Silverlining Africa – From Images Of Doom And Gloom To Glimmers Of Hope

• by: Ton Dietz

1. Changing images of the Dark Continent

Inaugural address
At a recent African Studies Association conference in San Francisco, I presented a paper on the  findings of a research project that I was involved in over the last few years on Ghanaians in Amsterdam and their ‘good work back home’.[i]

The theme of the conference was ‘African Diaspora and Diasporas in Africa’ and our panel was entitled ‘Development from Abroad’. Panel members presented numerous success stories from many parts of the continent and the general reaction at the conference was one of surprise at the many positive stories coming out of Africa. One of the participants in my panel talked about ‘silverlining Africa’ – stories that challenge past images of doom and gloom.[ii]

Just before going to the US, I chaired a session at the annual meeting of the Netherlands-African Business Council in a beautiful conference centre in Wassenaar where close to two hundred Dutch entrepreneurs shared enthusiastic accounts of their activities in Africa. The overall impression was that Africa is taking off and is the newest group of emerging economies to be knocking on the door of the global market. There is a political and business confidence in Africa today that reminds older observers of the euphoria during Africa’s Independence Era fifty years ago. Africa is now the place to be and certainly not a place to avoid. The organizer of the event[iii]more or less suggested that Dutch entrepreneurs would be crazy not to invest in and trade with Africa. Discussing the changes in the current Dutch development landscape, there was an almost triumphant attitude among the participants: ‘now it is our turn to eat’.[iv] But they also tried to be honest and straightforward: the new business opportunities need to be used in socially responsible, fair and sustainable ways. For some, Africa may appear to be a place where quick and dirty money can be made. For most entrepreneurs, the idea is that there are major opportunities here but that these can only be harvested with long-term commitment and involvement.

A month earlier when I was in China giving a lecture, my hosts arranged for me to visit the EXPO grounds in Shanghai.[v] I was particularly interested in the way Africa presented itself there. With a few exceptions,[vi] the African countries were housed under one roof in a huge exotic building bustling with chaotic activity. The sensual African dances and the loud drumming attracted many Chinese visitors, who were amazed by so much public indecency. The African market stalls were popular although there were Chinese-language banners strictly warning customers not to buy illegal fare and English-language signs with warnings about not taking pictures. EXPO’s title was ‘Better City, Better Life’, but a Chinese advisor who had been involved in the early support for the African pavilion told me that the Africans were not very keen on sticking to the general theme. Many of the African pavilion organizers had instead decided to show rural Africa as a paradise for tourists and investors with traditional scenes of Africa’s exotic nature and people, and as a continent full of resources to exploit. It was amusing to see that the Chinese positioned Africa as ‘the hottest place under sunlight’, even suggesting that this was the origin of the name ‘Africa’.[vii]
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Zinn Education Project ~ Tackling The Headlines: Teaching Humanity And History

With each passing day, it’s becoming more apparent that Trump’s agenda can only be enacted if people are ignorant of the issues underlying his supposed solutions.

Having trouble finding and keeping work? – Build that wall.
Fearful of terrorist attacks? – Ban Muslims.
Want energy security and infrastructure development? – Build that pipeline.

The best antidote to Trump’s xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and fossil-fuel soaked future is critical thinking. Join the Zinn Education Project in helping students probe the roots of social problems and call into question the phony, simple-minded policy prescriptions of the Trump regime.
These are just a few of the resources we have at the Zinn Education Project to help students think deeply and creatively about the world we live in.
Use these resources with your students. Share them with your colleagues.

Support the Zinn Education Project

Immigration and Border Lines
U.S. Mexico War: “We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God”

Today’s border with Mexico is the product of invasion and war. Grasping some of the motives for that war and some of its immediate effects begins to provide students the kind of historical context that is crucial for thinking intelligently about the line that separates the United States and Mexico. It also gives students insights into the justifications for and costs of war today. Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow.

Go to: https://zinnedproject.org/teaching-humanity-history/

Other subjects:
-The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration
-Tackling Terrorism and Anti-Muslim Rhetoric. A People’s History of Muslims in the United States. What school textbooks and the media miss
-Whose “Terrorism”?
and more

ASCL Country Portal ~ Information About African Countries ~ News, Statistics, Maps, Images And More

The ASC country portal provides a list of free internet resources and other information on Africa. It was initially set up for the general public but those with greater in-depth knowledge of Africa will also find some of the resources valuable. The ASC country portal aims to present  information on each African country at a glance. The internet resources have been selected by staff at the African Studies Centre library.

Corrections and suggestions are very welcome. Please contact: asc@ascleiden.nl

Go to: http://countryportal.ascleiden.nl/

YouTube Channel African Studies Centre Leiden

The African Studies Centre Leiden is the only multidisciplinary academic knowledge institute in the Netherlands devoted entirely to the study of Africa. It has an extensive library that is open to the general public. The ASCL is an interfaculty institute of Leiden University. The institute is located in the Pieter de la Court Building of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Leiden, Netherlands.

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AfricanStudiesCentre

Published on May 19, 2015
Film about the workshop ‘Governance and Connections in Africa’s Contemporary Conflicts’ (19 March 2015) and public lecture ‘Globalised Conflict Situations – Nigeria’s Boko Haram in Perspective’ by Egosha E. Osaghae, Professor of Comparative Politics and Vice Chancellor of Igbinedion University, Okada, Nigeria (20 March 2015). Organized by the African Studies Centre in Leiden.

Exposing The Myths Of Neoliberal Capitalism: An Interview With Ha-Joon Chang

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

Professor of Economics Ha-Joon Chang. Photo: wikipedia

For the past 40 years or so, neoliberalism has reigned supreme over much of the western capitalist world, producing unparalleled wealth accumulation levels for a handful of individuals and global corporations while the rest of society has been asked to swallow austerity, stagnating incomes and a shrinking welfare state. But just when we all thought that the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism had reached their penultimate point, culminating in mass discontent and opposition to global neoliberalism, the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election brought to power a megalomaniac individual who subscribes to neoliberal capitalist economics while opposing much of its global dimension.

What exactly then is neoliberalism? What does it stand for? And what should we make of Donald Trump’s economic pronouncements? In this exclusive interview, world-renowned Cambridge University Professor of Economics Ha-Joon Chang responds to these urgent questions, emphasizing that despite Donald Trump’s advocacy of “infrastructure spending” and his opposition to “free trade” agreements, we should be deeply concerned about his economic policies, his embrace of neoliberalism and his fervent loyalty to the rich.

C. J. Polychroniou: For the past 40 or so years, the ideology and policies of “free-market” capitalism have reigned supreme in much of the advanced industrialized world. Yet, much of what passes as “free-market” capitalism are actually measures designed and promoted by the capitalist state on behalf of the dominant factions of capital. What other myths and lies about “actually existing capitalism” are worth pointing out?

Ha-Joon Chang: Gore Vidal, the American writer, once famously said that the American economic system is “free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.” I think this statement very well sums up what has passed for ‘free-market capitalism’ in the last few decades, especially but not only in the US. In the last few decades, the rich have been increasingly protected from the market forces, while the poor have been more and more exposed to them.

For the rich, the last few decades have been “heads I win, tails you lose.” Top managers, especially in the US, sign on pay packages that give them hundreds of millions of dollars for failing — and many times more for doing a decent job. Corporations are subsidised on a massive scale with few conditions — sometimes directly but often indirectly through government procurement programs (especially in defense) with inflated price tags and free technologies produced by government-funded research programs. After every financial crisis, ranging from the 1982 Chilean banking crisis through the Asian financial crisis of 1997 to the 2008 global financial crisis, banks have been bailed out with hundreds of trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and few top bankers have gone to prison. In the last decade, the asset-owning classes in the rich countries have also been kept afloat by historically low rates of interests.
In contrast, poor people have been increasingly subject to market forces.

In the name of increasing “labor market flexibility,” the poor have been increasingly deprived of their rights as workers. This trend has reached a new level with the emergence of the so-called “gig economy,” in which workers are bogusly hired as “self-employed” (without the control over their work that the truly self-employed exercise) and deprived of even the most basic rights (e.g., sick leave, paid holiday). With their rights weakened, the workers have to engage in a race to the bottom in which they compete by accepting increasingly lower wages and increasingly poor working conditions.
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Where Global Contradictions Are Sharpest ~ Research Stories From The Kalahari ~ Contents

• by: Keyan Tomaselli

The ‘Bushmen’ or ‘San’ of the Kalahari could well be called an iconographic people. Partly as a result of this, over the years abundant social research has been carried out among the San. Keyan Tomaselli and his research team from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa form part of that tradition; however, in this book Tomaselli is also able to reflect critically, and not without a touch of irony, on the way the San have been represented over the years. Hardly ever has there been a researcher who so uncompromisingly and aptly illustrates the many ethical contradictions in doing fieldwork among the San, and at the same time manages to reconstruct and represent the actual fieldwork experience and the San people so vividly that you almost taste the dust of the Kalahari and smell the raucous world that is depicted.

Note on the Author
Keyan G. Tomaselli is Professor in Culture, Communication and Media Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. He is a Fellow of the University and serves on the advisory board of !Kwa ttu – The San Cultural and Educational Centre. He is Old World book review editor of Visual Anthropology, and has published on visual anthropology in this and other publications such as Appropriating images: The semiotics of visual representation (Intervention Press, 1999). Other journals in which Tomaselli has published include: Visual Studies, Cultural Studies, Journal of Film and Video, Research in African Literatures, etc. He is published in translation in Italian, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Arabic, amongst others. Tomaselli is editor-in-chief of Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies.

Contents
Acknowledgements, Acronyms, A Note on Pronunciation
Starting Off – Different people, different communities – Specifically, what are we doing?
Chapter 1. Negotiating Research with First Peoples
Chapter 2. Reverse Cultural Studies: Field Methods, Power Relations and 4X4s … 
Chapter 3. ‘Dit is die Here se Asem’: The Wind, its Messages, and Issues of Autoethnographic Methodology in the Kalahari
Chapter 4. ‘Op die Grond’: Writing in the San/d, Surviving Crime 
Chapter 5. Psychospiritual Ecoscience: The Ju/’hoansi and Cultural Tourism
Chapter 6. Textualising the San ‘Past’: Dancing With Development
Chapter 7. Stories to Tell, Stories to Sell: Hidden transcripts, negotiating texts
References

© Keyan G. Tomaselli, 2005
Cover photograph: Frederik J Lange (Jnr). Taken between Witdraai and Welkom, Northern Cape, June 2005.
Coverdesign: Ingrid Bouws, Amsterdam
Editing: Saskia Stehouwer

Published by Rozenberg Publishers, Amsterdam, 2005, ISBN 90 5170 481 X