New York African Studies Association

Newsletter
NYASA Newsletter No. 66
Winter/Spring 2014
ISSN 0148-7264

Dr. Oyeronke Oyewumi Named Distinguished Africanist
Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Soci-
ology at SUNY Stony Brook, will be receiving the
Distinguished Africanist Award at the 39th An-
nual Conference of the New York Africana Studies
Association being held at SUNY Cortland, April 4-
5, 2014. She also will be the keynote speaker at
the conference. Last years recipient was Lock-
sley Edmondson, Professor in the Africana Studies
and Research Center at Cornell University.
Among other recipients have been such distin-
guished scholars and writers in the field of Afri-
can Studies as Chinua Achebe and Ali Mazrui.
Dr. Oyewumi was born in Nigeria and educated
at the University of Ibadan and the University of
California at Berkeley. Her scholarship is widely
recognized and she was the recipient of the
American Sociological Associations 1998 Distin-
guished Book Award in the Gender and Sex cate-
gory for her 1997 monograph, the Invention of
Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender
Discourses.
She has garnered a number of research fellow-
ships, including Rockefeller fellowships, a Presi-
dential Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant.
Oyewumis most recent research award was a
Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship on Human Se-
curity managed by the National Council for Re-
search on Women.
Her areas of interest include sociology of gender;
sociology of knowledge; sociology of culture;
comparative historical sociology; feminist theory;
transnational feminism; social theory; social in-
equities in local, regional, and global systems;
African studies (post-colonial studies); and mod-
ernities.
In addition to her prize-winning 1997 mono-
graph, published
by the Univer-
sity of Minne-
sota Press, she
has edited two
books: Gender
Epistemologies
in Africa: Gen-
deri ng Tradi-
tions, Spaces,
Social Institu-
tions, and Iden-
tities, Palgrave
Ma c mi l l a n ,
2010; and Afri-
c a n Wo me n
and Feminism:
Refl ecti ng on
the Politics of
Sisterhood, Af-
rican World Press, 2003.
The Department of Sociology at SUNY Stony
Brook, where she is a faculty member, ranks 23 in
the U.S. based on the Academic Analytics Faculty
Scholarship Productivity index and has 16 full-
time faculty serving over 50 graduate students
and about 500 undergraduate majors.
1

Dr. Oyeronke Oyewumi
Interview with Seth Asumah, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Chair
of the Africana Studies Department, SUNY Cortland, 31 October 2013
By Roger Gocking, Emeritus, Mercy College
Q. You have recently returned from Ghana
where you attended the African Studies Con-
ference: Revisiting the First International
Congress of Africanists in a Globalized World.
Could you tell us about this conference?
A. It was held at the University of Ghana at the
Legon Campus from 24-26 October 2013. The
conference was presented as a sequel to the first
International Congress of Africanists which was
held at the University of Ghana in 1962. At that
time President Kwame Nkrumah and other Afri-
can leaders wanted to do something for African
studies. In general, Nkrumah had proclaimed
that the independence of Ghana was meaning-
less unless linked up with the total liberation of
the African continent.
In this spirit they [the organizers] had decided on
a conference of Africanists from all over the world
to look at the question of what was the African
self in the European order. Colonialism had
badly distorted the African sense of identity and
it was necessary to determine what were truly
the different parts of an African identity. The
conference was opened by Ghanas president,
John Dramani Mahama, in the University of
Ghanas Great Hall. There were three other guest
speakers: Dr. Carlos Lopes, the United Nations
Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary
of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UN-
ECA); Professor Fatou Sow, an associate member
of the Centre denseignement, de documenta-
tion et de recherches pour les tudesfministes
(CEDREC) in Senegal and France; and Professor
Ngugi wa Thiongo, who is currently Distin-
guished Professor of English and Comparative
Literature at the University of California at Irvine.
There were also two representatives from the Af-
rican Union.
There were scholars from about 35 countries who
gave papers, with the South African contingent
being the largest. There were discussions about
how African studies developed on the continent
from what had initially been a focus on econom-
ics and European literature. There had also been
an increasing concern with the study of African
languages. There had also been some pre-
conference events. Professor Ngugi had pre-
sented a public workshop and had gone to local
high schools. The Under Secretary had met with
Ghanaian economists, and there had been other
workshops. At the end of the conference there
had been a fashion show and an artist on the Le-
gon campus had designed a special cloth for the
event. Ghanian corporations had also generously
supported the event by providing food and
drinks.
Most of the panel ses-
sions were held at the
Institute of African
Studies which was
also celebrating the
50
th
anniversary of its
founding in 1962.
The conference was
organized by the In-
sti tute of Af ri can
Studies whose direc-
tor is Professor Ako-
sua Adomako Am-
pofo. She is currently
a visiting professor at
SUNY Cortland. The
Institute is extremely
self-contained. Nearby it has its own accommo-
2
Institute of African Studies
University of Ghana
Akosua Adomako Ampofo,
Director, Institute of
African Studies
dation, the 47-room Yiri Lodge. In the northern
Ghana language, Dagaare, Yiri means a home. In
addition to having its own library, the Institute
also has its own dance ensemble, and they pre-
sented a lively drumming performance when
President Mahama arrived to open the confer-
ence.
What was the most important outcome of the
conference?

A. In 1962 there was discussion on how to con-
tinue with what the conference had begun, and
there had been talk of forming a Congress of Af-
ricanists, but this did not go very far. In 2013
there were representatives from 29 different Afri-
can countries and also people from outside the
continent from the Americas, Europe, the Middle
East, and Asia. The result was the formation of a
new association, the African Studies Association
of Africa, ASAA. I suggested that this new asso-
ciation should affiliate with the ASA in the United
States and also NYASA, which would be diaspora
affiliates.
Nelson Mandela
(July 12, 1918 - December 5, 2013)
by Thomas Nyquist, Chair, Nyquist Foundation
Nelson Ro-
l i h l a h l a
M a n d e l a
was a South
African revo-
l ut i ona r y ,
pol i t i ci an,
and philan-
t h r o p i s t
who served
as president
of South Af-
r i c a f r o m
1 9 9 4 t o
1999. He
was Sout h
Africas first
black chief
execut i ve,
and the first elected in a fully representative
democratic election. In working to free his coun-
try from racial division, he led an essentially
peaceful revolution, culminating in his release
from prison in 1990 and the post-apartheid elec-
tion of 1994.
He was a Xhosa, born into the royal house of the
Thembu people. His father, Gadla Henry
Mphakanyiswa, was a descendant of a 19th cen-
tury Thembu monarch, Ngubengcuka, but
through the so-called left-hand house, which
did not stand in the direct line of succession. His
mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of four
wives, and Rolihlahla was the youngest of his fa-
thers four sons.
Mandela was born at Mvezo, near Umtata, 120
miles northeast of East London, in the native re-
serve of the Transkei, Eastern Cape. At the age of
seven he went to school, the first of his family to
do so. On that first day he was given the name of
Nelson. Each child had to have an English as well
as an indigenous name.
He was nine when his father died of a lung dis-
ease. According to Nelsons sister, Mabel, the
father made a dying bequest to the Thembu re-
gent, David Dalindyebo, giving Nelson into his
care. The bequest took Nelson to the Thembu
capital, Mqhekezweni, the great place where
he became part of the royal family.
In the family tradition, he was groomed to be-
come a counsellor to the future king, Sabata. He
was sent to a Methodist mission school, Clarke-
bury, 25 miles southeast of Umtata. At 19, he
moved to another Methodist school, Healdtown,
in Fort Beaufort, and then to nearby Fort Hare
University College, at that time South Africas
only black university.
In 1940, in his second year at Fort Hare, as a
member of the student representative council he
was expelled for his part in a rebellion over poor
quality food. He migrated to Johannesburg,
where he was to be introduced to the future ANC
leader, Walter Sisulu, then running an estate
agency. Sisulu took him to a local law firm, Wit-
3
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
kin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, and they agreed to
employ him on as a clerk while he completed a
University of South Africa B.A. by correspon-
dence.
At the office and at Sisulus home Mandela began
mixing with more radical members of black soci-
ety and he also met his first wife, Evelyn Mase, a
cousin of Sisulu. They married and had two sons
and two daughters. The marriage broke up in
1956, after Evelyn, a Jehovahs Witness, reput-
edly demanded that Mandela choose between
her and the ANC.
In 1943 he began a part-time law degree at the
University of the Witwatersrand. The following
year he became publicly active as a founding ex-
ecutive member of the ANC Youth Wing, which
was established to challenge the staid leadership
of the ANC.
1948 was a watershed year in South African poli-
tics, with the Afrikaner Nationalist Party coming
to power to institute its policy of apartheid across
South Africa. Among those forces seeking to
challenge its hegemony was a rejuvenated ANC
led by Chief Albert Luthuli, with Mandela as his
deputy.
That same year, Mandela, now qualified as an
attorney, set up a law partnership with the man
who would stand in for him during his long years
of imprisonment, Oliver Tambo. The firm of
Mandela and Tambo was South Africas only
partnership of black lawyers, so its services were
in great demand.
The rise of the Nationalist Party led the ANC to
seek alliances with communist and Asian groups
to organize civil disobedience campaigns. By
1955, with the removal of the black population
of the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown,
Mandela became convinced that the ANC had no
alternative but to take up armed resistance. A
freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the
oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,
and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to
use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.
At a certain point, one can only fight fire with
fire.
Further action by the ANC was preempted when
in December 1956, the government arrested
Mandela and 155 other activists for high treason
on the grounds that the Freedom Charter, drawn
up in June 1955 by an ANC-led rainbow alliance,
implied communist revolution. Mandela was
released on bail within two weeks, but not before
his wife, Evelyn, left him permanently.
The state had difficulty in making its case, and it
took until January of 1958 before the magistrate
committed 95 of the defendants for trial at the
Transvaal supreme court. During this period
Mandela meet Nomzamo Winifred Winnie Ma-
dikizela. They got married in June of 1958 and in
August he was back in court.
The trial was still in process when on March 26,
1960, 69 Africans demonstrating against the pass
laws were shot dead by police in Sharpeville, 35
miles south of Johannesburg. This massacre be-
came a rallying cry for the ANC. Surprisingly,
despite the increasing tension throughout South
Africa, those brought to trial by the government,
including Mandela, were acquitted.
Mandela immediately went underground and by
June of 1961 had persuaded the ANC leadership
to pursue a course of active resistance. He be-
came the head of Umkonto we Sizwe (Spear of
the Nation), the armed wing of the ANC, which
made its presence felt through explosions at
government installations in December 1961.
Mandela was finally captured in August 1962,
while masquerading as a chauffeur. He was ini-
tially sentenced to three years for incitement,
and another two years for leaving the country
without a passport. Then, in October of 1963, he
was brought to court again as the number one
accused in the Rivonia trial, alongside those
ANC leaders arrested at a farm that July.
He was accused of treason, and the expectation
of many was that the trial judge, Quartus De Wet,
would sentence him to death at the gallows. In
his now famous defense statement, that took
four hours, Mandela concluded by saying, Dur-
ing my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the
struggle of the African people. I have fought
against white domination, and I have fought
4
against black domination. I have cherished the
ideal of a democratic and free society in which all
persons live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live
for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for
which I am prepared to die. In the end, he was
sentenced to life imprisonment.
It is said that Mandela and the ANC believed that
the liberation of black Africa could be expected
within a a few years. But it was to be 26 years
before his release from prison. During that quar-
ter of a century, the fortitude that he exhibited
would have given pride to his elders. Among the
most painful experiences were the separation
from his family, the loss of his eldest son, Madiba
Thembi Thembekile Mandela, in a car crash in
1960, and the peccadilloes of his wife Winnie
that included rumors of love affairs.
He was finally set free on February 11, 1990, only
to observe in the year that followed his wife pillo-
ried in court on kidnapping and assault charges
relating to the death of the 14-year old township
activist Stompie Moeketsi Seipei in 1989. A six-
year sentence was reduced to a fine on appeal.
Mandela and Winnie separated in 1992 and di-
vorced in 1996. Soon after the divorce he be-
came a friend of Graca Machel, widow of the Mo-
zambican president and ANC ally, Samora Ma-
chel, who had died in an air crash 15 years ear-
lier. Marriage followed in 1998, on Mandelas
80th birthday.
After Mandelas release his stoicism developed
over 26 hears in prison provided a figure of dig-
nity to lead a new South Africa - described by an
English journalist as a tall, slim, stony-faced
figure...surrounded by the white generals who
had fought so hard to destroy his cause, taking
the salute at the presidential inauguration in May
1994. (Dave Beresford, The Guardian, December
5, 2013)
As the first post-apartheid leader, Mandelas
greatest gift was to provide a peaceful transition
from a society where Africans of various ethnic
nations - along with Asians, Coloureds, and oth-
ers - suffered under a political and economic sys-
tem dominated by a European minority. The
South African people, exhausted by a struggle
against one another, and within themselves, had
the need for a unifying figure to give them a
vision of nationhood. (Beresford)
Religious Art in Haiti: the Interaction Between Roman Catholicism and Voodoo
By Roger Gocking, Emeritus, Mercy College
Over the last 14 years I have been fascinated by
the way in which Christ and Christian personae
have been represented in Third World countries
where Christianity has been a relatively recent
import. Mostly this concerns Roman Catholic
and Anglican churches and to a lesser extent Lu-
theran churches which have in varying degrees a
well-developed tradition of religious art. For
Catholics, for whom statues, paintings and arti-
facts in general are essential components of any
Catholic church, religious art has been highly
developed beginning as early as the second cen-
tury AD. It probably reached its peak in the Ital-
ian Renaissance from the 14
th
to the 16
th
centu-
ries AD. Inevitably, when Catholic missionaries
came to spread Christianity to Africa, Asia, or
what was known as the New World, they brought
representations of this art with them to adorn
the church buildings they constructed.
At the NYASA Annual Conference in 2010 at
SUNY Binghamton, I presented my most up-to-
date findings on how this tradition has devel-
oped in Ghana. I looked at the influence of an
Afrocentric challenge to the portrayal of Chris-
tian personae in what had been an almost exclu-
sively Eurocentric artistic tradition. Last year at
the NYASA annual conference in Binghamton I
looked at how this was developing in Jamaica,
West Indies, with similar findings. At the end of
2013 I spent three weeks in Haiti looking at a
particularly unique situation as there is also con-
siderable interplay between Roman Catholicism
and Voodoo, the name that is given to the belief
systems that slaves brought from Africa during
the long era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Significantly, Voodoo has been much more will-
ing to borrow from Roman Catholicism than vice
versa and this very much extends into the realm
5
of religious art. In contrast. I think it is fair to say
that mainstream Catholicism has been very am-
biguous about Afrocentrizing the important per-
sonae of the Christian past as it has seen this as
conceding ground to Voodoo which has been,
and continues to be, its most important religious
competitor.

Unfortunately the devastating earthquake of
January 2010 has added an additional complica-
tion to the study of religious art in Haiti. The
earthquake was particularly devastating for
churches, and many of the most important in the
Port-au-Prince area, where the earthquake was
worst, were destroyed and much of the art in
them reduced to rubble.
The Church of Sainte-Anne in downtown Porto-
au-Prince was one such casualty. All that remains
is part of the sanctuary and adjacent walls. On
one of them is a mural depicting the Ascension
which well reflects the ambiguity on the part of
Haitian Catholicism towards Afro-centricity. The
disciples are portrayed by the local artist who did
this work in a racially unspecific manner, not
unlike much of the religious art of Americas
most prolific religious artist, the African-
American, Henry Ossawa Tanner.

The nearby, but equally, badly destroyed Episco-
pal Church of Sainte Trinit, was far more famous
for its nativistic murals. All but two of the twelve
murals were destroyed in 2010. They were
painted by Haitian artists between 1950-51 and
depict mostly scenes from the life of Jesus.
Bishop Charles Voegeli, the American-born Epis-
copal bishop, was away during the painting of
the murals but on his return expressed thanks
that the artists had painted Haitians. The Bap-
tism of Jesus by Castera Bazile is an excellent ex-
ample of this indigenization. It also locates the
baptism itself in what could be a very Haitian en-
vironment: it could well be taking place at the
Saut dEau in the valley of the Artibonite River,
which is an important site for both Catholic and
Voodoo pilgrims.
The Nativity by Rigaud Benoit combines nativism
with somewhat Byzantine features which have
had considerable appeal to Haitian Catholics.
The open thatched structure has been compared
t o V o o d o o
tonelle where
its ceremonies
t a k e p l a c e .
Onc e a ga i n
there is a wa-
terfall in the
painting that
could well be
S a ut d E a u,
which is a pil-
grimage site in
Hai t i associ-
ated with the
Virgin.
Much of the
early support
for art in Haiti
in general has
c o me f r o m
European and American expatriates. The Ameri-
can writer Selden Rodman played a major role in
planning, organizing and financing the Sainte
Trinit murals, and a grant from the New York
philanthropist, Mrs. Vincent Astor, was critical for
finishing the project. In contrast, what Rodman
described as Haiti's "timid bourgeoisie" had
"greeted the unveiling of the murals" with "arti-
ficially stimulated public outrage." (Rodman
1974: 54)
Instead, religious art in most Haitian Roman
Catholic churches is very much in the mode of
what has been described as Lart Saint Sulpice,
which some critics have described as represent-
ing the lowest quality in the entire history of
Christian art. [Lehmann 1969:20] It is invaria-
bly the international style of Church art in the
20
th
century and highly Eurocentric [McDannell
1995:170]. In a similar fashion to Jamaica,
churches in Haiti are locked when there is no
service scheduled but at least they are standing
and in good condition once you get outside of
the area around Porto-au-Prince and Jacmel. The
earthquake was quite localized.
The Cathdrale Notre-Dame de lAssomption in
Les Cayes built in 1908, about 125 miles away
from Port-au-Prince, is a very good example of
this international style. On the wall behind the
6
Mural of Sainte Trinte:
Baptism of Christ by Baizle
sanctuary there is a large painting of the Ascen-
dant Virgin Mary. Above the altar is a statue of
Christ on the Cross with Mary kneeling in prayer
below. She is dressed in traditional colors, blue
and white, with, significantly, the latter repre-
senting her purity and virginity and the former
the color of Heaven. In the garden outside is a
mural of the Last Supper l la Leonardo da Vinci.
When I asked my guide, an elderly Haitian lawyer
who had received his training in the US, whether
he thought Jesus and his disciples had indeed
looked like this he was quite adamant that they
had been Black Men. At least for him there was
obviously a considerable disconnect between
what the official Eurocentric portrayal of Christ
and Christian personae consisted and his own
beliefs.
The Cathdrale
Sainte Louis Roi
de France in
Jeremie, about
6 0 m i l e s
northwest of
L e s C a y e s ,
which was built
in 1877, has
s i mi l ar l y or-
thodox rel ig-
ious art with
one minor dif-
ference. The
main picture of
the Virgin is
very Byzantine
in its features.

One of the most unique works of art in the main
Roman Catholic cathedrals in Haiti are the Sta-
tions of the Cross in the Cathdrale Notre Dame
de LAssomption du Cap-Haitien. They were done
by a Haitian sculptor, who I believe was from
Port-au-Prince, and have been cast in aluminum.
They are quite unusual, but, nevertheless, the
physiognomic features of the figures in the four-
teen stations are clearly Caucasian.
Haitian buses, known as tap taps, which means
literally quick, quick, are often ornately
painted and often this artwork is very religious in
its significance. Significantly, portrayals of Christ
are invariably that of a Caucasian, but in the
painting on this tap tap the most famous words
from the cross: Father forgive them for they
know not what they do are in Haitian Creole.
This is somewhat unusual as French is over-
whelmingly the language of public signage.

Undoubtedly influenced by Roman Catholicisms
use of religious imagery, Voodoo has also taken
to representing its pantheon of spirits, known as
the lwa, as Christian personae. Shops sell such
imagery and this is an example from a shop in
Cap-Hatien that was selling all sorts of religious
paraphernalia that could not easily be distin-
guished from being for a Voodoo or Catholic cli-
entele. It is of the Voodoo Lwa, Ezili Danto, who
is usually represented as a Black Madonna. Sig-
nificantly, there is a Byzantine quality in the
physiognomic representation of her features as
well as indicated by the manner in which she
holds her child. Byzantine art had a major influ-
ence on Ethiopian religious art. Hector Hyppo-
lite, one of Haiti's most famous artists in the
1940s, may have even visited what was then
7
Station of the Cross The Second
Fall
Bus art in Croix des Bouquets
Lwa Ezili Danto portrayed as a
Black Madonna
known as Abyssinia after the First World War
(Rodman 1974:28). Whether or not he did,
clearly Ethiopian religious art has had a major
influence on Haitian artists. Lwa Ezili Danto is
one of the most celebrated of the lwa of what is
known as the Petro family of lwa, the family of
lwa that have been identified as coming from
Haiti itself rather than from Africa. She is also
considered to be mute and with facial scars. She
represents motherhood and supposedly fought
in the Haitian Revolution and had her tongue cut
out so she could not reveal slave secrets.

There are also sculptural representations of both
Ezili Danto and Ezili Freda, other lwa sometimes
represented as a white Virgin Mary. In one such
example that I saw, the sculpture was all in white
and can be seen as representing the Virgin Mary,
but even so its byzantine qualities were still ap-
parent.
Given this appropriation of aspects of Christian
art in Haiti it is not hard to understand why
mainstream Catholic churches have sought to
maintain their distance from much in the way of
indigenization, or what has since Vatican II been
described as inculturation. Nevertheless, there
have also been subtle changes evident in some of
the more recent art in some of Haitis Catholic
churches. A stained glass window in the Church
of Saint Pierre in Ptionville, a wealthy suburb of
Port-au-Prince that was spared by the 2010
earthquake, is a good indication of changes that I
have also seen in Ghana. Jesus, the fisher of men,
is no longer portrayed as a Caucasian, but nei-
ther is he black. Instead, there has been a com-
promise. He is brown rather than white but his
racial characteristics are rather unspecific.
It is inevitable that the push toward inculturation
that presently has so much momentum in the
Catholic Church will have an influence on main-
stream Haitian religious art. Two of the Sainte
Trinit murals survived the 2010 earthquake, and
they are being carefully restored with the inten-
tion of having them once again publicly dis-
played. Clearly they remain as an example of
what can be done in the realm of indigenous re-
ligious art and have the potential to move relig-
ious art in Haiti away from what has been its con-
servative focus.
At the end of my three weeks in Haiti I traveled
into the mountains of the Massif de La Selle that
lie to the south of Port-au-Prince. In the small
village of Furcy, at about 5,000 feet in elevation,
there was a small circular Catholic Church, Saint
Michael, that luckily was still open after an early
morning service. Behind the altar was a wonder-
ful nativistic portrayal of the Crucifixion very
much like Sainte Trinit. There was no one in the
church to ask who had been the artist and when
the work had been done. However, much of the
inspiration for the work was easy to determine. I
had been up early to view the sun rise on the
mountains of the Massif de La Selle which were
visible from outside the church. As the sun had
risen, glowing yellows, greens, browns, blues
and purples had infused the magnificent land-
scape outside. The artist had obviously sought to
capture this very Haitian reality in this painting
which is often the case in the Haitian nativistic
style. It is inevitable that this is so as it is no ex-
aggeration to say that mountains dominate the
Haitian landscape. As the Creole aphorism ex-
presses it: dy mon, gen mon (beyond the moun-
tains, more mountains).
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Co-editors: Roger Gocking and Thomas Nyquist. The NYASA Newsletter is published by the New York
African Studies Association, SUNY New Paltz 12561-2493. Contents may be reproduced with attribu-
tion. Membership is NYASA $25. Back issues of the Newsletter are available for $10 each.
8
Crucifixion in St. Michaels RC Church