Wade in the water: Barotse cultural citizenry and re-mapping of Africa

• In Event: Indigeneity and National Policy in Africa

Abstract

“We the people of Barotseland declare that Barotseland is now free to pursue its own self-determination and destiny”. Mr. Sinyinda, (Ngambela Prime Minister), Kingdom of Barotseland, February 2012.

This paper explores how the Internet can serve as a space for the reconstruction and repatriation of indigenous identity. Using the Barotse Cultural Citizenry as a case study, the argument advanced in this paper is that availability of internet in education and in varied global classrooms can enable the exploration of indigenous identities across internationally constructed borders to reveal, through archival photographs, film and documents, the continuities and evidence of African cultural identity and citizenry at work.

A “Virtual” wave of independence from neo colonialism is happening on the Internet. There is a current movement for sovereignty amongst indigenous groups globally who are using the Internet as a medium for mass mobilization to legitimize themselves and re-articulate their identity. The Barotse are one such group who are using the Internet as an advocacy tool to articulate and exercise their right to self-determination by making it a repository for their first nation history and a database for their forensic evidence of archival images and texts laying bare their legal claims for all to see.

At the Berlin conference of 1884 the colonial project in Africa was constructed, mapped and administered to manipulate capitol. In southern Africa in particular with the discovery of diamonds and gold, a system of belly politics was put in place to virtually enslave vast populations across the region who have unwittingly suffered for generations through the creation of arbitrary trade based borders, forced economic migrations and removals of millions from ancestral lands, mandatory taxes and racist laws that separated families and whole nations. The scramble for Africa continues with Europe, America and Russia entrenched and the wheels of the system are being replicated by China and India who are taking more than their fare share of the resources of the world from Africa.

Until as late as the early 1990’s this institutionalized system confused and obscured the history of southern Africa where before Mandela was released there was virtually no real historical information unless you had access to a large research library in the west, as there was a systematic disposal of any references to actual historical facts or figures in the region as a whole about anything pre-colonial with an disproportionate focus on archeological research to determine the origins of man. Apartheid had allowed southern African regional history to be completely twisted and myths were created daily. So who were all these Africans before 1884? How did the nation state idea systematically deny Africans access to their own history making them strangers in their own lands? The Internet is a democratic space that has finally given access to marginalized groups to reconstruct their histories.

The country known as Zambia today came about as a result of a merger of two autonomous nations namely Barotseland, a constitutional African monarchy and Northern Rhodesia, a territory constructed of the colonial project and so named after its own architect, Cecil Rhodes. Due to the Kghalahari sands and endless rivers, gorges and great falls Mosi Ou-Tunya, this African empire was impenetrable until the twilight years of colonialism.

Over a long history of negotiation and diplomacy Barotseland was one of the few African nations during colonialism to retain a protectorate status for its people, a semblance of self-determination along with Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Tunisia and others.

The Barotseland Agreement of 1964, a binding document would ensure the protectorate status of Barotseland and its people from the ravages of the colonial nightmare. Now after fifty years of Zambia’s denial of Barotseland’s right to self-determination, misrule, neglect, acts of aggression, repression, suppression intimidation harassment torture and arbitrary arrests, Barotse have created a legitimization movement on the Internet.

Today Barotseland is asking for recognition to be the 55th African State, in line with the Barotse National Council Resolutions of March 27, 2012. The Barotse National Freedom Alliance (BNFA) was invited and legitimized at the international conference on minority rights on November 21, 2013 at a hearing for the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples organization – UNPO in parliament in Cape Town, South Africa in the very hall where the draconian Apartheid laws were drafted and maintained for over ninety years.

Author

• Mukwae Wabei Siyolwe, Global Posse Productions, Inc.