What Bono Doesn't Say About Africa
6 July LA Times commentary - What Bono Doesn't Say About Africa by William Easterly.
Quote:
Just when it seemed that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on "Madonna's Malawi." At the same time, the memoirs of an African child soldier are on sale at your local Starbucks, and celebrity activist Bob Geldof is touring Africa yet again, followed by TV cameras, to document that "War, Famine, Plague & Death are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and these days they're riding hard through the back roads of Africa."
It's a dark and scary picture of a helpless, backward continent that's being offered up to TV watchers and coffee drinkers. But in fact, the real Africa is quite a bit different. And the problem with all this Western stereotyping is that it manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of some current victories, fueling support for patronizing Western policies designed to rescue the allegedly helpless African people while often discouraging those policies that might actually help...
As pointless a generalisation as those of the people he criticises
An article of half truths and skewed factoids - not really that different from the folks he is having a go at.
I believe that Africa's problems, much like those of COIN, are complex and not amenable to reductionism and sound bite solutions from people stuck firmly in their Western 21st Century paradigms.
I would find Blair, Bono, Oprah, the LA time commentator and the plethora of other folks who comment on Africa far more believable if they:
a. lived in sub-Saharan Africa for more than five minutes;
b. stayed somewhere other than the Mt Nelson hotel, Sun City or the Sabi Sands when they visited; and
c. had met, talked to, and shared time with some African's other than Nelson Mandela ( This is not a criticism of Mandela - he is probably the most amazing bloke I have ever met).
I have lived in Africa for a while over my career - good places and 'bad'. To my experience, it defies the trivial categorisation offered by either the LA times piece or the celebrity do gooders.
It does deserve 'better' - I think the best place we can start is learning more, and displacing the developed world's profound ignorance of the continent.
Cheers,
Mark
A Celebrity In The Bush Is Worth Two In Print
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
(Kipling)
They flaunt their cause celebre like their cheap Che t-shirts, oblivious to the hope and dignity all around them, focused on pain that gets them publicity, like cheap prosthetics to be waved for alms. I'm on a poetic roll today, by god.
