Interviewed by Walter Wilson Nana (The Post Newspaper)
Civil Society Cultural Advocates and enthusiasts of African Culture have prescribed cultural unification as a pertinent instrument for African unity. This, was amongst a series of ideas churned out at the just ended Cultural international conference in Sun City, South Africa. According to George Ngwane, who was party to the conference, Africans frowned at the corrosive effects of globalisation on indigenous culture. He talked about more of his South African sojourn with The Post:
What was the Cultural Diversity for Social Cohesion and Sustainable Development Conference all about?
It was a one-week conference (September 11-15) on Cultural Diversity for Social Cohesion and Sustainable Development that brought together more than 70 cultural professionals from Africa and the Diaspora.
The theme of the conference reflects the on-going process by member states of UNESCO and civil society cultural agents to examine and ratify UNESCO's convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions, which was adopted at the 33rd session of UNESCO General Conference in October 2005.
Thanks to the Musa Heritage Gallery, I was invited to a similar function in Dakar, Senegal, November 2005, to join in the debate on how cultural diversity impacts on human development, poverty alleviation and local craft production.
You highlighted UNESCO's convention on the protection and promotion of cultural expression. What does it address?
The convention has great implications for the whole of the developing world in particular. It highlights the need for national governments to develop a coherent policy for cultural industries and to synergise its approaches within the appropriate ministries involved in creative entrepreneurship.
In this regard, a liaison between ministry of culture and ministry of trade, culture and education, culture and tourism, culture and external affairs need to be reinforced. The convention seeks to provide measures needed to balance the current imbalances in the trade of cultural products and also to enhance capacity building for areas of the cultural sector in the developing world.
Personally, I regard Article 4, 1-3 of the convention as being extremely significant to Africa because it recognises oral tradition, heritage and indigenous knowledge system as part of cultural capacity. This is very important to some of us who decry the corrosive effects of globalisation on our indigenous culture.
What did you come out with at the Sun City conference?
We were able as civil society actors, government departments and isolated cultural practitioners to lobby for the establishment of national cultural policies in our respective countries. What this implies is that countries would have to convene all partners in the cultural sector to a kind of forum.
In the case of Cameroon, such a forum was convened in August 1991. Paradoxically, culture was fused in the then Ministry of Information and Culture. The August 1991 forum produced a laudable and ambitious cultural roadmap with elements like a support scheme for artists, creation of associations for artists and the annual organisation of festival of arts and culture.
The Ministry of Culture needs to convene another national forum on culture, to assess the grounds covered since 1991 and more. Especially to address in a more holistic manner the issues of building sustainable local creative industries, training of socio-cultural actors, establishing a private-public contract to fund local cultural projects, revamping the role of cultural policy officers in our embassies and reviving the moribund national commission for UNESCO in Cameroon.
The South African Department of Arts and Culture, National Commission for UNESCO and University of South Africa have created a transcontinental platform of Africans and the Diaspora that will, hopefully, develop a common position on issues like bilateral partnerships on cultural diversity and regional strategies and the role of culture in effecting social cohesion, human rights, democracy and social justice.
How do you intend to inject the aforementioned ideas into the Cameroonian society?
I was invited in my capacity as civil society cultural advocate and it would only be appropriate for me to forge linkages with other culture-oriented organisations in Cameroon. The vogue, even before the UNESCO Convention in 2005, is to create coalitions or networks for cultural diversity in most countries.
Peter Musa of Musa Heritage heads the Cameroonian coalition. These coalitions then engage their governments into the different roles, partners, who ensure a harmonised and coordinated national policy on culture, sensitisation, ratification and implementation of the UNESCO Convention.
It will be ideal for the Cameroonian case for development partners to sponsor a forum on cultural diversity that will examine and disseminate the tenets of the convention.
What is the way forward?
Some one described culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development and this has been recognised by the UNESCO Convention, AU, NEPAD and Art Moves Africa. But the successes of these global or continental cultural charters depend on the integration of national and sub regional cultural policies.
Cultural unification is a vital instrument for African unity. Hence, the urgency for countries and more so African countries to follow the example of Togo, Madagascar, Mauritius and Djibouti in ratifying the UNESCO Convention and establishing the structures identified in it.
Recent Comments