Africans, dancing, singing, running and women's lib

(Wanky rant of an African scribe)

COO

By the weekend, viewing CNN and reading the American media, it seems two things were left of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Africa trip were the swivel she did at the Carnivore Restaurant in Nairobi; and her angry response to a university student who asked her about her husband’s opinion, rather than her own, on a trade deal between the DRC and China.

Turns out the student’s translator was incompetent and got the question wrong; he hadn’t asked about former president Clinton’s views. So, was Clinton too thin-skinned? No exactly. I am not a fan of Mrs Clinton, but in DR Congo, every woman has a right to be very afraid. Clinton should have responded more strongly. The UN estimates that 3,500 women have been raped in DR Congo so far this year—and it is a “good” year by the country’s standards. In Eastern DRC, gangs roam villages looking for women to rape. In this environment, the mistake by the translator who put Hillary down by suggesting her husband Bill’s view on the Congo-China was more important than hers, has deep political significance. It is a product of the same demented views women as an object of rape.

If you don’t appreciate that, and the international media seems not to, then you can’t understand why there was a dance thingy at the Carnivore that swept Clinton away. There is a view held by racists and Africans who have despaired about the black man’s lot, that Africans are poor and go hungry because they spend all their time singing, dancing (and having sex) instead of working. Wrong.

The opposite is true. Because of the horrors of life in DR Congo, from King Leopold’s time to this day, the Congolese are some of the world’s best singers and dancers. Like other Africans, they dance and sing as a coping mechanism. It is the only way many Africans avoid being plunged into depression and madness by their adversity. So, without song and dance, most of them wouldn’t be able to work.
I think, that is the same context that explains why it is a black man, Usain Bolt, who ran the 100 metres in the once-unthinkable time of 9.58 seconds. I used black in the political, not racial sense.

I have written elsewhere that running has become a metaphor for the survival of black people. They ran from slave traders; they ran from colonialists; they continue to run from their dictators; to scamper into refugee; they flee famines, war, racism, and an international economic and political system that they feel squeezes them (a view I don’t share); and if you are a Kenyan, South African, or DR Congolese woman, you are tormented by the fear of rape every hour, every day.

Usain Bolt, then, runs for us. I don’t think Tyson Gay will ever beat him or equal his time. As American society continues its torturous journey of becoming less racial (they have a black president in Obama, don’t they?) the global dominance of African-American athletes will continue to decline. Gay needs the motivation of a grievance, not money, to beat Bolt. Or he needs, to paraphrase Sting, to become a Jamaican in the west first.