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Two polemics related to whites blacks have broken out in Belgium, one because of a theme party at the foot of the Africa Museum on August 4, the other because of a carnival that defends his "wild ".
The blackface, as a colonial and racist depiction of the black man, describes him as " incapable, vulgar and dangerous, too idiotic to represent himself ". The practice, which persists in Belgium and the Netherlands, is denounced in these terms by a petition addressed to Unesco by a Belgian collective, Brussels Panthères . On the other hand, the organizer of a costume party, where appeared on August 4 in Brussels a man in blackface, candidly asks the question: " We can still use Africa as a dress code, right ? "
The "Afro House" evening of August 4th is all the more vague as it was held in the park of Tervuren in Brussels, at the foot of the Africa Museum . This building, a vestige of the era of King Leopold II and the Belgian Congo, reopened in December, after five years of work and a grooming supposed to make it less colonial. Problem: the party was decorated with skulls stuck on pickets, and a dress code inviting to think " colorful prints, African, Wakanda, the undermining, Africa of the future ". The photos posted on the social networks have rather showed an Africa of the past, with party-goers in Swahili cloths, tight dresses leopard and ... beige Saharan. One man dared the blackface, and another the colonial helmet.
" Explain to me how this kind of event still exists in 2019 at the Africa Museum ? Would management or teams be under Xanax ? This comment was posted on his Facebook page by the Brussels coffee association Café Congo , which intends to " reflect on current Belgian-Congolese relations ".
A podium transformed into a macabre altar
Reply from a Flemish daily De Morgen : " An ignorant moron does not make the mass. For its part, the Africa Museum was embarrassed. On the day of the party, he posted a post on Facebook to decline responsibility in advance, not being the organizer, while wishing everyone " fun ". After three days of controversy, the museum acknowledged an error in judgment, regretted that it did not set clearer conditions and announced that it was working on " an ethical action plan so that it would not happen in the future ".
Dorcy Rugamba , a Rwandan playwright based in Brussels, wonders. " Imagine a Yiddish themed party with guys in striped outfits and lots of bones? Not only do these people wear colonial helmets, but they claim the worst crimes by making their Afro House podium a macabre altar, with skulls on a stake. Here we are in front of Kurtz's hut, Conrad's ivory collector and collector in his novel Au coeur des ténèbres (1899, Editor's note). We are beyond the blackface, in total contempt at the foot of the Africa Museum. There are pieces representing the souls of African peoples, thus desecrated because they serve the worst of speeches here. ".
Carnivals with " outings of negroes " and " wild "
The controversy is telescope with another, which bears on a well-established tradition. Carnivals have been held since the middle of the nineteenth century, from Dunkirk (" Black Nights ") to villages in Wallonia, featuring "outings of Negroes" and figures of "wild". In other words, whites in black and stuffed with the most stereotyped accessories, including a ring in the nose.
The collective Brussels Panthères, a movement "political, anti-racist and decolonial" created in 2013 by a dozen Afro-descendants of North Africa, had dissuaded in September 2018 the organizing committee of the Ducasse Culants, in the small Walloon city of the Two Acren, to proceed to his ritual "Release of the Negroes". " We sent an email to the bourgmestre to say that seeing people daubed in black and dressed in tribal costumes should stop , says Mouhad Reghif, spokesman for Brussels Panthers, and that we try to stop the activities by all means required. The burgomaster climbed on his great horses and called the federal police, but the organizing committee decided to cancel it for a quiet carnival. The " Release of the Negroes " was renamed this year " Out of the devils ", without it being known yet how they will be disguised ".
Hate messages
This year, the group wrote a letter to the director general of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, to alert him to the racist nature of the "wild" of the Ducasse of Ath. Since 2005, Unesco has been listed as an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, because of its figures of giants and dragons, the carnival presents on its site the figure "chained and agitated" of the Wild as a " testimony of the taste of the exoticism of the 19th century ". The missive is also a petition, relayed by the Decolonial International Network (DIN) in Amsterdam and signed by a hundred people, including the Frantz Fanon Foundation, the Anti-Negrophobia Brigade (France), Stop Blackface (Netherlands) and number of academics including Françoise Vergès and Olivier Lecour Grandmaison.
The Brussels collective intends to carry out actions (in clear, distribute leaflets and talk to people) during the Ducasse d'Ath, on August 23rd, 24th and 25th. Again, the mayor responded by asking for police reinforcements. Messages of support, but especially of hate break on the Facebook page of the Brussels Panthères, on the part of inhabitants of Ath who defend the "savage". " We are identified as Arabs and Muslims ," explains Mouhad Reghif. For example, a message says, " If you take away the wild, will you stop eating halal and torturing the sheep ? ". In addition, one of the members of Brussels Panther has been questioned in recent weeks by the federal police, following a complaint by the mayor of Deux Acren for terrorist threat.
The power of colonial propaganda
" We are witnessing a dialogue of the deaf , analyzes Martin Vander Elst, anthropologist at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, between activists who want to lay the foundations of a society free of colonial stereotypes, and opposite, people who do not want to ask questions. The defenders of the Ath savage fully identify with a folklore they can not trace the colonial genealogy or perceive specific racism. "
Denial, ignorance? The blockage comes, according to this expert, from the fact that the Belgians repressed the colonial fact, or even are nostalgic, because it was the object of a very strong propaganda. " In the absence of colonized for a very long time on the territory of the metropolis, the only stories were those of human zoos and other ethnological spectacles of universal exhibitions. That of 1897 attracted nearly two million visitors on the outskirts of Brussels. At the time, there were six million Belgians. In other words, one in three Belgians discovered the other in a cage by throwing peanuts at him ! Class visits to the Tervuren Museum, before its renovation, were the only contact of several generations with Africa . "Conlusion of Martin Vander Elst:" Sixty years after the independence of Congo, these practices reproduce as if they were self-evident, which inevitably raises questions ".
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