Named after the enormous Congo River and the large ethnic group living at its mouth, the Kongo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo first had its borders drawn at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. During this conference, Africa was arbitrarily divided in ways that benefitted the European colonial powers, with no regard for existing tribal systems and linguistic groups. In some instances, these new borders separated families, while other people without previous contact suddenly became part of one nation. Many of Congo’s leaders have favored certain ethnic groups and areas over others, exacerbating differences between ethnic groups. The future of the Congo depends upon average citizens transcending the political rhetoric of hatred and uniting within an African-style democracy.
Out of Africa, Part II
Tell these young African men that their odds of getting to Europe are tiny and they will tell you, as one did me, that when you don’t have enough money to buy even an aspirin for your sick mother, you don’t calculate the odds. You just go.
.. After a series of on/off droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, the weather patterns stabilized a bit, “until about 10 years ago,” the chief added. Then, the weather got really weird.
The rainy season used to always begin in June and run to October. Now the first rains might not start until August, then they stop for a while, leaving fields to dry out, and then they begin again. But they come back as torrential downpours that create floods. “So whatever you plant, the crops get spoiled,” the chief said. “You reap no profits.”
.. The father started to tear up. These people live so close to the edge. One reason they have so many children is that the offspring are a safety net for aging parents. But the boys are all leaving and the edge is getting even closer.
.. Which means they are losing the only thing they were rich in: a deep sense of community.
.. Lake Chad alone has lost 90 percent of its water
.. Gardens or walls? It’s really not a choice. We have to help them fix their gardens because no walls will keep them home.
How not to talk about African fiction
The history of modern African fiction is essentially 100 years of branding disaster. In marketing African fiction, the conventional practice among publishers both in Africa and the west has been to simply tag a novel to a social issue. “Such and such a novel explores colonialism.” Done. “So and so offers a searing representation of the scourge of misogyny.” Done. “Corruption takes center stage in so and so’s novel.” Done.
African fiction is packaged and circulated, bought and sold not on the basis of its aesthetic value but of its thematic preoccupation.
.. Here are the opening sentences of the Amazon blurb of Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.
A postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in twenty-first-century fiction, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending, philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. In this groundbreaking novel, an influential favorite among a new generation of writers, Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.
Compare this to the only opening sentence of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.
A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
.. To reduce all the flirty, humorous beauty of Adichie’s novel to “a tender story about race” is just wrong and borderline patronizing. But it also demonstrates the inherent bias in the way readers are invited to encounter African novels.
..‘I’m wary of “getting tagged”’: author Helen Oyeyemi
Africa as a Teaching Tool on Austerity and Structural Change
As with Africa a few decades ago, Greece’s creditors continue to reject a long-term solution, and seem intent on humiliation, teaching a wayward country a lesson.
The rhetoric of those involved is shocking. A few weeks back, the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, called for dialogue with adults in the room.
African negotiators will recall how they were humiliated and demeaned by the international institutions who rejected pleas for a more balanced approach. They will have much sympathy with the Greeks today.
.. The document is much more Keynes than Friedman, and focuses on long-term sustainable development, not short, sharp shock treatment according to ideological disciplining and subjugation.