Africans
It is interesting that although these articles are written in UK's main papers,
our friends like Pat Anderson Edie Cross or even Caroline do not see them or
simply do not want to post them. Here is one from the Guardian of London of
this morning.
EM
Toronto
=================
Condescension and ignorance are no help to Kenya
The West's patronising response to the recent events in Kenya betrays our
lack of respect to a sophisticated continent
Richard Dowden
Sunday January 6, 2008
Observer
Imagine: at the end of the Second World War, America and the Soviet Union
decide they are tired of tribal warfare in Europe. The century is only
halfway through and already some 90 million people have been slaughtered.
The solution is a single European country imposed from above. So the
Slovene President is trying to broker a provincial
border dispute between France and Germany. Under France is a vast pool of
oil but some of it is also under Germany - the Germans are all
Muslim by the way. Meanwhile, the ancient tribal hatreds still cause
frequent massacres among Greeks and Turks, Basques and Spanish and in
Highbury and Tottenham. Tribalism is not an exclusively African
disease.
Imagining a 'tribal' Europe gives you some idea of what African
citizenship is like. The EU has only 23 languages; Africa has at least
2,000. Kenya alone has 40. Like an imagined Europe unified by force by
outsiders, Africans played no part in the creation of their nation states.
Their boundaries were drawn on maps in Europe by Europeans who had never
even been to Africa and with no regard for existing
political systems and boundaries. Half a century later, Africans were
given flags and national anthems, airlines and armies and told they were
now independent; Kenyans, Nigerians or Chadians.
Unsurprisingly, most Africans, especially in rural areas with little
education, identify more with their own people, language, culture and
society than they do with their nation state, especially if that
nation state has done nothing for them. That is not to say they reject it.
Kenyans are proud of being Kenyan; even Congolese, where the
nation state is weakest, are desperately Congolese. There are no
serious secessionist movements in Africa today, except in Somaliland where
there is no ethnic factor involved.
So while tribalism is an issue in Africa, it is not some weird
atavistic African sentiment but a logical result of Africa's imposed
history. Most Africans I have met speak three or four languages,
intermarriage is common and there is, in normal times, little personal
conflict between people of different ethnicity. What always astounds me in
Africa is how well people of completely different cultures,
customs and languages get along with one another.
In some African countries, there is one dominant ethnic group. In
Zimbabwe, it is the Shona, in Uganda the Baganda and in Kenya it is the
Kikuyu. The Kikuyu also dominate business and tend to be richer than other
groups. Some of that comes through hard work and business acumen, but a
lot of it comes through corrupt political connections, which has bred
fierce resentment from those who have nothing. Almost half of Kenyans live
in desperate poverty, on the equivalent of a
dollar a day. But around them they see rich foreigners and some very rich
Kenyans, mostly Kikuyu. In a 2005 opinion poll, Kenyans put
equality as the issue that concerned them most, equality of
opportunity as well as resources.
Given their poverty and frustration, Kenyans are remarkably patient and
peaceful. But no wonder there was rage when an election appears to have
been stolen by a corrupt Kikuyu elite. So in Nairobi's appalling slums
crammed with desperately poor but hopeful Kenyans from all over the
country, Kikuyu shops and zones have been attacked and Kikuyus killed.
In other parts of the country, Kikuyu outside their traditional area are
also being attacked, as they were in Eldoret. In that part of the Rift
Valley, land was taken in the Forties and Fifties for white
farmers and the local Kalenjin driven off. At independence, the white
farmers left, selling to the highest bidders, who happened to be rich
Kikuyu. They moved in other Kikuyu to work the land and their
'occupation' is deeply resented. Land in Africa is not real estate, to be
bought and sold. It is sacred, where the ancestors still live, part of a
person's blood and soul. It cannot just be sold like cloth. Ever since the
white man left, there have been periodic clashes over land in the Rift
Valley; Kenya's population has doubled since then, so
competition for land intensifies.
Anyone who expressed shock at the recent violence in such a 'stable'
country clearly knows nothing about Kenya. The British government was
caught completely by surprise, but immediately deployed the language of a
former colonial power. Gordon Brown said: 'What I want to see is...' His
advice was wise but his tone set teeth on edge. Would he have used that
language when another former British colony, the USA, had a hung election
in 2000?
And Britain does not speak with credibility in Kenya. In every
previous election in Kenya, British diplomats turned a blind eye to fraud,
intimidation and rigging with bland words such as 'the result broadly
reflected the will of the Kenyan people'. They claimed the margin of
victory was so great that the cheating did not affect the result. Maybe,
but this time the margin was close and the cheating did matter. Britain
did little between elections to push for a fully
independent electoral commission. It couldn't - Britain's own
elections are run by the Home Office. Instead, it poured aid into
Kenya, even after members of the Moi and Kibaki governments were seen
stealing hundreds of millions of pounds in broad daylight.
Ever since it bought into the aid agency view of Africa - 'all Africa
needs is aid' - the British government has carefully reduced its
capacity for understanding the continent. You do not, it seems, need to
understand the poor in order to save them. In 2005, the 'Year of Africa',
it closed three embassies on the continent and abolished
Foreign Office country desk officers who built the institutional
memory of specific countries. Unless you understand Africa and how it
works, you cannot help it.
This ignorance and lack of respect not only led to Britain's
disastrous isolation over Zimbabwe - what Britain sees as a moral
crusade is perceived in Africa and elsewhere as a spat between Mugabe and
British Prime Ministers. And instead of Britain or Europe sending an envoy
to explore the possibilities for peacemaking, it is America's Jendayi
Fraser, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, who has flown into
Nairobi.
· Richard Dowden is the director of the Royal African Society
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is under anarchy"
Groupe de Communication Mulindwas
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