Zizou’s issues: football’s aesthetics vs. global ethics

Who would have predicted that on the morning after the grand finale of Germany 2006, and in the days to follow, much of the world would be debating a headbutt and its probably or allegedly racist provocation? The issue has divided people’s opinions, with some believing that the reputation of the game solidly rests on the upholding of a virtue called “sportsmanship,” in which a player should not react to a provocation, however insulting. Others contend that as long as it fails to address the problem of racism head-on (pun coincidental), football as a game does not deserve the attribute of being a beautiful game. Regardless what side of the debate you are on, the incident makes one thing clear: football is more than about athletic aesthetics and kinesthetics. It is also about global ethics and responsibilities in addressing problems of racial injustice and historical inequality. These problems are evident and in need of attention, even if it turned out that Matterazzi’s comment to Zinedine Zidane, popularly known as Zizou to his fans, was benign, if not amiable.

Those who see the game as being more about sportsmanship and athletic aesthetics than about global ethics insist that the best reaction to a provocation on the field is referring the matter to the referee, rather than responding to the provocation. The issue of not responding to provocations has been a defining problem for individuals and groups dealing with problems of social justice for many centuries. It may be said to share philosophical turf with ideas such as non-violence and the biblical ethic of turning the other cheek. Some movements based on these precepts have been successful, but others have merely worked to the advantage of the powerful and privileged, leaving the concerns of powerless and underprivileged groups unattended.

From the perspective of sportsmanship and athletic aesthetics, Zidane should have kept his calm and reported the matter to the referee. But this perspective ignores the question of whether the referee would have believed Zidane, having not been within earshot of the incident. Would the world have believed Zidane? A non-response from Zidane would have in fact meant that the only sound to be heard the morning after would be the deafening cacophony of Italy’s triumph. Would a complaint about racism, in a world in which racism has sometimes been blamed on the victim, have any chance of being heard in such a triumphalist din?

Another point being made is that a non-response reaction to a provocation on the field would have been more appropriate considering that the behavior of sports stars on and off the field has a huge impact on young people worldwide. This is also a good point to make, but it subordinates the problem of racism as being less important than the need to provide young people with impeccable role models. Subordinating the problem of racism to the backyard of perfect, spotless role models strikes me as not only immoral, but also unrealistic and misleading. Do we really expect young people to be that uncritical? Even if we accept that many young people are indeed uncritical and buy wholesale into the myth of the perfect sports star or celebrity, is that the kind of worldview we want to encourage in our young people? For how long are we going to sweep under the carpet the problem of racism and injustice in world football?

The problem of racism should not be seen as superficial and merely having to do with the temperament of players on the field only. It should be seen as a more profound problem, affecting the hopes and aspirations of billions of underprivileged people around the world. It should be seen as representative of the other intractable issues that have so far not been given prominent attention, including the fact that this was another all-Europe affair in which Eurocentrism as both an ideology and reality was on display yet again, as far as the hosting of the tournament, the slots per confederation, and FIFA’s selection of the best 23 players of the tournament. While the diverse ethnic and racial makeup of the French team was one indication of how racism can begin to be overcome in the very heart of Europe itself, that observation is, for the moment, being buried under superfluous condemnations of an act that may have been the culmination of years of pent up rage, as alluded to by those more familiar with Zidane’s experiences growing up and the larger problem of racial integration in French society. This is not a perspective that can be easily understood by some ensconced in the racialized privilege and class comfort of material surfeit.

Rather than seeing Zidane’s headbutt as an ugly act tainting the reputation of a so-called beautiful game, it should be the pervasive racism of European domination of world football that is truly ugly. The beauty of the game should not be seen in terms of aesthetic and kinesthetic displays on the field only. It should also be seen in the actions FIFA takes to make the game live up to that attribute by being an instrument of active world peace and global social justice. With South Africa 2010 on the horizon, one hopes we are heading in that direction.

African football, global inequality and 2010

Much of the African media’s analyses on the reasons why no African team went beyond the second round at the ongoing World Cup Finals in Germany focus on one theme that reflects much of the African media’s analysis of Africa’s problems: self blame. Virtually no analysis I have so far looked at mentions broader issues of global, historical and political injustice and inequality, in how world cup berths are allotted in the different FIFA confederations. In fact, a Rwandan columnist repeats a common refrain about how Africans always blame colonialism for their ills, when no such thing has even been mentioned in any of the analyses and comments, whose uniting feature has been blaming African teams for lacking self-confidence and resources. Such is the strength of the reluctance to examine African problems in their broader context that blaming colonialism is considered not only taboo, it is brought up even when nobody mentions it.

In Malawi, The Nation newspaper of July 1 quoted national team players, sports commentators and coaches as saying African teams lacked tactics and “failed to properly read issues on the pitch and react quickly.” Another player blamed it on lack of self-confidence, saying African teams gave a lot of respect to the more experiences teams. The Zambian paper The Post quoted the Nigerian coach Augustine Eguavoen as attributing the problem to lack of experience, while the Business Day of South Africa quoted Farouk Khan, youth development coach, as saying it boiled down to lack of facilities to promote the sport in Africa. The Zimbabwean Independent put their finger on “naivet.” There is no denying of the validity of each of these issues.

However, in addition to these analyses, I want to suggest a deeper examination of historical and political trends apparent in the development of the game since 1930, the first time that the world cup finals were staged, in Uruguay, South America. With the exception of Japan and South Korea in 2002, the world cup finals have always been played in two regions, Europe and the Americas. Is it much wonder, then, that the world cup has always been won by teams from these two regions, and never from any other region of the world? To date, after 17 world cup tournaments, in a period of 72 years (as of 2002), only 7 seven teams in the world have ever won the FIFA World Cup, all of them from either Europe, or South America. Is it such a big surprise that these two regions boast the world’s most accomplished footballing nations, and that other regions do not have such pedigree?

The inequality and injustice of the game’s organization is even more blatant in the way world cup finals slots are apportioned. The continent of Europe has 51 national football associations, and has 14 (15 in 2002) world cup finals slots. Africa, which has 52 member associations, has only 5 slots, an improvement from 1978 when Africa was accorded only one slot. South America has 10 associations, yet it claims 5 world cup places. Asia, with 44 associations, has 4 places, while Oceania, with 11 associations, has no slot of its own, relying on a victory in a play off with the 5^th placed in South America to be accorded a slot. Unstated in these allocations is the fact that some of the teams that are accorded national status in FIFA are not even sovereign nations. Examples include Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, teams that do not have nation status at the United Nations, yet they are accorded the opportunity to compete with a 3 to 1 chance of making it to the finals over sovereign African and Asian nations. This not an argument against these teams’ world cup berths; rather, it is an argument against the injustice and inequality facing African and Asian nations.

To its credit, FIFA has been more open and accepting to demands from the Confederation of African Football (CAF) for more places and support, thanks to the two FIFA’s presidencies of Joao Havelange, a Brazilian, and Sepp Blatter, a Swiss, who is the current president. According to Paul Darby’s (2002) study of the development of football in Africa, politics and colonialism have been apparent at each turn of the game. In his book titled Africa, Football and FIFA: Politics, Colonialism and Resistance, Darby argues that the contours of the development of football in Africa reflect the struggles of African countries in global politics and history. Writes Darby: “Africa’s position within FIFA’s global hierarchy can be illustrated and informed by drawing upon explanations which take into account of the globalization of culture, economic models of global development and a range of perspectives in international relations” (p. 7).

Darby’s framework and approach, which lead him to conclude that Africa has contributed a lot to world football, is shared by other researchers, including Alegi (2004), Cornelissen (2004), and several others. This is why I find it intriguing that much of the commentary in the African media says nothing about the broader contexts in which African football has to dribble and tackle. It does not take sophisticated thinking to understand how more opportunities to play in the world cup finals translate into improvement of the game back in the region accorded those opportunities. The self-blame train, interestingly, does not see this point.

There is much to be admired in the tendency for us Africans to blame ourselves, contrary to those who claim that Africans like to blame others. However there are broader contexts that must be taken into consideration, to make the analysis more accurate. A lot of the self-blame can in fact be seen as coming out of the inferiority complex that is widely, and perhaps correctly, understood to plague many Africans, who never cease to see Europe and America as the unmatched epitome of civilization and advancement. Some of the self-blame also comes from an attitude of Africans’ dissatisfaction with conditions in their own countries, unbalanced with an acceptance of the status quo at the global level. These are effects of a Eurocentric mindset, in which these particular Africans, mostly from the elite ranks, have been schooled to view themselves through European worldviews.

After several shots from the penalty box, Africa has finally scored into the goal of the hosting rights to the 2010 world cup finals. A few commentators have observed that Ghana’s performance in Germany has been worthy of world cup finalists, and that to those who have followed Ghanaian football, this has not been a lucky flick. Whereas hosting the tournament on African soil does give African teams an added boost, the reality of five slots, against historical domination and slot advantage from Europe and South America, does not offer much hope for an African team winning the cup. Africa’s victory lies in the gradual triumphs registered so far, a reflection of the awareness of the inequality and injustice of not only the world game but global relations as well, on the part of Africa’s struggle leaders and other fair-minded individuals around the world.

Soweto smoke, 30 years on

For the youth of today

The earth need not be hungry

Swallowing sweat

Dripping from bruised brows

Winds beating upon backs

Still firm and strong

For the youth

The earth need not be so dry

For our earth is nurture

And the road ahead

Demands stamina

Beyond textbook falsity

For us

Who dare to imagine

The many Soweto Uprisings

Still raging in our backyards

Shadowed in the backdrop

By gated kingly mansions

The earth is not only hungry

It is also angry

For why would our youth

Whiz through suburbia schools

Attain shrill-sounding degrees

Globe-trot in first world offices

Yet know nothing about Biko?

Nor Nkrumah

Nor Malcom X & DuBois?

And still think themselves

Elites

More deserving

Than the hoodlums of Ndirande?

On this day of the African child

Thirty odd years after June 16, 1976

Tell the youth the truth

And let the earth mend

From this deathly thirst

Parching throats

And frying minds.

© S. Sharra Mlauzi, June 16, 2006

Malcolm X and pan-Africanism today

Today, May 19^th, marks Malcolm X’s 81^st birthday. It is sad to observe that 41 years after his assassination on February 21, 1965, the pan-Africanist awareness and consciousness that Malcolm celebrated on the continent are dead, at a moment when they are in fact needed most. What happened to such a promising start? What can we do today to make pan-Africanism once again the ideological force that it once was?

When he visited the continent of Africa twice in the last twelve months of his life, Malcolm X followed in the footsteps of Dr. WEB DuBois in demonstrating how, to paraphrase his own words, the struggles of African Americans in the United States, and those of Africans on the continent, were “interlocked.” Malcolm X’s visit, which followed the settling in 1961, and eventual death in 1963 of Dr. DuBois in Ghana, was a key moment in the history of pan-Africanism. Malcolm X believed in internationalizing the African American struggle against racial injustice and inequality in the United States, which he suggested ought to be a human rights issue, above and beyond being a civil rights issue. He saw the support of Africans on the continent as key to achieving this heightened awareness of the struggle. Malcolm was able to hold this view for the specific reason that on the African continent itself, pan-Africanism was very much alive and thriving, with Africans exhibiting an acute awareness and a global consciousness of the struggle needed to liberate Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora.

Malcolm X visited the continent of Africa for the first time in his life in May, 1964. He had just finished his Hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, where he changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz. He was to return to the continent later that year, and stayed for 18 months. The two trips took Malcom X to several countries in Africa, including Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal, among others. He was able to meet and have private audiences with presidents of several countries, including Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and Dr. Milton Obote, then prime minister of Uganda.

In his autobiography, as told to Alex Haley, published in 1965, Malcolm X repeatedly spoke of how his whole life had been about constant change. Born on May 19, 1925, he grew up very poor, and lived in Lansing, Michigan, the very town I am writing this from. His father, Rev. Earl Little, a Baptist preacher, was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan here in Lansing, in 1931, for his active involvement in the Marcus Garvey back-to-Africa movement, known as Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Malcolm was six years old at the time. After eighth grade, in which he was voted class president, in a white-dominant school, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked menial street jobs, and led a life of crime selling narcotics, pimping, and armed robbery. He was later arrested with a colleague, and served 7 years of a 10-year sentence.

In prison, Malcolm discovered the library, and became a voracious reader. He took classes taught by instructors from Harvard and Boston Universities. He participated in debates, and imprived his writing ability. He read HG Wells, WEB DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, JA Rogers, Gregor Mendel, and many other scholars, on topics including world history, world civilizations, religion, genetics, and linguistics. One of his brothers told him about The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, which he later joined and became its strongest and most steadfast disciple. He became second in command to Elijah Muhammad, and his faith in the religion was deep and unshakeable. He was responsible for the growth of The Nation of Islam, from a gathering of about 400 to a national movement of more than 40,000 people. He made speeches across the United States, in which he spread Elijah Muhammad’s message that all white people were devils, created to contaminate the world and rule it for 6,000 years; and that black people, created a superior race, would soon take over and rule the world again. Beyond the black supremacist and racist ideology of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X represented an unparalleled deep understanding of the fundamental basis of the white racism that kept black people in America down and relegated them to a life of misery, injustice and ignominy. They did this at a time when most black people did not even have the courage to speak truth to power and teach whites about the disastrous consequences of racism unto African Americans. Later Malcolm was shocked beyond belief to uncover immoral acts committed by Elijah Muhammad. When he consulted Muhammad to find out how to deal with and contain the breaking scandal, Muhammad turned against him, and sought ways to restrict Malcolm. Muhammad’s opportunity came when, reacting to the assassination of President John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Malcolm X remarked that the violence that the US government had inflicted in different parts of the world had come back to haunt it. “The chickens have come home to roost,” said Malcolm X.

Elijah Muhammad suspended Malcolm from his position, and their differences grew. Malcolm made his pilgrimage to Mecca, which exposed him to the larger, original and authentic Islamic faith. During the pilgrimage, Malcolm mixed, mingled and prayed with Muslims from different ethnicities and skin complexions. While there he received honor and respect from people who looked as white as the white racists in America, something that he had never experienced in the United States. That began for him what was to become a profound, cosmic change in his worldview, in which he began to question his black supremacist ideology. Malcolm did not lose sight of the racism that black people continued being subjected to in the United States, but he was now able to see the positive role that white people could play in helping end racism. His thinking in this matter was most incisive and prescient, as he states in his autobiography:

"I said that both races, as human beings, had the obligation, the responsibility, of helping to correct America’s human problem. The well-meaning white people, I said, had to combat, actively and directly, the racism in other white people. And the black people had to build within themselves much greater awareness that along with equal rights there had to be the bearing of equal responsibilities" (Autobiography, p. 375, 1964).

He adds: “I knew, better than most Negroes, how many white people truly wanted to see American racial problems solved. I knew that many whites were as frustrated as Negroes.”

Malcolm X’s activism, both before and after the Hajj, was well known even outside the United States. In Africa he was as relevant to the struggle for independence as the other nationalists on the continent. His wish was for more black Americans to develop a greater awareness about the inter-linkages between their struggle and that of other black people on the continent. To a certain extent, that wish has been achieved in some sections of the black community in the United States. In Africa, one can’t help but feel that the awareness of the importance of pan-Africanism and the trans-Atlantic linkages of the destinies of black people around the world has been dying a slow death. Today, very few African leaders even address the issue. Very few African students from primary school to university have any idea about pan-Africanism, let alone Malcom X and what he stood for. The most obvious consequence of this can be seen in the discourses of the elites in discussing current affairs. Most of the discussion focuses on the heat of the moment, with very little historical, informed analysis of the broader contexts that keep churning out one crisis after another, as is the political situation in Malawi today. It has not always been like this.

In his autobiography, Kanyama Chiume (1982), one of the leading nationalists in the struggle for Malawi’s independence, writes about the continent-wide pan-African network that provided nurture and support to most countries fighting for independence. Serving as Malawi’s foreign minister up to the time Malawi achieved independence, Kanyama Chiume’s travels around Africa connected Malawi’s struggle to those in Algeria, Tunisia, Ghana, Guinea, Tanzania, South Africa, and many other countries. Malawi received support, financial, strategic and otherwise, from India, Egypt and other countries who were also fighting imperialism and colonialism. Chiume writes about meeting and discussing the African struggle with Algeria’s leader Ben Bella, Egypt’s Nasser, Ghana’s Nkrumah, Guinea’s Toure, Tanzania’s Nyerere, among others.

It is not too late to revive and re-energize the pan-Africanist ideals of African unity, as preached by John Chilembwe, WEB DuBois, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Frantz Fanon, Sekou Toure, and many others. I wish this message had received wider media attention when Malawi’s president Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika invited, and named a road after, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe earlier this month. While a lot of the criticism against the visit and the road-naming was based on Mugabe’s human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, none of the criticism, including and especially newspaper editorials, exhibited any pan-Africanist consciousness and awareness, choosing, instead, to toe the Euro-American line and thereby perpetuate the fatalist, dependency syndrome designed to ensure that Africa is forever shackled to imperialism. This has to change. And we must begin with the young people, who hold the promise for the future.

Bob Marley and the continuing struggle for global justice

I was in Standard 8 when one of my mother's brothers, William Ziwoya, or Godfrey Ziwoya, as he later insisted on being called, came to live with us at Police College, in Zomba. Uncle Godfrey, who was 7 years older than me, sadly died in 2000, aged 36. In his short life, he taught me two things, one of which has had a defining influence on my worldview. Uncle Godfrey loved reggae music, and considered Bob Marley to be the greatest musician of all time. He also loved Bruce Lee, and considered him to be the best martial artist of all time. His love for Bob Marley influenced me so much that I not only came to also see him as the most important musician of all time, I have actually come to adopt his pan africanist social justice agenda as my guiding worldview.

Today, May 11, 2006, marks 25 years since Bob Marley died. When I started secondary school and was able to utilize a book mailing service that the National Library of Malawi used to run, I read two thick volumes that were biographies of Bob Marley, Catch a Fire, by Tim White (1983), and Bob Marley: The Biography, by Stephen Davis (1985). I was 16 at the time, and thus began my social consciousness, sharing a strong feeling of inequality and injustice by powerful nations of the global North against smaller nations from the global South.

In my last year of secondary school at Police Secondary School in Zomba, in 1988-89, my friend Andrews Nchessie and I performed live on stage two of Marley's songs, Redemption Song, and War. From that day onwards everyone in the school began calling me Marley. I went on to possess as many of Bob Marley's albums and songs as were available, and have continued feeling their passion and power to this day.

As we commemorate his untimely death today, I find that Marley's words, adapted from Emperor Haile Selassie's 1963 speech to the UN, still resonate with truth, a quarter century later:

Until the philosophy which holds one race
Superior and another inferior
Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war, me say war

That until there is no longer first class
And second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man's skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes
Me say war

Today, Marley's music is not as widely listened to as it was when I was growing up. There has been no musician who has done what Bob Marley, a true pan-africanist, did for the world. A lot of young Malawians are growing up in a world where global injustices are still rampant, but the discourse has shifted. There are fewer musicians and artists who possess the intellectual depth and analytical insight of the historical and global root causes of world poverty and inequality. Instead, a triumphalist rhetoric that blames poor people for their suffering, and celebrates the mighty and powerful for their greed and wealth, results in shallow, superfluous understanding of the world's major problems.

One of the most important messages Marley gave the pan-african world were the words in Redemption Song:

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds"

Taken together with his urgent message for the end of racist philosophies that hold one race superior and another inferior, those of us who work with young people have our work cut out for us. And mentorship roles, like the type the late uncle Godfrey played with me, is an important part of that work.

DuBois, Chilembwe, and critical theory in education

From April 7 to April 11, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) held its annual conference at the Moscone Center, in downtown San Fransisco, USA. One of the panels that I attended at the conference was dedicated to a discussion of the state of critical theory today. Not since I started situating my work in critical theories informed by pan-Africanist ideals and the visions of the African Renaissance, has it occurred to me that there are historical and international connections amongst the work of WEB DuBois, John Chilembwe’s anti-imperialist struggle in the early 1900s that paved the way for Malawi's independence, and the way forward for education in Malawi and other societies working toward peace and social justice.

The AERA is the largest association for educational researchers in North America. Its annual conference attracts upwards of 10,000 people from North America and other places, including researchers, professors, publishers, classroom practitioners, and graduate students. This year marked my first attendance at the AERA, where I presented a paper, adapted from chapter 5 of my dissertation, in the Peace Education special interest group (SIG).

The panelists in the discussion on critical theory included Peter McLaren, Michael Apple, Joe Kincheloe, Elizabeth Heilman, Gert Biesta, and Wendy Kohli. I sat right upfront so I could get a better view of the panel.

Peter McLaren pointed out two things that schools of education tend to ignore today: the Marxist roots of critical pedagogy, and class exploitation. He also addressed recent criticisms that dismiss Marxism as “universalizing”, “totalizing”, “too economistic” and “deterministic”, saying for him, the goal has always been the achievement of a socialist society.

Of the most significance for the purposes of this blog, and for my intellectual politics, framed within the visions of pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance, were the remarks by Joe Kincheloe who, as of January 1^st, 2006, has joined McGill University, in Canada, from the City University if New York Graduate Center. Professor Kincheloe started by pointing out how predominatly “white” and “male” the panel was. While there were two females on the panel, all the panelists were white. He particularly singled out the absence of blacks on the panel, and thanked the Asians, Latin Americans, and Blacks who were part of the overflowing, standing-room-only audience. Kincheloe’s main point was that discussions in critical pedagogy don’t resonate with African Americans, which he sees as a problem. The North American academy, to paraphrase Kincheloe’s words, has appropriated Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy in the Brazilian and global Southern context, and made it an agenda for white people. What has been ignored in the process are voices like those of W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson, who, even before the Frankfurt School, credited with the origination of critical theory, were already talking about issues of critical pedagogy back in the late 1800s. Kincheloe called Du Bois the father of critical pedagogy, and said when voices like his, and those of other African Americans were being silenced in the discourses on critical theory, something was seriously wrong.

I have been reading about, and using critical theory, in my own work for some years now, yet this was the first time I was hearing anybody make connections between DuBois and critical theory. The work of DuBois, who was born in 1868, in Massachussetts, USA, and died in 1963, in Ghana, is as relevant today in the 21^st century as it was at the turn of the 19^th century when he declared, with stunning prescience, that the problem of the 20^th century would be the problem of the color line. DuBois’s critical insights into the evils and consequences of racism on black people worldwide provided a much-needed impetus for pan-Africanism, one of whose greatest achievements was the dismantling of colonialism. The telling moment for this fact came when Dr. DuBois renounced his US citizenship, and adopted Ghana as his country, where he lived until his death.

Of direct relevance to Malawi’s struggle for independence was the prevalence of Dr. DuBois’s ideas and writings at the turn of the 20^th century, the period that John Chilembwe, the first African to lead an uprising against colonialism and imperialism in the area that is now Malawi, was studying in the USA. According to Shepperson and Price’s (1958) extensive and comprehensive biography of Chilembwe, “although no evidence exists of Chilembwe’s reading in the United States,” it is reasonable to suppose that Chilembwe knew about DuBois while studying in the United States, and even when he returned to the then Nyasaland, where he continued receiving publications by black Americans. Today, there is little evidence in Malawi, let alone other African countries, of the ideals that Chilembwe, DuBois and other pan-African leaders fought for a hundred years ago. The Malawian school curriculum has contained a sanitized version of Chilembwe’s nationalism, with no connection to the bigger pan-African context, and its role in framing social justice struggles for black Americans.

The African Renaissance and its pan-African ideals need to become a part of not just the curriculum in primary, secondary and tertiary education, but also of the daily struggles ordinary Malawians face. Different individuals and institutions play different roles in enacting a country’s visions, and my part has been working with primary school teachers and students. Other areas in need of immediate attention include the media, in which our newspapers and electronic media need to engage more Malawians, in languages they use everyday, in discussing where we are coming from, where we are headed, and the importance of joining hands with other African societies, and societies who share our ideals, around the world.

Mother tongues, racialized belief systems, and self-destruction

Yesterday, February 21, was International Mother Language Day. The day was proclaimed as such by UNESCO in 1999, and was first observed in 2000. In Malawi, The Nation newspaper used the occasion to seek the views of a number of educational authorities on the government's forthcoming policy for lower primary school students to learn in the local language of the area they live in. The news report from The Nation, and the reactions to the report on the Malawi internet listserv Nyasanet, both demonstrate the difficulty of the issue, and the passion it raises amongst not only Malawians, but in diverse societies all over the world. At the bottom of the issue is the question of the role languages play in the efforts to understand local and global problems, a debate that has attracted an enormous amount of attention in scholarly books, journals and conferences. Outside the academy, however, the debate is dominated by views that betray the hierarchical lenses of race and class through which people see the world, and declare which side of the divide they are on. To put it shortly, most Malawian elites use the opportunity of such debates to declare their allegiance with the triumphant white, middle-to-upper-class, EuroAmerican view of the world.

Talking to The Nation newspaper, the secretary general of the Teachers Union of Malawi (TUM), Lucien Chikadza, singles out three reasons why the policy for Malawian children in lower primary levels to learn in local languages is not advisable. First, "Malawi does not have a specific language", he says. Second, the policy would entail the transferring of teachers based on areas where they come from, which could lead to unequal distribution of teachers. Third, says Mr. Chikadza, Chichewa "has a shallow vocabulary to reflect actual meanings of words and terms in English." For George Jobe, communications director for the Creative Centre for Community Mobilization (CRECCOM), despite a survey indicating the suitability of the policy, the policy poses what he calls "transition" problems if Standard 4 children will suddenly have to begin learning in English as late as Standard 5. The director of the Inspectorate in the ministry of education, Matilda Kabuye, says in the urban areas English will be sandwiched with a local language early on, while in the rural areas the sandwiching will begin in Standard 3 to prepare students for Standard 5.

On Nyasanet, one view has been that Tanzanians regret their Swahili policy when they end up struggling with English once they are outside their country, according to Bona Mkandawire, a Malawian living in Canada. Mkandawire points out that the policy would also mess up children who move from one part of Malawi speaking one language, to another speaking a different language. Timothy Nundwe, another Malawian, has been outright brunt, asking who needs mother tongues in "these modern days." He points out that most well-to-do Malawians send their children to private schools due to the poor standards in the public schools. Writes Nundwe: "This is a lunatic policy. These policies work in countries like TZ or Kenya where everyone else speaks swahili but in malawi where my mum in Hewe struggles to communicate with his [sic] workers in Chichewa and then now they want to introduce vernacular languages."

There's no doubt that this is an important debate to have, at the national level. However I have always been of the opinion that there's a communication gap amongst three groups of Malawians: Malawian linguists and language researchers, Malawian elites, and the general Malawian public. Linguists and researchers in Malawi and all over the world have consistently, over several decades, found that local languages are the best medium for education. All the rich, industrialized countries of the world teach their children using their local languages. This makes it possible for children to participate in their own learning, and to develop intellectual depth and conceptual breadth with what they are learning. This intellectual depth and conceptual breadth easily translates into innovation and creativity in society, opening up new possibilities for local and global solutions to problems.

In formerly colonized countries like Malawi, where the languages of instruction have remained the inherited ones from the European colonizers, the consequences of colonial educational policies manifest themselves in the elitism that divides our societies. All the major institutions of national importance are dominated by the tiny minority elite who speak English, and the rest of the population, upwards of 90 percent in Malawi, are blamed, ignored, ridiculed, and pushed out of the national development process. An illustration of this is the dominance of English in government, in parlimanent, in the daily and weekly newspapers, and in the education system itself.

There is an underlying racial and class belief system at work here, leading to excuses like those expressed by Mr. Chikadza that Chichewa has a shallow vocabulary not suited to educational practice, and by Mr. Jobe that introducing English at a later stage could deter the acquisition of the language. Both Mr. Chikadza and Mr. Jobe have valid points concerning the problems of teacher distribution, and the need to produce new learning materials in various languages. However Chichewa and Tumbuka are spoken widely enough in parts of Malawi that we would not need to develop materials in more than four languages. The revival of the other languages would be done through other civil society programs.

The ministry's suggestion to sandwich English with local languages needs a bolder step that considers full bilingualism in which children use BOTH English and a local language from Standard 1 onwards. Such a bilingual program, continued up to Standard 8, through secondary school and into the university, would serve the purpose that well-to-do Malawian parents want, the early acquisition of English. It would also serve the purpose of demonstrating the depth and capacity for complexity and sophistication that all language systems are endowed with. (For more on how this would work, see Benson, 2005. Malawian language researchers, including Dr. Hartford Mchazime, Henry Chilora and others have done extensive research on these issues).

Such a sustained, long-term and thorough bilingual program would not only revive local languages, it would also promote knowledge production and dissemination, which would allow ordinary Malawians to contribute to the revival of the country's progress, at no cost to the acquisition of English language skills.

What needs to be overcome is the self-defeatist notion that African languages are innate and unchanging. English did not start out as the dominant language of the world. It achieved that status only in the last three hundred or so years, before which it too was considered shallow, and subservient to other languages. But English has been an open language, devouring words and terms from other languages and enriching itself. We Malawians are very good at wanting to learn from rich, industrialized countries. But we learn the wrong things by, instead of emulating how the rich and industrialized countries teach their children in their own languages, we teach our children in the languages of our former colonial masters. Instead of trusting and investing in our languages to revitalize our societies, we kill our languages and shut out 90 percent of our society by privileging foreign knowledge, and destroying our local knowledge.

Malawian cuisine, cosmopolitanism, and mental colonization

When Alexander Hotels Limited launched their 'Malawi Night' event at the Shire Highlands Hotel in Blantyre on Friday, January 27, the earliest news reports on the occasion focused on the late arrival of the Minister of Information and Tourism, Hon. Patricia Kaliati, rather than on the issue of why the menus in Malawian hotels and restaurants look more British than Malawian. The Nation newspaper titled its report "Kaliati delays Malawi night," giving details of how the minister, who was guest of honor, kept patrons waiting for two hours, and how she later went table to table apologizing. Only towards the very end of the article does the reporter, Edward Nyirenda, describe the traditional Malawian foods that were on the menu.

Four days later, the Friday February 4 edition of the newspaper published Edward Nyirenda's feature article providing more details on what for me was the more important news of the night. Titled "A pure magic that was Malawi night," Nyirenda puts the event in a more elaborate perspective, starting with how the idea of a Malawi night came about, providing views of some of the Malawians who patronized the event, ending with how successful the event was.

For me, news of the event came when just the week before I had mentioned to a friend that the extent to which most of us Malawians are still mentally colonized can be seen in the stark differences between the foods we eat at home and the foods we serve in our restaurants and hotels. In our homes, we eat foods such as nsima, beans, mfutso, masamba otendera, nsomba, among many others, while in our hotels and restaurants we serve mostly rice, beef, chicken, spaghetti, and other foods mainly guided by Western tourist tastes. Alisa Makawa, the managing director for Alexander Hotels Limited, noticed this discrepancy, which triggered her mind into motion, leading to the Malawi Night.

Most of the patrons quoted in the report spoke about how wonderful the food tasted, and how the Malawian traditional music in the background made the occasion even more graceful and meaningful.

On the Malawi Internet discussion listservs Nyasanet and Malawitalk, the news was all about the minister's late arrival, and not one posting made mention of the significance of the event in the context of Malawian identity and heritage. To give credit to the two listservs, the topic of tourism has dominated discussion since the event, homing in to critical questions of how a British historian and researcher of Malawi, David Stuart-Mogg, ended up owning a skull of Mlozi, described by some historians as a 19th century half-caste Arab slave trader who ruled the area now known as Karonga, on the northern end of Lake Malawi. Mr. Stuart-Mogg himself made the revelation of his prized possession in a posting to both Nyasanet and Malawitalk on August 18, 2005, but nobody paid attention, until Bright Malopa raised the issue yesterday in the current Tourism debate.

Several Malawians are asking Mr. Mogg to explain how he ended up with the skull, issues that I would like to address in another posting. For now my main point is to congratulate Ms. Alisa Makawa and her Alexander Hotels Ltd for bringing up the idea of a Malawi Night and successfully pulling it off, putting onto the national agenda the question of how our tendency to copy everything Western inhibits our capacity to come up with original ideas in solving some of our problems.

I am talking about issues of Malawian identity and heritage here with the full understanding of the idea that no culture is pure, and that to view cultures in that way is to be narrow-minded and unaware of the influences cultures have on each other. This happens to be the message in Kwame Anthony Appiah's new book titled Cosmopolitanism: Ethic in a World of Strangers. While I agree with Professor Appiah's argument about the importance of recognizing what he calls the "contamination" that makes no culture pure, I also agree with those who have pointed out to the brilliant philosopher that the reality of globalization is such that rich and powerful nations and their multinational corporations bulldoze their will and way onto weaker nations, an idea that Professor Appiah does not appear to have been addressed in his book. Nor does he seem to have addressed the issue of how it is in fact Western societies with their insistence on the terms “Western,” “free world,” “universal,” etc, that need a lesson on what a cosmopolitan world we live in.

The recognition of how Malawian restaurants and hotels tend to offer Western menus and little traditional Malawian foods is a necessary step in understanding why Professor Appiah's idea of cosmopolitanism, while excellent, needs to be taken in context, and with caution.

Paul Theroux's 'mythomaniacs' and Malawian burden

In his op-ed piece in today's New York Times, Paul Theroux points out the destructive myths that portray Africa as a place that can only be saved by outside help. Using the example of Malawi, where he taught as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s, and where he recently returned for a short visit, Mr. Theroux argues that Africa needs its doctors and teachers, trained on the public purse, to stay and work there, rather than immigrating to the global North.

Mr Theroux describes an Africa that is, in his words, "much lovelier, more peaceful and more resilient and, if not prosperous, innately more self-sufficient than it is usually portrayed." But because it appears to be unfinished and different, it attracts what he calls "mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth." Giving the example of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie holding babies in Ethiopia, Mr Theroux says "White celebrities busy-bodying in Africa loom especially large," reminding him of Tarzan and Jane.

The results of such Western antics, Mr. Theroux observes candidly and impressively, have been "violence to Africa's belief in itself," yet for all the resilience Africans have shown, in the face of bad leadership, nobody has given credit where it is due.

If Mr. Theroux had ended his op-ed here, and not gone on to reproduce stereotypes about Africa and ignore the impact of debt and the role of the West in worsening Africa's problems, I would have considered his ideas rare and dignified, worthy of the attention of anyone interested in hearing views on Africa not found in mainstream discourses. But Mr. Theroux has gone on to call Malawi a "failed state", to characterize Malawi's current president as being no better than the two previous presidents, and he has said nothing about the destabilizing role the West has played in Africa over the centuries and decades.

While Mr. Theroux dismisses the idea that Africa needs debt relief, his reasons are not about the immoralilty of the notion of Africa owing the West money, given the contexts in which Africa found itself needing loans and aid from the West. He dismisses the idea of debt relief, in addition to the idea of sending charity money to Africa, because, he says, the money is never accounted for.

Mr. Theroux appears oblivious to the amounts of money in question, and the larger problems that debt servicing causes. On May 29 this year the Scottish newspaper The Scotsman reported that Malawi receives $90 million in aid each year, and pays $162 million to service debt. A 2004 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development revealed, according to The Green Left Weekly (of Australia) of June 29, 2005, that between 1970 and 2002 Africa received $540 billion in loans, and paid back $550 billion. Ken Wiwa wrote on July 4 this year that Nigeria started out with a debt of $5 billion. Since then Nigeria has paid back $16 billion, and it still owes $35 billion.

Whether Mr. Theroux is aware of these issues or not, one is left wondering exactly who owes who here in the manner the issue of "debt" is framed. If we add to the mix the 70,000 highly trained Africans who immigrate to the global North each year, and the historical wealth that was systematically stolen from Africa and taken to the West, including the free labor that fueled the industrial revolution (Inikori, 1999, 2002), the question of who really owes who becomes more intriguing than enlightening. But these are issues people like Mr. Theroux and countless others in the mainstream, both in Africa and in the West, conveniently choose to ignore.

Mr. Theroux has done remarkably well to point out how Africa can in fact be self-sufficient, and is not given credit for its resilience, but his effort leaves one with the impression that all is well in the West. He talks about bad governance, corruption and rigged elections as if they are a peculiar African phenomenon, when in fact these very vices are alive and thriving in the West itself. Given the ills and inequality Hurricane Katrina uncannily stripped naked, talking of Malawi as a failed state takes on eerie, curious proportions.

Malawians love to beat upon their presidents, and rightly so. However Malawians also appreciate the complexities involved in being a leader, so much that it is almost disingenuous, if not prejudiced, to characterize the three presidents who have ruled Malawi as nothing but megalomaniacs and swindlers. I have little praise for Malawi's presidents myself, but to say that President Bingu wa Mutharika "inaugurated his regime by announcing that he was going to buy a fleet of Maybachs" is to perpetuate an innuendo characterized by exaggeration and inaccuracy. Of course Malawians were shocked when the ever-vigilant Malawi press uncovered the President's wish to replace his accident-damaged presidential limouisine with one Benz Maybach (not a "fleet" as Mr. Theroux suggests). Malawians expressed enough outrage and the President canceled the deal.

In the nineteen months President wa Mutharika has been Malawi's leader, Malawi's economy has reversed from a MK5 billion ($500 million roughly) deficit to a MK3.6 billion ($360 million roughly) surplus, according to the Reserve Bank of Malawi (Financial and Economic Review, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2005). Gross domestic product grew by 4.6 percent in the quarter in question, and money supply increased by 13. 4 percent. The World Bank and the IMF have released more amounts of "aid," and more is on the way. Several road and infrastructure projects have been carried out and completed, and several cases of high profile corruption are being investigated.

Of course there are new problems brought about by Dr. wa Mutharika's style of leadership and temperament, including allegations of corruption. Other problems involve political resentment from his opponents, while others stem from weakened structures and reccurent drought. The Malawi media has been fastidious, and has kept the president and his government in check. In other words, there are many positive and encouraging things that are going on in Malawi today, none of which merited mention in Mr. Theroux's description of Malawi.

His point about the credit that Africa deserves but does not receive might as well start with Mr. Theroux himself, otherwise he risks being lumped together with the rock stars who feel burdened with a conscience more from hiding the ills and roles of their countries than from the crocodile tears shed on Africa.

'Yesterday' and the global HIV/AIDS discourse

Last night, Tuesday Nov. 28, I stumbled upon the new HBO movie 'Yesterday,' having forgotten that I had noticed an advert for it in the New Yorker of last week. I stopped everything I was doing and sat down to watch it. I came away from the experience deeply moved by the story, but unsurprised by the discursive entrenching of dominant paradigms and ways of thinking about global history, politics and contexts behind the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

'Yesterday' is an eponymous story revolving around the main character, 'Yesterday,' played by Leleti Khumalo, the talented South African actress who starred as ‘Sarafina’ in the 90s anti-apartheid movie by the same name. In the HBO film, we learn that her father named her 'Yesterday' because of his feeling that yesterday was better; today, things are not alright, or, as we would say in Malawi, "sizili bwino."

Yesterday lives with her preschool age daughter, Beauty, in the village, while her husband and father of her daughter works in the mines in Johannesburg. He comes home once a month, sometimes less frequently. Yesterday develops a bad, persistent cough, which forces her to walk a long distance to the hospital. The first time she gets there, she stands on a long queue, only to be told that the doctor is unable to see all the patients lined up. The cut off point is the person right in front of her. She walks the long, dusty distance back home without being seen by the one doctor running the busy clinic.

A friend she has recently got to know, a teacher new to the area, offers her money to take the hitch-hike taxi, what we call ‘minibus’ in Malawi, or ‘matatu’ in Kenya, and go back to the hospital. She arrives early, and is seen by the doctor. The doctor, a white woman who speaks perfect Zulu, tells her she needs to take a blood test, and asks her to sign her consent. Yesterday can neither read nor write, so the doctor goes ahead and takes a blood sample, asking Yesterday to come back next week to hear the results.

Upon giving her the results the following week, the doctor suggests she bring her husband to the clinic so he too can be tested. When she follows him to the sprawling, high rise metropolitan Johannesburg, he beats her up severely once she delivers the bad news. In time, he comes back to the village, and is sick. The village demands that he be taken out of their midst, lest he spreads the disease, but the hospital is full. Yesterday builds him a shack in the middle of the valley, away from the village, and takes care of him there, until he dies.

Yesterday comes out a very strong willed, dedicated and loving wife and mother. As the hero of the movie, she represents the dedication, strength and endurance of African women. This is perhaps the one fundamental message the story sends, amidst a backlash against women seen especially in Malawi, where, if you listen to some of the music performed by male Malawian artists, women are considered to be villains spreading the HIV virus to men (examples include 'Akunenepa nako kachilombo,' (they are getting fat from the virus, deceiving unsuspecting men); 'Tinabadwa osavala' in which the lyrics single out women as the ones responsible for tempting men; and such other songs).

Another powerful message from the movie is the Zulu language used throughout. English is used only in subtitles. The pride and depth of an African language in driving such a powerful social message should make African elites and policymakers think twice about their insistence on making English, a language used by a tiny fraction of the population, the lingua franca of policy, business, politics, administration, and education.

Being an HBO movie, the largest audience for 'Yesterday' will be mostly Westerners, who may or may not be shocked at the "ignorance" surrounding the disease in Africa. I feel this is not an honest message to send, given the awareness and publicity that has already been given to the AIDS pandemic. One would think that the larger, more significant debate now lies in the politics of global justice, where questions about why huge numbers of Sub-Saharan Africans bear the brunt of the epidemic, despite sexual promiscuity being equally rampant, if not worse, in the West and elsewhere, remain unresearched.

The movie leaves unmentioned issues such as the racist, apartheid era bio-war research suspected to have been aimed at blacks, dismissed as a conspiracy theory by dominant, mainstream views. Also unmentioned is the role played by the capitalist mining industry which sequestered male miners in hostels, away from their wives and families for months or years on end, a situation that facilitated the spread of HIV/AIDS. Thus the dominant ideologies keep framing the HIV-AIDS debate in the same terms of individual responsibility, ordinary villagers as ignorant and needing "education," and Africans as more promiscuous than the rest of humanity.

Even as Yesterday looks forward to the future and the education of her daughter Beauty, the dominant paradigm of education as panacea is entrenched, without questions about what kind of education is necessary, and what legacies meaningful education needs to confront for global peace and social justice.

Prisons in Malawi, Africa: legacies of borrowed paradigms?

On the front page of today's Sunday New York Times (Nov. 6, 2005) is a feature article, by Michael Wines, on conditions in Malawi's prisons in particular, and Africa's in general (click here to read the article; you might be asked to register before proceeding; it's free).

I can predict, almost always, that such an article will, as a rule, catalog all the social ills visiting upon Malawians, and will leave me and most other readers sad, numb and angry. While my reactions are aimed at my country and our failure to solve some fairly common problems, they are also aimed at the pattern of reporting about Africa, by both the Western and the African media. As with Mr. Wines' article, most of the reporting manages to put a human face on an intractable problem, bringing out the voices of people the politicians and bureaucrats have shielded themselves from. And that's always a commendable job.

But because the articles do not go beyond the vivid portrayal of the problems to attempt an analysis of the contexts within which these problems occur, African problems are written about in a manner that portrays Africans as having no clue as to how to solve their own problems, and making no efforts to even understand how and why we end up with such problems. The elites quoted in these articles, such as prosecutors, activists, government officials, etc, are portrayed as having no deep thoughts on how to understand a problem with such historical, ideological and global contexts as prison overcrowding and the malfunction and dysfunction of the justice system in Malawi. For instance, one reads an article such as this one without ever having to consider the fact the the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, worse than Malawi's own rate. Granted, problems in those prisons are of a different nature compared to conditions in Malawi's prisons.

I do not discount the probability that we are all clueless as to how to solve a problem such as this one, but my wish is to see a bit more of deeper thinking, questioning and putting the problem in the larger contexts that surround it.

At what point do we begin questioning our adoption of a legal and judicial system designed to work in Europe, in historical, economic and social settings different from ours? At what point do we start wondering whether we might want to work with our indigenous judicial systems, more suited to conditions obtaining in our societies? Our capacity to borrow and learn from other societies is commendable, but should it come at the expense of energy and resources needed to move our indigenous, locally relevant systems with the times, and negotiate change and innovation on local terms, rather than on terms dictated by the ideology we are borrowing from?

This is where I find Hizkias Assefa's (1996) words, referring to countries caught up in this type of dilemma, telling: "For these countries, the goals of modernisation and economic growth became receding targets. Hence these societies are caught in a tragic situation--they have given up much of what they were, but are unable to attain what they aspire to. No doubt this frustration will be a constant source of disruption, conflict and disillusionment at both the individual and societal levels" (Peacemaking and Democratisation in Africa, p. 65).

Western wealth, African exploitation: Dr. Beckford's Channel 4 documentary

I set up this blog as a forum where I, and others interested, would share thoughts and ideas on the various topics that must be discussed and thought about as we continue envisioning the rebirth of Afrika. The Afrikan renaissance is a topic that hardly gets mention in the world media, let alone on the Afrikan continent. The reason is that most African elites in control of the media and other institutions that shape and reflect public opinion view the world from the perspective created by the global North, which they feel more of a part of, than the perspective obtaining among the majority of the Afrikan population.

Afrikans who worry about these issues are quite few, and they have an uphill task in trying to push an agenda that questions dominant views of how the world works, and the place of Afrika in the world. These few Afrikans are joined by an equally small number Europeans, Americans, Asians, and First peoples around the world, who also work hard to question dominant views, and expose the suppressed histories that have shaped the contemporary world.

Dr. Richard Drayton, of Cambridge University, UK, is one the few Europeans doing this type of work. Dr. Drayton's article in The Guardian's Saturday, 20th August issue has a title that immediately captures the interest of anyone concerned with the issue of global social justice for Africa, a continent that most people choose to analyze ahistorically, focusing only on the heat of the moment. Titled "The wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation," Dr. Drayton's article focuses on a documentary titled The Empire Pays Back, shown on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, on Monday August 15, 2005, and produced by Dr. Robert Beckford, of the University of Birmingham, UK.

The issues being addressed by Dr. Beckford in his documentary, and being written about by Dr. Drayton, form what I believe to be the most important perspective necessary in envisioning the Afrikan Renaissance, namely, global social justice. Dr. Drayton writes: "There are many who like to blame Africa's weak governments and economies, famines and disease on its post-1960 leadership. But the fragility of contemporary Africa is a direct consequence of two centuries of slaving, followed by another of colonial despotism. Nor was "decolonisation" all it seemed: both Britain and France attempted to corrupt the whole project of political sovereignty."

Afrika pays a huge price for the lack of awareness on the history that has created the various contemporary crises in Afrika. Many politicians and elites have given up hope in the search for solutions to Afrika's problems; keeping up the hope that only they themselves and their circle of patronage can improve their lot.

This is the kind of thinking I see at work in the type of politics pervading Malawi right now, with the majority of Members of Parliament, mostly from the United Democratic Front and the Malawi Congress Party plotting to impeach President Bingu wa Mutharika for problems that could well be handled through already-existing mechanisms and channels. An impeachment is not a joking matter, especially when there are more urgent matters to attend to. The news on Malawi in the rest of the world is on how to avert the starvation that is threatening up to 4 million Malawians, while the news in Malawi itself is on the efforts by the disgruntled UDF and MCP to impeach the president.

It will take time to advance the debate on global social justice for Africa on the continent and around the world, but the work of Dr. Beckford, Dr. Drayton and others is crucial, and must be supported. Those of us who work with teachers and schools need to find ways of enriching teaching and learning to accommodate these issues of global social justice.

Farrakhan and the United States of Africa


The speech given by Minister Louis Farrakhan on Saturday October 15, at the Millions More Movement's 10-year commemoration of the 1995 Million Man March ought to give more impetus to the push toward the African Rennaisance.

Grand in its design and ambitious in its scope, Minister Farrakhan's speech envisioned unity for not only the Black world, but the rest of the poor, marginalized world as well. Farrakhan called upon African leaders to speed up the formation of a United States of Africa, and for a similar vision for the Carribean.

The call for a United States for Africa is not new. There was an active buzz about the concept at the turn of the 21st century, pioneered by the Libyan president, Muamar Gaddafi. Gaddafi promoted the concept at international gatherings, and on tours he udnertook across the continent. Unfortunately, Gaddafi's call has been caught in a web of geopolitical and religious suspicion.

It should be easy to mobilize support for the concept, but some of the countries that could take the lead on the continent are caught up in local wrangling, some of it externally induced, which makes the topic of continental integration and global Black unity not much of a priority right now.

Minister Farrakhan needs to mobilize Black leadership in the US, some of whose voices were heard loud and clear at the Saturday commemoration, and begin working with African think tanks, universities, associations, civil society and grassroots movements, if the idea is to move forward.

New Orleans and the Third World

Since my last blog entry on Sunday, September 4th, there has been more attention to the race and class aspects of the tragedy. Not much, however, has been said about the likening of the disaster to the Third World, or to Africa, as several journalists and other individuals did. And so it was very refreshing to read Mukoma wa Ngugi's take on the issue, in his Znet article published Thursday, Sept 8.

Katrina, the "Third World", and the scripting of race

Hurricane Katrina has stripped a veneer off the American facade that hides class and race differences from the rest of the world. Of course, for most people who carefully follow these issues both in the US and around the world, there's no veneer. The effects of classism and racism around the world are bare and open for everyone with a discerning eye. Or perhaps, with an eye attuned to social differences, because there are many with a seemingly "discerning" eye who believe that racism doesn't exist, or if it does, that it's non-white people who are racist against whites. Or that black people are responsible for what befalls them.

There are specific things that have been said, that have the appearance of being off-the-cuff and spontaneous, yet on closer scrutiny, they are things many people have always wanted to say, but have not had the occasion to. Katrina has been that occasion. I'm in particular talking about two issues. First, disbelief that what has happened in New Orleans could not have happened in the US, with many journalists, from the BBC, CNN, etc, saying it is as if this is Africa, or somewhere else in the Third World. Second, that black people are to blame, either for having been too poor to own cars and evacuate, or for the leadership structure in New Orleans being largely black. One remark that I responded to on the Malawi listservs Nyasanet and Malawitalk, on Saturday, September 3, was by a Malawian who said black people deserve the bad public opinion they get, because they behave aberrantly.

While I am concerned with racism and its adverse effects on people of color around the world, I am also concerned about the lack of concern about racism amongst educated Africans both on the continent and abroad. Of course racism is abhorrent and has no place in society, regardless of who the perpetrator is. Nor am I arguing that blacks are blameless.

Other Malawians seemed shocked at seeing mostly black people taking the blunt of Katrina, compelling one Malawian, Walusako Mwalilino, to post on Nyasanet and ask: "Why are you surprised that the calamity in New Orleans has hit black people harder than whites? Where have you been?" The juxtaposed AFP and AP photos on Yahoo News that portrayed blacks as "looting" and whites as "finding" triggered a huge reaction in the US and abroad, forcing the AFP to ask Yahoo News to remove their photo from the website.

The likening of the tragedy unfolding in the wake of Katrina to disasters in Africa exposes a deep-seated, essentialist attitude about Africa and the so-called Third World. This is the attitude that equates Africa and the Third World with catastrophe, and nothing else, while the US and other so-called developed countries are associated with greatness and advancement, and nothing catastrophic. Underlying this attitude is a failure to understand what causes the catastrophes Africa is associated with. It is an attitude that assumes that there is something about Africans and Third World people that CAUSES the catastrophes, and not the other way round. My initial reaction has been to point out that this is happening right in the United States itself, why should it be likened to some place else?

It is the same attitude that one sees when some Westerners visit an African city which is as large and bustling like aby city in the world, and when they return they remark: it was more like Europe or America, not like Africa. I'm sorry, but Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the US, not some pleace else in Africa or the Third World. And the disaster that unfolded there happened in the United States; you can not wish it away or liken it to another place. The veneer has been stripped, for those who have been in what can only be described as denial.

On NPR, National Public Radio (US), I caught the end of an interview with someone who said that after Katrina, everyone in New Orleans would now have an equal chance of rebuilding; everyone would have the same beginning point and it would be up to an individual to make the best of their future. Unfortunately I didn't hear who this person was, nor what else they said. But the bit I heard, understood as-is, is an unmistakable view held by people who apparently resent the criticisms leveled against racism. There was something in the subtext of what this person said that betrayed a simmering anger at anti-racist discourse, somebody who sounded as if they had always hoped for this moment when history would be erased and everyone would begin anew, on a fresh page, with no one having a headstart over others.

While I too would hope for such a moment, unfortunately Katrina is no such occasion. Katrina may have razed to the ground buildings and homes, but it certainly has not erased racism. I don't see much reason to hope that from now on, blacks, arabs, latinos, native americans and other minorities will be treated with the same favorable attitudes as whites generally are. It will not be the same for people who lost everything they owned as those who still have capital stashed away in banks and in social networks.

Later in the early evening I watched CNN's Lou Dobbs repeatedly asking guests and reporters why nobody was blaming the black mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, and the black "power structure." At one point, Dobbs said:

"It is also important, because Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP have injected a straightforward and dramatic and perhaps even truthful charge that much of the failure here is because of race. But we should put in context, it seems to me also, that the city of New Orleans is 70 percent black. Its mayor is black. Its principal power structure is black. And if there is a failure to the black Americans who live in poverty and in the city of New Orleans, those officials have to bear much of the responsibility."

At another point, with another guest, he asked:

"Why has there not been, from the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, other certainly well-meaning groups, focusing on the racial issues here, no mention of the fact that the mayor of New Orleans, who has to bear first responsibility in this, Ray Nagin, is himself black? That the power structure of the city of New Orleans is primarily black? The police department, the majority of which is black? Why has there been no focus on those facts and those responsibilities?"

Lou Dobbs went further to allude to differences in the way New York residents reacted to September 11, and the way "a few" New Orleans residents have reacted to Hurricane Katrina. "It's too easy to compare this to the way the people of New York City responded to September 11, and to look at the way in which some of the residents, certainly only a few, but some of the residents of New Orleans have responded," he said.

The entire program struck one as Lou Dobbs looking for support for his view that the mess brought about by the response that Bush called "unacceptable" was really the responsibility of black people in New Orleans. Even if he added that the federal government was also to blame, that had become common knowledge. His real issue was with the black people of New Orleans. Add to that his drawing comparisons between the looting in New Orleans and the absence of looting in New York, one saw a keen attempt by Dobbs to bring out a view he too, like the NPR interviewee, had long waited for a moment like this one to air. Missing from these kinds of views are any attempts to put events in a historical context to understand what has caused poverty in New Orleans, and the role racial relations in the US has played. It's as if everything just started today, and is therefore subject to the same type of critique.

Congressman Mel Watt, who chairs the Black Congressional Caucus, told Lou Dobbs class was more of an issue than race in the response to Katrina, and that there were differences between the 9/11 attacks and Katrina. "The difference here, it seems to me, was in New York, everything around the affected area of 9/11 was still intact. This is a whole city that's lost its infrastructure, and the local authorities really had no capacity to respond. So the federal government really had to bite the bullet and take the whole responsibility, and it just didn't do so early enough." While congressman was correct about the differences between tha attacks on New York, and the hurricane in New Orleans, his refusal to acknowledge the role of race was predictable of a US elected official.

When late in the evening CNN broke the news of the passing of the US Supreme Court's Chief Justice William Rehnquist, I began suspecting that the race debate shaping up in the wake of Katrina would go the way all such debates go--overtaken by new developments, and then buried and forgotten.

When such a debate ensued after Senator Trent Lott's comments on December 5th, 2002, at a 100th birthday celebration for Senator Strom Thurmond, now deceased, he was forced to resign as Senate Majority Leader, a move that killed the debate before it went any distance. Katrina appears to be such a strong hurricane whose aftermath, in its various forms, might linger around longer than previous events that expose the race problem in America, and in Katrina's aftermath, in the words of Lou Dobbs, "embarrassed a very proud nation". Kanye West, the rapper, decided to speak his mind and veer off a script prepared for him. This was the first time for me to hear that some of what we see and hear spoken on TV, by individuals apparently speaking their mind, is in fact sometimes scripted for them by the TV networks they appear on.

There's probably much more that is scripted in daily discourse in the US. With Katrina, one hopes more people will come out of denail, and veer off script.

On President wa Mutharika's firing of deputy Chief of Staff

The two Malawi internet listservs I'm subscribed to, Nyasanet and Malawitalk, have since Wednesday August 17 been dominated by postings on what the president, Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika, is alleged to have said about Malawians from the Northern region of the country. The president is said to have fired his deputy chief of staff, Joshua Nthakomwa, and to have angrily told him in the process: "I don't want northerners around me! Get away from me, I don't want northerners around me!"

Contributions on the topic have been charged, some expressing shock and anger, and others questioning the source of the allegation. Some have suggested that the Northern region of Malawi, long marginalized in Malawi's political, should become sovereign and self-governing. Some have spoken with Mr. Nthakomwa himself, whom they report denying that the President said the words he is alleged to have said.

I've been hoping that I'll chance upon some tangible, credible evidence that President Bingu wa Mutharika uttered the words that have dominated postings these past few days. So far there's none. All that we have to go on for want of authenticity are unnamed sources quoting other unnamed sources, as has already been observed by others.

I do understand that the story can not be dismissed on the basis that it is originating from unnamed sources; we have had true, genuine stories broken out through unnamed sources before. However there does not appear to be any other evidence to corroborate the claim that the president did say those words. None of the major, credible newspapers in Malawi have printed anything on the issue so far. Mr. Nthakomwa himself has denied the claims that the President said anything close to what is reported. We will see if Monday morning brings any new, credible evidence.

In Malawi itself, people I have spoken with have expressed surprise at the news. "I'm hearing it from you," someone, my own credible unnamed source, told me this afternoon.

Others have expressed hope that the new Presidential spokesperson, Chikumbutso Mtumodzi, will come forth and issue a statement. Let's hope he will be able to do so. But as it appears, this has so far been a "made-for-the-internet" story, with the result that people in Malawi are not even aware of the existence of the story. Should this continue to be the case in the next few days, with no major, credible paper reporting on the story, there will probably be no official press release from State House, the issue not meriting any such action. But I could be entirely wrong; a few days of waiting won't hurt.

As has been pointed out already, there are a number of northerners in key, important and well-deserved positions in the Bingu government, such as Ralph Kasambara, Goodall Gondwe, Mary Nangwale, not to mention Zikhale Ng'oma, who was chief of staff himself until recently. As for Mr. Nthakomwa, he was in his position only in an acting capacity, and knew that soon the president would be appointing someone to fill the position vacated by Zikhale Ng'oma.

Until we see more evidence corroborating the words Bingu is said to have uttered, providing more details as to where and when exactly the event took place, there's a big chance that this story was in fact manufactured for specific strategic reasons. In the process, a few well-placed netters and talkers may have been used merely as conduits, unwittingly. A few days ago we saw reports to the effect that the Northern Region Parliamentary Caucus was reviewing its support for the President, accusing him of neglecting the North in terms of infrastructure and key appointments. The Caucus's secretary, Hon. Abbie Shawa, said he was speaking on behalf of the Caucus. Later we saw another report, quoting three MPs from the North who not only disowned the statements aired by Hon. Shawa, but also revealed that the Caucus never discussed the issue, and therefore Hon Shawa should clarify that he was speaking for himself.

Whatever the truth turns out to be, Bingu and his DPP are said to be enjoying a lot of support from the Northern region, a development which is troubling other political parties. We may have to poise ourselves for more of such reports, with some of us hitting the ceiling and making absurd, inflammatory suggestions. If there will be any credibility to these stories, they will have to provide more specific, credible, corroborating details.

In no way I'm trying to claim that the President can not have uttered those words. I'm just trying to show that such reports need to be analyzed in the context of opposition politics and the politics of ethnicity in Malawi.

Malawi can teach the world too, OK?


The news this week that a delegation from the east Asian country of Tajikistan has been in Malawi to learn more about the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) bucks a trend common in the way some Malawians view their country. The delegation is in Malawi to LEARN from Malawians. Most of the times Malawians talk about learning from other people. Sometimes people will even reject an idea for no reason other than that no other country has ever brought up the idea before. During the campaign for last year's presidential elections, a People's Progressive Party (PPM) official was quoted on the 7 o'clock Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) news one evening as saying Malawi could not produce an independent president, because no other country had done it before. He went on to say it was inconceivable to imagine that Malawi could be the first country to do that. Malawi did not originate ideas, he said. Malawi copied other people's ideas.

It would have been a different matter had the official been regretting that Malawi didn't originate ideas, and urging Malawians to come up with fresh thinking. Rather, he was holding up this point as the way things ought to be. In other words, Malawi was a backward country and SHOULD NEVER see herself as capable of originating trends. Malawians should be content with being mere copycats.

Days after hearing that comment on the national radio, I discovered that in fact the politician was repeating an idea he had read in the newspapers. A political scientist at the University of Malawi, Chancellor College, had been quoted in an issue of the weekly Malawi News newspaper saying exactly what the PPM official said. It thus appeared that not only did we have a case of two elite Malawians constructing a myth for themselves and for all Malawians, and then fulfilling it themselves; the politician was indeed merely copying a statement emanating from elsewhere.

Politicians and academicians occupy important positions in society. The responsibilities they are entrusted with call upon them to exercise extreme care with what they say. They can represent people's opinions, but they also need to be visionaries and creative thinkers, rather than mere copycats.

The MASAF story ought to serve as an example to the rest of the nation as to how Malawians are highly capable people, and have unique perspectives that can teach other countries of the world. The leader of the Tajikistan delegation was quoted by The Nation newspaper as saying: Masaf was highly held by the World Bank during the conference as one of the most successful programmes in the world. That is why we thought of coming to learn how the fund operates." Regardless of the possibility that the leader of the delegation may have actually said "Masaf was highly HAILED" rather than "HELD," the message is quite clear.

The idea that Malawi should only learn from others, based on the assumption that Malawians have really nothing to teach other nations, is quite wide spread amongst Malawians, especially the elites. In his column in The Nation newspaper, Dr. DD Phiri on August 4 wrote about what Malawians and Africans ought to learn from the West. He titled his article "The best from the West," and concluded his article with the following statement: "People of the West continue to lead the world in inventiveness not because they are naturally superior to other people. They just happen to have a culture that nurtures genius. This is the best about [the] West that Africans can borrow. We must be achievers, not mere imitators."

The message from the learned Dr. Phiri was important, not least his dismissal of the belief amongst some Malawians and Africans that Westerners are naturally superior, and that by implication, the rest of us are naturally inferior. Equally important was his call for Malawians and Africans to "be achievers, not mere imitators." Unfortunately, the bulk of the ideas in the article was based on the same mentality that Malawians and Africans need to LEARN from others. There was nothing in the article on what Malawians and African can also TEACH the rest of the world. Thus on closer scrutiny, Dr. Phiri's article serves to perpertuate the very tendency he is advising against: imitation.

The Malawian and African media will make a major contribution to the image of Malawi and Africa, and to the Afrikan rebirth, by going out of its way to find stories such as this one, highlighting the innovations and fresh thinking coming out of Malawi and other African countries. This calls for taking a critical stance against politicians, academicians and thinkers who hold one-dimensional views of Malawians and Africans as people who have nothing to contribute to the world.

Professor Ayittey on Africa's governance problems

PBS documentary on Zimbabwean refugees in Botswana

Shown on PBS stations Tuesday, July 26, 2005

I missed most of this documentary, titled Border Jumpers and available online, but I managed to catch the interview which followed the program, with Professor George Ayittey, formerly of Ghana, and now Professor of economics at the American University, Washington, DC. Professor Ayittey is widely known for suggesting that African leaders and curruption are the root causes of everything that's wrong in Africa. Needless to say, he has his supporters, and he has his detractors.

My brief comments here are restricted to what Professor Ayittey said are the main causes of the Zimbabwean crisis in particular, and of African problems in general. I also take issue with Professor Ayittey's claims, made in the interview, that upon independence, most African countries rejected capitalism and democracy, which they saw as Western, and instead followed Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Many who follow African affairs will agree with Professor Ayittey that there is an extent to which President Mugabe can be held responsible for the crisis in Zimbabwe. Ordinary Zimbabweans are having to live in fear of party youths who are paid to antagonize citizens believed to be sympathetic to the opposition. The clamp down on press freedom has had worse affects on the local Zimbabwean media.

Professor Ayittey also makes an excellent point when he points to Botswana's economic and political stability as being rooted in the indigenous governance system that Botswana champions, ensuring the maximum participation of ordinary people in the running of the country.

Everyone agrees that corruption is a pernicious problem, and the professor makes a really insightful remark when he says corruption can never be completely eliminated anywhere; it can only be minimized. Equally astute are his observations on the problems with the decisions made around the G8 summit at the beginning of this month in Gleneagles, Scotland.

But completely missing from Professor's Ayittey's analyses of the Zimbabwe crisis is the role the West has played by wilfully and actively sabotaging Zimbabwe's economy, stopping all trade and monetary transactions with the country. Given the interdependency of all countries on the global economic system, sanctions against Zimbabwe by the global North are the single biggest factor in the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy. Unfortunately, it is the energies and vitality of the Zimbabwean people that have been most affected, while President Mugabe sits comfortably in his mansion. It is erroneous however to lay all the blame for Zimbabwe's problems on President Mugabe, given the actions the West has taken, mostly based on concern for the white farmers who were forced off the land.

Professor Ayittey goes on to argue that the main cause of Africa's leasdership and corruption problems is the rejection by post-independent African states of capitalism and democracy, seeing these as Western and therefore undesirable for Africa. He says most African governments, upon attaining independence, opted for Marxism-Leninism instead of free markets and democracy.

The problem with this argument is that it fails to take into account the fact that most African countries were colonized by the West, and not the East. Upon attaining independence, these countries continued with the structures left by the colonialists. Thus most African countries still use the languages of the colonialists as official languages. The entire structure of most African governments continues with the education system left by the colonialists. Judicial, economic and parliamentary systems are entirely Western, and very little of socialist or even indigenous systems can be seen, with the exception, as mentioned by Professor Ayittey, of Botswana.

Even for those countries which attempted Marxist-Leninist systems, or African socialism as in the case of Tanzania, the West never allowed these countries to succeed. Thus the West and apartheid South Africa encouraged military coups in countries such as Ghana and Zaire, supported armed rebellions as in Angola and Mocambique, and isolated countries like Tanzania. The problems seen in these countries can not be blamed on the rejection of capitalism and democracy, when in fact most of these countries continued with the systems left in place by Western colonial powers.

Professor Ayittey laments the fact that when things have gone wrong in Africa, African governments have blamed external factors instead of accepting their own incompetence. Without suggesting that self-blame is undesirable, Professor Ayittey makes African governments appear strange and unusual, as if the West has set an example where governments blame themselves when things go wrong.

When African governments are criticized outside the global and historical context of Africa's problems, there's an implicit impression thus created that pits the West as the model that African countries should follow. Professor Ayittey may praise Botswana's Kgotla system which mandates Cabinet ministers to attend weekly meetings in their villages, but his real model for Africa remains the West. This can be seen in his failure to contextualize the causes of Africa's leadership and corruption problems, which he solely blames on African leaders and elites.

I would have hoped that Bill Moyers, who acknowledges to have visited Africa several times, would have sought alternative views on the causes of Africa's problems to fill the gaps created by Professor Ayittey's one-dimensional views. It appears that even to left-minded journalists like Mr. Moyers, establishment views like those of Professor Ayittey are still far more preferrable than those critical of the global order.

The African rebirth is going to require a bold effort to expose the historical injustices that have come to shape global inequality. This will mean seeking out more and more views outside the mainstream.