Cameron Duodu
LETTER FROM THE NORTH
I was just telling myself that I was fed up to the teeth about whether “Africa” (one country) was a “lost continent” a “hopeless continent” or what have you, when the BBC asked me to appear on the TV programme, Newsnight, to discuss “the state of Africa”.
As it turned out, they were, in fact, devoting a whole 30-minute programme to the issue, which, if you know Newsnight – a programme that British politicians fight like hell to be seen on – seemed unprecedented.
Once I got to the studio, I found out that the programme’s menu was even more appetising – Desmond Tutu and the British Minister for Overseas Development, Claire Short, would be linked to the programme from outside London, and I would be in the London studio with Richard Dowden, who had recently written an outrageous series of articles in The Economist magazine, amounting more or less to the premature obituary of “Africa”.
The programme opened with a very good investigation of what is happening to Sierra Leone’s diamonds, by Robin Denselow, one of the few British reporters whom you can trust to understand what it is he is reporting on from an African country.
Then, the presenter, Kirsty Wark, said there seemed to be “something special about Africa that makes it bring trouble upon itself”.
To prove the point she walked on a map of Africa, stepping one by one into what she quaintly called “the almost rhythmic conflicts that travel through Africa”.
Africa equals rhythms equal natural barbarity. Geddit?
Well, in case someone didn’t get it, nice old Kirsty (admittedly, she can’t be blamed for what hackneyed but catchy phrases the researchers and writers come up with, can she?) then engaged Tutu in an exchange that should rank as one of “The Great Comic Moments of Television”, the seriousness of the topic notwithstanding. What follows is just a flavour of it all:
Wark (no doubt taking her cue from The Economist): “Archbishop Tutu, do you think there is anything special to Africa in the way it is plagued by these conflicts?”
Tutu (usual pregnant pause): “Hehe! A few years ago, I would be wondering whether there was something special about Europe! You had something called World War I, and a very few years after that you had World War II.
“You had the Holocaust. You had . I mean your soil was soaked with blood; with considerable turmoil and conflict. You’ve begun to come out of that – not entirely, because you’ve got Chechnya, Kosovo and Northern Ireland still. And we could, if we wanted to, look on that and gloat.
“Africa has a lot of troubles; but Africa has also got some very good things that have happened and are happening, and just as you pulled out of your morass, I firmly believe that with some help, Africa will surprise the world.”
Wark: “But what kind of help, Desmond Tutu?”
Tutu: “You know, after World War II, Europe was devastated and you received from the United States the Marshall Plan, and all that it meant in helping Europe to get back on its feet.
“We in Southern Africa, especially in South Africa, have been devastated by apartheid, and we require, I believe, something akin to a Marshall Plan, to help us get rid of the horrendous legacy of apartheid, because at the present time our government is having to deal with the normal demands of a new democratic society, and also having to deal with the legacy that apartheid has left in education, in housing, in almost every aspect of life.”
Richard Dowden was then asked to tell viewers what features about Africa’s conflicts he had highlighted in his writings. He said that Asia was colonised, like Africa, but 40 years after independence, except for Sri Lanka, the Asian countries are “doing fine”.
I challenged this.
Duodu: “I am sorry that Richard is making such a superficial analysis. Five, 10 years ago, South Korea was torn by one of the worst social conflicts in the world.
“He didn’t mention Burma, which has been around a long time yet is still torn by conflict. India and Pakistan quarrelling over Kashmir.”
Wark: “And they have nuclear weapons!”
Duodu: “Right. The human race is in trouble and the availability of weapons everywhere, which has resulted from the end of the Cold War, makes people resort more readily to arms to solve conflicts.
“Now, if you look at Asia, the reason why we have this tremendous leap in economic production is the proximity of Japan.
“Japan was rescued after the second world war by the US, and it then exported the technology it didn’t need any more to the neighbouring countries of Asia.”
Kirsty then turned the discussion to the question of what is to be done.
Duodu: “My father grew cocoa 60 years ago. The price that we are getting for the product from his farms today is worse than what we got 30 years ago.
“One year the price is up; the next, it’s down. So we desperately need to ‘add value’ to the crop before we export it.
“The logs we send to Europe and America must no longer go as raw logs but as manufactured furniture. But we do not have enough money to buy the machines that will enable us to put value-added on to our exports. Even when we do process our commodities before we export them, high tariffs in Europe and America block the export of processed goods. So we are treading water.”
The programme ended with Ben Okri, the Nigerian writer, reciting a poem: “If the rich go on exploiting the poor / We are talking about cannibalism / If the rich go on ignoring the poor / Absolute violence will be the music / To such deafness.”
I am sure this debate will, as they say, run and run. Meanwhile, our prayers must go to the somewhat frail Tutu, who is an irreplaceable jewel.