As soon as news broke that Sierra Leonean-Ghanaian-British actor Idris Elba is set to star in an upcoming Hollywood TV adaptation of Nigerian legend Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” as the lead actor, the swords were drawn.
Elba will play the renowned wrestler and proud warrior Okonkwo, the tragic hero of the novel. The criticisms came thick and fast from Nigerians and other fans of the book, perhaps easily the greatest African novel, which has been translated into more than 50 languages and is still used in literature and African studies courses worldwide. It was another cultural plunder of a Nigerian and African treasure, they said. Nigeria had great actors who could play and bring authenticity to the role; it was cultural neo-colonialism; the same old exploitation of black culture, they railed.
However, many disagreed too. They held that not only does thick African blood flow in Elba’s veins (he is one of us), but his global stardom would give far greater exposure to the film than a talented but minor Igbo actor from Enugu.
This is not the first time Elba has raised the ire of African cultural purists. South Africans piled on him for “stealing” the role of the great man Nelson Mandela in the 2013 film “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom“, although in the end, they liked the film. They had practised their barbs two years earlier when Oscar-winning African-American actress Jennifer Hudson played Winnie Mandela in a biopic about the storied musician, anti-apartheid activist, and former wife of Nelson Mandela.
In North Africa, the cultural guardians in Tunisia are still in a rage over the casting of Denzel Washington as Hannibal Barca in a forthcoming film about the Carthaginian general. They gripe that not only is Washington American, but he is too dark. The grievance even found its way into the Tunisian parliament.
Nigeria’s and Tunisia’s cultural Talibans should go jump in the sea. The African story needs to be told, but it is a spectacularly limiting form of cultural provincialism to require that it be told and acted only by Africans. It’s the same as witnessed in recent years, where African and black critics have gone after white women for the sin of braiding their hair or wearing an African dress!
We should learn from the colonisers. In 1997, a British theatre group, The Globe Theatre Company, came with a largely black cast to the Uganda capital Kampala to stage a series of shows of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” at the National Theatre. The Ugandan bourgeoise came out in full force for it, some in black tie. The British did this around Anglophone for many years. The British Council also sponsored other adaptations of British plays not just in Uganda, but in several former UK colonies.
The success of the British and general Western neo-colonial project, and the continuing “pro-Western” hold on African elite thinking and preference (taking our children to their universities and the leaders rushing to their hospitals when they fall sick), owes partly to the influence of these cultural exports – and admittedly some excellence on their part. An African Macbeth makes it easier to sell a British and European story to local communities and is a great cultural ambassador particularly when a “native” is the star. It is one reason white folks rarely go on crusades about their culture being appropriated.
We can also glean from the remarkable global and economic impact of South Korean cultural products and music (K-Pop). It is estimated that a $100 increase in the export of South Korean cultural products results in a US$412 increase in exports of other consumer goods, including food, clothes, cosmetics, and IT products.
It is why the British have never stopped loving Tanzania’s founding father, the cerebral Julius Nyerere, for translating three of Shakespeare’s plays – Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar – into Kiswahili.
Uganda’s independence Prime Minister, and later president, Milton Obote, was expelled from Makerere University for leading a pro-independence strike. But the British never forgot that he played Julius Caesar in a university play before they kicked him out.
From a strategic view, to Africanise the world and rise to global power, the continent needs the West (and Asia) to imitate and reproduce its cultural products – and pay royalties of course – on a large scale by flooding their TV and movie screens with African stories. In this regard the problem is not that Elba is playing Okonkwo in a Hollywood adaptation of “Things Fall Apart”, but that it is not Russell Crowe who has been cast as Okonkwo. And if any day soon Hollywood makes a run at Wole Soyinka’s “The Lion and the Jewel”, one hopes that it is British actress Emilia Clarke (of Daenerys Targaryen fame in Game of Thrones) who gets to play Sidi, not our daughter Lupita Nyong’o.
There is also a delightful species of universal humanist pan-Africanists who argue that if one accepts that Africa is the cradle of mankind and that all modern humans originated from Africa, then all human endeavours in most of the world have African roots. And the rest of humanity has a right to African cultural products as part of their inheritance.
The big problem should be where these African cultural products are stolen outright, and their creators get no credit or financial reward. That is a no, no.
By the same token, we shouldn’t be freeloaders. Elba seems to be putting some of his money into “Things Fall Apart”, and will be one of the executive producers. I believe when people invest their money, they are perfectly entitled to enjoy the fruits of their investment. Our forefathers, who inspired some of Chinua Achebe’s stories, used to say that “he who feeds the child must be allowed to lick his fingers”. Elba must be allowed to lick his fingers.