Of Anger and Shame in Africa

January 6, 2015 2:50 AM

In a Ghana hotel I overheard a western-sounding white male utter the following to a listener on his phone: “The people in Africa are so simple, I can do whatever I like here. They never challenge me.” My body froze, and of course I said and did nothing.

posted by infini (22 comments total)

The author's nonspecific call for unity felt very 1960s to me, but her underlying analysis was spot-on:

The fact that many people in the world are feeding off our politeness and benefiting from our docility. That our chaos and lack of unity as a people allows clandestine activity of the highest political and economic order. That our neediness is feeding the saviour complex of people who should by now be our peers. I reflected on the fact that despite the undeniable evidence that systems and strategies were set in place to force us into docility and non-productiveness; despite the fact that we were strategically moulded into subdued forms of our real potential; that we were overtly and covertly programmed into believing that our very embodiment is primitive and that we are the scar in the world’s conscience; people will insist on erasing the woundedness created by this reality and blame us and laugh at us for our current state.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:46 AM on January 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

Great great article.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:40 AM on January 6, 2015

and watch how someone will come in here and insist that we were pitiful before we were saved by colonisation. I beg you sit down

"I beg you sit down" is my new mantra. Mostly to myself.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:41 AM on January 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

As retro as pan-africanism might be I think it's an important point given how often the entire continent is lumped together by westerners and how critical the success of africans really are to the longterm health of the global economy. The west can't stop fucking with africa and exploiting their resources but in the long run we need at least some of the nations to "develop" (not even sure what that means or if people say it anymore but maybe, become self-sustaining, become consumers, become permanently stable politically, etc). If they don't, capitalism will be overwhelmed by human needs & eat itself.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:48 AM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I feel so privileged, in the good way, to be exposed to more and more voices like this to help shred the ignorance westerners (especially white ones) are cocooned in when it comes to the rest of the world. I know exactly what stereotypes she means, but have had nothing to counter them with other than a vague feeling of "this cannot be the truth." I have never been to a country in Africa, and it's such a vast place, the stereotypes make up most of what I "know" about it.

We need more of these voices, much more. Thanks for your post, infini.
posted by emjaybee at 7:31 AM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

A Different Kind Of Privilege
posted by infini at 7:32 AM on January 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

We need more of these voices, much more.

Ezibota

Ezibota is a multi-platform cultural experience fueled by its community’s stories surrounding African identity.
posted by infini at 7:39 AM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

I have been super lucky to spend a pretty good amount of time working and living in West Africa, and one thing that always horrifies me is the sort of "Well, we know what it's like" derision of some white people who have been living and working on the continent in various capacities for various periods of time. "The saviour complex of people who should by now be our peers" is the exact way to phrase it, with a good deal of a superiority complex, too. Always couched in "These People."

"Well, we brought $xxx,xxx of equipment, but these people just can't be trusted to keep it in good condition." "These people are so corrupt, you can't give them the money to spend themselves." "These people and African Time." "These people are so happy in the face of so much poverty and squalor." "These people have nothing to live for but their children." "These people really are developing!" "These people are so inspiring."

I don't know what to say to Africans in light of this, other than make apologies for the fact that the rest of the world has such a limited perspective on a diverse, interesting, complicated place. But I do wish that the popular narrative about development on the continent took Ms. Adams' article into account and really considered the way colonialism, and then neoliberal neocolonialism have systematically undermined, underserved, and underestimated Africa and the people making up the zillions of ethnicities and 55 countries which all have particular histories, contexts, needs, wants, resources, and strategies to deal with the world as it is.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:48 AM on January 6, 2015 [11 favorites]

infini: Concerning "A Different Kind of Privilege", I think the author misses the point. Perhaps, the preferential treatment shown to Zimbabweans is due to all the xenophobic attacks against them that have occurred in South Africa.

Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia_in_South_Africa#Xenophobia_in_South_Africa_after_1994

Here's one about the Alexandra riots:

http://www.culanth.org/articles/728-xenophobia-in-south-africa-order-chaos-and

Framing this whole issue as an issue of white vs. black or an issue of white privilege is incorrect. There are greater, more complex issues at hand. Here's an interesting piece from Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/201361895126526626.html
posted by enamon at 7:51 AM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Pan-Africanism might be retro but that doesn't mean it's without merit in some version or another. So many different countries have tried so many different things, to wildly different degrees of success, over the past century that a Pan-African economic and development council with some teeth could very likely do a lot of good in letting the region continue to develop itself and protect itself from outside exploitation. (Outside exploitation will, of course, continue for as long as there are resources and corruptible officials, though, but that's true anywhere.)
posted by Navelgazer at 7:57 AM on January 6, 2015

Framing this whole issue as an issue of white vs. black or an issue of white privilege is incorrect. There are greater, more complex issues at hand. Here's an interesting piece from Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/201361895126526626.html

For anyone who is wondering about the tyres around the necks of the people in the photograph, those tyres will be filled with petrol and lit on fire. We've fucked Africa well and good.
posted by Talez at 8:48 AM on January 6, 2015

enamon, from the article linked in the FPP

Anger at the fact that when we do, at least when I do reflect publicly, there is this ever so polite but defiant dismissal
posted by infini at 8:57 AM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

infini: Not sure how that's related to what I posted. I was responding to the article you linked which described favorable treatment of Zimbabweans and went to try to attribute it to various things without once mentioning the xenophobic violence that was perpetrated against Zimbabweans in South Africa. That fact was completely omitted and tends to change the conversation quite a bit.

Racism, xenophobia, and prejudice occurs amidst all races and ethnicities. Speaking of Pan-Africanism, for example, without acknowledging that fact and confronting it head on, will be counter productive. Furthermore, while I mostly agree with the FPP, the Facebook comments below the article worry me. The color of one's skin is not something to unite around. We must acknowledge that we are all human and that we come from different ethnicities and cultures. We are same and different and we need to learn to live together despite our differences. Focusing on people's skin color instead of their actions is counterproductive to that.
posted by enamon at 9:21 AM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

The color of one's skin is not something to unite around.

When the rest of the world has lumped black Africans into a single group because of skin color, turning that around and finding unity in common cause and shared experience of exploitation seems perfectly reasonable to me.
posted by 1adam12 at 10:06 AM on January 6, 2015 [12 favorites]

We are same and different and we need to learn to live together despite our differences.

differences such as being on one end or the other of western imperialism, right
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:04 AM on January 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

"differences such as being on one end or the other of western imperialism, right"

Not sure what you mean. Are you saying that people should be held personally responsible for the actions of governments over 200 years ago? and because of that people shouldn't live together? Or ?
posted by I-baLL at 11:32 AM on January 6, 2015

Are you saying that people should be held personally responsible for the actions of governments over 200 years ago?

No, but if those governments have left you with a positive legacy and someone else with a negative legacy, then any interactions you have should be pretty mindful of bridging the gap in your circumstances and educational, social and financial capital whilst still believing in each other's equality as a person.
posted by ambrosen at 11:41 AM on January 6, 2015

the actions of governments over 200 years ago

lol

The Pan-Africanism of the OP, as written in the OP, is a way of fighting back against present-day neo-colonialism. The point to be worked toward is Africa's self-betterment, resistance against outside interference, and the end of those intra-African conflicts which have somehow become the subject of this thread.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:19 PM on January 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Why Foreign Aid Is Hurting Africa
posted by clavdivs at 12:50 PM on January 6, 2015

I saw this this morning at the start of a long busy day, and have been thinking about it.

First, “The people in Africa are so simple, I can do whatever I like here. They never challenge me.”
This person cannot have been in Ghana very long. In fact I cannot imagine what possible Ghanaian circumstance might lead to such an opinion .... apart from in a particularly self-deluded dupe in a 419 scheme.

Secondly, I find living in West Africa (Nigeria) pretty challenging at the moment, but that is partly due to stringent expectations on myself to act as an empowered and very effective responsible adult - an expectation that's not at all paralleled in my life in Britain, and very much undermined by a kind of residual Northern British working-class consciousness as well. But that's personal, and perhaps, not to the point.

Thirdly, in my experience, West Africa is not so much looking to the West as perhaps people here imagine.* The place is a powerhouse. It produces IMMENSE wealth. It is busy. And it is confident. There are burgeoning wealthy middle and upper classes, and traditional ruling classes (for instance, Hausa/Fulani across the whole of the Sahel since the Fulani Jihad of 1804) who are able to fully avail themselves of new opportunities, markets and technologies; and who are doing very well, thank you. There is a sort of blindness to this in a lot of Western talk about development, which is a great naivety.

Fourthly though, while certain social bonds are immensely strong - family in the wider sense, one's religious community, homeland or patria (one's parent's village), and ethical obligation to the unfortunate - these bonds have developed organically while the organs of state have to an extent been cobbled together and bolted on. Our states are very young, younger than I am. Others of our institutions are ancient, many of the kingship systems for instance. So the combination of influence and force by which power is expressed and things get done, is the very opposite of straightforward.** And yes, there are unscrupulous people who take advantage of that: but the thing is, it's our own people, robbing the state and screwing the polity and to hell with The actual People who are, exactly, what the state is. And yes, we have graft, and very dishonest politicians and a plundering of the Commons and a massive transfer of wealth to 'international finance'***, and how exactly is this different from your country? We also have courageous principled politicians and other professionals who do a damn good job, above and beyond what can be expected, just as most other countries have too.

But we are plagued by lack of infrastructure which is a direct result of not having an ideological loyalty to the notion that the people, all the people, not just the worthy or the middle class people, are what creates the state. It's an ideology that took a long hard time to grow in Europe, and is currently under attack. The peculiar history of colonialism has meant this isn't always a credible part of new nationalisms. Reading Metafilter has made me realise that it's not at all a given in the context of the USA.

Of course, anyone's mileage may vary.

tl;dr: neo-colonialism is an issue, but it's not necessarily the issue.

I talk about West Africa because that's where my experience is. And I cannot emphasize strongly enough, that the Western point of view seems transparent to us**** only because we are in the West. It's worth trying to shift a little to understand that it is neither universal, nor inevitable.

*Quite a lot of contact with Saudi, Dubai and China at the moment.
**Which is why I'm betting that tourist must have spectacularly clueless.
***More so in Nigeria, cursed by an oil boom.
****me included.
posted by glasseyes at 4:20 PM on January 6, 2015 [10 favorites]

I could say a little about pan-Africanism. There is the AU, the African Standby Force, there is ECOWAS and I don't see why people think this idea is dead? Or failed?
posted by glasseyes at 4:30 PM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

A few decades after independence, the World Bank withdrew funding for higher education because it said higher education was not a priority for Africans, that what Africans needed most was basic education.

So there's a concerted war against the arts and sophisticated (theoretical) thinking for people of color. The political decision makers don't care because their kids are in private schools, starting fashion labels and winning Oscars. And then through their art, they get to perpetuate the culture and values of the aristocracy. The universities don't get it because they've been told education management is about the balance sheet, but most of all, because they have no class consciousness. They have no class consciousness because they've been told that Ngugi wa Thiong'o, ES Atieno Adhiambo and other thinkers were Marxist, and Marx was bad because he was communist. And detention, exile and stints in Nyayo house torture chambers put the fear of God into lecturers' hearts. We don't teach Fanon, Cheikh Anta Diop, Nyerere, Sankara, Mandela - or even Obama - in Kenyan universities. We're told there's no "market" for that. No-one gets a promotion for knowing what pan-Africanism is, or who Dubois, Harriet Tubman or Dedan Kimathi are.

Discouraging the arts in schools is a political agenda
posted by infini at 9:41 PM on January 6, 2015 [2 favorites]