Art is not for cows

“We are not bankers, doctors, nor nurses”, says the Zimbabwean singer Chiwoniso Maraire. “We have our own responsibilities towards society and that is: say what has to be said, regardless repression and intimidation that are part of day-to-day life in Zimbabwe.” Chiwoniso is top of the bill during the open air concert organised by the European Commission on the Flagey Square in Brussels the third of April. The concert closes the colloquium Culture and Creativity as Vectors for Development.
Chiwoniso expresses uncensored the social commitment that is widely spread in the artistic sector of Zimbabwe. That is not unusual in societies where dictators severely suppress freedom of speech, entrepreneurship and organisation. This was already clear in the seventies and eighties of the past century in South Africa, when the country was weighed down under the apartheid regime.
Breyten Breytenbach, the South African author who was imprisoned in those days because he violated the prohibition on interracial marriages, thinks culture in the development process should most importantly take care of imagination: “To realize progress we should pursuit something just outside our reach. Even if it just were us longing for a life with more dignity and compassion than the cruelty, paranoia, greed, corporatism or narcissism that occupies us and we explain so easily.” In his opening speech for ARTerial, a conference on activating the African art sector in 2007, he added that the necessary moral imagination that artists bring to society are “actions and expressions of creativity that always challenge the power and pretentiousness of orthodoxy and undermine them.”
Last year Al Jazeera called the Book Café in Harare, where Chiwoniso performs regularly, “the only censure-free place” in the country of Robert Mugabe. The Malian Aminata Traoré confirms Chiwoniso’s and Breytenbach’s opinion for the whole of Africa: “Those who have the power of speech, should use it to say essential things, not to make money on the global free market of culture. We do not need a generation of artists who fear insulting sponsors or people with buying power.”

Creative economy

“Culture playing a decisive role in development is unanimously recognised”, state Euro Commissioners Louis Michel and Jan Figel on the invitation for the international colloquium beginning of April. One look at Charles Michel’s budget shows us that the big consensus is very recent, because it is barely traceable in the costs made by the European Commission for development.
The European Development Fund 2008-2013 reserved for example 21.33 million Euros within the total budget of 23 billion Euros for support to cultural industries and involved educational activities. A budget place of 0.1 percent rarely means a high priority. Although it should be mentioned that also elsewhere in the European development budget amounts are reserved to support the cultural sector. The programme Investing in People 2007-2013 puts aside 50 million Euros for culture, the Mercosur Regional Programme 2007-2013 has 1.5 million Euros for culture, the Country Strategy Paper for India 2007-2013 has to manage it with 4.7 million Euros…
If the European Commission starts praising the importance of culture for development, it is not mainly because of the peaceful resistance artists such as Chiwoniso and Breytenbach are talking about. But it is more the economic promise Traoré questions that is important. The Commission is surrounded by good company.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) published together the Creative Economy Report 2008 last year. In their introduction the UN organisations wrote that “creativity, knowledge and access to information to an increasing extent are being acknowledged as powerful motors for economic growth and for development in a globalized world.”
The creative economy that is referred to is broader than only the artistic field and contains amongst others also software development, fashion and media. The export of creative goods and services amounted to 424.5 billion dollars in 2005 according to Unctad or 3.4 percent of the total world trade.
Elsewhere in the report the global export of visual arts is estimated at a 22.1 billion dollars a year, more or less the amount that the cultural and creative sector turn over every year in Belgium. Those general numbers disguise the fact that in the “creative economy” the North plays the biggest role, not so much the South and even less Africa.
“In spite of the abundance in talent and the wealth of cultural traditions and heritage in Africa, African cultural and artistic creations seem to be commercialized on a very limited scale on the domestic as well as the global market.” If cultural or creative economy are to play a central role in the fight against poverty and development, a lot still has to change.

People are not cattle

The Creative Economy Report 2008 appropriately states that time has come to a “more holistic approach that starts from the specific realities of the different countries and recognizes cultural differences, identities and real needs”.
Marie-Clémence Paes, filmmaker from Madagascar, could reply to that with an even older quote: “Art is not a priority for most African countries, where they are reserved for the elite and for communities that already can meet their minimum needs. But it is a serious mistake to only think in terms of vital needs. If we limit aid to food and health care, we treat people like cattle. Cows only need grasslands, water and vaccinations against diseases. Art and culture are essential, even if it were only to remind us that we are all human beings and that our needs are brought back to filling the stomach.”
This expression of Paes appeared at the end of last year on a poster for Africalia, a non-profit organisation founded by Eddy Boutmans when he was Secretary of State for Development Cooperation. His organisation supported hundreds of cultural and artistic initiatives in Africa during the last couple of years.
Opposite to the conviction of many development actors that art is a luxury, the Mozambican author Mia Couto supports the challenging opinion that real luxury for the elite is a part of the pessimism that they can afford. The poor, he says, can only be hopeful.
The developmental value of art and cultural expression lies not only in the economy that arises around cultural production, but also has a lot to do with what the Commonwealth Foundation calls “the liberating process of cultural expression”.
In the recent report

If we limit aid to food and health care, we treat people like cattle. Cows only need grasslands, water and vaccinations against diseases.

Putting Culture First. Commonwealth Perspectives on culture and development the organisation states that the importance of an area where cultural and creative expressions can flourish is becoming clear when you “not only understand cultural expression through art, craft, music, drama, stories and performance as expressions of an already existing culture, but also as a way in which liquid cultures examine and change themselves in a dynamic way.”
The cultural sector deserves support, most of all in the developing countries, because “it is only when people can tell their own stories, can reflect their own messages and can conduct creative discussions about their own society that development efforts can really start having positive results”.
The Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyenkula described it a bit less subtle during a conversation we had with him in Kinshasa last year: “The Congolese live in the middle of ruins – and then I am not only talking about physical ruins, but also about the devastations in the heads of the people. Therefore there is such a big demand for places where people can dream again. A place where there is also a possibility for critical self-perception. We have to keep dreaming, even though we are in the shit up to our knees. Off course it is important that everybody, finally, has enough to eat. But we have to start expecting more. And that is why art – alarming art – is necessary, more than ever.”

The immeasurability of concern

In the South there is no lack of artistic initiatives that try to produce as well economic surplus and employment as social connection and critique. Artists like squaring the circle. That is shown in the cited reports, in the project reports from Africalia or comparable actors from other countries and in stories of organisations such as KVS and Music Fund.
What lacks is an adapted policy framework to support these initiatives in the long term and from an adapted logic. Els van der Plas, manager of the Dutch Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development: “In development circles, art and culture are often supported when they aim for other goals: fighting poverty, informing about aids, decreasing the analphabetic population, etc. It seems weird to link these goals to cultural institutions. In the Netherlands we support the Rijksmuseum and the Concert Hall (…) not because they fight aids. We should not demand this from cultural institutions and persons in poor countries.”
Van der Plas decides that culture is a goal and not a means to something else. Maybe. If the Flemish Department for Culture supports a couple of artistic projects in Kinshasa or Johannesburg, culture will become an aim. But when the Belgian Secretary of Development Cooperation supports initiatives in Burkina Faso, Kenya or Congo through Africalia, it is not abnormal that the developmental relevance of that support is questioned.
The criterion that is used for artistic projects is another one than the one used for infrastructure, social organisation-construction or the realisation of concrete aspects of the Millennium goals. How does one measure concern? Or reflection on own stories? It is still possible when those processes take place in the defined repression context. The Zimbabwean people still notice that today. And it is easy to find support for such things.
But it is also important to write new scenarios in apparently stable societies, show confronting images, sing the counterpart. To reach further than poverty that has been normal for the people for generations. A good culture and development policy, states Els van der Plas, “maybe has even more influence than sending troupes or political delegations to problem areas.”
Thanks to Bjorn Maes of Africalia for research.
Gie Goris is editor from MO* and president of Africalia.