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Abstract
The spatialization of Africa is fraught, and places within Africa tend to be stereotyped by geographies of morality and simplistic rural/urban divides. Focusing on the spatial, cultural, and political bargaining of contemporary chiefs and cultural festivals in 21st-century Zambia, this article delinks cosmopolitanism and Afropolitanism from the city and associated attitudes of urbanity. Positioning place as a trickster character, it argues for a nuanced understanding of time-space imaginaries that refuses to bind people and identities to closed-down notions of place. In this article I propose the term cosmolocal, suggesting that the cosmolocal is an outward-engaging orientation that understands place as a profoundly discursive and situational process and that has the potential to exist anywhere. Many contemporary chiefs in Zambia embrace cosmolocalism, enabling them to escape the limitations of being viewed merely as custodians of culture who are limited to the space of the village framed historically as the warehouse of culture.
Notes
Notes
1 In January 2018 Donald Trump was widely rebuked for referring to African nations, Haiti and El Salvador as “shitholes.” See “‘There’s No Other Word but Racist’: Trump’s Global Rebuke for ‘Shithole’ Remark,” Washington Post, January 13, 2018.
2 Amanda Anderson (Citation2006: 71–72) argued that a revival of a “new cosmopolitanism” is largely in response to identity politics, and in general cosmopolitanism “endorses reflective distance from one’s cultural affiliations.” Rather than pit parochial attachment against cosmopolitan lack of attachment, she prefers to talk about voluntary attachments that are partial and aware.
3 Cresswell and Merriman (2013, p. 12) argued that the mobility turn in human geography is different from other types of mobility, as it is more careful about analyzing connections between mobilities in “a world too often generalized and homogenized as simply ‘mobile.’” Faist’s (2013) article “The Mobility Turn: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences?” considered the nexus between spatial and social mobility in migration studies.
4 In her book, Fernández examined four centuries of art and architecture through the lens of cosmopolitanism.
5 This essay was first published in The LIP (5), March 2005 (www.thelip.org).
6 Binyavanga Wainaina (2014), for example, argued that Afropolitanism is an elitist fashion statement that bears no responsibility and has little solid value outside of fashion and commodification in urban Western centers. In response to this critique, Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu (who now goes by the name Taiye Selasi) argued that her main intention in this essay was to simply create a space that some people could identify with. See “Afrpolitan—No Less and No More,” Enkare Review (http://enkare.org/taiye-selasi-afroplitan/).
7 When I was in Mwenda in Luapula Province in 2001, a number of people spoke to me about Luapula’s Dona Fish in relation to “moveousness”—that is, the act of moving around regularly in terms of trade and/or travel (Simbao Citation2008b, p. 167). Importantly, this was used in the context of village spaces and not the city.
8 Here I employ Escobar’s (Citation2001) distinction between being place-bound and place-based.
9 To discourse (verb) is to be in a conversation, drawing from Old French discours, from Latin discursus “running to and fro” (in medieval Latin “argument”), from the verb discurrere, from dis- “away” +currere “to run.” Similarly, discursive (which I relate to a discursive geography), draws from medieval Latin discursivus, from Latin discurs-, literally “gone hastily to and fro,” from the verb discurrere.
10 Personal conversation with Tariq Ali, April 2011, Grahamstown, South Africa.
11 This meaning is from circa 1500. See https://www.etymonline.com/word/local.
12 This meaning is from the early 1800s. See https://www.etymonline.com/word/local. While in 2010 I used the term cosmolocalism, I now prefer to talk about a cosmolocal orientation or attitude rather than a -localism, as the “ism” is harder to rehabilitate than a more open sense of “a local” or “many locals.”
13 I include the “living dead” here.
14 I draw from Tariq Ali’s notion of the local being “here and now, and wherever I am,” and Massey (Citation2015 [2005], pp. 139–140) wrote about “here” being an encounter in the entanglement of place and time. As such, she said, place is an event.
15 This is also cited in Cresswell 2015, p. 85.
16 This number is now well over 70. See http://www.mota.gov.zm/index.php/features/arts-and-culture/2012-12-22-03-04-35/traditional-ceremonies. According to the Department of Cultural Services, in the early 1980s there were only seven official annual traditional ceremonies that were recognized by the Zambian government: the Ngoni Nc’wala, the Lozi Kuomboka, the Kaonde Kufukwila, the Kaonde Nsomo, the Lunda-Kazembe Mutomboko, the Luvale Likumbi lya Mize, and the Ila Shimunenga.
17 Personal conversation with Mulenga Kapwepwe, Lusaka, June 2004.
18 The Republic of Zambia Ministry of Tourism and Arts gazettes these now over-80 ceremonies according to “district,” “chief,” and “tribe.” See http://www.mota.gov.zm/index.php/features/arts-and-culture/2012-12-22-03-04-35/traditional-ceremonies.
19 Many times when I asked people at cultural festivals why particular things are done, the answer was “because we have done so since time immemorial.”
20 The Comaroffs refer specifically here to being situationally of nation-states. (Emphasis in the original).
21 In the early decades following independence, village spaces were often referred to as warehouses of culture. See, for example, UNIP archives box 8/7 Central Committee/Foreign Affairs Social and Cultural, file 11 (Ad hoc committees), January 1976. Accessed in 2004.
22 July 2002 to January 2006 I attended the following ceremonies: 2002 Lunda-Kazembe Mutomboko in Luapula Province, 2004 Ngoni Nc’wala in Eastern Province, 2004 Lozi Kuomboka in Western Province, 2004 Lunda-Kazembe Mutomboko in Luapula Province, 2004 Luvale Likumbi lya Mize in Northwestern Province, 2004 Lunda Lubanza in Northwestern Province, 2004 Chishinga, Unga, Ng’umbo, and Mukulu Kwanga ceremony in Luapula Province, 2004 Lala and Swaka Ichibwela Mushi in Central Province, 2004 Soli Chakwela Makumbi in Lusaka Province, 2004 Gwembe-Tonga Lwiindi in Southern Province, 2004 Shila Mabila in Luapula Province, 2004 Ushi Chabuka in Luapula Province, 2005 Soli Nkomba Lyanga in Lusaka Province, 2005 Lunda-Kazembe Mutomboko in Luapula Province, 2005 Tonga Lwiindi in Southern Province, 2005 Chewa Kulamba in Eastern Province, 2005 Lenje Kulamba ku Bwalo in Central Province, 2005 Soli Chakwela Makumbi in Lusaka Province, and 2005/2006 Leya Lwiindi in Southern Province.
23 I attended the Kuomboka braai at the Fairmont Hotel (2004), the Likumbi lya Mize makishi march from the Arcades mall to the Polo Grill restaurant (2004), the Mize braai at Central Park (2004), the makishi performances at the Kabwata Cultural Village (2004), and part of the Mutomboko dinner dance at the Intercontinental Hotel (2007).
24 Numerous residents told me this when I lived in the village in 2002, 2004, and 2005.
25 The Times of Zambia, July 21, 2003, and personal conversation with Lucian Ng’andwe, July 2003, Cambridge, MA.
26 Personal conversation with Fernando Mwape in Mwansabombwe, June 11, 2004.
27 Personal conversation with Mwata Kazembe, Mwansabombwe, July 2004, in which we compared stories of living in “Dallas City” in Lusaka. I lived there in 2004.
28 Personal conversation with Mwata Kazembe, July 2004.
29 This also affords him a bit of distance from the watchful eyes of the bakalunda—the traditional councillors, some of whom were at first not happy that Mwata would socialize with his guests at this venue outside of the palace grounds.
30 UNIP did not go as far as TANU in Tanzania, which abolished the chieftaincy, or FRELIMO in Mozambique, who propagated the slogan “Kill the tribe and build the nation” (Gould 2010, p. 98).
31 UNIP archives box 8/7 Central Committee/Foreign Affairs Social and Cultural, file 11 (Ad hoc committees). January 1976.
32 Letter from Hon. F. M. Chitambala to the Secretary General Grey Zulu, August 1, 1985, UNIP archives, Box 8/7 Central Committee/Foreign Affairs and Culture, File 22 (Culture/Ceremonies).
33 Personal conversation, Lusaka, June 17, 2005.
34 Letter from Hon. F.M. Chitambala to the Secretary General Grey Zulu, August 1, 1985, UNIP archives, Box 8/7 Central Committee/Foreign Affairs and Culture, File 22 (Culture/Ceremonies).
35 Personal conversation Ally Mwanza, Chipata, Eastern Province, February 28, 2004.
36 Ishindi in Kabwela, Chansa. Citation2005. “Chiefs Shouldn’t Be Used as Rubber Stamps—Ishindi.” The Post, June 2, 2005.
37 Malupenga, Amos. Citation2004. “Chiefs Say Demands Are Justified – Nalubamba.” The Post, June 17, 2004.
38 Personal conversation with Senior Chief Mukuni, Pamodzi Hotel, Lusaka, July 19, 2005.
39 Usurping the largely accepted protocol of receiving gifts as the host, he asserted, “we don’t even have presents for the chief during our ceremony because the ceremony belongs to everybody… we see it as wrong to give gifts to the chief when the ceremony is for everyone.” Personal conversation with Senior Chief Mukuni, Pamodzi Hotel, Lusaka, July 19, 2005.
40 Thanks to Stary Mwaba for a helpful conversation we had about Mukuni’s involvement in politics in 2017.
41 Interview with John Kutumbo, Mwansabombwe, July 22, 2002.
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Ruth Simbao
Ruth Simbao ([email protected]) is the National Research Foundation SARChI Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, the Head of the Arts of Africa and Global Souths research program (http://www.ru.ac.za/artsofafrica) and a Professor in the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her research interests include the arts of Africa, the geopolitics of art and society, ‘strategic southernness’ and global souths, and Africa-China relations and the arts. [email protected]