TY - JOUR
AU1 - McClune,, Caitlin
AB - After over 30 years of Zimbabwean presidential rule, Robert Mugabe was forced to resign in November of 2017. The country continues to struggle with providing basic necessities to its population under the new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, while contending with the socio-economic legacies left by the now-deposed Mugabe. Regardless of these economic struggles, and along with many other developing countries, Zimbabwe has been experiencing a rapid rise in digital connectivity (Mabweazara, 2014; Mano and Willems, 2008; Wasserman, 2011), requiring that we examine digital technologies in the global South beyond the framework of the digital divide (Donner, 2015). Within the constraints of Robert Mugabe’s rule and ongoing political crises, artist communities have continued to thrive, particularly through the use of strategic narratives and the integration of digital technologies. This article highlights the work of the Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa (ICAPA), an organization that sustained itself through external funding and through the aid of new technologies during the economically precarious era of Robert Mugabe. Specifically, this article analyzes the organization’s strategies through the framing device of “digital unhu”(McClune, 2018), a concept that merges the influx of new technologies with the Southern African philosophy known as unhu.1 The ICAPA is a central hub of creative production in Harare, Zimbabwe, and mobilizes a variety of projects, including the Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe and the yearly International Film Festival in Harare. At the top of the organization's web page is an image of a woman holding a film reel on top of her head, with these words written underneath: “when we change Africa, we change the world.” Embracing global interdependence, this phrase is reflective of the African philosophy of unhu, translated as "I am because we are." Across history, the concept has adjusted to fit the parameters of various political movements in the African region, including colonialism, liberation, and nation-building. Importantly for this study, unhu was overtly embraced by the ICAPA’s founding member, Tsitsi Dangarembga, throughout her career while using multiple modes of creative expression. In more recent years, the organization has adapted digital technologies to the production and distribution of their work in a way that digitizes the use of unhu in the organization’s cultural production. Specifically, the organization’s structure and cultural products evidence digital unhu, a concept that combines the philosophy of unhu, and its historical specificity, with the integration of digital technologies in Zimbabwe. Digital unhu contains three main components: the fusion of older traditions with newer technologies, an emphasis on community and collaboration, and strategies of mobility. Through participant observation, I gathered interviews during an internship at the ICAPA in 2013. To add to this research, I did textual and discursive analyses of digital and film narratives accessed through the organization’s website (icapatrust.org). In order to provide historical context, I examined the construction of digital unhu over the decades of Robert Mugabe’s presidency, in order to highlight its existence at the level of the ICAPA as an organization, including through the previous work of the ICAPA’s director, Tsitsi Dangarembga; the film Kare Kare Zvako (Dangarembga, 2005); and the ICAPA website. In the following section, I give context to unhu as it was constructed in Zimbabwean national history, originating in the liberation war and solidified through the rhetoric of Robert Mugabe. I address how this history converges with digital technologies in Zimbabwe through aid of the concept of “immaterial labor.” Next, I introduce the ICAPA in Zimbabwe, and discuss elements and narratives available on their website (icapatrust.org). I pay particular attention to the film Kare Kare Zvako (Dangarembga, 2005), showing how unhu is central to the film, while highlighting narrative characteristics that exhibit allegorical significance. I then explore two videos posted on the site: March to Bring Back Our Girls (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa Trust, 2014a) and “Just See” March for Isabelle Masuku (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa Trust, 2014b). I point to narrative similarities between these three videos, highlighting the ways that digital unhu emerges across all three. In the conclusion, I explore the significance of digital unhu in the context of the changing conditions of labor across the globe, while making suggestions for future research. Zimbabwean history, immaterial labor, and digital unhu Zimbabwe has been labeled a parliamentary democracy since gaining independence in 1980. However, many consider Mugabe to have been a dictator. Zimbabwe’s ruling political party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), staged elections on a regular basis, yet human rights-based organizations documented intimidation and torture as means of winning these elections. In addition to political corruption, Zimbabwe’s economy suffered during its decades of independence. Although during its early independence Zimbabwe was one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, since the late 90s, it has had one of the fastest shrinking economies in the world. In addition, Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF put harsh restrictions on freedom of expression and actively produced government propaganda that was broadcast on two state-run television stations. However, the influx of digital technologies regularly thwarted the ruling party's censorship goals. Many scholars have examined how digital technologies have provided platforms for various types of political engagement in Southern Africa. This research includes work that explored the development of national narratives in Zimbabwean popular culture on the Internet (Mano and Willems, 2008) and the increasing use of social media platforms to express dissent (Chibuwe & Ureke, 2016; Leijendekker & Mutsvairo, 2014). In particular, Last Moyo (2011) has shown how bloggers creating alternative media on the Zimbabwean website Kubatana.org were empowered to produce counter-hegemonic narratives with radical content that criticized the Mugabe regime. Similar to the content of the ICAPA online, Moyo (2011) illuminated how the narratives on this site continued to work in neoliberal frameworks by adhering to particular liberal, democratic precepts that were heavily influenced by the organization’s funding sources. Examining the use of digital technologies in the context of the Zimbabwean organization ICAPA Trust provides a case-specific exploration of the role digital media plays in sustaining cultural figures while providing avenues for political and artistic expression. Ubuntu/unhu The term ubuntu was popularized by Desmond Tutu in the 90s during South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. However, throughout this research, I use the term unhu, a Zimbabwean-specific iteration of the term. Several Zimbabwean scholars have described unhu as a Southern African philosophy and a system of ethics with roots in indigenous practices (Eze, 2010; Ramose, 1999). According to Mogobe B. Ramose (1999), unhu is the foundational epistemological category in populations of the Southern African region. Additionally, Kamwangamalu (1999) suggested that unhu is a pan-African philosophy, as scholars have located phonological variations in the concept, such as umundu in Kenya, bumuntu in Tanzania, vumuntu in Mozambique, and gimuntu in the Congo. Scholars have likewise identified unhu as a form of proto-socialism that was built on during anti-colonial struggles. The concept gained traction during the Africanization movements of the 1960s that sought to unearth a form of socialism unique to the region. Anti-colonial organizing, often aided by communist countries such as China and Russia, drew from the concept unhu and its variations, particularly those used by political figures such as Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold Senghor, Julius Nyerere, Obafemi Awolowo, Kenneth Kaunda, and Ahmed Sékou Touré. Unhu in Zimbabwe Communities of Zimbabweans also used unhu in post-colonial nation-building projects. In 1980, the year Zimbabwe transitioned to majority Black rule, Stanlake John Thompson Samkange wrote the book Hunhuism or Ubuntuism: A Zimbabwe indigenous political philosophy, a book that emphasizes the use of unhu for national consolidation. He wrote, “Hunhuism or Ubuntuism dictates that there should be a Government of National Unity in the new Zimbabwe” (Samkange, 1980, p. 45). Similarly, over decades of governance, Mugabe drew from unhu as a way to establish a unified national culture. Most notably, he used this historical term as a way to justify the controversial ZANU PF policy of fast-track land reform in 2000.2 Mugabe used unhu to critique the way that a small group of White farmers continued to own the vast majority of arable land several decades after Zimbabwean independence. This discrepancy, with its long and violent historical antecedents, is what Robert Mugabe animated as a vocal proponent of economic redistribution. The government's call for reparations was intensified by the promise of land: restitution Black Zimbabweans long felt owed, dating back to the late 19th century. The affective drive towards the return to dispossessed land connects to the spiritual practices of Shona ancestor worship, whose sustenance relies deeply on specific tracts of land. In the late 60s and 70s, when anti-colonial leaders made alliances with Chinese and Russian communists, Marxist-trained guerrilla fighters partnered with Shona spiritual leaders during the liberation war (Lan, 1985). The history of Shona religious practices, infused with Marxist doctrine, animated the figure of Robert Mugabe, who fought in the revolutionary war. Post-liberation, he embodied the role of anti-colonial hero, eventually devolving into an autocratic ruler of an ill-run kleptocracy. Regardless, he continued to invoke anti-Western sentiments that resonated in essential ways. Unhu and human rights Because of the flexibility of unhu, the concept was used to bolster political precepts that differed significantly. For example, unhu was used to embrace the growing hegemony of human rights doctrines in the 1990s and 2000s, as well as more Marxist-inspired precepts of redistribution. Illustrating this flexibility, cultural figures, such as Desmond Tutu, utilized ubuntu/unhu as a way to bolster human rights and to facilitate large-scale political projects, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings in South Africa (Battle, 1997). Others, such as Appiah (1993), suggested that ubuntu/unhu’s relationship to an Africanized form of Marxism, or, African Communitarianism, has a striking “family resemblance” to the defense of socioeconomic rights (Fourie, 2008; Gade, 2011; Ngcoya, 2009). In many of Mugabe’s speeches, he distinctly interpreted unhu as a mandate for economic redistribution while highlighting the continuities between human rights doctrines and the ambitions of Western global powers. Mugabe was not alone in criticizing the sanctity of human rights. Postcolonial countries strapped with histories of forced human and resource extraction have always been wary of the liberal, democratic sanctity of human rights. African intellectual figures, such as Kwame Anthony Appiah (1993), decried human rights campaigns as ideological justification for the expansion of capitalism, impoverishment of the majority, and enrichment of the few. Where human rights doctrines prioritized protecting individuals from state encroachment, suspicion of these tenets increased, especially as these doctrines became hegemonic in the 1990s. These doctrines were particularly useful during implementation of Economic Structural Adjustment Programs, which exacerbated unstable economies through de-industrialization and the de-funding of education in the 1990s and early 2000s (Federici, Caffenzis, & Ousseina, 2000). Likewise, the lending requirements of global agencies, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Bank, required an assurance that human rights precepts were being followed, resurrecting painful histories of resource extraction, justified by the ideologies of civilizing missions. The parallel between colonial expansion and human rights requirements resonated particularly after the fall of socialism, strengthening the assumption that these policies inevitably carved linear paths towards development for non-Western nations (Chatterjee, 2010). During the 2000s, and in the following decades of Mugabe's reign, he continued to openly critique the doctrines of human rights, as well as the policies, requirements, and strings attached to funding that went into fostering these rights. However, despite Mugabe’s rhetoric, the corruption of ZANU PF had become internationally well known. Similarly, Mugabe enacted policies typical of dictatorships by severely restricting speech. An era of censorship required that cultural producers skillfully dodge government provocation, “disappearance,” or jail. Several cultural figures took significant risks in producing art that was critical of the government, and they often suffered the consequences: many went into exile (Eyre, 2004). However, members of the ICAPA Trust sought to do their work while remaining in the country. Their work, while not overtly critical of the regime, showed allegorical critiques that are legible across several of the organization’s narratives. Because the state provided little to no funding for the arts, Anglo-European non-governmental organizations, often interested in paving the way for democratic reform, provided the necessary financing. Within these two significant and historically fraught constraints, the ICAPA relied heavily on the capacities of digital technologies. For this reason, digital unhu is a useful framework for understanding the ICAPA and the narratives they produced. Immaterial labor outside of the West In a country with a collapsing economy and an ill-functioning government, the members of the ICAPA Trust continued to create cultural products by sustaining remuneration for their labor. Although many commentators called Zimbabwe under Mugabe a “failed state,” it is useful to look at the ICAPA’s work from the perspective of changing labor characteristics observed in the West and across the globe. Since the ICAPA is an organization that produces narratives heavily supplemented by digital capacities, the analytical category of immaterial labor is useful in understanding the ICAPA’s cultural products within the context of these larger shifts in cultural production (Hardt and Negri, 2001, 2005; Lazzarato, 1996; Terranova, 2004). Scholars broadly define immaterial labor as the informational content of commodity production "directly related to the changes taking place in workers' labor processes, where the skills involved in direct labor are increasingly skills involving cybernetics and computer control" (Lazzarato 1996, p. 136). Immaterial labor expands the definition even further to encompass the practices that create the “cultural content” of a commodity, which includes activities that aren't typically thought of as work and instead integrate into the communication practices of everyday life. This wide-reaching definition includes everything from the emotional labor of the service industry and caregiving; to participation in social media networks through posting, commenting, and forwarding; to highly skilled software programing. Whether producing software in high-tech industries, or “liking” a friend's post on Facebook, both are part of capital extraction as the hegemony of mass-produced material commodities has given way to the production of ideas, performance, and affect. Specifically, scholars understand these activities as productive in the ways that they solidify cultural and artistic norms, tastes, and public opinion, all of which are monetized (Lazzarato, 1996). While immaterial labor has been a useful concept for pointing to the rapidly shifting cultural and economic terrain of digital society, some scholars have accused it of being too embracing and, for this reason, ineffective (Gill and Pratt, 2008). Another criticism is that the term has been exclusively used to understand the digital culture and its socioeconomic effects within in the West (Harney, 2010; Sanyal, 2014; Venn, 2006). Digital unhu seeks to modify immaterial labor’s expansive embrace of activities and its myopic focus on Anglo-Western nations. As such, it takes into consideration the digital, hardware, and software that has developed in the West and is now inseparable from the centers of economic development. However, it connects these technologies to the concept of unhu, an evolving South African–based philosophy, which, to varying degrees, has been appropriated into anti-colonial liberation movements, nationalist projects, autocratic rule, and the discourses of human rights. Because of these distinct characteristics, research on digital connectivity in Zimbabwe requires a more historically and regionally specific analysis. The bulk of immaterial labor, as it was defined by Lazzarato (1996) and Hardt and Negri (2001), is rarely remunerated. The explosion of digital accessibility in Zimbabwe, through cell phones, has allowed owners of these devices to scroll, comment, and circulate online material, making up the vast majority of the labor done online. In addition, those who produce digital content, such as videos, memes, jokes, and so forth, are rarely paid. In contrast, the ICAPA's digital and cultural labor is financially compensated, mostly through access to development grants from European countries. However, the artifacts that this organization promotes online do not respond directly to the desires of paying consumers or cultural trends of the moment. As funding for the organization is acquired through donor institutions seeking to promote democratic values and behavioral change, the work of the ICAPA does not respond to the vacillating cultural trends of the moment. Instead, the ICAPA's work is compensated when it, at least on the surface, adheres to certain development-based principles, underlying the interests in ensuring the rights of individuals. Regardless of these restrictions, digital unhu is evident in the organization’s resurrection of horizontal forms of organizing, and cultural practices associated with unhu. This includes the collaborative work of multiple individuals in the organization without the standard of attributing these products to a single individual. In addition, the products that appear online are a combination of cultural expression and digital integration: labor that is performed by multiple members of the organization. Both are seen as a form of immaterial labor, though in this case, all combine online in ways that are specific to the history and politics of Zimbabwe. As such, digital unhu encompasses the type of labor that occurs in the digital and cultural spheres, though is accountable to the socio-political and economic conditions of cultural producers. The Institute for Creative Arts and Progress in Africa The ICAPA has been a center for creative production since it was founded in 1996 by Tsitsi Dangarembga, a well-known feminist author and filmmaker. Significantly, the organization made use of digital technologies early on in its development, including digital filmmaking and web-based promotion and circulation of cultural products. For these reasons, the ICAPA Trust and its website are useful for understanding the growth and integration of digital unhu in the Zimbabwean cultural sphere. Although she has not been highlighted on icapatrust.org, Tsitsi Dangarembga is well known in feminist, post-colonial scholarship for her book Nervous Conditions (1988), which won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize in 1989, and its sequel, The Book of Not (2006b). Tsitsi Dangarembga openly ascribes to the practice of unhu and has incorporated the philosophy as a primary tenet in her books, where unhu plays a prominent role in the moral lives of the characters who struggle under the conditions of colonialism. In interviews, Dangarembga has described her adherence to the philosophy as part of her Shona and African heritage, and in an interview said, “what we have are certain sets of conditions, in which people have to act to do the best for themselves and the group. For me, this is very important. And it's an aspect of my Shona and African heritage that I will not discard no matter what. You do the best for yourself and the group” (Makoni-Muchemwa, 2009, para. 10). Before her book received recognition, Dangarembga became involved in filmmaking, earning a degree in film direction in Berlin, where she met her husband, Olaf Koschke. The two returned to Zimbabwe in the early 2000s to begin their film production company, Nyerai Films, which later came under the umbrella organization of the ICAPA Trust. One of the essential tools the organization uses to organize and promote projects is the Trust’s website, icapatrust.org. Icapatrust.org On icapa.org, the statement of purpose reads “[the ICAPA] is an organization which is engaged in all aspects of creative art, including research, training, publication of papers, and production of creative art products” (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa, 2017). The site prominently displays a collection of films produced and directed primarily by Tsitsi Dangarembga. The production of films through this organization has stalled due to lack of funds and, as a result, the members have focused on the ICAPA's affiliated organization, Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe. This organization is an association of women who focus on producing narratives centered on the rights of women in Zimbabwe. Further, its most important ongoing project is the International Images Film Festival, which is held every year in Harare. Since the organization has shifted from the production of film narratives, the ICAPA has concentrated on the promotion of a variety of projects. Some of these projects include documenting demonstrations that demand women's rights and raising awareness around domestic violence. Over the course of its existence, the ICAPA has expressed narratives that directly reference the Southern African philosophy of unhu. The organization’s emphasis on community was evident while I was interning for ICAPA during fieldwork in Harare in 2013. Collaborative work was encouraged, and members from several different organizations regularly visited with ICAPA members to propose and work on a variety of projects. Similar to the structure of the organization on a day-to-day basis at the office, dispersed hierarchy was likewise apparent when clicking through various links on the ICAPA website. The projects clustered on the site did not highlight Dangarembga on any of the pages, despite her role as the founding member and her significant authority in the functioning of the organization. Clicking a link on the websites’ homepage directs you to the names of International Images Film Festival staff, one of the few places where Dangarembga, the ICAPA founder and creative director, is mentioned. No one, including the founding member, has been highlighted in the framing of any of the affiliated projects, portraying a distinctly dispersed sense of organization. In addition to this lack of hierarchy, the doctrines of human rights suffuse the language found on the site, from its statement of purpose to the highlighted organized demonstrations. This framing device attributes to the organization’s source of funding: what keeps ICAPA and its members financially solvent. Finding the funds Since Zimbabwe's dramatic economic downturn, the ZANU PF government has not meaningfully supported artistic communities. Because of this, the ICAPA Trust and most other artistic organizations in Zimbabwe have been dependent on donor funding. As explained in interviews by Olaf Koschke, securing funds for making films and running the organization has always been a significant struggle. At the base of every page of the site is the insignia for the two primary donors that financially support the organization. These donors include the European Commission for International Cooperation and Development and The European Union's ACP (Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific) cultures program, funded under the 10th European Development Fund by the European Union. The language of human rights—like democracy and behavioral change—have shaped the organization's statement of purpose, cultural products, and program initiatives. The ICAPA's stated vision is for "a Zimbabwe that serves as a model of democratic tolerance, integrity, and sustainability for its people, the region, and the continent through the provision of uplifting and motivating film narrative" (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa, n.d.). As such, the ICAPA hopes “to strengthen gender and related tolerances in Zimbabwean society by narrating women's stories and experiences, whether told by women or men, or any other gender, powerfully through the medium of film” (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa, 2017). In other words, the influence of donor agencies on the framing of the content is evident in the language on the site. However, foreign investment in the arts community has a long history in Zimbabwe. During the early decades of Zimbabwean independence, Robert Mugabe sought to attract foreign filmmakers to Zimbabwe because of the mild climate, safety, and cheap labor. As a result, producers flocked to Zimbabwe to make films such as King Solomon’s Mines (Thompson Lee, 1985), Cry Freedom (Attenborough, 1987), Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold (Nelson, 1987), and A World Apart (Menges, 1988). Similarly, for 10 years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) funded a pilot project for a film school financed by Danish aid agencies in cooperation with the government. Koschke and Dangarembga joined the team of instructors in 2000; Koschke worked as an editing instructor and Dangarembga taught script writing. However, in the wake of the controversial fast-track land reform in 2000, conditions dramatically changed. For example, the Danish aid agencies that had funded the film school project pulled their financial support. As Koschke described it, “big crisis. The Danes pulled the plug. They said, ‘no more money.’ But the government took over. UNESCO was reluctant to turn everything over to them, including the film equipment. There was no more money” (Olaf Koschke, July, 5th 2013, personal communication). With the equipment and facilities, the government opened a new film school, which has been underfunded and unsuccessful. Under these conditions, Anglo European–based donor institutions have continued to be the primary financial supporters of the arts. The thrust of European-funded filmmaking initiatives since the economic downturn of the country has been about message rather than profit. Funding from donors has promoted films that seek to change behaviors through democratic principles, as opposed to reflecting contemporary trends that appeal to consumer populations. This was the case in the UNESCO initiative, as well as the sources of funding available to the ICAPA in the aftermath of the school’s transition. Specifically, these donors promoted “rights-based” approaches to development. These parameters often emphasized the rights of vulnerable groups, such as women and children, and behavioral changes in response to the spread of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In other words, a priority placed on these rights are "reflected in the themes of film narratives sponsored by Western donors in Zimbabwe through non-governmental organizations” (Hungwe, 2005, p. 89). Emerging from development-based initiatives, the ICAPA’s collection of narratives, organized events, and manifestoes have contained the mandate to address gender-based violence, shaped by the vocabulary of human rights. Dangarembga’s films Everyone’s Child (1996) and I Want a Wedding Dress (2008), thematically focused on the gendered characteristics of HIV transmission, while Peretera Maneta (2006) and Neria (1993) focused on sexual and domestic abuse, respectively. In interviews, Tsitsi Dangarembga has described the constraints of donor organizations whose funding has come with strings attached. Dangarembga’s debut film was the HIV/AIDS educational narrative, Everyone’s Child (1996). The film's financial backers required that she tell a story that destigmatized people with HIV/AIDS and affected behavioral change, preventing further spread of the disease. As Kedmon Nyasha Hungwe (2005, p. 91) outlined in his research, Dangarembga insisted that without cooperation, "those who do not have the money are debarred from making a film … Everyone’s Child (1996) is not the film I wanted to make. I didn't want to make another AIDS film in Africa. I was not empowered to make the narrative that I wanted to make.” In contrast, the film Kare Kare Zvako (Dangerembga, 2005), which translates to “Mother's Day,” though partially funded by Dangarembga, was supplemented by ACP—European Union Cultures Plus—a program located within the European Development Fund. Based in France, the organization specifically caters to the production of culture without an insistence on pedagogical or development-centered narratives. In this way, when looking at the films made by Dangarembga, one can see a divergence between the collection of films heavily influenced by non-governmental organizations and donor-funded behavioral-change agendas, and those within which she had more freedom, specifically in the case of Kare Kare Zvako. As Olaf Koschke explained it: Films like Kare Kare Zvako and Nyami Nyami and the Evil Eggs wouldn’t have happened with development aid. The lack of development aid money was a slit in the throat of the film industry, but it was good because the value of the narrative played a bigger role. Kare Kare Zvako was the first Zimbabwean film funded with cultural money: not money that was dedicated for a development aid message or a political message, but actually a cultural message. (Olaf Koschke, July, 5th 2013, personal communication) In this way, the film Kare Kare Zvako (Dangarembga, 2005), though funded by foreign backers, enabled a form of expression that differed significantly from the narratives that were required to adhere to development initiatives. Kare Kare Zvako (2005): A digitized folktale A list of films made by Dangarembga is on the ICAPA website under the tab Nyerai Films. Many of these films adhered to development agendas, though several moved away from the goals of behavioral change and were based on traditional Shona narratives. Kare Kare Zvako (Dangarembga, 2005), is highlighted on the website. To the right of a screenshot of the film is a list of awards the film won, including the Golden Dhow award in Zanzibar, the Short Film Award “Cinema Africano” in Milano, and special jury mentions at the Amakula International Film Festival in Kampala. In addition to international accolades, Kare Kare Zvako is known in creative circles in Zimbabwe and gained Dangarembga recognition in small film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival. Her follow-up film, Nyami Nyami and the Evil Eggs (Dangarembga, 2011), continued in its footsteps by depicting surreal, magical, realist interactions between living and dead characters, as well as members of the spirit world. While its entirety is not available on the website, the ICAPA’s web page foregrounds the movie and provides access to a short clip. In Dangarembga’s version of the story, a family of five struggle for survival, while sustaining themselves through eating termites. The father figure refuses to work, is abusive, and takes what little sustenance there is for himself. The mother distracts her children from their hunger and fear of death by telling a story of a time of famine and how the people survived. The storytelling is interrupted by the father figure, who convinces his wife to leave their hut, after which he tricks her into falling into a hole with spikes at the bottom that kill her. He then cuts her up, cooks her, and eats her with the forced cooperation and witness of his four children. Throughout every stage of this gruesome process, the mother’s spirit interacts with the father and her children. These interactions are couched in the narrative devices of repetition and call and response motifs typical of oral folk tales. For example, each time the spirit of the mother resists her husband, he forces his children to sing a variation of a refrain repeated throughout the folktale: "Mother, please be killed. Mother, please be cut. Mother, please be cooked. Mother, please be eaten" (Dangarembga, 2005). After each variated refrain, the mother’s spirit responds in song. After eating her, his stomach grows large, the mother explodes out of him, killing him, and allowing her to return to her children. The mother then leads her children back into their hut to finish the story of the people who survived starvation, their lives intact within a cyclical tale of endurance. The film Kare Kare Zvako (Dangarembga, 2005) resonates with older cultural characteristics in several ways. According to Dangarembga, the structure of the film closely echoes a traditional folktale her mother told her as a child. Additionally, the film reflects Shona religious practices, which ascribe significant powers to ancestors and the spirits of nature (Lan, 1985). For example, in the film, much of the interaction of characters is between the dead and the living. Similarly, termite spirits play an influential role in the film, as they sustain the family with the only form of nourishment, highlighting the influence of the dead and regular contact with spirits. Additionally, Kare Kare Zvako’s (Dangarembga, 2005) edifying message of community first strongly correlates to the philosophy of unhu, with its premise of identity production through a community and its fundamental insistence on the benefits of inter-subjectivity. In other words, unhu’s influence acts on several levels, including the fact that human beings are not dominant in the narrative: land, spirits, and the dead play an integral role in distributing justice at the story's conclusion. Similarly, the film’s depiction of greed can be read as a critique of the Zimbabwean political system under Mugabe, as it had functioned since independence. While the film tactfully hid the critique of greed run amok in a traditional folktale, the father figure’s self-aggrandizing and destructive kleptocracy resonated with the figure of Robert Mugabe, an individual who gained extreme wealth at the expense of vulnerable populations. While accessing the film in its entirety is difficult, the film is available to the site’s visitors through a description and brief clip on the website. In this way, the film’s central oral folk tales, using the characteristics of repetition and call and response, converge the traditions of Zimbabwean folktales with the technology of digital film, which are then linked on the organization’s website: a space within which similar critiques of power are legible across the projects listed. Orality and hashtags: Links between narratives Short documentaries were found on the page devoted to activities organized by Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe. March to Bring Back Our Girls (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa Trust, 2014a) and “Just See” March for Isabel Masuku (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa Trust, 2014) narrated stories of abuse of power that parallel that of Kare Kare Zvako (Dangarembga, 2005), told with similar strategies of call and response. In the video titled March to Bring Back Our Girls, participants held signs that read #BringBackOurGirls, in solidarity with the 276 schoolgirls abducted by members of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, in Nigeria. In this short video, women march in solidarity through Zimbabwe, holding signs with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls to raise awareness and create linkages between the conditions of Zimbabwean women and the mass kidnapping of young women in Nigeria. Throughout the video, call and response songs are utilized to unify the women, as speakers demand the return of abused victims and justice for women in the region. Notably, the hashtag plays a crucial role in the video's narrative, evidencing both the extensiveness of digital connectivity, as well as the organization’s embrace of the capacities of digital technologies for transnational social justice. A particularly strong parallel can be found between Kare Kare Zvako (Dangarembga, 2005) and the short video entitled “Just See” March for Isabel Masuku (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa Trust, 2014b). The video depicts a demonstration arranged for a young Zimbabwean woman who was murdered by her husband in April 2014. In the video, demonstrators arrive at the Woman’s University of Zimbabwe, where various cultural figures speak, including Hon Oppah Muchinguri, Minister of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development. In the video, Muchinguri says, “it’s in our homes … these husbands are our problem. The aunties will try to help, and then often blame themselves. Patriarchy. It’s the men who define culture. When it suits them, they bend culture” (Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa Trust, 2014b, 4:05). At the end of the video, Rebecca Chisamba, a Harare-based TV host says, “Let’s just sing.” Her hands outstretched, she begins to sing the words, “just see” in a chanting refrain. The song is picked up by the audience, who join in the slow lament through layers of harmony. These videos, particularly Just See, resonate with Kare Kare Zvako (Dangarembga, 2005) through the themes of matricide, call-and-response song, and collective mourning. These components of Shona modes of oral storytelling, communal expression, and group coordination have been necessary throughout Zimbabwean history, from the 1894-97 uprising to the 1966-79 liberation war, to forms of survival under the dramatic dissolution of Zimbabwe's economy. Finally, the call to end gender-based violence in the face of misuses of power takes on larger significance in the context of Zimbabwe, where the government's crumbling infrastructure pair with violent responses to any form of protest. In addition, the centrality of the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls evidences a form of mobility: a central characteristic of digital unhu. The hashtag accompanied a digital mobilization that likewise transgressed the boundaries of state and governance. Similar to Sara Florini’s (2014) and André Brock’s (2012) work on Blackness on Twitter in the United States, #BringBackOurGirls was circulated to raise transnational awareness around the abuse of Black women transnationally. Finally, although she is somewhat critical of hashtag activism, Kamari Maxine Clarke’s (2017) discussion of #BringBackOurGirls highlighted transnational social activism and the use of digital technologies to identify the girls and prevent violence in the future. In the context of the short videos, these political strategies of mobility and Black solidarity in Zimbabwe highlight digital unhu’s characteristics of mobility and interconnectivity through digital call and response. This is evident in the hashtag virality of #BringBackOurGirls, requiring the call of a tweet that catches hold, and the response of others through retweeting and further commentary. These elements evidence the mobility and collaborative quality of digital unhu on the ICAPA’s website and cultural products. Conclusion As digital connectivity becomes integrated into everyday life across the globe, the particular characteristics of Zimbabwean culture and history emerge on the website and in the cultural artifacts of the ICAPA Trust, evidencing the attributes of digital unhu. These attributes include the convergence of older cultural practices with newer technologies, an emphasis on collaboration, and the strategies of mobility. In the aftermath of rapid digital integration in the global South, the concept of immaterial labor is helpful for understanding how this convergence links with the larger systems of capital. While this is by no means the only form of labor in Zimbabwe, it is a growing category, particularly with the ubiquity of cell phones and subsequent access to online social networks. As Zimbabweans and populations across the region become more integrated into networks of digital connectivity, these participants become significant to markets as potential producers and consumers. However, the artifacts associated with the ICAPA occupy a more ambiguous role in the evolving processes of creating value from knowledge, culture, and affects. Specifically, as shown in this research, digital unhu, in the context of the ICAPA, show the characteristics of unhu in digital networks: a criticism of kleptocracy, the primacy of community over individuality, and the invocation of histories of anti-colonial resistance. The ICAPA’s founding member, Tsitsi Dangarembga, has foregrounded unhu in her work, particularly in her novels Nervous Conditions (1988) and The Book of Not (2006b), and continues to integrate the precepts of unhu into the artifacts available on the website of icapatrust.org. Parallels surface in the use of call and response songs, collective mourning in the face of matricide, and a call to mobilize against abusive power structures, which, I argue, are allegorically resonant in the context of Mugabe's hold on power for more than 30 years. Similarly, much of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s work has adhered to parameters imposed by funding donor agencies: a common constraint on artists located in the Southern African region. Creative productions funded by donor institutions often require message-based narratives aimed at behavioral change, as opposed to responding to cultural figures, audiences, and their evolving desires. The stated ambitions to “promote rights,” grow “democracy,” and “change behavior,” on the ICAPA’s website resurrect ongoing tensions that have roots in the colonial era. Specifically, these strains manifest in a country where colonialism and the liberation war are still fresh in the national imagination. The products of the ICAPA adjusted to, while pushing against, the doctrines of human rights through digital unhu: specifically, through indexes of intersubjectivity and the premise of collaborative agency. In addition to addressing gaps in the literature by looking at the effects of digital integration in the country of Zimbabwe, this project adds to research on the digital realm by challenging the dominance in the literature of homogenous and Eurocentric inquiries. As digital integration continues to evolve in countries across the globe, historically nuanced research into regions labeled as “developing” becomes necessary for understanding the ongoing effects of these new technologies. Further research into digital integration and uses in the South African region—a region with a growing tech-savvy youth population—is necessary. Such research will provide needed insight into the multiple uses of technologies influenced by history and culture, thereby contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of digital practices across the globe. Notes 1 The more commonly known word is ubuntu, popularized by Desmond Tutu in the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa. 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TI - Digital Unhu in Institute of Creative Arts and Progress in Africa Trust: Digital Integration in Zimbabwean Cultural Production
JF - Communication, Culture & Critique
DO - 10.1093/ccc/tcz034
DA - 2007-03-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/digital-unhu-in-institute-of-creative-arts-and-progress-in-africa-iBxRqP0dav
SP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -