Alvin’s Blog

Yout’ Culture in Twentieth Century Africa

Young people’s culture is unique, linguistically artistic, powerful, opposed to all that which is not young, dynamic, associative, territorial, unifying and forever rebellious.

I say young people’s culture because the term ‘youth culture’ like the related but separate term ‘juvenile delinquent’ has a distinct meaning with immediate connotations. Young people’s culture is defined simply as the culture of young people. This provides neutrality which the term ‘youth culture’ does not. Culture is a way of life, a combination of artistry, achievement and everyday practises. Nowadays we associate ‘youth culture’ with the image of a kid wearing a so-called hoody manipulating his fingers into the shape of a derringer. In the African context in the twentieth century it was just as easy to think of all young people as local petty gangsters, like the tsotsis of South Africa. But of course not all young people were gangsters. In order to avoid a narrow understanding of the culture of young people, the term ‘youth culture’ will be avoided. Having said that, the culture itself changed dramatically owing to colonialism, the rich-poor divide created by weak capitalist systems, urbanisation and the availability of employment opportunities, international influences through the scouting system, integration into the global economic system and the influence of Western films, combined with new processes and definitions of what it meant to become a man.

In this article I will examine this changing nature of young people’s culture in twentieth century Africa by firstly explaining whose culture we are looking at. Who are these young people? I will show how colonialism, capitalism and urbanisation created new beings in cities: The Legit Man, and The Non-Legit Man. We will see they inspired young people and how this dichotomy gave alternative aspirations for young people and, therefore, cultures.

Young people are inherently rebellious, and as part of adolescence we have all gone through stages where we rebel just for the sake of rebelling without knowing why we are rebelling. Young people’s culture has always maintained one characteristic: rebellion. It is new opportunities and influences defined by historical contexts which colour this rebellion.

WHOSE CULTURE?

What do we mean when we talk about young people? If you’re over the age of 18, does it mean that you’re not young anymore? Or is it over 21? Do you need to wear baggy jeans and New Era caps to be considered young, or does the intimidating image you give off actually make you a man? In precolonial Africa, the arbitrary number defined as age did not define whether you were a man or not.

In order to be a man, you had to go through a traditional (handed down through many generations) initiation process, and if you passed you became a man, if not, you were a social outcast. This continued in rural areas during the colonial period, but although age still did not define whether you were a man or not in the cities, the ‘initiation process’ was replaced with a ‘To-Do checklist’. You were considered young if you were not married, did not have a job and therefore neither independent nor wealthy.

All these factors combined defined the powerless person. He has no recognition from the opposite sex, he does not have a legitimate thing to do in his life and he is so poor that he cannot afford food. ‘Young People’s Culture’ then is the culture of the powerless. This definition, of course, has its limitations. A powerless sixty year old is not ‘young.’ He is, however, not a man either, because to be a real man you have to tick the right boxes. So yes, there are limitations but the definition encapsulates what has been so influential in young people’s culture in the twentieth century, and that is being powerless in shady and stranger-filled cities. If anything, once you reach 25 years old in the West, you are no longer considered young. But once you come to your 25th birthday and onwards, you can at least consider yourself to be young at heart.

THE LEGIT MAN AND THE NON-LEGIT MAN

Yet what is so interesting about young people’s culture in Africa is that although it was created by the powerless, it actually gave power to those people who were a part of it. Ibrahim Abdullah, Nicolas Argenti, Deborah Durham, Richard Waller and I all agree on this point. Culture has been and is empowering.

Poverty and rejection left many kids on the streets of Africa. Colonialism created the cities which created bureaucratic, dock, railway and plantation work. Young people migrated to urban centres with the same hope that immigrants came to America with throughout the twentieth century. This new world, they believed, offered riches. There were success stories: some worked for the bureaucratic administrations for example.

These, however, accounted for so few. These successful outliers were not representative of young people. Many resorted to working in slave-like conditions in plantations. Others went back to their families in the rural areas from which they originally migrated from. Yet many remained in the cities, and their choice of lifestyle was to become a gangster. But even those who, as Nicolas Argenti notes, followed the legitimate path were not guaranteed success. He points out that “the great majority of young people who sought entry to the new order were not granted it. These young people – mainly men – were deeply frustrated by the false promise of emancipation represented by mission-school education that led to nothing.”

This was more so the case during economic crises which hit the new middle classes like the current financial crisis is hitting the investment banking world. The Legit Man was not always a happy man.

The Legit Man, then, was he who followed the path laid out by Western moral standards. He got a 9 to 5, got married with a pretty woman and had a family in the city and followed the colonial legal code. The Non-Legit Man, stuck in a rut without employment and failed by the promise of a wealthy life, turned to other ways of making enough money to eat and to afford a roof to live under. He robbed, jacked and sinned. The Non-Legit Man in Tanganyika stole jewellery from Indian families and from Sierra Leone to the lowest point of South Africa got involved in all types of petty crime.

This was his way of making a living; it was a gangster’s way of life. Capitalism, colonialism and urbanisation played a big part in forming this dichotomy. It created a wide rich-poor divide and there were not enough opportunities. The architecture of buildings and roads played their part in creating a street economy where sex talked and fast money was made. Most importantly this dichotomy led to the creation of the distinctive culture of young people in twentieth century Africa. The culture of the Non-Legit Man came to define it. Culture became gangster.

The reason why it became so prominent is because of politics. The culture of young people became so distinctive, recognisable and therefore powerful because it became a political issue. The problem was created by capitalism and colonialism, and the problem was one which had to be dealt with by the colonial administrative bodies. And once democratic institutions and electoral politics came into existence, dealing with the youth problem became a vote-winning issue. The Social Development Department of Tanganyika, for example, set up recreational activities like boxing and camping trips in light of the youth problem in the 1950s.

The politicisation of the issue of young people led to the promulgation of the idea that ‘youth culture’ was a major cause of crime coupled with vagrancy. It is the reason why the culture of youth became immediately indistinguishable from gang culture, mimicking the reasons why youth crime was in the papers every single day for a couple of months in the UK in latter part of 2008. Instead of helping end gang culture, all of this led to the promotion of it amongst many young people from poor backgrounds.

CULTURE SHOCK

The culture created by the Non-Legit Man then became popular, so much so that it became something to aspire to. It became became the trendy thing to do and as Glaser notes, by the 1950s “the majority of African male youths on the Rand belonged to gangs.”

It gave young men another pathway to manhood. While initiation procedures continued in the rural areas, the city offered new ways of breaking away from the gerontocracy which rendered young people powerless.

Young people want to become men. They aspire to have power. In precolonial and rural Africa, power was in the hands of the elders of the communities. Part of the struggle for a young person is to be respected, independent, wealthy and influential. The want for power and the desire to be regarded as a man was of the highest importance to young males, as it is today. The arrival of the British, Germans and French provided new avenues for the rebellious characteristics of a young person to be expressed. Cities gave them a place to escape to, to seek independence and to remove themselves from the ageist structures which both restricted and embarrassed them. The culture of young people was allowed to take a form on its own accord aided by the missionary schools. Education gave some young people the confidence and belief which gave them an arrogant ‘I know all’ attitude. Coupled with the new bureaucratic jobs available to them, it created The Legit Men who created their own cultures.

While the Legit Men found independence through well-paid jobs, The Non-Legit man gained an unparalleled respect through blood, sweat and tears. Gang culture gave these young men who did not get an education or job – most of whom had no direct contact with parents (some ran away, others were abandoned) – a hard way of life which gave them prestige and pride which they could find no where else. The culture of youth for these people changed in the twentieth century because the colonial system had failed them. Glaser points out that “[y]outh gangs were likely to emerge in any urban environment that included a substantial population of poor city-bred youth with limited employment possibilities and lack of adequate housing, schooling, and recreation facilities.” This is echoed by Richard Waller’s explanation for the spivs who grew within urban centres.

The Non-Legit Man and his gang were borne by the dark and dirty urban environment. This failure, though, was the best thing that could happen for the culture itself. It gave birth to the rebellious sounds of African music and inspired artists. The films and posters brought into the region also led to a fashion revolution especially in the 1940s and 50s when tsotsis began to emulate the American city-slicker.

It was fashionable to be gangster. To be sent to jail is cool. To rob an old woman is money. To kill a man is virtuous. The attitudes of young people defined their culture. This law-breaking attitude and evil notions of masculinity owes its birth to the capitalist colonial administration. This is not to say that Western capitalism and imperialism is all to blame, or that indigenous people were not responsible for gang culture. One of the most extreme versions of gang culture, the culture needed for a civil war, was established by the rebels and soldiers in Sierra Leone, for example. Recruiting and capturing young people readying them for war and throwing them on the front line, culture and the way of life for these kids were brotherhood, nationhood, guns, drugs, rape and alcohol. In this case the culture of youth, or some might argue the absence of culture, was again defined by the socio-political conditions of the country. This time the rebellious youth expressed themselves militarily, moulded by men who had never grown.

It is crucial to remember, though, that in spite of the negative portrayals of young people, many did well and worked within the system. Those involved in the Boy Scout programmes participated in this British export because they really enjoyed it. It was not successful as a colonial tool for subsuming the population, but it did show that there were good things to come from colonial masters. And in the latter part of the twentieth century, especially since the 1970s, the spotlight turned to student political activists. At that point, the culture of young people seemed to suddenly turn smart. Again it highlights how the perceived culture of young people changed according with the political issues of the time and the political strategies of those political actors. Culture was expressed at various points in the day and in all sorts of activities, as Richard Waller notes that “[t]hrough music and dance, dress, sport, alcohol and the cinema, on the street and in the clubs, the young sought to fashion themselves, to create meaning, community and identity.”
Through all their activities, whether it was scouting or choir singing, pubbing or pick-pocketing, student politics or football, young people sought recognition and power through their way of life and their culture.

FOREVER REBELLIOUS

To conclude, young people’s culture has evidently expanded and diversified and recreated itself. This process of change was not a gradual process through history, instead it redefined itself in sudden spurts. Colonialism brought young people to urban centres and gave them new ways to express themselves. What must be noted is the fact that throughout this article I have examined the changing nature of youth culture with no mention of females. This is because the culture itself was defined by male activities. It also points out that the view of what ‘youth culture’ is was and is determined by the major political actors within society. Quiet women who stayed at home and did usual everyday activities were not of interest because they did not bring scorn to the people, nor did they get the attention of those involved in politics. Young people’s culture will be forever rebellious, but let us remember that we focus on the loudest and most contentious young people, while leaving the good and quiet ones unheard.