On a university tour to Zimbabwe, students spent their first few days in the capital, Harare, where they lived with urban families and studied cul-

l.

U) 5

WHERE IS
THE REAL AFRIcA?

On a university tour to Zimbabwe, students spent their first few days in
the capital, Harare, where they lived with urban families and studied cul-

ture, politics, and language. Then they moved to a village where they again
lived with families. The village had small, brick houses with concrete floors

and corrugated iron roofs. People wore Western-style clothing and went

to Christian churches. Village kids attended school, listened to the radio,

followed Zimbabwean soccer and politics, and knew about international

and American popular music. One of the visiting students was assigned to

the house of the village chief where, on the first night, there was a tradi-

tional funerary celebration. The next morning the wide-eyed student told

the group that he had finally seen “the Real Africa.” In thescapital and the

village, the student had just seen modern and modernizing Africa, con-

nected to the world in hundreds of ways, but for him these were not part

of the Real Africa.

The student’s reaction is representative. We Americans seem to ex-
pect and want the Real Africa to be different, and often the more differ-

ent the better. To find the aspects of Africa that are similar to us somehow
doesn’t satisfy us in the way that difference does. In this chapter, we ex-

plote what Americans seem to expect the Real Africa to be.

68
Chapter 5: Where Is the Real Africa? Helpless Africa 69

The difference we prefer in our Real Africa seems to focus on the idea

that Africa is natural while we are civilized. Africa, this idea goes, is what

we would be if we didn’t have our history, science, law, democracy, ad-
vanced technology, religion, cities, and ‘so forth. Our Real Africa is what

we imagine existed in our own distant past when we lived close to nature

and, indeed, were a part of nature. •This imagined naturalness of Africa

comes in two main versions, negative and positive. In the negative version

Africa is a survival-of-the-fittest jungle with poverty, sickness, starvation,

warfare, corruption, and an inability to rise above itself. In the positive ver-

Sion Africa has good features that we fear we have lost, such as wisdom,

community, hospitality, and joy.
These versions might seem to be opposites, but they aren’t. They each

portray Africans as being closer to ‘ natural” humans than Americans.

Africans represents what all humans would be if they were not influenced

by both the positive and negative aspects of history and civilization. This

idea of African naturalness gets extra support from the popular stereotype

of Africa as full of wild animals (discussed in Chapter 9).

It is tempting to say that the American focus on Africa’s “natural” dif-

ference is racist. After all, race implies biological difference and biology is

natural. However, I don’t believe the current impulse of most (but not all)

Americans is to think of the people of Real Africa as being biologically

more primitive than American whites or blacks (or Asians, eté.•). Rather,

it seems that the idea of the Real Africa as closer to nature is a legacy of our

ignorance and our racist past. Today we have transformed many Of the

ideas expressed in biological, and thus racial, terms into milder cultural

terms. Now most Americans would say that it’s African culture, not
African biology, that is responsible for the Real Africa being close to na-

turee This is progress, ofa sort.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways that African’ difference is evoked

in modern American popular culture.

Troubled Africa

It’s relatively easy to find evidence in the American media of Africa’s mul-

tiple woes. The point here is not that these do not exist. Indeed, Africa

does have many woes. Rather, there are two other points tp. make. First,

Africa’s woes need to be understood as a result of Africa’s history rather

than “Africa’s nature,” and second, sub-Saharan Africa has a population of

over 875 million people, and not everyone living there is troubled. In the

United States one in seven households has food insecurity, but most of us

don’t say that the hungry caused their own troubles or that hunger defines

our country. Just as we should not define America as hungry, we also
should not define Africa primarily as trouble.

To take an example, it is common for news items to imply that a par-
ticular conflict is caused by age-old ethnic or religious animosities and that

such animosities are natural to people who do not live in modern societies.

What is missing, however, is a complex and accurate understanding of
both history and culture. Violent conflict is not inevitable in small-scale so-

cieties or among devout believers and the causes of such conflict are gen-

erally complex and rooted in modern history rather than in the distant

past. In Chapter 8, there is a discussion of atribe” that shows how limited

the idea is when discussing today’s Africa.

Helpless Africa

Kathryn Mathers, a South African scholar, recently found that Ameri-

can study-abroad students arrive in Africa with Dark Continent stereo-

types and that they have a strong urge to help Africa overcome its

troubles. She believes that the students want to help others so they can

feel confident and superior in a post-9/11 world in which Americans

fear they are losing control of the world and their own country.l While

rd date the strong desire ofAmericans to help Africa much earlier (think

about missionaries, for example), it is clear that many of us feel called to
help Africans.

Certainly, the help offered by American celebrities is a relatively re-

cent phenomenon. Modern celebrity help for Africa began in earnest when

Bob Geldof and other star musicians organized Band Aid (1984) and then

Live Aid (1985) to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia. Since then,

additional concerts and a steady stream of celebrity visitors (among them

Bono, George Clooney, Mia Farrow, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitti Madonna,

Guy Ritchie, Jessica Lange, Oprah Winfrey, and Simon Cowell) have
helped call attention to many African issues. Whether or not these celebri

ties are sincere or merely seeking publicity at Africa’s expense, it is clear

that they succeed by tapping into the American desire to help Africa.

70
Chapter 5: Where Is the Real Africa? Unchanging Africa 71

Yet is the Real Africa so helpless? Nigerian novelist Uzodinma lweala

says that while Africans appreciate help, we have mistaken the Real Africa.

My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs

through a litany of African disasters before presenting ‘(usually)

wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has

done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college .

student speaks of villagers dancing because they w.ere so grateful for her

help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about

Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head—because.

Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the Weds
fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the

West’s prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations

on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Afric;uns have done’

and continue to do to fix those problems.2

Africans are not children and their problems are not naturalto Africa. The

problems have been created in a past that we Americans participated in,

they are sustained by a present that we are involved in, and they Will be

solved only within a global context, by cooperation between ourselves and

Africans (see Chapter 6).
Michael Holman, former editor of the Financial Times, a British news-

paper, says that “celebrity aid” reinforces stereotypes by promoting gift

giving rather than deep analysis of African problems. If we continue to see

African problems as susceptible to redress only through aid, we will con-

tinue to see Africans as helpless and inferior. What message, for example,
is sent when celebrities make high-profile adoptions from rica? That
Africa has no future? Holman suggests that celebrities could do the most

good for Africa if they would abandon stereotypigal help-for-poor-

Africans strategies and focus on starting bates about questions that mat-

ter. Things might really be different, says Holman, if Madonna, who

adopted a child from Malawi, would say,

We should respond to the fact that the diaspora of Africa’s educated is
swollen by 60,000 a year. This has led to the bizarre, outrageous sit.ua-

tion that more doctors who were trained in Malawi are practicing. in

England’s second city of Birmingham than in Malawi itself. If one of

Malawi’s main exports is health professionals, that is not in itself a bad

thing—what is unacceptable is that there is no organised replenishment?

Holman doubts that the celebrities’ “armies of advisers and publicists and

sponsors” would permit such statements. What do you think? I believe

that intelligent entertainment celebrities (that’s not necessarily an oxy-

moron) could help spark much-needed debates and still remain celebri-

ties. George Clooney’s work in Sudan seems to represent the best efforts,

although he does not generally question the West’s and others’ roles in

creating and sustaining Sudan’s woes. Otherwise, for now, celebrities tend

to reinforce Dark Continent stereotypes and thus keep us from address-

ing real issues concerning how the world is structured.

Unchanging Africa

It’s amusing to see a description of so-called traditional Africa that in-

cludes a statement such as “these age-old customs” or “as their ancestors

have done for hundreds of years.” If we find a Christian cross in an exca-

vation of a tenth-century European church and find a similar cross in a

twenty-first-century European church, would we conclude that today’s

Europeans are living as their tenth-century ancestors lived or even that

they believe the same things about Christianity? Hardly. History works

for Africans as it works for us. There is both continuity and change.

I like to ask Africans what they think Arngricans think about Africa.

Here, for example, are excerpts from an interview with a Nigerian eco-

nomics professor who teaches in the United States (and happens to like

Americans):

Q: How do you think that Americans perceive Africa?
A: The Dark Continent.

Q: Do people really say that?
A: Oh yes. They ask me if I live in trees.

Q: Do they reglly say things like that, or do they mean it as “joke?
A: No, they really ask. They don’t know. They ask, “Do you live with

animals?” “Do you eat snakes?’ Things like that. I’ve had colleagues

73
72 Chapter 5: Where Is the Real Africa? Exotic Africa

say to me, “Oh, you must not be typical.” One person asked, “ls

one of your parents white? The stuff you’re telling me is not my

idea of Africans.

Q: Did you grow up Witb white kids gt all?
A: No. Once in a while we’d see an expatriate, a BritiSh or American

person, coming to our little town. We would go out of our way to
welcome them. But we would just say Hi to them and then leave.

African students frequently report interesting questions they are asked

by professors and other students. A professor asked a student from Ghana
who had lived all of his life in an African city whether he was used to sleep-

ing in a bed. A student from Cameroon was asked by fellow students
whether there are houses in Africa: “They ask if we live in houses! And if

there are cars in Africa, and it’s really (laughter). I don’t know if Chere

is any country in the world now that doesn’t have houses or cars.

The way we treat African art tends to reinforce our views of Africans

as unchanging. For example, visual arts specialist Carol Magee recently

studied Disney’s African Safari Lodge in Orlando, Florida. She found

that “traditional” African art objects were carefully displayed and de-

scribed throughout the lodge, while a few examples of African

art were merely used as decoration in a restaurant. The message is that

the objects, often those associated with rituals, represent our fantasy of

today’s Real Africa, and, says Magee, this is really a re-creation of colonial

Africa.

In the same manner, we are much more likely to see So-called tradi-

tional African art in museums, private art collections, and galleries than

we are to see the work of modern African artists. Curators, collectors; and

dealers highly prize the supposedly primitive qualities of traditional

African art and want art that is old, in decent condition, and, most impor-

tantly, used by Africans, preferably in an important ritual. In other words,

the best African art for a collector tends to feed on and reinforce stereo-

types about Africa,
The system is self-perpetuating. If you are an African artist, your mare

ket is largely in copies of so-called traditional objects so there isn’t incen-

tive to be innovative. American galleries and museums are beginning to

show us alternatives, but there is still a ways to go. Art collectors and

dealers still scour the continent looking for the most desirable traditional

pieces. Many African countries have laws that prohibit or restrict the ex-

port of such national treasures, but certain types of art have acquired so

much value in the United States (and in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere)

that sellers and customs officials in Africa can rarely resist the money they

are offered. Thieves, smugglers, and forgers also find the high prices an

encouragement to enter the market.7

Exotic Africa

One definition of exotic is “strikingly unusual,” which implies that some-

thing is either truly rare or merely unfamiliar. Cannibalism, if it existed

(see Chapter 7), was truly rare while belief in nature spirits is common,

though largely unfamiliar to us. Because we are unfamiliar with Africa,

there will be much that is exotic to us. We can treat the exotic in one of two
ways. We can focus on it and thus heighten its difference, or we can try to
look at it in context and attempt to see it as familiar, human, and under-

standable (even if we don’t approve). Very often, Americans choose the

former. The student described at the beginning of this chapter found the

Real Africa in an exotic past, ignoring the context of the African village

and how the funeral ceremony fit into a changing Africa.
One place the exotic is emphasized is tourist Africa. Tourist Africa

isn’t the real Africa, just like tourist America isn’t the real America. It is

carefully managed, commercialized, and exoticized. The dancing and

drumming of cultural performances are pitched to tourists’ illusions of

what they would like Africa to be, with seams covered up and a bit of

quaint wildness added. Here’s the 2008 rhetoric advertising one of the

more interesting tours of Africa;

You’ll feel you’ve stepped into the pages of National Geographic on this

total immersion into the dazzling tribal world of Ghana, Togo, and

Benin. This isa greatly under-visited destination, the richest of tribal

Africa, and our itinerary is one ofa kind.

Watch voodoo priestesses whirl in trances at fetish altars, hike up a

ridge to commune with a famous oracle, peer into the dungeons of a

15th-century slave castle, attend a flamboyant Ashanti funeral
8

Sexualized Africa
74

Chapter 5: Where Is the Real Africa?•
75

This tour might well be worth the effort and expense, but it is clear that

the tour company will be seeking and emphasizing the exotic and that the

tour won’t be representative of most of today’s African ‘ e,

Here’s part of a similar blurb from a 2012 advertisement for a differ-

ent tour:

Elder Treks: Small group exotic adventures for travelers 50 plus.

Travel to another place and time. Elder Treks 4-cduntry journey to

Niger, Benin, Togo and Ghana is simply fascinating, for those with a

real spirit of adventure.

This region of West Africa is the birthplace of Voodoo. Learn•about

the mysterious beliefs from encounters with Voodoo followers and

priests. Explore fetish markets and visit temples and shrines to witness

a Voodoo ceremony including the practices ofchanting, drumming and

the resulting trance.

In Niger, visit the capital, Niamey and the bizarre market of Ayorou,

with it’s (sic) fascinating tribal offerings. Joyrney.insearch Of the last

wild herd of giraffes in West Africa. In Benin, encounter a rich tribal

and cultural diversity. In Togo, visit Somba and Koutammakou, a

World Heritage Site. Drive through the lush, beautiful mountains Qf

central Togo, stopping to visit one of the famous Kabye blacksmiths?

It sounds interesting, but the ad and trip clearly exoticize Africa and

Africans.

Sexualized Africa

Another way to construct Real Africa as close to nature is to portray

Africans as hypersexual, This is certainly a legacy ofa more racist era when

black Africans were considered mote animalistic and sensual, more natu-

ral and less intelligent than white Europeans. Indeed, it was cpmmon to be-

lieve that others in all different parts of the world were different sexually

because of their biology. Now we aren’t likely to express this sentiment, but
others’ sexuality is nonetheless a way we imagine difference..

For example, Dr. Ray Sahelian advertises yohimbe,an 4phrodisiacal
herb, on his website, saying, “Experience the orgiastic mating rituals of the

African Bantu.”10 In a book, Sahelian writes, “According to early histori-

cal records, Bantu tribes ingested inner bark shavings of the yohimbe tree

to sustain them during extended orgiastic mating rituals that would last up

to two weeks.”ll What Sahelian doesn’t say is that the “historical records”

are late-nineteenth-century German reports and that the Germans were

highly racist and evolutionist at that time and therefore untrustworthy ob-

servers. Thus there’s no accurate context for the sources or the culture. All

this is exotic rubbish.

Sports Illustrated has found a sexualized Africa to be useful for its swim-

suit editions. It set at least two major swimsuit stories— 1994 and 1998—

in Africa. The 1998 article on the Maasai of Kenya shows swimsuit-clad

white American women in semi-erotic poses with blanket-clad Maasai

herders. The photographer prefaces his photographs with a paragraph that

explains: “The idea was to capture the raw, unspoiled beauty of this place

and this people.” He wants an imagined Real Africa. Who is he kidding?
His white guide arranged with the Maasai “chief’ to pay $1,000 for a day

of photography; “Me won’t bother anyone, and besides, it’ll be fun! [The

Maasai headman] had obviously had plenty of experience with what West-

erners consider ‘fun.”‘ So much for unspoiled Africa. Kenyan middle-class

society is in fact very modest about sexuality, and the country has strict

laws against pornography.12

Carol Magee, mentioned above, analyzes the 1994 swimsuit edition in

detail in her 2012 book. In fact, she actually went to the South African lo-

cation of the photoshoot. There she found that the photos were taken in

an outdoor museum and that the actual South Africa, even in rural areas,

simply doesn’t look like the images in the magazine. Moreover, Magee

comments on the fact that the darker-skinned Jamaican American model

is more sexualized in the photos than the white American model.13

In 2013, Sports Illustrated photographed models on all seven continents

for its swimsuit edition. Oh its website, it also posted additional photos,
including photos of models with hunter-gatherers in Namibia. This time

there was mote controversy. A critical comment in a web blog was picked
up by ABC News and turned into an evening news story. The blog by
Dodai Stewart opined that “Using people of color as background or ex-

tras is a popular fashion trope but although it’s prevalent; it’s very dis-

tasteful. . People are not props.” 14 Professor Marc Lamont Hill of

76 Chapter 5: Where Is the Real Africa? Wise Africa 77

Columbia University told ABC News that, “For me, the African picture
was probably the most offensive because it played on some of the most old

and stereotypical images, it showed the African as primitive as almost un-

civilized.”15 ABC News was equivocal, noting that some people enjoy see-
ing other people and places in the swimsuit edition. Nonetheless, Sports

Illustrated felt it necessary to issue an apology, albeit a weak one.16

Sports Illustrated might argue that its goal is to capture. “unspoiled

beauty” (read natural beauty) of Africa and Africans, but such beauty is ar-

tificially constructed to conform to our stereotypes. The same is clearly

true for what the magazine does to construct mythical women, both White

and black. Both African and Western women are turned into objects and

naturalized. Yet the fact that both ABC News and Sports Illustrated re-
cently took note of objections to such stereotyping shows that our atti-

tudes are changing.

Wise Äfrica

Westerners have constructed positive images of Africans and other non-

Westerners for a very long time. As far back as elassical Greece and

Rome, Western authors idealized various peoples on the fringes of the

known world. And from the era of European expansion onward,

Amerindians, Polynesians, and other non-Westerners sometimes ap-

peared in Western literature in the form of wise characters’who tritiqued

Western civilization. The idea of the noble savage, which .developed in

the late seventeenth century, maintained that so-called primitives lived

in a “state of nature”—healthy, happy, good, and free—as Godintended

all humans to live.

After about 1800, the widely held evolutionist myths made it•difficult

to sustain positive images of non-Europeans. Increasingly, Africans were

seen as savages who needed to be controlled and, if possible, trained to do.

ptofitable work. Yet both colonial missionaries and secularists preferred to

deal with Africans who were “uncorrupted” by the West. Government of-

ficials frequently found that Western-educated “trousered blacks” and

mission blacks” caused problems because they could challenge the West

on its own terms. And missionaries preferred Africans who were ‘inno-

cent,” meaning those who would accept Christianity in a biblically appro-
priate “childlike manner.”17 Indeed, when Africans read the Christian

scriptures, they sometimes concluded that it was the missionaries them-

selves who were not following the Bible. Thus, for many colonists, the Real

Africa was an illusionary place where Africans were good children—less

evolved and more natural.

More recently, Westerners have attributed more dimensions to

Africans, so that we now view Africans as more complex and more like us

than ever before. Nonetheless, even our positive stereotypes still evoke dif-

ference. For example, Malidoma Somé has become something ofa celebrity

in several American subcultures including the men s movement. Somé, a

Burkinabe (a person from Burkina Faso) with doctorates in both political

science and literature, became involved in the American men’s movement.

In his book Of Water and the Spirit, he describes how he was taken from

his home as a very young child and raised by dictatorial French Jesuit mis-

sionaries. Fleeing back home at age nventy, Somé could no longer under-

stand his Dagara traditions or even his language. The elders struggled to

reunite him with his people and culture through a dangerous initiation rit-

ual. Eventually, Somé became a Dagara shaman and he now teaches Da-

gara wisdom to Western audiences. One of his messages is that all males

can learn from African initiation ceremonies how to mark the passage from

boyhood to manhood, overcoming the crises of adolescence and becom-

ing comfortable with adulthood.18

I find Somé an exceptionally interesting writer. Yet the book and his

lectures are still problematic as a window on Africa, because they respond

specifically to American longing for a place where life is wise, prime, basic,

and good. Noble Africa stereotypes are still stereotypes. Here is a com-

ment from Somé’s website:

The spark ofthis ancestral flame, which I have brought to the land of the

stranger, is now burning brightly. Increasingly, I have been and will be

encouraging westerners to embody these traditions as a testimony to the

indigenous capacity to assert itself with dignity in the face of modernity.

In this way the ancestors will know that this medicine has found a true

home—that it is more than an honored guest.19

Somé’s version of Africa might be an antidote for overdoses of some Dark

Continent myths and ofVVestern civilization, but it also falsifies and ob-

scures contemporary Africa.

80

published a

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rights era of

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African Am,

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history.

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Where Is the Real Africa? 81

ned with a

nd the civil

aong black

gone. An
ds recently

e students

his stu-

at African

ionist, the

Eate coun-

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actt:tal Africa poses prob-

For example, several years

Afrocentrist graduate stu-

presenters. The crux of the

Western education$ because

s; and because they were mod-

nerican Afrocentrists, who had
31not been to Africa, claimed to be the realJAfricans.

Where Is the Real Africa?

The Real Africa of our imaginations never existed. Nineteenth- and early-
twentieth-century evolutionism created Africa as different—natural and

primitive—and that idea hasn’t died yet. Such an imaginary Africa is

kept alive by ignorance and by the benefits we get from myths about

African difference. Yet the point here is not that today’s Africa has no

problems or that it has no difference. Indeed, Africa has more visible prob-

lems than any other region of the world, and Africa is the most rural of the

continents except for Antarctica.

But Africa’s problems and differences need context. First, Africa’s

problems are not inherent to Africa. That is, they are not natural. They

were created in a history that included Western civilization as well as the

civilizations of Africa. The West has been deeply involved in Africa for

more than 500 years and has rarely taken Africa’s real interests into con-

sideration, despite a professed desire to help. This historical past, for bet-

ter and worse, is very much a part of every corner of today’s Real Africa.

Moreover, Africa is much more similar to us than our myths about dif-

ference allow. Africans in the past and present made and make decisions

that are as rational (and irrational) as ours. And not only is today’s Africa

40 percent urban, cities are growing faster in Africa than anywhere else.

These cities imply roads, cars, bus lines, airports, water supplies, electric-

icy, jobs, bars, nightclubs, movies, restaurants, popular music, factories,

churches and mosques, hospitals, computers, cellphones, stock exchanges,

and much mote. Does everyone have reliable water, a job, a car, a computer,

or a cellphone? Obviously not. But, to take an example, cellphone use is

growing fastest in sub-Saharan Africa, where an average of 57 percent of

adults have cellphones. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, usage is heaviest

among urban males aged 18 to 45 years, but in some countries rural use is

about the same as urban (for example, Ghana: urban 58%/rural 60%; Nige-

ria: urban 77%/rural 66%; South Africa: urban 82%/rural

To take other examples, IBM is opening a research lab in Kenya where
up to fifty scientists will study problems related to Kenyan traffic (vehicle

congestion is a major issue), clean water supplies, and population density.33

Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa are exploring space programs so they

can, among other goals, provide better information to farmers. The World

Bank, while cautious, says “GDP growth in sub-Saharan Africa is back on
track.” The global prices of its exports are rising, there is strong local de-

mand, new products are beingdeveloped (including many oil and gas dis-
coveries), and governments are gaining experience in encouraging growth.34

Rural Africa, where 60 percent of Africans live, is rarely as isolated

from modern Africa as we imagine. There are, perhaps, a few Africans who

have stayed away from modern life either by choice, remoteness, or lack of

opportunity. They too are part of the Real Africa, but they are more

82 Chapter 5: Where Is the Real Africa?

exceptions than representatives. For most rural Africans, there is frequent

and increasing interaction with towns and cities. Most rural Africans are

producing crops for urban areas or for the world market. Most rural chil-

dren are going to school. And the vast majority of Africans practice either
Islam or Christianity.

Is the Real Africa different from the Real America? Yes …