Growing up, we were always taught to admire the global
north. In fact to aspire to it. There was even a comedy on
Zimbabwean television that we loved to watch.
Its’s theme song had lyrics that said something like ‘I wanna be an
American’. In school European history
was always made to be slightly more exciting. I am pretty sure a lot of us in
Zimbabwe, if we studied history in high school know of the Sarajevo incident
that precipitated the First World War.
We were never taught that Africans also fought in the war but we knew
the name Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
Add to this, the expansion of satellite television and African American
rap music or rhythm and blues, we would be all set for desiring the global
north as the definitive version of life’s success. Never mind the fact for example that Tupac
Shakur was railing against the establishment in his own country of birth.
Coming full circle to adulthood or assumptions of self-sufficiency,
we would still be green with envy about the lives of those that live in New York,
London, Paris or Edinburgh. We even aspired to eat fish and chips as a signal
of personal arrival at success. And also
why inevitably your Chicken Inn easily persuaded us to ‘luv dat chicken’.
But the issue that most concerns me is how we fell in love with
the politics of the global north. I, to
my great regret, once had a Time Magazine cover of Tony Blair stuck up on my
wall at university. Right there alongside
bigger posters of Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko.
Our naïve assumption was that politics would always be better
in the global north. In fact we
considered it more progressive and envied it.
We would think the world of Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac and the partisan
purveyors of the political brands such as CNN, Time magazine and the like.
Even when the invasion of Iraq occurred few of us thought to
call it out for what it was, a war fought under false pretense with devastating
consequences. I remember a friend who
watched the invasion of Baghdad with the equivalent glee of seeing a Rambo
movie. Always expecting the victory of
the west over the east.
By the time we get Obama as the likeable image of politics
in the global north, we were in over our heads.
We had already formed opposition political parties made in the image of
the politics of the global north, all with the intention of anticipating ‘acceptability’
and ‘recognition’. Not that we were without cause, but it was always easier to
have it affirmed by those that we envied.
Correctly we had also accepted the universality of human
rights and the freedom of movement of all human peoples.
A lot of things have happened since then. The liberalism of the global north began to
wane. Particularly after the global
financial crisis of 2008 (incidentally in Zimbabwe we still don’t think that
directly affected our economy.) The emergence of nationalism's and to the east
of state capitalism, left us increasingly high and dry where it came to our
initial assumptions of global solidarity or even belonging. The people of the global north demonstrated
our worst fears by electing leaders that lean to the right and reflect a newly
strident (and possibly racist) nationalism.
With the election of Trump and more recently Boris Johnson in the UK, we
now know that contrary to our feel good assumptions, the majority of people in
those countries and probably in the majority of European states, still want to
remain exceptional. They still want to
be different from our preferred assumptions of ‘equality’. And these are not the people that we were all
along seeing on CNN or the BBC. These
are the very real people of the global north.
They evidently do not like immigrants, they also do not like being
similar to everyone else. And this is a
hard truth to swallow for us in the global south who had been taught to hold
those societies in awe.
We had all along preferred the elitist version of societies
in the global north, where it would have been unfathomable for a man who
referred to Muslim women as ‘letter boxes’ to become a prime minister. In this, we were wrong but have not been
wronged. We have just misjudged those
societies and misunderstood what is meant by a global universality of human
values. There is them and then there is
the rest of us.
I will end with an anecdote.
I have a Zimbabwean friend based in the Diaspora. The UK to be exact. I asked him to vote Labour in that country’s
recent election. He was startled. He retorted that he would not vote for a party
whose leader looked like a homeless person.
He works in the social services field.
He however wanted acceptance as being truly British. And argued as such.
Its almost like how most of us would argue in favour free
market economics in the Zimbabwean context. It is not that they would truly
believe in such a neoliberal approach.
They want to be recognized for sharing that opinion with the wealthy persons
of the global north. No more no less. We need to value ourselves better and to stop looking for
the approving gaze of those in the global north.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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