New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  The men of my mother’s maternal clan are tall, strong-boned and handsome. They are powerful and lithe with dark skin and long limbs. Well, my mother says, when I ask about her uncle’s enlistment, we are vaRozvi, you know. He would have volunteered. There was a war; he wanted to go show his spear. She adds, with a sidelong glance at my father: They were the lords—the fighters, the rulers. It is a family joke that my father “married up”, his own origins and ancestry not nearly as exalted as those of his wife. Her people once had an empire. They were a fierce, aggressive people whose rule included the south-western plateau of what is now Zimbabwe, and at its zenith extended west towards Botswana and south to north-eastern South Africa. The empire lasted from the late 1600s well into the 1790s when severe drought and stirrings of rebellion from within and without brought about its gradual decline. They are a people who still carry this history with pride. Their totem, Moyondizvo, deviates from the general ascribing of a single animal totem for a clan. I cast about for a translation that captures both the meaning and the spirit: moyo—the heart; ndizvo—that is it; that is the truth . . . the heart that is true. The Rozvi are “the true heart”—a totem that embraces all others. Or, as I am sure my mother would put it, subsumes all others.

  These are my mother’s mother’s people, and although the tradition of patriarchal inheritance would frown on me claiming too much of this history for myself, I am proud of these forebears who were successful farmers, rich in cattle and famous for building cities of stone, for their pottery and, in 1693, for defeating a Portuguese militia which sought to gain control of their gold mines. They traded copper, gold and ivory with Arab merchants and—especially important to me as I try to piece together Michael’s story—they were known as cunning military strategists, developing the “cow horn formation” of battle that Shaka Zulu would later employ against the British. The Moyondizvo praise song exalts Jengetanyika—the keepers of the land; Kudanga kusina chinoshayikwa—the abundant kraal in which nothing is found wanting. We are warriors, my mother says—sitting up in her chair. And although history books credit the Kingdom of Mutapa as the builders of Great Zimbabwe, the city that gives my country its name, my mother has always shrugged this off. The Mutapa and Rozvi empires ran concurrently and, she is quite clear about this, the books have it wrong. We built those houses of stone.

  This is the lineage of Michael Bhasvi Kanerusine. Mu’soja of the Rhodesian African Rifles. Sekuru Toro, the Tall One. Great-uncle Longchase. Moyondizvo. The True Heart. I do not have his rank and, besides a general idea of what his cohort would have done during the war, I know nothing about his wartime experiences. I can only imagine the journey he would have taken as a nineteen-year-old from Ruzane village, Hwedza, Southern Rhodesia. But as I stole glances at the old men in their Royal Chelsea Hospital uniforms, and later as a commissioning editor searching for writers who could tell the story of the soldiers I longed to know more about, it was his memory that nudged me on.

  My great-uncle would have looked stunning in that red coat.

  Let me begin with what I remember. The story my late brothers, my sister and I told one another.

  One day my mother’s uncle arrived at our home in Tynwald, Harare. In my memory it is not long after independence, the early 1980s. We lived in a rambling single-storey house set on five acres in what had, merely years before, been a whites only neighbourhood on the southern outskirts of the city. Michael Kanerusine was my grandmother’s younger brother, the fifth out of ten children. Although our home was a regular stopping point for relatives visiting from the rural areas, including those from Ruzane village, we children had not met him before.

  He was an imposing presence—long and lanky with big hands and huge feet. My sister Mavhu remembers how she and our younger brother Nhamu would follow him around the garden, always making sure not to get too close or to bother him as our mother had warned that he had a temper. He gave us a hard time, my mother says when I ask her about this. She tells the story of how he got drunk one day and lay down to sleep on the railway line that ran near our house. He just slept right there on the railway tracks, she sighs. Luckily, some neighbours recognised him and brought him home.

  He had gone to fight King George’s war and when he finally made it home he said he had come back from Burma. But what took you so long? Ndangandiri kuhondo. Ndangandichiri kuuya. I was at war. I was still on my way. Sometimes he spoke of being in Algeria, in Angola, Uganda . . . He mentioned Germany and Russia. One story was that he had participated in a powerful ritual to ensure he would not be killed in battle, that he would survive the war. But the vow he had to make to the ancestors in return for their protection was that he would never again see his parents. By the time he returned, they were already dead.

  In the story my siblings and I told each other over the years, Toro’s sojourn with us marked this eventual return home some thirty-five years after the soldiers who fought in WWII would have been decommissioned. We imagined him journeying from the far north, across a continent, stopping along the way as history swept by with world-changing movements of independence, new governments and national identities. I was at war. I was still on my way. It is a story of epic adventure and daring and I have always wanted to believe that I carry his spirit in my heart, have always wanted to be as fearless in my adventures. What better ancestor to claim than one, a colonial subject, who had boldly gone into the world and chosen for himself the timing and manner of his return? I think of the ease with which I cross borders with my dark red British passport and wonder what it must have meant for a young (and then not so young) man from a Southern African village making his way, over a period of more than three decades, across our vast continent. In our minds, Toro became a giant.

  Amma Asante

  Born in London to Ghanaian parents, she is a BAFTA award-winning writer/director who began her career as a child actress, appearing as a regular in the popular British school drama Grange Hill. In her late teens, she left the world of acting and eventually made the move to screenwriting with development deals from Chrysalis, Channel 4 and the BBC. Two series of the urban drama Brothers and Sisters followed, which she wrote and produced for BBC2. The film A Way of Life was her directorial debut (she also wrote the screenplay), garnering newcomer nominations from the London Film Critics’ Circle and Evening Standard Film Awards, and winning 17 international awards for writing and directing and Newcomer Awards for writing and directing from the BFI London Film Festival and the prestigious South Bank Show Awards. Belle, her second feature film, received widespread acclaim and earned her nominations for various awards worldwide.

  The Power of Defining Yourself

  Figures revealed by the Women’s Media Center in New York showed that, across a five-year period ending in 2012, of the 500 top-grossing movies, only two had black women directors attached to them—that’s 0.4 per cent. So I’m thinking, now, back to the night before I was about to set foot on the set of the first movie I directed. I was absolutely terrified, and my fear pivoted around the fact that I knew I wasn’t what was expected of a director. I didn’t fit the industry model, full stop. I wondered how I was going to lead my all-male crew, who were also all white, how I was going to instil confidence in them and get them to believe in me, so that I could end up with the film that I had written on screen. After all, I knew they had never worked under anyone like me before; you know, my shape, my flavour.

  I realized, essentially, that society had created the very world I wanted to work in as one that, statistically, did not include me. And that society, by its own boundaries and perceptions, had created me to be somebody who didn’t fit into the category of what filmmakers were generally expected to be. Yet I felt like a director, and I knew I could craft stories onscreen and connect those stories to audiences. Still, the figures don’t lie. The statistics did not tally in my favour. Essentially, my definition of me didn’t match the definition that society had bestowed upon me.

  It begs the question: who defines you? Society, or
yourself? Is society’s opinion of who you are, who you can be, what value you have, what you can achieve in life—is that more powerful and important an opinion than your own? If you say you are a writer, for example, and you have something valuable to contribute to the literary world, but reviewers and critics say you’re not a great writer, then whose truth wins? And whose truth is most likely to determine your future as a writer?

  Well, for me, the answer is really simple. It’s whichever you choose to believe. I have this idea. Since we can all dream a far bigger dream for ourselves than society ever could, what would happen if we all decided we were going to actively define ourselves and allow that definition to govern everything, over and above anything that society could define or indicate for any of us? How would that influence our lives?

  The question of who defines us comes up in everybody’s life at some point. It doesn’t have to be about race or gender, necessarily. For me, the question embedded itself long ago. I grew up down the road from Brixton at a time when it was being so negatively defined by society, and defined in a way that it didn’t authentically see itself, that it practically imploded in its struggle to be heard. And, with an older brother, who was still a teenager at the time, I experienced how it felt for some that they were living in a police state. Yet I also witnessed how Brixton refused to be marginalized and criminalized, as it rose up during the riots of the 1980s and rejected the definition of the existence it should have by society’s standards.

  Defining yourself outside the realms of society is not easy. It’s such a fascinating subject to me as a writer and director that it has risen to the fore of every single project I have ever worked on, and probably every single project I will ever do. I think the reason is because it’s so complex, and what’s so hard about it is to recognize when your choices and your direction in life are being influenced by society’s perhaps more restricted ideas of who you should be.

  You know, when the mirror image of what society is suggesting to you doesn’t reflect the person you really feel you are. Or, even worse, when the untrue image that’s coming back to you does feel real, because the messages and the influence can be so subtle that it’s easy to dismiss. You know, “This is just the way things are supposed to be.” That’s what you tell yourself.

  Think about how many used that argument when it came to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, or against women who demanded the vote, or even today, when it comes to gay marriage. Think how many institutions and organizations use outdated, antiquated, biased rules to maintain the status quo, sometimes an unjust status quo: “We’ve been doing this for x number of years, so we can’t change it now, it’s tradition.” That’s a word they like to use, “tradition”. For me that sounds unevolved, to not move forward because something is tradition.

  Yet when society is acting to prevent you reaching your goals and your dreams, that’s precisely the time you have to truly remember who you are. The reason I believe that is because today none of us emerge from just one single world. We are all a combination of many worlds put together. And sometimes, when you are at the junction of many worlds, society considers you a contradiction.

  Growing up down the road from Brixton, I experienced the common story of constantly being asked: “Where are you from?” I would say: “Well, actually, I was born here in London.” Then I would be harangued: “No, but where are you really from? . . .”

  And, interestingly, I would go back to Ghana to visit both my grandmothers, with my mother during summer vacation, and I would be told: “Well, you’re not really Ghanaian, because you’re too English.” It got to the point where at this junction I was at, I didn’t know which pathway to go down. Because, if I took one pathway, it would be rejected, if I took another pathway, that would be rejected. In many ways it felt like society was defining me as an outsider.

  And I say again, this doesn’t have to be solely about race or gender. We’re all at the junction of many worlds. It can concern race, class, sexuality, so many different things today. I wonder if there is anyone who, at some point in their life, hasn’t been identified outside of the realms of where they see themselves, or at some point hasn’t felt like an outsider. I don’t think it should be about having to pick one pathway over another. I shouldn’t have to pick being British over being Ghanaian, or being Ghanaian over being British. Because, ultimately, I am a product of both. Both those cultures reside inside me. And it shouldn’t really matter if that’s not normal to society.

  It’s not so much about a collision of worlds as it is a combining of worlds. And it really shouldn’t matter whether society defines it as normal or not. As the late Dr Maya Angelou would say, if we are always trying so hard to be normal, how can we ever know how amazing we can be?

  Now, bringing to bear your definition of yourself in society, I know, can be hard. There are all sorts of things: beauty ideals, gender expectations for both men and women, racial profiling, class prejudice, these are all examples of how we can be thrown off-base in terms of knowing, understanding and defining who we know we truly are. I am thinking now about the guy who wants to stand in his truth when it comes to his sexuality, even though his community or his religion might expect something different of him. Those who define themselves as beautiful but society tells them they are not, and I think to myself that at those points exactly, when society is telling you that you are not who you feel you are, that’s the time that you have to understand the power of what it means to define yourself. It may be the difference between whether you may be happy or less happy in life, a failure or a success in life, but most importantly, conscious or unconscious in the story of your own life.

  I think back now to finding my way originally in the business of film, and being told so often: “It’s very hard to sell Black movies with a Black protagonist.” Yet there are enough movies today that have defied that and shown that to be untrue. But regardless of whether that was just opinion, or whether that was perception, or whether it was truth or not, I realized that if I was going to move forward in the business, I was going to have to try to find a way of working out what the obstacles were, and find a way to negotiate those obstacles.

  What I learned is that when you truly embrace who you are, and all the worlds that you come from, when you bring those sensibilities to a previously closed-off world, you move society forward. When we move into other worlds, we touch people, we impact people, and when people change, then society has to as well. For me, the value of embracing all the worlds that exist in you is that those of us who are able to do so have an insight that shows us why colliding worlds on the outside are not a bad thing. Because when worlds meet, progress can follow; the mother who may run a Fortune 500 company, the son of a cleaner who becomes a doctor, or think about the first African-American children to set foot in the all-white schools after segregation was abolished, those are all people that inspire me to do what I do.

  I’m thinking now about the women who do make their way in the male-dominated world of film-making, and what we realize about those women is that when they are able to break into that world, they make an impact. The British Film Institute released figures between 2010 and 2012 that show that although women were still under-represented in terms of independent film-making, they represented a significant percentage when it came to successful films. People love their films. That’s what I mean by saying that when we have the courage to move forward into other worlds, we have the impact to change them.

  It takes me back to the story I started with: stepping onto the set of my first film.

  A few weeks before I was about to shoot that movie, a film executive came up to me and said: “Well, you’re not going to step on set with your big high heels on, are you?” As if me coming on set with high heels was going to be the thing that established me as a woman in a man’s world. For the record, I don’t direct in high heels, and I didn’t direct my first film in high heels, except for the last day; I always make that a tradition now. But I did celebrate my love for h
eels in one way. The logo of my company is essentially a high heel and appeared with my company name at the end of that film. You see, I believe in leaning into our identity, not leaning back. And high heels are definitely a part of my identity.

  But I believe the part of me that loves high heels and loves being a woman is every bit the part of me that is able to write movies, direct movies, and deliver movies. Just as the part of me where Africa meets Europe is the very part that gives me my unique yet universal eye. You see, I believe every industry, every business, every society, requires fresh eyes to open new windows on old concepts and unseen worlds, to bring new perspectives to the universal experience.

  The journey for me of defining myself is an ongoing experience. I work at it every day. But if you ask me today: “Who are you, Amma? Where are you from?” I can tell you this: I am a black British woman. I am proudly born of Ghanaian parents. And I am a screenwriter and a movie director. Now, how will you define you?

  Michelle Asantewa

  Born in Guyana, she migrated to the UK to reunite with her mother. Her interest in African traditional spiritual practices and cultural identity prompted her to do a PhD on the Guyanese Comfa ritual. She set up Way Wive Wordz Publishing, Editing and Tuition Services to accommodate a range of learning and creative aspirations. Her publications include the novels Elijah (2014), Something Buried in the Yard (2018), The Awakening and Other Poems (2014), her PhD thesis Guyanese Komfa: The Ritual Art of Trance (2016) and Mama Lou Tales: A Folkloric Biography of a Guyanese Elder (2016), which are self-published through Way Wive Wordz.