viewed Star and Shadow Cinema Oct 2024; ticket: £7
I AM NOT A WITCH I AM A CHILD
The most stiking image in Rungano Nyomi’s ‘I am not a Witch’ is of the broad white ribbons that are attached to the backs of each witch in the ‘witch camp’, ribbons which unwind from giant spools. It is beautiful haunting image that contains within itself a symbolic wider warning. ‘Ribbon tethered’ is how we first see the witches. The witch camps are the places where the government has gathered together the assorted women accused of witchcraft and where they are exhibited as ‘specimens’ of real Africa. The African Witches. The claim made is the white angelic fetters somehow weaken the power of the witches rendering them safe for tourists to approach and to gaze upon. The witches have been neutralised, made safe. Witches are no longer a source of social anxiety, but a spectacle for tourists. Besides being exhibits, when the tourist trade gets slack the Government has no compunction in putting out the witches to hard labour in the fields – still of course attached to the magical white ribbons which as the women move unspool off giant spindles attached to the specially adapted trailer of a truck. Life’s a scam.
‘Shula’ is an abandoned child accused of witchcraft. She is peremptorily found guilty of such by a witchdoctor’s reading of a sacrificed chicken. A phone call later and she is drummed off to the witch camp as the newest and youngest recruit a prime specimen witch now attached to her white ribbon ripe for exploitation by a government official.
Naomi’s film is structured as a series of episodic clips comprising a series of situations to which Shula witch is exposed. Her Government supervisor drives her round to a number of different places where she has to perform as a witch, thereby increasing her credibility and profitability for the minder. She’s a little gold mine. She is not a witch. She is trailed to an impromptu court where she is asked to find and point out the thief from a group of suspects; she is asked to bring rain to parched land; she is brought onto a TV chat show and introduced to the wife of a politician who tells her how co-operation with the powerful leads to a comfortable life. A nod and wink that proablbly pass by Shula.
In none of these episodes is there any emotional manipulation of the material. The strips of action are captured by Nyomi as wide shots which allow the viewer to see and judge for themselveswhat is happening to Shula.
Shula’s face is core to the film. But her face is not exploited to soak emotional response from from the audience. There are (with one exception) no soap opera tropes tears, strtched lips, tightened eyes or trembling jowels. Nyomi films Shula’s face as an affect image. This is a term coined by Deleuze to describe filming the face in a neutral expressive mode to which the audience has to ascribe meaning and understanding. We have to make what we can of Shula, not by reading her face, but by understanding her situation. The only telling exception to the affect image, is the brief clip in which we see her in school with other children – here we see her face fill out to become a smile, for a moment she is transformed only to be wrenched out of the classroom by the Minister to continue his profitable use of her as a witch.
In the final episode of ‘I am not a Witch’, there’s a tracking shot of an ox cart. We are following it from the rear as it moves before us at the traditional slow pace of such things. We wonder why we are following it. It stops. The two men on the cart’s box seat stand up. From the back of the cart they pick up a small white shroud and lower it to the ground beside the cart. We know it is Shula’s shroud.
The corruption the chicanery the dishonesty with which she has been forced to participate, have crushed her soul and the body has died. As her body lies on the ground her sister witches arrive transported on their special truck with the ribbon spools on its loader . They gather round the shroud: tethered to their white ribbons spooling off the lorry they sing to her departed soul.
Shula’s life as a witch is presented as an individual story. We see the particular forces of greed and manipulation slowly squeeze life out of her, kill her spirit.
But there is also a universal angle to Nyoni’s script. Shula also stands for the wider issue of the infantalisation of Africa. Nyoni’s film is a statement of a deeper more universal issue relating to the post-colonial experience: Africans are still defined as children. Africans were characterised by the colonial Western powers as children a characterisaton that gave quasi legitimacy to theft abuse slavery and manipulation of Africans: they are children, they are happy with beads and brightly coloured cloth. This characterisaton has been conveniently taken up by their post colonial successors. In many African countries the colonial regimes handed power over to local elites many of whom more or less continue many abuses of the colonial era: appropriating to themselves the wealth of the country, keeping tight rein over the social matrix by rewarding themselves and their close relatives and allies with the significant political and economic and commercial positions.
Africans, like Shula are tethered to metaphysical white ribbons which neutralise them. Africans like Shula are described and treated like children justifying assertions that they need adults to decide their best interests. This characterisation of the people is central to maintaining a psychic grip on the their ability to stand up for their own interests. Being labelled and treated as child undermines belief in agency, that one has the ability and resources to be responsible for making decisions. Defined as lacking these attributes Africans are judged by those in power as not ready for democracy or self determination. One of the duties of children is to learn to respect and obey their adult betters. As children of the State they must accept the rule of those who understand the world and its complexity. Resistance to the adult has to be punished, severely if necessary. To cast the populaton as children legitimises the klepocracy of the state and can undermine the will to oppose power, embrace inadequacy and engender a proclivity to accept the words judgements and decisions of the big boys and girls.
This defining of the native population as ‘children’ also provides a justificatory framework for the exploitation of African countries by big corporations who are sold or given franchises to exploit the wealth of Africa. No one is frightened of children. Without fear there is an amoral carte blanche. There are no constraints on businesses exploiting their assets as quickly as possible, polluting the environment to save money and prohibiting Union organisation. Children don’t understand these things. They are not really concerned about them unless stirred up by trouble makers. If you are seen as a child you have the rights of a child. That is to say the rights of Shula. The right to be forever attached to a broad white ribbon that controls you, the right to be cynically exploited for all of your life, the right to die in an unmarked shallow grave mourned only by the old witches themselves tethered by white ribbons singing beautiful haunting songs which drift off into the distance.
adrin neatrour
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk
