Dialogues: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Dead End Of Modern DayJournalism in Nigeria/The Golden rhino

Did Dele Giwa smoke tobacco? Is the image of journalists depicted here, not that of pre-internet Hollywood ?

Some journalists are bloggers but are all bloggers journalists?

If not, what distinguishes one from the other

I suspect that this is a big issue in journalism courses.

On a different note, yesterday I opened Francois - Xavier Fauvelle's

The Golden Rhinoceros, published by Princeton in 2018. This is a book of thirty four segments,

each about 7 to 10 pages, on diverse iconic sites and narratives about Africa. By page 134, there

were only about four or five major incidents of Eurocentric dogma. Not bad, considering

the stuff that we normally have to put up with.

His first chapter is about "the tribulations of two Chinese in Africa" and after reading the chapter twice, I just couldn't see

what the tribulations actually were. I take it that he is referring to Zheng He who reached Africa twice in the fifth and sixth

voyages of 1417 and 1421, at Somalia and Kenya. But what tribulation did he face? Then there is Ma Huan

who probably never set foot in Africa. Tese are his references in the chapter but I guess he just wanted to use

" tribulations" and "Africa" in the same sentence, and didn't think it necessary to back up his statement.

But what began as a reasonable account of ancient South Africa pp. 135- 141, turned into the usual eurocentric dismissal of African ingenuity, artistic experimentation and creativity. Fauvelle concludes that since the South African "golden rhinoceros" had one horn- typical of the Indian and Javanese rhinos - and not two, like the African rhino, the core of the object was an import. Says he:

"We will thus stick with the hypothesis that the wooden figurine was perhaps made elsewhere than Africa and was

gilded on the banks of the Limpopo as a sign of its appropriation by royalty." p.140.

I went back to a video I did on Ancient South African golden artifacts to get my bearings.

The ancient South Africans made gold beads, gold nails, gold bracelets and anklets and yes, golden rhinos.

I saw these exquisite objects at the University of Pretoria and also at the Mapungubwe Museum in Limpopo province:

www.vimeo.com/184536252

Now it seems that in some African rhinos, the second horn looks like a stump. It is longer in others.

But even if there were no single- horned rhinos in Southern Africa, too - and we can't even be dead sure of this - why

wouldn't/couldn't /shouldn't the craftsman - metallurgist symbolize the double horn in a single- horn representation?

Africans are progenitors of abstract art, so a little bit of abstraction would not be out of the realm of

the possible. Right? To place the Golden Rhinoceros. on the cover , as an icon of Africa,

and then make this spurious claim, really fits in with the underlying philosophy of the text, even though the author

plays nice, here and there, throughout the text.

It is important to note, though, that the detailed bibliographic references are major assets of the text.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

University of Texas at Austin

2019 Distinguished Africanist Award

New York African Studies Association

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM <chidi.opara@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2019 1:07 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Dead End Of Modern DayJournalism in Nigeria: