By Andrew Mulenga
After gaining independence from the British Empire
in 1964, Zambia’s free citizens’ next step was nation-building, and one of the
biggest instruments to be used was the development of an outwardly generic Zambian
identity bolstered by a common national cultural heritage. Of course for a
nation of more than 72 ethnicities this would be no easy undertaking.
 |
Zambian liberation hero,
Simon Kapwepwe admires
a sculpture
(Photo- 1964 Independence
Exhibition catalogue) |
But it may perhaps be why the energetic new leadership
quickly identified the importance of arts and culture as a tool, therefore, through
the Department of Cultural Services it organised annual arts festivals
featuring concerts and exhibitions. Among these exhibitions, two of the most
notable ones to occur in the 1960s were entitled the International Art Exhibition and Wood Sculptures from Zambia respectively.
Records indicate
that the International
Art Exhibition or National Exhibition of Art and Culture was
organised by the Livingstone Museum but showcased in Lusaka for locals and
foreign guests to the independence celebrations from the 19 October to 30
November 1964.
According to the
exhibition catalogue’s acknowledgments: “The International Art Exhibition was the Hon. Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe’s
idea. He was responsible for promoting its existence, and the organisers were
greatly encouraged by his inspiring public declaration; Culture is the backbone of a nation”. Kapwepwe, who was Minister of
Home Affairs at the time, wrote an evocative Foreword for the publication and laid
emphasis on national unity.
“Culture is the
heritage of us all. Some may be more interested than others in the treasures of
the past, but no one can fail to take pride in his country’s participation in
the story of mankind as represented in carvings, sculpture, music, painting,
and the other arts”, he declared. Of course his reference of the term culture
here, was in line with the Oxford dictionary definition of a noun that
describes: “the arts and other instances of human intellectual achievement
regarded as a whole”. Kapwepwe declared that through culture humanity is in
touch with the best that has been known and achieved in the world, and thus the
human spirit.
 |
A Johannesburg model, Colleen Andrews, studies some of
the many Zambian sculptures which have been flown to Johannesburg
for exhibition at the Adler Fielding Gallery this week
(Sunday Times 23-10-66) |
“The committee
responsible for the organisation of Zambia’s Independence Celebrations
determined from the start that there should be an exhibition of art which would
combine in one representative show styles from all places and of all times,” he
continued in part “And in this context we planned to show the part that Africa
has played in man’s story so far. The National
Exhibition of Art and Culture will demonstrate the specific contribution of
Zambia to this story. I hope that this exhibition will bring you pleasure. It
will surely help us appreciate what harmony and perfection are and thus
strengthen us in our determination to make them prevail. The men of culture are
truly apostles of tolerance and understanding, the guardians of beauty and
light, and our hope in this world for unity and concord.”
The photograph accompanying
the foreword shows him clad in a loose flowing chitenge-like outer garment that
resembles a Toga, covering the whole
body apart from the right arm. Coupled with a pair of sandals and a majestic, well-crafted
wooden staff the outfit was in itself a fashion statement, a protest perhaps against
the suits donned by the former colonial masters. The attire was also something
akin to that of the Kente cloth worn
by Kwame Nkrumah who had lead Ghana to freedom just over five years earlier.
 |
Cover from the 1966 exhibition
held at the Adler Fielding Gallery
in Johannesburg |
Coming from a
restrictive academic system towards locals, as a new nation, Zambia did not yet
have academically trained artists or curators in the Western canon, so Frank McEwen
from the Rhodes National Gallery in Salisbury, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was brought
in to put up the display, despite the new government not seeing eye to eye with
the then white supremacist south. Before coming to Africa, McEwen had lived and
worked in Paris and left an important post with the British Council. Modern art
giants like Picasso, Braque, Brancusi and Henry Moore were his personal friends
and he often shipped their work to Rhodesia for temporary display, so bringing
such a character in was no mean achievement. McEwin is also credited for rebelliously
allowing children and students from African townships into the Rhodes National
Gallery in Salisbury, a place that initially had race restrictions.
Nevertheless, as
for the “Wood
Sculptures from Zambia” exhibition, it was first shown at the Livingstone Museum, shifted to the
Evelyn Hone College in Lusaka and later shipped abroad. About 30 craftsmen from
only three provinces were listed by tribe; Lozi, Lunda Luvale, Mbunda, Luchazi,
Toka Leya and Kwanga, but the show was still comprehensively framed as
“Zambian”, such were the efforts made for the unification of a new nation. The show’s
first stop abroad was of all places, South Africa again despite Kaunda and his comrades
being outspoken enemies of the apartheid regime at the time. If the October,
1966, newspaper cuttings from most of South Africa’s major papers at the time
are anything to go by, the show was a resounding success, it was covered in the
Beeld, The Star, Rand Daily Mail and the Sunday Times.
 |
Cover for 1966 exhibition
of modern Zambian sculpture |
The
S.A. Digest wrote: “A collection of valuable traditional
Zambian sculpture is at present being exhibited in the Adler Fielding Gallery
in Johannesburg. The realisation that commercialism was decreasing the standard
of wood carving in the country by the Zambian Government to assemble a
collection of attractive wood sculpture. The collection of more than 200
sculptures will later be flown to America for several exhibitions there before
being taken to Switzerland.”
A Sunday
Times headline read: “Kaunda sends
S.A. collection of Zambian Sculpture”. The story itself read in part further
read: “With the active encouragement of the Zambian Government’s Directorate of
Cultural Services, Traditional Arts (Africa) Ltd., has been able to create a
nucleus of artists whose work is attracting recognition overseas.” Traditional
Arts (Africa) Ltd. was a Livingstone-based company ran by Dennis Erwin who had
organised successful shows with the aid of the Livingston Museum director Reynolds.
Under the headline “Unique carving” in The Star,
journalist, Mary Packer pointed out that “This exhibition shows three types of
Zambian sculpture, in the first place, “classical Zambian sculpture, consisting
of old pieces from the Livingstone Museum. The second part consists of
contemporary sculpture that, although based on the traditional style, has new concepts.
The third and last group shows examples of the mass tourism art”. But Packer seems
to momentarily ignore the categorisation, granting the work a much more
fetishized, aura and classification. She writes: “Startled at the outset by a
gigantic carving of an all-powerful deity, one walks straight into the heart
and mind of primeval Africa as symbolized by the greatest collection of Zambian
sculpture ever seen here”; adding more emphasis to the works’ perceived
primitiveness and ethereal quality, she describes it as “A forest of curiously
superhuman shapes that challenge the eye – and chill the blood. They
demonstrate the vital difference between primitive art culled from the source and
its synthetic substitutes. This vast exhibition (collected from remote areas
where the artists still steeped in tradition have been encouraged to continue
their hereditary symbolic carvings)”. In one line, she oversimplifies the work
as being produced by artists living in Zambia’s remote areas, when in fact
artists such as Sililo were at the time based in Livingstone, which was already
urbanised, having also served as the capital before Lusaka under Northern
Rhodesia after the British South Africa Company decided to shift its
administrative headquarters from Kalomo.
The foreword for these exhibition catalogues was
written by the Zambian Minister of Information and Postal Services at the time,
Lewis Changufu. Although Cangufu may have gone overboard eulogising Erwin for
rescuing Zambian sculpture from degenerating and openly declared that the very
survival of Zambian handicrafts was entirely dependent on Europe, there is no
denying that serious effort and a great deal of support was being provided by
government.
“I am pleased to present to you the Exhibition of Zambian Sculpture jointly
sponsored by the Traditional Arts (Africa) Ltd., whose dedication to the
revival of classical African sculpture has rescued some of Zambian sculpture
from degenerating into low quality mass produced curio art. The survival of our
traditional sculpture is largely dependent upon the European and American
customers who collect African works of art. Unless efforts are made to present
to them only works of good quality, there is a danger to these patrons buying
anything that may be offered to them, thereby allowing bad works to go outside
the country as representative of Zambian art,” stated Changufu.
“I would commend to your particular attention the
work of Rainford Sililo. This artist has had a varied career, at one time
producing for the tourist market at Livingstone curios as crude and as poor as
those exhibited in the LEST WE FORGET section of this Exhibition. Now, under
Mr. Erwin’s encouragement, he has blossomed into perhaps the leading Zambian
artist and one whose work is in considerable demand. By his development alone a
valuable service has been rendered to Zambia yet we are confident that there
are other sculptors – and artists who are following hard on in his heels.”
And Barrie Raynolds, the Livingstone Museum
director who wrote the curators note stated: “It is important that they be
encouraged and guided during these formative years so that they may play their
full part in shaping the cultural heritage of Zambia and in developing the art
of Africa”.
It is evident that through the 1960s, the Zambian
government continued to enthusiastically sponsor arts and culture. According to
Cynthia Zukas, who was head of the defunct Lusaka Artists Society in the late
1960s reveals that the organisation was also generously supported by an annual
government grant and much of it would be used to specifically fund an annual
arts festival.
“The government was very interested in cultural
development, both Kapwepwe and Kaunda were very vocal, the Department of
Cultural Services had a generous grant. In addition, the first few years after
independence the department also supported annual arts festivals,” said Zukas
in an interview early this year. “I cannot remember when they stopped but for
the first three or five years they were very good, they got off really to a
very good start”.
Here, one is tempted to ponder over the words of N'Goné
Fall, a Dakar-based independent curator, art critic, and consultant in cultural
engineering. In an article entitled State
of Emergency: culture in Africa is at a crossroads published in the autumn
2006 edition of Art South Africa,
although written close to a decade ago, the words ring true to the fall out in
arts and culture sponsorship not only in Zambia, but across the post-colonial
African continent?
“The 1960s is remembered as a time of
geographical, social and cultural breaking-down. In those busy days, African
governments implemented national theatres, national museums, and national
performing arts companies. Culture – well funded and privileged – was used as a
weapon to fight against western imperialism,” writes Fall who is also a
consultant for Senegalese and international cultural institutions as well as an
associate professor at the Senghor University in Alexandria, Egypt.
“Two decades later, things started to fall apart.
National touring exhibitions stopped, museums closed, funds vanished. Culture
was no longer the priority. African politicians blamed it all on Structural
adjustments”, she argues.
She points out that meanwhile in the west, exhibitions
became really international, featuring artists from Latin America, Asia and
Africa. She claims that subsequently workshops, magazines and arts festivals slightly
balanced western artistic hegemony but this was not enough.
“We need to bear in mind that the African
continent is lacking cultural infrastructure, art professionals, information
flows and a real political commitment. The happy days of independence are over.
A different context needs to questions and challenge the local and the global, websites
and art centres, books, magazines, workshops and networks,” she writes in part
“Culture is a vehicle for traditions and ideologies. Today the continent is
passively consuming foreign cultural productions. Personally, I am sick and
tired of this. We can no longer ignore the fact that African youth are being
bombarded with, and stupefied by concepts, ideas and values manufactured
elsewhere – all this in the name of planetary fraternity and cultural
diversity. It is time to shake our minds and to consider that we are in a state
of emergency”.
Although expressed more recently, Fall’s sentiments
hold water and are in sync with Kapwepwe’s declaration that “Culture is the
heritage of us all” some 50 odd years ago. But how far are we from the cultural
vision of the founding fathers?
The arts festivals and revolving exhibitions were
abandoned along with funding decades ago, the attempt at a national dress code
was short-lived, and efforts for authenticity with regards traditional
sculpture were all but thrown out the window, Sililo and his fellow sculptors
never really made it onto the world stage. Erwin and Changufu’s attempt to
rescue it went nowhere and today you have the very “tourist art” they tried to
curb flooding the Sunday craft markets with works from as far flung as Kenya. Some
of it is even embarrassingly displayed abroad like the cheap wooden masks that
are still on display in the Zambian stand at the Expo Milan 2015 in Italy. So
where are we today? Certainly far worse than the 1960s.
Not to say efforts have not
been made to redeem support for arts and culture as both a vanguard of national
heritage and a viable economic sector. Through policy, somewhere within the “Arts,
Culture and Heritage Commission Bill” there lies hope, but the bill is
entangled in red tape, tightly wrapped in the lack of political will. The words
“Culture is the heritage of us all”, remain a faint and distant echo, the first
intense cries during the birth of a nation.
