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Thandekile Moyo
“AS nature comes to earth, violent and unapologetic . . .” this quote from Mashingaidze Gomo’s book, A Bleeding Piece of Earth, always gets me thinking. The violence of nature is seen in all the terrible disasters that happen across the globe. On Monday (14 August) Africa awoke to the horrific news that a mudslide had killed more than 400 people on the mountainous outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital city, Freetown. A hill collapsed after three days of torrential (extremely hard) rainfall and the mud overran many houses on its way down. This is a devastating disaster as it is likely that hundreds of people are still lying dead under the mud and rubble.
Many people are up in arms on social media against Western media houses who haven’t given the Sierra Leone mudslide as much coverage as some Africans would have loved. They have accused CNN and the BBC of selective sympathy as they seem to care more about the Barcelona terrorist attacks and other disasters occurring across Europe and the Americas. On Thursday (17 August) France decided to turn off the lights on their Eiffel Tower to pay tribute to the victims of the recent Barcelona attack that left 13 people dead and dozens injured. Africans cried foul!
Africans on Twitter and Facebook expressed sentiments such as this one: “How on earth does France pay such tribute when only 13 people died yet over 400 died in Sierra Leone and it was business as usual for the French?”
Some expressed how betrayed they felt. On 13 November 2015, there was a suicide bombing at the Stade de France (Stadium of France). On the same night three gunmen opened fire at a concert hall and some popular bars and restaurants in Paris and killed innocent revellers. More than 130 people died and hundreds more were injured.
There was worldwide heartbreak and a global outpour of grief as many could not comprehend the horrific act of attacking innocent people going about their everyday business. Africans put up French flags as their profile pictures and the hashtag #prayforParis trended for days.
We have cried with the Western world throughout all their disasters, from the 9/11 attacks, to the Tsunamis and right up to the Cambrill terrorist attack. The question then on Africans Facebook statuses is, “why isn’t the west sympathetic to our pain?”
I have tried to understand this sense of betrayal and try as I might, I do not get it. The West never asked Africans to sympathise with them. In actual fact I am sure they wouldn’t care less whether we prayed for France or did not. We gatecrashed their pray for each other “parties” and for some reason now feel they also owe us the same courtesy.
The only reason we ever got to hear about any Western disaster is because they made enough noise about it. They broadcast it all day, every day for everyone to hear. Nobody did it on their behalf, they pushed their own causes, ran their own movements and touched hearts far and wide, all the way to Zvishavane, Plumtree and probably Freetown as well.
If we want anyone to “pray’ for Sierra Leone or for Zimbabwe, we need to be at the forefront of that drive. We cannot expect other regions to be more heartbroken than we are over the troubles that befall us. Where are Africa’s media houses when these things happen? It is our own media who should be at the forefront of broadcasting our issues to the world. As it is, we are crying for the world to cry with us when not even a quarter of Africans are standing together in support of the Freetownians. Where are our own hyper twitters? Where are the Facebook addicts?
Africa is so full of excuses, it is nauseating. We seem to never take responsibility for anything. It is always somebody else’s fault. We are underdeveloped because we are marginalised. We are underdeveloped because we were colonised. We are unemployed and un-entrepreneurial because we have no funding! Excuses excuses!
Nature, which is our environment, is bold, violent and unapologetic. The sun will rise and be hot without caring what will happen. It does not care that it will burn your crops, give you sunburn or dry up lakes. The rain will fall unapologetically flooding rivers and causing mudslides. Humans have no choice but to adapt to nature or to perish. We must live in spite of the burning sun. We need to survive in spite of the flooding rains. Human development is thus our response to nature.
We build homes to shelter ourselves from nature. We build roads to make it easier to travel across rough terrain. We therefore cannot develop without understanding nature. Development helps us fight the side of nature which is unfavourable to us. When mountains block our paths we drill tunnels through them to get to the other side. We build dams to store rain water and to redirect water to our turbines for electricity generation. We have learnt to work with or around nature for it will not change for us.
What this means is that we must survive in spite of our harsh environments, natural or man-made. We have to build roads in spite of marginalisation.
Our industries must be kept alive in spite of Sanctions. Businesses can be started without funding. This is because we are the capital. Human capital is the skills, knowledge and experience possessed by a person or group. The moment we realise that the most important capital to any business is the human mind and body we will realise that funding is overrated!
We need to come down to earth and compare ourselves with other countries and generations and their rate of development. The French built the Eiffel tower in the late 1880s before any of the modern construction equipment we see today was created. This means the person who designed it did not let the fact that he did not have the “right” equipment stop him. The leaning tower of Pisa was built over hundreds of years. This means that it was built by at least three generations of Italians who all realised the importance of finishing the job started by their forefathers. Closer to home the Egyptian pyramids were built at a time when their technological advancements were worlds away from where Zimbabwe is now.
Our very own Great Zimbabwe was built by our ancestors with only stones and “homemade tools”. Our ancestors fought the first Chimurenga war with the most archaic weapons you can imagine but they are said to have killed more British men than in any of the other uprisings across Africa. The second Chimurenga, fought without any of the frills the Rhodesian army was privy to, was won by young men and women who fought hard despite not having any special weapons or training. They were the capital!
All these awesome developments, with no foreign funding, no modern technologies and you cannot build a school without Government assistance or foreign funding. All this and you cannot start a chicken project because nobody will give you a loan. This despite the fact that you can afford a hen and a cock. I have heard of communities with unemployed, idle, able bodied young men and no borehole because they are waiting for funding. Gwanda has had water problems for months because of a silly war between the Council and Zinwa and I am yet to hear of a group of youths that have dug a well.
The environment, natural or man-made, is bold and unapologetic. Because of that fact, development occurs in spite of the environment and not because of the environment. Progress is brought not by those who conform but by those who refuse to.
One of my favourite songs, Humble and kind by Tim Mcgraw says “don’t expect a free ride from anyone, don’t hold a grudge or a chip and here is why, bitterness keeps you from flying; always stay humble and kind.”
So let us build our own ‘Eiffel tower’ and turn off its lights when one of us needs our support. Let us be the broadcasters of our own news so that we give the world only the pictures that we want them to see. Let us tell our own stories, fund our own projects, fight our own causes and push our own agendas.
And “as nature comes to earth, violent and unapologetic . . .” we will stand tall, we shall not perish.
Bongani Ndlovu