MWELELA CELE

In the mid-90s, while studying at the University of the Western Cape (UWC)—which students of my generation and other comrades often called the University of the Left—I was enrolled in a Psychology course. During my second year, one of the modules I took was Social Psychology, taught by Mr. Umesh Bawa, a Clinical Psychologist.

At our first lecture, Umesh handed out a course reader that included chapters from Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born philosopher and psychiatrist. This seminal work, first published in French in 1952 and then in English in 1967, profoundly impacted me when I started reading it a few days later in the UWC Study Hall below the Main Library on a Friday afternoon.

Black Skin, White Masks delves into the psychological effects of colonialism on Black people and explores the complexities of race and identity. It discusses how colonialism dehumanizes both the colonised and the colonisers. Reading these sections of Black Skin, White Masks was a transformative experience.

It was five years before I encountered Benedict Wallet Vilakazi’s essays and articles on the significance of African languages, and five years before I read Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Yet, there I was in the mid-90s, absorbing Fanon’s insights that suggested adopting the colonisers’ language(s) often meant adopting their worldview.

After delving into chapters of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks from the social psychology course reader, I began exploring his other works at the UWC Main Library. It was there that I discovered The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, initially published in French in 1961 and later translated into English in 1963. What struck me the most was Fanon’s argument that true liberation for the colonised requires a complete rejection of the colonisers’ values, and if necessary, violent struggle.

Since my first encounter with The Wretched of the Earth, I have periodically revisited its chapter titled ‘Pitfalls of National Consciousness.’ In this chapter, Fanon critiques the national bourgeoisie for their failure to achieve genuine independence and development. Instead, they often emulate the colonial bourgeoisie, perpetuating exploitation and inequality. Fanon warns that without authentic social and economic reforms, newly independent nations risk falling prey to corruption, neocolonialism, and stagnation. Another chapter that particularly resonates with my professional interests in Libraries, Archives, Museums, History, and Heritage is ‘On National Culture.’ Here, Fanon argues passionately that the colonised must reclaim their cultural heritage as a means of asserting their identity and dignity.

From the year 2000, I returned home to Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, where I worked at the University of Durban Westville (UDW) (renamed the University of KwaZulu-Natal after the merger with the University of Natal in 2004). I was based at the UDW Documentation Centre below the Main Library, working as the South Africa Coordinator for the South African National Cultural Heritage Project. During my time at Westville, a friend from my days at UWC, Bruce Buthelezi, who was pursuing postgraduate studies at UDW, visited me at the UDW Documentation Centre. He was excited about a brilliant lecturer teaching one of his courses and described this lecturer as an encyclopedia of books. Bruce and I shared a passion for books, journals, and newspapers, particularly the works of Fanon. He invited me to join him in meeting this impressive lecturer, Richard Pithouse.

Intrigued, I agreed, and we walked across campus to J Block, home to the Politics and Philosophy Departments. That day, I met Richard for the first time, witnessing him effortlessly typing out a list of book titles and their publication years from memory, totaling close to fifteen titles by the time he printed the page, including works by Fanon. A few days later, I approached Richard with the idea of starting a book club on campus. In an office adjacent to his, he introduced me to Pravasan Pillay, a gifted honours student, and together we quickly established the book club, which met weekly on Thursdays in the seminar room shared by the Politics and Philosophy Departments. In 2001, the Philosophy Department organised the Annual Frantz Fanon Memorial Lecture, featuring the renowned Professor Mahmood Mamdani, author of the famous Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (1996).

In 2002, Dr. Narissa Ramdhani, my boss at the UDW Documentation Centre and Co-Chair of the South Africa National Heritage Project Committee, created the Voices of Resistance Oral History Project. This project conducted interviews with South Africans of Indian origin who were involved in the political struggle against apartheid, and these interviews were digitized. Ms. Vino Reddy, a stalwart of the Black Consciousness Movement, became the Coordinator of the Voices of Resistance Oral History Project. I was one of the Oral History interviewers.

From Vino, I learned a great deal about Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, the South African Students Organisation (SASO) and the Black Consciousness Movement. She taught me how Frantz Fanon influenced the Black Consciousness Movement. Steve Biko and other founders of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa were inspired by a global moment of Black self-assertion and the works of various radical writers of the time. Among these were Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, John Mbiti’s Introduction to African Religions, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins, Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton’s Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Key concepts and ideas were influenced by thinkers such as Charles Hamilton, James Cone, Cheikh Anta Diop, David Diop, Léopold Senghor, Kenneth Kaunda and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, as well as frameworks like négritude and African humanism. Additional stimulus came from the US civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s, including the Black Panther Party. Vino introduced me to Black Consciousness stalwarts such as Professor Harry Ranwedzi Nengwekhulu, Mr. Strini and Ms Asha Moodley.

I remember one day at a poetry event at the Bat Centre on the Durban harbourside, I was carrying a copy of Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God (1964). When Strini saw it, he told me that he had read it in 1965 or 1966, highlighting the brilliant literature they were engaging with at the time. I recall Vino telling me about an incident when, from a flat upstairs, they saw police approaching and decided to throw their books, including Fanon’s work, out of the window to avoid arrest for reading banned books or political books. The influence of Frantz Fanon is evident in the SASO Newsletter and Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like.

When I worked at the UDW Documentation Centre from 2000 to early 2004, I couldn’t have guessed that a few years later, from January 2013 to August 2018, I would be working for the Steve Biko Foundation and the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg, King William’s Town (eQonce), Eastern Cape. I had the opportunity to contribute to the preservation and promotion of the legacy of Steve Biko and his colleagues in the Black Consciousness Movement. I served as the Chief Librarian of the Steve Biko Centre Library and Archive and assisted with museum work, primarily temporary exhibitions. Additionally, I organised education Programmes and essay competitions.

In my role at the Library and Archive, I was responsible for establishing the library and archive from scratch, which included purchasing books and materials, arranging the archive collection, and assembling a team of librarians and archivists. The library and archive are located at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg. I oversaw all library and archive operations and developed policies for the library and archive. When I joined in 2013, the Steve Biko Centre was brand new, having been officially opened in November 2012.

A major part of my contribution at the Steve Biko Centre were the Public Programmes, which became the public face of the Centre. From 2013 to late 2018, we organised over 45 book launches and more than 30 seminars/public dialogues. We also hosted various visiting exhibitions. My passion for the work of Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire, and their influence on the Black Consciousness Movement, guided my efforts. Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed were key references as we preserved and promoted the legacy of Steve Biko.

My years in the Eastern Cape coincided with the Fees Must Fall movement and the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South African universities. Both movements drew inspiration from Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko. While working at the Steve Biko Centre, I collaborated with Professor Richard Pithouse (my friend from the early 2000s during the UDW days), who was teaching Politics at Rhodes University. Our collaborations often focused on Frantz Fanon or Steve Biko, with renowned scholars such as Professors Nigel Gibson and Lewis Gordon visiting the Centre to present dialogues on these figures.

In 2019, while I was working as the Archivist and Public Programmes Director for New Frame, I was recruited by my boss Professor Richard Pithouse, to be a researcher for the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. At that time, Richard was the Editor-in-Chief at New Frame and the Coordinator for the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. Nontobeko Hlela was also a researcher for Tricontinental, but unlike Richard and me, she was employed full-time by Tricontinental and chaired all our meetings. During our meetings, one of the many standing items on the agenda was the translation of Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth into isiZulu. It was agreed in one of the meetings in 2019 that we should find someone to translate the book into isiZulu soon. Around this time, we were also setting up The Forge, a cultural space and The Commune bookshop.

Shortly thereafter, Nala Xaba joined us as the Arts and Production Coordinator for The Forge and The Commune. All of us at New Frame and The Forge worked in the New Frame newsroom, with the Tricontinental office in the same space. My desk at New Frame was next to the New Frame library collection, and shortly after Nala joined, we began sharing a desk. Tebogo, who was cataloguing books and working on the From the Archive section and New Books section of New Frame, also shared the desk with us.

While we were sitting together, I mentioned that Tricontinental was looking for someone to translate The Wretched of the Earth into isiZulu. Nala suggested her mother, Makhosazana Xaba, a renowned poet and essayist. Nala’s suggestion seemed perfect, as Makhosazana, also fondly known as Sisi Khosi, had the ideal background. At that week’s Tricontinental meeting, I presented Makhosazana Xaba’s name. Richard was enthusiastic about her suitability, noting that Fanon’s writing is poetic. I also mentioned that she was a trained soldier of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), had spent many years in exile, and was a trained nurse. The team agreed she was the perfect candidate.

During the meeting, I also mentioned that Professor Peter Mtuze, a great isiXhosa novelist, had translated Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like but felt it needed editing by someone political. We wouldn’t have that problem with Sisi Khosi, as she was a political struggle activist and a trained soldier, as well as a respected feminist and health worker, capable of connecting with Fanon, a psychiatrist. I recently learned that Sisi Khosi is actually a trained psychiatric nurse.

Parallel to identifying Sisi Khosi as the potential translator, we discussed the project with various people, including colleagues from the Paulo Freire Project – Centre for Adult Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in Pietermaritzburg. Managing Director Anne Harley emphasized the importance of accessible language, agreeing with Richard that the translated version should be as clear and accessible as Isolezwe newspaper. We also consulted with the Church Land Programme (CLP) Director David Ntseng, who stressed accessible language’s importance.

Richard also highlighted the importance of the then potential translator, Sisi Khosi, meeting with Professors Lewis Gordon, Nigel Gibson, and Michael Neocosmos – all distinguished Fanon academics. We decided to appoint Sisi Khosi based on her qualifications: she is a poet, a political activist who trained in exile to liberate South Africa, and a health worker, qualities Frantz Fanon himself would appreciate. Our consultations highlighted the necessity of accessible language, and we were fortunate to find someone who embodied all these attributes. Additionally, her prolific writing confirmed that this translation would be well-received and published.

In summary, throughout my academic and professional life—from my university days at UWC to my work at the UDW Documentation Centre and the Steve Biko Centre—Frantz Fanon’s work has been a guiding influence. This culminated in my role as the Archivist and Director of Public Programmes at New Frame and later as the Co-Director of Public Programmes at The Forge and The Commune Bookshop. Alongside Professor Richard Pithouse (Editor-in-Chief at New Frame and Coordinator at Tricontinental) and Nontobeko Hlela (Researcher), we organised The Frantz Fanon Colloquium in March 2020, just before the COVID-19 lockdown. This event was a significant success, attended by the leading grassroots social movement in South Africa, Abahlali baseMjondolo, as well as progressive NGOs, students, academics, and activists.

In my current work at the KwaZulu-Natal Amafa and Research Institute, we are collaborating with Inkani Books to launch the isiZulu translation of The Wretched of the Earth, translated by the renowned poet and short story writer Makhosazana Xaba. The translated title is Izimpabanga Zomhlaba, and the launch will take place in September in Pietermaritzburg and Durban KwaZulu-Natal.