Colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa introduced conflict across gender, race, class, and sexuality. By the 1950’s, Witchcraft also became a major point of contention among the discourse between colonialists and natives' political movements. This article addresses the discourses regarding natives and colonialists in Sub-Saharan Africa drawing from film sources such as Mama Africa: Riches, and written sources such as Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga and Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Sex and Class in Kenya by Carolyn Martin Shaw. Presentations conducted by Dr. S. Clarke-Ekong and students also outline and further exemplify the discourse of decolonization and kinship between natives and colonialists in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Riches, directed by Ingrid Sinclair and part of a series of short films titled Mama Africa, focuses on a schoolteacher’s dreams to live among a “free Africa”, whose hopes are shattered upon the realization of gender discrimination in Botswana. A summary of the film suggests that her problems originate from an inability to indoctrinate herself into the culture of the natives, and ergo, to understand them. Similarly in Carolyn Martin Shaw's work, Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Sex, and Class in Kenya, Shaw draws stark contrast from the ethnographies of Louis Leakey and Jomo Kenyatta, two anthropologists who both claim membership of the Kikuyu tribe in Kenya, but who have had two very different experiences: Leakey's ethnography describes life as a colonialist, while Kenyatta's enthography describes life as a native. Shaw draws her information from a pool of anthropologists and scholars in women’s studies, and her work primarily deals with the region of Kenya. Shaw’s work also studies relationships of comparison and contrast between the Kikuyu and the Maasai tribes of Africa. According to Shaw, Sub-Saharan Africans thrive in three separate classes: the white colonist, the dark-skinned native, and the white landowner, who lives and works the land. Because the third class works so closely with the land, he cannot be aptly described as either colonialist or native. The preferred nomenclature is “afrikaan”.

In Mama Africa: Riches, the character Mollie expresses concerns about feeling that the natives are hostile towards her, an outsider. Similarly in Shaw's work, Leakey and Kenyatta present ethnographies of a colonialist and a native, among the Kikuyu and in the context of the development of a democratic society. While democratic society may be a noble thing for Leakey, Kenyatta describes being sent to the European missionaries to obtain a good education, and then using the knowledge he has gained from the colonialists in order to cause a revolt much later on. Kenyatta's ethnography describes the mixing of african folk living and European education as ingredients necessary to create the perfect man or 'savior' of the Kikuyu. Here he is using education as a tool, blending the useful elements of European culture with his own native African culture to create a better world not only for himself, but for his tribe.

Tsitsi Dangaremba exposes a different facet of this dynamic in her book, Nervous Conditions, as she reveals the struggles she experienced with her brother, who was allowed to go to school, while her own inability to attend school was not regarded with any seriousness. The traditional view of her family and tribe held that the woman’s place was in the home and the fields. According to such an ideology, she would not have the time to think about school after she had finished planting, harvesting, and housechores. In an effort to raise funds to attend school, she plants her own corn to grow and sell. Comparatively, Shaw addresses the woman’s role in the production and distribution of foodstuffs. The Lost Sister, which comes from the ethnographies that Shaw draws from, focuses on a brother’s dependence of his sister’s independence. This underscores the entire system in which the male becomes a “big man” because of the female’s hard work. A twisted example of this is presented when Ngamo gives away mealies to the other people in their age group, and gains favor from others by stealing them from Tambu. Ngamo makes himself look impressive to others at the expense of his sister. Between Tambu and Ngamo, an underlying kinship connection also exists. Ngamo’s death leads their mother to conclude that Western education not only deprived him of his native tongue, but that it also caused him to drift further apart from his family, from familial duties (which Tambu finds disrespectful and lazy), until it eventually claimed his life. For this reason their mother was opposed to Tambu “taking Ngamo’s place”.

Shaw also deals extensively with sexual morality and women’s role in society, and the U.S. media’s handling of the Mau-Mau movement. Shaw addresses the importance of pre-marital virginity in Kenya. In native defense, her sources provide a type of sexual play that enabled members of the same age group to express their sexuality while preserving virginity. Among the Kikuyu of Kenya, all who remain virgins in a community where sexual play is commonplace exhibit strength of character. However, European missionaries looked upon Sub-Saharan African sexual play with disapproving eyes and began to enforce changes. Several ethnographies address an increased amount of unwed women with children that quickly followed the adjustments made by European missionaries. According to the student presentations on Zimbabwe, virginity was also highly desired. It would often yield a promising bride price because many men believed that having sex with a virgin would cure sexually transmitted diseases.

The Mau-Mau movement, begun by Jomo Kenyatta (a Kikuyu anthropologist who later became a president of Kenya), created a split among the Kikuyu into two groups: loyalists (supporters of the government) and separatists (supporters of Mau-Mau). The New York Times, Newsweek, and Time magazines covered the Mau-Mau movement in Kenya between the 1950’s and 1960’s, but Time magazine were the most detailed in their coverage of the Mau-Mau oaths. These oaths were killing oaths, sworn by members to go after white landholders in Kenya. According to Shaw, these oaths comprised of a mixture of European witchcraft and native nationalism.

The rituals, sometimes so brutal and appalling that they even repulsed members of the Mau-Mau, were contrived to instill fear in Europeans and colonialists. The American magazines, however, treat the subject as though Kenya was ‘rolling back in time’, associating witchcraft with primitivism (yet fail to address that the witchcraft involved in the Mau-Mau oath rituals was of a European legacy, and not an African one).

Dr. S. Clarke-Ekong's lecture on Nigeria and a series of short, student presentations regarding Rhodesia, what is now Zimbabwe, stressed that “one cannot understand Africa without first knowing African history, and in order to understand African history one must first understand colonialism.” Sub-Saharan Africa endured great change with the rise of colonialism. Education is often considered a very positive thing, but in the context of changing kinship ties, and how members of the same family treat each other differently when Western education is absorbed into the framework of the native’s life (i.e. Ngamo, Jomo Kenyatta, Louis Leakey), it changes them indefinitely. Louis Leakey and Jomo Kenyatta, both of whom were Kikuyu anthropologists, wrote very biased ethnographies that were of little worth except for their ability to build a future by presenting perspectives that are best defined as “colonialist vs. native”. Kenyatta utilized his European education as a weapon against later Europeans through the function of the Mau-Mau movement. Like many subjects that focus on, or contain few elements of witchcraft and the occult, the Mau-Mau movement gained “a primitive angle” of news coverage by the U.S. media. Virginity also played a vital role of morality in Sub-Saharan Africa, which became severely compromised with the arrival of European missionaries. Understanding the discourse of kinship across race, class, and gender become exceedingly clear once we understand the histories which lead to the present.