And here we have an object lesson in what I see as the biggest barrier to Africa (or any third world nation) ‘saving’ itself - apathy. If we wanted to chat about the race for the Democratic leadership, or the Hutton inquiry, or Paris Hilton, we’d have no shortages of lively threads to participate in. Africa threads always sink after we agree that the problem is huge and none of us know what to do about it. So we go about our business and, paralyzed by indecision (‘What should I do?’) and hopelessness (‘It probably won’t make much difference anyway’), we forget about Africa.
Here I’ll point out that we’re really very lucky to have the privilege to ‘forget’ about Africa. It’s not our problem, really. We can live quite satisfying lives without worrying about it, and the more we think about it the more depressed we get, so why bother?
Again, we are very lucky to be in this position. At least, some of us are.
My in-laws are not. Their currency is worth next to nothing, their country is ruled by a madman, and although they are black Africans they fear losing their land (which is all they have) to other black Africans. My nieces and nephews are growing up in a world where just about anyone they meet could have AIDS, they are not permitted to speak their mind on just about anything, they have little chance for a successful future as there really aren’t any jobs for them, they are without a mother as she has moved overseas to try to make some foreign currency to move back, and they are exposed to endless streams of media telling them (a) all the wonderful things that exist in the world, and (b) that they will never be able to have any of it. If I sent them some money they would want to buy a Playstation.
So as you can see for me the question of ‘What can I do?’ is slightly more than academic. And I don’t know how to answer it. I’ve read a whole lot of books on the subject, though, that have really helped my thinking. Let me begin, if you will indulge me … (and if not, the worst that will happen is another argument, from which someone could hopefully learn something)
Bosda’s point that we’re really just arguing about the role the West has played in Africa’s continued troubles is well taken, but I don’t think this is a minor problem at all. As we’ve argued above, ‘the West’ (meaning, international financial institutions, American and European corporations, etc) continues to play an active role in Africa’s ability to help themselves. They are prevented from saving up and investing by debt servicing and demands that they open up their industries to foreign investors. However, I belive that the role of the West in Africa’s marginalization is not limited to economics.
Postcolonialism is the study of the relations of the West with the Third World, in a nutshell. It is a huge, sprawling, massive, complex, contradictory field which is often quite inaccessible to someone who doesn’t have the time or inclination to study it in depth. (Have a look at Homi Bhabha or Judith Butler if you don’t believe me.) One key postcolonial … ist, I guess, was the late, lamented Edward Said (pronounced sai-EED), whose book Orientalism (1979) was a seminal work in the field. He basically argued that the way the ‘third world’ (defined variously as ‘former colonies’ or Africa, Latin America and most of Asia) is represented in the West has much more to do with the West than it does with any actuality of the third world.
For instance, when Napolean went to Egypt, he and his troops brought back many ‘images’ of Egypt - they wrote books, painted pictures, produced descriptions etc. These images were hugely influential in the way Egypt and Egyptians were thought of in the minds of Europeans at the time, since they really had no other source of information.
But keep this in mind: anyone who travels anyplace strange will have a few predictable reactions: they will be uncomfortable, they will think things are weird and strange and possibly ‘scary,’ they may have trouble relating to the people they see. And it’s these people, who may be filled with negative feelings towards Egyptians, who are representing Egyptians. It would be like, for example, a Palistinian writing a Travel Guide to Israel (or vice versa) - it would not necessarily be flattering but it would certainly not be accurate.
Said argues that this dynamic pervades most representations of the third world (and is very self-reinforcing: if you expect to see savage brutes, then you will) in the West. Since most people don’t actually know any Africans, they have may no reason to question the view of Africans which is presented to them. We all like to think we are ‘enlightened’ and that we have surpassed these biases and prejudices and see Africans for what they ‘really’ are, but how can we? Everything we know about them (assuming we don’t know any in person) we know from representations which could themselves be filled with prejudices that we could never see, even if we looked, since we don’t have an ‘actual’ vision to compare the representations against.
For me Said’s most important point is that noone has ever come up with a method to separate the scholar from his/her circumstances, ie, whenever I meet an African I will always be meeting him/her as a white Canadian. I cannot escape this position I’m in. Critically, I can’t tell myself that I have an ‘accurate’ view of this African because of my position, and my 27-odd years of being subjected to views of Africans that may or may not have anything at all to do with Africans.
The other key point about postcolonialism is that it’s too easy to assume that ‘the other’ (whoever that may be - Africans, psychiatric patients, Palistinians, terrorists) are one homogenous group, who have certain things in common, and whose individual differences aren’t as important as their shared identity. In other words, we stop seeing them as people and see them instead as, well, Africans or psychiatric patients or whatever. A relevant example is Iraq: Bush usually refers to them as a group with simplistic shared interests (they all hated Saddam, they’re all happy he’s gone) when the actual experiences of diverse Iraqis are quite complex and often filled with internal conflict.
What does this mean? It means, when you think about Africans, withhold judgements. If someone about whom you know very little is doing something that doesn’t make any sense to you, remember (a) you don’t have any idea what their circumstances are (remember, newspaper accounts are very limited), and (b) pretty much all humans everywhere share some things in common: they love their children, they want a secure future, etc. For example, as a North American we cannot understand what makes some African women want to cut up the genitals of their daughters (nor why their daughters sometimes want it too). We have to remember that there is some reason why they want to do it. I’m not suggesting that that makes it okay, just that when trying to address the problem we don’t slip into condemnation (‘you’re brutal savages, you hate your women,’ etc) but remember that they are human beings who make decisions based on what’s best for them in their circumstances. Why do they make these choices, which as far as we’re concerned is ‘bad’? What circumstances need to change in order for them to make different (better) choices?
The key point for me in all of this is this: Everybody is just trying to live their life as best they can. For too many people, this often comes down to the choice between the least of a number of really terrible options. (For example, what would drive you to give your life savings to a smuggler, who would pack you in the back of a tomato truck to be driven across Asia, with the faint hope of arriving in England, where you’re going to be marginalized as an ‘asylum seeker’? Well, if we see people who do this as ‘freeloading weasels’ there’s no answer to that question. But if we see them as people making choices, we realize that things would have to be pretty flippin’ bad at home for them to take that risk for such little return.) Again it is a privilege for us to not have to think about this: we never have to make the choice, for example, which child to feed and therefore allow to live. We never have to make the ‘choice’ to abandon our family - never to see them again - to move overseas, so that we can send money home to them.
Now, back to Said: Orientalism is a fantastic book but quite academic. (Although the introduction is definitely worth a read.) His later work Covering Islam doesn’t address Africa, rather Islam, but it’s a fantastic way to get the feel of what Orientalism means. It’s about Iran and the crisis in the 80’s, and it’s also particularly enlightening in the light of Iraq.
Now, I don’t know if any of this will bring you any closer to an answer about what to do. But it certainly helped me sort out my thoughts and understand how complex global relations can result in the horrible things that happen. It also made me more able to evaluate what (broadly speaking) is ‘good’ for Africa and what is ‘bad.’
Another key point to remember about Africa in particular is that poverty feeds on itself. People who have nothing have nothing to lose, for one thing, so their behaviour may seem strange to those of us whose circumstances are different. They are much less able to mitigate problems like drought or disease. People who are not paid well by their employers are much more likely to be corrupt. If you have to stay home and work the fields (or tend a sick relative) you can’t go to school. Poverty means people use resources less efficiently, for example, they may wreck their soil because they can’t afford to let it lie fallow, or to not use harmful pesticides. They may sell their cow for quick cash and then not have any milk any more. They may do environmentally damaging things - sh*t in their own beds, if you will - because they can’t afford to save if for tomorrow’s use if they have nothing to use today.
So when thinking about what to do you have to be aware of all these interactions, many of which we don’t understand. But these interactions can provide hope, too: for example, providing school lunches has a huge positive effect on attendance, as sometimes people don’t send their kids to school because they can’t afford to feed them any way except for scooping from the family pot. The link between educating women and slowed population growth is well documented. Cheap AIDS drugs would expand the workforce (by allowing patients to function and caretakers to find other occupations). Grassroots initiatives are great because they are location specific and they understand these interactions at the local level, which larger organizations often can’t.
Well, this has been a huge post. I could keep going forever.
I just don’t want us to forget about Africa because it’s too hard. Please let’s not forget about Africa just because it’s too hard.
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