African Renaissance's half-baked 'Native Experts'

It would seem the greatest waste of time in post-1994 society is to try to find logic why white political strategists, advertising gurus and marketing experts are considered native experts, especially by hoodwinked indigenous African people.

After all, they neither speak African languages nor have an intuitive connection to grassroots people.

The fact that white people are the ones who possess and control the telling of the African story is nobody’s problem but that of Africans. In fact, Africans deserve to have their stories told by “others”. That is why they cooperate with them.

This thought struck me when I was reading an extract from Mark Gevisser’s book Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred. It was run in the Star to advertise the paper’s Mbeki’s Legacy debates launched on Tuesday October 14 2008 in Auckland Park.

Of course, there is no problem with a Gevisser writing a comprehensive biography about the new South Africa’s second president after Nelson Mandela.

This, to me, follows logically because some African politicians have all the time for “African journalists of European descent” and very little patience for their black counterparts who are willing to be translators.

After all, Gevisser put 10 years into writing the book, only to emerge as yet another example of a native expert. Judging by the way some newspapers elevate him, it would seem nobody is allowed to challenge or question anything that Gevisser has to say about Mbeki.

We should not be surprised if in the next year or two he joins Steven Friedman, Raymond Suttner or Anton Harber to become a professor at a white university because of their knowledge and understanding of the native.

But it was Gevisser’s exotic and strange experience of covering the Mbeki campaign that raised my eyebrows.

According to his narrative, as soon as Mbeki entered a humble African house, Gevisser informs his readers that “a woman collapsed, weeping, as she told her story. Was it awe at the proximity of power, relief at finally being heard, or sheer frustration that was the subject of her tale?”

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that this is a “foreign” experience to Gevisser and he has no clue about what is going on.

Of course, he would have to rely on an African researcher or interpreter (probably a so-called senior African journalist) or — just like most native experts — resort to “guesswork” and speculation.

It is this sort of portrayal of the African experience that makes one ask serious questions.

It looks like something is dangerously wrong when Africans and the world have to rely on someone who may be an outsider to the African experience to tell us about what is happening inside.

It is still a strange thing, to me, that Africans have to rely on journalists and editors who do not speak their languages or understand the nuances and subtleties of their cultural experience to inform and educate them about what is happening in their own backyard.

It is also against this background that I was aghast and astounded when Gevisser reveals that Mbeki’s “campaign was devised by Stan Greenberg, the American pollster who had played so great a role in securing Bill Clinton victory 12 years previously, and its cleverness — it seemed to me — was that it had abided by Mbeki’s adherence to what we might call the Coriolanus dictum: I play the man I am”.

When I turn the pages of a newspaper, when I read stories that an African is being trained on how to be true to himself by a non-African, I say that something must be terribly wrong.

When I read stories, when words jump at my mind telling me that a Mbeki would need American advice on how to mingle and interact with his indigenous African people, I say that something needs to be urgently corrected.

When I read an insight article, when I am informed that African politicians need to be advised by outsiders who neither speak the language of their people nor have a connection with their day-to-day experience, I say that gullible newspaper readers deserve what they get.

I say there is nothing wrong with Africans of European-descent telling African stories or Americans advising British-raised presidents.

All I am saying is that perhaps the message is human and universal.

But is the messenger qualified to tell the story if he does not understand the language and has no intuitive connection with the indigenous people?

It is time to test the skills, knowledge, capability and, of course, limits of those who have become the new Native Experts.