OK, I give in. This is going to be another airport story. Time used to be when Moscow’s Scheremetyevo airport was a hub for a certain kind of world traveller.
I am not just talking about communism’s so-called fellow travellers – I am talking about hundreds of thousands of people who simply wanted or needed to get to distant points of the globe for as little as possible. Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, made this possible.
Whatever the ultimate, and probably disastrous, cost to the Soviet system, Aeroflot was able to connect people to the rest of the world, without any moral or political obligations.
The price the traveller had to pay was that, whether you were an Australian trying to get from Bombay back to Sydney, an Indian trying to get from Dakar to Maputo, or a Jamaican trying to get from London to New York, you had to go the long way round – via Moscow.
Apart from the physical distance that was tacked on, Aeroflot was notorious for selling you a ticket according to a schedule that turned out not to exist, so that you ended up enjoying a somewhat harsh extra few days’ stopover at Scheremetyevo – at the airline’s expense – before finally getting to your destination.
I guess the cost was worth it as an image-builder for the Soviet Union, while it lasted. It was certainly a blessing to all of us cheapskates who really had no other means of getting from A to Z.
The demise of the Soviet Union means that Moscow is no longer the important hub it used to be. Its place has been taken by new hubs, points on the map of the new globalisation that has taken the place of a world socialist revolution – unlikely places like Dubai.
But why should they be unlikely? Where direct routes to the key commercial areas of the world are still saturated or jealously protected by powerful new airline alliances, sneakier, if longer, routes are bound to emerge to save the bacon of the economy-minded traveller.
Dubai airport is part of the millions of modern complexes that have leapt up into the grey desert air of the Arabian Gulf since the oil boom of the 1970s. It is cool and impressive, a steel, chrome and glass affair based on the fantasy design of the ultimate science fiction space station.
As Scheremetyevo did in the 1970s and 1980s, Dubai airport serves a very practical, human function. The huge difference is that, unlike the grim, uniform and, well, Russian-ness of Scheremetyevo, the interior world of Dubai airport represents a very modern aspect of globalisation. The crisply uniformed airport staff hail not only from the Arabian Gulf but from far beyond – notably the Indian subcontinent and the Philippines, it would seem. It’s an airport that is efficient, snappy and Third World at the same time – a different kind of icon for the 21st century.
The lesson here is that money can indeed buy you anything, even a leg-up into the First World. Dubai has been able to buy in the best of everything from everywhere – manual labour, advanced skills, design concepts, technology – and in the process create a new kind of Third World identity.
Emirates Airlines, the carrier that is most likely to waft you into and out of Dubai on your way to wherever it is you are going, is staffed from cockpit to cabin to ground support with almost every nationality but that of the Gulf state whose flag it flies.
It is not important. The servants of this new Third World enterprise are Greek and Russian and Italian and British, even South African, and they come in a fascinating variety of skin tones. Their tasknn is to provide excellent service in exchange for very fair rates of pay. Nationality and religion are no longer the issue. Growth and wealth creation is what counts. And everybody, master and servant alike, is happy with the deal.
At this time, when Europe and the United States are stiffly resisting the idea of cancelling Africa’s dubiously calculated debt and even more the idea of paying restitution for the haemorrhages of the slave trade, let alone colonial and post-colonial exploitation, here is an example of what a massive injection of hard cash can do.
If Africa at last had its massive inflow of long-term debt, what could it not achieve? Even where corruption creams off its share, it cannot all be hidden away forever. Seeds will take root, and the desert can be made to bloom.
Africans often say Africa is cursed because it is too rich. The continent’s detractors, who are legion, will retort by nnnsaying: ‘If Africa is so rich, where is its wealth? Why have Arabia and Asia and South America, which suffered the same kind of exploitation by Europe over the years, been able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and create enterprises and empires that the eye marvels to look upon?’
I would argue that no part of the world was as viciously, steadily and systematically owned as Africa was, with its people still largely intact in their variety, yet cowed by the manner of their subjugation.
The Arab Gulf, by comparison, was largely left to its own sinful devices. After all, they didn’t have much to offer. Not, that is, until that sudden discovery of massive deposits of petroleum and the skilful way in which its sheikhs were able to turn it to their own advantage – with enough left over to bring the common man and woman into the fold.
Yes, money may be the root of all evil. But by the evidence of Dubai, it would also seem to be the only route to paradise.
Archive: Previous columns by John Matshikiza