Afro-pessimists are fuelling our image crisis

Western media have published images of black people to illustrate the gravity of the monkeypox outbreak, and many Africans are not amused.

There is deep displeasure with the use - or is it misuse - of photos to do with Africa on stories of a crisis that’s primarily of white Europeans and Americans. An association of journalists covering Africa for foreign media, in a stinging statement last week, called it ‘the perpetuation of a negative stereotype that assigns calamity to the African race and privilege or immunity to other races.’

Admittedly, I identify with the feelings of those offended. The misgivings seem a lot like the reactions that followed the decision by an Associated Press editor to crop the image of Ugandan teen climate activist Vanessa Nakate out of a photo she took with five white girls, including Swede climate champion Greta Thunberg.

And just when the Russia-Ukraine war started, there were grumbles after Africans were ill-treated as they sought to exit the country when it became clear their safety couldn’t be guaranteed. They were denied food, held at points of exit and blocked from boarding trains.

These incidents, however isolated, are a stark reminder of how systemic racism continues to define the world decades after slavery and slave trade ended. And there’s still the so-called neo-colonialism to contend with.

I have previously argued in this column that Africans in Africa and outside of it will continue suffering at the hands of richer and organised continents. It’s the unpalatable truth. Stereotypes against blacks have undergone a metamorphosis into a critical human rights issue. More and more, Africans and generally blacks are thought to be violent, lacking in self-drive, poor, dumb and opportunistic. There’s a long thorny road to true racial equality. Some scholars say racial equality is an unattainable ideal.

Sadly, though, racism always stalks blacks. As South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says, millions of descendants of Africans sold into slavery remain trapped in lives of underdevelopment, disadvantage, discrimination and poverty to date. It is awful.

But some of these ills we see today against Africa, in my view, are self-invited. How would you expect respect from people or countries you adore and worship at the expense of your value systems? Africans themselves have become afro-pessimists. How do you help people who least believe in themselves? People who can boldly trade their way out of poverty but still think their financial liberty must come from the west!

The cult-like following of the European soccer and our uneducated contempt for our own local games, for instance, defies understanding. In Kenya, watching EPL is seen a symbol of high social standing, similar to speaking good English. When we treat foreign countries as grander, we embolden them to disrespect us.    

There is no doubt most Africans crave life in the western world. You can tell this by high number of visa applications informed by the quest for better education, health and good life. Last year, 1,146 people died in six months while crossing the Mediterranean. Kenyan stowaways often discovered on planes risk their all to reach Europe.

Believing in ourselves is the first step to dismantling these injustices. We lack proper advocacy towards changing how we view ourselves and how we want the world to view us. We may be stranded at the lower social, political and economic pecking order.

But we must beat the lopsided handling of race issues by the world. Africa should be emergent, not dependent. We must work hard towards a better image bearing in mind that nothing improves a country or a continent’s image as discernible progress.

The writer is an editor at The Standard