Film-maker Moabi Mogorosi has an ambitious plan to revive local arts, especially storytelling, out of conviction that no society can reach its full potential without developing its arts.
For all his unassuming nature and quiet demeanour, Moabi Mogorosi is a man of lofty ideas.
I have done everything ÔÇô pestered, arm-twisted, blackmailed, dragooned, and you name it ÔÇô to get him to agree to this interview. Like all good artists I know, he likes to stay in the background and let the spotlight shine on his art, happy that the work will speak for itself ÔÇô and speak better than its creator.
We meet at a colleague’s house, where the duo is editing a TV commercial for a cellular network operator.
Mogorosi has dedicated his life to the revival and preservation of what is possibly the most underrated of art forms in Botswana ÔÇô storytelling, which incidentally forms the central theme of his first movie, Hot Chilli. Infact, story-telling in its undiluted sense, is the basis for his two major pursuits ÔÇô theatre and film making. So deep runs this passion that in 1994, with the assistance of David Slater, he ran Botswana’s first storytelling festival. Seeking to ride on the success of the festival, he later founded an arts group, Setso, which was made up of dancers, musicians, and storytellers. However, when he left to study in the United States in 1995, the group collapsed. Now and again, he sees some remnants of the group ÔÇô a reminder, perhaps, that the idea must not be allowed to die.
Mogorosi’s thing with storytelling goes back home to his upbringing.
“My grandmother told us stories each day,” he relates the common fireside tradition of many a homestead in the countryside, under the stars.
His mother, a retired primary school teacher, found that her pupils grasped concepts better and faster when she weaved stories into her lessons. There was no escaping the influence of the two matriarchal figures who held so much sway in his childhood. He even got his mother to make a performance at the storytelling festival.
“There is a tradition of women storytellers in the family, and I am the first generation of men to take the art,” he says. “I took the stories from the fireside to the stage and film.”
He observes that there is no family without stories, which is why he enjoys collaborating with others who share his passion. Such collaborative efforts are always an enriching experience with each bringing their own interpretation or a slight variation to the line, learnt way back from a figure who perhaps has since departed this world.
Mogorosi states that storytelling is the foundation of Botswana’s arts. It informs and feeds into other art forms such as dance and music. He talks of its central place in imparting society’s values and ethos.
“To locate ourselves as a nation we need to go back to this important art, and not to discard it as an outdated fireside leisure pursuit,” he says. “Our being lies there. I find that as a young artist for me to be original I need to go back to storytelling. I can’t do anything in a vacuum. Storytelling is where I derive my inspiration.”
He argues that every society has its being, which shapes its character and gives it its uniqueness.
A typical example of the past being a foundation for the present is how traditional storytelling flows into Mogorosi’s filmmaking work.
“When I studied in the United States, I found that some of my not so good short films were the ones that I had located in the United States. But when I located them in traditional stories, something good always came out. That was when I consciously decided to go there and make storytelling the basis of what I do ÔÇô be it film, theatre, or anything to do with the arts,” he says. “Other countries colonize us through their stories, which we watch in the cinemas as movies. Even TV news coverage is packaged to project a certain national perspective. It’s storytelling in a different form,” he says.
I hear echoes of the debate on how media content and well-chosen perspective shape ÔÇô and in sometimes cases, even reinforce ÔÇô perceptions. The bias in writing history begins in coverage of events, so the line goes.
“We need to cultivate this art from the roots and be true to ourselves so that where we come from shapes and informs our modern stories,” Mogorosi says. “This is what should inform our vision and when it does, the path will become much clearer. At all times, we need to ask ourselves who we are and keep going back to our roots. In everything I do, I go back to our stories. It’s my base.”
Having studied Film and Video Production in the United States, he is in the final stage of a Master’s in Dramatic Arts which he is studying with South Africa’s Wits University. His MA research project was whether Basarwa storytelling and dance can be used as a medium to address HIV/AIDS and other social ills. To do the research, he went to live with a family in New Xade.
He found that involvement of everyone ÔÇô elders and the youth ÔÇô in shaping the drama was key to the acceptance of its message. Everyone became part of the solution, not just spectators. Though more research is still needed, he is confident that the medium of storytelling can be replicated to reach out to other audiences. It goes back to the essence storytelling in a traditional setting ÔÇô as a vehicle to impart certain knowledge.
In an age where there is so much flow of cultural influences, some would even question the relevance of wanting to preserve a relic like traditional storytelling. Mogorosi wants this to be understood within a broader context, beyond just preserving a cultural practice ÔÇô “It’s to have a base to build on”, he says.
“Our past is our foundation,” he argues. “Unfortunately, we have discarded everything, including the good things that we could have built on. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in our architecture. We discarded thatch because we associated it with backwardness, yet people who come from the west and choose to settle here find that indeed thatch is good for our climate. We rushed to embrace corrugated iron, which is incompatible with our hot climate. The result is that our homes are uncomfortable. We should have improved on our traditional way of building without discarding everything. That should have informed our architecture and given it character. Every nation has its unique architectural stamp, except us. Instead what you see in Botswana is confusion that comes from low self-esteem. Our buildings borrow from all over, but there is nothing that gives them a distinct Tswana character.”
To seek to preserve an art whose foremost practitioners are either dead or aging is a big challenge by itself. Now add to that the lack of respect for the art in question, and you have an idea what Mogorosi is up against. But he is unfazed in the conviction that some respectability can be restored to storytelling. He has seen it happen in other countries that those who possess unique indigenous knowledge are revered and earn a decent living.
“Unfortunately, we still do not see beyond the recreational value of our arts; that they are a repository of our ethos,” he says. “In other countries this is a pursuit that is taken very seriously as a form of livelihood. In Botswana people who have these skills are not given recognition. That is why many of them will die unknown. But that doesn’t mean that we should give up.”
In the spirit of not giving up, he has founded Mogolokwane Arts Academy to reignite the flame of different forms of the arts, and recapture the mood that used to be generated by groups such as Baranodi, Reetsanang, and Mambo in the early 1990s. The plan is to hold workshops in different facets of the arts such storytelling, film, dance, or theatre. The first workshops will start running this year with resource persons of repute from within and outside Botswana.
“We need to revive our arts because no society has ever reached its full potential without developing its arts,” he says. “The arts are supposed to mirror your society.”
