in 1970. Basically, Africa is where it was in 2000, or in 1970, in terms of its share of global economic market power. This economic marginality indicates that Africa’s exit from colonialism and apartheid by the turn of the century merely facilitated re- entry into the same vacated structures. In 1894, one the architects of British colonialism and apartheid in Southern Africa, Cecil John Rhodes, inscribed a concrete colonial principle where he said “in future nine-tenths of (Africans) will have to spend their lives in manual labour, and the sooner that is brought home to them the better”. Rhodes said these words as part of the passage of the infamous Glen Grey Act, also known as the “Native Bill of Africa”, which legalised a reality where nine-tenths of Africans were to remain strangers in their own land. The other one-tenth were to be incorporated into the colonial state as “civilised” Africans who not only assisted in managing the nine-tenth, but were by and large exempt from daily deprivations and violence that the nine-tenth experience. Mamdani in Citizen and Subject suggests that institutional colonialism remains intact today and apartheid and colonialism constitute a continuum of “decentralised despotism” that contemporary Africa has failed to abolish. This decentralised despotism reproduces citizens and subjects, whereby “Civil society…was presumed to be civilized society, from whose ranks the uncivilized were excluded” (Mamdani, 1996: 16) Also, “Citizenship would be a privilege of the civilized; the uncivilized would be subject to an all-round tutelage.” Mamdani suggests that Africa has largely failed to democratise – a process which, had it been successful, would have abolished the algorithm that produces citizens and subjects in the nation state. I propose that the problem is more complex than failed democratisation. Instead, the problem is one of a persistent apartheid, which requires a form of forensic apartheid studies to understand.
The apartheid studies perspective is an emerging framework from the global south which considers apartheid to be a paradigm and theoretical framework that explains our modern times in terms of co-extensive separations or “good neighbourliness” (Mboti, 2021). For instance, inequality is a form of “good neighbourliness” because it has not led to visible apocalypse in social and economic relations. Instead, life generally goes on. Poverty and wealth exist side- by-side not only without visible conflict but also in a “good neighbourly” relation whereby they seem to constantly need each other. Hence the nine-tenths of Rhodes, or the citizens and subjects delineated by Mamdani, or Africa’s 1% share of global manufacturing, all speak to the fact that there is now permanent apartheid (or good neighbourliness) in our social and economic relations whereby none of these stark separations – however shocking – cause the global order to overturn. Instead, life goes on. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west as it has always done.
In as far as fandom is an invention of unended apartheid, it has to be regarded as a marginal and marginalising construct in Africa. Only the one-tenth can be fans. The nine-tenth cannot be fans directly or intentionally. That is, I am going to argue that any discussion of fandom in Africa has to reckon with the fundamental “nine-tenthness” of Africans in general. Nine-tenthness is a construct that I wish to use to express not only the fragmented nature of fandom but also the manner in which fandom expresses the continuing economic and market marginality of 90% of the continent’s population. Essentially, fandom in Africa is un-separate from the economic and market marginality of Africans, at the same time that it is an expression of that marginality. This means that fandom in Africa is bifurcated by the permanent apartheid that is a constant of feature of African life: there is, as intimated, fandom incorporating nine-tenths of the population and fandom for the one-tenth. There is no passage between the two. This border between fandoms is regulated and policed by economic scarcity. Hence, for instance, there are always problems of distribution in Africa (cf. Mboti 2014; Mboti and Tomaselli 2015). The route to market is always policed by middle men, monopolies and cartels that force popular entertainment industries into the shadows and informality (Lobato, 2012; Ureke 2018, 2019; Mboti and Brown
2014). When you have more people than available resources, (probabilistic) distribution is out of the question. The only solution is what we can call decimalisation: the parting of wholes. When you have more children than school textbooks – say, five children per textbook – the scarcity is solved by fractions (hence, the “ninetenthification” of African publics). In situations of scarcity, whatever you do, the available resources will never be properly distributable.
Using examples from film, music and sport (football, rugby, tennis, netball and cricket), I seek to demonstrate that fandom in Africa is decimalised. Fandom in Africa is both a construct and a practice incorporated into economic power structures, but also policed and refracted by them. I must make clear that this argument assumes that Africa is still operating under economic structures derived from colonial and apartheid “pasts” – pasts which are still present. At the same time, we can see fandom as a process that does not passively accept apartheid. Instead, there is constantly refracted resistance.
References
Lobato, R. (2012). Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution. London: Palgrave
Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mboti, N. (2021). Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto, Vol. 1. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Mboti, N. (2014). The Zimbabwean Film Industry. African Communication Research 7(2), 145-172.
Mboti, N. and Brown M (2014). Nollywood’s Unknowns: An Introduction. Journal of African Cinemas. 6(1), 3-9.
Mboti, N. and Tomaselli, K.G. (2015). New Political Economies of Film Distribution for South Africa’s Townships?Examining the ReaGile concept. Critical Arts 29(5), 621-643.
Rhodes, C.J. (1894). “The Glen Grey Speech” [Cecil John Rhodes’ Speech on the Second Rereading of the Glen Grey Act to the Cape House Parliament on July 30 1894],http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/glen_grey_speech.pdf Accessed 30/6/2011.
Ureke, O. (2018). Introducing the 'drasofi': A genre of convenience and context in Zimbabwean film production.Journal of African Cinemas, 10(1-2), 147-164.
Ureke, O. (2019): Locating Sembène’s mégotage in Zimbabwe’s kiyakiya video-film production, Journal of African Cultural Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2019.1599829
