Painting in Turbulent Times: House Wall Art, Culture, and Commentary in Colonial East Africa

Under Ningachi's guidance we inspected more than one Makonde village. They are picturesque—not even envy can gainsay that; but not one of the wretched, airy, round huts, in which the generations of these people dream away their dim lives is comfortable even according to the modest standard of the native. They are not even plastered with clay, in the usual fashion, and this of itself makes fresco decoration impossible. In one sense this fact is a relief to me, when I think of the miles I have tramped at other times, on hearing of beautifully painted houses in such and such a village. Painted they were, but the beauty was a matter of taste. We do not admire the scrawls of our children, and just such—clumsy, rudimentary, utterly devoid of perspective—are these beginnings of native art. In fact, wherever artistically untrained man gives way to the universal instinct of scribbling over all accessible surfaces, whether blank walls or smooth rocks, the result is very much the same, whether produced by the European tramp or street-boy, or my Wangoni and Makua.

—Karl Weule (1909: 366)

But one thing is certain, none of them can nowadays be considered a genuine tribal mark. The novice inclined to look at them as such, till taught better, as I was in a most compendious way by old Makachu. This venerable man is covered all over with the same sort of pattern as those displayed by the women, although some of his are much the worse for wear. I asked him why he was thus decorated, expecting to receive a long dissertation on tribal marks and similar institutions, and was somewhat taken aback when he merely said "Ninapenda" ("because I like it so").

—Karl Weule (1909: 360).

What did it mean to adorn one's home walls with paintings during the heyday of colonialism? Although lacking in appreciation, these quotes of Karl Weule show that he was one of several who noted a widespread pattern of house wall painting among communities in central East Africa during the colonial period. Wall painting was a feature that received little attention during its time and in subsequent scholarship. This article offers a preliminary analysis of wall painting found in parts of central East Africa during the heyday of colonialism between the 1900s–1960s. Home wall painting was far from "child-like" or "quaint," as some colonial ethnographers would have it. Rather, it was an important popular arts tradition.¹ My research collects and analyzes available period documentary and photographic depictions of house wall-art found in present day southern and central Tanzania, Malawi, and northern Mozambique. Precise readings of wall painting are undeniably difficult and subsequent research will undoubtedly deepen present understandings. Nonetheless, this article proposes that wall painting fulfilled a variety of purposes that likely included important roles as media for cultural messages and political critiques. With similar examples found across many cultures, house wall painting was a popular arts tradition apparently tied to neither "ethnic" nor nascent national identities, making it an important example of rural, "average" peoples' popular culture during this period.

As this article's second epigraph relates, there were layers of meaning (as well as possible misunderstanding) found in the colonial encounter with visual arts. When he confronted the Makonde elder, the German ethnographer Karl Weule expected to hear that body art tattoos corresponded to tribal demarcations, a perspective much in keeping with colonial period reductionist thinking about "ethnicity" in Africa (Ranger 1993; Mamdani 1996). Instead, Weule acknowledged the rebuke he received: "because I like it so" (Weule 1909: 366). Missing in this exchange was the vital question of why this elder liked body art. As with tattoo traditions, wall art's popularity may have spoken to individual or cultural aesthetics,

1.

Photograph that Weule titled "Fresco on the Wall of a Hut at Akundonde's, Representing Two Europeans with Their Escort: the Work of a Yao Boy" (Weule 1909: 185). This is the single photograph that Weule deliberately took of...