QUANTUM AFRICA By Chanda Chisala
Sometimes when I feel
like I need to stimulate my brain a little bit, I read some of the
latest confusions in the field of quantum mechanics. Or, if there's
nothing twisted enough there, I pick up a long article on Africa by
Gregg Pascal Zachary or some other Africa expert, such as James
Ferguson, the Stanford University anthropologist.
The reason is simple: I
believe "African Studies" is the most complex (if not most
daring) subject of study ever invented by the social sciences, and I
know that anyone who is crazy enough to choose this as his subject of
major interest for the rest of his life has to be somewhere on the
border of genius and insanity. Their intellectual writings thus carry
a feel of genuine art at times, as they focus their minds with
passionate intensity on a subject that refuses to yield to easy
generalizations, and hence their explosive, energizing value!
Before Zachary
diversified into the intractable Africa question, he had reached the
top of the journalism world in the United States, having been a
senior writer for The Wall Street Journal and a columnist for The New
York Times, in large part covering that most complex of subjects:
technology, innovation and the interplay between these and political
economy. His talent was to simplify such complex forces and
interactions for the general public. He even wrote a book about the
life and times of the most significant electrical engineer in
American history, Vannevar Bush, and another book describing in human
language the development of the Windows Operating System by Microsoft
engineers. It seems that when Zachary had no greater challenges in
the world of journalism, when there was no harder story for his
razor-sharp mind to understand and simplify for the general public,
it was natural for his insatiable mind to drive him to attempt
demystifying the one world that has shattered the most analytical
egos: Africa.
What afflicted Zachary,
it seems to me, was similar to what befell Microsoft's Bill Gates
when he finally left the world of solving hard technology problems,
after reaching the peak of that world, and then decided to dedicate
the rest of his life to the depressing world of (trying to solve)
African health problems. The paths of these two adventurers –
refugees from the cosmos of Silicon Valley – even crossed once
when Zachary was consulted by the Gates Foundation on various
research projects on Africa to help with the communication aspect of
their foundation among the people of this continent. That's how I met
him in Zambia (as one of the small players on the local media scene).
Although Gates and
Zachary are connected to generations of Westerners – in Africa we
just call them "whites" – who have always felt some moral
compunction about living in a world of material abundance amidst the
indigence of other people on the same planet, they have
differentiated themselves by taking a radically new approach: they
actually want to understand Africa first. That apparently obvious
idea is in fact an unprecedented innovation. Other whites thought
(and most still do) that it was enough to simply throw money at
Africa, because there is really nothing complex about that poor
"country"!
This old approach
assumes that "Africa" is just one monolithic culture, and
if there are any cultural differences among the Africans at all, they
are too few and too insignificant to make any difference on how to
deal with them. This is probably true about most places of the world
(it is even quite true about African American communities), but it is
definitely not true about this particular continent. The depth of
cultural complexity can be seen from the sheer number of unique
ethnic groups (72 in Zambia alone) and the shocking differences among
the languages (even among ethnic groups that originally migrated from
the same places). Google Translator has not made any steps in
codifying these languages to help foreigners understand African
tongues (or Africans to understand other Africans), because it is a
task that would be too expensive for the multibillion dollar company.
This is why a person who seriously throws himself into studying
African societies has to be – how should we put it – interesting.
The only equivalent in
complexity I can think of in the natural sciences is an area of
physics called quantum mechanics. What kind of person dedicates his
life to such a convoluted subject that it confused Professor Albert
Einstein? It has to be a very "interesting" person indeed.
And this reference to
quantum mechanics is not a random analogy. Whereas classical physics
looks at normal objects and can establish their specific measurements
and motions with simple formulas when certain forces are applied on
them, quantum physics decides to look at these objects at a greater
level of detail – the level of sub-atomic particles – and finds
that all that formulaic certainty suddenly disappears. A crisis of
confidence among scientists ensued from the discovery that the best
they can say about where such an object will be is just a probability
– which is a respectable way of saying that physics had pretty much
become (at best) intelligent guesswork. Albert Einstein, the
godfather of the classical physics world, was concerned that his
field could lose the objectivity of mathematical predictability it
had held since at least Isaac Newton. Up until his deathbed he was
still trying to find a simple classical formulation that would
restore the infallible confidence of physicists even at that level of
detail, because "God does not play dice."
In Africa, God does
apparently play dice. When one goes on the ground to study African
people, they soon discover that there is no such thing as "Africa."
The concept they held in their head suddenly disappears. Every place
is different. And even places within places are different, sometimes
in very fundamental and surprising ways. The people may think
differently, behave differently, value different things, and so on,
not just from country to country, but even within each country.
Africa is diversity on steroids: it is diverse diversity.
And like our quantum
physics problems, this is not limited to space alone, but even
extends to time. When you return to that place after you publish your
book about it, you might not recognize it. Or you might. Some African
societies are very susceptible to external influences and changes,
some are not so malleable – and yet even that can change (are you
still with me?)
When Catholic
missionaries first arrived in the Great Lakes region of modern-day
Rwanda in the late 19th century, their message of salvation was
wholeheartedly embraced by the Hutus. This probably gave the
missionaries a nice little formula on what to say to "Africans"
and what to expect. But when they went among the Tutsis in the same
area, they were baffled to see the same message (and method) totally
rejected. Before you make a conclusion about the atheistic
personality of Tutsis from this historical fact, you should also be
informed that today Tutsis are among the most religious people in
Africa (at least the last time I checked, that is!)
So does this mean that
no one can ever make any general statement about Africa at all? I
think that someone can make sufficiently general statements about
Africa as long as they have enough experience among Africans to know
the limits of their generalization, both in space (where it is true)
and time (whether it is still true). It is here more than anywhere
else that some sort of Popperian humility is imperative.
But it is ultimately
like any other area of expertise. Those with the most experience are
likely to make the most correct judgments (and yes, judgment is
ultimately about probability). Following Malcolm Gladwell's rule on
expertise, there has to be a certain minimum number of hours (years)
spent spent among a certain minimum number of African groups that
should enable someone to become more proficient in their judgments
(and predictions) of Africans in general, while keeping in mind that
it is also a continent of many black swans (no pun intended). What
has been underrated in the past is just how complex this subject is
and how much experience is required before anyone can say something
intelligent about Africa.
The real experts on
Africa have spent many years of deep interaction with different
societies of Africa (even I, an African living in Africa, do not
really qualify). When you meet this rare group of humans with such
ample experience, it is always astonishing to witness the level of
accuracy with which they constantly explain aspects of your own
(African) country. Of course they are not always perfect, but like a
grandmaster of chess (whose level of play also resembles art), their
intuition has been honed into lightening-quick judgment calls from
the endless number of questions they have asked in their African
peregrinations.
Gregg Pascal Zachary
comes from that endangered species of journalists who sincerely ask
questions because they really do not know the answer. Many modern
journalists start with an answer – "the" answer – and
then devise the questions (and sometimes the "sources")
that are likely to confirm it, a trend that is probably as culpable
for the slow death of traditional journalism in the West as Google
is. These modern journalists could not possibly do proper African
field work because the first rule in the manual is that one has to
check his own ideology (whether conservative or liberal) at the
airport, especially if one is not psychologically prepared to witness
events that will certainly eviscerate some important tenets of that
neat ideology.
In Zachary's work you
see many times when he has to bring out a fact that you know does not
support a conclusion he holds, but he reports it anyway, and then
wrestles with its meaning. He even exposes the misinformation
reported by some other lesser journalists who happen to falsify
aspects of a story in order to sell a neater conclusion, and one that
he would actually love to be true. It is this brutally honest,
“scientific” approach to journalism that has qualified him for
this arduous task of subjecting Africa to traditional investigative
journalism at the quantum level.
Enjoy his art.
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