On my Twitter feed, I’ve been tracking and commenting on the fuel subsidy issue. But in the haze of the nation’s collective rage on the fuel subsidy removal, and in the euphoria of being virtually surrounded by a heightened sense of political awareness on the part of Nigerians on a level made even more intense thanks to social media, it is entirely possible that we may be allowing ourselves to be distracted by other pressing issues at hand.
Boko Haram has been responsible for two killing sprees in as many days. In Gombe, Gombe State, the Islamic sect sent a gunman to go to a Deeper Life church service and kill 6 and injure 10. In the other, the sect claimed responsibility for the killing of 20 in a church in Mubi, Adamawa State. These attacks, they claim, were in response to the government’s admittedly-laughable State of Emergency in both states.
And those are only in the past two days. On the 3rd of January, in Dutse, some suspected Boko Haram members attacked Birniwa Divisional Police Headquarters in Jigawa State, killing a teenage girl and a police officer before setting fire to the building. In a ridiculing of the State of Emergency put in place by President Goodluck Jonathan, explosions rocked both Maiduguri, the sect’s stronghold in Borno State, and Damaturu, Yobe State, late on Wednesday, the 4th.
This Vanguard piece also has a great timeline of Boko Haram’s attacks on Nigerians. In the face of government’s ineptitude in dealing with them, the sect has even grown so bold as to issue ultimatums to Christians to leave the North, lest they be killed.
It makes sense that the government would rather face a group of protesters it does not believe will hold firm to its purported ideals than its ineptitude in the mirror. And so we must do exactly that: stand firm. And we must hold that mirror up high.
It is good for us to train our eyes on issues like the fuel subsidy removal that directly affect us, but it is also very important that we do not let the rug be quietly swept from under us in other areas. Let us not be inured to the deaths of those that have suffered at the hands of a ruthless band of crazed men. Let us not forget to hold accountable the government that has allowed them such boldness as to believe that our lives are worth more when we lie blown to bits, our blood on our walls, our eyes devoid of life.
Friday, January 6, 2012
The Beginning of the End of a Bad Marriage?
I published this piece on the fuel subsidy protests in NigeriansTalk.org.
The history of Nigeria has for too long been like a bad Nollywood movie. Nigeria is that battered housewife who has taken her beatings quietly, allowed her earnings to be squandered by her wasteful, alcoholic, extravagant, unworthy husband.
Even when we choose our leaders, it seems we choose to stay on our most destructive trend. Our political leaders and our religious leaders often look the same. We flock to pastors who call our children witches, imams who sleep with our daughters, empty suits who take our tithes to buy exotic cars and gallivant around the world, then return to us to preach humility and simplicity. These beatings, these abuses, these insults to our intelligence, we have taken silently.
For decades, nothing has happened. But 2011 has taught us, from Egypt to Tunisia, right down to the most intractable situation in Libya, that in a moment, decades can happen.
You can read the rest here.
The history of Nigeria has for too long been like a bad Nollywood movie. Nigeria is that battered housewife who has taken her beatings quietly, allowed her earnings to be squandered by her wasteful, alcoholic, extravagant, unworthy husband.
Even when we choose our leaders, it seems we choose to stay on our most destructive trend. Our political leaders and our religious leaders often look the same. We flock to pastors who call our children witches, imams who sleep with our daughters, empty suits who take our tithes to buy exotic cars and gallivant around the world, then return to us to preach humility and simplicity. These beatings, these abuses, these insults to our intelligence, we have taken silently.
For decades, nothing has happened. But 2011 has taught us, from Egypt to Tunisia, right down to the most intractable situation in Libya, that in a moment, decades can happen.
You can read the rest here.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Will We Better Off in MTVBase Was Available Around the World?
Africa’s image problem, I submit, is more of an issue of Western media’s trouble with nuance than any real malice. It is hard, it turns out, to portray that people can be more than one thing at the same time -- that one can wear fancy Italian shoes with traditional garb; that there can exist in the same country a place where people drive SUVs to the supermarket and a place where some people have to walk miles for clean water in the same damn city. If one must be true, it seems, surely the other cannot. And relatively few consumers of media will really go to African countries themselves. And the few high-profiles ones that do go (looking at you, Kristof) tend to go to confirm their own biases, not challenge them.
And that’s where MTV Base comes in.
MTV Base’s shows an Africa that does not see itself as a problem, but as a party. We are young and sexy. We have style. We go to clubs and drink and laugh and rap and sing along with the best of them. This is us: Our Advertised Version. The "Monkey sweats but you can't tell from its fur" version. In terms of reality, it is not much different from the advertised version of what we are told that we are: overly-reliant on Western generosity, potential atrophying from lack of initiative or care, clay resting too comfortably within the grubby hands of greedy autocrats. In a sense, MTV Base's Africa is as mono-dimensional as the Africa that we see in Western media. It’s just a different dimension, a dimension that we would rather see.
It is not that music video Africa is any more “real” than the West’s version of Africa. Reality, in fact, is beside the point. It’s just another representation as simple as the one that is currently all the rage. The genius of indulging this fantasy of an MTV Base Africa all over the world – I’m fully aware this will never happen – is that it recognizes the need for simple narratives of Africa, and delivers on this. And by countering one simple narrative with another, it adds shade and color to the already-existing simple narrative. In so doing, It brings simplicity and nuance. And what is more African than that?
And that’s where MTV Base comes in.
MTV Base’s shows an Africa that does not see itself as a problem, but as a party. We are young and sexy. We have style. We go to clubs and drink and laugh and rap and sing along with the best of them. This is us: Our Advertised Version. The "Monkey sweats but you can't tell from its fur" version. In terms of reality, it is not much different from the advertised version of what we are told that we are: overly-reliant on Western generosity, potential atrophying from lack of initiative or care, clay resting too comfortably within the grubby hands of greedy autocrats. In a sense, MTV Base's Africa is as mono-dimensional as the Africa that we see in Western media. It’s just a different dimension, a dimension that we would rather see.
It is not that music video Africa is any more “real” than the West’s version of Africa. Reality, in fact, is beside the point. It’s just another representation as simple as the one that is currently all the rage. The genius of indulging this fantasy of an MTV Base Africa all over the world – I’m fully aware this will never happen – is that it recognizes the need for simple narratives of Africa, and delivers on this. And by countering one simple narrative with another, it adds shade and color to the already-existing simple narrative. In so doing, It brings simplicity and nuance. And what is more African than that?
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Those 'Top 20 Africans' Lists
Thanks to the not-so-mini hiatus and having third world internet issues, I'm only just getting around to posting on these awesome ladies who made Forbes of 20 Young and Influential African women.
Someone on Twitter pointed out the difference in the composition of these lists in the US, for example, versus when the roster is drawn up for African countries. These list in the US and in other Western countries tend to be chockful of entertainers, whereas for Africa they're full of intellectuals.
This was brought up a bit boastfully, but I think the reasoning for this may not necessarily be something folks from African countries should welcome. Indeed, if you took up the 20 Young Americans lists, especially based on poll respondents, it won't feature many intellectuals. That's because it'll be honest. Its also worth pointing out that these Western news outlets are, well, Western, and therefore are more likely to show things as they are in Western countries, not projections of what they'd wish them to be. Forbes, Newsweek, etc, can't know of who really does hold sway in countries like Nigeria, for example. If they did, I doubt they'd put the words 'influential' and 'young' in the same sentence.
But this is all by-the-way. I do love that these remarkable women get such coverage. I'm familiar with the work of women like Funmi Iyanda and Ory Okolloh, and they certainly deserve this recognition, and tons more. I just wish it were people like these that actually controlled our political and cultural discourse. A real list of people with real sway over our cultural imagination will probably be overrun half-witted imams, and megachurch pastors.
Someone on Twitter pointed out the difference in the composition of these lists in the US, for example, versus when the roster is drawn up for African countries. These list in the US and in other Western countries tend to be chockful of entertainers, whereas for Africa they're full of intellectuals.
This was brought up a bit boastfully, but I think the reasoning for this may not necessarily be something folks from African countries should welcome. Indeed, if you took up the 20 Young Americans lists, especially based on poll respondents, it won't feature many intellectuals. That's because it'll be honest. Its also worth pointing out that these Western news outlets are, well, Western, and therefore are more likely to show things as they are in Western countries, not projections of what they'd wish them to be. Forbes, Newsweek, etc, can't know of who really does hold sway in countries like Nigeria, for example. If they did, I doubt they'd put the words 'influential' and 'young' in the same sentence.
But this is all by-the-way. I do love that these remarkable women get such coverage. I'm familiar with the work of women like Funmi Iyanda and Ory Okolloh, and they certainly deserve this recognition, and tons more. I just wish it were people like these that actually controlled our political and cultural discourse. A real list of people with real sway over our cultural imagination will probably be overrun half-witted imams, and megachurch pastors.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Thank You, Mr. VJ, for Playing My Song
It's been a long time, shouldn't have left you without a dope beat to step to. So here's some dope beats.
I really like this playful one from Kenya by Stella Mwangi. I'm a sucker for anything with house music influence, especially if it comes from anywhere on the continent.
South African house machine Liquideep with "Settle for Less".
I think this girl is Kenyan or Zambian or something, but I honest-to-goodness am not sure (which I actually like). Cool song, and the video is really nice and quirky. Side note: She has a song called Big Nyash. Does that mean what I think it means? In Nigeria, "nyash" often refers to one's ... well.... assets.
Here's one from a favorite, South African rapper AKA. He's one of the best on the continent in my opinion, and this new song is crazy nice. If he keeps this up, I might turn into a stan.
Last but not least - @okayafrica put out a blast today on South African singer Lira's new EP. Stream it in full here.
I really like this playful one from Kenya by Stella Mwangi. I'm a sucker for anything with house music influence, especially if it comes from anywhere on the continent.
South African house machine Liquideep with "Settle for Less".
I think this girl is Kenyan or Zambian or something, but I honest-to-goodness am not sure (which I actually like). Cool song, and the video is really nice and quirky. Side note: She has a song called Big Nyash. Does that mean what I think it means? In Nigeria, "nyash" often refers to one's ... well.... assets.
Here's one from a favorite, South African rapper AKA. He's one of the best on the continent in my opinion, and this new song is crazy nice. If he keeps this up, I might turn into a stan.
Last but not least - @okayafrica put out a blast today on South African singer Lira's new EP. Stream it in full here.
Friday, July 29, 2011
How Illegitimate Is the Informal Economy?
This over at NigeriansTalk and this piece at The Economist's Baobab Africa blog on how expensive Angola is have me thinking about the informal sector in most African countries.
Chad's N'Djamena and Gabon's Libreville are second and third, respectively, on the Expensive African Cities list (you can see the world list here). On Luanda, The Daily Maverick puts quite succinctly why the trouble of expensive African cities is such a problem:
What is scary about the high cost of living in many an African city is not just the effect it has on Africa's rising middle class, but also the fact that most Africans find employment in the informal sector.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the informal sector makes up about 80% of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is also the realm in which most women in the developing world find work, whether we're talking prostitution or selling food on the side of the road (This is in the document below). The number isn't at all far-fetched to me - anyone that has ever walked or driven on a road in an African city can tell that there are far more wooden shacks selling cigarettes and sweets and street hawkers selling recharge cards than there are, say, skyscrapers and shopping malls with banks or salons or boutiques.
An interesting observation: the more developed the economy, the lesser the percentage of people who work outside the margins. 33% of South Africans and 44% of Namibians work in the informal economy, for example, compared to 74% of Madagascans and 82% of Malians). This observation, though, makes one wonder to what extent the state is complicit in creating an informal economy. To what extent is the pervasiveness of informal economies and the resigned acceptance thereof an admission of failed economic policies on the part of African governments? This, from the African Association of Planning Schools, frames it interestingly from a planning perspective:
I've included the document here. Check it out.
Informal Economy Toolkit 1
Chad's N'Djamena and Gabon's Libreville are second and third, respectively, on the Expensive African Cities list (you can see the world list here). On Luanda, The Daily Maverick puts quite succinctly why the trouble of expensive African cities is such a problem:
As foreign expatriates and the money which underpins them push prices of top end goods and services, so the local elites – who eat in the same restaurants and compete for the same properties – are forced to spend more and more. And to spend, they must earn. As elite salaries rise, so the inequality gap between the vast majority of the country and the few who have made it to the top gets wider and wider. In Luanda, it’s not unusual to see Porsche’s whiz through sprawling shanty towns, their drivers on their way to a top hotel for a R1,000 meal while onlookers ponder how to feed their families on the R10 they earned that day. Not exactly a recipe for social cohesion, or development.
What is scary about the high cost of living in many an African city is not just the effect it has on Africa's rising middle class, but also the fact that most Africans find employment in the informal sector.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the informal sector makes up about 80% of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is also the realm in which most women in the developing world find work, whether we're talking prostitution or selling food on the side of the road (This is in the document below). The number isn't at all far-fetched to me - anyone that has ever walked or driven on a road in an African city can tell that there are far more wooden shacks selling cigarettes and sweets and street hawkers selling recharge cards than there are, say, skyscrapers and shopping malls with banks or salons or boutiques.
An interesting observation: the more developed the economy, the lesser the percentage of people who work outside the margins. 33% of South Africans and 44% of Namibians work in the informal economy, for example, compared to 74% of Madagascans and 82% of Malians). This observation, though, makes one wonder to what extent the state is complicit in creating an informal economy. To what extent is the pervasiveness of informal economies and the resigned acceptance thereof an admission of failed economic policies on the part of African governments? This, from the African Association of Planning Schools, frames it interestingly from a planning perspective:
Ananya Roy (2009:10), in an analysis of the Indian context, argues that planning cannot solve the crisis of Indian urbanisation since ‘planning itself is implicated in the very production of this crisis’. She continues,
Informality then is not a set of unregulated activities that lies beyond the reach of planning; rather it is planning that inscribes the informal by designating some activities as authorized and others as unauthorized.This view is echoed in Oren Yiftachel’s (2009:88) analysis of the political geography of informality.
He posits the notion of ‘gray spaces’ positioned between the ‘whiteness’ of legality/approval/safety, and the ‘blackness’ of eviction/destruction/death. He goes onto argue that planning is always deeply implicated in ‘whitening’ (condoning, approving) and ‘blackening’ (criminalizing, destroying) different types of informality. Yiftachel states bluntly that the ‘informality of the powerful’ is often authorised by the state whilst alternative forms of informality remain indefinitely gray or are officially ‘blackened’.
Urban planning – that is, the combination of relevant spatial policies – is often behind both the existence and criminalization of gray space. Urban plans design the city’s ‘white’ spaces which usually create little or no opening for inclusion/recognition of most informal localities and population, while their discourse continuously condemns them as a chaotic danger to the city (2009:94).
Roy pushes this point further, arguing that ‘informal spaces’ are produced by the state, and that ‘to deal with informality therefore partly means confronting how the apparatus of planning produces the unplanned and unplannable’ (2005:156).
Wilson (1991) echoes these sentiments pointing out that historically, even the most benevolent projects and traditions of state planning have emphasized control and confinement. Although she stops short of advocating the abandonment of planning, she argues,
There is a sense in which all town planning contains both a utopian and a heroic, yet authoritarian, element. Although its purpose may seem purely practical, it does claim to offer, like the utopian work, a permanent solution to the flux and flow of the ever changing city. The plan is always intended to fix the usage of space; the aim the state regulation of urban populations.This would suggest that informality demands a critical analysis of traditional planning tools and techniques.
I've included the document here. Check it out.
Informal Economy Toolkit 1
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Poem for Sunday
Ogaga Ifowodo is criminally slept-on. Something that jumps out at you at every poem of his (my favorite is Homeland) is his use of imagery. He makes you want feel it all, like tiny earthquakes in your head. If you must rhyme a poem, this is how it must be done.
And those final lines "Unmarked days quench their suns, black into nights/ and dreams enact weighted hearts in free flights".... the music of that. Goodness.
This one's a favorite from his wonderfully-titled collection God Punish You, Lord Lugard.
Unmarked Hours Beat their Hands Against the Wall
Unmarked hours beat their hands against the wall
grieve for wings plunged in a waterfall.
Outside the window, a woman's shoulders
quake in tribute to a scene of soldiers:
teeth, fragments of flesh in warm blood painted
the picture she sees of those that fainted.
A single call to prayer, amplified
to all of Sin Town, brings mortified
legions to banal rites of righteousness.
As the minister swears his piousness
birds blessed with greater freedom flee our skies
abandoning us to death and muted cries.
Philosophies of suffering dress the walls
of this cell, make the fate of dead seagulls
happier than of failed hearts that bled and wept:
"If men were God!" that mocked the cliff and leapt,
crying out their grief: "Let Nigeria end now!"
No one will inquire who, why or how,
an old or new decree has sanctified
all wrongs in duty personified.
Unmarked days quench their suns, black into nights
and dreams enact weighted hearts in free flights.
Ogaga Ifowodo
November 1997
And those final lines "Unmarked days quench their suns, black into nights/ and dreams enact weighted hearts in free flights".... the music of that. Goodness.
This one's a favorite from his wonderfully-titled collection God Punish You, Lord Lugard.
Unmarked Hours Beat their Hands Against the Wall
Unmarked hours beat their hands against the wall
grieve for wings plunged in a waterfall.
Outside the window, a woman's shoulders
quake in tribute to a scene of soldiers:
teeth, fragments of flesh in warm blood painted
the picture she sees of those that fainted.
A single call to prayer, amplified
to all of Sin Town, brings mortified
legions to banal rites of righteousness.
As the minister swears his piousness
birds blessed with greater freedom flee our skies
abandoning us to death and muted cries.
Philosophies of suffering dress the walls
of this cell, make the fate of dead seagulls
happier than of failed hearts that bled and wept:
"If men were God!" that mocked the cliff and leapt,
crying out their grief: "Let Nigeria end now!"
No one will inquire who, why or how,
an old or new decree has sanctified
all wrongs in duty personified.
Unmarked days quench their suns, black into nights
and dreams enact weighted hearts in free flights.
Ogaga Ifowodo
November 1997
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The Limits to NGOs' Effectiveness
Over at the Boston Review, Pranab Bardhan is eloquent in making the case against NGOs and their effectiveness and goals. The point that looms in Badhan's argument is that NGOs cannot "dismiss the complexity of issues involved in the problems they hope to remedy or the democratic mechanisms and experiments necessary for finding the best way forward for all parties." When it comes to NGOs working on economic development, though, this gets right to the heart of it for me:
This takes me back to the early 2000s when coffee farmers and social justice was the sexy issue of the day, and we still see the same thing rearing its head in the push-and-pull between small farms and commercial agriculture. Read the whole thing.
The social activists share with left-wing unions a preoccupation with redistribution, and a lack of concern for generating enough surplus to enable it. There are obvious trade-offs here between incentives for private enterprise and the need for social justice. Faced with these issues, just as the Left might refer to the great things the state can do, social activists refer us to the great things small producers and community-based organizations can do. The small-is-beautiful communitarians often ignore the many cases of local communities tyrannizing minority groups (Forms of lynching reminiscent of the U.S. South continue today in the ethnic villages of Africa and India.) And small local producers often cannot benefit from economies of scale and technological upgrades or invest in high-risk-high-return projects, which require risk pooling with non-local entities. As a result, they remain on the margins, mired in low productivity. While there are scattered examples of dynamic small producers, they don’t represent a viable systemic alternative. When real capacity to create wealth is missing, social activism is often reduced to mere populism, which in the long run can be wasteful and counterproductive.
This takes me back to the early 2000s when coffee farmers and social justice was the sexy issue of the day, and we still see the same thing rearing its head in the push-and-pull between small farms and commercial agriculture. Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The Trouble With the Caine Prize
The Caine Prize has a new winner. From the press release at the Caine website.
Hisham Mattar, writer of the amazing In the Country of Men that I just finished last week, said that? Well, that's another story. You can read my review of the story here.
One of the most depressing things about being from an African country, and I suspect it is the same for being from any post-colonial society, is the need to seek validation abroad or by Western standards. You can be the best writer ever, but if a bunch of white guys in academies don't see it, you're not. This applies to disciplines outside of literature as well. It's really as simple as that.
That is what is so extraordinary about the Caine Prize. Folks call it the "African Booker Prize", and with the mantle of premier African literary award comes the weight that The Booker, The Pushcart, The Pen or any other literary award doesn't have - the burden of representation, of validation, of choosing by dint of one's position the face of and state of African literary scene.
If you so much as scroll through the blog, you would see my reviews of each of the five stories that made up the shortlist for the prize. I tried not to absolutely skewer things in reviews (unless, of course, it's really that abominably bad), but as a whole I'm agree with Ikhide Ikheloa from 234Next on the quality of this year's shortlist:
I hope to goodness that this applies only to this years, but judging from Olufemi Terry's Stickfighting Days, pathetic stories seem to be their thing. Emmanuel Iduma, publisher of Saraba Magazine, responded to Ikheloa's comments, which seemed to cause quite the firestorm on the internet and, I hear from someone present, was even talked about in the discussion part of a Caine Prize event that happened in London today:
Knowing my own writing process and how much is involved, I'm wont to agree with Iduma. I'm not willing to be cynical enough to say that these writers are, as Ikheloa says, "willing to stereotype [Africa] for glory". I have no idea what led NoViolet Bulawayo to write the story she did, chockful of such familiar tropes on woe-is-me African literature (IMF street? Really??) And I should say here that this is what annoys me the most about the counter-argument to this brand of literature. Writing about Africa does not absolve one from writing well, and bringing complex characters to life, and, indeed, having a plot and creating a believable world for a reader from which (s)he can take away something of value. It really does not.
Writers write. Readers have opinions. It's really that simple. One has a right to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and churn out just whatever (s)he pleases. I certainly did not like Hitting Budapest, a plotless story that does not seem to have a point beyond "these kids are poor and live squalidly and you should pity them", but I do not really care about Bulawayo; she can write whatever she wants. I'm madder at the Caine Prize for seeming to favor stories of a particular strain, the ones that are less about characters and the network of trip-wires that make up their humanity and more about flattening characters to render them tools to make a political point, and absolving them from the basic responsibilities that come with writing a good story. I'm madder at them for not asking for complexity, and buying into an oversimplified narrative of Africa - poverty, war, disease, starving/fighting children -- just like most Western media does. I'm madder at the Caine for saying that this collection of stories is the best they could get out of Africa. I'm mad because I and so many people out there know that that is not true.
Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story entitled ‘Hitting Budapest’, from The Boston Review, Vol 35, no. 6 - Nov/Dec 2010.
The Chair of Judges, award-winning author Hisham Matar, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held this evening (Monday 11 July) at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Hisham Matar said: "The language of ‘Hitting Budapest’ crackles. Here we encounter Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Stina and Sbho, a gang reminiscent of Clockwork Orange. But these are children, poor and violated and hungry. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language."
Hisham Mattar, writer of the amazing In the Country of Men that I just finished last week, said that? Well, that's another story. You can read my review of the story here.
One of the most depressing things about being from an African country, and I suspect it is the same for being from any post-colonial society, is the need to seek validation abroad or by Western standards. You can be the best writer ever, but if a bunch of white guys in academies don't see it, you're not. This applies to disciplines outside of literature as well. It's really as simple as that.
That is what is so extraordinary about the Caine Prize. Folks call it the "African Booker Prize", and with the mantle of premier African literary award comes the weight that The Booker, The Pushcart, The Pen or any other literary award doesn't have - the burden of representation, of validation, of choosing by dint of one's position the face of and state of African literary scene.
If you so much as scroll through the blog, you would see my reviews of each of the five stories that made up the shortlist for the prize. I tried not to absolutely skewer things in reviews (unless, of course, it's really that abominably bad), but as a whole I'm agree with Ikhide Ikheloa from 234Next on the quality of this year's shortlist:
The good news is that the Caine Prize is here to stay. The bad news is that someone is going to win the Caine Prize this year. This is a shame; having read the stories on the shortlist, I conclude that a successful African writer must be clinically depressed, chronicling in excruciating detail every open sore of Africa. Apologies to Wole Soyinka. The creation of a prize for “African writing” may have created the unintended effect of breeding writers willing to stereotype Africa for glory.
The mostly lazy, predictable stories that made the 2011 shortlist celebrate orthodoxy and mediocrity. They are a riot of exhausted clichés even as ancient conflicts and anxieties fade into the past tense: huts, moons, rapes, wars, and poverty. The monotony of misery simply overwhelms the reader. Fiammetta Rocco, the Economist’s literary editor who chaired last year’s judges, crows that the stories are “uniquely powerful.” The stories are uniquely wretched. The chair of this year’s judges Hisham Matar declares presumptuously that the stories “represent a portrait of today’s African short story: its wit and intelligence, its concerns and preoccupations.” Really? Is this the sum total of our experience, this humourless, tasteless canvas of shiftless Stepin Fetchit suffering?
I hope to goodness that this applies only to this years, but judging from Olufemi Terry's Stickfighting Days, pathetic stories seem to be their thing. Emmanuel Iduma, publisher of Saraba Magazine, responded to Ikheloa's comments, which seemed to cause quite the firestorm on the internet and, I hear from someone present, was even talked about in the discussion part of a Caine Prize event that happened in London today:
I believe what is more important is the objective of the story. I assume it is unhelpful to draw a line on what a writer’s process/objective is by his story. Granted, critics do this continuously – yet in the final analysis if we can define a “grand” objective of “the story” we can go past these questions of stories that dance to a Western tune. And what is the West, anyway? And what is even human? So our grand objective must transcend western lines, become human, and take a more particularized stance. Can this grand objective be grasped? I propose that memory, fraternity and essence are merged, so that every writer, of whatever African descent, plugs his narrative into this fusion. Hopefully.
Knowing my own writing process and how much is involved, I'm wont to agree with Iduma. I'm not willing to be cynical enough to say that these writers are, as Ikheloa says, "willing to stereotype [Africa] for glory". I have no idea what led NoViolet Bulawayo to write the story she did, chockful of such familiar tropes on woe-is-me African literature (IMF street? Really??) And I should say here that this is what annoys me the most about the counter-argument to this brand of literature. Writing about Africa does not absolve one from writing well, and bringing complex characters to life, and, indeed, having a plot and creating a believable world for a reader from which (s)he can take away something of value. It really does not.
Writers write. Readers have opinions. It's really that simple. One has a right to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and churn out just whatever (s)he pleases. I certainly did not like Hitting Budapest, a plotless story that does not seem to have a point beyond "these kids are poor and live squalidly and you should pity them", but I do not really care about Bulawayo; she can write whatever she wants. I'm madder at the Caine Prize for seeming to favor stories of a particular strain, the ones that are less about characters and the network of trip-wires that make up their humanity and more about flattening characters to render them tools to make a political point, and absolving them from the basic responsibilities that come with writing a good story. I'm madder at them for not asking for complexity, and buying into an oversimplified narrative of Africa - poverty, war, disease, starving/fighting children -- just like most Western media does. I'm madder at the Caine for saying that this collection of stories is the best they could get out of Africa. I'm mad because I and so many people out there know that that is not true.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Al-Jazeera Being Awesome
Al-Jazeera's Inside Story has a great piece on famine and conflict in the Horn of Africa. It'll never stop being annoying how you can't embed a video from AJE, but the video is Africa's Drought: Is War or Weather to Blame? and the link is here.
I like the effort they go into to get at the question of why the situation is so intractable. If you have all these reports predicting a riot in the Horn of Africa, then why don't you use your knowledge to get at some more sustainable solution (Ugh, I just used the world "sustainable)? How is the long-term vulnerability of NGOs' funding affecting the situation? What do we do about the overflowing refugee camps? How is this all affecting Kenya? It's a good examination on the issues at hand in a way I don't see in most other media, and acknowledges the complexity of the situation.
I have no answers, but this put voice to a lot of questions that I have/had.
I like the effort they go into to get at the question of why the situation is so intractable. If you have all these reports predicting a riot in the Horn of Africa, then why don't you use your knowledge to get at some more sustainable solution (Ugh, I just used the world "sustainable)? How is the long-term vulnerability of NGOs' funding affecting the situation? What do we do about the overflowing refugee camps? How is this all affecting Kenya? It's a good examination on the issues at hand in a way I don't see in most other media, and acknowledges the complexity of the situation.
I have no answers, but this put voice to a lot of questions that I have/had.
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