Sometime in the late seventies or maybe in the early eighties I
watched with considerable fascination a film titled ‘The land that time
forgot.’ This film, based on a novel of the same name in 1918 by Edgar
Rice Burroughs. Burroughs is probably better known as the creator of
Tarzan, a character that fed white supremacist ideologies. Burroughs’
vivid imagination gave us dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals long
before Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton’s
1990 novel, did.
The book, and the film of course,
are temporally located at the time of the First World War when the crews
of two vessels, one British and another German, astray in Antarctic
waters chance upon an island which, contrary to all known natural
processes, thrives in a climate that supports all kinds of species, long
thought to be extinct.
Watchable.
This
is not about the films, the books, authors or story-lines, but simply
the title: The land that time forgot. I was reminded of this title while
thinking of Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth.’ That, and his
‘Black Skin, White Masks.’ Essential reading, so I tell my daughters,
for these are basic texts that reveal the ways in which peoples in
countries such as ours which have been ravaged and plundered continue to
suffer the enduring effects of such processes.
Fanon,
in ‘The Wretched of the Earth,’ speaks of land, hence the above
preamble: ‘For a colonized people the most essential value, because the
most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring
them bread and, above all, dignity.’
Land. Key.
Land
theft has been the A-Z of all invasions, colonial or otherwise. It is
done at gun-point. Slaughter is at the heart of the process. Gripping,
twisting and destroying minds can and do facilitate. This is why Bishop
Desmond Tutu once said, ‘first we at the land and they had the book;
then they said, “close your eyes, let us pray,” and when we opened our
eyes, we had the book and they had the land.”’
Land
of course, straight up, is territory. It is typically imagined in terms
of extent, square-somethings. It yields food and dignity, Fanon was
correct. Wrest it away and those on the land have no place to stand,
metaphorically speaking. They are forced to beg for tenurial
arrangements, they are forced into relations of production that are
exploitative and moreover erode dignity and self-belief in innumerable
ways. That’s what the Waste Lands Ordinance 1 of 1897 did, quite apart
from straight-forward annexing of territory. The history of the world,
come to think of it, is all about processes associated with land theft
and resistance to imminent robbery, with fire-power or legislation.
But
I am thinking of ‘land’ as a metaphor. Land as a metaphor for all
things owned or are associated with entitlements of one kind of another.
Culture, for example. History. Heritage. Lifestyle. Things and
processes which confer meaning and value to our existence. When these
are denied or, worse, when we are taught to consider such things as
being of lesser or no value whatsoever and, even worse, are persuaded to
consciously and actively join hands with the thief to dismiss,
denigrate and even vilify it all, then and then alone are we truly
dispossessed.
This process involves masks. We have
black (or brown) skins, but since we are unable to replace such colours
with white, it is suggested that we wear white masks. Not everyone needs
such persuasion of course, They are many who wear masks for reasons of
convenience if not conviction. It’s about mimicking the oppressor and
indeed emulating the oppressor in the acts of oppression. Success for
the oppressor, at least in this respect, arrives when the wearer of
masks truly believes that the mask has replaced original skin. Doesn’t
happen that way, but belief is a powerful lie that can enable the
sustained development of oppression, the attendant extraction of wealth
and further colonisation of minds.
Mask-wearers
willingly concede territory. They are ever-ready to be consoled by
crumbs yielded by negotiating the terms of oppression. They give up
land. They support land-theft. Then they protect thieves and justify
theft. They convince themselves that crumbs offered as compensation are
actually feasts. They wear their masks with pride. They are divested of
dignity and hurrah the divestiture. They are among the worst of those
who can be called the wretched of the earth. Caricatures. Cartoons.
Approvers of crimes against humanity. Applauders of those who would
erase history, obliterate heritage and force fellow-territorials to be
subjected to insults and humiliation.
Land is not
just square-somethings. Land is made also of heart and mind, of
knowledge and knowing, of the conscious and a conscience. That land,
torn and yet beautiful, has seen the ravages of time. It carries signs
that yell, ‘forget, forget, forget!’
We should not. [This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title ‘The Recurrent Thursday’]
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