Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Lessons from the end of the earth

The island at the end of the earth.

That is what "Madagascar" means apparently. This stunning photograph shot in 1967 for National Geographic probably shows us why.

Madagascar, a large tropical island off the south-east coast of Africa with over 20 million inhabitants, has been in the news this year for all the wrong reasons. All the wrong, and sadly all too familiar, reasons that keep recurring in both space and time across the continent of Africa.

It has been argued by some that Africa's biggest problem is one of image and that the 24-hour news channels do not reflect the reality on the ground. There's something to be said for that I suppose: I remember asking John, a friend from Belfast, what it was like living in The Troubles (this was before Tony Blair came along with the Good Friday Agreement). "Surprisingly normal," he said, and went on to explain how, most of the time, they just went about their day to day lives without incident.

And yet, and yet. Just how "normal" could life have been in Northern Island with its segregated communities, thousands of British troops on the streets, and hundreds of active paramilitary freedom fighters or terrorists (depending on which side you supported)? The truth is the people of Northern Island had probably grown accustomed to living with the abnormal. So much so that the abnormal had become normal.

And so it probably is in much of Africa today. We have become so accustomed to living with the abnormal that it has become normal. Or rather, the abnormal has remained abnormal and we have become ab-normalised.

Recent events in Madagascar have been tragic and farcical in almost equal measure: a 59-year old duly elected president ousted from power by a 34-year old former DJ who cannot constitutionally become head of state anyway because he's below the stipulated minimum age (40); a supine military aiding and abetting the theft of state power; a pliable judiciary endorsing it; and the restless, mindless, pitiless mood for "change" by the fickle mob. Yes they could, and yes they did: the hapless and helpless incumbent president stepping down after more than 100 civilian deaths and before the many more that were sure to follow if he had dared to resist the inevitable.

Why do such things keep happening in Africa?

Perhaps we're asking the wrong question about the wrong place. Why doesn't this sort of thing happen outside Africa, in Europe say? This casts rather a different light on the matter altogether. For we know that such things were once just as frequent and just as widespread in Europe.

Once.

But not any more.

Why?

2 comments:

ambersun said...

Hi again

Not sure about Africa why?

Here in Australia our indigenous people are in a bad way.

Some of the issues are - warring tribes lumped together in made up homelands, loss of culture with resulting loss of identity and faith, low tolerance to alcohol and family abuse.

Not sure if this is the case in Africa but it might be.

Let me know..

Amber

Mjumo said...

What I was trying to do here was to turn the usual question ("Why do such things keep happening in Africa?") on its head. In three ways: by shifting the focus away from a narrow present to a wider past, from "Why?" to "Why not?", and from "Africa" to "elsewhere". And in so doing show that, perhaps, in historical and geographical terms, the contemporary African situation is not such an anomaly after all. On warring tribes (factions, ethnic groups, etc.) lumped together in made up homelands: it is certainly true of Africa, but it is also true of many other places (the island states of South East Asia come to mind), but they have somehow managed to overcome (or at least contain) their differences. On loss of culture: no culture can remain the same after contact with another culture (and that's not necessarily a bad thing; it means that one culture can learn from the successes-and mistakes- of another culture). But the presence of such challenging factors need not portend certain failure-we (humanity) can rise above them.