Robert Kirby: Loose CannonAmong Africa’s sorest afflictions has been, of course, its missionaries. This pessimistic breed started pouring into those parts of Africa closest to Europe – from where all the best hypocrites emerge – a few hundred years ago and have been here ever since.
Not only still here, but still arriving. What is it about Africa that attracts so many do- gooder charlatans? Be they old-time religious pioneers or those of the newer academic and socio-political kind, they continue to be drawn, they continue to surge in, to paint their notional advices and prejudices. Every day you hear them being interviewed on the SABC, the eager doctrine salesmen, the healers for all South African ills.
Perhaps they are only reaffirming sentiments originally expressed by the London Missionary Society which, in the early 19th century, openly admitted its concern, describing Africa as “that sore continent in need of God’s revelation”. Without being invited the society sent forth messengers like the well-meaning but preposterous Reverend John Campbell, one of hosts of inspired people who, in pursuit of their mission, showed ignorance, myopia, arrogance and many other hallmarks of the deeply pious.
Campbell’s diaries, Travels in Africa abound with fatuous observations. One in particular haunts. Campbell visited the Corannas, an Etosha nomadic group living a Zen-like existence, in unconditional affinity with their environment. Of this happy conjunction, Campbell observed: “The savages here walk in single file, possibly due to the lack of subjects for conversation.”
Playing the part of the serpent in this new Eden, Campbell spent “many long evenings” trying to explain to the Corannas that there was something called “sin” in the world. It was their first introduction to the concept of malfeasance, together with its collateral Christian guilt and envy, imported and expounded to people who, until Campbell, had been getting along perfectly well without it.
All of which brings me to the subject of John Pilger, a do-gooder missionary if ever there was one. Having not seen it, I cannot comment on Pilger’s television programme about South Africa. But, in his more recent Mail & Guardian article, in which he attempts to drag to heel the SABC’s senior political proctophile , Allister Sparks, he has my fullest sympathy. Where I take issue is with a statement at the end of the same piece, in which Pilger sermonises about one of the mutant forms of censorship, acquiescence in authoritarian will: “This is how censorship spreads: at first indirect and insidious, followed invariably by the most virulent form – self-censorship”.
With these plush words, the Reverend Mr Pilger flows into exactly the same mould as an unctuous piece of advice once proffered by the actress, Janet Suzman.
In the 1980s she addressed some elitist women’s shopping-group luncheon party in Cape Town. Janet also preached on the dangers of censorship. Censorship, she explained with a rueful smile, is actually terribly bad for one. And one really should try to do something about it instead of just sitting there accepting it.
Janet Suzman’s Hidden Dangers of Censorship sermon was reproduced in the press. I remember writing a newspaper piece in response in which, with my usual latitudinarian charity, I suggested that Janet should try pissing up someone else’s rope. We didn’t need some smirking theatrical evangelist telling us why censorship was bad, or how to fight it. Utterly without any help from he r – or her fellow British thespians – South Africans had already worked all this out for themselves.
Warning active South African voices about censorship was like giving a lecture on the need for efficient contraception in a brothel. ” We’d already done something about that, m’dear.”
Exactly the same sentiments are hereby offered to Mr Pilger. I don’t mind him sounding off about censorship. Every little bit helps. What I do resent is the way he ignores the prodigious effort, thought and bustle that have gone into disputing censorship in South Africa – long before he arrived to tell us how necessary this was. Writers, academics, artists, lawyers, editors – too lengthy these lists to publish here.
For a meticulously researched overview, I recommend to Mr Pilger, Christopher Merrett’s copious study of “secrecy and intellectual suppression in South Africa”. It’s called A Culture of Censorship. A reporter of Mr Pilger’s acknowledged worth might read it before next he offers us smug advice.
What I am saying, Father Pilger, is when we savages walk in single file, it’s usually in the sensible hope that the savage walking in front stands on the puffadder before you do.
Another form of censorship? At least it’s our own.