By Onyango Oloo
1.0. Biting Social Commentary on Celluloid Via Senegal
Can you say Xala?
No, it is NOT "Eksala". Jeez.
And is NOT a Greek word, so no "Zala". Hasha.
Not a Xhosa word either so stop ALREADY with those CLICK sounds. YAWA!
C'mon, work with me, dear readers, WORK WITH ME.
Try doing if Wolof style.
That's right,"HA-LA" will get you home safe and dry.
Having said Xala the halal way, you can exhale, ama?
Ala! Lahaula! Mashallah! Kumbe!
MAKOFI!
I knew you could do it.
Say it with me:
Xala.
Again:
Xala.
One more time:
Xala.
With feeling:
XALA!
But what have you been saying????
Well,let me CLUE YOU IN.
Xala is a Wolof word meaning "Curse."
But not just any old curse.
It is the curse of SEXUAL IMPOTENCE.
That's right!
Now, you guys in the audience, just a sec, listen to me:
No need to wilt or wither away-don't worry...
I was NOT referring to YOUR SEXUAL PROBLEMS.
Besides, there is Pfizer's product endorsed by none other than Bob Dole to help you along....
I am talking about a MOVIE, based on a NOVEL, believe it or not.
Don't take it personal, OK?
Here are some images:
Did you know that some people consider Xala one of the classics of African cinema?
And you never even HEARD of it, let alone SEEN it?
Or thought that "Love Brewed in an African Pot" was it?
Wondering why we passed over The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin Dada?
Do not even get me started on those dime a dozen CHEESY Nigerian videos that usually feature a devious middle class overseas based witch in opulent West African attire who comes back to the mother continent to lure some unsuspecting deer caught in the headlights orphaned rural lass to the bright lights of Amsterdam where said buxom beauty dreaming of higher education abroad is instead shocked to find herself thrust into the repulsive, slimy and disgusting clutches of leering horny Caucasian johns lurking lecherously in some sordid red light district...before finding the Lord and a rich husband in the final frames...
Why is Xala considered one of our continent's artistic triumphs?
Well, here are some reviews:
SIX Opinions-
here is the FIRST one
here is the SECOND one
here is the THIRD one
here is the FOURTH one
here is the FIFTH one
here is the SIXTH one
And who is the GENIUS behind it all?
Well, it is this old geezer:
And WHO is he?
His name is Ousmane Sembene.
Some of us think that his novel, God's Bits of Wood, is Africa's BEST novel, no offence intended to our equally famous home grown colossus.
And he is not just a writer who makes films on the side.
Click on this link to find out more about the unusual talent
This is how you can order Xala online:
click here
click here
2.0.The Pettiness of the Kenyan Petit-Bourgeoisie
Since Sembene is a COMMUNIST, let me go to Moscow and wake up Lenin from his mausoleum. In 1920 Vladmir Ilyich Ulyanov wrote one of his enduring little booklets, dubbing it, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Obviously being a communist himself, he did NOT consider it an infantile disorder. Instead, he devoted his publication to a SAVAGE attack on the immaturity of ultra-leftists who have very inflexible attitudes and rule out any compromises with anyone. Today is not the day to rehash that famous tract. I want to quote a section of it to illustrate a point I want to make up about the Kenyan elite. Here is the excerpt:
Marxist theory has established—and the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements has fully confirmed—that the petty proprietor, the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge.
"A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism" - that was THE PHRASE I was hunting for in that Marxist granary.
Let us paraphrase it for the Kenyan neocolonial market. My friend Mwandawiro Mghanga, taught us during those clandestine ideological classes held under the very noses of the Kamiti authorities that "petit-bourgeois" translates into "bepari mchwara" in Kiswahili.
So today I want to talk about the Kenyan bepari mchwara driven to wazimu by the horrors of ukoloni mamboleo.
Strictly speaking even the much vaunted comprador bourgeois big hitters like Biwott, Uhuru, Chandaria,Nyachae and so on are just dressed up members of the Kenyan petit-bourgeoisie-especially if you compare them with the corporate behemoths of Japan, Europe and North America.
But I am not even talking about these guys.
I am talking about the Ahmednassir Abdullahis, Makau Mutuas, Shem Ochuodhos, Swaleh Taibs and yes, the Karisa Maithas.
Shocking as it may seem, these five people have more in common than you may imagine.
They happen to be petit-bourgeois Kenyans living and dying at a time when global monopoly capitalism has made it very hard for individual members of this social stratum to escape from this layer to join the rarefied comprador ranks.
Let us begin with the expired case of Karisa Maitha.
It appears that the best guarantee of solving your financial problems is to have a heart attack and die.
Because then, you will have none other than the President of the country standing in the middle of your own living room promising your three widows that the government will finish paying for that 11 million shilling home you have been struggling to own outright.
You see that is the tricky part-having to die first before your debts are forgiven.
How about your sins?
Who forgives those?
I may as well dispose of Maitha's sidekick next.
The youthful Mombasa mayor is trying to project himself as heir apparent to the departed Tourism minister. Which is kind of weird, touting the questionable credentials of a suspected war lord tainted with murmurings of corrupt deals despite the well crafted urban lore of the abandoned SUITCASE(ok, I am deliberately exaggerating) full of maasais and jirongos. Taib wants to be the next one to eat from Kisauni.
Let us now turn to Makau Mutua who should try out for a spot in Kenya's acrobatic team.
Reading his recent rantings against Kiraitu, Kibaki, Anyang' Nyongo et al, I simply cannot believe that this is the same individual who sent me a very public email late last year demanding that I strike him off the Kenya Democracy Project mailing list because I had the temerity to write to the Canadian Prime Minister highlighting fears by Kenyan democrats inside and outside Kenya that the Kibaki regime was abandoning the reform agenda and was poised to scuttle Bomas. At that time, those of us who spoke out loudly and boldly against the crass betrayal of the Kibakites was considered extremist and outlandish and we were darkly warned that we may be playing into the hands of KANU of all forces.
Today Makau Mutua and Onyango Oloo are singing from the same hymn book-albeit in different churches.
And I know you guys have not seen me running and up the streets of Montreal in my underwear, beating a drum and blowing a firimbi to celebrate Ahmednassir Abdullahi s resignation from the Kenya Anti-Corruption Whatever.
I commend him for his public rebuke to the president.
But I also add:
BIG WHOPEE.
Was Ahmednassir Abdullahi not among the same guys who were virulently opposed to the Bomas process in general and the Zero Draft in particular? Why is he now doing all these cartwheels and somersaults as he contemplates the RAMIFICATIONS of BLOCKING the path to a new democratic constitution?
Mr. Ahmednassir Abdullahi :
I am far from being impressed.
Which leaves me with Shem Ochuodho.
He has been suspended from his cushy Kenya Pipeline job via a directive from Simeon Nyachae.
Ochuodho's supporters are crying foul and some are reading tribal insinuations and the heavy handedness of Mr Nyachae.
I am reserving judgment.
It is in the public domain that Mr Ochuodho has been tainted with charges of financial impropriety in the past-there are those who allege that he hijacked a joint initiative started by Kenyan professionals in cyberspace to set up the ARCC. Soon after his appointment at ED there were stories in the press about nepotism involving Mr Ochuodho. Now Shem is an old friend and I remember we spent several months together at Industrial Area in 1982.
I am giving Shem the full benefit of the doubt, but in all fairness, we cannot have it both ways.
We cannot complain that the government is doing nothing to fight graft and then start wailing like wounded martyrs the moment some action is taken. What we should all insist on is a TRANSPARENT PROCESS that ensures that ALL THOSE WHO ARE CHARGED WITH CORRUPTION are treated equally.
Which is one reason why I am perplexed at what is taking SO LONG TO ARREST MURUNGARU AND MWIRARIA and grill them on their shady connections to the Anglo Fleecing scandal.
And Saitoti and Moi should be cooling their heels in Kamiti as we speak over the Goldenberg outrage.
What was that phrase again?
"The Kenyan bepari mchwara driven to wazimu by the horrors of ukoloni mamboleo"
If you want to understand the flip flops of Ahmednassir Abdullahi and Makau Mutua, memorize this passage that we quoted above:
"...the petty proprietor...who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge."
So do not be surprised if you see the LSK head honcho kissing Kibwana four months down the road and Makau giving Kiraitu another bear hug.
They are like yo-yos, these Kenyan petit-bourgeois yahoos, swinging today this way, and tomorrow that a-way...
3.0. Xala? What Xala?
Sembene Ousmane's seminal mid seventies classic captures exactly the bankruptcy of the comprador bourgeoisie in Africa today. If they were impotent thirty years ago, they are practically castrated eunuchs today, in the twenty first century. For proof, just check out how Ali Mwakwere was waiting for cues from the AMERICANS before making any moves during the recent Iraqi hostage crisis. Or how David Mwiraria is trying to throw out his back to appease the IMF retrenchment specialists. Or how Raila and Kiraitu will kiss and make up to ensure that NARC still gets their financial shot in their arm from their Western drug dealers.
Nobody symbolizes this total political impotence as much as the invalid currently occupying the State House. The more Mwai Kibaki tries to show he is in charge by lifting his feeble arms, the more he displays all those strings of his local and international puppet masters. The real President does NOT sleep at State House.
And look at the jokers who have cynically manipulated the President's ill health for their political survival:
Minister for Special Projects Njenga Karume duking it out with Insecurity Czar Chris Murungaru for prime office space-as if this what Kenyans put them in office for.
DISGUSTING!
I have written extensively about our slavishness to the West so I will not say more.
But that Xala is fatal as far as the present ruling clique is concerned.
Fortunately somewhere, a New Kenya is Sprouting....
Let me curtail an otherwise longish piece to go and do my radio show which begins in twelve minutes flat.
Some of you are heaving a sigh of relief.
Good for you.
Onyango Oloo
Montreal
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment