Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 603

The news about Zimbabwe

*Guest post by Mikko Kapanen.

Land reform and Zimbabwe; say those words in any order and you get a reaction. It obviously was a failed and atrocious attempt of a corrupt leader who bribes people to vote for him and then still lies about the result just to be popular amongst his people. Obviously. Well, obviously at least if you have been following the story through almost any media with the exception of New African magazine – I honestly cannot think of another exception that I'd know of. According to this news narrative that unsurprisingly enjoys unquestioned consensus in the western press, the agricultural sector of Zimbabwe collapsed and violence coloured the previously white farms first red and then black as the ownership landed neatly in the hands of Mugabe's political cronies. Right?

Wrong. A group of researchers mainly from Zimbabwe has conducted a fascinating study* which focuses on the Masvingo Province in the southern part of the country, but reflects the circumstances on a much broader national level. Based on their on-the-ground research they found out – and I am not going to get too much into details since the findings are available in the booklet that I have (and in the book, which I haven't read) – that many of these myths are just that. Myths.

Admittedly, agricultural production has struggled in many ways and since the land reform certain crops such as wheat, coffee, tea and tobacco have not reached the same production standard as before. That is the kind of stuff we know because the media – even if not so much recently – went on and on about how terribly things have been going. What was forgotten was that the production of certain other crops such as small grains, edible dry beans and cotton have been increasing. The production of dry beans is actually up 282% since reform.

Production is also much more diverse than what it was with new ideas and new products introduced. And while political corruption did exist, and still does, in the form of inside golden handshakes and the so-called cronies owning the land, the truth isn't quite as simple with regards to that either. Out of the people who own any of the redistributed land only less than five per cent fall into that category. Mostly the new owners are a diverse group of people of all ages, some former farm workers and others from the cities. They invest in the land and farms so much so that the research team had calculated the full amount of investment for the country being US$91 million since 2000, which is quite a bit for a financially struggling country.

The main points – at least some of them – are that Zimbabwean agriculture is in transformation. The old didn't continue in the new, but structures are changing and considering the short time period of a mere decade as well as largely absent state or NGO funding, the successes, where they have been, are remarkable and can be attributed to a few things, but mainly hard work and a certain amount of creativity. I really recommend you to read the booklet as it is very interesting. The ultimate condensing of its message is that not that it's all good, but it's not all bad either; it's complex, but there's a lot of potential and promise.

The reason why I am particularly interested in all this is the fact that I spent some time in the country soon after the main wave of reforms and farm takeovers, when according to the news white people were being killed in the country as a rule. Of course that was a lie – much of the news is very one sided anyway – but since agriculture or land reform aren't something I know all that much about, I wanted to expand the idea to a few things I am able to speculate on. I also want, at this point, to emphasise that I am neither celebrating the current political structure of Zimbabwe nor trying to tell how the future should go. I am not a specialist and even if I was I'd have the decency to shut my mouth about it. I am, however, interested in the reaction of the so-called western media. So based on these findings, why is it that the news stories from Zimbabwe were, and still are whenever occasionally they are published, so misleading?

First we need to understand that the now heavily demonised President Mugabe is one of the world leaders who chose not to be a western puppet. He hasn't been taking orders from the north and he has been very vocal about it. I am not saying that he is a great leader – I believe he definitely was a great leader and one of the heroes of the independent Zimbabwe, who got somewhat sidelined and forgot to share the power, but his biggest sins, in this context at least, are not the ones he has committed against his people – especially the ones in the urban areas – but the ones where white people have been at the receiving end; the farmers and the western leaders, the BBC journalists and NGOs.

To mess with those people is to lose a PR war. No matter what the actual outcomes of your actions and policies are, you are ranked lower than Nazis on the morality chart of western norms. If there's one thing we white people are, we are sore losers. And I don't say this to generalise individuals, only to describe our mostly racist structures of power and communication. You are free to disagree, but what has been normalised in the past centuries runs deep. And deep down there it informs our school books, media and through that, our world view thus being kind of invisible, because it is what we are so used to see and because it doesn't really inconvenience us, we simply don't pay attention to it.

The news about Africa – to a large degree – are informed by development aid providing NGOs, suggests Karen Rothmyer in her Harvard University discussion paper They Wanted Journalists to Say 'Wow': How NGOs Affect U.S. Media Coverage of Africa (2011). A similar idea is also explored in C.P. Eze's brilliant book Don't Africa Me (2008). The fact is that there is a whole industry of western aid that employs thousands of Europeans, Americans, Australians and people from many other countries. These NGOs rely to a large extent on outside funding and in order for them to receive that funding they have to prove that the need is huge. In order for Bono and Bob Geldof (who rely on this less financially) to raise funds for an urgent need with famine or so, they must basically paint as terrible a picture as possible for us to give as much money as possible. While some great things might be achieved, some other terrible things come as a result. This goes to your red nose days and all. So the reason I have digressed a bit, is that what has happened in Zimbabwe has happened outside of that structure; there haven't been any gap-year Dutch teens patronising locals because they receive a bit of money and an experience of a lifetime to do so.

There haven't been that many older professional aid workers either, but local people have come together. That goes against the aid narrative according to which such aid is needed that only predominantly white Europeans and Americans can oversee it or else the corrupt and uneducated locals will make a mess of it.

Finally, the last of my speculations is that Zimbabwean land reform comes too close to something that is non-negotiable: South African land reform. In order to keep away from any meaningful debate around the land issue in South Africa, Zimbabwe has had to look like a failure. It has had to look not only like a bad idea, but also as an evil idea. It can't be only a question of agriculture and economics, but it needs to be a question of human rights, and mainly, the rights of the white humans at that. The long knives are terrorising the nightmares of the white farmers so subsequently they will also dominate the news dystopia.

I am sure there are other reasons as well and the matter is complex. The summary of the whole thing, in the real world, is that it's not that it's all good, but it's not all bad either. Like my undergraduate Professor always told me – It's complicated. The news, as opposed to the reality on the ground, thinks that it's simple, but my argument is that they are simply wrong.

Some recommended reading:

1. Download the booklet: Zimbabwe's Land Reform: A Summary of Findings

2. Download the discussion paper: They Wanted 3. Journalists to Say 'Wow': How NGOs Affect U.S. Media Coverage of Africa

3. Video series: Zimbabwe's land reform: Voices from the field – Parts 1- 8

4. Ian Scoones et al. (2010) Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities. James Currey.

* Mikko (@mikmikko) blogs at Welfare State of Mind.

[image error] [image error] [image error]

The Myth and Reality of Paul Kagame

The full video of the Open Society Institute in Manhattan's panel discussion on contemporary Rwanda is now up. Its a little more than one and a half hours in length and worth watching. The panel consisted of academics and journalists Howard French and Stephen Smith, the former Kagame confidante Theogene Rudasingwa, and, finally, Rona Peligal, deputy director of the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. Peligal acted as moderator. The themes that run through the presentation are: conversations about Rwanda are driven by two impulses (guilt and fear); the continuities between Kagame and predecessor regimes in Rwanda;  Kagame runs "a transformative authoritarian regime" (in Smith's words); and that ethnicity is at the heart of state politics as well as that of exile. The panelists conceded that Kagame can take credit for rebuilding Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, but some noted that  "Rwanda has always been a well organized country."

Check out the outburst near the end of the panel by Tim Gallimore, former spokesperson for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He was listed as "a  discussant." Gallimore, who is also a consultant to the Rwandan government, accuses the panel of "a double standard" when it comes to Kagame and that the debate was "laced with poisonous rhetorical questions" and "unsubstantiated charges."

[image error]

Vivienne Westwood in Kibera

Vivienne Westwood is hawking a new line of clothing, handbags, and shoes in her "Ethical Africa Fashion Collection". Vivienne's attempt to remain relevant by connecting her designs with charity is an old, if problematic trend – remember Gap and the "Red" campaign, with Christy Turlington et al, posing in sweatshop clothes intended to donate profits to AIDS charities? The hugely frontloaded campaign, on which up to $100 million was spent on marketing (Gap alone spent $7.8 million of its $58 million outlay on Red during 2006's fourth quarter, according to Nielsen Media Research's Nielsen Adviews), may have only raised "$18 million" by 2007 (see Advertising Age).

In any case, launching fancy clothes at this time of the year is nothing new: it's fall, and it's one of the two seasons of the year during which designers offer variations (usually on the same tired themes) to luxury-goods buyers and the wanna-be-seen crowd. And in these lean years, it is luxury goods that keep on being profitable: the world's multi-millionaires and billionaires are careful to display and one-up than ever, using their (and their wives, daughters, and mistress' bodies) as corkboards on which to hang the proof of their enduring net worth and untouchability. Other poor sods lose house and job to fluctuations in the market, and manufacturers of goods intended for the middle class struggled to remain profitable; but when Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's designer brand The Row debuted their crocodile skin bags, including a glazed black backpack that starts at $39,000, at Barneys – only to see it fly off the shelves by pre-order, much like salt, sugar, cooking oil, and rice did during the leaner years of Kaunda's rule in Zambia.

But Westwood's clothing look sloppily designed (and not because they are cut to look artfully slouchy) and … dare I say it … dirty. True: when they are not attending galas where Bono is making a spectacle of himself, Fashionistas with 40 big ones to spend on a bag like to be transported to Africa. Westwood is simply joining a long tradition, where the luxury goods-buyer's desire to be seen as 'doing good' for the 99% (especially the bulk end of the 99%), is connected to consumption. So one can continue to purchase (and thus exercise the power that separates one from those who have little agency in this world order), while feeling less of a responsibility to face the intrinsic, structural inequalities that maintain this order. But will this rare species feel an urge to wear any of Westwood's horrible assemblage?

The bags in this collection are handmade in Nairobi, and made using recycled materials by "marginalized communities of women" in support of International Trade Center Ethical fashion Program of the United Nations. But what that means in terms of profit sharing, we don't know. Most likely, there's no profit sharing – just a good feeling from paying a tiny fraction of the mega-margin of profit to the "marginalized women".

In the photoshoot to 'celebrate' her ethical line, she plonks a series of female models (Elsie Njeri, Ajana, and Sonnietta Thomas) – and a very pale, bug-eyed man in a series of highwater trousers that make him look even more like he just escaped from rehab – in the 'informal settlements' of Kibera. (The Fashion Notebook has a full set.)  The results are predictable: the models – via signals of health, height, beauty, and of course, the outrage of costumery – look alien. Their difference is beamed out to the potential buyer. So not to worry, ethical fashion consumer: you won't be mistaken for an African slum dweller, though you port costuming put together by them, and though the clothing does look a bit sloppy.

Plonking herself down in the dust selling her wares, or faux-carrying a plastic water bucket of water in Kibera (in carefully posed shots), Vivienne doesn't question the questionability of her presence there. In these photographs, it is the residents of Kibera who look alienated in their own home landscape.

[image error]

Africa Unsigned

Africa Unsigned, an Amsterdam-based website uses crowd-funding–a method which allow people to pool their money online–to raise money for African and Africa diaspora musicians that you cannot  be found inrecord stores, commercial radio or local versions of MTV. Here's a link to a report by Voice of America producer Ricci Shryock with Rina Mushonga, a Dutch-Zimbabwean singer, and Pim Betist, the site's founder. Most of the site's visitors are from Europe and America, but now Africa Unsigned is targeting the continent. They're targeting mobile phone users. Kenya is the first target.

* While you're at it check out Ricci's photography.

[image error] [image error]

'New music for new politics'

[image error]

The "authentic" label notwithstanding, a new report by Banning Eyre (of Afropop) reporting for NPR from Egypt, is worth the listen:

The country is looking for new music to go with its new politics. The problem is nobody seems to agree on what that might sound like, but plenty will tell you that today's popular music is stale.

Eyre spent a month there. He also reports that you'll find the new music not on the radio or TV, but at street weddings, on "the streets of Cairo's poorest districts" and occasionally on hip hop albums, with "no help from authorities or institutions."

If the music gets recorded at all, it goes on homemade CDs or the Internet. The common thread that ties them all together is a strong Egyptian identity, and a rejection of the tired love themes that pervade mainstream Egyptian pop.

This month Afropop airs a series of programs looking at Egypt through the eyes of musicians.

Listen here.

Photo Credit: Suren Pillay.

[image error]

Music Break / Sylvester & Ssavoo

The video for Kampala rappers Sylvester & Ssavoo's "Akaseera" comes with a laid back groove. I am still celebrating Ugandan independence.

Via Silkamb.

Jeffrey Gettleman in Somalia

By Abdourahman Waberi*

Jeffrey Gettleman will not run the risk of being seen as 'a nobody, a cockroach, a gangster,' unlike the Somali pirates he depicted in the columns of the New York Times Magazine last weekend (« Taken by Pirates », Oct 5, 2011). In that particular piece of reportage, a totally asymmetric treatment is set from the beginning and accepted as an indisputable truth. The Chandlers, a British couple taken hostage by a group of 'scruffy' Somali pirates, are the real people the journalist is concerned about. But in the process,  we  the readers are, in our turn, taken  hostage by the journalist's asymmetric  vision.

We know from the very first lines that he is the omniscient eye and ear of the most powerful newspaper in the West and that he is reporting from the worst places on this earth. The fact of being there constitutes a badge of honour and a privilege he will not easily give up. Thanks to people like Jeffrey Gettleman, who continually shed their own kind of light on the tragedies and injustices in the Horn of Africa, my native region is routinely misrepresented. And the world has grown tired of the Somali story; Brave Jeffrey has not. He deserves my admiration. Better, I should thank him immensely for his courage and his dedication and praise his sense of observation. Even when the latter is more often than not approximate, if not fuzzy : « 'It wasn't really a pretty night', Rachel Chandler recalled… There was no moon, and the stars were shrouded by clouds… Within seconds, eight scruffy Somali men hoisted themselves aboard'.

Jeffrey Gettleman seems to be a failed novelist (mentors' list may include Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene). Having read and re-read his piece, I am tempted to give him some old-fashioned advice : 'Shoemaker, stick to thy last… Better do supremely well one thing than many badly!'.

* The piece was accompanied by this set of illustrations.  This is Abdourahman Waberi's second post for AIAC.

[image error]

Fanti Love Song

… To New York City? By Ghanaian crooner M3NSA off his new album.

'Emerging' Photographers

Paris Photo will celebrate its 15th anniversary at the Grand Palais this year. With a "Place of honour for Africa (…) From Bamako to Cape Town."  This focus on Africa follows focuses on "Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, the Nordic Countries, Italy, Japan, the Middle East and central Europe."

Les Rencontres de Bamako exhibits the work of Abdoulaye Barry (Chad), Mohamed Camara (that's a photo from his Souvenirs series above), Fatoumata Diabate (Mali), Husain and Hasan Essop and Zanele Muholi (South Africa), Uche Okpa-Iroha (Nigeria), Jehad Nga (Kenya/Libya), Nyani Quarmyne (Ghana), Arturo Bibang (Equatorial Guinea), Baudouin Mouanda (Congo-Brazzaville), Nyaba Ouedraogo and Nestor Da (Burkina Faso). Because there's only so many African photographers to choose from these days all of them seemingly caught in a perpetual state of "emergence" –even if they've been around for years.

Les Rencontres de Bamako runs from 1 November 2011 to 1 January 2012.

10 songs about Marcus Garvey

Roots reggae singer Fred Locks count downs the top 10 songs about Marcus Garvey (including his own "Black Star Liners") from Port Royal, Jamaica for the revamped Large Up. The former blog, with its focus on Caribbean culture, is now a "lifestyle portal."