Propaganda for the millions: images from Africa

African Arts, Summer, 2004 by Merrick Posnansky

Stamp imagery is a fruitful object of study on numerous grounds. Stamps are the work of artists, frequently indigenous to the countries they work for, who are attempting to convey an idea, a feeling for particular themes of interest to the historian. For many countries, stamps are a means of conveying knowledge about that country's cultural heritage to the outside world. Stamps often have a broader impact than the actual objects depicted, as they are collected by millions of people world wide. In the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, and Western Europe alone there are not less than two million collectors whose knowledge of Africa comes from stamps and not from museums. Stamp images are an ever-changing iconography that informs us of the interests of both the patrons who commission the stamps and those who buy them. Stamps bear emblems of tradition and power and although there is only anecdotal evidence of their impact, it certainly exists. I can vouch from my own experience when, as a child and later a young man, I developed a curiosity about the "native" peoples on francophone African stamps or the animals, castles, and art on anglophone stamps. Stamp imagery thus continues to provide impressions of the other world as much as well-thumbed copies of National Geographic. The Ife head on the 1953 Nigerian stamp (Fig. 1; Nigeria Scott 86) (1) certainly excited my own curiosity before I came to Africa in the mid-1950s, when the academic study of Africa was still in its infancy.

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Just what is depicted on the stamps of Africa? Stamps serve to proclaim and legitimize the authority of rulers. Like the Maria Theresa silver dollars so common in Africa in the early nineteenth century, or the Queen Victoria gold sovereigns at that century's end, the earliest stamps of Africa depicted European symbols of authority: the ruler's head, the Kaiser's yacht, or the allegorical symbols of freedoms and values that imperial powers failed to provide for their African subjects. Many of the earliest stamps, like those of Togo, were overprinted German stamps or stamps identical to those in Britain but with the addition of the territorial name.

Following World War I, the tendency developed to provide recognizable identifiers, stereotypes of what the issuing authority felt characterized their possession. Thus there were, at different times, the lion for Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika (Fig. 2; Tanganyika Scott 48), the giraffe for Tanganyika, the pyramid for Egypt, the camel for the Sudan, the palm tree for much of French West Africa, Christiansborg Castle for Ghana, the soapstone eagle and the Great Zimbabwe tower for Southern Rhodesia, and masks for the Belgian Congo. When commemorative stamps began to be issued in the 1930s, they celebrated colonial expositions in France; coronations, jubilees, and royal marriages in Britain; Victory in Europe; and Universal Postal Union anniversaries.

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Events which Africa would now like to forget were also celebrated, such as the centenary of Cecil Rhodes's birth in 1953, the fiftieth anniversary of the crushing of the Ndebele uprising in 1943 (Southern Rhodesia Scott 64), the centenaries of famous Europeans who discovered Africa's rivers and facilitated the era of imperialism, and fifty years of Belgian monarchs in the Congo. The Manifest Destiny of the Boers and their treks to open up new lands for settlement were a feature of South African stamps, a pointed reminder to both the peoples of the territory and the outside world that this trusteeship was clearly part of the Republic of South Africa's domain. The last ten years of colonial rule were marked with relatively sedate pictorials, animals, local monuments, scenic attractions, "native" types (Fig. 3; Gabon Scott J33 and Cameroun Scott 321), and village scenes for francophone Africa but these were certainly no celebration of African heritage.

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The first stamps of independence celebrated not only symbols of nationhood, torches of freedom, and the vibrant colors of flags (Fig. 4; Mali Scott 1), but also new monuments such as state hotels as well as achievements that proclaimed national promise of progress in agriculture, industry, education, and health care (as in the stamps of Uganda). Within the next ten years, the exuberance of Africa's wildlife, floral, aquatic, and avian richness was displayed often on definitives, or stamps meant for daily use over extended periods of time, while special events such as the anniversaries of the various UN agencies which support Africa, the visits of foreign dignitaries, and the establishment of pan-African organizations dominate commemoratives, or stamps issued over very short periods to commemorate a specific event or to honor some aspect of cultural heritage.

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With independence, the median size of stamps increased. In the period before 1914 the average stamp was 10mm x 25mm, with the occasional stamp, like the high-value German issues depicting the Kaiser's yacht, reaching 25mm x 35mm. After 1920 many stamps were as large as 25mm x 40mm. Many post-1961 stamps are up to 40mm x 50mm, which allows for larger images more suited to printing techniques, rather than previous images derived from engravings.