Adding noise to the Kony 2012 soundtrack

Posted on April 30th, 2012

Charles Taylor in the limelight – oh wait, but what about the likes of Mengistu Haile Mariam?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve kept a close eye on this “Kony Kraze” as it unfolded in the media. Facebook abounds with commentaries – in my academic circle, mostly negative ones. I read whatever I could get my hands on.

Many people retorted that Invisible Children’s take on the LRA is seeped in the White Man Burden’s complex, among other issues pointing out to the fact that the 27 minute video is ironically disconnected from the reality it’s portraying and leaves little room for Ugandans themselves to speak, er, well, about their own lives. In fact the video seems to be more about the audience (young Americans) than about the cause.

I saw the storm take off and avoided watching the video for a couple of weeks. Based on the way it attracted attention, as though watching it was THE thing we ALL should do to “save Africa”, I knew I’d be frustrated. My instinct finally succumbed as I sat in bed and watched the video in the wee hours of the morning while nursing my infant.

Don’t they say to always trust your instincts? My first reaction was quite emotional – I wanted to get online and order thousands of Kony 2012 Action Kits. All the right strings were pulled for me to start acting now in order to protect an innocent little girl or a little boy like my baby from abduction, rape and a lifetime of trauma.

I immediately tapped in to Russell’s passion for the cause. Only an extremely devoted activist would feature his own son and put him in the line of fire. Unless he was utterly and naively convinced there would be no line of fire? Which is also worrisome.

Thankfully logic kicked in. Wait … The basic objective of this whole campaign is to support the Ugandan army? AND it’s being marketed as a once-and-for-all solution to the phenomena of child soldiers in Africa/Uganda?

It’s a cliché that this “solution” is coming from well-intentioned but misinformed gung-ho white middle class Americans. Did anyone see the video of Alicia Silverstone feeding her infant by pre-masticating food and spitting morsels into her baby’s mouth? The Kony 2012 does just that. Invisible Children is the mama and the rest of North American youth are young’uns in need of pre-chewed moralistic nourishment that will boost them into action. My skin started to crawl.

While the creators of the Kony 2012 campaign video received a harsh beating (Russell went a little berserk apparently), Russell and his team of advisers represent the mouthpiece for a whole generation of North Americans who made the video a huge success. Their message spread in lightning speed because it spoke to so many people.

I have to admit that I admire people who put themselves out there (no doubt though it could have been done more intelligently …). Many feel that doing something, anything instead of nothing is more productive than the naysayer who thrives on others’ initiative to walk the walk and use it as fodder to generate more of their own talk in insular elite academic circles.

And while I agree with the criticism their interpretation of the conflict drew, the backlash to the film and, worse, the personal attacks on Russell were as disconcerting as the infantilizing approach of the designers of the Kony 2012 Action Kit.

At the end of the day, Russell and his team really hit a raw nerve for me: the sense of helplessness I feel toward tyrants like Kony. It angers me how random the target of the Kony 2012 cause is, knowing that there are hundreds more still lurking around in freedom, power and money stolen from their own people.

As I write this, Charles Taylor is in the media again, being tried for his crimes. As I write this, Mengistu Haile Mariam continues to live a luxurious life in Zimbabwe, having received asylum from Robert Mugabe. But then, should there be no action taken at all? No, acting is important. But how we carry ourselves in the implementation of our intentions determines whether we should have attempted to help in the first place at all.

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Help for East Africa!

Posted on September 13th, 2011

Just a quick note to remind you all that the Canadian government program to match dollar for dollar all donations made for East Africa ends this Friday September 16! So get your dough rolling!

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The irony of unequal accumulation

Posted on July 27th, 2011

Moving sucks. I’ve just discovered that recently. I’ve lived abroad for extended periods of time. I pack lightly. But moving house? Hmmm… I’ve realized that the former is easier than the latter, at least in my case. As I sit helplessly in the sea of mostly useless stuff I’ve collected over the years, I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth – the irony of unequal accumulation.

I’m not proclaiming a kind of ‘mea culpa’ for being a ‘Westerner’, the kind of embarrassment that surfaces among people who are acutely conscious of the harrowing gap between the rich and the poor. Been there, done that. While I no longer hide in the shadowy corners of the privileges others worked hard to provide for me, I remain wary of people who disconnect their wealth and the opportunities of accumulation they’ve entertained from the rest of world, mostly filled with people who could only dream of pantries with overstocked food like mine.

What is happening right now in Somalia is heartbreaking. We’ve all seen the pictures. It feels like an eerie flashback of the drought that plagued Ethiopia in the 1980s. The effects of Somalia’s devastation have spilled over to poverty-stricken neighboring countries that include areas on the verge of famine (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-africa-drought-idUSTRE75R2JQ20110628).

Exacerbated by the influx of Somali refugees into Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, these countries, along with Uganda, are dealing with what Reuters dubbed “the worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa”, affecting more than 10 million people in the Horn.

I contemplate on the amount of canned goods I didn’t even know I had. My husband jokingly ridiculed my habit of overstocking by inviting my extended family to our place for food and shelter should a nuclear war break out in Canada. Consider this an invitation to all you readers as well.

On a brighter note, the Festival International Nuits d’Afrique wrapped up its 24^th season in Montreal! Between the move and the blistering heat I missed out on all the fun. Would love to get some feedback from those who attended!

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Could there be a link between African and Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commissions?

Posted on June 1st, 2011

In early March 2011, I had the opportunity to sit in on an international forum organized by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada to open a discussion about how best to establish a National Research Center that will honor Aboriginal survivors of residential school.

Discussants from all over the world made their way to Vancouver to speak of their experiences with TRCs and about the founding of archives for the memories of victims. Ironically the first TRC was set up by Uganda’s Idi Amin in 1974, a Commission of Inquiry into the Disappearances of People in Uganda that didn’t accomplish much since Amin dismissed the findings.

 The link between Africa and Canada was established on the first day of the forum through speakers like Doudou Diène, a Senegalese man who was formerly a UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. In his presentation, he reminded us how discrimination in Canada is hidden but certainly present, and made the case that there is a connection between slavery and the Aboriginal residential school experience in relation to how history books are written and by whom. History books, he argued eloquently, can be used as instruments of silence.

 Freddy Mutanguha, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who now serves as executive director of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda, gave insights into TRCs, explaining how they can broach the issue of documenting horrors. He was diplomatic enough not to mention the fact that Canada has become a key destination, according to a 2009 article in the Telegraph*, for some 800 suspected war criminals from his country, including Léon Mugesera, the “mastermind of the genocide” accused of inciting hatred.

Mugesera has been living in Quebec since the early 1990s and worked as a post-doctoral research assistant for a professor in the linguistics department at Université Laval in Quebec City in 1993-1994.

 The connections drawn between the African speakers and Aboriginal survivors of residential schools got me thinking about the relationship (or lack thereof) between Aboriginal peoples, and new immigrant populations to Canada. Have Canadians of African descent and Aboriginals made any connections at all here in Canada? Have they become allies in their quest for justice? Is the universalization of mass suffering enough to mobilize people at a time when speaking about human rights has become the norm?

I couldn’t help but wonder why it takes people to come from Africa in the framework of an institutionalized performance of ‘justice’ to reach out to Aboriginals when many Canadians are more aware of the Rwandan (or Jewish, or Armenian, etc.) genocide than they are of the ongoing cultural genocide of Native communities in their own back yard. Perhaps we are not reminded enough that the land that immigrants have adopted as their own properly belongs to Aboriginal peoples?

 *http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/rwanda/5113564/Rwanda-massacre-perpetrators-still-at-large-on-genocide-anniversary.html

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