The Sunday Mail
Sifelani Tsiko
The story of Philip Emeagwali, one of Africa’s greatest scientists who designed the programme and formula for the fastest computer on earth, the Connection Machine, stirs up diverse emotions in black people around the world.
Today the programme is used by search engines such as Yahoo! and Search.com.
In a lecture he delivered at Arizona State University in Phoenix in 2003, he recalled how when he was just 10-years-old, his father posed the following question:“The story or the warrior, which is ightier?”
“The warrior!” he replied.”
His father shook his head in disagreement. “The story is mightier than the warrior,” he said to Phillip.
“How can that be?” he asked him.
“The story lives on long after the warrior has died,” his father explained.
This story, though simple, raises important questions on the tragedy of the erosion of the ancient African scientific heritage which has been exploited and used by the Europeans for their own ends.
Most books in African schools and universities credit Europeans with the origin of mathematics, geometry and other scientific achievements, omitting the contributions of Africans and other non-Europeans.
The resulting bias has created a distorted version of history that favors the storyteller rather than the story itself.Little or nothing has been done to reclaim the ancient African scientific achievements and highlight contributions made by Africans to the development of mathematics, architecture, geometry and other scientific fields.
Pan- African scholars have told us that there were complementary or even parallel developments by other people when it came to the development of science and technology.Historians tell us that Africa is home to the world’s earliest known use of measuring and calculation, confirming the continent as the birthplace of both basic and advanced mathematics. They argue strongly that thousands of years ago, Africans were using numerals, algebra and geometry in daily life.
This knowledge, they say, spread throughout the entire world after a series of migrations out of Africa, beginning around 30 000 BC, and later following a series of invasions of Africa by Europeans and Asians (1700BC-present).
Africa is rich on stories about civilization with original advancements in such fields as astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, medicine and climatology.
According to African historians, Timbuktu was one of the major cities of West Africa which was very successful and had many learning centres, with people collecting and writing books on law, poetry, astronomy, optics, mathematics.
They say this history of scholarship in Africa extended over large parts of the continent. There is a whole body of untapped ancient African scientific knowledge from mathematics, astronomy, pharmacy, agriculture, forestry, architecture, design and to a whole range of crafts that still survive on the continent.
The Great Zimbabwe Monument and other dry-stone monuments found in Zimbabwe and other African countries, as well as the art of basket weaving that has survived decades and decades of the onslaught of European influence, provide some valuable insights into the power of ancient Africa scientific creativity.
The use of various inscriptions to measure quantities, for example, the Ishango Bone (20 000BC) in the Congo, the Tsoro or Mancala game – which forces players to strategically capture a greater number of stones than one’s opponent, the use of the Papyrus and the use of rectangular, cylindrical granaries and huts, the use of triangle, octagon and other shapes to design crafts and structures, present oldest known evidence about mathematics, geometry, design and architecture in Africa.All this demonstrates that science as we know it today was a result of contributions by many cultural groups.
My recent visit to the National Gallery to see the Basket Case II Exhibition, being held under the theme “A Collective Experience: Beautiful and Timeless”, peeled my eyes and taught me why ignoring one’s history is not only risky, but also lethal to one’s survival.The science of art and design as we know it today has been mistakenly attributed to Europeans and yet this intangible cultural scientific heritage has been passed from one generation to the other here in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa.
Since time immemorial, Africans have always used the intangible scientific cultural heritage as a means of expressing cultural values and as a way of giving a unique insight into their way of life, thoughts and ideas.
What I found out, was that the basket weaving cultural showcase at the National Gallery has drawn much on the richness and breadth of the unparalleled expressive use of colour, form, design and texture by Zimbabwe’s highly creative rural basket weavers.The exhibition has displays of a wide selection of material cultures of the VaShona, BaTonga, SiNdebele, Shangani, Karanga and Manyika.
The assembling of this wide range of traditional crafts and artifacts, from basket weavings and beadwork provided me with an opportunity for greater appreciation of the intangible scientific knowledge that is embedded in Africa’s material cultures.
Non-Africans have made billions from advertising, use of African material forms, design and architecture after carefully exploiting the diversity and vitality of the crafts and other intangible cultural scientific ideas.African’s intangible cultural heritage has been commercialised elsewhere with little or no credit to them.
“It’s time to reclaim and celebrate our achievements using our own narratives,” says Raphael Chikukwa, curator at the National Gallery. “As Africans we have remained as passengers in our own ship for many years. This has to change and as President Mugabe has rightly said, we need to safeguard ourselves, our art, our science, our history, our resources and our minds. If we don’t we will always be passengers in our own ship.”
He says the second edition of the Basket Case exhibition, supported by the British Council, Alliance Francaise and Goethe Institute and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe brings together five prominent African and European artists: Ifeoma Anyaeji (Nigeria), Alexandra Bircken (Germany), Tapfuma Gutsa (Zimbabwe), Delaine Lebas (United Kingdom) and Michel Paysant (France) to share experiences and showcase Zimbabwe’s scientific cultural heritage to the world.
“This exhibition is a chance to celebrate our ancient scientific and engineering designs which have been passed from one generation to the other.“The Western way of looking at things is different from the African way of doing things.
Westerners tend to document knowledge whereas Africans intuitively document their knowledge.
“We do not use tape measures, set squares or any other equipment to produce our material cultural products, we have the sense of proportion in our minds hence we have Tsvandadiki, Dengu, demo diki and we are able to build round huts and granaries perfectly without any instruments,” says Gutsa, a veteran artist.Gutsa says it’s not easy for an average mathematician or modern designer to reach such levels of creativity.
“There is cultural domination, one dominating culture thinks it embodies all the knowledge and sees others as backward. All cultures have something to contribute to the collective world civilisation,” he says.
He says Africans have paid a heavy price for failing to employ modern methods to document their indigenous knowledge systems.Skilled basket weavers from Binga, Bulawayo, Lupane, Honde Valley and Masvingoare participating in this exhibition which aims to get compelling stories of the survival of Zimbabwean basketry.
Virtuoso basket makers will also demonstrate how they invent form, experiment with new materials and perfect the techniques they have learned from their parents and grand-parents.
Through this exhibition, organisers believe this platform provides the opportunity for a greater appreciation and deeper response to the particular needs of rural basket weavers who require viable and sustainable markets for their materials.
Very little commercial development of basket weaving materials has taken place in Zimbabwe and with increasing realisation of the importance of the creative industry on the country’s economic growth perceptions are changing.
The creative arts industry, such as basket weaving, have the potential to generate income, jobs and export earnings while at the same time promoting social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development.
Marketing contemporary basket weaving art can improve the livelihoods on rural communities and give them an incentive to promote the use and conservation of traditional basketry innovations passed from one generation to the other.
Emeagwali sums it up aptly: “A period for us to acknowledge that science is the gift of ancient Africa to our modern world (has come). As my father taught me, the story is mightier than the warrior. The story lives on long after the warrior has died.
“We Africans have to tell our story. We underestimate the power of the story.”
