How post-independence failures have helped the West change an image of who Africa’s heroes are
At the
time of independence, Africa was basking with self-discovery and
self-confidence. There was hope and confidence that Africans would shape
their destiny independently. We were supposed to cooperate with others
as equals. The first crop of post-independence leaders – Kwame Nkrumah
(consciencism), Julius Nyerere (Ujamaa), Kenneth Kaunda (Humanism),
Leopold Sedar Senghor (Negritude), Milton Obote (The Common Man’s
Charter) even attempted to develop distinct ideologies for their
countries. Even Mobutu Sese Seko had “Authenticity.” Many of these
philosophies were ill conceived and generated failure. But they were an
important effort to create a distinct view of who we are and how others
should view us.
This did
not exclude western texts. I read ancient Greek and Roman civilisation
beginning at age 10 – focusing on philosophy, literature and art. I
admired Socrates. My heroes included John Stuart Mill (for his ideas on
liberty), Thomas Jefferson (for his defence of press freedom) and I
dared write a letter to Ronald Reagan at age 12. Although I was a proud
African, I saw myself as a human being first.
Today, it
seems the obvious and the perceived economic and political failures of
the 1970s, 80s and 90s in Africa destroyed that intellectual tradition
that made our leaders try to think independently. These failures are an
attempt at a one-sided view of post-independence Africa. Perhaps our
leaders and elites lost faith in locally developed solutions and turned
to the West for answers. It is also possible this sense of defeat
undermined our self-confidence. However, this development has given vent
to outside intrusions to regain control over our sovereignty that was
hard-won through wars of national independence.
Across
most of Africa, we see a growing effort to usurp our sovereignty.
Increasingly, Western intellectuals and activists have taken on the role
of becoming our liberators. Secular missionaries have succeeded
Christian missionaries. The latter dressed their mission in religion –
to emancipate our souls; the secular missionaries use the language of
ending poverty, democracy and human rights – to emancipate our political
being. The old colonialism proclaimed its desire to liberate Africans
from the tyranny of custom and the despotism of chiefs. The new
colonialism promises to liberate Africans from material poverty and
brutality of our leaders.
In this
new era, Africa has new heroes – celebrities like Bob Geldolf, Angelina
Jolie, Bono and George Clooney; academics like Jeffrey Sachs and Paul
Collier; journalists like Anderson Cooper and Nicolas Kristof;
humanitarian activists like John Prendergast; liberators like David
Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy (did you see how they “liberated” Libya?);
philanthropists like Bill Gates etc.
As the
Kony 2010 U-Tube documentary shows, we are not supposed to be active
participants in our own emancipation. We are supposed to be passive
spectators in the struggles that are shaping our destiny.
Thus, our
human rights are defended by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International; our press freedom is fought for by Reporters without
Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists; our democracy is
promoted by the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House; our
lives are saved by Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross; our
diseases are fought by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the
Global Fund; our economic policies are shaped by the IMF and World Bank;
our struggle to overcome poverty is led by Jeffrey Sachs and Angelina
Jolie; our hungry are fed by WFP; our refugees are cared for by UNHCR;
our trade negotiations are led by Oxfam and Action Aid; our leaders’
crimes are tried by the ICC – the list is endless.
How did we
come to this? One needs look at the main news about Africa in the mass
media to see how our inherent inability to manage our affairs has been
played and replayed. The news is about civil conflict, poverty, famine
or disease. If it is about famine and hunger, for example, there will be
an impoverished mother in dirty clothes, carrying a malnourished child
on her back, stretching out her frail hand towards a white aid worker
who is presented as an altruistic saviour.
Colonial
attitudes have been recreated through the reporting of Africa today.
Many of the promoters of colonialism were high minded Europeans like
David Livingstone seeking to end slave trade, spread Christianity and
“civilization.” Yet behind this seeming altruism also lay Western
cultural hubris captured in Gen. Ian Smuts comment: “The African has
largely remained a child type, with a child psychology and outlook.”
The imagery of Africa as a continent in need for Western help has not changed.
Visit an
aid project in Africa. There will be a white aid worker in his 20s
teaching an army of middle aged Africans how to use a condom, how many
babies to produce, how to plant rice etc – as if they are children. In
government ministries there will be an aid project with a 25-year old
college grad from the USA working with an African PhD civil servant. He
is paid 12 times better than his African counterpart. The African has
to feed his family. Knowing the aid project serves interests of the
donor than the recipient, he leaves office to attend to his private
business, leaving the college grad to do all the work. In the evening,
the “technical expert” retreats to a largely white drinking club and
gossips to his friends how “Africans are lazy.”
These
attitudes would be a sad but minor inconvenience if they were restricted
to those who think about Africans this way. The fundamental problem is
that they are most dominant among us African elites. We have been
bombarded with the images of our incompetence, inferiority, and
helplessness daily – and we seem to have succumbed to them. Any attempt
to fight this image will be met with claims that such an African
supports local dictators or corruption. Therefore, the first line of
defence of these stereotypes are African elites themselves. The second
will be western intellectuals, journalists and diplomats who will claim
“you are exaggerating” the issue.
As these
images are played out, another image appears on the horizon – the
“international community” coming to our rescue. This will be a kind
relief aid worker, volunteer doctor, an altruistic human rights
campaigner who will have “sacrificed” the comfort of his Beverly Hills
lifestyle to come to our rescue (in Darfur).
I was
previously blind to the import of these images of Africa and their
racist undertones until I lived in America – once in California and
later in New Haven. In either case, I lived in a rich (read white)
neighbourhood – the roads are well paved, the sidewalks done, the houses
neat, the fountains work, the streets are lit at night etc. Just across
the street is a poor (read black) neighbourhood – the roads filled with
potholes, pavements broken, ramshackle houses. The police would stoke
the neighbourhood every evening looking for black male youth to arrest
for using or dealing in illegal drugs.
Why does
the city council pave roads in the white neighbourhood but ignore the
black neighbourhoods? Through discussions with friends, I was told black
people do not show up at town council meetings, don’t vote and have
therefore been politically excluded from public services. But why have
they developed this self-destructive behaviour? It sounded abnormal. I
would see politicians and preachers, both black and white, on American
television castigating blacks for lacking “personal responsibility”
hence their condition. I became critical of black culture, accusing
African Americans of self-destructive behaviour as Barrack Obama does.
Over time,
I began listening to African Americans rather than arguing with them.
They referred me to books and research studies that have been done about
the crisis of the black man in America. What I stumbled upon began a
sobering journey of reflection. It became clear to me the “truth” is
created. One truth in America that I took for granted was that gangster
culture was among blacks because of trade in drugs. Yet statistics
showed that white people in America are 13 times more likely to use
drugs than black people. That notwithstanding, 78 percent of drug
arrests are of black people. In Georgia, 98% of all people sentenced to
death for drug related crimes are black. In New Jersey blacks are only
15 percent of drivers on its highways. Yet they constitute 46% of all
traffic stops by cops and 76% of arrests.
Here was
the puzzle: as an avid reader/viewer of the American press, I had never
seen mass abuse of black people as an issue in the mainstream media. The
media was always awash with self-congratulatory news about the
greatness of the US. Black incarceration was only highlighted as a
fringe issue. Civil rights advocates like the Reverend Al Shapton were
often brought in only as comic figures fighting for an issue that had
been settled. Nowhere in the news did I hear or read that up to 30% of
adult African American males were in jail and that there were more black
males of college going age in jail than college.
Leaving
the worst injustices on black people in America, I returned to Africa to
find white American journalists in the thick of a struggle for freedom
on our continent. I would meet white human rights activists working to
save the people of Rwanda, Zambia or Kenya from their “brutal and
corrupt” governments. I would feature on TV and radio debates on BBC or
CNN with white academics from America fighting for our democracy. I
began to wonder why all these passionate defenders of our aspirations
for freedom are silent about the freedom of their fellow black citizens
at home.
Anderson
Cooper who goes to Congo or Haiti to make special reports about the
suffering of the people there has never done one special feature in a
black ghetto in America. The US has the largest prison population in the
world – even more than China- but the colour of prisoners is never an
issue in the American media. The media were telling the truth and
nothing but the truth, but they were not telling the whole truth.
Slowly,
reluctantly, I began to re-examine my views about Africa and how I
presented them as a journalist and publisher. Perhaps we consume
ourselves with too much negative reporting (all true) to almost complete
exclusion of our achievements. The constant barrage of news about
failure makes us hate ourselves. We have no examples of our achievements
– so we think we need others to liberate us.
I had been
writing a book on aid to Africa and its effects. Then I found an agent
and a publisher to work with. As we discussed the content of the book, I
was shocked by what he told me: I had to be bold on how I presented
Africa. He even suggested a title: stop aid now: how American (or
western) assistance sustains corrupt and brutal regimes in Africa.
My agent
was a smart and practical marketing man – no racist at all. He knew
which batons to touch in order to sell a book about Africa in the West. I
understood his point of view. But I did not agree with it. It was clear
that to sell something about Africa in America and Europe one has to
feed the prejudices. I had met this reality with many of my friends from
Europe and North America covering Africa for international news media.
Each time there was a good story, they told me their editors would not
like it. But each time a famine struck a country, an epidemic ravaged a
village, a war engulfed a town, a ritual murder was reported in an area,
a warlord massacred people etc, my friends would hit the headlines
across Europe and North America. I was not going to promote this
narrative.
Racial
bias shapes the news which reproduces and sustains racial bias in a
circular flow of conscious and subconscious racism. It took me longer to
reflect on this dynamic and even longer to begin changing my mind about
how I, as an African journalist, need to go about my work. I am still
reflecting and learning… But one lesson is clear: even in covering
Africa’s failures, we should at least provide context.
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