Why the U.S. president always feels
compelled to lecture to Africans and my obsession with his meddling
It has become custom for U.S.
President Barak Obama to constantly volunteer unsolicited advice to African
people whenever a given country is going through some major event. So when
Nigeria was going into elections, Obama recorded a video: “For elections to be
credible they must be free, fair and peaceful,” he lectured Nigerians, “All
Nigerians must be able to cast their ballots without intimidation or fear. So I
call on all leaders and candidates to make it clear to their supporters that
violence has no place in democratic elections and that they will not excite,
support or engage in any kind of violence before, during and after the votes are
counted…”
This was saddening but also
illuminating. Who does Obama think he is to make this call? God? Does he think
Nigerians do not know these basic concepts? Isn’t it obvious that if Nigerians
do not adhere to them, that is not due to lack of knowledge but due to
structural circumstances and political incentives that drive politics in that
country? He recorded a similar video for Burundi, lecturing its people on how
they can end their conflict. There is something megalomaniacal about Obama.
Perhaps he sees himself as a special human being, a Pope for African peoples.
So he thinks we need his sermons to change the political trajectories of our
nations.
Obama may be well intentioned when
he lectures Africans, genuinely believing - like his African admirers, that he
is trying to help our continent. But we should not miss the underlying attitude
that informs his lectures. To understand where he is coming from, one needs to
read colonial literature focusing on its racial content. I will liberally
borrow quotes by colonial officials from Prof. Mahmood Mamdani’s majestic work,
`Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism’.
In his 1929 Rhodes Lecture at
Oxford, former South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts said the African is a special
human type. “It (sic) has largely remained a child type with a child psychology
and outlook.” And Albert Schweitzer agreed: “The Negro is a child and with
children, nothing can be done without authority.” In the colonial mind,
Africans were no ordinary children. They were destined to remain perpetually so
– “Peter Pan children who can never grow up, a child race” as Christopher Fyfe
mocked this attitude.
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Many high-minded colonialists did
not see themselves as oppressors but as helping “civilise” Africans. I suspect
Obama has internalised these racist stereotypes albeit (perhaps)
subconsciously. The belief that Africans cannot govern themselves and need
foreign assistance is deeply entrenched in the Western mind. To many in the
West, Africans need the benevolent hand of the white man to tutor them on how
to live their lives and govern themselves. It is expressed in many
Western efforts to save or help Africa.
For example, our civil wars are to
be ended by an American military intervention, our political leaders tried by
the International Criminal Court, our human rights defended by Human Rights
Watch, our hungry to be fed by World Food Program. Our sick must be treated by
Doctors Without Borders, our press freedom defended by the Committee to Protect
Journalists, our democracy advanced by Open Society Institute, our poverty
fought by philanthropists Angelina Jolie and Bono, our civil society must be
Western funded NGOs, our policies decided by the IMF and World Bank.
Visit any part of Africa and see for
yourself. In government ministries will be “technical experts” advising on the
budget and on every public policy. In villages there will be aid workers
teaching Africans how many babies to have, how to plant beans and rice, how to
use condoms, etc. In cities, Western donors will be funding a “democracy
deepening” or “capacity building” project. On practically every arm and leg of
our existence, there will be white people working to fix our problems. We are
children whose every step must be guided by the benevolent hand of the white
man.
There are many problems in Africa –
poverty, corruption, low levels of human skill, conflict, etc. Our states are
young and hardly omnipresent in the lives of many of our people compared to
their counterparts in the West. Nationhood has not gained sufficient social
consciousness among many of our citizens. Our societies are still largely
agricultural. The social values and norms of most of our people differ from
those of the West. As we struggle to modernise, our structural conditions
create particular challenges – violent conflict, corruption, stolen elections,
pervasive patronage etc.
A section of African elites and
their Western cheerleaders see these outcomes as pathologies inherent in
Africans. Yet even a casual reading of Western history shows that they were
inevitable accompaniments of its own modernisation. Western nations went
through a similar experience without outside help. Modernisation stimulated
massive social upheavals involving international and civil wars in the West.
These upheavals were not aberrations but part and parcel of the process of
modernisation. Africa is also going through these massive social changes and is
handling them much better than Europe did.
Blind to these historical parallels,
a significant section of Western society, supported by sections of African
elites, yell and shout at how pathological Africans are. Many Western scholars,
journalists, activists, pundits, leaders and diplomats can no longer use
overtly racial language to express these biases. They fear being accused of
racism. But African elites are not restrained by this fear. So they make
attacks about African leaders, systems and peoples presenting them as
pathological. Western society is always keen to promote such African
“intellectuals” as spokespersons of their racist views. So it has created an
international intellectual infrastructure that gives television appearances,
newspaper articles, publishes books, academic papers and speeches by Africans
who condemn Africa.
This is the context in which we need
to understand and problematise Obama. Since he is partly of African ancestry,
he is the best suited “black man” to play the role of colonial headman,
lecturing Africans on how to behave themselves as good colonial subjects –
without coming across as racist. It is not that Obama is stupid and cannot see
his role in the wider scheme of the white military, financial and industrial
aristocracy that rules our world. Rather his megalomania and exaggerated belief
in his own messianic mission to save the world blinds him to his role as the
agent of white social contempt of Africans.
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