Its textiles are similarly diverse in terms of material and method. Materials ranging from raffia palm fiber to silk to recycled wire are expertly woven, knit, knotted, plaited, embroidered, beaded, stamped, painted, and dyed to create a staggering variety of textiles.
The Gallery is a permanent space dedicated to year-round, rotating displays of textiles and clothing from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection.
Admission is free. African music is as diverse as the people, and has also been influenced by music from the western world. Traditional music in southern Africa usually involves drums and singing, and such instruments as the thumb piano accompanied by rattles made from some dried fruit or vegetable with seeds inside. After a Latuka man has taken his bride-to-be, he goes back to the father of the woman to ask for his blessing. The otjize mixture is considered to be a beauty cosmetic.
They also use wood ash for cleansing the hair because water is scarce. Each issue has a destination update, loads of information about conservation and wildlife, specials offers, traveller tips, community projects, website highlights and tons more Find out more about our Bush Telegraph. Don't worry. Your e-mail address is totally secure. About Us. This crude force was, however, softened by making use of traditional leaders as extended arms of state control over the tribes or the local communities, giving this externally imposed system a semblance of legitimacy for the masses.
Adding to this appearance of legitimacy was the introduction of a welfare system by which the state provided meager social services and limited development opportunities to privileged sectors. National resources were otherwise extracted and exported as raw materials to feed the metropolitan industries of the colonial masters. Smith Development was conceived as a means of receiving basic services from the state, rather than as a process of growth and collective accumulation of wealth that could in turn be invested in further growth.
The localized, broad-based, low-risk, self-sustaining subsistence activities gave way to high-risk, stratifying competition for state power and scarce resources, a zero-sum conflict of identities based on tribalism or ethnicity. Independence removed the common enemy, the colonial oppressor, but actually sharpened the conflict over centralized power and control over national resources.
Today, virtually every African conflict has some ethno-regional dimension to it. Even those conflicts that may appear to be free of ethnic concerns involve factions and alliances built around ethnic loyalties. Analysts have tended to have one of two views of the role of ethnicity in these conflicts. Some see ethnicity as a source of conflict; others see it as a tool used by political entrepreneurs to promote their ambitions.
In reality, it is both. Ethnicity, especially when combined with territorial identity, is a reality that exists independently of political maneuvers. To argue that ethnic groups are unwitting tools of political manipulation is to underestimate a fundamental social reality.
On the other hand, ethnicity is clearly a resource for political manipulation and entrepreneurship. Francis M. Deng Former Brookings Expert. After independence Africans were eager to disavow tribalism as divisive.
Unity was postulated in a way that assumed a mythical homogeneity amidst diversity. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana outlawed parties organized on tribal or ethnic bases. Julius Nyerere, a scion of tribal chieftaincy, stamped out tribalism by fostering nationalistic pride in Tanganyika and later, Tanzania, born out of the union with Zanzibar.
Jommo Kenyatta of Kenya forged a delicate alliance of ethnic groups behind the dominance of his Kenyan African National Union party. In South Africa, apartheid recognized and stratified races and ethnicities to an unsustainable degree. Post-apartheid South Africa, however, remains poised between a racially, ethnically, and tribally blind democratic system and a proud ethnic self-assertiveness, represented and exploited by Zulu nationalists, spearheaded by the emotive leadership of Chief Buthelezi.
Throughout Africa, the goal of safeguarding unity within the colonial state has preserved the stability of colonial borders while generating ethnic tensions and violence within those borders. Sudan offers an extreme example.
Blyde River Canyon in South Africa. Photo by Lina Loos on Unsplash. At more than 17 million people, Lagos is the largest city in Nigeria. Photo by Chuks Ugwuh on Unsplash.
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