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The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment and the Struggle for Hegemony in British East and Central Africa, 1935–1937

2009; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680802704674

1465-3451

Glenn Reynolds,

African studies and sociopolitical issues

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1 Siegfried Kracauer, Propaganda and the Nazi war film, in: Kracauer (Leonardo Quaresima, ed.), From Caligari to Hitler: a psychological history of the German film (Princeton, 1947). Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (New York, 1998). David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 (New York, 2001). For a broader discussion of the nexus between British popular culture and imperial expansion, see John Mackenzie (ed.) Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester, 1986). 2 For a good primer on the subject, see John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: a critical introduction (Baltimore, 1991). On cultural imperialism in mass communications, see Robert Wichert, International Media Flow: Cultivation Effects in Developing Countries, online @ http://www.wichert.org/international.htm. On American cultural diffusion in Europe, see Robert Rydell and Rob Kroes, Buffalo Bill in Bologna: the Americanization of the world, 1869–1922 (Chicago, 2005). 3 Rosaleen Smyth, The British colonial film unit and sub-Saharan Africa, 1939–1945, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 8(3) (1988), 285–298. Alec Dickson (Mora Dickson, ed.), A Chance to Serve (London, 1976), 27–30. George Pearson, Flashback: an autobiography of a British film maker (London, 1957), 202–212. 4 Rosaleen Smyth, The development of British colonial film policy, 1927–1939, with special reference to East and Central Africa, Journal of African History 20(3) (1979). Mike Ssali, The development and role of an African film industry in East Africa with special reference to Tanzania, 1922–1983, Ph.D. dissertation (University of California at Los Angeles, 1988). David Kerr, The best of both worlds?’ Colonial film policy and practice in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Critical Arts 7(1–2) (1993). Rob Skinner, ‘Natives are not critical of photographic quality’—Censorship, education and film in African colonies between the wars, University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 2 (April 2001). Charles Ambler, Popular films and colonial audiences: the movies in Northern Rhodesia, American Historical Review 106(1) (February 2001). J. M. Burns, Flickering Shadows: cinema and identity in colonial Zimbabwe (Athens, 2002). Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: colonial power and African illness (Stanford, 1991), Chapter 8, 180–199. Andrew M. Ivaska, Negotiating ‘culture’ in a cosmopolitan capital: Urban style and the Tanzanian state in colonial and post-colonial Dar es Salaam, Ph.D. dissertation (University of Michigan, 2003), Chapter 2. 5 John Merle Davis, An Autobiography (Kyo Bun Kwan, n.d.), 126–127. 6 Joseph Houldsworth Oldham was secretary of the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, editor of the International Review of Missions, and co-founder, with Frederick Lugard, of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. He was also a key architect of the interwar doctrine of ‘native paramountcy.’ Robert G. Gregory, Sidney Webb and East Africa: Labour's experiment with the doctrine of native paramountcy (Berkeley, 1962), 27. 7 Yale Divinity, International Missionary Council and Conference of British Missionary Societies archives (hereafter IMC/CBMS), BH2005, Box 1212, #48, Jamieson to Oldham, November 21, 1930. 8 The Copperbelt became a virtual laboratory for British and American anthropological investigations into ‘changing Africa.’ For a critical re-evaluation of this rich literature, see George Chauncey Jr., The locus of reproduction: women's labour in the Zambian Copperbelt, 1927–1953, Journal of Southern African Studies 7(2) (1981), 135–164. Igor Kopytoff (ed.) The African Frontier: the reproduction of traditional African societies (Bloomington, 1987). Henrietta L. Moore and Megan Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees: gender, nutrition and agricultural change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890–1990 (London, 1994). James Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley, 1999). 9 See Glenn Reynolds, Image and empire: cinema, race and the rise of mass black spectatorship in Southern Africa, 1920–40, Ph.D. dissertation (State University of Stony Brook, 2005), Chapter 3. See also Bhekizizwe Peterson, The politics of leisure during the early days of South African cinema, in: Isabel Balseiro and Ntongela Masilela (eds) To Change Reels: film and film culture in South Africa (Detroit, 2003), 32–46. For more on the relationship between Phillips, Davis and Oldham, consult Glenn Reynolds, Image and empire: Anglo-American cinematic interventions in sub-Saharan Africa, 1921–1937, South African Historical Journal 48 (May 2003), 90–108. 10 Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society (Cambridge, 1996), 52–53. 11 John Merle Davis, Modern Industry and the Africa (Edinburgh, 1933), 376–382. 12 Ibid., 325. 13 Ibid., 324. 14 Ibid., 324. 15 Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Room, Carnegie Corporation Grant Files (hereafter CCG), Box 186, Folder: IMC/Study of Cinema, J. Merle Davis, An International Study of the Cinema. It should be noted that at this time Egypt, although nominally ‘independent,’ was still under British military occupation. Northern Rhodesia had been formally colonized in 1924 by the British who took over control of the region from Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company. 16 Major L. A. Notcutt, Sisal economics, Tropical Life (London, 1923). 17 Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), CO323/1253/5. 18 CCG, Davis, An International Study of the Cinema, 2. 19 Ibid., 3. For a fuller discussion of Peffer and the Carnegie Corporation's evolving interest in adult education, see Michael Lay, Into ‘terra incognito’: considerations on the ‘timeliness’ and ‘importance’ of the Carnegie Corporation's early involvement in adult education, New Horizons in Adult Education 2(11/21/88) (Fall 1988), 33. 20 For a list of the 26 members of the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment Advisory Council, see L. A. Notcutt and G. C. Latham, The African and the cinema (London, 1937), Appendix A, 209–210. The Colonial Office was virtually inundated with proposals of a similar nature during this period: see Reynolds, Image and empire, Chapter 4. Scholars have generally emphasized the role of the Colonial Office in the BEKE, but at the Seventh Imperial Social Hygiene Council Conference, Davis stressed to his audience that the experiment was ‘essentially a missionary undertaking.’ See Native Kinemas in East East Africa, Kinematograph Weekly, July 18, 1935, 23. 21 T. H. Baxter, A Dash Through Africa (London, 1928), 2. Davis also elicited advise from, among others, Alfred Hoernle, Ray Phillips and Isaac Schapera. Aware that cinema in British India had become politicized, Davis also conferred with the Madras Film Appraisal Committee. 22 Notcutt and Latham, 23. 23 As Northern Rhodesia's Director of Native Education in the 1920s, Latham had argued in favor of keeping Africans away from the medium, but by the early 1930s his interest in expanding the scope of indigenous education led to his re-appraisal of the medium. 24 Several scholars have noted a ‘crisis’ in interwar African education, but have failed to recognize that the BEKE was implemented precisely to overcome the expenses and failings of existing African educational programs during this period. See, for instance, David Scanlon (ed.) Traditions of African Education (New York, 1968), 8. David Abernathy, The Political Dilemma of Popular Education (Stanford, 1968), 89. A. R. Thompson, ‘Ideas underlying British Education Policy in Tanganyika,’ in: Idrian N. Resnick (ed.) Tanzania: revolution by design (Nairobi, 1968), 27. 25 British Film Institute (hereafter BFI), Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment papers, Origin and History. 26 Ibid., 2. Ultimately, Latham and Notcutt envisioned that the BEKE could lay the groundwork for establishing a chain of ‘Bantu Cinema Houses’ in East Africa and Northern Rhodesia under ‘adequate control’ to counter the more questionable fare of commercial cinema houses. By the 1930s, theaters in southern African cities like Dar es Salaam were exhibiting Hollywood and Bollywood films. In addition to fears over ‘inappropriate’ content that might ‘incite native passions,’ the fact that the films kept Africans out at night led to trepidation among many whites. Although colonial officials in Dar es Salaam had banned Africans from using urban streets after 9 p.m., they were forced to allow some exceptions for cinema-goers. Patrons were required to walk directly back to the ‘African’ residential area of Kariakoo after the films let out. See Andrew Burton, African Underclass: urbanisation, crime and colonial order in Dar es Salaam (London, 2005), 165. 27 See International Review of Missions (hereafter IRM) 24(47) (1935), ii–iii; IRM 25(49) (1936), vi; IRM 25(51) (1936), ii; Sight and Sound 4(14) (Summer 1935), 92; East Africa (March 28, 1935); Crown Colonist (May 1935); Congo Mission News (July 1935), 32; Cape Argus, Native and talkies, April 11, 1946; Rand Daily Mail, London Sees Bantu ‘Charlie Chaplin’, January 15, 1936. See also Overseas Education VI(4) (July 1935). 28 PRO, CO 323/1365/5, Zanzibar British Resident to Malcolm McDonald, August 14, 1935. 29 IMC 26.31.29, ‘Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment’, Diary of G. C. Latham, June 27, 1935. 30 Ibid. 31 Seth Feldman, Viewer, viewing, viewed: a critique of subject-generated documentary, Journal of the University Film Association 29(1), 23–36. Feldman states that Notcutt and Latham failed in their published report to mention the inclusion of White People. While these films are downplayed and not mentioned by name in The African and the Cinema, there is reference to a ‘composite film’ on p. 75. See also PRO, CO 323/1316/5, Davis to Vernon, November 5, 1935, p. 2. On four trailers of the king included in the BEKE, see IMC 26.31.28, Notcutt to Davis, May 7, 1935. Interestingly, British firms recognized early the commercial potential of the project, and began plying the Advisory Council with requests to provide industry films free of charge. Lever Brothers, Austin Motors and Cadbury Brothers, for instance, offered to loan Port Sunlight, This Progress and The Night Watchman's Story, respectively, but it is doubtful that they were ever shown on a BEKE tour. IMC 26.31.28, Messrs Hogg, Robinson & Capel-Cure Ltd. to J. Merle Davis, August 30, 1935. 32 Latham and Notcutt thought the death of the thief would wound African sensibilities, but ironically they were therefore forced to sacrifice their own commitment to ‘tell the truth about the world.’ This was no small matter, for one of the cornerstones of the BEKE was that Hollywood was ‘ruining the native’ and providing the African a false image of the Western world. 33 Notcutt and Latham, 41–47. 34 PRO, CO 323/1365/5, Davis to Vernon, November 5, 1935. 35 PRO, CO 323/1356/4, Section II, Summary of Observers’ Views. 36 The CDF contributed £3000, and the endowment stipulated that the governments of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika contribute £250 each. From across the Atlantic, the Carnegie Corporation extended an additional $5500. The CDF grant also shut the door on Davis's idea for producing an African-based Pilgrim's Progress. But given the suspicion with which many Africans regarded Christianity, the failure to move it beyond the planning stages might have proved fortuitous. Indeed, some years later the Catholic Church imported from the Congo a series of pictures portraying a suffering black Christ on the cross. According to reports, ‘These were rejected by the people, who said, “This is not true. You are trying to deceive us”’. John V. Taylor and Dorothea Lehmann, Christians of the Copperbelt: the growth of the church in Northern Rhodesia (London, 1961), 189–190. 37 Notcutt and Latham actually thought the topic was ‘too advanced’ for many areas of East Africa, but hoped it would buttress existing medico-interventions in urban areas. 38 According to Nancy Rose Hunt, in the Congo ‘medicalized childbearing was central to a historical movement that began in the 1920s’ in part to ‘reorder reproductive hygiene’ and ‘promote natality and stable family life.’ It is telling that in the Congo, too, as in neighboring British African colonies, visual aids would eventually be brought into play to promote the institutionalization of hospitalization for birthing. See Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization and Mobility in the Congo (Durham, 1999), 268, 270. 39 The three films are archived at the British Film Institute (Native Veterinary Assistants was also known as Veterinary Training of African Natives; Peasant Holdings was also known as African Peasant Farms—The Kingolwira Experiment). 40 Notcutt and Latham, 58. In the mid-1920s, William Sellers began making experimental films in Nigeria to combat plague. His experiences led him to codify the basic parameters of colonial cinema, including the use of simple, long shots taken at eye level to increase African ‘comprehension.’ The BEKE deviated from this doctrine somewhat, but it remained the basic template for colonial cinema campaigns through the 1950s south of the Sahara. See William Sellers, Films for primitive peoples, Documentary Newsletter (September 1941), 173–174. William Sellers, Making films in and for the colonies, Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts 101 (1953), 829–837. William Sellers, The production of films for primitive people, Oversea Education: a journal of educational experiment and research in tropical and sub-tropical areas (October 1941), 221–226. 41 See also Timothy Burke, Our mosquitoes are not so big,’ images and modernity in Zimbabwe, in: Paul S. Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin (eds) Images and Empires: visuality in colonial and postcolonial Africa (Berkeley, 2002), 41–55. 42 Kalibala's wife Alta had opened the school. Kalibala would go on to complete a Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard in 1946 on ‘The social structure of the Baganda tribe of East Africa.’ 43 IMC 26.31.30, Kalibala to Wrong, June 26, 1935. Kalibala found that in Kampala, both ‘Africans and Asiatics,’ while asking for ‘native dances to be exhibited once in a while,’ much preferred Charlie Chaplin and ‘other movies that talk’ to films aimed at the edification of the masses. He supported this conclusion by relating his experience watching health instructional films provided for local students. After the show, Kalibala heard several students chatting to each other: ‘If I knew I wouldn’t have attended’, one exclaimed, ‘there was nothing exciting.’ 44 Robeson had just completed the British feature Sanders of the River, Zoltan Korda's 1935 imperial epic that led to Robeson's epiphany concerning the paternalism and racism embedded in European depictions of African cultures. Robeson refused to sit on the BEKE Advisory Council, but John Merle Davis did speak to Robeson's wife, the celebrated scientist Eslanda Goode Robeson, about the project. Unfortunately the details of this meeting were not put to paper, but Davis did refer to Eslanda as ‘an entirely new type of American negress with remarkable insight into the problem of the native African.’ IMC 26.31.30, Davis to Notcutt, July 2, 1935. 45 Kayamba made several suggestions for East African dances that could be made into films, including the ‘Goma,’ ‘Bengwa,’ ‘Lele Mama,’ ‘Kisonge,’ ‘Wayeye’ snake dance and ‘Warungu’ devil dance. IMC 26.31.29, fiche #1, ‘Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment,’ Diary of G. C. Latham, June 14, 1935. For more on Kayamba, a leading mission-educated member of the African elite in Dar es Salaam, see The story of Martin Kayamba, in: Margery Perham (ed.) Ten Africans (London, 1936). 46 Notcutt and Latham, 47–48. In Kenya, Latham also visited teachers at the Jeanes School to ‘obtain their views on the present films and on what they would like to see from both Africa and elsewhere.’ Ironically, although the school was a direct outgrowth of the Phelps-Stokes Commissions to ‘Africanize’ educational curricula, the instructors expressed an interest in seeing more footage of ‘King George and his family.’ BFI, BEKE papers, G. C. Latham's diary, October 7 to November 31, 1935, item #4. 47 Charles Perrings, Black Mineworkers in Central Africa (New York, 1979), 208–209. See also Robert Rotberg, The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa (Cambridge, 1971), 160–167. The Alison Russell riot commission looked into the ‘disturbances,’ but largely blamed ‘gamblers,’ ‘thieves’ and other ‘subversive’ elements. See Report of the Commission to enquire into the Disturbances in the Copperbelt, Northern Rhodesia, October 1935 (London, 1935). 48 G. Walsh and H.R. Montgomery, ‘Report on Native Taxation’ (Nairobi, 1936), pp. 13–14 (#49 and #52), 34 (#105), 49 (#168). Norman Leys had argued as early as 1924 that from the Kikuyu perspective, ‘the Government is not their Government. In their view, everything it does, the tax, the labor obligations and all else, is done for the benefit of Europeans.’ Cited in Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: conflict in Kenya and Africa (Athens, 1992), 83. 49 Notcutt and Latham, 35. 50 Ibid., 31–44. 51 Sight and Sound, for instance, declared First Farce to be ‘most popular among the natives’, and described it in upbeat terms as a ‘knockabout farce’ with ‘infectious’ acting. In fact, while some audience members certainly enjoyed the film, African elders often objected to the disrespect shown by the naughty boy to the older generation. 52 IMC 26.31.28, Jane Notcutt to Davis, October 6, 1935. 53 PRO, CO 323/1316/5, Nysaland official to Sir Cunliffe-Lister, February 2, 1935, emphasis in original. 54 Newspaper clipping from CCG, BEKE Grant Files, Box 186, Study of Cinema folder, South African Outlook, May 4, 1936. 55 IMC 26.31.29, Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment, Progress Report for August 1935 Received from the Field Director, Major L. Notcutt at Vugiri, Tanganyika Territory, 3. See also Notcutt and Latham, 144, where they declare that African female actors are ‘usually intensely self-conscious and quite unreliable.’ 56 Notcutt and Latham, 52. 57 Located southwest of Lusaka, the village was home to St. Mark's Teachers’ College, and the school sent out a ‘corps of messengers’ to summon all interested villagers nearby. Because the BEKE had sound commentary in Bemba and Nyanja only for Northern Rhodesia, the Assistant Warden of St. Mark's, James Mwela, provided commentary in Tongo for the approximately one thousand spectators watching the films in the college quadrangle. 58 This and the following accounts are taken from G. I. Feinnes, That moving and telling picture, Central Africa LIV, 638 (February 1936), 29–32. 59 For more on the influence of the Western genre in southern Africa, see G. Reynolds, Playing cowboys and Africans: Hollywood and the cultural politics of African identity, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25(3) (August 2005), 399–426. James Burns, John Wayne on the Zambezi: cinema, empire, and the American Western in British Central Africa, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 35(1) (Special Issue: Leisure in Africa History, 2002), 103–117. 60 Sight and Sound, 5(20) (Winter 1936–1937), Extract from a paper at the 23rd session of the International Colonial Institute (Brussels), held in London, October 1936. 61 Kenya National Archives (KNA), PC/NZA/3/15/157, #43: BEKE: District Commissioner of South Kavirondo to Provincial Commissioner, September 24, 1938. 62 PRO, CO 323/1356/4, Minutes of the 70th Meeting of the Advisory Council on Education in the Colonies, July 23, 1936. 63 IMC 26.31.30, John Merle Davis to Notcutt, December 14, 1935. 64 Cited in Onyero Mgbejume, Film in Nigeria … Development, Problems and Promise (Nairobi, 1989), 10–11. 65 What is certain is that the film failed to resolve the crisis for the Kamba. Only a few years later the government initiated a compulsory de-stocking plan, leading to an orchestrated campaign of passive resistance. As Rosberg and Nottingham point out, it was the destocking plan that led to the rise of an ‘educated non-traditional leadership’ among the Kamba. Carl Rosberg Jr. and John Nottingham, The Myth of ‘Mau Mau’: nationalism in Kenya (Nairobi, 1985), 164–174. 66 Feinnes, 31. 67 Latham also hoped that a central organization for colonial cinema could be set up in London, responsible for creating films for the colonized that would gradually include more images of the broader Western world. See PRO, CO 323/1535/2, G. C. Latham, Films for the colonies: a call to action, #5. 68 According to one official, ‘the standard was so low in some of the films as to render them unintelligible to African audiences.’ PRO, CO 323/1535/2, Copy of Minute by the Director of Education E. Travers Lacey, Enclosure no. 1 (Nyasaland no. 107), February 23, 1938. See also PRO, CO 323/1535/2, memo by Bowyer of Colonial Office, May 8, 1938. 69 PRO, CO 323/1421/10, Conference of Governors of British East African Territories, June 1937: Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment, Memorandum by Government of Tanganyika. See also Smyth, The development of British colonial film policy, 445. 70 See J. Koyinde Vaughan, Africa and the cinema, in: Langston Hughes (ed.) An African Treasury (New York, 1960), 90–91; Manthia Diawara, African Cinema: politics and culture (Bloomington, 1992), 10–11. Diawara complains that because of the BEKE's paternalistic racism, ‘the British never adequately trained Africans to handle their own film production’ (p. 4), but he also accuses Notcutt of exploiting the local labor pool by training Africans in processing and other semi-skilled tasks (p. 2). 71 PRO, CO 323/1421/10: Suggestions for Use of Cinema Units and Films Supplied to Kenya Government, #5. As another experiment, a small entrance fee was introduced to determine whether a colonial cinema project could pay its own way. The relatively meager funds collected were handed over to the Native Authority in each territory, but no consensus was reached as to the ability of the program to compete with more popular commercial cinemas. 72 CM, Box 317, Propaganda-Cinematograph; Folder 2, Transvaal Chamber of Mines Secretary to L. A. Notcutt, June 24, 1938. 73 This film was an experiment in using modern technology to capture for posterity Africa's ‘tribal’ past—to make a record, said Vickers-Haviland, ‘of historical and patriotic value to the tribe before the memories of the older generation fade.’ L. A. W. Vickers-Haviland, The making of an African historical film, Tanganyika Notes and Records VI (1938), 82–86. 74 National Archives of Zambia (NAZ), Section 2/1280, #1/5, C. Eastwood to Sandford, February 14, 1940.