Review of 'Performance and Politics in Tanzania: The Nation on Stage' by Laura Edmondson

'Performance and Politics in Tanzania: The Nation on Stage' is based on Laura Edmondson’s experience in Tanzania from 1993 to 1997. It is divided into two parts with six chapters. Part One comprises chapters one and two and is titled 'Imagining the Nation'. The author opens the book with a fascinating chapter on the history of theatre in Tanzania. The author has, to a larger extent, managed to show the evolution of theatre performances in Tanzania. Using various ‘popular’ theatre groups, Edmondson shows the complexity of the socialist government initiatives in building and institutionalising national culture through theatre.

Part Two of the book is titled 'Sexing the Nation' (comprising chapters three and four) and elaborates the traditional dances (ngoma) which were core during the cultural rehabilitation process of the post-independence epoch. Edmondson compares this process of culture rehabilitation to ‘national erotica’. The author describes the message conveyed by traditional dances such as sindimba and lizombe as contradictory to the body movements since they ‘call for subdued sexuality’. Furthermore, Edmondson (p. 71) describes the dancing of lizombe as a process to ‘simulate intercourse on stage’. In Part Three – 'Contesting the Nation' with chapters five and six – she describes the competition model used by ‘popular’ theatre groups in Tanzania from the mid-1990s.

While partly concurring with the author’s analysis of the performances in Tanzania, more issues need explicit questioning. In her description of traditional Tanzanian dances, she has simply concentrated on female dancing on the ‘erotic movement of hips and pelvis’ and male dancing on a ‘vigorous stamping of feet’. There were few cases of dancing patterns used when the socialist state was mobilising and motivating people to build or rehabilitate national theatre and a culture ruptured by slavery and colonialism. Generally, there are more than 120 ethnic groups in Tanzania with divergent origins. Many of these ethnic dances do not necessarily conform to the author’s selective analysis of ‘stamping feet’ and ‘hip/pelvis movements’. For example, it is likely that the Nyakyusa of southern Tanzania will have a different dancing style as compared to Maasai or Zanaki people. Such description of Tanzanian dances as 'national erotica' is derogatory since the existence of similar practices to non-African cultures, especially in Euro-America, is well known.

Highly influenced by a ‘feminist’ standpoint, the author describes such dances as sexual simulations, erotic and derogatory to women. Edmondson (p. 68) further concludes 'the rural and the female body, other located on the margins of the Tanzanian state, serve as objects of obsession and uncertainty. As such, these bodies are subjected to state control in an effort to maintain a holistic vision of the unified nation.' It is unrealistic to narrow down the whole complex socio-political process of building national identity and the institutionalisation of traditional dances into such ‘flimsy’ feminist argumentation.

Furthermore, Edmondson (p. 69) perceives these ngoma – which are susceptible to change – as a ‘canon of ngoma’, which are the only ones taught in the former Bagamoyo College of Arts. From her observation, students graduate knowing only such a canon, which has about eight traditional dances (p. 69). Again, Edmondson fails to understand the concept of susceptibility and adaptation, as well as the idyllic and utilitarian nature of ngoma in Tanzania. Historically, then Tanganyika (Tanzania) had hundreds of dances from all ethnic groups, each with at least three dances, which means there were more than 500 different dances. Slavery and colonialism destroyed some and those that survived were carried into the building of the national culture project. As the establishment of institutions such as the Bagamoyo College of Arts was based on fulfilling the national cultural agenda, there is no objection to the idea that the selected ‘literature’ is to reflect the same. The author also argues that the content of theatre performances is being solely dictated by the state. What Edmondson has left out is the capacity and the position of artists to explore their creative freedom within their own communities. As noted, dances like beni during colonial times were capable of deploying dual purposes, ‘praising’ the colonial government using military costumes and drilling acting while a ‘sending’ liberation message to the audience.

There is a decade's gap between the time when the research was conducted and the book’s publication, which means that the theatrical landscape has diversely changed. To use decade-old findings to generalise could result in inadequate conclusions. Updated data and further synthesis were needed to actualise the arguments, which in most cases were missing. On the global perspective, Edmondson does not provide any relationship between Tanzanian theatre's transition and inventions by global dominant policies such as imperialism and neoliberalism. Instead she links the demise of ‘popular’ theatre groups such as Muungano, Mandela and others to the evolution of television. Though Edmondson has a point in her explanation of how the process of building and institutionalising the national culture was in fact a return to the pre-colonial past, she could have used a combination of perspectives in her analysis. Edmondson’s academic language, arguments and perceptions seem anomalous. The rest of the synthesis is left for the reader to contemplate and systematically conclude that the arguments which Edmondson provides in six chapters are contradictory.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* 'Performance and Politics in Tanzania: The Nation on Stage', by Laura Edmondson, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007, pp. x + 175 + photographs, US$65.00 cloth, US$24.95 paper.
* Vicensia Shule is a performing artist working at the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.