Journals

It's no secret that racial discrimination and iniquity remain a part of daily life in Africa.  However, because the global media most often portrays these enduring phenomena solely through the lens of post-colonialism, their true nature remains unknown to the majority of outsiders.  And so, whenever genocidal violence erupts in places like Kenya or Rwanda, westerners who care are left to shake their heads and wonder why.  Perhaps it would be easier to comprehend if such brutality took the form of an oppressed black majority storming en masse from its crowded townships to mercilessly attack symbols of the white establishment.  Though still barbaric and inhuman, that scenario would at least make sense --one side hating the other's disproportionate opulence and lashing out to overturn the status quo.  Yet, with one notable exception (Zimbabwe), where a fading tyrant still cloaks his murderous ways with a veneer of black solidarity and empowerment, the Marxist era of African race wars has all but disappeared.  In its place, festering behind the myth of united harmonic negritude, a darker truth now lingers: the most vitriolic and hate-filled elements of the continent's intolerance are decidedly intra-racial in nature.   I experienced a dramatic example of this acrimony first-hand while checking into a hostel in Maputo, Mozambique, with Greg and an African friend of ours named Amos.  We had just hitch south to the city from Beline, where Amos worked as a bartender.  A Swazi by birth, he grew up in Johannesburg during the apartheid era, and seemed accustomed to white people--who now impatiently yelled drink orders at him throughout their long winter holidays--treating him like a second-class citizen.  As we approached the hostel, the black security guard out front nodded at me and Greg politely as he opened the gate.  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw his affable expression change into a look of disgust when our friend walked by.  Amos is a member of the Shangaan, a Tsonga-speaking ethnic group who were among the first black laborers to be recruited for work in South Africa's gold and diamond mines.  There, his forefathers soon earned a reputation for hard work and efficiency which persists today.  As a consequence, a Zulu acquaintance of mine told me, the Shangaan are often dismissed as common laborers, who will do jobs that 'prouder' tribes consider to be beneath them.   In some ways, the guard's reaction to Amos reflects the enduring success of the colonial regime's strategy of divide and rule, where by over-emphasizing minor ethnographic differences between local tribes, they established an artificial hierarchy, which in turn led Africans to fight amongst each other, rather than focusing on the true source of their oppression.  But, to my mind, the episode also serves as a timeless reminder of how easily peoples' inclination towards self-righteous superiority can be manipulated into hate.  After all, the Shangaans' dark skin and hard-working, industrious reputation make them the recipients of a chauvinism which the colonizers exploited, but could not themselves create--or maintain.  Apparently, it seems, there is just no limit to some human beings' need to find a social inferior who they can look down upon.