JAC 8 (2) pp.

199–214 Intellect Limited 2016

Journal of African Cinemas

Volume 8 Number 2
© 2016 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jac.8.2.199_1

BUNMI OYINSAN
York University

Orality, documentary,
intertextual performance
and discursive practices: A
reading of Ye Wonz Maibel
(Deluge) 1997 by Salem
Mekuria

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article offers a reading of Salem Mekuria’s Ye Wonz Maibel (Deluge), a docu- orality
mentary on the Red Terror in Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam. Mekuria’s film
film critiques notions of objective and scientific truth on which patriarchal nation intertextual
states and revolutionary rhetoric often depend. Mekuria does this by using a genre performance
most associated with objectivity and truth – the documentary. Mekuria uses the documentary
film as an avenue to get herself and her subjects to actively perform their thinking diaspora
through of the traumatic events. The process of active introspection allows Mekuria African women
and her subjects to question official accounts of the events. In presenting her subjects’
voices Mekuria challenges the binary victim/oppressor using the notion of the
African palaver, and other oral traditions such as sem-enna warq (wax and gold),
a major influence in Ethiopian creative expressions. She offers Deluge as a model
for participatory intervention and as a discursive and mediational performance.

199
Bunmi Oyinsan

1. Please see ‘An INTRODUCTION

Address to Miss Phillis
Wheatley’, a poem This article offers a reading of Salem Mekuria’s Ye Wonz Maibel (Deluge), a
composed in her documentary on the Red Terror also known as Qey Shibir in Ethiopia under
honour by Jupiter
Hammon, in 1778 Mengistu Haile Mariam. Mekuria’s film critiques notions of objective and
(http://www.csustan. scientific truth on which patriarchal nation states and revolutionary rheto-
edu/english/reuben/
pal/chap2/hammon_
ric often depend. Mekuria does this by using a genre most associated with
poem.html). Also, in objectivity and truth – the documentary. She uses the film as an avenue to
Phillis Wheatley’s get herself and her subjects to actively perform their thinking through of the
poem entitled: ‘To
the University of traumatic events. The process of active introspection allows Mekuria and her
Cambridge, in New subjects to question official accounts of the events. In presenting her subjects’
England’ she refers to voices she uses various oral traditions such as sem-enna warq (wax and gold),
herself as ‘An Ethiop
tells you …’ (1998). a major influence in Ethiopian creative expressions. She offers Deluge as a
model for participatory intervention and as a discursive and mediational
2. This is because the
late emperor was performance. It is a model that draws on oral modes of calibrating intertex-
himself an iconic tual relationships between texts. The film also demonstrates how through the
figure of inspiration in
the African American
act of telling their stories, participants attempt to shape their individual and
imaginary (Woubshet communal lives.
et al. 2010: 13). To The significance of Mekuria’s film is such that affords an analysis of the
illustrate, Woubshet
et al. cite the example symbolic and symbiotic role of Ethiopia, which is often used to represent the
of Andreas Eshete, a whole continent in the imagination of Africans in diaspora (especially African
foremost intellectual American and the Caribbean). Ethiopia has served as a source of pride and
from Ethiopia who
credits his involvement inspiration for African Americans as illustrated by allusions to it by creative
with the Black Panther writers from as far back as Phillis Wheatley. Wheatley who is possibly the first
Party and SNCC while
studying in the United
black person to publish a book in the English language anywhere in the world,
States as a major like several other writers in diaspora such as Jupiter Hammond, her contem-
inspiration. porary used the word Ethiop or Ethiopia to describe themselves as African
and to represent Africa.1 This sentiment is also reflected in the reception of
the medieval Ethiopian text, the Kәbrä Nägäst, a version of the seduction of
Sheba by Solomon. The Kәbrä Nägäst version of the biblical story is prevalent
amongst continental Africans as well as some Africans in diaspora because
it relates how the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia with Solomon and
Sheba’s offspring, Menelik I. Its popularity among Africans in diaspora is
responsible for the belief of many African Americans and Rastafarians who
hold onto the notion of Ethiopia as the Promised Land.
Ethiopia serves as an icon that represents an entire continent in the imagi-
nation of Africans in diaspora. Its relationship with the African diaspora is also
a symbiotic one and Woubshet et al. attest to how the Civil Rights and Black
Power movements were major sources of inspiration to Ethiopian student radi-
cals who ironically were major participants in the Ethiopian revolution that
toppled Emperor Haile Selassie (2010: 3).2 In an interview with John L. Jackson,
Haile Gerima, an Ethiopian film-maker admits to the influence of the Black
Power Movement in helping him come to a realization of the significance of
his ‘accent and narrative temperament’. This enabled him to strive to bring the
‘folkloric and cultural background’ of his Ethiopian upbringing into his cinema
(2010: 11–12). The folkloric and cultural grounding to which Gerima alludes
cannot be divorced from the orature of the areas in which as a film-maker he
was socialized.
Ethiopia’s modern diaspora began during the late-twentieth century when
the country was beset by famine and abject poverty. Issues like estrangement,
familiarity, kinship, foreignness, loss and longing became common themes
for Ethiopians in diaspora (Woubshet et al. 2010: 10–11). These themes were

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 Orality, documentary, intertextual performance …

also influenced by a desire to speak the unspoken in attempts to make mean-

ing of the traumatic events in Ethiopian history. Mekuria’s film, which was
made from the perspective of an insider/outsider based on her position as an
Ethiopian in diaspora, is reflective of some of the voices which try to re-envi-
sion Ethiopia from diaspora: ‘[P]eople who, in new tongues and new media,
are plumbing the riches of Ethiopia and reflecting on experiences and identi-
ties forged’ (Woubshet et al. 2010: 10–11) outside of the homeland.
In what follows I focus on an analysis of how Mekuria draws on the
language of orature to challenge prevailing ideology in Ethiopia during the
period which the film historicizes as well as during the making of the film.
I then appraise how her use of oral accounts influence her transformation
of the documentary as a genre of cinema. I attempt to demonstrate through
this reading of the film that an analysis through orature enables knowledge
production which would not otherwise be possible.
Deluge offers a rich autobiographical account of Mekuria’s life before
she moved to the United States and it relates the fact that Mekuria’s promi-
nent family had very strong ties with the Church and imperial government
in Ethiopia and so she had access to education and travel abroad. The film
admits that these were opportunities that were not readily available to the
majority of Ethiopians who were forced to live in abject poverty. Mekuria
informs the viewer that she made the film as an Ethiopian woman living in
exile in the United States, having lost her younger brother, Selomon and her
best friend, Negist to the revolution. Deluge, therefore, taps the living memory
of the event in order to help Mekuria, various interviewees and the viewers
confront the Ethiopian crisis.
Deluge starts by relating the events that ousted Emperor Haile Selassie,
the long-time monarch of Ethiopia who served as regent from 1916 to 1930
and reigned from 1930 to 1974. The film is in the form of a personal chroni-
cle of the events that led to the toppling of the Emperor as well as the events
that resulted from it, which lasted about seventeen years starting in the 1970s
and going on into the 1980s. According to Mekuria’s account in the docu-
mentary, towards the end of Selassie’s reign, some of the Ethiopian masses
found themselves contending with devastating famine that was ignored
by bureaucrats on the excuse that they did not want the famine to mar the
monarch’s anniversary. However, in spite of Selassie’s extravagant lifestyle,
Mekuria believes that he was a staunch believer in education, especially for
children from upper- and middle-class families. Ironically, it was this class
that produced the first generation of educated youth who also became the
revolutionaries who ousted the monarchy.
To begin, the film relates how the revolution that toppled Selassie was a
bloodless one that led to the Emperor’s replacement with a military commit-
tee, the Derg, pending proper elections. As a result of a promise of free and
fair elections, idealistic students, determined to usher in democracy through
self-determination and social justice through a socialist system flocked to the
countryside spreading the word in a bid to convince the masses to embrace
the new regime. Unfortunately, their democratic ideals did not materialize.
This led to the splintering of the student organizations with one faction in
favour of supporting the Derg’s continued stay in power while the other was
determined to try to overthrow it and its leader who had emerged as a military
dictator of the country. Mekuria asserts that the result was an internecine war
that lasted more than ten years and was known as the period of Red Terror.
She depicts this period as most brutal in the way that it pitched members of

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families against one another leading to the betrayal and slaughter of tens of
thousands of Ethiopians. Mekuria’s brother and her friend who ended up in
opposing camps fell victims to the war.
Using an African oral approach, Mekuria weaves myths, tales and accounts
of events into the narrative of the film. The film, which was made in 1997
blends several methods, including historical, performative and drawings. It
introduces eyewitness accounts as well as the views of the film’s director and
narrator that unfold alongside the public account of the events in Ethiopia.
Thus, the film brings to life compelling events and accounts described by vari-
ous people from different perspectives as well as archival cinematic footage.
In spite of government pledges to address women’s problems by 1980,
after six years of socialism, only marginal gains were made. These were in
the area of reducing illiteracy and through consciousness raising by getting
them to participate in women’s and other mass organizations. However,
women remained highly marginalized in attempts at socialist transformation.
They were excluded from the sharing of resources and power (Mariam 1994:
60–61). Rather than alleviate the women’s condition, the socialist agrarian
system that was instituted simply strengthened patriarchal rule. By having so
many women’s voices presented through the use of interviews and Negist’s
letters as well as Mekuria’s own voice in various forms, Mekuria honours their
perspectives and gives them equal status with the male voices in the film.
Next, I examine some of the strategies through which Mekuria inserts
herself and other subjects into the social discourse on the Red Terror. To do
this, I will discuss the role of language – both written and oral – in Mekuria’s
resignification on the meanings of the crisis and through this, on questions
of truth.

ORATURE, LANGUAGE, REPRESENTATION AND SOCIAL LIFE

Drawing on studies by Bakhtin and Volosinov, Jane Hill (1985), argues that
languages are codes that direct attention to the dynamics of negotiations of
issues such as identities, social relations and the constitution of the commu-
nity. Language, as Honor Ford-Smith reminds us ‘is not merely a set of
sounds or movements but rather a set of codes for identity and social rela-
tions’ (2005: 9). As such, it is through language that issues of power and
identity encoded in the language are best encountered. This is a particularly
salient issue in Ethiopia since Ethiopian writers, unlike those in many other
African countries are not beholden to a European lingua franca as they write
in Amharic (Woubshet et al. 2010: 9).
Compared to other African countries, literacy came early to Ethiopia but
orality continued to remain a significant feature of the country’s political
culture (Carmichael 2006: 23). This may account for why Mekuria chose to
focus on spoken accounts in the Amharic language in spite of all the poli-
tics around the adoption of Amharic as a national language. In so doing she
embraces the complexity of both the orality and the written tradition thereby
enacting a position which is highly productive for exploring such a profoundly
conflicted time. For example, it is highly significant that it was an Amharic
version that was aired to Ethiopians (see Mekuria’s interview with Ukadike
2002). Amharic had served as the national language in Ethiopia until Haile
Selassie was deposed. Amharic was also the medium of instruction in schools
until 1991 following the military takeover of government by the Ethiopian
People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) (Gish et al. 2007: 88).

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 Orality, documentary, intertextual performance …

It was in a bid to engender acceptance that the EPRDF resorted to espous- 3. Some of these scholars
are: Hymes (1981),
ing a ‘politics of hate’ (Carmichael 2006). The EPRDF’s political philosophy Urban (1984) and
depended on the idea that the Derg, like the imperialists, had forced a policy Bauman (1986).
of Amharacization on Ethiopia. EPRDF’s policy also encouraged the idea that
ethnic Amharans had been given unfair advantage and the new government
strove to highlight a history of Amhara brutality and domination and the
subordination of other ethnic groups. They, therefore, challenged Ethiopians
to write their ‘true’ histories in order to replace what they alleged was hegem-
onic versions of the past (Carmichael 2006: 37). This resulted in a flurry of
politically motivated people in Ethiopia as well as in the diaspora rushing
to publish revisionist history, a lot of which, Carmichael (2006) asserts were
written in ignorance of basic historical methodology. In a bid to focus on the
exceptional, most of these writings did not take into account the ‘everyday’
(Carmichael 2006: 37).
As an Ethiopian who had lost loved ones to the crises, Mekuria displays
awareness and a rejection of the victim history, which Carmichael discerned
in oral informants. This might therefore, explain why it was important for
Mekuria’s film to employ oral elements in trying to get people to question the
official version of history (2006: 9). I read her use of the Amharic language as
a form of ‘resignification’ since as Judith Butler suggests, there ‘is no purifying
language of its traumatic residue and no way to work through trauma except
through the arduous effort to direct the course of its repetition’ (1997: 38).
Using Amharic language to work through the traumatic events might not
necessarily amount to a denial of its contentious history but it signals to it as a
possible unifying language. It is the language through which the people in the
film recall their pain and loss as well as their participation in the Red Terror.
Mekuria’s interrogation of the victim history inherent in both the orature
of Ethiopia as well as the official written position is not naive. In Deluge, she
approaches her engagement of oral sources pragmatically by presenting many
views and standpoints and through the use of different kinds of languages –
visual, oral and written. She also engages myths, paintings and letters. The
effect of using so many sources is that narrative coherence becomes frag-
mented and this gives room for reflection.
Mekuria also uses silence effectively. For instance, the most harrowing
scenes (such as the ones showing cavernous graves, with mothers riffling
through the sand with their hands in the hope of finding the remains of their
children) are not voiced but only punctuated by the haunting sound of a tradi-
tional flute. Her use of silence illustrates one of the ways in which oral narra-
tives use pauses sometimes accompanied by the sound of flutes or drums to
allow listeners to fill in the gaps. This is because in oral traditions, even when
members of the audience are silent at the time of a performance, they become
active when they tell the story in subsequent entextualizations of it (Bauman
and Briggs 1990: 70). Their reports, like the process of introspection by various
subjects in the film, to which viewers are made privy, take the form of both
assessments of the causes and consequences of the crises. This process also
asserts the eyewitness’ right to tell the story alongside the viewers’ own right as
reporters of the film to others. This ‘central device for connecting narrated and
narrating events’, which is based on Volosinov’s insights, has been expanded
by a body of subsequent researches (Bauman and Briggs 1990: 70).3
Additionally, reported speech in oral tradition enhances ideological heter-
ogeneity by drawing on multiple speech events, voices and points of view.
It is a device that augments the decentring of the narrating event and of

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Bunmi Oyinsan

the narrator’s voice in that it ‘opens up possibilities for renegotiating mean-

ings and social relations’ (Bauman and Briggs 1990: 70). Likewise, Mekuria’s
attempt to foster ideological heterogeneity and open up avenues for renego-
tiating meanings, and social relations is expressed through the use of letters
from her brother and friend who were in opposing camps. It is also reflected
in Mekuria’s admission of her confusion and the discordance that her reti-
cence to get involved initially caused with her brother who kept urging her
to take a stand. She also uses artworks and letters by eyewitnesses alongside
subject testimonials from dissenting sides. For instance, her father staunchly
believes and declares that ‘No one ever gave better leadership to Ethiopia
than Emperor Haile Selassie’ while Selomon and Negist had both staked their
lives on the belief that Ethiopia was better off without the monarchy.
As Mekuria further explains, things ‘had reached a level of hysteria that
even the closest of people – a brother and sister- could not continue politi-
cal discussions. To me that symbolizes our potential future. Unless we say
let’s stop and talk about this, nothing is ever going to change’ (Ukadike 2002:
243). This statement further underscores the crux of Mekuria’s attention with
this film that is clearly not about apportioning blame or declaring for one
side against another but highlighting the importance of dialogue as a way of
re-envisioning the beleaguered nation. It therefore depicts multiple truths and
in so doing undermines the claim to objective truth on which documentary is
based. It is this issue – that of documentary, testimonial and truth that I shall
now discuss.

DOCUMENTARY, ORALITY AND TESTIMONY

According to Bill Nichols, the ‘voice of documentary is most often the voice
of oratory’ (2001: 49). However, he makes a distinction between the voice of
documentary and story-telling in that he surmises that it is the voice of the
film-maker taking a position on issues and topics. As such, he surmises that
documentaries ‘require a way of speaking that is fundamentally different from
logic or story telling’ (2001: 49). He further submits that the ‘rhetorical tradi-
tion provides a foundation for this way of speaking’ (2001: 49). Nichols’ analy-
sis is based on a formal western rhetorical tradition that is concerned with
convincing the audience by taking a position through the marshalling of an
argument against other positions. However, although Mekuria’s film shares
some of the qualities identified under some of Nichols’ taxonomies such as
participatory and reflexive documentaries (2010: 210–11), Deluge still has
affinity with informal storytelling traditions that accommodate the presenta-
tion of alternative views and the participation of the audience.
While the rhetorical tradition is predicated on notions of schools of
thoughts or experts in particular disciplines, in informal storytelling settings,
knowledge creation is more open to the engagement of multiple perspec-
tives even if these do not necessarily guarantee equal hearing. This is reflected
in Mekuria’s film, which is more akin to such traditions, in that rather than
try to replace received ideas with her own position, she presents her stance
alongside others, even those which clearly oppose her views. This is in line
with what can be perceived to be her mission – to get people to claim their
right to participate in the national discourse. In more than one instance, we
have her presenting subject testimonials by people who hold dissenting views
against one another and even her position in such a way that one view is not
projected as the ‘truth’ or superior argument.

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 Orality, documentary, intertextual performance …

In order to comment on the heterogeneity of truth, Mekuria draws on the 4. According to John
Beverley, ‘[t]he word
idea of testimonials and witnessing. First, this is a film about people testify- testimonio in Spanish
ing to their account of the Red Terror. Testimonials and witnessing are key carries the connection
concepts that historically emerged from courtrooms but have been taken of an act of truth
telling in a religious
up and adapted by social movements. Examples of eyewitness testimonies or legal sense’, it
that form parts of social movements go as far back as publications by former means to testify or
slaves such as The History of Mary Prince, by Mary Prince, which was first ‘bear truthful witness’
(2004: 3). The ethical
published in 1831 and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American and epistemological
Slave, by Frederick Douglass, published in 1845. The Truth and Reconciliation authority of
testimonios come from
Commission in South Africa as well as testimonios4 like those by Rigoberta the belief that ‘we are
Menchu, first published in Spanish in 1983 and others from South America meant to presume
illustrate how ideas about testimony continue to serve movements for justice. that its narrator is
someone who has lived
Testimonials and witnessing, even when they are written or form part of in his or her person, or
established legal systems are inherently connected to orality in that witnesses indirectly through the
speak their stories about witnessing horror which are then recorded in form experiences of friends,
family, neighbours, or
of writing. The autobiographical nature of this film and the fact that it uses significant others, the
eyewitnesses reliving the Red Terror, point to similarities with the Truth and events and experiences
that he or she narrates’
Reconciliation Commission in South Africa5 and concepts like testimonio and (2004: 3; see also Nance
witnessing in South America. (2006).
Typically, the concept of testimonio in South America focuses on victims 5. The Truth and
relating their individual or communal trauma and the accusation of an oppres- Reconciliation sittings
sive system or individuals. The concept has raised some ethical issues that were commissioned in
1995, they were held
Julie Salverson (2006), John Beverley (2004) and Kimberley Nance (2006), have in camera until April
addressed about ‘truth’. These ethical issues have arisen because often, testi- 1996 after Merkuria
monios are told to other people who then write them or have them published shot Deluge, which was
released in 1995.
in other ways. As such, questions around what happens when outsiders are
involved in relating or making testimonio public have been raised. Such issues
are about how it is possible to understand experience that is different from
one’s own. Questions about how outsiders intruding or usurping the voice
or voices of the person or persons who actually suffered trauma, and the
positionality of a reader/spectator who has not necessarily been a part of the
trauma as interpretant have also been raised. Deluge helps us to address some
of these issues. First, Mekuria discloses her conflict over being an insider/
outsider, having lived outside Ethiopia for a long time. She also discloses her
investments in the truth about what happened. However, as with testimonios,
she is a woman who herself suffered the traumatic loss of loved ones. She
therefore presents the film as a way of talking to others who went through
similar or more harrowing events as they all recall and try to interpret the Red
Terror and their role in it to themselves as much as to whomever else might
see the film.
What Mekuria demonstrates by drawing on eyewitness testimonies in this
documentary might also help shape how we are able to know and, therefore,
narrate what took place. Epistemologically, her approach suggests the notion
that there is no position of absolute truth, innocence or guilt. This, she achieves
by using various forms of eyewitness accounts, thereby destabilizing the notion
of one stable truth. Through the use of subject testimonials by various eyewit-
nesses, engaging in a process of introspection, Mekuria presents us with flesh
and blood Ethiopians reflecting, talking about and thereby contributing their
eyewitness account in historicizing the traumatic Red Terror, the crisis which
pitched family members against one another. These testimonials draw atten-
tion to how the revolution uses the same tools that the monarchical system
had used in new ways to get the citizens to cede their voices, thereby colluding

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Bunmi Oyinsan

with that which oppressed them. By having so many discordant voices give
their accounts in the film, Mekuria challenges the idea of truth as transparent.
She also underscores ideas of truth as having many faces by allowing
many people, dead and living to have their say. She interviews the living and
has the letters of dead people read while showing us pictures of them. Thus,
Mekuria uses the testimonial form that is usually identified as part of a social
movement to critique a social movement (the revolution) that has gone awry.
By so doing, Mekuria demonstrates one of the ways through which people
perceive and comprehend ‘the specific social reality of which’ they are actively
‘participatory subjects and agents’ (Wynter 1995: 12).
Deluge illustrates that while orality does not guarantee that a society is
democratic or humane, there are modes of orality that can be called upon to
serve as counter-hegemonic forces. The testimonials by various subjects are
reminiscent of African palavers. Typically, palavers were held under Palaver
trees that according to Mitchell Land (1992) marked the centre of the village.
Moradewun Adejunmobi suggests that the word ‘palaver’ connotes ‘conten-
tious discussion’ (2004: vii). As a social moment, the palaver tradition in
African societies is an informal session during which attempts are made to
manage problems collectively rather than from the top down. Typically, the
objective is to find common grounds that will satisfy all the parties sufficiently
in order to ensure community integration.
Its aim is to assert the life of each individual at the same time as it under-
scores communal life. As such, it is based on dialogue in an attempt to allow
individuals and groups to air their perspectives. Palavers are not time bound
and will last as long as it takes to reach some common grounds acceptable to
all sides. They are also held as many times as necessary to reach a resolution.
In an ideal situation, the aim of a palaver is to arrive at a common ground
that satisfies all sides enough that they see themselves as the architects of the
consensus reached. This will ensure their commitment to the implementation
of the decision or decisions reached (Wamba dia Wamba 1985: 3–4). The first
of the testimonials in Deluge is by Mekuria’s father, who is filmed sitting in
a living room; the shot is framed as a medium close-up but the father does
not look directly at the camera. Like almost all the other people interviewed,
we see him thinking, sometimes making eye contact with the interviewer, at
other times he seems to be talking to himself. It is the same kind of framing
that is used for all the others.
The women too, including Mekuria and Negist’s sisters do not address
the camera and are pensive as they speak except for two instances. One, is
when Mekuria’s sister, Jembe Tefferra, speaks in English (the only time in
the film when we have a subject give part of their testimony in English). The
other is a scene with an elderly couple, Negede Yeshewawork and Ato Mola
Worke, taken in front of an open grave holding a picture of their son. The shot
starts with the camera tilting up, then slowly zooming into a medium long
shot as the woman, Ato Mola Worke, continues to describe how her son was
abducted while the man stands quietly beside her. The scene ends with the
camera zooming out to show them looking small as they stand surrounded
by large open graves. While there is a lot of literature that links the process
of talking as a way of alleviating the effects of traumatic episodes in the form
of a ‘talking cure’, I am submitting that what Mekuria aims for and achieves
here is quite different. While the palaver does not guarantee equal hearing, it
is part of a body of beliefs in the efficacy of words which is common in most
African cultures. The Yoruba, for instance believe that words are so powerful

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 Orality, documentary, intertextual performance …

they can destroy, but they are also just as efficient in building or rebuilding.
One of the dynamics operative in this film is tied to the notion that so long as
people can talk, they cannot claim to have simply been victims on whom the
Red Terror was unleashed.
By and large the film positions characters, dead or alive, as well as the
director herself as participants in this palaver which is trying to get people to
figure out how, as individuals, and collectively they ended up with such cata-
strophic events. It is most instructive that we see these people who through
the process of introspection claim responsibility for their own parts in the crisis
as well as for allowing a dogmatic acceptance of ideology to overrun their
ability to accept the right of others to hold different views. It is also significant
that Mekuria juxtaposes national and personal accounts while using various
kinds of testimonials to carry the narrative thread in a bid to challenge official
versions of the crisis. To achieve this, Deluge, which is a form of participatory
intervention, is a documentary that also works as a mode of performance. I
now discuss how this documentary works as a performance that draws on
oral techniques of calibrating intertextual tensions between cognate texts.

ORALITY, DOCUMENTARY AND INTERTEXTUAL PERFORMANCE AND

DISCURSIVE PRACTICES
According to Stella Bruzzi (2006) documentaries are performative acts that are
essentially unstable and informed by questions of performance and performa-
tivity. This position is based on the idea that

documentaries are inevitably the result of the intrusion of the film-maker

onto the situation being filmed, that they are performative because they
acknowledge the construction and artificiality of even the non-fiction
film and propose, as the underpinning truth, the truth that emerges
through the encounter between film-makers, subjects and spectators.
(2006: 11)

This definition eschews the position of earlier theorists like Bazin who adhered
to notions of transparency in documentaries. According to Bruzzi this new
definition replaces the idea of transparency with a multi-layered, performa-
tive interaction between subjects, film-makers and spectators (2006: 11). As
such, she proposes that in trying to unravel the meaning of a documentary, it
is instructive to note that its meaning and identity are not fixed but fluid and
emanate from a ‘productive, dialectic relationship between the text, the reality
it represents and the spectator’ (Bruzzi 2006: 7).
The imposition of a strict generic divide between documentaries and
fiction films is readily eroded when using orature as a paradigm for analysis
just like the divide between what constitutes the personal from the commu-
nal. Reading Mekuria’s Deluge as a performance (which is also a central
feature of orature) illuminates this dialectic between the film as text, the real-
ity of the crises represented through film footage of the crises and the specta-
tor. To illustrate, one of the ways in which Deluge underscores its relationship
with the spectators is through shots of Mekuria in a studio with voice-over,
which in essence are addressed to the viewers in much the same way as an
oral narrator would engage listeners. Deluge is, therefore, a documentary
that does not put itself forward as ‘the truth’ and uses these devices to draw
attention to this.

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The film also signals its relationship with other texts and as such invites
the examination of how connections between texts are constructed. According
to Richard Bauman, intertextuality has been a defining element in linking
cognate oral texts (2004: 1). Some of the reasons he suggests for these are
ascribed to Herder who describes it as the ‘“sung again” quality of oral poetry’
and the ability of orature to circulate, as well as the ‘capacity to “spite the
power of time”’ (2004: 1). An example of this can be demonstrated by the way
in which Mekuria takes the trouble to admit that as the daughter of a priest
she had learnt to read by using the bible at the beginning of the film. She
says this after citing the Sheba myth to which she had alluded, in a manner
that decontextualizes the story from the biblical account only to recontextual-
ize it in a different form. The story of Sheba and Solomon in the bible does
not admit any amorous relationship between the two monarchs. Mekuria’s
version, however, claims that Sheba returned to Ethiopia pregnant after an
amorous relationship with Solomon and that the child that was born as a
result of this liaison was Menelik, the first Ethiopian emperor.
Management of narrative performance does not only allow a text to align
itself to other texts but also involves the anticipation of future texts. As such,
by referencing the myth about the Queen of Sheba that identifies her as the
progenitor of the Ethiopian emperors at the beginning of the film, Mekuria
links her film to prior forms of historicization but then shows footage of
actual events. For example, she includes archival footage of the pomp and
pageantry which marked Emperor Haile Selassie’s 80th birthday celebrations
sandwiched between footage of the Ethiopian famine, showing children and
women starving and footage of teenage girls struggling to hurl huge mounds
of wood uphill. This way, Mekuria manipulates the intertextual tension
between ‘replication and the purposeful construction of an intertextual gap’
(Bauman 2004: 11). When she references the Sheba myth, it is not necessar-
ily in a bid to draw attention to any a priori truth of the myth surrounding
the beauty and wisdom of Sheba and her descendants who ruled Ethiopia for
many centuries but to signify on it as a discursive practice, one of the many
ways in which the Ethiopian meta-narrative has evolved. This device situates
her performance within other discursive practices.
Citing the myth also reflects Mekuria’s conversance with the oral traditions
of Ethiopia, in that she uses it to answer anticipated questions about her posi-
tion as an insider even though she lives away from Ethiopia. Mekuria antici-
pates questions and tries to provide answers in line with established sapiential
traditions. For example, she also provides answers to questions that might be
raised about her role in the crises even though she was living outside Ethiopia.
She illustrates this with footage of herself and other students being interviewed
about their activism in a TV studio in the United States at the height of the crises.
She also anticipates and answers questions about her identity as an
Ethiopian, as well as her reactions to some of the major events that took place
as a result of the unrest. In oral tradition, this perspective is premised upon
a notion of social life as discursively constituted, produced, reproduced and
linked by interdiscursive ties to other performative acts. These could take
several forms and are determined by cultural frameworks for ‘the production,
reception, and circulation of discourse’ (Bauman 2004: 2).
It is also important to pay attention to the dialectic between performance,
sociocultural and political-economic contexts because this allows a considera-
tion of how people gain rights to transform utterances because decentring
and recontextualization have overriding implications in the performance of
social life (Bauman and Briggs 1990). These devices illuminate issues that are

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 Orality, documentary, intertextual performance …

of central concern to scholars in various fields. Contextualization implies a 6. Please see notes on
1Kings 10:1 of Quest
process of negotiation during which participants ‘reflexively examine the Study Bible (2003).
discourse as it is emerging, embedding assessments of its structure and signif-
icance in the speech itself’ (Bauman and Briggs 1990: 69). Meta-narrative
devices indicate features of the ongoing social interaction, the structure and
significance of the narrative, and its links to other events. For example some
interventions work to bridge gaps between narrated events and storytelling
events by reaching out phatically to audiences (Bauman and Briggs 1990: 69).
Mekuria achieves this by showing herself in the studio, watching file footage
of the events as they unfolded in Ethiopia as well as through the expression of
her sentiments about letters from Selomon and Negist, which were also writ-
ten to her from the USSR as the events played out in Ethiopia.
The ways in which an utterance or performance attains authority might also
stem from the perception of the voice of the performer, which might be partly
grounded in the knowledge, ability and right to control the recentring of texts
because the control of the function of decentring and recentring is a component
of the social framework (see Hymes 1975). Bauman and Briggs also suggest that
the repetition of stories, like the citing of proverbs are crucial to the ‘symbolic
construction of discursive continuity with a meaningful past’ (1990: 78). This
is illustrated in the film by the way in which Mekuria signifies on the Sheba
myth when she links the famous Queen to King Solomon as the ancestor of
all Ethiopian emperors including Haile Selassie. As a result, she authorizes this
story which Ethiopians, like some other Africans, have continued to hold on
to in spite of the fact that the bible is clearly silent on it and only records an
account of a platonic relationship between Sheba and Solomon. Some bibli-
cal scholars do not even accept the possibility that Sheba was from Ethiopia as
they situate her country somewhere in the southern part of Arabia.6 Mekuria
introduces the story over a map that is intercut with paintings of scenes from
the story depicting Sheba as black. One of the shots of the map starts out with a
zoom that identifies Axum in Ethiopia. The camera then tilts up slowly to simu-
late Sheba’s journey ‘by land and by water’ to reach Solomon’s palace.
One of the many things that Mekuria achieves with the citing of this
much-contested story is to signify with it at the beginning of the film that
her intention is not to present an authoritative historical account. Mekuria
cites the story in this sidelong glance, hinting only at Solomon’s seduc-
tion of Sheba and an amorous relationship between them. This allows her
to draw attention to the power of this myth like others that she had heard
while growing up. She gestures to some of these myths as out-rightly false
(like the claim that Ethiopia is a Christian island in a ‘Moslem sea’). She then
brings up others that she tries to back up (like the claim that Ethiopia is a
‘land of legendary beauty’) with some stunning panoramic shots of Ethiopian
landscapes. This way, she illustrates the agency of ordinary, everyday people,
especially women, to participate in the creation of national narratives. For
as she challenges in the film: ‘What history is without myths and legends?’
Again, this underscores the film’s mission not to present itself as ‘the truth’
but as a mediational performance.

FILM AS MEDIATIONAL PERFORMANCE

Mekuria’s explanation that she included Selomon’s and Negist’s letters as a
‘guide’ because they are symbolic of ‘what was going on in Ethiopia at that
time’ (Ukadike 2002: 243) attests to the film’s agenda to draw on multi-
ple views and as a mediational routine. Mediational routines represent

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Bunmi Oyinsan

performative models that are related to the process of authorization and

Bakhtin suggests that:

The authoritative word demands that we acknowledge it, that we make

it our own; it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to
persuade us internally; we encounter it with its authority already fused
to it. The authoritative word is located in a distanced zone, organically
connected with a past that is felt to be hierarchically higher. Its authority
was already acknowledged in the past. It is a priori discourse.
(1981: 342)

However in oral situations where the full authority of the source is the norm,
mediational routines may act as resources for ‘contrastive manipulation’. For
instance when the source utterance is infiltrated by the mediator’s voice if
it contrasts with the authoritative version, thereby widening the intertextual
gap during the process of recontextualizing the target utterance (Bauman
2004: 153).
Mediational performances also impact the ways in which power and
authority are maintained in discourse in other ways. For instance in medi-
ational routines, the target utterance, and sometimes the source utterance
are public enactments because a salient functional capacity of the routine
is ‘publication’, which in the root sense of the term connotes the render-
ing of discourse publicly (Bauman 2004; Hymes 1966; Urban 1991). As such,
the constitution of the audience as public is critical. One of the impacts of
metadiscursive processes enacted by mediational performances are tradi-
tionalization, which alludes to the socialization of knowledge and authoriza-
tion. Traditionalization is a discursive and interpretive practice that operates
through the creation of connections that link current and past discourses.
It is through these processes that traditionalization imbues discourse with
meaning (Bauman 2004: 146–47). Other mediational routines might be used
to undermine authority and to ‘transcend the ephemerality of the spoken
word’ (2004: 147). There are various ways in which source dialogues are
reproduced and the method deployed affects ‘the degree of iconicity between
the relayed text and the source text’ (2004: 148). One way is through reported
speech, such as when a target utterance is framed as direct discourse with
retention of source as deitic centre. Indexical forms point at the participant
structure of the source or target dialogue, while locative references entail the
assimilation of text to source or target dialogue. Additionally, presentational
modes refer to instances when the target dialogue maintains or shifts the
presentational mode of the source, and interactional regimentations shape
the production of the source and the target while either maintaining or vary-
ing it (2004: 148).
First, by including letters from Selomon and Negist, Mekuria gives her
brother and best friend voice in the discourse as a result of which they also
participate in shaping of the narrative. Second, by actualizing their letters as
voice-overs that are read over pictures of the writers, their pronouncements
in the letters are authorized in that their voices as well as their images are
brought into the public domain as eyewitness. As a mediational routine, this
use of the letters does not only result in the temporal continuity of texts but
their inclusion in this form, ensures that they are disseminated beyond a
single individual source so that they are incorporated into the stock of usable
knowledge.

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 Orality, documentary, intertextual performance …

SEM-ENNA WARQ (WAX AND GOLD)

The subtlety with which the film interrogates the official position is sugges-
tive of practices rooted in traditional Ethiopian intellectual concepts such
as Sem-enna warq (wax and gold). This is a poetic phenomenon embody-
ing a twofold interpretation which exists in other African languages (Gabriel
1982). Donald Levine asserts that the concept ‘constitutes both a key to the
genius of Amhara culture and a highly distinctive Amhara contribution to
Ethiopian culture’ (1965: 5). He further proposes that wax and gold is a form
built of two semantic layers. The first layer that is the denotative or ‘appar-
ent, figurative meaning of the words is called “wax,” while the connotative
or “hidden” meaning is the “gold”’ (1965: 5). Although it is principally a
poetic figuration, wax and gold constructions permeate vernacular Amharic
and inform Amharic conversations. Levine further elucidates that, the termi-
nology is derived from goldsmiths, who construct clay moulds around wax
forms which they then drain before pouring the molten gold into that form
(1965: 5).
Wax and gold encapsulates the pivotal role of symbolism and subtlety in
Amhara discourse and represents more than a principle of poetic composi-
tion. It patterns the speech and outlook of every Amhara. In essence, wax
and gold is a refined and highly stylized form of Amhara communication. It
is of particular significance to the analysis of Mekuria’s film in that sem-enna
warq is said to have its most stylized expressions during political or military
conflicts and it constitutes an ‘outlet for criticism of authority figures in a soci-
ety which strictly controls every kind of overt aggression toward authority, be
it parental, religious, or political’ (Levine 1965: 9).
As expressed in the film, wax and gold is not so much an attempt at ambi-
guity but more an elaboration of Mekuria’s perception of the paradox of the
situation that led her best friend and brother to take opposing sides that cost
them their lives. The end result is a film which, on the one hand offers alterna-
tive views of the political history of the Ethiopian nation, while on the other,
is an attempt to incorporate the personal everyday human perspectives into
the meta-narrative. Whichever way one looks at it, Deluge is complex enough
in the sem-enna warq tradition that it was not given air time on Ethiopian
television. This is because, as Mekuria elaborated in an interview, while on
the surface it is ‘explicitly opposing the previous government’, implicitly, ‘any
government that is narrow-minded and bent on maintaining a single party
system, that’s sort of very much interested in confining power to a small
group of people, would feel a message from this film’ (Gearhart 1998: 54). It is
a film that works to open up the discussion of the Ethiopian crises by serving
as a platform for people to tell their stories. Next, I examine how by so doing,
the participants in this film as well as Mekuria engage in shaping their indi-
vidual and national lives.

SHAPING LIVES THROUGH STORYTELLING

Mekuria’s life, like the lives of other participants in the film, is impacted by
the narrative being recounted in the film. The simple act of verbally recall-
ing the events, affords them the opportunity to attempt to shape their stories
in the telling. This is because history and self-memory are essentially social
concepts and the autobiographical self evolves in discursive material situa-
tions (Milz 2008: 161). The process of evolution goes beyond the particular
speech act, which in this case takes the form of Mekuria speaking through

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Bunmi Oyinsan

her documentary. The film’s format, which allows the subjects to tell their
narratives of lived experiences, adds complexity to the totalizing official
version of events.
Also, the stories that the subjects in the film narrate might not necessary
have existed fully framed in their minds waiting to be told. Rather, the process
of introspection and their attempts at shaping the narrative illustrates a form
of agency in shaping their lives as it complexifies aspects of the official story.
Such engagement in the telling of memory cannot exclude knowledge and
mastery of the narrative genre and oral cultural conventions of the society and
as such necessitates being cognizant of oral aesthetics.

CONCLUSION
Mekuria’s film critiques ideas about objective truth on which patriarchal
nation states often depend. By using a documentary format, a genre most
associated with objectivity, and combining oral and written traditions from
Ethiopia, Mekuria raises questions about documentary truth. These allow her
to critique official histories of the revolutionary period. She also challenges the
orthodoxies of western documentary, using multiple oral techniques to resig-
nify on multiple and complex truths of Ethiopian history, including gender,
politics and language.
Mekuria uses her documentary film as a tool for inserting her voice as well as
those of other subjects, especially women, in the national discourses. The process
of introspection helps Mekuria and her subjects question the official accounts of
the Red Terror. It also allows them to admit their participation in the crisis.

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SUGGESTED CITATION
Oyinsan, B. (2016), ‘Orality, documentary, intertextual performance and
discursive practices: A reading of Ye Wonz Maibel (Deluge) 1997 by Salem
Mekuria’, Journal of African Cinemas, 8: 2, pp. 199–214, doi: 10.1386/
jac.8.2.199_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Bunmi Oyinsan is a writer, television scriptwriter/film producer and drama-
tist. Her novels include Silhouette (1991), Halima (2000), Three Women (2006),
Fabulous Four (2000). She edited Trembling Leaves (1998) for the Association
of Nigerian Authors. She has also published several short stories, written and
produced stage and radio plays. Her television dramas and serials include,
Owuro Lojo (1995), Golden Cage (1996), Aditulaye (2003) and We the People
(2002). She was Chairperson of the Association of Nigerian Authors (Lagos
Chapter) 1993–1995. In Canada she directed stage and produced The Black
Journal (2007), a television magazine programme with the CBC, Halifax. Her
Ph.D. is from York University, Canada. Her research explores how orature
impacts cultural productions by African women and women of African
descent in diaspora in literature, films, New Media.
Contact: School of Gender and Women’s Studies, York University, 206
Founders College, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.
E-mail: olubunmioyinsan@gmail.com

Bunmi Oyinsan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

214   Journal of African Cinemas