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Gibson Nyikadzino-Correspondent
THE British, after using physical force on Africans through colonisation, have fully resorted to exporting their culture through institutions of soft power.
In an era where technology has led to improved networking and interconnectedness of the people the world over, its downside has been how the neo-colonial systems have used it to spread their cultural propaganda.
Today this power is being exercised over Africa through foreign scholarships and fellowship programmes being offered to locals to go and study abroad, gain new knowledge and help in re-imagining the future of the world with the “rest of the world”.
It appears as if the world is moving towards a new social contract in which education can be used to achieve similar goals, but for the developing world, it is being duped by the creation of a false cultural consciousness peddled under the “in this together” belief.
Big powers have in the past few years started paying special attention and importance to the use of culture and education as effective instruments or sources of soft power.
By exporting their culture through education and culture, there has been a replacement of violence in the physical form to one in the psychological form to which the escapism from that trap has wreaked havoc in the minds of many.
The main reason for this is less economic and directly more political.
The British Council’s objective
It was in November of 1934 that the British Council was founded on the initiative of Britain’s Foreign Office “to promote abroad a wider appreciation of British culture”, to which Africa has become a victim of this cultural appreciation.
The decision to have the British Council was arrived at after the British realised they needed to design an institution to conduct its cultural propaganda overseas on behalf of the British government.
Britain was also having a growing realisation of the need for new measures to manage its aggressive foreign propaganda that harmed its interests and prestige.
The new alternative approach that the British Council offered was the use of culture and cultural propaganda, which is the dissemination of British ideals in a general and also “political form” to improve the British standing in international politics.
Recruiting Zimbabwean artistes?
A few weeks back, an electronic flyer or advertisement purporting to have originated from the British Council with a call to recruit Zimbabwean journalists, musicians, poets and content creators generated a lot of debate on social media platforms.
Opposing views were flown, with many people making contributions that were at variance with each other. Today, the issue is not yet resolved.
A thorough search on the social media handles of the British Council however, did not show that flyer, unless this writer erroneously omitted such.
This, however, does not vindicate this propaganda institution. It has the appetite to use its culture for political objectives. Poets, musicians, journalists, content creators and creatives are a key constituency for any society.
They are a constituency that has also been vulnerable to external influences through the cultural exchange tag where the British Council only want to pour and impose elite views that do not reflect what happens in the context of the Zimbabwean culture.
A lot of technological and technical propaganda has been used in the culture industry by the British Council to sanitise the colonial empire’s tainted history of colonial subjugation.
As such, some of the local artistes have surrendered the prowess of their culture to technology.
Conquered by “technopoly”
The term technopoly was coined around 1992 to describe the “surrender of one’s culture to technology” which is impossible without the integration of propaganda.
The influx of technology and digital media applications over the last 15 years has signalled a possible danger to the cultures of nations of the south.
An economic model predicated on generating revenue through the use of digital platforms, themselves instruments of alien cultures, has created a reliance on creativity that is not supported by the cornerstones of African culture, but only to the cultural whims of the new coloniser, that is culture.
Through various programmes, the British Council has done more harm to the traditional culture of Africa, Zimbabwe in particular.
Because it is a tool of British cultural propaganda, some of the concepts to promote local culture and the technological devices are not congenial to African context and have rather helped to reduce African cultural values to a zero mark.
To the traditional conduct of foreign affairs, what the British Council does is referred to as the practice of cultural diplomacy.
However, where there are no visible cultural exchange programmes to benefit the artistes, giving them sustainability initiatives, local artistes have been subsumed into thinking Western culture is all they need to progress.
No to cultural misconduct
The idea of cultural exchanges and interculturalism as espoused by the British Council has little results other than it being a propaganda and psychological warfare being organised through the process of persuasion.
The agenda of these exchanges have also been primarily said to be creating international opportunities “for the people of the UK and other countries and build trust between them worldwide.”
It is an unfathomable lie, one that artistes should never fall for when the instrument of British soft power, the British Council, says it prioritises cultural exchanges with other people of other nations. That claim is insincere.
There is no equal appreciation of cultures of the world as the British Council intends to promote “cultural diplomacy” to only suit the interests of the British by subduing the “weaker cultures” which are never adopted into the British mainstream.
Africans have fought and struggled to protect their cultural identity for decades and letting the resonance of the thumb piano, the sweet symphony of the mbakumba and mhande music be substituted by the commodified culture of the West is a prima facie case of cultural misconduct.
To understand the importance of the local culture is to understand why the British Council has particular interest in what it calls “cultural exchange” or “interculturalism” leading to many of Zimbabwe’s poets, musicians, content creators and sculptors being lured to the British corner.
It is high time to warn local artistes that the British Council is a political and not cultural organisation that is saturated with enticing culturally persuasive messages, but drawing the African talent into a whirlpool of narcissism, confusion and distraction.
This cultural propaganda is only there to serve and enhance British influence and prestige at the expense of our local talents.
Local culture centres and institutions of soft power such as tertiary schools, colleges of music, theatres and poetry halls should be adequately funded and equipped with appropriate cultural components that advance the narrative of locals to avoid the pitfalls of self-consciousness.
Online Reporter