Binyavanga Wainaina – you are so right
Let us imagine that Africa was really like it is shown in the international media.
Africa would be a country. Its largest province would be Somalia.
Bono, Angelina Jolie and Madonna would be joint presidents, appointed by the United Nations.
European aid workers would run the Foreign Affairs Office, gap year students from the UK the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Culture would be run by the makers of the Kony2012 videos.
Mocking the image of Africa constantly pimped by the western media – especially the BBC – Wainaina, a leading Kenyan writer pleads for a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to Africa.
Africa’s image in the West, and Africa’s image to itself, are often crude, childish drawings of reality.
He wants us to dilute the image of the mud hut and tribal dance with roads, railways, cables, factories and offices.
Fat chance, Mr Wainaina – the British Guardian reading, BBC watching middle class want mud huts and tribal dances because they need to feel superior. Not in the old Imperial way of keeping the restless natives down with a Gatling gun but because they want to trade pity for gratitude. They lust for famines, droughts, massacres so that they can distribute largesse and feel good about themselves. They have spawned a vast network of NGOs, staffed by their own children just to show Africans that they cannot be trusted to look after themselves.
If they had their way Africa would be one vast national park where the mud huts and tribal dances would be “managed” in the same way as the big game. No cables or smoking factories would desecrate the landscape because the chattering classes need Africa as a background for the frenetic pace of their own lives.
Where would all those “caring” celebs go on Red Nose day if Africa became like India and China, thrusting vigorous economies that were challenging our own sclerotic bureaucracies? Where would Madonna go for her next trophy adoption? What would Oxfam do with all those blankets and condoms?
More power to your elbow, Mr Wainaina – and the next time a rather turgid BBC left wing “comedian” arrives in some “African” village with a fleet of Range Rovers and accompanied by a bevy of mini skirted “production assistants” carrying a football so that he can be filmed for 35 seconds surrounded by grinning young “natives” why not shove his red nose right up his anterior orifice and bundle him on his way….
