Thank you a million, but no, thank youAs is often said, the media are only a mirror-image of what official society, including the Government, is doing. It is no wonder, then, that Kenya's media attach such importance to whatever a British official may say of Kenya. Thus when so many Nairobi editors go to town with a statement that a British envoy has given the Kibaki Government so many marks, they are only echoing the same political class which gives them their headlines. Why is the African ruling class so keen to be praised by European officials? Why are African statesmen so desperate for a good press in London, Paris, Rome or Washington DC? Because it is only an artificial class. It has no natural or indigenous cultural, economic, political and intellectual roots. It has been moulded literally by hand in the colonial and neo-colonial classroom in the image and service of other societies. For its survival, the African state depends precariously on those other societies. Their whole budgets are predicated on Western "aid". It is from this "aid" that members � most of them parvenus as avaricious as a piranha � develop the paunches which wags call "patriotic fronts". And this "aid" hinges on "conditionalities" which add up to surrender of sovereignties that Lancaster House already made fictitious. Persistent failure to behave can be fatal. In The Dogs of War, Frederick Forsyth shows that many of the coups d'etat attributed to Africa's genetic inability for democracy are plotted and funded by Western billionaires anxious to put in the hands of trusted political groups their huge stakes in the given African countries. Soon it might emerge that the eminence grise in Africa's latest coup is one of the Western transnationals vying with others to exploit the oil riches beneath Sao Tome and Principe. This permanent sense of insecurity � from internal rootlessness and external dependence � is the chief reason African states are so sensitive to criticism and so quick with repressive measures. Despite its central role in it, the official West is the most scathing critic of the thin skin and the tyranny it occasions. Yet, being its creator, it is also the most committed to its survival, demanding merely that its embarrassing protuberances be chiselled out and "democracy" achieved � with the crucial intrusion of "development aid". This is the source of official Africa's incurable fixation with its image in Western newsrooms and corridors of power. An African government will often rush to a foreign correspondent with crucial information it has just denied a local journalist. Thus many African media think it is an earth-shaking story when a mere envoy praises an African Government. British officials abroad know it very well. So, even without any expertise or locus standi, they yap all the time with know-it-all "advice". For they know they will get a headline in the local Press. Thus a number of Nairobi media made it the lead story in their bulletins when the British High Commissioner purported to tell Kenyans how their Government was performing. It was thoroughly self-demeaning of these media to do so. First, like Mr Edward Clay, they live right here in Nairobi. And it is their job to find out and inform their clients how the Government is performing. They do not need anybody else � much less a foreigner � to tell them. Second, despite his conceit, Mr Clay has no special certificate for judging governments � none, that is, except that he is a Caucasian and represents a power that can confer preferment on Third World leaders. Do I mean that our Press should give envoys the blackout on such subjects? No. I only mean that we should look at it with a keen sense of proportion. We should ask ourselves what size of headline � if at all � our envoy in London will get whenever he habitually sits in arrogant judgment of Whitehall. Experience should long ago have taught our editors that, during a crisis, whenever an Anglo-Saxon official extols an African leader � whenever a US official pours fulsome praise on any Chris Murungaru � our first question should be what service the African leader has rendered to London or DC. |
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