394
A F
RICA
pression that they're carrying vases of flowers on their heads. The
fabrics, as I said before, are barbarically colored and patterned; but an
expert eye can not help but notice that this barbarousness is a second
hand product, that is, it is a
barbarousnes~
filtered through the pictorial
experiences of the European
avant garde.
The open markets offer
in·
numerable bolts of these fabrics piled up on the sidewalks; I stop and
have some of them shown to me. They are of very crude cotton, the
price is very low; yet to have brought about the mixture of such violent
and new colors and such extravagant and seductive patterns, one feels
that the primitivism of Gauguin, cubism and
Cart negre
were needed.
Made in Manchester or in Holland, these fabrics interpret and, at the
same time, stimulate the Africans' passion for the violent colors that
always produce such a beautiful effect with their black skin.
I stroll along admiring the sight of all those men and women
strutting down the dusty street in the scorching sun with their togas
and their evening dresses, in an atmosphere of perpetual proud holiday;
and then suddenly I remember something: those printed cotton fabrics
that were shown to me during my trip to Russia in the
combinat
of
Tashkent in central Soviet Asia. Placed side by side with the English and
Dutch fabrics which the Africans of Accra wear, there is no doubt that
the Soviet fabrics, printed in colors and fabrics that are drab and old–
fashioned, would make a very poor impression. So there is reason to
believe that these fabrics and in general all the products of Western
light industry have paved the way, in a cultural and psychological
sense, for neo-capitalist influence in Africa, while the well-known lack
of Soviet light industry has produced the opposite effect as far as the
ideological and political expansion of Communism is concerned. Of
course, man does not live by colored fabrics and other similar products
alone, but neither does he live by bull-dozers and tractors, turbines and
excavators. And judging by the joy and pleasure with which the
inhabitants of Accra wrap the multi-colored fabrics around them, one
would say that at least in this part of the world, light industry provides
greater satisfaction for man than heavy industry.
Kano, April
The Negroes walk. I have traveled thousands of kilometers in black
Africa and everywhere, in the uncultivated territories as well as in the
cultivated areas, I have seen single individuals, or couples, a man and
a woman, or small families, or even groups of ten, twenty people of
both sexes and of every age walking in terrible solitude through bound-
