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Ranga Mataire
Writing Back
One outcome of the global search for a Covid-19 vaccine has been to expose a type of African that is happy to keep travelling in circles, never able to extricate himself from colonial linear hegemonic thinking.
They trash their own indigenous systems of knowledge which have sustained their survival for more than a million years, long before the white man set foot on the continent.
The Covid-19 pandemic that so far has had a more devastating effect on Asia, Europe and the United States has exposed the perennial debilitating mentality of many Africans, who believe that medicinal salvation must come from anywhere else but Africa.
In the West, there has been talk of a vaccine, which is on trial in Europe. The whole of Africa seems to be anxiously waiting for this vaccine and other drugs.
We, of course, applaud efforts being undertaken by those outside of the continent to come up with a vaccine. However, the complete shunning of equal efforts being undertaken by African scientists and traditional medicine practitioners smacks of serious self-hate on the part of black people. This includes some among members of the Fourth Estate, the media.
Like what a brother of mine in the profession recently remarked, there seems to be a disjuncture between what the ordinary man thinks, which is largely in favour of indigenous herbal remedies, and the preference by states to pander to the global political economy.
The need to appear politically correct has over the years led to a stunted growth of indigenous knowledge systems and indirectly a trashing of the very things that define us as equal human entities in the global scheme of things.
Let’s take the example of Madagascar’s Covid Organics, herbal drink that is said to have had tremendous results when taken by those affected.
On Saturday, the President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, officially launched a local herbal remedy believed to alleviate the suffering of those with Covid-19.
According to africa.com, the herbal remedy has been developed by a Congolese doctor, Dr Jerome Munyangi, in partnership with the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research.
Covid Organics is said to contain Artemisia, a plant cultivated on the Big Island to fight malaria. Artemisia is also cultivated in Cameroon, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, all high-altitude regions, which also have a pronounced cool climatic period.
In a show of his confidence in the herbal drink, President Rajoelina told the world: “All trials and tests have been conducted and its effectiveness in reducing the elimination of the symptoms has been proven for the treatment of patients with Covid-19 in Madagascar.”
President Rajoelina said the drink would be distributed free of charge to the most vulnerable and sold at very low prices to others.
He said he was convinced history would prove him right, as already there had been two cases that he said had recovered after taking Covid Organics.
“Covid Organics will be used in prophylaxis, ie preventive, but clinical observations have shown a trend towards its effectiveness in curative, other clinical studies are currently underway,” President Rajoelina stressed as he launched the herbal drink.
But that’s not the whole story. As of May 1, Madagascar’s case stats stood at 128 cases of which 92 had recovered with no deaths.
If this is not a positive story worth celebrating, then I don’t what else we should celebrate, given the devastating impact the virus has had globally.
Sadly, no ululation has thus far echoed across the continent. In fact, there have been echoes of contempt, particularly from fellow Africans who think the Malagasy President is playing Russian Roulette with people’s lives.
When did the rains start beating us? At what stage did we become ever-ready to rubbish our own ingenuity, which has sustained lives since time immemorial?
It is not that we are vouching for the Madagascar cure. It is that we are concerned at how ready some Africans are to dismiss any talk of their own making a breakthrough in medicine. They do not maintain the same scepticism for similar Western claims. Scepticism is healthy, but it cannot be tilted to one side, and always against your own.
It is sad that what dominates the whole narrative about the pandemic is the same polemics and racist tropes. As recent as March 27, 2020, one Larry Elliot wrote a very condescending piece for the Guardian titled “Africa won’t beat coronavirus on its own. The West must dig deep before it’s too late.”
At first, nothing seems odd about the article, until you reach the end, where Mr Elliot says: “What is certain is that financial help needs to arrive and arrive soon. Otherwise the world is sleepwalking to catastrophe.”
Now I don’t know if Mr Elliot is aware that a catastrophe has already taken place in Europe and the United States where people have died in their thousands. I am not sure if Mr Elliot is aware that there is a country called Zimbabwe, which has not received aid from the traditional Bretton Woods institutions, but has so far fared fairly better in instituting measures for the prevention of Covid-19?
It would appear that some in the West are so peeved at the idea of Africa not being the epicentre of the epidemic. I think the greatest response to Mr Elliot’s perpetuation of endless stereotypes about African countries comes from one Rufaro Samanga, a brilliant Zimbabwean-South African scholar and storyteller, who writes for a media platform OkayAfrica.
In an Op-Ed, “Africa is not the centre of the coronavirus epidemic and the West is pissed”, Samanga raises the point that: “While it may be a bitter pill to swallow, African governments are already leading the way in terms of response efforts and they will continue to show the rest of the world what needs to be done and how.”
Samanga’s reasoning hinges on the fact that African governments’ capacity to lead in prevention of spread of epidemics probably stems from the fact that they have been tasked with facing epidemics more often in the past, so much that they have invariably developed effective strategies over the years to contain, treat and resolve.
Indeed, quarantine and self-isolation are not foreign concepts to Africa, although they appear new to the West. Remember one Western President saying “It’s going to disappear” and added that, “Maybe (it could) go away”?
There is very little we can do, except to continue putting the narrative in its proper perspective and exposing the duplicity of some Western journalists in their depiction of Africa. But there is more that we can about ourselves as Africans.
We need a thorough decolonisation of national consciousness and go back to the source.
The source is what has made us survive the odds as a people. Let us be proud of who we are, including our indigenous knowledge systems.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter