Slavery is Back....

Slavery is back, this time though it’s the Chinese who are cracking the whip against black backs, at least, that’s the story if (Peter Hitchens) is to be believed; reporting from Zambia in the unlikely abolitionist newspaper, The Daily Mail, he exposes the modern day slave trade in which millions of Africans are being sold as chattel to the highest bidding China PLC by unscrupulous African governments and leaders. It’s not rice or cotton that’s king but minerals, iron ore, copper and zinc that are being ripped out of the earth to feed China’s rapacious appetite for wealth and industrialization, he writes. I hope my entre gives a little of the hyperbole masquerading as journalism in Hitchen’s piece.

It’s not the very verifiable fact of China’s expansion and consumption in Africa that’s contentious in this piece, but the insidious but nevertheless, predictable Daily Mail take on the story. Confronted with a story of Africans negotiating the torturous process of opening up to the world economy, they choose to portray a simple story of passive Africans lying down and taking it. It’s a bit much to take from a paper that laments within its pages the demise of colonialism, and many of whose readers and writers no doubt mutter beneath their breath that the place was much better run when they were around. Scratch the surface of the Daily Mail’s new, benevolent concern for Africa’s fate at the hands of the Chinese and what you will find is this: A palpable fear (and jealousy) that the ‘yellow peril’ is back with a vengeance eating up the yummy goodies that should rightfully be consumed by the west and the predictable patronizing attitude that this poor continent is doomed.

In his piece, Hitchens interviewed Zambian opposition leader, Michael Sata, who is vigorously querying the Chinese presence in his country and questioning its benefits. Despite the obviousness of a story here – Hitchens could have led with a story of how some Africans are working for the welfare of their citizens, and covered more in depth the challenges they faced, he followed the spurious but sensational line that a new slave trade is afoot. It’s powerful stuff – but hey we all have something to cry about – give me something to shout about.

Yes – but the story makes people in the west aware, right? Well, no. All it engenders is the feeling of hopelessness that this/that continent cannot be saved – and here comes another group of rapists to attach in Liffey’s words ‘this poor helpless continent’. It’s a feelgood movie for the folks back home; (there but for the sake of god…).

I’d like to hear about how the efforts of people like Michael Satu can be taken forward; for one, it seems obvious to me, that the next steps should be to unionize the workers and make them aware that China has a lot more to lose than gain if the mines close.

Side Business

On a post clubbing bus ride a few days ago, one of my friends told me a story of how he’d arranged to do a bit of business on the side by sending some items to Nigeria to be sold through a very close family relative. We’re talking through the same uterus close’. This close family member executed his duties very well and stood to gain a very handsome commission out of the deal – which said friend hoped to make into a regular sideline that would benefit not only him but also the relative in question.

For whatever reason, the relative managed to spend all the money gained, both his share and my friend’s. The story was told to me in a very downcast and bitter tone, with my friend vowing, more or less between gritted teeth not to trust anyone in Nigeria anymore, not even his own family. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a story before, and not I suspect the last. In my own family, there are countless examples of similar heartbreaking experiences. We both wondered how his relative could be so short-term in his thinking, and I recalled some of the stories I’d heard of others killing the ‘goose that lays the golden egg’. Apart from the fact that my friend was hurt, emotionally by the incident, the sad part of this story is the discouragement that it gives to people trying in their own small way, to make a buck and help people along the way.

It seems to me that the ‘extended family’ benefits of the African family that we’re always shouting about, are much less robust than we would like to think, and in fact, is corrupt down to its core – isn’t it just an excuse for family members to take advantage of each other and exploit each other? As to the idea of following the Asian example and building a business empire along family lines, like the Tatas, et al in India, it seems like we might be too selfish to do that. When I was at university, one anecdote that a well-oiled Nigerian (forgive the pun) colleague told me, was that his father had resorted to employing eastern Europeans to mange his farms, such was his distrust of his fellow Nigerians as employees. It’s a disheartening model – not only for job creation but for developing that social element which seems in and among Africans to be in short supply – Trust.

What's worth dying for?

Two things have struck me this week as extraordinarily brave. I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to be active in the world, and (that’s probably half the problem) - trying to decide what is important – or knowing what we/I think are the really big and important things yet not knowing how they should manifest in the day to day minutiae of our lives. Two extraordinary acts of bravery, or foolhardiness, depending on how you want to frame it struck me this week. In Nigeria, a young man by the name of Roland Macaulay has started up the first gay church - in defiance of local homophobia. In Ireland, Maura Harrington, began a hunger strike to protest Shell’s building of an oil pipeline right through her town.

It’s a symptom of our generation and the times that we often imagine that the age of great, passionate political action that can transform the world is gone; people don’t buy into that anymore, in any case, the forces are too large, too overwhelming to do anything; so we sink into the apathy of being disgruntled with the world to a degree, but not disgruntled enough to do anything about it. That’s why I find Roland Macaulay’s actions both brave and inspiring. Roland was the head of an open and tolerant church in London, and he could happily have remained there, ensconced in the safety of London’s tolerant environment. Nevertheless he’s chosen to put his money where his mouth is, foolhardy as it might seem to some. Maura Harrington has taken an even more extreme approach to political protest; her hunger strike in protest against what in England more often than not elicits a few feeble and resigned complaints from local residents – is shocking not so much because this woman is starving herself to death but more because we have become so apathetic about the ability of big business to get their way (even in the democratic west) that a hunger strike has become a conceivably way for someone to have their voice heard. I guess the thing that awes me is that, what these two people have decided is what, for them is worth dying for: for Roland Macaulay it’s the prospect (yes, perhaps not so imminent) of a Nigerian mob, and for Maura Harrington, the possibility of an excruciatingly painful death, and all this held in the balance by the belief in other people’s ability to change or at least accede to the statement they’re making – yes, I’m here and the only way I’m going to away is if you kill me first.

How many of us are that certain about what is worth dying for?

This is bravery....

I think the answer to the question is self-evident; this is bravery.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2008/sep/16/activists.pollution

Rag&Tag

A few nights ago, I watched an independently produced and directed movie called, Rag & Tag. It’s a family drama of two boys whose childhood love for each other transcends the bounds of time and the social forces that try to separate them and find each other again in adulthood. The films, and the characters, are set primarily within the Nigerian black community. It is, as you can probably, already imagine, also a gay love story. I watched the film in a small, private screening in east London, which was heavily attended, primarily by gay, black men, and featured following the screening an audience with the screenwriter and director, Adaora Nwandu.

The film has many obvious limitations, the script could have done with a lot more refinement and development, many of the characters and situations are blatant stereotypes of Nigerians, Jamaicans in the west, it includes a drug-dealing, wheeler, dealer Nigerian who works in import-export, a Nigerian patriarch with an exaggerated and often confused accent, and of course, bible-bashers galore, and in parts, the performance of the actors was less than polished; Nevertheless, this film, without the obvious advantages and TLC of the Hollywood or pinewood machine, was enthusiastically received. The audience, mostly black, gay men, responded so passionately to having their story told, and seeing some semblance of their lives onscreen, a response which thrilled and inspired me. Their response tells me one thing, black audiences; particularly black, gay audiences are hungry for stories that talk about their lives beyond the usual stereotypes of the media. If such a flawed piece of cinema could elicit such an enthusiastic response, it puts a lie to the frequent claims that the audience for black stories, black gay stories have no audience; to the stock excuses that there is no audience for these stories, and any endeavor catering to them is fated to struggle and bankruptcy. The story of making the movie is in itself remarkable. It took Nwandu, three years to make the film, and it was made by literally begging and scrapping around, and commandeering every friend and family member who would help. The final love scene was shot in the director’s mother’s bedroom. It’s a remarkable thing for the subject matter that it was shot both in the United Kingdom, but also in Nigeria, where to put it mildly, the subject of homosexual love is a taboo.

To be fair, the director herself was at pains to stress that she understood why many people baulked at funding the movie; because ultimately stories are about ourselves, and stories which, especially in the west do not reflect what those who unfortunately have the money and clout to make movies want to see, will and have struggled to be made; despite this, the fact that this flawed movie received the enthusiastic response it had, and which by all accounts is growing, (and will grow) both financially and critically, suggests that there is a space for stories beyond the mainstream, a small space perhaps, but one that in this day and age of democratized media can prove a financial goldmine, we have all in the media industry heard about the long tail, perhaps its time for the moneybags to take more leaps of faith. Meanwhile, Adaora Nwandu is busy working on her next venture. I, for one, will be paying my five cents to see it.

http://www.mukaflicks.co.uk/

@Dele Meiji

Zimbabwe' - A new deal for african elections

Zimbabwe’s power sharing deal gives a vague sense of hope to those who’ve despaired of a solution to the leadership crisis for a state that went in very quick bound from bread basket to basket case. The nature of the deal which leaves, Robert Mugabe undiminished in his position of president, but gives Morgan Tsivangirai the position of prime minister feels of course like another one of those African dances that involves two steps forward and one step back. It seems a precedent is being set for what happens when there are disputed African elections. The incumbent seizes power or declares victory in hastily convened elections, and the opposition galvanise an increasingly incensed people to protest against the thwarting of their democratic will. To avoid full-scale civil war, a compromise solution is reached in which the two sides agree to share power. This has been the case most recently in Kenya, and a bit further back in Cote d’Ivoire. On the upside, we might be witnessing the steady erosion of the all or nothing approach to politics; albeit, a very grudgingly conceded one as witnessed by Mugabe’s murderous intransigence. It’s interesting to note that the two places where such compromises have now been reached, the opposition’s power and appeal is based on trade union movements that have been able to a degree to transcend ethnic divisions; in fact, the political maturity of leaders such as Tsivangirai and Odinga in railing in their supporters from violence might be a model example for other African nations, not least, the reputedly stable South African body politics (and its undoubtedly polarising upcoming elections) to follow, in the coming years. The fact that each side controls some coercive power of the state Tsivangirai the police and Mugabe, gives some hope that the balance of power won’t rest solely on who shouts the loudest at the unwieldy cabinet meetings.

Nevertheless, watching Mugabe, Tsivangirai, and Mbeki signing the accord, I couldn’t help feeling just how cosy the whole deal seemed, even the third wheel Mutambara was fitted in.