When artistes stood for the African dream

At a round-table session held to celebrate Prof Austin Bukenya a little over a fortnight ago, the subject of FESTAC ‘77, also known as the Second World Black Festival of Arts and Culture, repeatedly came up.

Veteran thespian Steenie Njoroge was in attendance at #BukenyaForum, and he had with him a copy of Kenya’s souvenir programme for FESTAC ’77, which was held from January 15 to February 12, 1977. When I saw it, almost 40 years after the event, I had this strong urge to make sense of our participation at that famous festival.

If you mention FESTAC in Nigeria, there are two places that immediately ring home. One, is the federal housing estate, located on the Lagos-Badagry expressway, initially created as the accommodation for delegates of the festival. The estate has lost the glory it once held and many of the houses are now owned by private individuals.

The second, more popular connotation is the National Theatre in Iganmu, Lagos, home to the Festac Festival. This international event brought together 75 countries and communities from all over the world.

Today, the National Theatre remains a major tourist attraction. It is documented that 9,546 participants and over 550 visitors attended the event from 62 FESTAC delegations.

To look through the archives of Festac’ 77 and situate the discussion in Nairobi requires a visit to the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC) located on Broad Street, Lagos. CBAAC was established in 1979 and houses all the materials and core collections relating to FESTAC’ 77.

A walk up the stairs, leading to the offices and archives section brings you face to face with a framed image of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. Mzee’s portrait accompanies those of Sir Seretse Khama of Botswana, Rwanda’s Juvenal Habyarimana and Gaafar Nimeiry, who was President of Sudan from 1969 to 1985.

These portraits speak briefly of the Pan-African efforts of that era.

AFRICA'S STRUGGLES

CBAAC’s archives section is well-organised and it is easy to retrieve data from it. Although the official English programme is absent, there are several in French, which was the second language of the event.

There are data registration cards for participants from all the countries and from Kenya, a young Professor Micere Mugo leads the pack followed by a host of other artistes, some alive, some having long left us.

Lenny Juma, Paul Onsongo, Katana Kazungu, Allaudin Qureshi, Sharad Sandakass and Njeri Mwotia were present. So were David Maillu, Chris Wanjala, Francis Imbuga and the late Seth Adagala, who directed The Trial of Dedan Kimathi in Nairobi.

Adagala is also remembered as the first African director of the Kenya National Theatre, the man who pioneered the very worthy National Theatre Drama School, which was opened by Tom Mboya, the then minister for Economic Planning.

For the event, Imbuga wrote Betrayal in the City, and Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo co-authored The Trial of Dedan Kimathi.

They depicted the struggles of the people towards independence as well as those of a pseudo-liberal society showing that the reality was “not yet Uhuru”. Both plays were published in 1976, and prepared for the stage by the Festac’ 77 drama troupe.

These Kenyan productions shared the stage with LANGBODO, an adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s A Forest of a Thousand Demons and Kinjeketile from Tanzania.

Although hugely successful at Festac and well received, it had not been an easy run for the Kenyan troupe. Back home, local playwrights and actors had to contend with issues of nationalism, ownership and the identity of African theatre almost daily.

In a series of articles written by Wanjala, Hillary Ng’weno, Phillip Ochieng and Imbuga, there were repeated calls for the opening up of the cultural space at the Kenya National Theatre in the face of the then expatriate owners.

An article written in the Sunday Nation on October 10, 1976, by Seth Adagala detailed the struggle and “Long Hard Battle to stage Kimathi Play.”

CULTURE

In 2015, Prof Ngugi would allude to this struggle in his speech at the official opening of the newly-refurbished KNT. The belief of his generation of thespians was that Kenyans had the right to partake of their own nationalism before the plays, which had not been previously performed on stage, were performed for a larger international audience.

All sorts of reasons were given by the powers that were then, to prevent Kimathi from being staged, including the claim that there was a dearth of African audiences in Nairobi’s theatres.

“After a struggle and some outcry from the press, we were given three days to present the play,” said Ngugi.

The theatre was filled, much to the surprise of the naysayers. This episode, however, would be the beginning of Ngugi’s run-ins with the government of the day.

Much has changed over those years in the thinking that brought Africa together at what was arguably its largest gathering of the arts in that decade. Festac’ 77 had been preceded by the First Black Cultural Festival held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966.

Incidentally, the ideas calling for a “resurgence” of the black man’s culture, as if it had been lost somewhere, were mooted in Paris in 1956 when the Pan African Cultural Society called a meeting of Negro Writers and Artistes to discuss the same.

Public discussions on the African continent 40 years later are more about leadership, peace and security than about our commitment to cultural promotion. Forums like #BukenyaForum are valuable because they allow us to go back in history and assess the gains we have made at national, regional, continental and personal levels in achieving the kind of Africa we want.

The question of African identity still stands, 40 years after FESTAC and now it is inescapably threatened by that age-old link between our land and eager masters of economic imperialism who are aided by self-serving leaders. Perhaps, it is time for another FESTAC.

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Ms Mucheke works with Santuri Media and is author of a forthcoming title, "Looking back at 50 Years of Lagos".