The awarding of the top prize, the Golden Bear, at this year’s Berlin Film Festival to the documentary Dahomey by French-Senegalese director Mati Diop (Atlantics, 2019) is an indication that the dominant influence of identity politics in the cultural sphere is losing ground. Endless debates about structural racism and the primacy of gender policy avoid the roots of social problems and are designed to distract from the essential, burning class questions in society.
Dahomey, which is less than 70 minutes long, deals with the legacy of colonialism. In relation to the famous bronze sculptures of Benin, there has been an increased debate in recent years about the return of cultural objects expropriated during the “scramble for Africa” by colonial powers. Countries such as France and Germany have recently signed agreements and returned some of the artifacts to their countries of origin.
In November 2021, 26 works of art made the return journey from Paris to Benin (which includes the former Kingdom of Dahomey, which existed from about 1600 to 1900). The works were looted by French colonial officials in the late 19th century. A film crew is present and the director brings to life the 26th art object, a statue of King Ghézo, who ruled from 1818 to 1859. In a dark, eerie voice, the figure recounts his mixed feelings about returning home after 130 years of captivity. They range between “the fear of not being recognized and the fear of not being recognized at all.”
The reception of repatriated works in Benin is a major state affair. The fireworks go off, but everything is foreign to No. 26. There is the modern government palace – gigantic by the standards of the old kingdom of Dahomey – where a towering Amazonian female figure is supposed to symbolize the struggle for independence. No. 26 is not yet familiar with cars and modern roads. Today’s rulers descend the stairs in modern gowns with heavy gold jewelery and embellished with traditional motifs, giving a hint of the grandeur of days gone by. A young, helmeted worker approaches the precious cargo from Paris with curiosity.
The arrival of the statues does not cause general euphoria in Benin. The students discuss it. One of them feels no connection to the “things”, which he never learned about in school, he explains. Another young student states that historical artifacts fill him with patriotic pride. A third scornfully says it is just a political campaign by French President Emmanuel Macron and Benin’s President Patrice Talon to burnish their poor image with the population.
Others are also suspects. A student calls for the promotion of local languages. She only speaks French, but she is not French herself. Another states: if it was really about promoting culture, then everyone should have access to the works of art, but for poor people from remote villages the cost of travel makes this impossible.
Also, why, after 130 years, have only 26 of the more than 7,000 looted cultural objects been returned? How long will the whole process take? A student is convinced that only a pan-African revolution can lead to true self-determination, but then the question is, who can be trusted to make it happen? This is what No. 26 also asks.
Dahomey it doesn’t give ready answers, but director Diop is obviously dealing with such issues and the questions they raise in her film. The sheer size of the independence statue cannot hide the fact that the country’s official “freedom” in 1960 has not overcome the effects of colonial oppression or allowed Benin’s own culture to flourish. In fact, Benin is one of the poorest countries in Africa and the world. In 2019, the official poverty rate was 39 percent, while underemployment was 72 percent and the informal employment rate was 90 percent. The political and legal system in the country is notorious for its widespread corruption.
Students’ discussion is inevitably influenced by notions of black identity and a pan-African path. But alongside mistrust of the former colonial powers and anger at their neo-colonial crimes, there is a healthy mistrust of the dangerous elites who rule their country, who clearly have no interest—to say the least—in the general population. rediscovering their own history and culture.
Like other international film artists, Matti Diop showed her solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza and called for a ceasefire at the festival award ceremony, stating: “To rebuild we must first restore and to restore we must deliver justice. We are one of those who refuse to forget… I stand with Palestine.”
Which direction Africa? (À quand l’Afrique?)
Which direction Africa? (À quand l’Afrique?), a 90-minute documentary by Franco-Congolese director David-Pierre Fila, recalls the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 and its consequences for Africa, particularly the Congo. Led by France, Germany, Great Britain and Portugal, 14 countries – the various major and minor imperialist powers – met in Berlin to divide Africa among themselves, exploiting the continent’s wealth and raw materials at the expense of African population. Not a single African representative was invited or participated in the Berlin meeting.
The film uses old photographs to show the extreme forms of exploitation used by colonial powers (in Congo’s case, Belgian imperialism) to build infrastructure in the process of robbing Africa of its precious resources. These photographs are contrasted with images of how Africans construct buildings today, clearly with an apparent new sense of confidence and independence, but still with very simple means and materials.
As in the case of Dahomey, DRC’s independence has not begun to solve the problems of poverty (“widespread and rampant” across the country, says the World Bank) and social backwardness. It is also one of the poorest nations on earth, with about 62 percent of the population living on less than $2.15 a day.
Which direction Africa? points out that the nationalist leaders who emerged across Africa in the post-war period failed to keep their promises (many of them, in fact, were accompanied by “anti-imperialist” rhetoric). Interspersed with political commentary in the film are poetic observations on the scenic beauty of Africa.
Like the Beninese inside Dahomey, the Congolese population struggles to learn and understand its history. How can the future be shaped? Both films refrain from overtly advocating black nationalism or Pan-Africanism.
However, a much more acute understanding of national and international social dynamics is needed, provided only by the Theory of Permanent Revolution, for which the Trotskyist movement fought.
Formal independence in Africa in the early 1960s did not and could not solve the tasks of democracy and genuine independence because the indigenous ruling elites remained tied by a thousand threads to the imperialist powers and deeply hostile to their own workers. and rural masses. The latter only fill them with fear and loathing.
The Cold War enabled the local bourgeois strata for a time to maneuver between the great powers and the Soviet Union and—as in Benin—even clothe themselves in a “socialist” cloak, without doing anything to actually touch the privileges. of local elites and private property capitalists.
In the intervening decades, however, these societies have been transformed by global economic processes, which have created powerful working-class factions. This is one of the reasons why the art object ‘No. 26” is so out of its depth. Just under 14 million people live in Benin, a very small country. by 2050, according to UN calculations, there will be 24 million. Neighboring Nigeria has a population of 220 million, with 16 million living in the largest city of Lagos alone.
Overcoming economic impoverishment, backwardness and neo-colonialism requires the mobilization of this enormous social force as part of the global working class. This in turn is inextricably linked to the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a socialist society on a global scale. This is the only way out of poverty and social despair.