NOISY WESTERN AMBASSADORS SHOULD LEARN TO SHUT THEIR MOUTHS SOMETIMES

Wally Serote, the South African writer once wrote during the struggles against apartheid, that ‘to be black and relatively conscious, is to be angry all the time’. It was true then and even truer now. Any conscious African, whether at home or in the Diaspora, is a walking time bomb of anger. Angry at the general situation of Africa and Africans, even if your personal condition is fantastic, you cannot in all conscience look at Africa and be happy. We can do much better than we are doing at the moment, at all levels: personally, socially, politically and culturally. There are too many resources on this continent for all of us not to be outraged at the mass poverty that the majority of our people are forced to endure.

You cannot open the newspapers, listen to the radio or watch television in any African country (or the few reports on Africa you see outside of the continent) without being angry and feeling like hitting your TV or tearing up the papers. Is it the face of poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict, invariably African, that you want to quarrel about, or the repeated presentation of Africa as a hopeless and helpless continent?

But it is not about these that I want to discuss this week. I have been living in Kenya (or paying rent at least) for about three years now. They have been very interesting times culminating in the tragic violence that followed the rigged elections of last year. One of the positive things that have come out of that tragedy is that the ceiling has been raised against rigging. Kenyan voters are now being envied by many disempowered voters across the continent, for making it extremely expensive in human and material terms to rig their vote or steal their mandate. Imagine if the vote of every Nigerian counted: would they have the kind of governments they have at the local, state and federal levels today? How different it would be in Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso or Cameroon, if indeed the votes of citizens mattered?

But why am I angry this week? I have been angry for a long time at the level of public debate about the various challenges that Kenya faces. Politicians see things only in partisan and tribal times. When they call for justice, it is only because they believe the arms of the law will catch their opponents. If they call for reconciliation, sensitivity or amnesty, it is not because they believe in it but because they see themselves as the beneficiaries.

But it is not the hypocrisy of the politicians and the voters who knowingly elected them that I am concerned about. I am exasperated by the busybodies of experts, conflict vultures and self-appointed friends who claim they want to help Kenyans. You cannot pick up the newspapers in Kenya today without reading about one Western Ambassador or the other giving instructions to Kenyan leaders to implement the Waki report, or to do this or that, threatening one form of sanctions or the other.

It is amazing the way these ‘diplomats’ take the liberty and licence of giving orders and instructions to our leaders with impunity. I have not heard any African Ambassador making such statements. Are they less of a diplomat than their western counterparts? Or do European and American Ambassadors care more about Kenyans than their fellow Africans? Would the reaction of the Kenyan Government have been the same if African Ambassadors were shooting their mouths off the way Western Ambassadors do on every conceivable issue? Would the media have given a statement from the Ambassador of Cameroon, Ivory Coast or Uganda the same publicity?

There are a number of reasons for why we are here. Many of our own diplomats have a very narrow definition of their mission and mandate. Many of them think to behave as though they are only sent to represent the government of the day, rather than the people of their country. Some of them fear that any criticism they may make of their host governments is equally true or worse for the government they are representing.

While I will not advocate for our ambassadors to behave like latter colonial governors, it is unacceptable that they keep silent using only the excuse of, ‘we are diplomats’. All African countries belong to the AU and the numerous regional and sub-regional institutions, with shared values about peoples / human rights, protection of the weak and vulnerable, and respect for the dignity of Africans. We should use this as a moral and political entry point for showing solidarity to other Africans as and when required. The loud Western diplomats also come from countries that do not necessarily practise what they preach; therefore contradictions should never silence our voices. It is not always about what government we represent, but what values we stand for. It is about our pride and sovereignty over our affairs.

As for loud and noisy western ambassadors, they should learn to shut up sometimes. Their noise just distorts the local situation without offering a sensible way out. Africans can fight their own battles and don’t need headmasters from Europe or America.

“Forward ever, backward never”…..Kwame Nkrumah (1909 – 1972)

………………DON’T AGONISE!…………………..ORGANISE!!…………….

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Thursday Postcard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.