Saturday, May 27, 2017

Spruce Up Africa’s Image
May 27, 2017
Opinion & Analysis
Perspective, Stephen Mpofu
Zimbabwe Chronicle

Every year on May 25 Africans celebrate, or merely observe,  Africa Freedom Day, now known as Africa Day.

They mark the day when the Organisation of the African Unity, otherwise known as the African Union,  was launched in Ethiopia’s capital Adddis Ababa where it remains headquartered, to spearhead the liberation of the continent from colonial rule which was in almost all cases repressive against blacks by their European conquerors.

Today, 54 years on, our continent remains the “dark continent,” a name that was pejoratively given it by European explorers and their fellow natives who had had no access to the land pulsating with minerals and oil and inhabited by potential slave labourers that people in the West with weak limbs desperately needed to do their donkey work for them.

But surprise, surprise! When the foreigners splashed into the sensational African sunshine a golden haze seemed to have hung over the vast continent, causing the foreigners to dig deep in their hills, exploiting the continent’s riches and carting these off to build palaces back home in their native countries, while shackling together in chains black slaves and congesting them on ships, some of them rickety,  and hauling them off to work in mines and on plantations in the Americas.

[Of course,  many of our people did not make the journey,  dying while en route and their bodies being cast into the sea, like worthless animals.]

But the glorious image bestowed on the continent during the exploits faded off when those strangers without knees, as they were called by blacks for wearing long trousers that concealed the knees, were given short shrift at the independence of African states.

In anger, after their hegemonic desires were dashed by the revolutionary movement, the former colonial powers and their cousins elsewhere in the West began to regard, as they do to this day, albeit in their collective hearts, Africa as an insular island that is good for nothing.

This vindictive regard for Africa is probably being perpetuated now through the coverage of African countries by news media in the West.

In fact it seems that whatever positive thing that takes place in Africa is given negative projection in news media in the West in more cases than not.

Stated otherwise, it would appear that Africa, the insular island in the white man’s world, is only a source of bad news with probably a positive filler appearing here and there in newspaper columns or on television screens because it becomes extremely unavoidable in the eyes of others in the global village that the world has become in post modernity on account of advances in media research and development.

And yet, a country in the West that secretly created a virus in a desire to exterminate the black race from the face of this earth but hit a dead end when the experiment went berserk and produced a virus that has and continues to exterminate millions of both white and black people exists on with no remorse whatsoever for what clearly amounts to a crime against all humanity. That whites in other countries remain mum over the creation of HIV can only suggest that a grand coalition of whites exists against their common enemy, the black animal on two legs.

No wonder then that we witness a holier-than-thou pontification and ganging up by the same grand coalition against some African leaders, accusing them of committing war crimes that are, in comparison, less heinous than the creation of the Aids virus.

It is as though that country is more important in this world than the lives being lost daily so that no one points an angry finger at it as if afraid of demonic reprisals if one did so.

In fact, that country enjoys stardom status instead of that which befits a mass killer, for creating the virus that causes Aids which daily decimates more people on the African continent in particular.

Because Africa seems now to be only an afterthought in the minds of its former colonising powers, posting many correspondents on the continent appears to be a luxury that those countries can do without. Instead African stringers are hired to cover events but some, if not most of these correspondents are not highly qualified and so accept the jobs for the sake of the juicy bucks that go with it.

In fact, a European or white mindset appears to have been superimposed on these poor fellows so that they write stories about Africa that are devoid of a patriotic, African perspective to meet the ethnocentric tastes of their foreign readerships.

Stated otherwise, the correspondents believe they must view African happenings, whether these be positive through the negative mindset of a Western journalist in order for these scribes to be regarded as being professional journalists.

Consider, for instance a story by a Zimbabwean correspondent about an event in which our president is involved. It will not be unusual to read in the body of the story something like: “the 93-year-old Mr Mugabe said” blah, blah, blah.

What is implicit in such a story filed by a black Zimbabwean as though he was a white foreign correspondent is that because of his advanced age President Mugabe is not supposed to say or do anything good for this country.

But nothing could be farther from the truth of foreign prejudice implanted in the minds of African journalists writing for overseas publications.

What this kind of foreign filth soiling the minds of African journalists writing for overseas publications suggests is that these correspondents must of necessity go through the baptism of revolutionary fire in order to represent their continent well.

Representing a country well means exactly that — presenting something in its true perspective, be it positive or negative, the latter being intended for measures to be taken to put wrong things right for the benefit of society as a whole.

Perhaps Western countries need to follow the example of China whose active presence and participation in developmental affairs makes butterflies flutter in the bellies of that country’s rivals in the West.

Chinese news correspondents are well placed in Africa in the same way as Chinese support was, for instance quite visible during the armed struggle by our people against the Smith regime.

As a result they project in their files events as they truly are and this gives their readers a true picture of our country.

Zimbabweans and any other people for that matter cannot help but appreciate such all-weather friends.

What a wonderful global village our world would be like were different nations supportive of each other in times of difficulties as well as in good days!

No comments: