People often say they are proud of their country, proud of their ancestors and all they achieved. Presumably it also follows that you can be ashamed of your country and the sins of its fathers.
The longer I spend as a Briton living abroad, the more I’m aware that Britain is nothing special, just another peculiar character in the global ensemble. The longer I spend as a Briton living in Africa, the stronger grows my disquiet at the red, white and blue cloak that trails behind me.
The “special relationship” between Britain and South Africa, as Jacob Zuma somewhat lazily described it last week, was in the spotlight during the president’s state visit to chilly London. It was a cultural collision that saw the Zulu polygamist shed his leopard skins for a white bow tie, as the queen made him an honorary knight grand cross of the Order of the Bath.
Paying his diplomatic courtesies, Zuma told an audience: “Though we may be a long way from South Africa, we feel very much at home here.”
He noted Britain’s role in the struggle against white minority rule, providing refuge to Oliver Tambo, giving birth to the anti-apartheid movement and supporting the transition to democracy.
Distinctive imprint
Zuma said Britain is South Africa’s biggest foreign investor and source of tourists. He pointed out that statues of two former South African leaders stand in Parliament Square: General Jan Smuts and Nelson Mandela, the latter’s first name bestowed by a teacher who may have been a student of British naval history.
Zuma added: “There are many South Africans of British descent. The culture, language, institutions, practices and values of this nation have left a distinctive imprint on South African life.”
It was a delicate way of putting it after the salty exchanges between Zuma and the British press. Stephen Robinson’s assault in the Daily Mail bore the deathless headline: “Jacob Zuma is a sex-obsessed bigot with four wives and 35 children. So why is Britain fawning over this vile buffoon?”
Zuma hit back at Britain’s military imperialism of the past and continued cultural imperialism today, with its presumption of superiority over “barbaric” Africans.
This provoked Graham Boynton in the Daily Telegraph to suggest that Africans should be grateful for that legacy. He wrote: “The European colonials gave Africa efficient and comparatively honest civil services, a vision and a work ethic that saw the construction of road and rail networks, modern harbours and airports, and education systems based on European standards.”
‘Racism and contempt’
Enough is enough, said the South African press, rallying around the president. A leader column in Business Day chided: “Let us help you guys in Fleet Street with a little news. Life in SA, even under Zuma, is, trust us, a lot better than in the UK. Sure Zuma’s imperfect. He may even be a lousy leader. But he’s our lousy leader. We’ll deal with him.”
Jeremy Gordin, Zuma’s biographer, fumed in the Daily Dispatch that Robinson’s polemic “bespeaks a racism and contempt that the English specialise in. Basically, such a piece is saying that the man with the black skin, who hails from Africa, and who subscribes to a polygamous marital system, is a lesser breed; he’s a sex-crazed buffoon.”
Gordin went on: “There’s not much funny about what Robinson has written and of course, its success lies in its appeal to the basic racism of the English about the laughable black men in Africa who sit under a tree, have many wives to till the fields for them, and never require Viagra.”
My mind went back to my first days living in Africa when I toured Rorke’s Drift in KwaZulu-Natal. There was the story of the disastrous British defeat by Zulu warriors at Isandlwana where, facing death so far from home, Colonel Anthony William Durnford exulted his surrounded men: “Fix bayonets and die like British soldiers do.”
‘Who invented concentration camps?’
Then came the heroic British defence of Rorke’s Drift. What’s less well remembered is the Battle of Ulundi six months later, in which the British, reinforced with superior arms, crushed the Zulus and burned King Cetshwayo’s royal homestead to the ground. I remember being told of the sadness in the eyes of old Zulu warriors as they witnessed the end of their once proud nation. “The breaking of so great a thing should make / A greater crack”, to quote Shakespeare.
The Anglo-Boer war is unforgotten too in monuments I’ve seen and people I’ve met. In a pub decorated with hunting trophies near the Vaal river, an Afrikaner called Reichardt Piek asked me: “Who invented concentration camps?”
I replied “Lord Kitchener”, although this is disputed.
“That’s right,” he said. “How many people died there?”
It was around 28 000, mainly women and children whose houses had been burned in the British army’s scorched earth policy, in response to the Boers’ guerrilla warfare. About 20 000 black people also died in the poorly-run, disease-ridden camps.
Citing companies such as Anglo American mining group and SABMiller brewer, both founded in South Africa but now headquartered in London, Piek told me: “South Africa is still a British colony. The black regime here is corrupt because they know capitalism. Bribery and corruption have always been here — it’s an invention from Britain.”
In Harare, Zimbabwe, I’ve stood at state events where President Robert Mugabe berated “the British, the British, the British”, for the killings, theft of land and colonial degradations visited on the former Rhodesia. In Livingstone, Zambia, I’ve looked at museum displays of the joy on independence day, when the yoke of British imperialism was overthrown.
The voices of Afrikaner nationalists and Mugabe come loaded with crippling baggage of their own. Yet to live outside Britain is to experience the dawning realisation that much of the world doesn’t owe you a thing. In fact, that world is often more gracious and welcoming than the children of Victoria deserve.
Yes, my country helped save the world from fascism, but it also helped send millions of Africans into slavery. Pride in individuals, pride in ideas, pride in acts of heroism is one thing, but pride in one’s country is a willfully selective posture. – guardian.co.uk