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'The Economist' And That Little
Matter of Stereotyping
The Nation (Nairobi)
10 February 2008
Gitau Warigi
Nairobi
The Economist magazine likes to go for what is racy and stylish.
That's why it's so entertaining to read. It will avoid
inconvenient angles if they get boring. In its most recent issue
it had a cute little story comparing Kenya with Gaza.
"Both have too many people, or to be more exact, too many young
men without jobs or prospects," the magazine pontificated. Yet
even this exalted journal hesitated to say Kenya's "present
discontents" can be explained entirely through that.
Or by comparison with the Gaza Strip. It is interesting how so
many "experts" have suddenly sprouted everywhere to explain the
Kenyan tragedy. The average Palestinian may not take kindly to
seeing his
protracted struggle against the occupation of his homeland treated
in the same breeze as an electoral dispute in Africa that got
violent.
SIMILARLY, A TRAINEE WARLORD IN Eldoret brandishing a bow and
arrows would get puzzled to read his adventures juxtaposed with
the mortal battles of the Middle East where rocket propelled bombs
provoke laser guided missiles into retaliation.
I am always entertained by the simple stuff like I was reading in
a provincial American newspaper which gets by without too much
pretension or nuance. It is when the correspondents seek to get "complex"
and "historical" that their prose gets tortured and lost.
The simple stuff has a predictable backdrop to it, never mind that
it is often full of fiction. As with the newspaper I was reading
on the internet, the narrative is always about a well-to-do guy
and another
from the slums. For some reason the former is always said to be "associated
with the regime", or to be from Central Kenya.
The other, who is always fished out of some place like Kibera, is
more often than not made out to be from Nyanza. In one story the "rich"
guy was supposedly being interviewed while playing golf at the
Windsor Club and sipping some unnamed "iced" drink. I assumed
whatever that iced drink was must be damned expensive. As for the
other fellow, he got interviewed in a city slum appropriately
called Baghdad which I have never heard of.
Stereotypes have their uses, especially when you are in a rush to
explain a story quickly and simply. More so if you have to explain
such sagas to the homeland of George W. Bush, where things are
best kept crisp and brief. A dirty slum crowded with unemployed
youths is supposed to smell trouble, especially right now in
Kenya.
In future if the action shifts to cities like Sao Paulo, we will
find out that there are bigger slums there, which they call
favelas. We will also find out that Brazil, even more than Kenya,
has the unfortunate
distinction, if the UN Development Programme is to be believed, of
having the worst disparities of income anywhere in the world.
LAND, OF COURSE, HAS BEEN MADE to be the messiest issue in Africa
- and a convenient fallback also. We have seen it used to make a
once-promising country called Zimbabwe go bananas, economically.
The disparities we talk of are real, there as well as here. But
should others like South Africa have any reason to gloat? If the
Whites' share of arable land vis-a-vis that of Blacks in Zimbabwe
was scandalous, it is rarely mentioned that in South Africa the
imbalance is actually worse.
And that is only about land. I doubt it very much if the earthy
Jacob Zuma, who startled Thabo Mbeki by dancing his way into the
presidency of the African National Congress, shares membership in
the tony Johannesburg private club called Rand with a
recently-minted Black patrician like Cyril Ramaphosa.
Could be as The Economist claims we Kenyans - and Gazans are
breeding too fast such that the consequence is a "cohort" of young,
idle men.
And since they are "relatively" healthy and educated...."thanks to
foreign aid"...(alas!)...their joblessness, so we are told, is apt
to make them "pugnacious." Which is to mean they become a ready
band of warriors.
Let's pray Kofi Annan doesn't read The Economist for anything more
than its entertainment value.
* * * * * *
Talking of Mr Annan, there are no "buts" or "ifs" regarding the
necessity of his mediation to succeed. For the sake of this
country, it must. There are no two ways about it.
If indeed there was a major turning point for the better as
reported on Friday evening, that should come as the best news this
year.
There has been the usual local griping about foreign "meddling" by
Western countries and others closer home like Uganda. But what
this shows is that Kenya is too important regionally to be allowed
to disintegrate.
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