When did the African renaissance die?

Whatever happened to the African renaissance? I thought that shifting priorities, not to mention last year’s xenophobic violence, had long since consigned it to the dustbin of history, as a catchphrase anyhow.

Just when it seemed that we were to hear of it no more, here’s the man, who started it all, going on about it again. Thabo Mbeki — remember him? — is still telling people to be part of the African renaissance. Granted, his speech was part of the Africa Day celebrations at Rhodes University. But even a man so apparently distanced from reality must know that this is an idea that never really took hold in the popular imagination.

There was a time when it all seemed so promising. Back in 1996, Mbeki’s speech marked a transition from national consciousness, in the form of the rainbow nation myth, to a continental focus. “I am an African,” he announced. “I owe my being to the hills and valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the desert, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land …

I owe my being to the Koi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape … I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their actions, they remain, still, part of me. In my veins course the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom … I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves … who sees in the mind’s eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death in concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins … I come of those who were transported from India and China …
Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that I am an African!

It was a beautiful speech, one that marked Mbeki’s first grand gesture as a statesman. Since everybody knew that Mbeki would assume power once Nelson Mandela retired from politics, his words carried weight. The concept of an African renaissance began to gather momentum as the national mood shifted away from the reconciliatory emphasis of the rainbow nation — soon dismissed as “rainbowism” — and Madiba magic. Mbeki told a gathering of US corporate chiefs and African officials at the May 1997 Attracting Capital to Africa conference in Washington that the African renaissance had already begun. It was here that Mbeki presented himself, to a receptive audience, as the spokesman for Africa.

Soon enough, the words “African renaissance” developed a power all of their own, almost a magical quality — as if, by evoking them, political correctness was guaranteed for a cause. The African renaissance had rapidly become what Ray Hartley, then political editor of the Sunday Times, described as “one of those globally adored notions that no one dares contest”. The SABC changed its slogan to “The pulse of Africa’s creative spirit”. Calabashes and beadwork began to proliferate in corporate campaigns as business gravitated towards a concept apparently tailor-made for annual reports and corporate videos.

“Perhaps the biggest issue that faces our leadership is to find the challenging idea that can galvanise and energise all the people. The African Renaissance and the African Century are the end result of such an epoch-making idea,” gushed Saki Macozoma back in 2000. Similarly, the managing director of Microsoft (South Africa), Mark Hill, declared: “Microsoft is currently contributing towards making the African Renaissance a reality. We don’t believe this to be a cliché, but rather a serious challenge facing South African businesses interested in the future of this country.”

Whether ordinary South Africans ever felt the same way is open to debate. The 2000 edition of FutureFact, a report by the UCT Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing, reported that research indicated broad support for a leading role for South Africa in African affairs, and one of the positive aspects of the African renaissance was that it had “powerful symbols”. However, the same report also observed that “cynicism surrounding the African Renaissance is rife”. Hardly surprising, really, given the African renaissance that was starting to take place just across the Limpopo and garlic and African potatoes were being offered as solutions to a disease that ravaged the continent.

It’s interesting to look at the ads of the time — consumer advertising is always a useful clue to those concepts that people relate to and those they don’t — and note that very few non-government or non-corporate campaigns used the African renaissance as a creative idea. (MTN was a rare exception, with TBWA Hunt Lascaris developing a campaign that imagined an entire world embracing Africanness; I remember how one of the scenes featured a French woman saying “Hei suka wena” to her boyfriend.)

That ad appeared back in the year 2000, when the African renaissance was already in decline. Soon enough it gave way as a dominant idea in public discourse to the Brand South Africa era, when the chattering classes became obsessed with the economy and the performance of the rand, the International Marketing Council began to promote the country in earnest and people like Mark Shuttleworth were held up as national heroes. The mood, for a while, was relatively positive and practical, focused as it was on tourism, the expansion of the black middle class (we all love our black diamonds) and bidding for international sporting events like the 2010 World Cup.

So to see reference being made to the African renaissance now, after Polokwane and Manto and Msholozi and all the other muddy roiling water that has passed under that particular bridge, is somewhat disconcerting. Anachronistic even, as if we’d been transported 10 years into the past. Somehow, the African renaissance was always a concept that made sense to elites, but not to people on the ground. It was too remote, too theoretical, oddly lacking in any kind of emotional traction.

A lot, in fact, like the man who first gave it impetus. Do we debate whether either of them still have something to offer the world? I suspect the question is moot. After all, the world has long since moved on.