Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 296

The majority of African migrants move between countries on the continent

Charles Moses, 30, a new immigrant from Nigeria’s southeastern Anambra State, smiles in front of the wall of a house in Madina, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Accra that is home to many Nigerians. Image credit: Louise Matsakis.

Immigration to the West accounts for less than 50% of all global migration according to data from the United Nations. Most people move from one non-Western country to another, yet their stories are rarely told. Journalism about immigration focuses overwhelmingly on those coming to North America and Western Europe, even though individuals who move within the Global South make up the majority of refugees and migrants.

Claire Adida, the author of Immigrant Exclusion and Insecurity in Africa: Coethnic Strangers, published this year, wrote to me in an email:  “Africans migrate in Africa all the time, looking for economic opportunity, interacting with members of their host societies, carving out a life for themselves away from their hometown. They have been doing this for generations.”

Adida, who is also Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California-San Diego, added: “Yet we know very little about these communities, their struggles and successes, and we have very little data. This is therefore a phenomenon that remains very much informal and poorly understood.”

In her new book, Adida explores the diversity of immigration experiences in urban West Africa. The book is one of the first to explain immigration integration in the developing world.

Immigrants, for example, make up 3% of Ghana’s population. At least 80% of immigrants who come to the West African nation are from other African states, according to a report from the International Organization for Migration (IMO). Many come from neighboring states, such as Nigeria.

Most economic migrants arrive to Ghana from neighboring countries, partly because Ghana is a part of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The economic partnership of fifteen West African countries was founded in 1975, and aims to foster free migration within its borders.

Ghana’s borders have recently become even more porous. Beginning in July, the country began to offer tourist visas on arrival to citizens of all 54 African Union (AU) member states. Historically, it has been more difficult for Africans than for American and European tourists to travel within their own continent.

While in Ghana’s capital in June, I met a group of Nigerian immigrants selling cellphones along the streets of Madina, a bustling neighborhood on the outskirts of Accra. One of them, Henry Nnamdi, 33, held up a shiny red Samsung, and explained that he left three young kids to move to Ghana four years ago to earn more money for his family.

In the same market was Charles Moses, 30, another mobile phone salesman. He came to Ghana only six months ago, after the Nigerian government demolished his clothing boutique in order to build a bridge.

While his lack of knowledge of local languages has made meeting new friends difficult, “We Nigerians mingle with Ghanaians very easily,” he said. Nnamadi and Moses are some of the thousands of Nigerian immigrants who come to Ghana each year, largely to find opportunities for work.

While many migrants who leave neighboring countries to come to Ghana are unskilled laborers, some bring important trades to the country.

“I decided to move to Ghana because I wanted to learn an approach to medicine in an Anglophone country,” Van Nam Glouzon, 30, a doctor originally from Ivory Coast explained to me. Glouzon, who also speaks French and Russian, noticed that most medical research is written in English, and believed practicing in an English-speaking country would allow him to stay on the cutting-edge of his field.

According to research conducted at the University of Ghana’s Centre for Migration Studies, a significant number of male migrants who came to Accra reported that moving delayed marriage. Many said they had trouble renting a room, which delayed marriage even further.

Not all people who come to Ghana from neighboring countries are male. Nearly half of them are women, the University of Ghana report indicated. Olivia Ogechi, 26, is one of them. She moved from Nigeria’s southern Imo State in order to pursue nursing school in Accra.

“I have a passionate need to serve people,” she said while organizing the colorful women’s shoes she sells in the city’s street markets. “Ghana is a cool place to stay,” she continued.

The IMO report showed also that not every immigrant to Ghana comes from a neighboring state. Fifteen percent come from Europe, like Torbjörn “Toby” Bergman.

The 43-year-old emigrated from Sweden two years ago to open Chuck’s Bar & Restaurant, an upscale continental eatery in Tamale, a city in northern Ghana 10 hours from Accra by car. On a Friday night, the restaurant’s expansive backyard was packed, in part because it’s one of the only places like it in town.

“We changed something about this city when we opened this place,” he said.

Many of the people who come to Ghana arrive under more unfortunate circumstances than Bergman. In recent years, Ghana has seen a large increase in the number of refugee and asylum seekers, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The Ghanaian government has sometimes botched its responses to the influx. In June, more than 40 asylum seekers, including infants, were left to sleep in the open near Accra’s international airport, according to Joy News. The Ghana Refugee Board (GRB) chose to repatriate them back to their countries of origin.

“It was a number of refugees from the Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, central Africa, and other countries who were lodging on the lawn of a benevolent Ghanaian,” said Sheila Tamakloe, the journalist who reported the story. Some refugees were even sleeping on the lawn of the GRB.

According to Professor Adida, “Inter-African migration brings both promise and peril to African host societies. It brings promise because African migrants open up new economic opportunities by creating or bringing new goods, new trading routes, new institutions,”

“At the same time, African migrants are – just like everywhere else in the world – easy scapegoats when an economy contracts, and unemployment and instability rise.”

What is clear is that each individual who immigrates to Ghana, or to any country on the globe has their own narrative, no matter their reason for movement. What can be done now is to continue to tell their stories, especially those largely undocumented in the Global South.

Re-thinking immigration by looking at Africa

Charles Moses, 30, a new immigrant from Nigeria’s southeastern Anambra State, smiles in front of the wall of a house in Madina, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Accra that is home to many Nigerians. Image credit: Louise Matsakis.

Immigration to the West accounts for less than 50% of all global migration according to data from the United Nations. Most people move from one non-Western country to another, yet their stories are rarely told. Journalism about immigration focuses overwhelmingly on those coming to North America and Western Europe, even though individuals who move within the Global South make up the majority of refugees and migrants.

Claire Adida, the author of Immigrant Exclusion and Insecurity in Africa: Coethnic Strangers, published this year, wrote to me in an email:  “Africans migrate in Africa all the time, looking for economic opportunity, interacting with members of their host societies, carving out a life for themselves away from their hometown. They have been doing this for generations.”

Adida, who is also Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California-San Diego, added: “Yet we know very little about these communities, their struggles and successes, and we have very little data. This is therefore a phenomenon that remains very much informal and poorly understood.”

In her new book, Adida explores the diversity of immigration experiences in urban West Africa. The book is one of the first to explain immigration integration in the developing world.

Immigrants, for example, make up 3% of Ghana’s population. At least 80% of immigrants who come to the West African nation are from other African states, according to a report from the International Organization for Migration (IMO). Many come from neighboring states, such as Nigeria.

Most economic migrants arrive to Ghana from neighboring countries, partly because Ghana is a part of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The economic partnership of fifteen West African countries was founded in 1975, and aims to foster free migration within its borders.

Ghana’s borders have recently become even more porous. Beginning in July, the country began to offer tourist visas on arrival to citizens of all 54 African Union (AU) member states. Historically, it has been more difficult for Africans than for American and European tourists to travel within their own continent.

While in Ghana’s capital in June, I met a group of Nigerian immigrants selling cellphones along the streets of Madina, a bustling neighborhood on the outskirts of Accra. One of them, Henry Nnamdi, 33, held up a shiny red Samsung, and explained that he left three young kids to move to Ghana four years ago to earn more money for his family.

In the same market was Charles Moses, 30, another mobile phone salesman. He came to Ghana only six months ago, after the Nigerian government demolished his clothing boutique in order to build a bridge.

While his lack of knowledge of local languages has made meeting new friends difficult, “We Nigerians mingle with Ghanaians very easily,” he said. Nnamadi and Moses are some of the thousands of Nigerian immigrants who come to Ghana each year, largely to find opportunities for work.

While many migrants who leave neighboring countries to come to Ghana are unskilled laborers, some bring important trades to the country.

“I decided to move to Ghana because I wanted to learn an approach to medicine in an Anglophone country,” Van Nam Glouzon, 30, a doctor originally from Ivory Coast explained to me. Glouzon, who also speaks French and Russian, noticed that most medical research is written in English, and believed practicing in an English-speaking country would allow him to stay on the cutting-edge of his field.

According to research conducted at the University of Ghana’s Centre for Migration Studies, a significant number of male migrants who came to Accra reported that moving delayed marriage. Many said they had trouble renting a room, which delayed marriage even further.

Not all people who come to Ghana from neighboring countries are male. Nearly half of them are women, the University of Ghana report indicated. Olivia Ogechi, 26, is one of them. She moved from Nigeria’s southern Imo State in order to pursue nursing school in Accra.

“I have a passionate need to serve people,” she said while organizing the colorful women’s shoes she sells in the city’s street markets. “Ghana is a cool place to stay,” she continued.

The IMO report showed also that not every immigrant to Ghana comes from a neighboring state. Fifteen percent come from Europe, like Torbjörn “Toby” Bergman.

The 43-year-old emigrated from Sweden two years ago to open Chuck’s Bar & Restaurant, an upscale continental eatery in Tamale, a city in northern Ghana 10 hours from Accra by car. On a Friday night, the restaurant’s expansive backyard was packed, in part because it’s one of the only places like it in town.

“We changed something about this city when we opened this place,” he said.

Many of the people who come to Ghana arrive under more unfortunate circumstances than Bergman. In recent years, Ghana has seen a large increase in the number of refugee and asylum seekers, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The Ghanaian government has sometimes botched its responses to the influx. In June, more than 40 asylum seekers, including infants, were left to sleep in the open near Accra’s international airport, according to Joy News. The Ghana Refugee Board (GRB) chose to repatriate them back to their countries of origin.

“It was a number of refugees from the Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, central Africa, and other countries who were lodging on the lawn of a benevolent Ghanaian,” said Sheila Tamakloe, the journalist who reported the story. Some refugees were even sleeping on the lawn of the GRB.

According to Professor Adida, “Inter-African migration brings both promise and peril to African host societies. It brings promise because African migrants open up new economic opportunities by creating or bringing new goods, new trading routes, new institutions,”

“At the same time, African migrants are – just like everywhere else in the world – easy scapegoats when an economy contracts, and unemployment and instability rise.”

What is clear is that each individual who immigrates to Ghana, or to any country on the globe has their own narrative, no matter their reason for movement. What can be done now is to continue to tell their stories, especially those largely undocumented in the Global South.

Peculiar alliances

Heavy clouds in Colombia. Image credit: Mariusz Kluzniak via Flickr

One of the most counterintuitive sights in the referendum on Colombia’s historic peace agreement between the government and FARC rebels, was a coalition between Human Rights Watch (HRW) and former President Álvaro Uribe in favor of a “no” vote.

At the beginning of October, Colombian voters narrowly rejected a comprehensive historic peace agreement that would have ended the decades-long war between the government and the FARC. For his work on the peace deal, President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Since the margin of victory for the “no” campaign was slim (53,894 votes in a country of 35 million eligible voters), many factors were cited as potentially decisive: a hurricane on the day of the voting; that it was really a referendum on the unpopular President Santos; and the involvement of HRW that might have lent some respectability to the No campaign. The No campaign, which was based on fear rather than political imagination, was led by Uribe, whose regime was associated with widespread state violence. Human Rights Watch leaders chimed in that peace cannot be had with “impunity.” The HRW also tried to extricate itself from Uribe’s uncomfortably tight embrace even as it celebrated the rejection of the peace agreement.

It is important to look beyond this peculiar alliance. After all, Amnesty International also called on the government to ensure “that all those responsible for the despicable crimes under international law inflicted on millions of people over half a century face justice,” and in the process, casually equated justice with criminal accountability for military and political leaders.

How did major human rights organizations end up narrowing justice to punishment? What are the effects of prioritizing trials for perpetrators of political violence and war crimes over other measures? The transnational human rights movement that came to prominence during the Cold War with Amnesty International’s campaigns for the release of “prisoners of conscience” has taken a punitive turn. The reduction of justice to punishment is not, however, simply an imposition by human rights organizations from the global North. The Argentine human rights movement of the 1980s popularized the fight against impunity and amnesties as a human rights cause. Yet these concepts, taken up by academics and activists in North America and Europe, ended up being used as a wedge against the wishes of communities most affected by violence. As I have argued elsewhere, when concepts in human rights and transitional justice travel, they change, and their effects are contingent on the new contexts and the ways they get mobilized.

The rhetoric of justice as criminal accountability has been globalized and thereby separated from its original context. The curious case of HRW’s advocacy against Colombia’s peace agreement raises at least two problems with this globalization of a specific human rights ideology: First, the call for trials might be less convincing and productive in certain political and social context. Second, the broader reframing of justice as punishment for human rights violations and war crimes leaves us with an impoverished understanding of justice and an uncritical embrace of criminal justice systems that often have been part of the problem that they are called upon to remedy.

When Argentine activists started their fight against impunity for enforced disappearances committed under the military dictatorship, their concern was about the accountability of state actors: the state tried to pardon itself. The concern about accountability was tied to calls for truth about the disappearances and for reforms to ensure that state agents would never again torture and murder citizens.

The vocabulary of impunity and accountability that has been developed in the Argentine context took on a different meaning when used elsewhere, especially in the context of protracted civil conflict with multiple parties. Communities that have lived through complex armed conflict often prioritize peace, reparations, and redistribution over calls for punishment of perpetrators. In the Colombian referendum, people living in provinces that have experienced high levels of ongoing violence have overwhelmingly voted in favor of the peace agreement. The agreement allows FARC combatants to transition from paramilitary fighters to participants in a political process that has systematically marginalized many Colombians. There is a difference between calling for prosecutions of murderous state agents and subjecting a complex military and political conflict to the binary logic of criminal law. The peace agreement was bound to be a compromise, not the pipe dream of any of the parties. The HRW subjected it to standards of ‘justice’ developed in very different circumstances, and it did so from a safe distance.

Even if those most affected by a conflict voted for trials, there are reasons to be cautious about embracing criminal justice mechanisms as responses to politically motivated violence committed by state actors and non-state agents.

The vocabulary and institutions of criminal justice are (ideally) designed for crimes committed by individuals in defiance of community norms, not for situations in which the state apparatus turns violent on its own citizens or violent civil conflicts. Although domestic and international law include prohibitions on war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the course of an armed conflict, subjecting civil war to criminal punishment carries the distinct dangers that non-state military actors are punished for their participation in the conflict rather than their specific prohibited conduct during the conflict.

The submission of politicized violence to the machinery of criminal justice easily vindicates the state, the courts, and the law that might deserve critical scrutiny. In transitional trials, prosecutors and judged craft narratives that offer legal judgment and criminal punishment as redress for violence that is described as ‘lawless.’ But is it so? State repression and civil conflict are not occasioned by the absence of the state or the law, but are enabled when state power and legal mechanisms are wielded against real and imagined political adversaries. The law and the criminal justice system are not innocent of the violence they are called upon to adjudicate. But rather than inviting reflections on the connections between state power, legality, and violence, trials too often celebrate a facile understanding of the rule of law and punishment as the opposite of, and appropriate reaction to, violence.

Even so, the prospect of prison for perpetrators of politicized violence feels just right to many people. Trials, for all their shortcomings, can constitute important rituals of transition. Such rituals can deliver a powerful message of a new beginning. Yet they do this by ascribing the responsibility for complex violence to the individual perpetrators who are being convicted (if that is indeed the outcome of the trial). The messy and much needed stories of collaboration, structural violence, dispossession of land and natural resources, racism, bystanders, and indifference are unlikely to feature prominently in courts. Moreover, trials often do little to change the material realities of the people victimized in the conflict. Thus, trials may feel good, but they do so at the price of reducing the complexity of the conflict into a simple morality tale and inviting us to get comfortable with a punitive state.

A human rights movement that is interested in reducing violence and state repression should be cautious about endorsing trials that celebrate the punitive state as a fountain of justice. As long as the fight against ‘impunity’ has priority, broader social justice issues will lose out.

Drogbacité

Didier Drogba touches up his hair during Cote d’Ivoire v Mali. Image credit: Jake Brown via Flickr.

My candidate for the best thing ever posted on the internet – an object that may single-handedly justify the existence of social media – is this clip of Didier Drogba, along with his wife and two friends, watching the final of the 2015 African Cup of Nations. The game pitted the Ivory Coast against Ghana and, as is oddly traditional in the African Cup of Nations, it went not just to penalty kicks but to a surreal and extended shoot-out that culminated in the two goalies taking shots against each other. Boubacar Barry, the Ivory Coast goalie, became a legend that day by accomplishing a feat few goalies ever have. He first blocked the penalty kick from the Ghana goalkeeper. Then Barry stepped up, sweating, and kicked the ball into the goal, winning his country the African Cup of Nations.

Drogba, however, was watching from far away. He’d retired from international football after the devastating 2013 defeat, also in penalty kicks, to Zambia in the final of the African Cup of Nations. But as compensation for not being able to watch him be part of that victory on the pitch, we got to watch him watching the shoot-out. What is delightful about this video is that we’ve all, at some point, been in the position that Drogba occupies in this video. Still, his intensity, and the way he celebrates when his country wins, is unbelievably funny and joyous to watch.

There is also a certain sadness, or longing, about the moment: he’s living vicariously what he probably deserved (as much as any athlete deserves anything) to have lived himself. The intensity of the video is partly the result of the fact that you know that, he knows he should be there. Or maybe it is that he is there on the pitch as well as his coach – or rather, in the end, on the floor, almost praying in front of the television.

Who is Didier Drogba? In his new autobiography Commitment he tells us some of the story. The genre of the athlete autobiography is dangerous territory. As you wade into one of these, there is always a good chance of being force-marched through insufferable clichés, tedious personal details, and overly massaged accounts of interactions with other athletes and managers. One enters with trepidation. But Commitment is actually quite an enjoyable read, rarely scintillating, but comfortingly steady and straightforward in recounting a life that has been full of intriguing twists and turns.

Drogba’s trajectory has, in a way, been an unusual one. He became one of the most famous footballers of his generation thanks to his time at Chelsea, but never won a major tournament for his national team. He was, however, able to use football – in a small way – to contribute to peace in his country, something probably more valuable than a trophy. So it was that, as he watched the Ivory Coast finally win the African Cup of Nations in 2015, from his home, he could celebrate as if he was there, as if he had won.

Drogba was born in 1978 Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast, but at the age of five his parents sent him to live with his uncle, Michel Goba, in France. Goba was a professional football player. Looking back, Drogba describes this experience of being “uprooted” at a young age as a defining one, though he “never forgot those roots” in Ivory Coast and has “long felt a burning need to reclaim them.”

Following his uncle’s itinerant career, he grew up in different small towns in France, first in Brest, then Angoulême, then Troucoing on the outskirts of Lille. He stood out: some of his friends “would even rub my skin to see if I really was that colour!” Neighbors would stare or look away.

In Dunkirk, Goba – by then Drogba’s legal guardian – got him on a youth football team. On Sundays, they went down the beach where his uncle showed the young boy “all sorts of tricks,” like “how to use my body against a defender, and how to time a jump effectively.

“When I saw him jumping up for a ball, I used to think that he stayed in the air forever, as if he was flying,” Drogba recalls (p. 9). Still, the pitch wasn’t an escape: as he played, he was “always hearing comments about the colour of my skin.” Lonely, he lived in his “own bubble.” This helped him develop a vital skill that has served him well: adapting “really fast to whatever situation I found myself in. New team, new country? No problem.”

Eventually Drogba’s mother and father migrated to France, and he was re-united with his family. As a teenager he lived in a one-room apartment in Levallois with five siblings, including a newborn brother. His father discouraged him from playing football and urged him to focus on his studies. But when his grades improved, he asked if he could return to the pitch, the only place he felt really happy.

“Deep inside, though, I knew I would be a footballer, irrespective of what my father said. There was no question in my mind.” When his father came to watch one of his games, he realized he was seeing a totally different person than the shy son he saw at home.

Drogba was part of a remarkable generation of footballers who grew up in France during these years. But unlike Thierry Henry, Zinedine Zidane and Lilian Thuram, he never attended a football academy or training program. Instead, he made his way through the lower levels of French professional football. In fact he wondered, early on, if he would ever make it: in 1998, at the age of 20, he fractured his ankle and fibula, reduced to watching Henry, a new superstar, lift the World Cup trophy.

Throughout the book, he writes about coaches who took an interest in him and taught him who he was as a player. The coach at Le Mans, for instance, once told him: “You don’t need to play the full 90 minutes. For you, five, 10 minutes are enough . . . You can play ten minutes and make a difference.” Throughout his career, both in professional and international football, Drogba had that transformative presence on the pitch: he often came on as a sub and changed everything. He was able to move up from the lower division to a Ligue 1 club, at Guingamp, where he played alongside Florent Malouda and under coach Guy Lacombe, who Drogba remembers as “… a great tactician, and he taught me a lot about placement, movement, pace.” Later on, when he was at Chelsea, coach Guus Hiddink reminded him that he could “stop running around all over the place. You’re a striker, you don’t have to do that. Just stay up there and finish the actions.”

I tend to think of Didier Drogba as a particularly solid player. But Commitment offers up constant reminders of how brutal and bruising a professional athletic life can be. His early career included a string of injuries to his legs and feet, including broken leg and foot bones. Later, just before the 2010 World Cup, he broke his arm and even ended with a bout of malaria that slowed him down in the 2010-11 season.

Commitment offers some particularly charming accounts of what it is like to be on the pitch as a professional footballer. He writes about a game he played with Guingamp against Paris Saint-Germain. He was awed as he watched the Brazilian star Ronaldinho score a brilliant goal against his team that day: “I obviously couldn’t clap, but in all honestly, that’s what I felt like doing.” In the second half of the game, a teammate scored an unexpected goal and somersaulted in celebration. “His leap gave us all wings.” Soon Drogba scored. The small stadium was packed, as were the “blocks of flats and balconies” that overlook it in the town. When Drogba scored another goal, “total madness broke out around us.”

Through these performances, Drogba became recognized as a star striker, and at the age of 25 was recruited to play at Olympique de Marseille. This is a place famous for the intensity and devotion of its fans. Drogba describes going to the hill-top Basilica in the town, and offering his OM shirt in the hopes that this would “give us a bit of divine fortune.”

At first Drogba was terrified, feeling “different from his teammates.” But they carried him along: one day early on, when he was lagging on a team run, unaccustomed to the heat, a teammate said: “We’ll wait. We’ll just follow you. You lead, we’ll follow.”

“I was now dictating the pace,” Drogba remembers. “I was blown away by that attitude.” He was given a jersey with his favorite number – 11 – and fans greeted him warmly on his first game with a banner that said “Drogba, score for us.” Playing in front of the 60,000 fans in the Stade Vélodrome, he often felt “a sort of out-of-body sensation.”

Drogba became famous in part for the way he celebrated his goals for Marseille: “whenever I scored, I broke into a bit of coupé-décalé, a popular dance in Ivory Coast and in the Ivorian community in France, based on Ivorian pop music.” This became his “trademark,” and the “fans loved it.” They adopted it as their own, and after a key victory there were “lots of demonstrations of coupé-décalé by the locals!”

But he also continued to encounter racism from fans. After scoring against Real Madrid, he heard fans making the “unmistakable sound of monkey noises. It was a small minority but, all the same, it was very clear. I was shocked. And I will never forget thinking, even in my moment of glory, ‘Wow, a big team like Real Madrid. I can’t believe they’ve got fans like that!’”

At Marseille Drogba fully came into his own as a footballer. Freed from the “physical attrition” of the second division, he found himself in a place where “it’s technique that’s important, and timing, attacking at the right moment, having a good footballing brain, knowing when the other team is having a slight dip and grabbing the balance of power. It was all about reading the game and by then I’d started to understand these things, so it felt natural to me, and therefore easy.” He gained that particular kind of flattery that marks a good striker, hearing defenders “making some comments along the lines of the only way to stop me was to kick me. . . .”

Playing against Porto, he met José Mourinho in the tunnel after a game. He “jokingly asked me in French if I had any brothers or cousins who played football like I did.” ‘Actually, there are lots in Africa who are better,’ I joked back”.

“‘One day, when I can afford you, I will sign you,’ Mourinho promised.”

It was to be, and a few years later with Mourinho at Chelsea Drogba reached the peak of his career. For the many Mourinho-loathers out there, Commitment offers a striking counterpoint. Drogba lavishes praise on the manager. For one thing, he didn’t have his team do those silly 5 to 10 kilometer runs that were the norm in France.

“I had always hated those runs and often used to struggle with distance-running training.” His emphasis was on being “football fit” (p. 87). The two developed a relationship that remained strong throughout Drogba’s career. “Communication – that’s all I have ever asked of managers. It’s so incredibly simple, but it’s amazing how often it doesn’t happen.”

Drogba was raised Catholic, and attributes much of his success to his faith. He has “conversations” with God during games – “which might sound funny or strange to some people, but anyone who has seen me looking up to the heavens or crossing myself, that person will realize this is true.” Drogba’s recounting of a famous 2012 victory by Chelsea against Bayern Munich in the Champions League final highlights the role religion played for him on the pitch. With his team down 1-0 Drogba began “speaking to God . . . begging him, ‘If you really exist, show me, show me!” God responded, enabling him to score a header, timing his jump perfectly “just as my uncle had taught me all those years ago.” Of course, God, can be a bit fickle, and not long afterwards Drogba had a “moment of clumsiness” and earned Bayern a penalty kick. “Oh my God! What have you done! Why does this always happen to me, why?” But he had enough energy to hassle Arjen Robben, who took the penalty kick, which was saved by Petr Cech. The game went to a penalty kick shoot-out and Drogba scored the decisive penalty.In the locker room afterwards, Drogba draped himself in the Ivory Coast flag and delivered a long speech to the trophy.

It was, however, as a player on the Ivory Coast national team that Drogba made his most important speeches. Though a dual national, with both French and Ivory Coast passports, Drogba was never selected to play on any of the junior national teams in France. His uncle, however, had once played for Ivory Coast and, as he put it, “I really wanted to continue the family tradition and pull on the jersey for ‘The Elephants.’”

“Even was I was young, I used to get goosebumps whenever I heard our national anthem” (p. 227). He recalls his first match with the national team, an African Cup of Nations qualifier, in September 2002: “what is seared in my memory for ever is the excitement of walking out into the cauldron of heat that was our national stade, the Stade Félix Houphouët-Boigny.”

Fans had packed the stadium since ten in the morning, with artists and musicians performing, and “everyone had been joining in.” And this, he learned, was “the norm for every game!” (p. 230) Only ten days later, a civil war broke out in Ivory Coast. Though a ceasefire was signed a few months later, there were regular bursts of fighting over the next years, and French and UN peace-keeping troops were deployed in the country. Drogba, who was the best-known star on the team thanks to his success at Chelsea, became captain of the team in 2005. That September, with the country again “on the brink of another full-blown civil war,” Ivory Coast team qualified for the 2006 World Cup.

As the team was celebrating their historic qualification, Drogba approached the cameraman filming the scene for Radio Télévision Ivoirienne, asked him for the microphone, and proceeded to make a speech:. “My fellow Ivorians, from the north and from the south, from the centre and from the west, we have proved to you today that the Ivory Coast can cohabit and can play together for the same objective: to qualify for the World Cup.” Then, asking his teammates to get down on their knees, he continued: “[W]e ask you now: the only country in Africa that has all these riches cannot sink into a war. Please, lay down your arms. Organise elections. And everything will turn out for the best!”

Drogba recalls that he had no idea if the speech would be heard or would have any impact, but when the team arrived in Abidjan, there were huge crowds waiting at the airport and “crazy” celebrations. His parents were waiting for him, and they were deeply proud – “not so much because of our qualification – that was almost secondary – but for the message I had sent out for peace.” His words had been played and replayed on television and aired on the radio for days. As the team made their way through the city to the president’s house, there were throngs of celebrants in the streets, on rooftops, “waving flags, blaring horns, cheering and crowing with joy.”

The team had a disappointing performance at the 2006 World Cup, but in 2007 Drogba was chosen as the African Player of the Year. In March of that year, a ceasefire was brokered between rebel forces in the north of Ivory Coast and the government. Drogba had an idea: what if he travelled to the rebel stronghold in the north, in Bouaké, to present his recently acquired trophy as African Player of the Year? And what if Ivory Coast played their next game – an African Cup of Nations qualifier to be held in June – not in Abidjan but in the north as well? He proposed the idea to the head of the Football Federation, who was encouraging, and then proposed the plan to the president of the Ivory Coast. The government agreed.

At the end of the month, Drogba travelled “into the rebel heartland of Bouaké” in an “open-topped car,” escorted by soldiers. He met with the leader of the rebel group Forces Nouvelles, Guillaume Soro, who was soon incorporated into the government as Prime Minister as a further step towards ending the conflict.

The African Cup of Nations qualifier, against Madagascar, was set for  June 3, 2007, in Bouaké. Though some teammates were worried about the journey, Drogba reassured them based on his trip to the area in March. The team blazed against Madagascar, winning 5-0, with Drogba scoring the final goal.

“The game itself became a symbol of an attempt to heal divisions. I saw soldiers from the army watching alongside soldiers from the rebel forces.” The footage of the game encouraged people who had fled their homes in the north to return. “People were heard to say, ‘If Drogba has been to Bouaké, it means it’s safe to return.’ It was amazing to realise how much impact was footballers could have.”

Drogba’s political role, he writes, made him a “national icon – something that I had absolutely not expected.” In 2007, after the brother of one of his best friends died of leukemia for lack of treatment in Ivory Coast, Drogba created a foundation to raise money for health and education in his country. He writes that he decided to “donate all my commercial earnings to the foundation” and has “continued to do so ever since. He wanted to avoid creating “a foundation that – and I’ve seen this a lot – is announced with big fanfare and one big fund-raising event, a dinner or something. They get a load of money in, and then silence. No one knows where the money has gone.”

Recently, however, Drogba has been accused of doing just that with his foundation, which is now under investigation. And, ironically, his teammate, John Terry, took cover in Drogba’s foundation, claiming that he couldn’t possibly be racist if he had donated money to charitable work in Africa.

If the future of the charitable Drogba seems a bit uncertain, the footballer Drogba is still journeying on the football pitch, having taken advantage of the retirement plan for great footballers offered by Major League Soccer. He made an interesting choice by joining the Montréal Impact, assuring him a place within a Francophone community and fan culture. From the start, he’s been welcomed by fans there, with cultural organizations including the Maison de l’Afrique in the city joining with the MLS to produce this poster celebrating his first game with the team. Some even managed to get a famous banner long deployed by Chelsea fans – that says “Drogba Legend” – over to Montréal. He scored a hat-trick in his first match and has been a steady force since then.

Looking ahead, he says he envisions returning to Chelsea in some capacity once he has stopped playing. “I think I have left my mark on football,” he notes – rightly. And he’s appreciated it: “I started with minus nothing, so everything I now have is a big plus.”

Weekend Music Break No.100

Music Break number 100 is here!!! Let’s celebrate the occasion with a playlist of classic African music from our younger years. I know that for me, many of these songs soundtracked long car rides and late night parties at home. Sean Jacobs also puts in some of his own favorites to reminisce on. No description this week, just enjoy some classic sounds from around the continent. And if anything sounds new, go ahead and follow the Youtube wormhole!

Music Break No.100

Have a happy weekend!

Music Break No.100

Music Break number 100 is here!!! Let’s celebrate the occasion with a playlist of classic African music from our younger years. I know that for me, many of these songs soundtracked long car rides and late night parties at home. Sean Jacobs also puts in some of his own favorites to reminisce on. No description this week, just enjoy some classic sounds from around the continent. And if anything sounds new, go ahead and follow the Youtube wormhole!

Music Break No.100

Have a happy weekend!

“What can we do for ‘the worst place in the world’”? Surely this play, is not the thing.

Promotional Still from They Drink It in the Congo.

As an Africanist and a woman of color, I make it a mission to support diversity in storytelling. This often means I am setting myself up for failure; at the receiving end of a botched history-cum-geography lesson about “Africa” or some other place where ‘black’ people are. This time, while watching Adam Brace’s play, They drink it in the Congo, the failure was so severe that it reduced me to tears. In an act of self care, I walked out at intermission (though in an attempt to give the play a chance, I read the second half at a later date. It was futile).

For the first 90 minutes, I watched as black men were portrayed as violent and full of rage and as sexual predators, and black women were portrayed as victims and silent workhorses. The stage was transformed into a coltan mine in the middle of the presumed Democratic Republic of Congo, and black characters from one scene transform into violent militia in the next. I watched more black men, holding machine guns, allude to forcing a father to rape his daughter. In the next scene I watched that same young woman writhe in agony, an aid worker speaking to her in broken French, while rattling off stats on a phone to confirm said rape. I watched as black bodies were brutalized and put on display for consumption of art. In a play that promoted itself as being about the Congo, I watched as black characters were used to prop up the self-exploration of white leads.

I have little to say about the quality of the writing, acting or stage production – I will leave that to the experts (some of whom have taken umbrage with these things). But as a community psychologist who seeks to grapple with the basic premise of what makes us human, of what makes us act, of what makes us real, there is much to say about the premise behind Brace’s play – and what could have been produced instead.

This play exists as a supposed think piece, a project that is likely rooted in an effort to appeal to fundamental aspects of humanity. A piece to “get people talking” and thinking about the Congo, or “the worst place in the world” as it is labelled on the play’s website. But I can safely say he didn’t stand a hope in hell of doing this – not in the way he set it up.

To assume that invoking extreme emotional responses will lead to critical reflection on life, liberty, and in this case, the plight of the Congolese, shows a limited understanding of how emotions are related to action. Much psychological literature has been devoted to exploring how emotions can be used to inspire action, and in some cases, changes that aid the “tortured other.” Such research tells us that when a stimulus evokes an emotional response, in our efforts to manage emotions, a process of engagement, thought and action, and occasionally change, can occur. The wide use of emotional appeals in the humanitarian aid industry is rooted in such evidence.

The play seeks to regulate the emotions of theatre goers through the use of shocking and largely violent stimuli (guns, rape, tragedy), with the hopes of triggering a cognitive  engagement and a response.

However, the reality of emotion regulation theory is, that numerous factors will influence whether or not engagement or change occurs in response to emotion. For example, are the audience the type of people who are likely to engage in critical thinking? Or are they the type of people to respond to uncomfortable emotions through denial or switching off? Does the stimuli in question present a challenge to someone’s existing understanding of the world (perhaps a black lead fighting for the Congo instead of a white one)? It turns out, that the latter is more likely to invoke thinking and action. However, given that this play fails to produce alternative perspectives on the Congo, instead flipping the script on white characters and their role in the Congo, the use of stereotypes are wasted. We are left with little more than a piece of poverty porn, wherein stereotypes of the Congo, its suffering, its violence, and the sexualized and violent African, are reified.

This vision of the Democratic Republic of Congo just isn’t true. Every day, people exist, survive and sometimes thrive in that country. And, a host of local organizations in the country are currently using art, theatre and other forms of media in an attempt to present a counter narrative to what is peddled by western media and international NGOs.

For example, Yole Africa (the art of empowering youth), a Goma-based organization uses the arts to provide a local narrative to challenges what is “known” about the Congo, presenting stories of everyday life, its joys, sacrifices and successes. Their Youtube series Art on the Front Lines, includes short films that focus on the stories of teachers, artists and children in Goma who work at using art to challenge the colonial legacies in their education system to “show the world that you can make something professional out of nothing,” as quoted by a local teacher. If given the chance, people from the DRC can tell you that they, like people all over this world, are more than just the product of things that happen to them. We are all more than the effects of war, of suffering and of violence. This as a counter narrative is what holds the real power for change. For if it can happen to them, what is to stop it from happening to us? This counter narrative, a reminder that our own happiness and safety is just as fragile as theirs, is far more likely to be the type of stimulus to inspire real cognitive reflection and change.

In the hands of the mainstream media, stories of the DRC will not seek to uplift or challenge our thinking. In the hands of mainstream media, the Congo remains the heart of darkness, because there is no reward in claiming otherwise. However, the days are long behind us when the “poor and suffering” must rely on the voice of an outsider to speak on their behalf. If the play must be the thing, then perhaps the people behind productions like this one should step out of the way, and leave it to the Congolese to tell their own stories.

Beyond the International Criminal Court

via ICC Flickr

In the past week, three African states (South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia) have announced their withdrawals from the International Criminal Court. Amnesty International describes these withdrawals as a “march away from justice,” and “drastic blow to countless victims globally.” Rather than simply decrying these decisions, perhaps it is time to think more carefully about what we mean by “justice,” and about the utility of the ICC as a tool to achieve it.

Critics have accused the Court of pursuing only the weakest players in the geopolitical spectrum, in part the consequence of the most powerful refusing to join. Relatedly, they point to the power politics at play in ongoing cases that raise doubts about its supposed impartiality and independence.

Less discussed are the challenges and contradictions raised by the Court’s lack of enforcement powers: namely, who it relies upon to apprehend suspects, and what accountability mechanisms, if any, are in place to prevent further bloodshed in the name of enforcing “justice.”

From the protection of victims and witnesses to the apprehension of suspects, the ICC’s operational reliance on powerful states ensures that individuals from those states will largely escape scrutiny, and that the Court’s decisions are often far removed from the very people it was designed to protect.

Perhaps the most dangerous implication of this dependency on “cooperating” states is the potential for manipulation in the service of entirely different projects. Some analysts draw a parallel between the ICC and the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine, noting that while both projects claim to challenge impunity in the name of peace and justice, the reliance on powerful states to implement their agendas can turn victims into proxies for military intervention. The kind of justice that the ICC is in the business of “delivering” is therefore also in question.

The Court’s cases in Uganda, Sudan, and Kenya have variously encountered these challenges and criticisms. The complexity of each case warrants scrutiny, and demands attention not only to the ICC’s relationship to structures of power but also to those of the individuals it seeks to hold accountable, many of whom may use their positions of power to escape trial.

A 2010 Wikileaks file revealed the former ICC Prosecutor’s proclivity to use geo-politics to his advantage: in an effort to win China’s support for the case against Omar Al Bashir, Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo suggested that the Americans reassure China that its access to oil would not be jeopardized if Bashir were “removed” from power.

Ultimately, the Prosecutor seemed more concerned with serving the interests of external players than with the Sudanese themselves, as many accused him of disregarding the indictment’s potential impact on domestic and regional peace-making efforts.

Is “justice” as defined by the ICC ultimately a source of meaningful redress? Does it sufficiently shed light on the broader structures of political and economic oppression?

The ICC and its more prominent supporters, much like proponents of the “responsibility to protect,” generally lead us to believe that the Court is the answer to impunity, as though the law were divorced from politics, and as though “peace” and “justice” can simply be delivered at the push of a button.

Yet the ICC is an institution located within a larger architecture of power that endows some crimes and some victims with legitimacy, and not others. At the same time, its “responsibility to punish” is subject to political manipulation that allows for further exception and impunity, as observed in the case of the Security Council referral on Libya.

The extent to which the Court is, or ever can be, a counter-hegemonic justice project therefore requires careful consideration — demanding questions rather than answers. Rather than presume to know about the priorities of “victims,”  perhaps it is time to engage with activists on the African continent and beyond about the possibilities and limitations of the ICC to contribute to our collective struggles, and to grapple critically with how we conceive of justice itself.

Botswana at 50: African miracle or African mirage?

President Ian Khama during the 35th SADC Summit held in Gaborone, Botswana. Image Credit: GCIS via Flickr.

At the end of last month, Botswana celebrated the 50th anniversary of its political independence from British colonialism. Long celebrated by outside observers as the “African Miracle” or “African success story” for its steady economic growth and seeming political stability, more recently that designation is being called into question.

At independence in 1966, Botswana was a severely impoverished territory, surrounded by hostile and racist white minority regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and South West Africa (now Namibia). Botswana was steadfast and vocal in condemning these regimes and provided moral support and refuge to liberation struggle groups, such as the African National Congress of South Africa, even though it was heavily dependent on South Africa economically and for infrastructure.

The country is arid with a physical landscape dominated by the Kgalagadi Desert to the west and the famed Okavango Delta to the northwest. At independence, subsistence agriculture was the main economic activity with cattle keeping being particularly significant to the economy of the country. Diamond mining started in the 1970s and 1980s, and this brought significant revenue to government coffers. The result was the fastest growing economy in the world for the last three decades of the 20th century.

Impressive economic growth enabled the government to provide social amenities, such as health, education, roads and water among others throughout the country. The provision of social services has been heavily subsidized by the state in order to be affordable to the population and in some instances these have been provided free of charge. For instance, Botswana’s small population, which today stands at just above 2 million people, was a little more than a decade ago being decimated by an HIV epidemic. The government moved quickly to provide free antiretrovirals and medical care to people living with HIV/AIDS.

The government has also provided grants and subsidies to the arable farming communities in a bid to boast agricultural production, and to diversify the economy and decrease dependence on diamond mining. Unfortunately, arable farming has seen significant decline despite government efforts.

Despite the impressive economic growth mentioned above, significant numbers of people in Botswana still live in abject poverty. Economic disparities are also reported to be among the worst globally. The economy has not grown in line with the population, hence large numbers of young people, among whom are university or tertiary education graduates, remain unemployed.

Botswana has been a liberal or multi-party democracy since independence – it has held elections every five years and has seen four peaceful presidential transitions – even though only one political party, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), has ever held power. Nevertheless, Botswana has consistently been judged the least corrupt country in Africa by Transparency International.

However, for a number of years now, some sections of the population and independent scholars have been voicing concerns about what is seen as the militarization of the public service. Government has also been accused of engaging in grave erosion of civil liberties and authoritarian tendencies. A significant development was the split in the ruling party BDP in 2010, and formation of a new opposition party, the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD), by defectors. The defectors argued that internal party democracy had been replaced by autocracy and favoritism in the BDP.

Corruption and rent-seeking in government are also said to be on the rise, with the perpetrators believed to be getting away with it if they are connected to or a part of the ruling elite. These concerns saw the country experience the most competitive election ever in 2014, with opposition parties registering an impressive 52% of the popular vote while the ruling party trailed at 46.7%. The latter managed to hold onto power and President Ian Khama (the son of the founding president, Seretse Khama), in power since 2008, was elected to a second term by the country’s BDP dominated parliament (despite losing the popular vote the BDP still dominated parliament because of the country’s first past the post electoral system).

The Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), which is made of up Botswana National Front (BNF), BMD and Botswana Peoples Party (BPP) got 32% of the popular vote, while the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) received 20%. It is highly likely that had the BCP been part of the UDC the opposition may have defeated the BDP. Indications are that the BCP could be part of the UDC for the 2019 elections, which may lead to the first change of government in Botswana.

The BDP has been described as center-right and BNF and BCP as center-left or social democratic. But these labels do not mean much. People or voters are more concerned with service delivery and employment creation than the political orientation of the parties. Young people constitute some 40% of the country’s population and an important voting sector. Ideology means little to them as they worry about lack of economic opportunities and employment.

Furthermore, Botswana remains one of the countries in Africa and the world with the fewest women in parliament, despite an abundance of qualified and available talent.

A new narrative is growing louder, with critics arguing that compared to hugely successful economies, such as Singapore, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, which were underdeveloped economies 50 years ago, Botswana is lagging behind. The quality of democracy in Botswana is also said to be in decline, with newer democracies in southern Africa, such as South Africa and Namibia, said to be stronger.

The point of no return in Ethiopia

Screen grab of of Irreechaa protest video published by Jawar Mohammed via France24.

Hundreds of Ethiopians have been killed by their government this year. Hundreds. You might not have known because casualty numbers have been played down; “evil forces” and accidents are blamed rather than the soldiers that fired the bullets; we are even deprived of the ability to fully grasp the situation because journalists are not allowed to report on it and the Internet is periodically shut down by the government. (In fact, last week Ethiopia finally admitted to the deaths of more than 500 anti-government protestors. Protesters insist that more people have died.) Whatever we make of the government’s prevarication, the Irreechaa Massacre that took place at the beginning of this month was a point of no return.

Irreechaa is a sacred holiday celebrated by the Oromo people, when several thousands gather annually at the banks of Lake Hora Arasadi in the town of Bishoftu to give thanks. At this year’s Irreechaa celebration, a peaceful protest broke out after government officials tried to control who was allowed to speak at the large gathering. What happened next is unpardonable.

Video footage shows government forces shooting tear gas and live ammunition into the crowd. Panic erupts. Women, children and men who had come to celebrate flee for safety but many are trampled on, drown and fall to their deaths. The government claims only 55 were killed in the incident. Non-governmental sources, however, put that figure at over 300. Mainstream media has conveniently portrayed the cause of the tragedy as a stampede yet simple logic refutes this. “When you fire on a crowd of 3 million close to a cliff and adjacent to a lake, causing mayhem, that is not a stampede. It is a massacre,” says Dr. Awol Allo, a law lecturer at Keele University in the United Kingdom.

Frustrations and grievances in Ethiopia have been growing for years. In 2014, protests began over the Master Plan to expand the capital Addis Ababa into Oromia Region. This was just the spark. Though the Master Plan has been abandoned for now, thousands of people across Oromia and more recently Amhara regions have continued to protest against the government. Their demands are fairly basic: human rights, an end to authoritarian rule, equal treatment of all ethnic groups, and restoration of ancestral lands that have been snatched and sold oftentimes under the guise of development.

The government’s brutal response has only added fuel to the fire. Irreechaa is the most recent example of this. Within days of the massacre a wave of anti-government protests erupted across the country, mostly in the Oromia Region. People are coming out in larger and larger numbers. Fear is dissipating and giving way to determination. Many activists believe it is too late for reconciliation — that “the opportunity for dialogue was closed with Ireechaa”.

No one is to blame for this but the government itself. The EPRDF government in Ethiopia has been tragically recalcitrant and short-sighted in dealing with the legitimate concerns of its citizens. Externally it has touted its success in maintaining stability and spurring double digit economic growth rates as a source of legitimacy, while internally it shoved itself into the seat of power by eradicating any form of real opposition. But anyone who has been to Ethiopia knows precisely well that the image of “Africa’s rising star” is only a façade, which tries to cover up deep rooted social and economic inequalities, abject poverty and human suffering, ethnic patronage and corruption, and a weak economy that is overly reliant on foreign investment. In short, the political, economic and social situation in Ethiopia today is not, by any stretch of the imagination, stable, despite what the EPRDF’s self-interested allies like the United States would like to believe.

Over the years, various groups that have tried many ways to peacefully seek change in Ethiopia. In 2005, opposition groups tried to compete in elections. When they almost won, they were arrested and exiled. In 2012 Muslims across the country peacefully demonstrated for more liberties and autonomy. As their movement gained momentum, many of their leaders were labeled as terrorists and sent to prison. In 2014, Oromos began to protest against the government’s ill-conceived Master Plan and are now paying the price. Throughout this period, countless activists, journalists and students have been arrested, numerous independent media outlets have been shut down, and the space for civil society groups has shrunk almost to the point of nonexistence.

The great Frantz Fanon explained that, “we revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.”  In Ethiopia, the government’s actions have left many people with no other option but to fight. It is a country that has experienced much civil violence in the past, and is reluctant to return to it. However, the people’s patience is limited. Already, protestors are beginning to take more desperate measures. Some have torched foreign companies to send a message to the government and its foreign investors that their concerns and frustrations can no longer be brushed aside. From Eritrea, Dr. Berhanu Nega — who once ran as part of an opposition party in the 2005 elections — is preparing for a full-fledged guerilla war.

At this point the EPRDF only has two options: cut its losses, gradually cede power and make way for meaningful elections or dig its boots deeper into the ground, like a stubborn child, and hold out for as long as it can. The consequences of the second option will be more bloodshed and in the end a much greater fall for the regime. History has shown that when Ethiopians have had enough, they have overthrown even an imperial monarchy dating back centuries. The old Ethiopian proverb should be a warning: “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.”