Inam Kula's letter

This publication project called the cohort to each write a letter to another and to write this letter through their work. The outcome is a chain of letters demonstrating how the cohort has affected and have affected one another by creating and holding space together.

Nifemi,

I write to you in Exile. 

No, I have not crossed the Zambezi river and I am not in a military camp in Angola or Zambia. However, sometimes I feel as though I am in exile in my own country, as though I am waiting to return home to the land that Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) promised our people in 1994.

There are many similarities between Nigeria and South Africa, but the one that stands out for me  is how in both our countries, the arts have been used as a form of activism; artivism, if you may. The great Fela Kuti was an uncompromising critic of the post-colonial order. In one of his songs, he says “Coffin for Head of State.” One might think that this statement is radical but Fela was inviting us to ask ourselves what to do with a political elite that has no solutions to the problems that the people face, yet year after year insist on being elected to lead. What do we do with a Black political elite that is constantly evading responsibility and shifting blame yet is always implicated in corruption? The coffin is figurative, it is a call for the death of an endless history of suffering subjected to innocent people.

It is a direct critique of those who promised a better country but who betrayed that promise, without remorse.

Similarly, today, Burna Boy, through his song “another story” invites us to critically think about the legacy of colonialism in Nigeria, and by extension the African continent at large. He makes the inference that the history we have been told is incorrect and that in fact we, as young Africans, have little to no knowledge about our histories and ways of being.

As you have been to Cape Town, you will have experienced first-hand how it is grossly affected by segregation as a result of apartheid spatial planning. Growing up, this had a huge impact on the way I perceived the world. Upon learning about my family’s history, I learned that this violent relationship had in fact not started with me but directly affected generations before me. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were born into multiracial communities, but through apartheid’s forced removals their families were dispossessed and displaced into areas that were classified as “Blacks only.”

Just like that, our land was gone, our dignity was stripped, our future taken away, and our potential was capped. 

Fast forward to 1994, to the democratic birth of the “Rainbow-nation” and the world’s most revered independence story in Africa. Here, like in many African states that gained Independence in the 1960s, Black people had hope for true liberation, a better life, and most importantly, to retain their  dignity. Unfortunately, for 29 years to date, this has not been the case.

There is a branch of scholarship that has been growing in relation to questions of temporality in Afro-pessimism. What Afro-pessimists suggest is that Africa has been frozen in time. This is an idea that should be entertained because it basically argues that the conditions of Africans have not changed since slavery, colonisation, and in the case of South Africa, apartheid. They argue that the hierarchies that once existed still exist now. How then do we measure or speak about time for a people whose past, present, and future are collapsed into one thing? A people who are under the yolk of Anti-Blackness, where the cries of Africans during colonisation are the same cries today?

I suppose the question that remains then is: what is to be done? Well, of course, any attempt to think about Africa without the opinions of those who have the lived experience of being African is already a failed project. Historically, academia, mainstream media, NGOs, and the likes have tried to speak about Africa without consulting our people –– the people who know the continent. What ought to happen is to speak with Africa, not of it. The idea that Africans are oblivious of their problems and they are unaware of the dire conditions within which they exist, is false. The reality of the matter is that they do and they know it more intrinsically than those who come and study them. This is evident not only in your work, but the entire cohort of the 2022 Building  Beyond programme has demonstrated that we have the necessary tools, ideas, and skill sets to change the narrative of the continent. This is to say that we must move away from the anthropological approach of engaging with the continent and we must adopt a more collaborative style. It is only when we do this that we might come to a better understanding of the fabric that makes up the continent and of what threads we can use to mend and tailor it. 

There have been many memorable moments over the course of the mentorship, but my most valuable lessons were learnt from the intimate, informal conversations we engaged in.

In these moments we could be ourselves and tell our real life stories without a sense of occasion or performance. One such moment was when you said to me, “show me a good architect and I’ll show you a good politician”. Of course, the definitions of “good” or “politician” are subjective, but the statement struck home. That exact moment accelerated how I think about the future of my practice and the role that I, as an architect and activist, have to play in a post-colonial and post-apartheid South Africa, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Drawing from your previous sentiments and my experiences of meeting all the participants of the programme from this past year, I’d actually add, “show me a good artist, and I’ll show you a good  activist.” 

From Jozi to Lagos

Inam