ECAS 2013

This presentation deals with the recent trajectory of the making of a national hero, Julius Nyerere, former president of socialist Tanzania (1964-1985). Contrary to what today's pervasive discourses circulated in the Tanzanian public space suggest, Nyerere has not always embodied the nation. Contestation and opposition emerged at various moments of his rule and his political action was put under harsh criticism. It is only since the early 2000s that Tanzania has witnessed the return of Nyerere as a national persona. A posthumous historical memory of Nyerere is being built by various actors (the state, the media, common citizens) and at various levels (from the local to the national) through different "places" of memory, taking the shape of myth-building and personality cult, or 'Nyerere-philia'. The presentation specifically addresses explores how the Tanzanian post-socialist context is a key factor to capture the making of Nyerere as a national hero, analyzing how, in Nyerere National Museum and during the 50th anniversary of independence in 2011, the state's objective met with, or was challenged by, citizens' interpretation of the significance of Nyerere, that is, imagining political morality in a demoralised national context.

The making, disappearance or reinvention of heroes reveal, beyond the latter's particular characters, specific sequences of nation-building and state formation. The relationship heroes thus establish between state(s) and society(ies) raises, at least, three sets of questions. First, how and above all by whom some figures or groups are proclaimed, reinvented or erased as national heroes? The second question revolves around the term 'nation': which nation is at stake? By which processes nations and heroes are defining each other? A third important question to be raised concerns the circumstances in which heroes appear or disappear in national and official historiographies. Heroes' images are not only reshaped under particular historical contexts, but also manipulated in order to support and legitimate specific political, ideological, social or economic projects.

Out of the Ethiopian case, this paper connects sequences of state/nation-building on the one hand, and the (re)invention of national heroes on the other. Based above all on official empirical material (speeches, interviews, national celebrations), I propose an interpretation of the mechanisms through which heroes are being exhibited by the EPRDF, the leading party since 1991.

Complex state/nation-building strategies reveal multiform uses of past, reinvented and new national heroes under the new regime. These complete rather than exclude each other, showing how successive regimes can to reinvent heroes, and how these national figures remain malleable. The study of national heroes thus reveals the perception of the nation by officials, and how these aim at using heroes in order to legitimize their control of the state.

Their exact names usually are not well-known even inside the country, although everybody knows what does it mean "Bisesero" or "Nyange school". They are not political leaders, intellectuals or icons of anticolonaialist movements. The majority of them are just common peasants or students. During the genocide 1994 or the following turbulent years they refused to die submissively or to take part in massacres. Some of them were fighting against Interahamwe squadrons with stones and sticks, others - were hiding the Tutsis in their houses with a risqué to their own lives. There were also those who refused to separate on Hutus and Tutsis in response to demand of militiamen and were all murdered.

In Kigali Memorial Centre you can find the special stand devoted to resistance to genocide. There were made also a number of movies in the post-genocide era about the people who resisted or at least refused to kill and hate ("Love Letter to My Country", 2006; «We Are All Rwandans», 2008).

The collective national hero of "New Rwanda" is the common Rwandan who fights or did fight against the "genocide ideology" (the term is legalized through modern Rwandan law) and practice.

The exciting stories about those who have choose humanity in the midst of collective madness often paying for that rather high price serve as the base of new nationalist ideology and project of national reconciliation. They act as images of heroism and humanism, courage and determination, realizing the expectancies for the national renaissance and recovery from the collective psychological trauma.

The legacies of the liberation struggle and its heroes continue to impact politics in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. All three governments of these Southern African countries perform hero worshipping of former liberation fighters, albeit in different ways and intensities. We go beyond the mere assumption that the liberation fight and its legacies play a crucial role and provide empirical evidence for this claim through a three step analysis: First, we provide figures on the composition of cabinets since independence, showing that more than half of today's cabinet members have actively participated in the liberation fight and are often considered as liberation heroes in their countries. Second, to shed light into the emergence of a liberation hero narrative, we compare recent election manifestos of the liberation-movement-turned-parties with older documents of the movements and show how their rhetoric changed over time. In a third step, we contrast these findings with practical politics and find core differences across our cases, which allows us to draw some conclusions on the contexts that facilitate the emergence of heroes.

Literature - both oral and written - is one of the most prominent places for the reflection and creation of discourses about important social roles like that of the hero. Literature from West Africa in French and Bambara has produced several great heroes like Soundiata Keita and Biton Koulibali. Likewise it has also brought life to a number of anti-heroes like Fama Doumbouya in Ahmadou Kourouma's "Les soleils des indépendances". An important role in the creation of the hero is the character of the Griot - the historian, artist and consultant. By the power of his words and music he gives strength to the others to behave like a hero.

How to become a hero? How to become an anti-hero? How do literary texts reflect these questions? Becoming a hero is both a solitary and cooperative process. Initially it appears as if heroes in the post-colonial literatures become increasingly more like anti-heroes. Are there nevertheless signs or examples of a new type of hero and do Griots still play a role in giving them life?

This paper presents a number of central literary texts which deal with the importance of the Griot - hero relation and shows literary strategies like praise singing, historical story telling, caricature and satire by Griots both as characters in the texts and also as authors of the texts.

Africans have few heroes to identify with, and this paper has as its core the thesis that sports furnishes the most pertinent of all heroes for Africans, especially African youth. The time of the political heroes seems more or less over, the continent's present giants all seem to have clay feet, the media are a force in their own in bringing heroes down, so the prime type of hero now in Africa are the big time sportsmen. Africa's sports base is very narrow - just a few sports - so just a small number of sports serve as the repositories of popular heroes,mainly football players and athletes. Speaking from a personal experience in African sports administration, I will try to show how this type of hero is easily made, quite steadfast and through his or her extreme visibility very suited as the New African Hero. More than the political power figures, these icons embody most of the ideals of the present youth. It also shows, that this production of heroes or icons, is highly dependent on a globalised situation, in which what is important in Africa resonates with the exploits of their heroes in Europe. The globalisation of heroism seems to elad to a new dependency.