{"id":128,"date":"2019-02-28T16:11:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T16:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/?p=128"},"modified":"2019-02-28T16:11:33","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T16:11:33","slug":"excerpt-from-the-eagle-and-the-springbok-by-adekeye-adebajo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/excerpt-from-the-eagle-and-the-springbok-by-adekeye-adebajo\/","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt from \u2018The Eagle And The Springbok by Adekeye Adebajo’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Culture:<\/strong>
\nNollywood versus South Africa Inc.<\/strong>
\nNigeria\u2019s exceptionalism includes the deep continuities of indigenous cultures. South Africa\u2019s exceptionalism has included the rapid pace of Westernisation. Two African countries \u2013 deep in history, rich in culture, and diverse in demography \u2013 have revealed comparative destinies of the African experience and contrasting visions of the African condition.1<\/em> – Ali Mazrui, Kenyan intellectual<\/p>\n

Nigeria exports \u2018Nollywood\u2019 \u2013 its indigenous film industry \u2013 as an authentic African cinema. South Africa exports an American-style mall culture, which represents its deep Western influences. Nigeria is the most indigenously diverse country in Africa; South Africa the most Westernised state on the continent.<\/p>\n

American scholar Joseph Nye defined \u2018soft power\u2019 as non-military resources which countries can deploy to influence others to follow their lead and to desire what they want.2 Many examples abound of \u2018soft power\u2019 exercised by Nigeria and South Africa in Africa and its diaspora. Both countries continue to educate elites from neighboring regional states at their universities. Nigeria\u2019s film industry \u2013 Nollywood \u2013 is a veritable source of \u2018soft power\u2019, which has expanded its values across the continent creating an authentically African cinema in the process with which many populations in Africa and its diaspora can identify.3 World-class Nigerian footballers in European leagues and the national football team, the \u2018Super Eagles\u2019, who won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics, also play a similar role. So do renowned writers such as Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, and Orange Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Turner Prize winner Chris Ofili; actors of international acclaim like Chiwetel Ejiofor and David Oyelowo; the musician and composer Fela Anikulapo Kuti; and singers such as Asa, Don Jazzy, Wizkid, and Davido.<\/p>\n

South Africa has similarly spread its \u2018soft power\u2019 through Nobel peace laureates Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and F.W. de Klerk and Nobel literature laureates Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee. The country successfully organised Africa\u2019s first football World Cup in 2010; hosted and won Africa\u2019s first rugby World Cup in 1995; and has become a magnet for tourists from Africa and around the world. South African-born Charlize Theron became the first African to win an Oscar \u2013 for best actress \u2013 in 2004; while the South African film Tsotsi won the best foreign film Oscar in 2006. Musicians like Hugh Masekela, Lira, Black Coffee, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, and Abdullah Ibrahim have bolstered South Africa\u2019s \u2018brand\u2019 abroad. The country\u2019s ubiquitous fast-food chains such as Nando\u2019s, Steers, and Spur as well as its American-style \u2018mall culture,\u2019 which has been exported across Africa, are further signs of the country\u2019s \u2018soft power.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nigeria: From FESTAC to Nollywood<\/strong><\/p>\n

Within the Nigerian context, culture is an underexamined but important part of the country\u2019s domestic and foreign policy. Here we focus on two issues: Nigeria\u2019s hosting of the pan-African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977, and the phenomenal rise of Nollywood, Nigeria\u2019s prolific film industry, which has attracted devotees all across the continent and among Africans in the diaspora.<\/p>\n

FESTAC involved a redefinition of pan-Africanism by an increasingly self-confident nation that had long seen itself as \u2018the giant of Africa\u2019. The festival drew thousands of artists from across Africa as well as members of the diaspora from the Caribbean, South America, North America, and Australasia. American scholar Andrew Apter observed: \u2018Nigeria emerged as the unequivocal leader of the new black world. Spending lavishly on its global citizens, the Nigerian state accrued political capital as master of ceremonies while recasting the nation in indigenous terms as the fons et origo of virtually all black cultural traditions.\u20194 FESTAC involved events like durbars, regattas with war canoes, and traditional dances, as well as the exhibition of elaborate works of art and the construction of a stunning national theatre and sprawling festival village. Apter places the festival in the context of imperial spectacles such as London\u2019s Crystal Palace Exhibition (1851) and America\u2019s Columbian Exposition (1893), noting that such \u2018cultural productions\u2019 reveal connections between empire and knowledge. FESTAC was a celebration of Pax Nigeriana: a national showpiece staged by a self-confident elite to mark the arrival in the leadership ranks of the nouveaux riches of the world\u2019s largest black nation and to promote African culture as a sign of cultural equality with the West, which had often denigrated the continent\u2019s cultures. The event marked the celebration of aparty that Nigerians assumed would never end.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, some Nigerian born-again Christians date the start of the country\u2019s decline to the \u2018demonic\u2019 masks and gods unleashed by FESTAC, 5 while many continue to regard the event as a profligate \u2018Festival of Awards and Contracts\u2019 during the wasteful era of the oil boom when the problem, according to Nigerian head of state General Yakubu Gowon was not the money, but how to spend it. The decision to build a brand-new capital in Abuja by 1991 with spectacular highways, conference centres, and religious buildings \u2013 it now hosts the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) secretariat as a potent symbol of Nigeria\u2019s regional leadership \u2013 was also taken during the euphoric days of the oil boom. Abuja\u2019s street names reflect a pan-African identity, and the Nigerian capital has served as the centre of many continental peacemaking initiatives in respect of conflicts in such countries as Liberia, Sudan, and Togo.<\/p>\n

It is, however, the phenomenon of Nigeria\u2019s prolific film industry \u2013 Nollywood \u2013 that has attracted the most recent positive international attention for the country. Nollywood produces over 2,000 films a year, which is more than Hollywood, but less than Bollywood, making it the world\u2019s second-largest film industry in 2017. The industry is thought to employ about one million people, including production and distribution, making it the second-largest employer in the country with annual sales estimated at $250 to $350 million.6 The production of Nigerian movies started in 1992 with a blockbuster film called Living in Bondage about a man who gains wealth and power by killing his wife and repenting after her ghost haunts him. The themes of ritual murder and redemption, human desire, breaking of social taboos, and the quest for wealth and luxury run through many of these movies. They have spread like wildfire in video parlours throughout African societies in which superstition and born-again Christianity are very much part of daily life. Other popular titles have included\u00a0Glamour Girls, The Battle of Love, Thunderbolt, Sango, Rituals, Survivors, Goodbye Tomorrow, Mortal Inheritance, Agogo Eewo, She Devil, The Prostitute, and The Strange Women.<\/em><\/p>\n

The films have mostly been shot in the Nigerian megalopolis of Lagos, a city of entrepreneurial spirit and indefatigable endeavor. They are still mostly recorded on videos and DVDs and are thus widely available to both rich and poor not just in Nigeria but across West, Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa. Many of the films are available in cities like Accra, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Kinshasa, and Johannesburg, and are widely watched in the African diaspora in Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. Nollywood has also massively increased the role and visibility of women in African cinema. As veteran Nigerian movie producer Tunde Kelani noted: \u2018Our movies are definitely African. Their popularity shows that Africans have a lot in common socially, culturally and politically.\u20197 Nollywood films have sparked demonstrations in Ghana and Tanzania against crass materialism and \u2018voodoo-mongering\u2019.8 Some Ghanaians also blamed a number of serial murders that occurred in their country on Nigeria\u2019s Igbo community in Ghana because of the resemblance of these incidents to the fictional accounts gleaned from Nollywood movies.9<\/p>\n

Critics like John Afolabi have described the films as reinforcing Western stereotypes of African primitivism and underdevelopment. The National Film and Video Censors Board of Nigeria similarly criticised the \u2018repellent subjects\u2019, \u2018fetishism\u2019, \u2018ritualistic killings\u2019, \u2018devilish Spiritism\u2019 and \u2018homosexuality\u2019 of Nollywood films.10 Chukwuemeka Chikelu, Nigeria\u2019s then minister of information and national orientation, recognised the importance of Nollywood in telling its producers and editors in 2003: \u2018I invite you my friends to see your work as an integral part of a Renaissance Project. The Renaissance of a great nation, the renaissance of a great people. Your work is an ambassador from Nigeria to the world. It is an international diplomat requesting no accreditation. The content of your work is the only credential that is presented for Nigeria in the living room of millions of people around the world.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Eagle And The Springbok by Adekeye Adebajo<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Category: Non Fiction \/ Essays<\/p>\n

Year of Publication: 2018<\/p>\n

303 pages<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Culture: Nollywood versus South Africa Inc. Nigeria\u2019s exceptionalism includes the deep continuities of indigenous cultures. South Africa\u2019s exceptionalism has included […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":51,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,29,30,31,27],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-adekeye-adebajo","tag-book-excerpt","tag-nigeria","tag-south-africa","tag-the-eagle-and-the-springbok"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/24EC12858448326C69E99DC8C8FF.jpg?fit=1879%2C2857","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paFCvA-24","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178,"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookcraftafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}