Liepello Pheko
Despite North Africa’s Arab Spring (which has inspired a global movement against corrupt and undemocratic leadership) and the birth of Africa’s 54th state, Southern Sudan (the result of the Sudanese people’s will expressed via a referendum), the idea of Africa as an uninterrupted landscape of human suffering and political failure remains steadfast in Western media discourse.
This perspective is anchored in the tried and tested method of presenting this vast, diverse and in many instances breathtakingly beautiful continent paradoxically, as a homo-genous mass of starving people stranded on barren lands under the yoke of despotic leadership and deadly diseases… Thus also implying that Western intervention is necessary, and even noble.
Hollywood’s cinematic forays presents a clichéd view of Africa as the hot and humid continent that’s a breeding ground for corruption, teeming with despotic leaders and malfunctioning governments. Of course, the long-suffering victims of this merciless continent are always ready for rescue by noble white protagonists who parachute in to save the day. Think Blood Diamond, The Interpreter, Fair Game and The Bang Bang Club.
Branding Africa as the basket case of the world is nothing new, but the timing of this particular wave bears careful scrutiny together with the West’s geo-political, military and economic interests.
A CNN programme last weekend dedicated 30 minutes to American journalists’ anguish about “Africa’s plight”, replete with classic ‘Brand Africa’ imagery of war and hunger. There was not a trace of strong African voices to counter the victimhood on display and no mention of the mess left by America in Somalia 20 years ago.
At the same time, a local news channel was providing an account of the sterling work of the South African humanitarian agency Gift of the Givers in Somalia, as told, designed and led by Africans.
Having weathered America’s recession better than many other regions, it is ironic that the picture of “Africa the scar” re-emerges at a time when most African economies are growing faster than at any time since the days of Structural Adjustment (economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans) and more consistently than anywhere else in the world.
Africa is possibly one of the best places to be on the planet. Yet it is presented as dependent and despondent in order to justify and rationalise the incursions on our sovereignty and resources.
The rebranding also comes at a time when European economies are faltering and when their citizens’ anger requires aggressive penetration into external markets to rehabilitate failed European governments and force open new market opportunities.
Where Europe’s Economic Partnership Agreements (a scheme to create a free trade area between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States) may have failed, propaganda and some bombs may just do the trick.
The new Transnational National Council in Libya is an intriguing assemblage. Some reports suggest very few Libyans can even name the leadership of the council much less its mandate or vision for Libya.
In typical form, the recent meeting in Paris covered by CNN, where global leaders decided upon Libya’s future
, an American analyst said that the absence of a few Africans, such as South Africa, is unimportant since countries like Russia, the US, the UK, Algeria, China and Germany were there to shape Libya’s future.
Shortly after, Al Jazeera reported the unashamed jostling at the Paris meeting for lucrative tenders to “rebuild” Libya.
It could not have looked more like the Berlin Conference of the 1800’s that carved Africa up, entrenched the colonialist agenda and dislocated the continent from determining its own destiny.
And while Western leaders throw money at the transitional leaders of these emerging democracies, Egyptian civil society is rightly questioning the motives of these countries, which that less than a year ago, were happy to prop up both Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi.
Kinda Mohamadieh, of the Arab NGO Network for Development warns that transitional governments are not appropriate vehicles for long-term economic adjustments and could be consigning their successors to harsh neo-liberal policies that cannot be easily escaped.
Moreover, a military foot-hold in Africa is a strategy of the US.
Having observed the result of invasions across Central and Latin America as well as the geo-military chaos in the Middle East, African countries rightly refused to host the Africa Command (Africom) in 2008.
It was rejected by every African country except Liberia, but seems likely to be back on the agenda as imperialist mayhem is once again sown in an effort to force the continent into hosting the American military presence.
While claiming that it wants to reduce its military influence abroad, the US unconvincingly asserts that Africom will support “leadership and peace building”.
But when Africom first emerged on the scene, Theresa Whelan, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for African Affairs was far more candid about America’s true intentions.
“Natural resources represent Africa’s current and future wealth, but in a fair market environment, many benefit,” she said.
The recent invasion of Libya and the Nato-inspired regime change is playing itself out as a clear and tragic replica of the fall of Iraq.
The architecture of Iraq’s fall was built around myths and half-truths. Just as the “War on Terror” was the excuse the US needed to wreak havoc on civilians in Iraq under the cloak of “liberating” them from a despotic leader, so too has “freeing” Libyans provided a tenuous but determined foothold for the exploitation of the country’s oil wealth.
Imperial media mythology ignores patently self-interested motives for invading sovereign states and subverting African-led processes.
Instead, Western media propagate the myths of the “official” storyline, which in Libya’s case included the bizarre claim that Gaddafi’s soldiers were Viagra-drugged to perpetrate mass rape of which Amnesty International found no evidence.
Manufacturing illegitimate wars in Africa to galvanise Western economies that are still in depression can only accelerate Western decline.
Invasion and war mongering are expensive and neo-imperialism has left Western countries practically bankrupt.
America has a debt of $14 000 trillion (R99.3 trillion), while France, Britain and Italy each have enormous public deficits compared to less than $400 billion in public debt for 46 of the 54 African countries combined.
While Western media houses continue their compli-city in promoting “anti history”, the African continent as opposed to “Africa, the basket case” is ascending.
Cameroonian, Jean-Paul Pougala, sums it up perfectly in an article on why the West went after Gaddafi when he writes: “As the American economist Adam Smith predicted in 1865 when he publicly backed Abraham Lincoln for the abolition of slavery, ‘the economy of any country which relies on the slavery of blacks is destined to descend into hell the day those countries awaken’.”
* Pheko is Executive Director at NGO/think-tank, the Trade Collective and is Africa co-convener of the World Dignity Forum. This article appeared on The South African Civil Society Information Service website.