by Henry Lisege
Originally, nativism took the mould of Black Consciousness Movement in apartheid South Africa and Garveyism in America, both very dangerous and retrogressive systems. In South Africa, led by Steve Biko, Mamphela Ramphale and Barrey Pityana, we are told that the focus of nativism was on blackness as the major organising principle which was given cold shoulders by eminent people like Nelson Mandela, who to the contrary emphasised a multi-racial approach as the most ideal for the post-apartheid nation. In the Americas, there was Garveyism, which largely espoused black separatist views.
Leopold Senghor, one of the trailblazers of the nativism school of thought in Africa gave us ‘black aesthetics’ or ‘Negritude’, which pundits have dismissed as nothing but just some form of African nationalism propounded while ironically favouring maintenance of close ties with France and the rest of the western world. Professor Ngugi picked up this form of African nationalism from where Senghor left it, dusted it off and renamed it ‘decolonising the mind’. Ngugi himself does not seem to believe in a decolonised mind as he is going about it all wrong: he wants to present himself as the high priest of black aesthetics yet he practices this black aesthetics from a swanky parsonage in the United States.
Professor Kembo Sure’s article in the inaugural issue of The Nairobi Reader, titled ‘Naming as a Political and Cultural Metaphor’, is nothing but just a mouthful for ‘nativism' or ‘African nationalism’ or what Professor Ngugi calls ‘decolonising the mind’. This debate has been with us for a while, and it looks like a debate that is almost always destined to generate more heat than light: a dangerous and divisive in-directional exhaustive heat. Unfortunately, in other parts of the world, nativism has given us an anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-Hispanic character who almost wiped out a political system that has taken over two hundred years of sweat and blood to build. Immigrants and non-natives have been demeaned and dehumanised to the last drop of their blood.
Kembo has now joined this activism with the contention that a rose by any other name does not smell as sweet! He seems to celebrate Ngugi for dropping the James part of his name but castigates Mobutu for Africanising his name and country but partaking the French cuisine, practices and mannerisms—yet the two scenarios are not any different from each other. It is comical that this debate has degenerated into just some form of activism about names and not displeasure with the negative effects of colonialism.
Kembo-Sure relates that while studying for his MA at Leeds University, he stiffed one of his lecturers who had wanted him to translate his Dholuo name into some English equivalent for ease of pronunciation. This is commendable, but the tragedy is that Kembo and yours truly are of the Olusuba extraction and were assimilated into the Luo. It is worrisome for Kembo-Sure to be too concerned about losing his Luo identity to the Western one than he is disturbed about assimilating into the Luo. This scenario, therefore, begs the question: what is the noise really about? Negative effects of colonialism? Really! Those aggrieved must come up with a more ingenious way of fighting the negative effects of colonialism.
Nativism, Garveyism, Black Aesthetics, Black Consciousness or Cultural Consciousness are much of a muchness. All of us will recall the encounter of the mainstream media journalist whose name he was told betrayed him by a leading politician. It is, therefore, fair to surmise that these nativism ideas are outdated and are a hindrance to the realisation of the desired multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic coexistence the world so badly needs.
Culture is multifaceted: there are the naming, dressing, socialising, initiation bits, among others. In a globalised world, it is illogical to isolate naming alone, an insignificant molehill used just for reference purposes and nothing much, and then make it a huge diversionary mountain. Our names and naming systems should reflect a globalised world and not a narrower cultural and political one. Let those who are misleading us into believing that they are disgusted by their names hold their peace or go the whole hog and search their protolanguage as well and go back to living in caves, walking about naked, eating wild herbs, and walking over long distances as opposed to using modern means of transport. The love for nativism is nothing more than scholars falling over themselves in attempts to outdo one another in throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
* Henry Lisege is a cultural critic who believes in globalisation as a new cultural reality. He holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa and is currently undertaking an MA in Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Nairobi (okuroaruji@gmail.com).
To join the discourse on the cultural significance of names and the politics of naming, share your comments below or write to editor@nairobibookshelf.com.
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