It was all coincidence but a type of coincidence that jabs you into critical reflection. In one of our course seminars there was a discussion of the divide in technology between the North and the South. Apart from the usual reasons the debate explored some hitherto areas that are taken for granted. Somehow somewhere Africans have a responsibility over the escalation of the problem. One reason in the inquiry is that an African scholar is never taken seriously in his homeland. Everybody immediately assumes the all knowing radical critic who is ready to dump to the dustbin every theory or intellectual explanation of any local phenomena. The seminar thus among others explored the need for a changed mindset across the continent.
Then the next day it was about the big Brother Africa 3 show in South Africa where a favourite Malawian contestant was beaten to the prize apparently by a seemingly non-favourite for the $100,000 prize. Nevertheless this did not regulate calls for turning the young Malawian lady into a hero, a celebrity of some kind. This is where my critical inquiry was awakened. Here is someone becoming a celebrity. For what task? Just staying in some other house and relating with fellow housemates and getting votes either from within the housemates or viewers as to who should be evicted or not. So far no qualms about it. Nothing wrong with people getting thousands of dollars from idleness.
I then started thinking about other things including the modelling industry which is a cousin to such Big Brother Shows. I found out in the process that there are actually more related ways of ‘earning’ at the local level. However just as we do with our own prophet local scholars we dismiss them. I started wondering why we apply different standards to totally similar situations. Why do we reprimand those ’timing’ – the young men who sit inside a minibus to create an impression to the ever-rushing would-be-passengers that the bus is almost full save for few empty two or three seats - whose idleness is to woo more passengers into the bus? Several times I have heard passengers castigate them and at times I have shared such sentiments? But why should sitting ’idle’ in a minibus for advertisement be radically dismissed from its cousin, ’idleness’ in a Big Brother House?
Then there are minibus callboys. They have over-received the advice from angry people that they better to the village and engage in farming other than earn their money from shouting hoarse their voices in attracting passengers aboard a given minibus. If we are to take out the ’rotten’ misbehaving from their numbers, I fail to understand the principle upon which they should be talked ill of as we on the other hand accommodate fashion modellers. On what principle is modelling right and non-violent minibus touting wrong?
Then also consider the so-called lottery and jackpot competitions. Big lottery companies and casinos are recognised and frequented by the elites of our society yet the local typical Malawian who dares engage in his own version of lottery along the streets is arrested by law enforcers. I am sure something is wrong with our orientation about wrongness. I know several people including myself who have at one point or the other harboured hard feelings about the many GANYU boys in town who run after every stopping minibus to carry some load for payment. The fact that some elements of such people misbehave for sure does not outlaw the entire practice. What has our response been: ‘You are just lazy beings. Go and engage in some serious enterprise at home, farming’. Yet we are comfortable and envy the fashion model who gets thousands of dollars for just wearing some other piece of clothing and parading/cat-walking before live TV cameras. It is ok.
Such double standards betray the enormous homework the African must do if she is to realise her own goals. No one should blame colonialism or the West here. It is purely short-sightedness on our own part. It should be made clear that this does not translate into branding fashion shows and Big Brother shows as unjust and evil. Instead focus is on our similar situations here on our continent that operate on the same principles and motivation as those on the international arena, in the West. The problem is one of double standards being used to evaluate similar situations. It would be too demanding to engage the intellectual acumen of ethicists to school us of the dangers of double standards.
To me this tells me that Africa is not moving in her own path understood and designed by herself. We are living other people’s script. I don’t think we should blame those whose script we are trying to adapt to. In any case we should give them (the West)credit for being so original and devising ways of life that are not only good for them but very appealing to others who are not part of their society.
It is naive to think that this mode of thinking, of applying double standards to the detriment of your own initiatives, is restricted to the world of entertainment. Nay. We are a people who still believe that the best potential employee is one who has been trained overseas. This has some practical and empirical foundations in some respects. For example in science and technology, we have some (not every) reason to expect someone who has been trained in an overseas institution to be much more updated and at pace with the trends of technology whose only permanent feature is its dynamism. In some disciplines however we greatly need the local scholars to seriously engage in some disciplines that do not necessarily appeal to universal scientific standards, e.g. Governance and ethics. Home grown scholars are bound to demonstrate rare skills in addressing problems in these fields than we ever expected of them.
This is a call for a change in the mindset. Indeed it is high time that we became original and innovative about addressing the issues that stagnate our progress. We have to have confidence in our efforts and abilities. This though is not synonymous with the call to detest anything un-African for that would be entirely foolhardy. It is just being virtuous the platonic way: knowing what to outsource and what to produce from self-initiative. Unfortunately we seem to be a people who are far from turning not only to but into ourselves for key clues for our own solutions. We are our own enemies. This is why I have little recognition for the conspiracy theories about the underdevelopment rampant across the continent. This is not to claim the external hand has not troubled the waters to our roughness. It is a denial however that they are the problem.
It is advisable at times not to distrust other humanity other than yourself. Indeed sometimes prudence demands that you be very jealousy with where you place confidence in. However it is imprudent to on any grounds mistrust and have no confidence in your very self. It does not matter how uncountable an army of people that have confidence in you might be. As long as you have zero confidence in yourself, which is the initial step towards arrest of self initiative doom is the next destination. This is much more dangerous when a people who have no confidence in themselves have a territory of their own. It is even more scary when they have for themselves an entire continent.
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