CONDUCTA DE GIRO INDUCIDO POR APOMORFINA

Zimbabwe was colonised by the British in 1890. This historical process was accompanied by the use of physical and military force (Ranger, 1985). Apart from the use of force, the white settlers introduced a plethora of laws meant to censor or prevent Africans from advancing the liberation cause. The Rhodesian regime used cultural censorship and violence to block Africans from

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producing and distributing information that was deemed subversive through a series of Ordinances and oppressive legal statutes. However, this was not sufficient to control Africans. They evolved clandestine ways of eliding state censorship. Not sufficient research has been done to reveal how the Rhodesian laws on censorship were extended into post independent Zimbabwe. The nationalist government wilfully resorted to oppressive laws in order to control, restrict and to ban visual images, music, written literature and other forms of popular art deemed subversive to the state.

2.1.0 Obscene Publications Ordinance Act of 1911

The restriction of film content and form in Southern Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe, emerged from the introduction of the Obscene Publication Ordinance of 1911. Patel (1997) points out that the Ordinance prohibited the possession and posting of indecent or obscene publications of printed and visual matter. Also, the ordinance criminalised and penalised specific conduct such as the publication of inter-marriages between blacks and whites. Furthermore, it was considered a crime to publish political protests literature and circulate it among black nationalists. The Obscene Publications Ordinance Act of 1911 used vague legal terminology as obscene, undesirable and morally objectionable to describe what Africans saw as creative literature that promoted freedom.

The ambiguity of the terms abominable or mischievous could be interpreted by the authorities to mean anything. Although the Ordinance was established with print media in mind, its terms of reference were also used to curtail freedom of film to express dissenting or opposing ideas. The repressive attitude of the Rhodesian government manifested itself through several speeches by D.W Lardner – Burke who was the minister of Law and Order. In one of his [in] famous speeches, Lardner – Burke is quoted by Drag to have said that, “The government cannot permit the prized ideal of press freedom to be used for spreading subversion when all are engaged in fighting a cruel and reentries enemy” (1993:43). The world all refers to both government and press, and as a metaphor the word implied that the colonial press, legislators and government were supposed to support each other ideologically to block black political emancipation. The word enemy was a euphemism for all forces—internal and external that had committed themselves towards the independence of black people in Southern Rhodesia. While the Obscene Publications Ordinance Act of 1911 was primarily focused on restricting the content and form of print media, the regulation of written and visual

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images was introduced later under the ambit of Cinematograph Ordinance of 1912 (Mazango and Chiumbu, 2000).

2.1.1 The Cinematography Ordinance Act of 1912

The cinematography Ordinance of 1912 was a crucial piece of legislation to the Rhodesian government that ensured that visual arts conformed to the government’s aims and objectives of preserving white supremacy. Patel (1997) provides two factors that he views were important points for the Rhodesian government to promulgate the Cinematograph Ordinance Act of 1912. First, the enactment appeared to have been put in place to control art on celluloid exhibitions rather than the moral purity of the audience. Second, exhibitions given in private premises were expressly excluded from the purview of statutory control. Patel’s (1997) conceptualisation of Cinematograph Ordinance emphasises the technicalities that were involving in controlling film images. However, Hungwe (1991) and Drag (1993) argue that apart from the existence of censorship that could be explained in technical terms, the enactment of the Ordinance Act of 1912 was focused on restricting the ideological potency of film images. For Hungwe (1991) throughout the colonial period from 1890 – 1979, the British government established cinema propaganda machinery to strengthen the coloniser’s hold onto the colonised.

The primary goal of colonial films was to promote the white settler worldview and maintain white standards and privileges while ensuring that limited socio-economic and political development occurred among Africans. Visual images were tailor-made to prove that whites were superior to the so-called uncivilised native Africans. Hungwe (1991:23) goes further to say that, ‘Development was construed in terms of relationships between two races (Africans and Europeans) that were at different historical points of evolution, with no prospect of equality in their future.” The Cinematograph Ordinance described relationships between whites and blacks in Rhodesia as undesirable and morally objectionable. Correspondingly, film images were not allowed to depict possibilities of relationships among blacks and whites. Instead, the legislation used stereotyping as a way of controlling black advancement within the social, economic and political spheres in a colonial context. Drag(1993) points out that much of the stereotyping directed to black people in Rhodesia was accomplished through informational and educational films that were screened in rural areas.

Through those colonial film images, black farmers were depicted as poor, ill-equipped to deal with

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the demands of modern farming and that they were illiterate. In contrast, white farmers were depicted as successful, enlightened and ready to respond to modern ways of farming. As a way of constructing the binary of good (white farmer) and bad (black farmer) stereotyping became a form of institutionalized form of censorship. Screening of these films in the rural areas was meant to spread ideas of white superiority among the black population living in the rural areas. Harry Franklin and Bill Gale who worked for Central African Film unit(CAFU) in Southern Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe, point out that,‘…colonial development and welfare funds were conditional on proposed film unit concentrating exclusively on making instructional films for African audiences’ (Nell,1998:100). The strict conditions imposed on film through economic censorship also ensured that few locally-made films were shown to the African audience. Of the few films that were availed to the Africans, most of them projected colonial tropes of Africa as uncivilised and barbaric.

2.1.2 The Rhodesian Literature Bureau and Censorship of African fiction

Although this thesis applies to film censorship, it is pertinent to briefly show how other forms of popular art such as fiction were restricted or even banned by the Rhodesian censorship laws.

Chiwome (1996), Kahari and Veit-Wild (2008) provide comprehensive studies to show how the Rhodesian publishing policies sidelined African authors who specialised on fiction. According to the three literary critics, the Rhodesian publishing policies were mainly driven by commercial imperatives rather than African cultural considerations. An institutionalised form of economic censorship adopted by the Rhodesian Literature Bureau was meant to discourage creative works by Africans that were viewed as controversial by depriving the market for those creative works. As Chiwome contends, the Rhodesian Literature Bureau ‘…felt that adventure and crime fiction rather than serious novels would be suitable for the given type of market’ (1996:47). To make matters worse, Rhodesian publishing companies did not have competent editors. The editors used condemnatory terms such as ‘chaff’, ‘crap’, ‘awful’ and ‘naïve’ (ibid) without considering the cultural contexts within which those works of fiction were produced. These negative evaluative comments undercut the potential of black writers to reach many readers since a greater number of their novels were actually dismissed before reaching the public domain.

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However, although Chiwome (1996), Kahari and Veit-Wild(2008) make the reader aware of the impediments that were placed on African literary creativity by the systems of Rhodesian censorship, the trio assumed that the influence of the literature bureau on African fiction was final and uncontested. Black writers evolved rhetorical devices through which they expressed views that undermined the restrictions imposed on African literary works by Rhodesian Literature bureau (Hungwe, 1991). Authors valorized their traditional values. Some, like Aaron Chiundura Moyo in Ziva Kwawakabva (1976) renders Cabral’s concept of ‘Return to the source’ (Zegeye and Vambe, 2009: 93) in creative form and shows that ordinary people can create meanings outside the inhibitions imposed by colonialism. Within the field of visual images, the same kind of subterranean resistance and awareness is noted by Hungwe who asserts there is ‘…strong evidence that the colonial film-makers under-rated their audience who developed rapidly with successive shows of films, and began to raise questions about the messages to which they were exposed, and how those messages related to their economic and political aspirations’ (2010:14). However, the growth in political awareness of black people was monitored by the colonial system which then intrudced more drastic changes and amendments to the colonial laws in order to undermine African people’s quest for freedom and extend white hegemonic control on black political activism.

2.1.3 Censorship and Entertainments Control Act of 1967

The amendment of Obscene Publications Ordinance introduced statutes that restricted and prohibited the circulation of visual media considered subversive among African communities. Later, the legislation became Entertainment Controls and Censorship Act in 1932. The Act established the Board of Censors whose purpose then was only to scrutinise films and film advertisements (Ndlela, 2003). In 1967 various strands of the 1932 Act were combined to form the Censorship and Entertainments Control Act. The Act was meant to prevent the flow of information that was likely to undermine the Smith Regime. Hungwe observed that with the growing black political agitation in the 1960s:

“The state sought to counter African nationalism with a vigorous propaganda campaign that included taking over the broadcasting services, banning newspapers sympathetic to African aspirations and introducing draconian censorship regulations. Of particular interest to the history of film was the banning of a Michael Raeburn’s film, Rhodesia Countdown(1969), which satirized white attitudes and racism against Africans”(2005:85).

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As if this was not enough, Raeburn’s book about the struggle for independence in Zimbabwe called Black Fire(1978) was also banned(ibid). He was forced to flee the country until after Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. The 1967 Act, together with the Emergency Powers (Maintenance of Law and Order Act) gave the powers to the Rhodesian government to regulate, control, restrict or prohibit the printing or publishing of newspapers as well as the production of films viewed as subversive to the colonial regime. Some ‘benign’ forms of censorship occur even in the most democratic society in the world. However, in colonial Rhodesia the degree and insensity to which freedom of expression was undermined among African communities was deliberately meant to cripple their thinking capacities and prolong as well as de-activate revolutionary consciousness agitating for political independence. What was described as censorship for the public interests actually served the interest of a minority of white bent on holding onto political power and discriminate against Africans in economic matters.