Letter To Africa

BY many indicators the world judges Africa to be its most insecure region.

For instance, well over 60 per cent of peacekeeping operations of the United Nations (my current base) are in Africa.In fact, this very same department is about to mount an unprecedented operation in Darfur, consisting of over 26 000 peacekeepers. According to the Failed States Index, Africa has eight of the world’s ten most failed states.A similar picture is evident in Freedom House’s conclusion that Africa is home to eight of the world’s most repressive regimes.The continent is also home to 35 of the world’s 40 most underdeveloped states, with more than half of Africans lacking access to doctors and hospitals.And we are the only continent which is unlikely to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015.Such scary indicators aren’t fiction or the invention of some nihilistic Afro-pessimist as the charges supposedly stand against me.Each of these images serves various purposes for particular audiences.For some in the African elite, they are to be rejected, even if they capture the multiple realities experienced by Africa’s inhabitants.Quite simply, they speak volumes about the challenges we face as a continent.As an African, I can’t absolve myself from these statistics because they narrate a story about us.It is where we are now.Yet we would want to have the same standards of living as citizens in Paris, Singapore or Vienna.I argue this way simply because every day in Paris or New York is a sharp reminder of how unwell the continent is, and such rude reminders find expression in issues such as queuing for a visa applications, passing through immigration, watching news images of Africans being deported, or working frantically in DPKO on the problems in the Great Lakes.This is the painful and humiliating reality of living in Europe or the United States and looking at Africa through Parisian eyes or as a New Yorker.In fact, it is the whole point of looking at yourself as a liability and being looked at as a liability by the country you inhabit.These real images or ‘banal’ experiences would perhaps resonate differently had I been apathetic about our plight as Africans.Or had I chosen not to do this column because it makes me dedicate excessive amounts of time to thinking about Namibia and Africa.But let me also briefly inverse the problematic.I know too well that Africa is a source of opportunities and riches with abundant sources of minerals, energy, and wildlife.Paul Williams puts it well: “Africa is a bountiful continent that is ripe for renaissance but in need of stability and investment.”The more one gets to look at Africa in terms of what it wants to be (stable and prosperous), the more I become impatient with the bad students who are reversing the leaps Africa makes in its push forward.What view or judgment to pass to take on the continent becomes unavoidably an intellectually convoluted matter.Kamongo from Lansana Conte’s Guinea Conakry, whom I met very early when I came to Paris, always emphasised: “l’Afrique est finie (Africa is finished)” – despite me trying to convince him that Africa had some bright spots, notably Namibia, Tunisia, and South Africa etc.How do we convince illegal immigrants that the African countries they left behind are better than their destinations? It’s a tough call.Impatience with Africa as I have come to realise is not only generational or based on a worldview, but it is a material question too.In part, the apocalyptic view is not just to be blamed on the western media, but the way we govern ourselves also feeds these stereotypes.What ammunition does Zimbabwe or Somalia give us to argue our case differently? Yet Mugabe enjoys support and is protected by his African peers in the name of African solidarity.When we try and protect and save this leader at all costs (supposedly against preying imperialists), are we not inordinately misplacing the problem and consequently the solution? Are we not consolidating the bases of this leader and locating solidarity in rather simplistic anti-colonial paradigms, instead of focusing on the human security of ordinary Zimbabweans? These perspectives are in most instances unhelpful in generating confidence in the continent, both from the outsiders who see the continent as a liability and in need of charity on one hand and, on the other hand, the Africans who are dispossessed.Similarly, this prevalent deflection of criticism and assignment of blame to colonial powers has led to chronic avoidance of frank public or private discussions among our leaders and ourselves.The question is then inevitably posed as to which Africa we should support and defend and how do we frame a new continent, if we don’t do so on the basis of a new set of values and expectations from our leadership.What should the relationship be between the governed and those who govern? What normative framework of security should we adopt, and consequently how should leaders pose the problematic of development if it is not around the universal language of human rights and democracy? The status quo will not help us and we need to look at development and freedom as twin moral imperatives.* Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in political science at the University of Paris- Panthéon Sorbonne, France.He is currently on a UN research internship at the UN Headquarters, New York.According to the Failed States Index, Africa has eight of the world’s ten most failed states.A similar picture is evident in Freedom House’s conclusion that Africa is home to eight of the world’s most repressive regimes.The continent is also home to 35 of the world’s 40 most underdeveloped states, with more than half of Africans lacking access to doctors and hospitals.And we are the only continent which is unlikely to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015.Such scary indicators aren’t fiction or the invention of some nihilistic Afro-pessimist as the charges supposedly stand against me.Each of these images serves various purposes for particular audiences.For some in the African elite, they are to be rejected, even if they capture the multiple realities experienced by Africa’s inhabitants.Quite simply, they speak volumes about the challenges we face as a continent.As an African, I can’t absolve myself from these statistics because they narrate a story about us.It is where we are now.Yet we would want to have the same standards of living as citizens in Paris, Singapore or Vienna.I argue this way simply because every day in Paris or New York is a sharp reminder of how unwell the continent is, and such rude reminders find expression in issues such as queuing for a visa applications, passing through immigration, watching news images of Africans being deported, or working frantically in DPKO on the problems in the Great Lakes.This is the painful and humiliating reality of living in Europe or the United States and looking at Africa through Parisian eyes or as a New Yorker.In fact, it is the whole point of looking at yourself as a liability and being looked at as a liability by the country you inhabit.These real images or ‘banal’ experiences would perhaps resonate differently had I been apathetic about our plight as Africans.Or had I chosen not to do this column because it makes me dedicate excessive amounts of time to thinking about Namibia and Africa.But let me also briefly inverse the problematic.I know too well that Africa is a source of opportunities and riches with abundant sources of minerals, energy, and wildlife.Paul Williams puts it well: “Africa is a bountiful continent that is ripe for renaissance but in need of stability and investment.”The more one gets to look at Africa in terms of what it wants to be (stable and prosperous), the more I become impatient with the bad students who are reversing the leaps Africa makes in its push forward.What view or judgment to pass to take on the continent becomes unavoidably an intellectually convoluted matter.Kamongo from Lansana Conte’s Guinea Conakry, whom I met very early when I came to Paris, always emphasised: “l’Afrique est finie (Africa is finished)” – de
spite me trying to convince him that Africa had some bright spots, notably Namibia, Tunisia, and South Africa etc.How do we convince illegal immigrants that the African countries they left behind are better than their destinations? It’s a tough call.Impatience with Africa as I have come to realise is not only generational or based on a worldview, but it is a material question too.In part, the apocalyptic view is not just to be blamed on the western media, but the way we govern ourselves also feeds these stereotypes.What ammunition does Zimbabwe or Somalia give us to argue our case differently? Yet Mugabe enjoys support and is protected by his African peers in the name of African solidarity.When we try and protect and save this leader at all costs (supposedly against preying imperialists), are we not inordinately misplacing the problem and consequently the solution? Are we not consolidating the bases of this leader and locating solidarity in rather simplistic anti-colonial paradigms, instead of focusing on the human security of ordinary Zimbabweans? These perspectives are in most instances unhelpful in generating confidence in the continent, both from the outsiders who see the continent as a liability and in need of charity on one hand and, on the other hand, the Africans who are dispossessed.Similarly, this prevalent deflection of criticism and assignment of blame to colonial powers has led to chronic avoidance of frank public or private discussions among our leaders and ourselves.The question is then inevitably posed as to which Africa we should support and defend and how do we frame a new continent, if we don’t do so on the basis of a new set of values and expectations from our leadership.What should the relationship be between the governed and those who govern? What normative framework of security should we adopt, and consequently how should leaders pose the problematic of development if it is not around the universal language of human rights and democracy? The status quo will not help us and we need to look at development and freedom as twin moral imperatives. * Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in political science at the University of Paris- Panthéon Sorbonne, France.He is currently on a UN research internship at the UN Headquarters, New York.