Africa: It’s a rough neighborhood. That’s what I say when someone brings up Kenya or Darfur or Namibia. I just don’t want to talk about it. A few years ago I took the Greyhound from Kansas City to Phoenix to visit my friend Camilla. She was new in town and didn’t know the spots, so we spent three whole days at her house, talking. It was one of the best conversations of my life, and it spanned the whole time. We covered love and art and all the good shit, and on my last night in town we went to a coffee shop with a boutique in the basement, sat down at a table, and stumbled upon Africa. We talked AIDS, famine, rape, and machete death, political unrest, child soldiers, and lions. After an hour we were both too depressed to say anything else, so we dabbed around the racks of skirts and crafts downstairs for a bit and left, silent. The next day I boarded the bus for Vegas.
Last night we all got to drinking and played a game where we had to name countries from different parts of the world. We started with African nations. Someone said Zambia, then my friend who’s going to Kenya soon to build school desks said Kenya, Lauren said Côte d’Ivoire, which was mine, only in English, so I said Sierra Leone, and so on. If you couldn’t think of a country when it was your turn you had to drink. In the end I forgot about Zimbabwe, even though I’d been talking about it earlier, but I was drinking to begin with.
I had been telling everyone about Mugabe and the only uplifting thing I have heard out of Africa in a long time.
It happened a couple months after the Kenya election bloodbath. I remember the day before that vote in the Herald newsroom lucidly. I read a Reuters factbox about how Kenya was a bastion of peace and affluence in a continent of chaos. Even the guy who wrote our eds, Michael Soltys, penned a positive note on Kenya’s behalf. The next day, after both sides had accused the other of rigging the ballots and Nairobi’s slums were alight with riots and murder, I asked Michael about it and he just trailed off…
Now it’s Zimbabwe’s turn to make Africa ashamed. Tsvangirai is in exile and as the Queen of England strips Mugabe of his knighthood without eliciting as much as a shrug, the runoff vote looks to go on tomorrow, as illegitimate and violent as any. But I remember one bright spot in the days following the general election in April that sits in my head as an example of exactly what Africa needs.
Tsvangirai had won first-round victory by a slight margin while a shipment of arms was on its way through the ocean to Zimbabwe from China. Mugabe, who has not made his reputation by refraining from the use of force for political gain, licked his lips. His minions had been keeping track of which communities had voted for the opposition and had been frequenting them, delivering beatings — just the type of mix that doesn’t improve with guns.
Zimbabwe is landlocked, thus has no harbors in which a ship can dock. The Chinese boat was charted for Durban, but the South African port authority saw it on the register, and word got to the dockworkers’ union. The union bosses convened, elbowed around their wooden union table, chomped their requisite union cigars, and decided that aiding the delivery of arms to Mugabe was colluding to commit murder of their fellow Africans, if not as good as killing them themselves. The Chinese boat sat in the harbor for several days, then the union held its own poll — the ship could dock at port, but no guns would come ashore.
The captain got on his Chinese radio and called his boss, who said, Well, if not South Africa, then Mozambique. Off the boat went, but the news had spread.
The solidarity the workers of Africa showed over the next week makes me want to sob with glee. The ship arrived in Mozambique, where the dockworkers turned it away. Back it sailed, west, around the Cape of Good Hope up the coast to Angola. The government said it was not welcome. A little further south, past the next political border: the same result. The Chinese ship headed home, heavy under its unspent arsenal. Mugabe never got his guns.
No amount of Western school desk builders will fix Africa. No number of UN peacekeepers, Mormon missionaries, Red Cross agents, or charitable donations can mend what hundreds of years of colonialism, unimaginable poverty, and antique ethnic* hatred have torn apart. By all means should the wealthy world spend what it can to finance a continental recuperation, but all efforts must accord with the reality that outside aid alone equates to a bandage, and only Africans can repair Africa.
Zimbabwe will go to the polls tomorrow, its ballots stamped with serial numbers so Mugabe’s goons can know if someone fails to vote right. He has other means, and does not need a Chinese ship, the tale of which will become a blip — not even a note in his Wikipedia post. I’m sure there are other stories of Africa that inspire hope in other people who are tempted to think the continent is lost — a backwards, AIDS-wasted anachronism in the worst way — but the South African dockworkers turning back the gun boat is mine.
What a beautiful act of refusal, a blind gesture of peace. A collective decision to turn one’s back and take a box from a different ship.
*This sentence originally read: “…colonialism, unimaginable poverty, and antique tribal hatred…”
Read why I changed it.
Oh Nate, I miss you so.
Interesting post, but I notice your use of the word “tribal” to describe ethnic conflict and urge you to consider its racism. It’s unfortunately standard in Western media but writers like you can work to change that.
Good catch, super. I always keep musicality in mind when I write, and “antique tribal hatred” has a nice ring because of the triple-”t” sounds, but the article you linked to makes a solid point.
When, then, is appropriate to use the term “tribe”? I would obviously use it to refer to American Indians who describe themselves as a part of such. Any other time?
Well, I actually think “tribe” is hardly ever appropriate to use. It’s a very problematic word. Even when it’s used in “new” contexts (such as in that book Urban Tribes from a couple years ago), it still carries the weight of its colonialist meaning, doesn’t it?
The example of Native Americans is especially interesting — I’m glad you mentioned that. Although many Native Americans *do* use the word “tribe” when identifying their community, this is as a result of the US government’s use of the word. “Tribe” is a bureaucratic term. Native American communities must use the term in order to be recognized for gov’t services and programs, and other rights, however outside of these procedures, many Native Americans employ the terms “nation” or “people.” As the article I linked to before argues, we have to consider that the term “tribe” is only used to describe non-European peoples. The war in Kosovo wasn’t “tribal warfare,” it was “ethnic cleansing,” for example.
And, of course, many Africans will use “tribe” to describe themselves in English, but this is a result of having had a colonial language imposed upon them, just as it is in North America. The general argument against the use of the word “tribe” has been that not only that “tribe” reinforces negative stereotypes (primitivism etc), but also that it has a vague definition. Like, what exactly coheres people into a tribe? Shared language? Culture? Location? History? This vagueness only serves to obscure the historical and cultural differences between groups.
By the way, I enjoy your blog — it’s very thoughtful, and I’m glad you linked to the article. If you’re interested in reading more on the topic, you should read Archie Mafeje’s “The Ideology of ‘Tribalism.’”
Cheers from NYC
Yes, yes, “tribe” does connote colonialism. Many American Indians do use it to describe their groups now, as opposed to their use of the words “nation” or “people,” but is that because they support colonialism or admit defeat in the face of it, agreeing to use the word of the white man because it’s now status quo?
In many cases, probably. But in others, I don’t think so.
I’ve had a number of conversations with students at Haskell Indian Nations University who said they preferred to use the term “American Indian” — rather than “Native American” — to describe themselves precisely because “American Indian” includes the term “Indian,” which their people were branded by European colonials. To them, the term “Native American,” although a more accurate term, is a half-assed liberal concession that, in a veil in respect for their heritage, actually perpetuates its deterioration by not addressing the history of the people. To them, using the word “Indian” actually confronts the issue — “We are called ‘Indian’ now because Europeans came to this continent, slaughtered millions of us, took our land, and ruined our culture” — it reminds people of the actual history of the people, while the term “Native American” does not. “Native American” glosses over history, allowing people to forget about the past and, with a change of nomenclature, consider the problem solved (take a survey of American Indian quality of life nowadays compared to that of other ethnicities and tell me the problem is solved).
Now, as far as the word “tribe” goes, I think one could probably apply the same logic, but I’m not sure — and for the purposes of this post in the context in which we’ve been talking about the word, I certainly don’t think it’s appropriate. However, I question the assertion that, simply because a word attained its definition a certain way, that word should be henceforth banished from our lexicon. Such efforts attempt to restore what cannot be restored, protect what is already broken. We must take what we have and move assertively and thoughtfully forward. The students who choose to refer to themselves by a name they were given by their conquerors — instead of the one they were later given by their conquerors’ apologizers, who did little else to remedy the inequality — do just that. They remind us the problem is not fixed.
Thanks for the insights, the kind words, and, of course, for reading.