Culture Guides

Mini-guide by Suzie Capelli

I read a book recently about the inter-tribal violence which accompanied the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Like many outside the country I don’t know much about what happened apart from the fact that Afrikaaners and apartheid were bad and what came after had to be better.

These days, the more I look at it, the more it seems like the Afrikaaner people in South Africa simply did what every other post-colonial government on the continent seems to have done – once in power they put in place policies and practises which favoured only their tribe. The major difference, apart from the race issue is that the government enshrined their policies in law. And that they were unusually brutal and thorough in enforcing these laws.

Africa is somewhat of a special case, as most of the country borders were carved out by Europeans in a conference in the late 1800’s without so much as a cursory glance at the existing tribal boundaries. So since the colonists handed back power, it has been difficult to find leaders who will implement development that is good for the country as a whole and not just his people (whoever they might be). I sometimes wonder if this idea of nationhood one of the reasons why Asian countries have gotten ahead while much of Africa is left behind.

In most places Whites in Africa are the forgotten tribe, so much so that you will not see any statistics showing ex-pat earnings and contribution to the economy in any report on developing countries. This seems rather odd, seeing as many ex-pats are long term residents and although they are a small percentage of the population, they can have a large and possible distortionate effect on economics, especially in urban areas. Much of the development enterprise seems geared to producing jobs for Whites, by Whites. And very highly paid jobs at that.

Unfortunately there seems a growing number of organisations practising some kind of local jobs for the sake of having locals (see next section 6), which is equally odious. Surely the idea of having someone from a developed country in Africa or having a local working for a Western organisation is to increase efficiency and capacity through stiffer competition?

I once asked some street kids why they persistently begged only from White people. I was told that “Mzungos(Whites) are good people”. For a while I wondered if I should commit random acts of nastiness, just to get rid of the racial stereotype. I guess its not hard to see where this attitude that Whites are “soft” people, who help you out in time of need, not to mention that they have a bottomless supply of cash.

I’m sure this attitude pervades from the poorest street kids to the continent’s most powerful. When pressed again as to why the kids don’t ask money from locals, I was told that locals are likely to lash out and hit them. It begs the question as to why the West should care for the poor and disadvantaged in developing countries, if the well-off of their own countries do not?

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