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Ranga Mataire-Writing Black
A story is told of how Africans migrating to the North had to change their indigenous names to something acceptable to their new environs.
It was a desperate clamour for acceptance and the development was so rampant in entertainment circles. Hollywood, it is said, treated aliens with scorn.
It was at a time when “othering” was not such an unfashionable act.
It is at that time that our very own Thandiwe Newton found herself on the northern shores seeking greener pastures in the entertainment circuit.
In a desperate attempt to fit in her new circumstances, Thandiwe accepted being called Thandie throughout her acting career that spans 30 years and more.
While we welcome her full reckoning or rather her re-awakening, we are not flattered that for over 30 years, she conveniently accepted being called Thandie.
We accept that it’s her personal choice to bastardise her identity but she must never sell us a lie that for 30 years she unwillingly accepted living a lie.
She conveniently liked it and promoted it because at the time it was the most “fashionable” thing to do.
We thus found it amusing when she makes a declaration that after 30 years, her name would be credited in all future projects with its original Zulu-derived spelling.
“That’s my name. It’s always been my name. I am taking it back, what’s mine,” declared madam Newton.
It rather sounds snobbish and a bit disingenuous for a person in her twilight.
Who exactly had stolen her identity that she now wants back? Being famous without intelligence is dangerous because it ingratiates one with some kind of arrogance without deeper knowledge of issues.
Let’s take for example her plunge into Zimbabwean politics where she is exposing her lack of understanding of the intricate issues currently outplaying in the body politic. Years ago, it was fashionable and sellable to bash Zimbabwe but it now sounds rather ridiculous and desperate for one whose charm is waning.
Before her drama, many of us understood the power of names and naming.
This explains why Rhodesia had to change to Zimbabwe. This also explains why many colonial names of roads and buildings had to change and it’s still an ongoing process.
Before Thandie realised that she needed to reclaim her name, we already knew that naming is central to identity. We already knew that to be a person, is amongst other things, to have a name.
We understood history particularly slavery and colonialism. When African slaves landed on the Western shores, they assumed new names given by their slave masters.
The idea was to disconnect them from their umbilical cords of origin. For there is power in naming and names carry with them not just a person’s identity, but all the nuanced aspects of one’s culture.
So renaming the slaves was meant to completely disconnect them from any lineage with fellow slaves and trash any residual linkages of culture with their places of origin.
It was the same with colonialism, which had to rename conquered spaces with names of their heroes. It is not a coincidence that we had and still have names like David Livingstone town, Churchill Road, Salisbury, Fort Victoria and so forth. It was meant to give a homely connection with the Empire, but also to desecrate spaces that Africans revered.
We know why Thandiwe has suddenly realised the importance of embracing one’s names. She thinks it is now fashionable to do so given the global whirlwind of the “BlackLivesMatter” movement.
One cannot be a proponent of the “BlackLivesMatter” while at the same time not embracing one’s authentic name.
We don’t buy the alibi that she assumed the name Thandie because of a spelling mistake, which took away the W in her very first screen credit and she stuck with it since. She was probably referring to the 1991 Australian film “Flirting”, given this was her debut.
The truth of the matter is that there was and is still racism in the entertainment industry in Britain. This, Newton unwittingly reveals when she says that for much of her career and despite changing to Thandie, she felt invisible or being put in a box due to the colour of her skin. Now Thandie tells us that she wants people to “truly see” her and that she doesn’t want to participate in the “objectification of Black people.”
Well, the objectification of black people did not start in 2021. It started long back and it’s still ongoing. Newton did us a disservice by failing to realise this early in her career.
Her mother is the granddaughter of an indigenous Shona chief and she would have emphatically written Back to Empire by embracing her identity earlier in her career. Her embracing of her own identity would have educated a lot of dimwits in the Western hemisphere.
Newton would want us to believe that Thandie was foisted upon her without her choice.
Well, only dunderheads can accept such an alibi. We simply thank God that at least she realised the folly of living a lie.
We await Newton’s forthcoming films “Reminiscence” and “All the Old Knives” both to be released this year, to see her reclaimed true identity.
Online Reporter