On Being White in Africa

or "Don't call me mzungu, bwana" (with apologies to Mbongeni Ngema)

During my trip i was almost always seen as a white, foreigner, on a bike (in that order). This was expected. But that didn’t make it any less irritating. In the same way that i would object if a black person travelling in a predominantly white country was addressed with ‘Hey black’, ‘blackie’, ‘Mr. Black’ or anything similar, so too did i resent being characterised primarily by race.

Now of course, that kind of comparison is simplistic. It fails to take into account the role and actions of white men (and i use that gender-biased word intentionally) in these countries in the not-so-distant past. The fact is, no matter what your family did or didn’t do in the past, white people have a lot to answer for in this particular part of that world. If you want to travel it, or indeed live in it, that is a small burden you really should be prepared to bear. That said, it never fails to amaze me how little resentment there is. Given what I know about colonial history I sometimes think that if i weren’t white i would be a racist: making statements along the lines of “Look, some of my best friends are white, but…”. And that’s the thing. If I really believed that this kind of attitude was a derivative of post-colonial resentment, then I could live with that – not happily, but if that’s the price to pay for wanting to live in Africa as a white person then so be it.

But actually, I don’t think history has much to do with it all. It is largely, in my view, a kind of lazy xenophobia – a sloppy generalisation of people in small communities that mocks and tries to undermine ‘the other’, the outsider. It applies not only to whites, but (often, sadly, even more so) to Indians, Arabs, ‘mulattos’ and black Africans from other countries. And it angers me. Personally this goes back to nursery school in Mozambique, where I apparently came home on at least one occasion and said to my mother “Why are they calling me ‘mzungu’ at school. I’m not mzungu, I’m Sean”. And I couldn’t say it any better now; I’m an individual in my own right, as a people who were oppressed for the mere colour of their skin you should know better than to generalise in this way. (In fact it’s dissapointing how often that happens: witness what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for the last half-century or so).

This applies to both positive and negative generalisations. In Malawi I found it harder to deal with the often-obsequious friendliness of some Malawians to whites, than the initially somewhat guarded reactions I got in Kenya and Tanzania. Interestingly, whilst I never – not once – felt actual hatred in the latter two countries, I did in Malawi on more than one occasion…

Ultimately, one shouldn’t need other people’s acceptance to feel that you’re at least as African as anyone else on this continent, but I do get angry if people explicitly or implicitly refute that claim. The need for this kind of acceptance is not common to all white people in Africa however. Whilst travelling i realised that there are broadly four kinds of white people in this continent: The passer-through; the expatriate; the white settler and the white African.

In ‘passer-through’ I include everyone from drop-in travellers, to overlanders, all the way through to volunteers who might stay for up to two years. These people are as diverse in their views and attitudes as any group of white people, but ultimately what they share in common is that their presence on the continent is transitory. Most importantly, they know this and that affects their attitudes. They do not call the continent their home, and therefore have no reason to resent being seen as outsiders – they see themselves as such. Of course there are exceptions, like the writer Paul Theroux who I’ll get to in a moment.

The ‘expatriate’ is similar in some ways to the passer-through in the sense that ultimately their ‘allegiances’ are to a country outside of the continent. They are often private sector or aid-agency employees. They may express, and feel, love for the continent and its people but it is often of a more-or-less subtly patronising kind. These people – by definition – often, at greater cost, recreate the life to which they are accustomed back ‘home’ in a kind of enclave. Again, they might object to being characterised by race but not to being considered non-Africans.

The ‘white settler’ is arguably the most interesting of the four groups. These individuals certainly consider themselves ‘Africans’, and will react angrily to any suggestion to the contrary, but they won’t necessarily take offense at being characterised by their race. This is because whilst they wish to be seen as people of the continent, with no lesser emotional ties than their fellow black citizens, they have little inclination to mingle with other racial (or, indeed, cultural) groups. ‘Separate but equal’, as someone once said. There are a lot of these in South Africa.

Then you get the ‘white African’, which for lack of a better definition is someone who fits into none of the groups above and is a citizen and/or resident of an African country with a strong affinity to the continent. Contrary to what the deputy of the Pan-Africanist Congress here in SA implied in a recent article, they don’t need to dance like Johnny Clegg or Brenda Fassie, eat pap and mopani worms and drink ‘umqombothi’ – that’s like saying that to be British you have to drink Earl Grey tea, like yorkshire pudding and talk like the Queen.

A book has just been published here in SA dealing with precisely this issue (and titled ‘White Africans’) but from one extract it seems the author doesn’t ‘get it’. He thinks the white settler is a thing of the past.

This post was in fact delayed because I wanted to finish reading Franz Fanon’s ‘Black Skin, White Masks’; a book that anyone who wants to understand racism – black or white - and its effects really should read. Amongst many things, he addresses the experience of being told “You’re not really (one of that race), you’re one of us”. In such a situation, it is tempting to take this as a compliment – especially as a white person who is told “You’re not really white” by black compatriots. But this attitude just enforces, albeit subtly, the idea that people, in all their complexity, are defined by the colour of their skin. In the same vein, it is folly to suggest that ‘black people have rhythm’ or ‘white people are more rational’.

Racism is deeply ingrained in so many aspects of society that it is a continuous struggle to remain uncontaminated. But being aware of that is, is suppose, at least as important as succeeding in it.

To emphasise this point, let me end with the last line of ‘Dark Star Safari’ a highly-acclaimed book written by the travel writer Paul Theroux (who lived in East Africa for at least two years in his youth, and the title of which he seems to have ‘borrowed’ without acknowledgement from the much better Polish writer Kapuscinksi): “The best Africans are still bare-assed”. You don’t need to bother reading the rest of the book to find out how he reaches this conclusion. It is a return to the ‘noble savage’ view of the colonial era which finds no justification in his actual experiences, from a man who cannot say he doesn’t know better.

I won’t wish you a white Christmas…but happy holidays.