My learning curve in African political writing.

Writing about politics in Africa is a complex business

 

With my travel writing experiences still fresh in my mind, I was keen to keep writing and it was at the forefront of my mind for months after my East to West trip across Africa. Opportunities for writing whilst living in Morogoro, at the base of the Uluguru Mountains, weren’t in abundance and it was eighteen months before I had the opportunity to write professionally again.

In 2013, I moved to Dar for a more thrilling life than the quiet one offered in Morogoro. I was more excited than a child at Christmas and jumped around like a Mexican jumping bean as my visiting mother tried to make sense of my life in Tanzania, and sleeping with a guard outside my bedroom window each night.

Hot In Dar

The move was anything but simple and it took a while to settle into my new life but I loved it and within a few months I was writing for Hot In Dar – a fresh-on-the-scene free magazine in Dar. Better still, I was being paid for my writing this time.

Lady Luck strikes in any place and it seemed I was her best friend in 2013. Not long after my move, I was introduced to a friend of my boss’ wife.  She had secured a job for a magazine called Hot In Dar. They needed writers who could fill their content space and a chance conversation led to me writing about the Askari (guard) monument in downtown Dar. No one seemed to know why it was there or why what looked like a European WWI soldier was on prominent display in an African city.

This became my first introduction to some serious research for writing purposes. Hot In Dar might have been a small magazine, but my name was published with the article and the ex-pat community was still proportionately small. The last thing I needed was to be pulled up for not getting my facts right about a famous monument that little was known of. We all knew it, we just didn’t know what it symbolised or why.

Lesson 1

It took only a couple of hours to find a detailed history of the monument which I won’t bore you with. Writing about the monument from an interesting perspective took a lot longer.  I settled with the perspective of the inanimate soldier and personifying him made a good start. Painting Tanzanians in a heroic, but tragic, role secured my publication as the Tanzanian editor loved it.

Lesson 1 in African political writing learnt: know what the editor’s political preferences are and paint the country you are writing about in as good a way as possible. Of course, this won’t work in the free world but remember, TIA!

Lesson 2 and 3 - dealing with corruption

I was soon writing more for them and my interest turned to NGOs working in Dar. They really had the odds stacked against them, yet here they were doing the most amazing work for great causes. They were involved in taking care of local animals, working with local schools, churches, farming communities, villages, small towns and sporting events. They poured money and sponsorship from around the globe into their causes. It sounded fabulous. But, the more I got to know about NGOs, the more problems I understood they faced.

Corruption was one of the biggest losses of money and resources they faced and there was little they could do about it. One thing I understood fully about Africa was that as an outsider, you had few rights, little respect or sympathy from some locals and are a sitting flamingo in the firing line of gun-toting officials adamant they can extort and exploit you, and you deserve it: you’re foreign, therefore, you’re rich. I’d heard an unbelievable story about an NGO that had provided a mini bus for each primary school in Dar es Salaam. Not long after, Dar procured its first bus services, run by private companies who used mini buses and designed their own routes around the city. You don’t publicise it, you simply suck it up.

Lesson 2 and 3 in African political writing learnt: #2 you don’t criticise the hand that steals from you; #3 you’re a minority so don’t expect to win a one-sided political tug-o-war.

Persecution and lesson 4

It was this understanding that fired me into writing about the problems they faced in the most politically-correct way that I could. This was hard when it came to writing about the persecution of albino Africans who suffered the most perverse torture due to archaic beliefs in the healing powers of their blood, skin and hair. We had an albino pupil at school whom I adored and there was no way on earth I was about to let the plight of albinos go unnoticed.

Going back to the wonderful NGOs whose behemoth work goes largely unnoticed, there is one in Dar called Under The Same Sun: it is run by a Canadian albino man who provides kits to albinos to help protect them against the sun. They also help the victims of these vicious attacks which, horrifyingly, included body parts hacked off with machetes, and children and adults attacked so their hair, eyes, skin, blood and genitals can be used. Kikwete, the then President of Tanzania had promulgated absolution against the perpetrators in 2008, yet years later little was being done. 

Whilst I hated writing the truth behind this persecution, I was glad I had bought it to the media fore in Tanzania. The publication of the article became a debateable subject. After concerns were raised and discussions were held, the article was amended for fear I could face reprisals from the Tanzania government for my factual claim that politicians were involved in the attacks. I imagined being dragged from my bed in the middle of the night as our guard lay bloodied on the ground outside. It seems outlandish, but was nevertheless, possible.

Lesson 4 in African political writing learnt: be very, very careful what you say about corrupt officials still in office. Some countries apparently have eye-watering ways to make you pay. Propaganda really is a bitch. Whilst the world depicts Trump as a pig and details of a 10,000% rise in sales of Orwell’s 1984 circulate social media, there are still countries out there that simply won’t stand for political ridicule or scandal.

Even in writing, there are restrictions that hold you down and I began to wonder is this an international thing? I’m no stranger to propaganda but what is the true extent that corrupt political truth kept from us on a daily basis? Just how far are politicians willing to go to conceal the truth? This is a question I have since come to comprehend in my research into the international poaching crisis. Further blogs will explore this issue in more depth.

This was the least I could do for the victims of such a heinous crime. To me, this was such an important issue that shouldn’t go uncovered. Yet it is only one drop of sanguinary water in a desert of apathetic, controlled people. Despite many attempts to get this story published in England, there was very little interest. Yet recently, BBC2 showed their documentary Born Too White and I was elated! Finally, the world was taking notice of something I had tried to bring to them three years ago.  Now it is time to move on the issue of poaching, and a new chapter in my revived writing career.