Kenya

<sup>Although the concept has come under attack from different quarters within Africa, and for different reasons – even long before Nicolas Sarkozy came calling in Dakar - there nevertheless seem to be a renaissance of sorts taking place. At least on the African art scene if not on the political arena or on the social landscape yet.

One of the messages of Mbeki's envisioned renaissance was for the African people to take pride in their heritage and to take charge of their lives.

But this new trend - for lack of a better word – of only appreciating those things African that are appreciated by the West - is it a form of self discovery or self awareness among the Africans, or it another fad picked from West? Is being more Africanised the new way for Africans to be white and branded on the global market? A conversation about my hair with a friend led me into thinking about the African renaissance differently. See, i love to keep my hair kinky and natural. I will braid it sometimes and most other times have a multi coloured and elaborate head scarf. But my hair remains 'untreated' and unstraightened as it were with 'chemicals'. To this, my friend responds by telling me that i am so white.

That is a contradiction of terms, it may seem. That I am viewed as having a white man's mentality because I keep my hair natural. Most African women will perm their hair - meaning straighten it - or wear a straight weave. This, one would think, is what would be defined as being white.

I know where my friend is coming from though. It seem, at least in my Nairobi society, that the more a person is becoming 'African' in their dress or style or appreciation of art and culture, the more white they seem, because it is the new way to show that one is cultured. Being into things African is the new white in Africa! And what irony it is!
 
Is the perceived renaissance therefore all genuine? The African now appreciates himself and does not see himself through the eyes of his teacher and lord, the Master?
 
As the West scrambles for Africa yet again in neo colonialism, authentic and unadulterated art and antiques and old tokens have began missing and finding their way to museums and collectors' homes in Europe and the US. It's a renewed interest in Africa that seem to be rubbing off on the Africans too.
 
Is it self awareness then? Is it going back to our roots and having a high regard for what we had initially been taught was barbaric? Is it self growth and a sense of self worth or is not another lesson from the white world, only this time, asking us to look at ourselves?
 
A renaissance is supposed to mark a time of radical changes in a people's system of thinking. But as Africans, is there a chance of turning back from what we have come to think of ourselves as Africans. Can we ever undo or shake off neo-Africanism, which is
neither Western nor genuinely African, the state that most Africa has been subjected under- a lack of identity and a crisis between embracing what we feed our minds on from the day we get into a classroom and letting go of little understood African culture.
 
Perhaps we can never know what it would be if our renewed interest was genuine or not. The damage is already done. Most of us do not know what being truly African means. Our skin and environment constantly reminds us that we are Africa, yet our ideologies and our thoughts are constantly conforming to trends set by others who neither know nor understand Africa.</sup>

^{See, even here we argue and reason in a language that’s not our own. It was Ngugi wa Thiong’o who said that language was a medium of “our memories, the link between space and time, the basis of our dreams”}

^{Yet to some, not being able to speak in your mother tongue is thought of as ‘cool’ or advancement. Hence, to use Wa Thiong’o’s analogy, the link to our memories being broken, are we not lost in space and time? Aren’t we a people without a basis for our dreams, if we do have dreams at all we can call our own?}

^{To quote Breyten Breytenbach, who quoted Ngugi Wa Thiongo in his speech ‘Imagine Africa’:}

^{“For Ngugi, using and promoting the mother tongue is not simply a reaction against the supposedly economic pragmatism of globalisation; it is more about resurrecting the African soul from centuries of slavery and colonialism that left it spiritually empty, economically disenfranchised and politically marginalized. Ngugi believes that when you erase a people's language you obliterate their memory. And people without memories are rudderless, unconnected to their own histories and culture, mimics who have placed their knowledge-of-self-and-other in a "psychic tomb" in the mistaken belief that if they master their coloniser's language they will own it and be allowed to sit as equals at the dinner table to use it as fork, however clumsily. It is not easy to eat crumbs with a foreign fork. Such a people, because of their alienation, will become dangerous to themselves and to others. Like hooligan parrots”}

^{What more can I add to sentiments on the state of the African so well put? Wherever the inspiration for the renaissance is coming from, whether genuinely born in Africa or created outside Africa and brought here, one would hope that it will cause a growing collective awareness and self discovery happening throughout Africa. And Sarkozy is obviously wrong and acting haughty to suggest that the African lives in a ‘realm of fancy …where there is neither room for human endeavour nor the idea of progress’.}

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