MISCHIEVOUS AZANIA
Christopher Hitchens on the
fictional origin of an African nationalist name
RETURNING from South Africa a few years ago, I wrote a comment about the adoption, by the More muscular nationalist militants, of the name Azania. As a title for a future black republic, it has vastly grown in popularity since. It appears on the headstone of Steve Biko, the brilliant Young leader of the Black Consciousness movement, who was beaten to death in such detail by the security police. It forms the 'A' in new militant acronyms of the current rising, such as Azapo. It might, just possibly, one day take its seat between Australia and Belgium at the United Na- tions. But what struck me as bizarre when I first wrote about it was the coincidence between the name of the future and the name of the ramshackle kingdom in Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief. It was as if the black nationalists were unconsciously de- termined to afford copy to Peter Simple, or to purple-faced men in White's Club. I filed the mystery away. What mystery? It turns out that in 1964, the leadership of the Pan-Africanist Con- gress, having set up an exile headquarters in Algeria, wrote to Evelyn Waugh and asked him where he got the name. Picture It: a militant on the run, four years after Sharpeville, reading Black Mischief by a flickering lamp, And finding it such cork- ing stuff that he dashes off a note to Combe Florey, Somerset, begging the favour of an early reply. Getting one, too — Waugh wrote back rather stiffly: 'As you should know, it is the name of an ancient East African kingdom.' Actually, nobody could or should have known anything of the sort, since Azania is a Hellenised shot at render- ing an Arabic (and therefore probably a slaver) term for East Africa. Unlike, say, Zimbabwe, it has no root in any of the African tongues spoken in the southern cone.
I made this discovery while reading Joseph Lelyveld's marvellous new book Move Your Shadow, which is an account of his many years as New York Times corres- pondent in South Africa. The story is told at somewhat greater length in C. J. Driv- er's biography of Patrick Duncan, the cheerful and dauntless Balliol man who did so much to bring the Pan-Africanist Con- gress to life, and who was living in Algiers at the time. On receipt of Waugh's letter he, Peter Raboroko and Reginald Ntantala biffed off to the bureau of Le Peuple Algier to blazon the new designation. In PAC circles, it has been taken as standard ever since.
It's very difficult to imagine being called anything but one's own name, and very hard to picture the effect of a change in the name of one's own country. Probably the most immune to this concern are the English, who come from a country with no name at all (except for Britain, England, the United Kingdom, Great Britain and its full name) and who notice this so little that they grizzle only about details like the vanishment of Rutland. Such reactions are a perverse way of demonstrating confi- dence in the identity of the homeland. A bishop signing himself Ebor or Verulam does not invite ridicule, any more than does a man who insists on the redundant job-description of 'male nurse'. It is only the other way around (like Burkina Faso for Upper Volta, or 'chair' for woman) that ignites the guffaw.
It works with people, and it works with places. Appropriate and memorable though the change may be, nobody makes easy use of 'Ho Chi Minh City' for Saigon. And nobody I can think of refers to Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, or indeed to 'Lord' Wilson at all. But Zimbabwe, say, comes fairly naturally. Nobody ever knew how to pronounce RhodeezialRhodeesher any way, or anyway. Much of the problem may arise from the success of English as the international vernacular. Even those who want to express resentment of the fact are compelled to take notice of it.
In the United States today, there is a slight but unpredictable revival of the old cult of black Islam, In the mid-Sixties, the followers of-the late Elijah Muhammad (no relation) used to shed their 'slave names' and take new identities. The most famous of these, Malcolm X, saw the X as a symbol of the fact that, having abandoned his title of servitude, which had been Malcolm Little, he still did not know who he was. By the time that extreme black Muslims had murdered him for disavowing racial separatism, he had begun to try out El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. This expressed his conviction that Islam observed no distinction of colour; a finding that would have astounded the original Azanians as the dhows hove in view with their empty holds.
The hard-line Jewish underground of the Mandate years used to run a paper called the Palestine Post, but its successors now forbid Arab nationalists on the West Bank to use this subversive label. And many post-colonial nations, such as Algeria, Angola, Indonesia and others, cling proud- ly to their historic names. Only in appal- lingly inapposite cases — Gold Coast, Dutch Antilles, Belgian Congo — has a fresh start needed to be signalled by a new name. Lucky indeed is the country that doesn't have to examine its baptism. Amerigo Vespucci would mean nothing to anybody living on my block of Washington DC.
But people will die, and kill, for the right to be called by their chosen name. Black schoolchildren in Soweto, which really ought always to be given its proper name of South West Township, revolted originally against the idea of being taught in Afri- kaans. And many of them now fight for Azania, a word that derives 'neither from Xhosa or Zulu, Sotho nor Tswana', as Lelyveld puts it. How boring if Algeria had called itself, at independence, 'North Afri- ca'. How nice, on the other hand, to have an authentic name. The African National Congress opposes all such fancy, and de- nominates itself as a 'South African' poli- tical movement. Psychic wounds might actually be salved more effectively if a black ambassador ever took his place between the applauding representatives of Somalia and Sudan.
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