Black Orpheus and White Pluto
By THOMAS HODGKIN - pOTO-POTO is a nice town. Compared with the squalid urban huddle of Lagos, the wretched tenements of Sekondi, Medina—Dakar's enormous slum—With its succession of nameless streets, a mixture of sand and puddles, excrement, goats and babies, Poto-Poto is even beautiful. Here people live in their compounds, with some privacy. In the compounds of the better-off there are separate establishments for uncles, cousins and grandfathers. Palm-trees grow. If one walks a little way one can see the Congo and the blue and green mountains beyond.
Poto-Poto and Bacongo are two African agglomerations urbaines which, with the European town, make up the city of Brazzaville. The French administrator in charge of the agglomerations, a kindly, somewhat formal man, took me out to see the-sights. But first, for propriety's sake, we had to find the African President of the Commune of Bacongo. (The French Government once defined " notables " as " native tax- payers of over twenty-five years of age who are highly regarded generally on account of their social standing, their piety, their advanced age, their education, or on account of services which they have rendered to the State. . . .'" The President fitted this description excellently.) Without much difficulty we dug out this ancient symbol of Eurafrican co-operation and wedged him in the camionette between us—docile, well-drilled, untalkative. We saw the new market-place, the new drains, the municipal restaurant—serving a good two-course meal for Is. 3d.—the clinic, crowded with patients, the training-centre, where young Africans learn in short intensive courses to be semi-skilled masons, joiners and motor mechanics. We visited the domestic science centre, and saw African married women making elegant dresses for themselves and layettes for their babies (once they. had got over the natural feeling that it is hubristic to make clothes for the unborn). We talked with the highly efficient trained nurse running the centre de plied- culture. " Look at this baby." She,- handed me a naked one. " You see how clean he is, and beautifully cared for. They're all like this when they've been coming a little time."
We ended the morning at the Poto-Poto Art School, kept by a young French painter, M. Lods. About a dozen Africans were sitting painting. The little pictures sell for 2,000 francs (about £4), and the big ones for 3,000 francs. They make their living this way. In a good month a painter may make .0 no, which puts him well up in the income-scale. Some . . exciting fantastic pictures were signed ".Mouri, dit Picasso." "You see," M. Lods explained, " when the British Consul- General came and looked at one of Mouri's paintings, he said ' that's a regular Picasso '—so ever since Mouri has signed himself that way." But, after much hesitation, I chose an Assali. Assali paints brown Africans, in all kinds of decora- tive, usually dancing, relations with one another, on a black background—rather in the style of the ancient rock paintings. I said I thought the children would like it. " You don't think your children may find it a little—erotic ? " said the Adminis- trator, with a Frenchman's more perceptive eye. Foolishly I asked M. Lods how he did it, and got the answer I expected —" I don't do anything at all: they just come and they paint." From African painting the conversation turned to Sartre's essay Orphee Noir, which he wrote as an introduction to Senghor's collection of Negro poetry. Sartre called it Black Orpheus, he explains, because the Negro's effort to break out of his " European culture-prison " and rediscover his " negritude," this " systematic quest," reminds him of Orpheus going to reclaim Eurydice from Pluto. It is not so, much an essay really as a revolutionary poem—".What ,would you expect to find, when the muzzle that has silenced the voices of black men is removed ? That they would thunder your praise ? When these heads that our fathers have forced to the very ground are risen, do you expect to read adoratiorkin their eyes ? " You don't have to go very far in Poto-Poto to find this underworld of poetry, below the level of social services and administrative paternalism. The town itself was founded, forty-odd years ago, by a secession of the plebs—by some Mongo who refused to work for the French companies and left the concessions. You find the same independence of spirit to-day among the fishermen of Stanley Pool. They dislike any kind of authority—family, tribal, or European—or inter. ference with the natural rights of fishermen. By Poto-Potd standards they make good money and can afford to live well— sleep under mosquito nets, eat tinned foods, drink red wine, and dress their wives and -girl friends in new cloth. The courtesans are independent too. Immense opportunities aro offered by a town where to every two women there are three men. They have their misteries—Viokiii, Lolita, Brillant and the like—which arrange picnics and outings and keep up the rate for the job. (M, Georges Balandier, writing two years ago, spoke of 2,000 francs a month, plus presents, as the minimum: but it has certainly gone up since then.) And there are other openings for women: they play an important par in the retail trade of the town—selling cigarettes, cola-nuts a fancy goods. Poto-Poto gives them a chance to enjoy a neW kind of liberty. For all that the songs of the courtesans' guilds are many of them sad :— Ecoutez, flies andes, Dieu nous. a donne des meres, Des meres qui nous tuent Pour de !'argent.
The keen young men who organise the clerks and boy- cuisiniers in CGT and CFTC Unions; the Catholics, with their cathedral like a palm-forest, their fishermen's mass, and their intelligent journal, La Semaine de l'AEF; the " mili- tants " of the Parti Progressiste Congolais, with their firm belief that history is on their side; none of these fit into a tidy administrative pattern. Nor do the unemployed: officially there are 3,500 of them in the whole of Brazzaville, out of a total adult -male population of 32,000, but in fact the figure is probably nearer 5,000. I met a young African, out of a job, who told me he had studied philosophy at the /ycee. He was spending his time sending out notices inviting the citizens of Poto-Poto to support his canditature for the presidency of the Government-sponsored Cercle Culture!. He was too success- ful. I asked the French administrator later how the elections had gone. Impossible," he said. " The centre was crowded out with hundreds of people, many of them illiterate, who weren't members at all. We had to postpone the elections." Perhaps it is not fanciful to see Poto-Poto as the microcosm and the French Union as the macrocosm—the crisis of the French Union reflected in the opposition between the facts of paternalism and the ideas of Orphee Noir. General Guillaume, in a recent article on " The .French Accomplishment in Morocco," points out that " 7,500 miles of surfaced roads and 18,750 miles of maintained roads now permit the year-round movement of more than 65,000 vehicles. . . . Casablanca now handles more than 7,000,000 tons a year, which puts it fourth among French ports." True—and there are many other French achievements besides. But how far do these thousands of miles of surfaced roads carry you when confronted by the criticisms of a Negro poet, for whom we Europeans are simply : " These gentlemen from the city , gentlemen of propriety Who know no more to dance by the light of the moon Who know no more to walk on the flesh of their feet Who know no more to tell the tales of their fathers. . . ."
Of course, the strains are much less acute, and the explosive forces much less explosive; in Poto-Poto than in North Africa. But many of the same elements seem to be present: the fishermen who drink red wine and don't care a fig; the new proletariat; the unemployed intellectuals; " the harlot's cry from street to street." And there are democratic institutions in Equatorial Africa—deputies, ' senators and elected assemblies. But there is also administrative Platonism (or Plutonism ?)—the idea that the wise and good (who are usually, but not always, French) should govern, and the Africans, who are "des bons enfants," should be governed. And if one has to have political parties, one can always invent a parti de l'administration. Well aware of the crisis, the French are searching for a solution. " Eurafrique " ?—But does this in practice mean much more than admitting Germany as a colonial partner ? A Federal France—with local legislatures and responsible local Cabinets ? More initiative for the Assembly of the French Union (that neglected organ of the Fourth Republic) ? But the germs of the solution are con- tained in the preamble to the 1946 Constitution—" La France— emend conduire les peuples dont .elle a pris la charge a la liberte de s'administrer eux-memes et de gerer democratique- ment leurs propres affaires." And, while Platonism dies hard, it much to the credit of the French that (unlike Plato) they have never discovered a method to prevent the circulation of ideas. (Jacques Despuech's Le Trafic de Piastres is a best- seller. And there is an excellent book-shop in Brazzaville.)
Previous page
