CINEMA-AFRICA: Learning From Life 2000 Years Ago

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Andrew Whaley

HARARE, Oct 27 1998 (IPS) - Southern African nations, grappling at the end of the century to establish political and economic co- operation, could do worse than looking back on the life of their ancestors of 2,000 years ago.

An award-winning documentary released this month by Zimmedia, a small Zimbabwean film making company, gives a vivid reminder of the thriving trade that existed for two millennia all long Africa’s east coast and into the hinterland.

“Tides of Gold”, winner of the best documentary film at this year’s Southern African Film Festival (SAFF), evokes a golden epoch in Africa in the centuries beween between 800 BC and 1500 AD. A number of powerful urban states grew up throughout the region. Kilwa in present day Tanzania, traded gold as far afield as China.

In the south, in what is now the northern part of South Africa, at the confluence of the great Limpopo and Shashi rivers, a stone citadel was built at Mapungubwe; its wealth based on a flourishing ivory trade.

At Great Zimbabwe, the mysterious stone edifice which is the symbol of the modern Zimbabwe nation, a gold-rich kingdom grew up with many vassal states supplying the precious metal in exchange for glassware and porcelain.

The documentary also shows how, at Chibuene, a coastal town close to Vilanculos in Mozambique, Africa was trading with Persia, Venice and China, some 1,200 years ago.

Tides Of Gold dramatically reconstructs the scope and extent of economic activity in the southern African region and way beyond its fringes. Much of the proof of a flourishing economy exists in modern day Africa, yet it remains largely unseen and unacknowledged.

Two Zimbabwean documentary film makers, producer Simon Bright and director Ingrid Sinclair, began to unearth some of southern Africa’s hidden treasures simply by looking at everyday life. Documentary footage shows panners excavating gold in much the same way as it was done 2000 years ago. Beautiful dhows plying the palm- fringed coasts of Mozambique have not changed much either.

“Here we are trying to set up SADC (Southern African Development Community)”, says Bright. “This is now heralded as the new economic identity for southern and central Africa – and you go back one thousand years and trade connections were already well-established. Why not now? Why all this petty nationalism?”

The 52-minute documentary was filmed in Madagascar, Tanzania, Commoros, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It reveals a golden age of international trade, not thorough relics dug up from the earth, but by revealing the living patterns and unchanging spirit of trade. Says Bright: “Gold is panned in the way it was 2200 years ago – and is probably being smuggled now, in the same way it was traded 2200 years ago.

Today, this transformation is largely veiled from the public eye as facts are vague and details come in fragments. The whole picture of southern Africa’s flourishing trade is still being collated largely in foreign libraries.

Bright and Sinclair had to begin their research in Uppsala, Sweden, where archaeologist Paul Sinclair runs a network of like- minded academics. His Urban Origins programme has started to piece together the history of the southern African region.

Archaeologists and historians from Tanzania, Madagascar, South Africa and Zimbabwe have began to reassemble a scantling history, squirrelled away in academic journals, northern libraries and in the oral history of the rural and matitime peoples of southern and eastern Africa.

The film intimates a vast Swahili empire that stretched from Mozambique to Somalia. Tanzanian archaeologist, Felix Chami, reveals that the Rufigi Delta was an epi-centre of the great spice route of India.

Zimbawean archaeologists Webber Ndoro and Gilbert Pwiti destroy the preposterous idea that Africa was subsumed in its Dark Ages “a view that was projected by the 19th century European explorers,” says Bright.

For Bright, the film is a great reckoning with the destractors of Africa, the kind who claimed that no African could have built the impressive Houses of Stone at Zimbabwe. He explains: “I was brought up on a farm which lay in the shadow of the (Great Zimbabwe) acropolis, so I always had this fascination for what was widely interpreted then as “A Mystery”. I spent a lot of my upbringing following the archaeology and history of Great Zimbabwe.”

Tides Of Gold is the most recent of several documentaries, made by Zimmedia, which reinforces African culture. Mbira, Spirit Of The People, a documentary about the traditional music of Zimbabwe; Bird from Another World, the visual poetry of two sculptures, among others, reveal the power of contemporary and traditional African artistry.

Tides of Gold has already garnered considerable interest around the world. The South African Broadcasting Corporation has bought it. The film is invited to the Amsterdam International Documentary Forum. Deals are in the offing in Germany, Denmark and closer to home, in Mozambique. Zimbabwe television is said to be interested and other African networks are looking for a copy of theis slice of African history.

The documentary cost 140,000 US Dollars to make and is already proving to be worth its weight in gold.