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ANYONE EXCEPT ME


Teju Cole wrote about a concept called ‘The White-Savior Industrial Complex’. In his article published in the Atlantic, he highlights the ‘heroism’ that draws Americans to ‘make a difference’ in the lives of those in the African continent and further goes on to criticise the unidirectional approach that these heroes take. He mentions the ‘principle of first do no harm’ and ‘the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them’ (Cole, 2012). It is a piece worth reading, and perhaps there is a matter that Africans need to address amongst themselves that can be inferred from the piece.

We have become comfortable doing the very least and feeling good about it. The urban learned people have over the years become a ‘naming’ and ‘shaming’ self-directed camp where wrongs are highlighted and criticised with minimal to no follow-up. Increasingly people are categorised as either good or bad, thus their actions are not interrogated for the intention or circumstance. Eliot Aronson wrote about “ ‘the halo effect’ which is a general bias in which a favourable or unfavourable impression of a person biases future expectations and inferences about that person”. Thus, a person is bad because we expect them to be bad or vice versa.

This simplistic view has led to the increased desire to be ‘clean’ in the public eye and that demands a sense of appearing to be working even though an institution or person is not actually performing the task, and ends up getting away with it. This follows a cycle- a person is ‘found’ to have done something wrong in the public’s eye, somebody posts about it and it is shared widely on WhatsApp/Twirra or other social site, there is public outrage and the person comes out to apologise and something to the tunes of ‘we will investigate’ is said. The people calm down and wait until the next ‘evil’ has been committed and the cycle repeats itself.

Now what this does is that it lessens the load on the individual to critically look at issues. It puts this task on a few who then become the custodians of who is being shamed or praised and for what reasons. It also means that there is rarely ever a move to action to deal with a problem that society faces. It was Otto Von Bismarck who said that ‘when a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn’t the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice’. So, there are many people who are angry about something but largely unwilling to go beyond retweeting, commenting and occasionally contributing money towards it.

In the long run the people become numb to issues, because they become every day issues that the person is tired of clicking on, some become more individualistic and others go out of their way to act like it does not affect them. This allows more room for perpetrators who are not held accountable and the people become frustrated about the same and further lose hope. Then we stop acknowledging the issues altogether, we stop talking about it and stop actively seeking a means to end the crises, this is sometimes referred to as ‘self-censorship’. The problem becomes ingrained and an ‘eventuality that cannot be avoided’. And it is genius because it was the same thing that happened to the African during colonisation, which shifted the compass to the victim and justified the imperialist colonisers’ actions. And was again seen when the African started using ‘Shithole’ to describe himself, bouncing off on the comment made by the president of the USA.

There has been an increase of ‘solution bearers’ who come in, often without consulting the people, and start churning their ideas of what they think ought to be done. Humility asks one not to assume that they know what the people want. One must ask. There are steps the African needs to take, but how can he do this if he believes it is someone else who ought to act, either donors, or the government or ‘anyone except me’?

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