How could I know I am ‘the African’?
By Tariku Abas Etenesh
(First appeared on www.theethiopianamerican.com)
Whoever had said books are good companions, deserves a nod of approval from anyone who had actually made friends out of books. Some books get you new experiences, and others give you new paradigms. I had read one of the latter kinds, years ago, that deservedly lent me, since then, a perspective to frame a question as a reply for the seemly conventional view about Africa and all Africans in the mainstream western rhetoric and conception of the continent.
Sight Unseen
The book is entitled ‘Sight Unseen,’ and recounts an unusual conversation between two philosophers, one sighted and the other visually impaired, both working at philosophy departments of two universities. The book is a collection of emails the two professors exchanged on a topic selected by the sighted one who wanted to explore what 'reality' meant for the blind.
The book recounts how the first invitation reached the visually impaired professor in the form of a question that roughly goes: What do you think is the biggest thing you have missed because you are blind? To which the reply by the visually impaired took me by surprise and made me rethink my own views of what is like to be visually impaired. In the reply letter, the visually impaired philosopher thanked for the curiosity of his colleague but said he preferred to rephrase the first question and start from another question: How do I know that I am Blind?
My first reaction to that reply was: How come he doesn’t know he is blind? But a few pages into the book gave me a eureka moment of realization. That, for a person, who had, since birth been blinded, the deprivation I might ‘know’ he feels are nothing but my own conceptions of what I think he should miss. ( colors, light, etc.). But how could one lose what he hasn’t seen or have never had been a part of? His night dreams might not necessarily be constructed of images that result out of light and shadows, but nonetheless, he can’t be said he can’t dream, only that the texture of the dream could be different. This is a case of the impairment of the perceiver projected on the perceived.
I tried the lesson of that book on one of my flights back to Addis from Europe; I was sitting next to a person of good build and wearing a striped shirt. After about half an hour of no communication except the casual smiles we exchanged, we started to throw questions at each other to break the ice. That was when I learned that the tall meek-faced person sitting next to me was a Belgian and was working for a charity that is operating in five African countries. But the smiles and warmth of our initial conversation didn’t last as it started when we ventured on a topic familiar to us both (when he asked me a question after realizing I am African.) He related how the charity he works for is helping refugees in Congo and four other countries in Africa. And with a certainty of a kind, that one could witness in most westerners these days, he threw a question at me, “why is African this corrupt?”. He did so as if that was the only-first-and appropriate question to ask anyone who calls himself African. To which I replied, “First, tell me how I could know I am ‘African,’ and then I will tell you about it.”
Exactly as would be expected, the tall Belgian looked at me perplexed and said: “What do you mean you don’t know you are African; you just said it yourself?” Well, that was enough for me to realize he did not get what I meant; and I had to go a little bit further to explain. And asked him why the name Africa, triggered in him just the word corruption and that he felt no restraint, (despite the rule-of-thump of decent introduction bidding one to be restrained from anything outright judgmental) to ask me about corruption like an African given; and that he must be talking about a different Africa than the one I knew and that I wanted to be told what ‘the Africa’ of his perception and practical-take was.
To justify his claim, he recounted the various tales of destitution he had seen in Africa and the corruption he had witnessed just to do charitable work to help African immigrants, in different civil-war trodden nations of the continent. It was understandable that he has actually faced corruption in Africa; but he has been to just five African countries, (and had experienced the marginal section of communities in those countries, at that,) but feels justified generalizing. I understand that there are all sorts of problems the continent is suffering from; all kinds of maladies that are actually present but as far as I am concerned, those are not maladies trade marked African (as if the rest of the world is not responsible for them too), but human maladies suffered due to various reasons. A problem deferred as ‘African’ and a problem recognized as ‘human’ is, far too unlike.
Well, allow me to postulate this story onto a reality that is, like the conception of the visually capable professor seemed ‘given knowledge’ about blind, to the ‘given knowledge’ of the Western world about Africa and Africans. There seems to be an accepted, and (sometimes propagated by African ourselves,) portrait of Africa that I find is conceptualized from just one angle, and that insists on framing the continent as one thing and one thing only. This is the backdrop for the media and in most cases the academic clamor that feeds on this distorted image and feels justified to think of Africa only in terms of ‘what is the greatest misfortunes the continent has’; not in terms of ‘does the continent have it in the way we think about it in the first place?’ That is why I would, in the face of such assertions, boldly ask: “How do I Know that I am “the African?”
Here I should help you by clearing any misunderstanding or misreading of my question; I was born in one of the oldest nations in Africa -Ethiopia-and still lives there. I said so just to ditch a remote perception you might develop that I might be someone feeling the chill of cultural or identity crisis- I am not. So why should I ask that question? Because, since long ago, past the times marked by myriads of political, philosophical, religious imperatives, usually from the West, (supposedly the civilized world,) that dares to sell and portray Africa in one gloomy tone, we, Africans have done less to decry the fact that this was the case of the impairment of the perceiver projected on the perceived and that our Africa is actually not just what is portrayed but more.
However today, the sell of gloom-and-doom is about the continent is not just done by the West. There is enough exhibit of brainwashing done to the point where ‘the Africa’ in the Western market of public opinions is the reality in the mind of Africans too. This is more pronounced when Africans, like me, travel to the western cities. Many fall prey to the clamor of self-abasement and cultural self-sacrifice by, (in most cases innocently) being part of the scene that sells the distorted image of themselves and of Africa.
Years after, a friend of a friend who worked with the charity that the Belgian worked for went to Belgium for a very short business trip and during his stay there he posted some of his pictures that showed him in different cities of Belgium on his Facebook page. Of the six or more snapshots he posted, one took me with a shock. It was not that he did post it, rather the joviality of his pose. And as I have later learned, the utter lack of knowledge of the background of the landmark he was posing next to was astonishingly bizarre. It was a picture taken at the foot of a big statue, at the back of the Belgian Royal Palace in Brussels, of a massive man on a huge horse.
I sent a short message if the person knew who the statue he posed next to was? To which he said he did not know in detail except that he knew the person for whom the figure stood for was Leopold II and used to be one of the kings of Belgium in the past. This is nothing but a real case of smoke screened history for the statue and of the man it commemorates. The honest African traveler had just posed at the foot of the statue only as punctuation to the trip he was onto.
I sent another message, this time a question with a touch of historical perspectives, “assume you were in Germany for a visit, and in the middle of Berlin you saw the glorified statue of Hitler, would you feel jovial to pose next to that statue and take a picture? To which the answer was obvious; he even said the Germans are not that oblivious of the horror and the humiliation Hitler had brought to their nation and would not in any form grace him with such an edifice. The Germans did not honor Hitler because by doing so they are accepting the greatness of humanity, and respecting the victims of his hellish racist regime.
Leopold II, who not only was, (as he infamously vowed "should not miss out on ‘the scramble for the big cake of Africa,’) was the Hitler that Belgium and the whole of Europe did not sell so because his victims were Africans. He was responsible, (as someone who has controlled the Congo as his private property) his persecutions, mutilation and barbaric enslavement of more than 15 millions of Congolese, was no less in the party of the greatest disgraces for humanity; but in the middle of Brussels he is celebrated and honored by statues. Why? The answer might not come as clear as I might put it when the Western version is delivered but, it sounds to say, Leopold II massacred more than ten million Congolese, yes, but he did it to civilize them, after all, they are Africans! You might not like what you read, but that is the truth Belgium tells itself.
I could look guilty of being too single-minded about Leopold II's atrocities. But even if I declare to fall prey to the single-mindedness, why is there a double standard when it comes to justice for Africans? That is the grossest of ways a perpetrator of genocides and massacres is celebrated by a people that claim to be 'civilized.' The Hitler of Europe deservedly remains condemned and disgraced while Hitler of the Congo, Leopold II, is glorified in the heart of the ‘civilized’ world that prides to stand for human rights.
The problem is two-fold, we the Africans seem to have neglected the story, and the Belgians have forgotten the mammoth scale crimes on humanity they have built their country’s development on. What is more saddening is that, this is not a singular story, it represents the reality of all former European colonizers who are hiding behind the ‘African Burden’ myth they have created in order to sooth the conscious of history into not disclosing the naked fact that their nations are the results of loot and inhuman exploitation of their colonies.
One of the challenges faced by African Diaspora in Europe, nowadays, is xenophobia. The ever-increasing unemployment coupled with the misinformation’s and negative portrayal of Africa as just the dependent parasitic continent at the mercy of Europe has contributed to painting this great lie with a tint of distorted truth. A Belgian youth, who is told just the greatness of Leopold II and his 'great contribution' to the ‘civilization of the Congo’, could only feel justified that Africa has always been a parasite; but this storytelling denies that Leopold II had considered Cong as its personal property and have slaughtered and massacred more than 10 million people in ten years. That is the one part of the Belgian-Congolese story the young Belgian would never be taught at school. This is as well true for the Congolese; if he dares not adequately view the oppressor such and not as the benefactor. As Franz Fanon had famously said that whoever controls the Congo, controls Africa, Congo is turning into a breeding ground of conflicts and destruction lest to claim freedom in the real sense of the word, the whole of Africa has an assignment to live up to for the sake of honoring humanity by standing for the peace and stability of the Congo-region.
So like the professor who is visually impaired, who had to first clear his colleague's conception of being visually impaired as an imported perception, Africa is put into a difficult situation of being forced into a garb that is not fit for her because the western world had decided it to be so.
With the ever-present economic upheavals and distresses that are plaguing the western world these days, the African Diaspora finds itself in a difficult situation.
I see that is one way to assure African homecoming; the recognition of the place I duly deserve as a member of the human family. It is like a question that would define a homecoming to my history (African history in particular and of the world in general.)
Because the marketplace of public-opinions and cultural-chemistries in the West is filled with ‘bestselling’ and systematically paled images of the continent available for the innocent especially when surfing the cultural definitions of Africa by the Western media and academia. Well by cultural definition, I mean, the meaning and (no matter how unrelated to the realities on the grounds might be), of a thing defined to suit by the opinion makers of the West. And the question is not whether I am an African but where I am ‘The African? The west portrays all African to be. I say I don’t know that Africa.
The ‘Africa’ of the West says I am the ‘savage’; when the so-called civilized West has for centuries been perpetrating savagery on Africa under the pretense of bringing “civilization.” The Africa I know actually stands morally tall in giving a chance to human solidarity by pardoning the great injustices perpetrated by apartheid in South Africa and Zimbabwe by the so-called 'Civilized' West.
The ‘Africa’ of the West says that Africa chose to be underdeveloped; when in practice, the multinationals that are sucking on the mineral and natural resources of the continent, benefiting from the bloodshed in Africa, are nothing but the continuations of the colonial heritage and the exploitation of the continent by the Civilized.
The ‘Africa’ of the West says African countries are destitute because of their wish to be; where through the structural adjustments and the clandestine and oftentimes overt supports for dictators who are nothing but human rights abuses and civil liberties cripplers against their own people but who live up to the Western tunes of exploitation is the reality at large.
The ‘Africa’ of the West says I am a parasitic minority on the economies of their nations wherever I am the Diaspora. When in reality, Africans have contributed a lot regarding changing the trajectory of the nation they are in. And are still financing the economies of many big Western nations. A Congolese in Belgium should not be intimidated because it was Congolese wealth that built the greatness of Belgium. And the same is to the other former colonizers. He should be more so, not intimidated as he is the moral superior to the Belgian because he did not set out to chase Belgians out of Congo or the Germans for Namibia elsewhere. He should be not intimidated because African morality dictates that in times of distrust, your guest is your opportunity to honor humanity.
The African Diaspora is more than anytime in recent history being subjected to atrocities in western nations resulting from xenophobic intents. Which should be dealt with a coordinated effort that dares to say the stereotypically stamped ‘African’ doesn’t represent them and choose to protect their history and stop falling prey to the same powers of the past that denied the continent her deserved dignity.
TAE
