Are we all stuck in a big snuff movie?

Fred Khumalo: Every time I watch Blood Diamond - I saw the flick when it first hit the big screen, have since seen it a number of times on DStv and where I know I might see it again - I am revolted by the stereotypes about my continent: Africans are blood-thirsty, greedy, myopic and bereft of the milk of human kindness.

These are stereotypes that have been nurtured and embellished over generations by authors such as H Rider Haggard and historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, who famously said "Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none." Moviemakers and Western politicians have also made comments about the dearth of things that are positive about the continent. It is said that if you repeat a lie enough, it becomes the truth. But wait a nanosecond: are these things being said about Africa lies? Which are the lies and which are the truths?

I know some of my friends will shake their heads ruefully and mutter how I have succumbed to colonialist indoctrination; how I have forgotten that civilisation started in Africa; how we built the pyramids; how we taught Pythagoras a thing or two; how Shaka contributed to the modern art of fighting; how there is evidence of our pre-colonial achievements in the famous Timbuktu archives, at the former sites of the kingdoms of Mapungubwe and Monomotapa. Yeah, I've read all of that and I am proud of who we once were. But ...

Having read the infuriating history of the continent that one loves so much, one has over the years grown this love-hate relationship with Africa. One hates what others keep saying about the continent - but the objective self cringes at the evidence. Yes, colonialism wrought untold damage - stealing our land and artefacts, and gradually denuding us of our dignity, self-worth, history and pride, our languages and cultures, even.

But hey, we are strong people, as Mosibudi Mangena suggests on page 6 of Review; we broke the shackles of colonialism and achieved independence, with some countries on the continent having been free for more than 50 years. However, we have failed to liberate ourselves from ourselves, as Bob Marley also once observed; mental slavery still holds us bondage. But let me not steal Mangena's thunder. Read his piece at your leisure. Let me rather concern myself with what got my goat this week.

Scholars and activists ranging from Steve Biko to Frantz Fanon have written, debated and worked hard at turning the stereotypes on their head, at trying to search for and rescue the redeeming qualities from the fractured corpus of the continent.

This week, two newspaper stories have contrived to put the issue of African stereotypes (or African failure?) into sharp relief.

Naomi Campbell testified at length on how the former president of Liberia Charles Taylor had caused to be delivered to her room a bunch of "dirty pebbles", which later turned out to be diamonds. The inane ramblings of the supermodel are not worth elaborating on. It is the person of Taylor and what his greed did to his own country and neighbouring Sierra Leone. The United Nations special court for Sierra Leone sitting in The Hague has heard how, driven by greed and a hunger for power, Taylor turned to the worst form of barbarism - encouraging his acolytes to eat the hearts of his detractors, chop off their hands, driving the fear of God into their enemies.

Ah, but Taylor is an isolated case, a lone madman, I hear some defenders of the continent fuming. Isolated case? Idi Amin, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Mobutu Sese Seko, Daniel arap Moi, Sani Abacha, Mengistu, the warlords of Somali and, oh, the madman just across the border? And now that we've decided to get closer to home, we might as well deal with the outrage that was exposed by our sister newspaper the Sowetan this week.

It does not involve "isolated" madmen from "the rest of the continent". It involves a company owned by our own people who should know better that after our democratic polls in 1994 we vowed to ourselves and to whoever cared to listen that we would "never be like the rest of the continent".

Folks, forget the poetry, forget the rainbow-nation-inspired optimism. I am shuddering at the reality that is unravelling.

The Sowetan reported how security guards employed at Aurora Mine, owned by Khulubuse Zuma, the president's nephew, and Zondwa Mandela, the former president's grandson, shot dead at least four people who were allegedly mining illegally. .

The story says the murders took place this week, and the bodies had been left by the security guards to rot - until one of the survivors blew the whistle. Had I seen these kinds of murders in a movie such as Blood Diamond, I would have rolled my eyes at the African clichés.

Admittedly, a mine is a business. It should be protected from interlopers. Therefore, one would have thought that the security guards would have been guarding the mines in the first place, preventing interlopers from sneaking in. Further assuming that the guards found the illegal miners, why kill them? Why not arrest them?

These are the questions that occupied my mind this week, and led me to think back to Taylor and what has been done on this continent in the scramble for its natural riches. These happenings undo the good work by some of our outstanding thinkers and activists to redeem this continent's image.

Such happenings fill me with what Archbishop Tutu called, at the height of apartheid, a "nightmarish fear" for the future. My nightmarish fear stems from the fact that the Aurora incident is part of a pattern that we have also seen in Zimbabwe. On August 1, this newspaper reported on how Mugabe's soldiers were part of a huge syndicate smuggling diamonds from Zimbabwe to Mozambique, to the detriment of the natives of Zimbabwe. People were getting killed in the process.

One of our great poets, Mongane Serote could, in his poem dedicated to his native Alexandra township, have been writing about Africa when he wailed:

... And Alexandra, /My beginning was knotted to you,/ Just like you knot my destiny. /You throb in my inside silences /You are silent in my heart-beat that's loud to me.

Alexandra often I've cried./ When I was thirsty my tongue tasted dust, /Dust burdening your nipples./I cry Alexandra when I am thirsty. /Your breasts ooze the dirty waters of your dongas,/Waters diluted with the blood of my brothers, your children, /Who once chose dongas for death-beds. /Do you love me Alexandra, or what are you doing to me?

Like Serote, I am shedding tears of impotent rage.

Mailbag

I travelled on the Gautrain on July 13 with two overseas visitors, a small baby and my son with his five-year-old daughter. We were helped efficiently on the outward journey but, coming back, we jumped on the train just as it was leaving, to return to Rhodesfield. No staff in sight, or any info of where we were to sit for Rhodesfield.

When we arrived at Rhodesfield, the doors did not open and we had to carry on to the airport. We then alighted and returned to the same train only to be told by the most senior lady worker that we would have to return to Sandton and come back again. Really! We were definitely not going to do that. We then proceeded to the back of the train and she told us in no uncertain terms that we could not go back there. She eventually did take us back there and we alighted at Rhodesfield.

There are only three stations , so why don't the doors open to allow people off? We were not impressed with this third-world bureaucracy. - Euphemia Smith