Living normally in an abnormal space
By: Alfredo Hengari
I HAVE been in a state of involuntary transit in Windhoek for the past week. It has been turned into a nightmare. I am stuck in Windhoek because my luggage has gone missing in Luanda, the capital of Angola.
As a footnote, I am a homeless person, a vagabond – and as such travel with my only worldly possessions, my compact, but elegant wardrobe, including selected books as extra luggage to help refine my columns. Unsurprisingly, after someone had cut the padlock of the luggage with my books, the latter arrived the following day at Hosea Kutako Airport.
As an African, with a stake in the future of the continent, it ought to be an article of faith to believe in the future of the continent. Believing in this future means that as a political columnist, I must, as a moral obligation, including my search to be objective, raise the issues as I see and understand them. Under ordinary circumstances, I ought to talk about my five-hour experience at Aeroporto Internacional de Luanda in the same manner in which I would write about my experience at Dubai International Airport or Singapore Changi International Airport. There are many who write about Africa as a hopeless continent. Ordinarily, I should not write with such nihilistic fervour about my space. But I am struggling to say something good about Luanda Airport. Had I been there before the new one, I would say something different.
You, the reader would charge me with unfairness and not being in touch with African realities, including a lack of understanding of the historical experience of Angola. You would argue that it is a country that went through many wars: the war for Independence; the Cold War; the Election war of 1992 and the Lusaka war from 1997 until the death Jonas Savimbi on February 22, 2002. The Lusaka Protocol of 1994 could only get to a point of implementation after the death of Jonas Savimbi. So, Luanda as a capital has only been at work since 2002. In fact, Joao, an M.A student in theology at Emory University in the United States does not only share impressions with me how difficult it is to get Angolans to study, but he informs that the main discussions around President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos’ continued stay in power is based on the view that he has been in power for 8 years. Even if he has been in office since 1979, the propaganda view and now citizen view is that it would be unfair for Dos Santos to leave now since he wants to show that he is still the man for the future of Angola.
Luanda, based on my first and superficial impressions about a city that ought to be getting the basics right, dashed my measured optimism about Africa’s leading oil producer. My sense of pessimism is borne out of the experiences of other countries, with similar dynamics, yet which have been able to get the basics right within a reasonable period of time. Aeroporto Internacional de Luanda, which is a new airport, is a shocking space for Africa’s fastest growing economy. It is not only unsightly and impractical, but at immigration, one-sentence translations from Portuguese to English are littered with rudimentary mistakes and errors. The service is indifferent and unfriendly. Since I was in transit, I was asked to wait in some unmarked space while an immigration official took my passport and left without any explanation. As I have been requesting for my luggage in Windhoek, the indifferent manager here does not speak English, and the telephone lines at Luanda Airport have been out of order for a while due to repairs. As I recounted these experiences to my entourage, I was informed that I had to part with a few US Dollars to receive the normal treatment that passengers in transit or those whose luggage is missing deserve. I am raising these superficial impressions for they have also allowed me review some of my premises. How do we convince an African who is doing well in London or New York to come and contribute to the development of a continent if we are not getting the basics right? How do we convince Jean who is completing his MBA at Chicago Booth (with the prospect of a job on Wall Street) to return to a place where he must pay bribes in transit? Sitting in Paris, travelling with ease through European capitals and villages, I had heated conversations trying to convince my twin brother who became a regular visitor to Paris and London, to also travel to cities like Luanda, Maputo, Mombasa or Gaborone. In short, I had wanted to say to him and others that the future of Africa lies in us doing things in our backyards, promoting intra-African tourism and interacting with fellow African professionals. It is also this reasoning that has been at the heart of my own existential concerns: whether to return to Africa or not. In discussions with my educated friends, I have always insisted on us returning to Africa in order to contribute to the renaissance of the continent. It is now becoming a tall order. The challenge is how to accept the old known normal as normal - how to try to live normally in abnormal space.
* Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in political science at the University of Paris- Panthéon Sorbonne, France.