The rural nature in Africa’s emerging class of ‘big sizes’

Is it caused by a biased and ignorant western media or is this image of coups, wars, poverty, inefficiency and slums a fact, based on reality? In recent weeks, the question of Africa’s negative image has been dominating BBC radio, which much mean it is occupying a lot of minds.

In my submission at the Kampala debate, I stated that the image is “as is”. It is Africa as we know it, experience it, feel it, live it. No more, no less.
Yes, there are many in the West and Asia who think Uganda is still led by Idi Amin (although from the behaviour of the current Ugandan leader, Europeans and Asians who think Idi Amin is still Uganda’s head of state might not, after all, be more correct than they realise).

Many around the world still think most Africans live in trees. Well, most Africans don’t live in trees; but most African children still study under trees, most Africans still sit under trees as the only shade they can find and in reality, most Africans live in shacks and huts that are worse than some trees.

But taken overall, the image of drudgery, flies around children’s noses, children in photos taken by Whites staring passively and showing all signs of little mental stimulation, of countries run by dictators and dictators’ families and henchmen, is an accurate one.

Harsh reality a known fact
Africans from Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Chad and others who frequently take trips in risky boats to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe, many drowning in the process, do not need CNN, BBC or the Guardian in London to tell them anything negative about Africa. They live and know the harsh reality all too well.

Most participants at the BBC Africa Debate in Kampala acted in the usual way that Africans who have travelled to or studied in the West behave: defiant, indignant, accusing the Western media of bias and even racism.

These are Africans who usually are celebrities and regarded as rich and successful in their home countries. When they travel to Europe, they discover that in Europe, owning a car, TV, house, bank account, iPad or carpet in your home does not make you rich. Those items that impress “Campusers” and other simple-minded women in Kampala, Nairobi and other African cities are defined as basics in Europe.

So when our African “middle class” take their airs and maalo to Europe, they discover that they cannot stand out from the crowd, which explains why most Westernised, well-educated, “well-to-do”, well-connected Africans are so much more bitter with the West than the man on the street in an African township. It is their egos, not the ordinary African’s, that gets trimmed while in Europe.
In Uganda, senior editors and executives of our national newspapers that have circulations as low as 30,000 copies, 20,000 copies, 10,000 copies, 5,000 copies daily, mostly drive 4X4 Sports Utility Vehicles.

Editors of newspapers in Norway, Sweden and Finland whose newspapers have circulations of 300,000 to 700,000 copies daily usually ride to work on bicycles, take the underground train or as some senior editors of Newsweek and Fortune magazine in New York City do, walk to work every day.

I’ve often wondered about the wealthiest Ugandans, the people much adored and much reported about as belonging to the “A-Class” of Kampala and what they regard as goals. I asked Daily Monitor Investigative Editor Chris Obore when he was going to meet KCCA Executive Director Jennifer Musisi to put this question to her: What does she do with all that money she earns in a month?

I’ve seen so many Ugandans who in terms of income are way, way above average, who even in Europe, Japan and America would be middle class. I am disappointed in nearly all of them. The things they do with their money are still basic, ordinary, maalo. It is the usual story of build a house, send children to schools in South Africa or the UK. Drive a 4X4.

White people who earn $2,500 a month live infinitely more interesting, sophisticated, charming, intriguing lives than most African middle class who earn $10,000 a month. I find the young Whites who walk about the streets of Kampala in dirty slippers and carrying backpacks far more interesting and engaging than our boring “A-Class”.

Even today, with the eurozone economies facing their deepest crisis and drop in standards of living in 70 years, White Europeans and Americans who have had to cut back on national budgets and personal spending still come up with the most charming, world-changing, intriguing, creative ideas in the world.

As for us, the so-called “emerging African middle class”, with all our 4X4 cars and houses surrounded by fortress-like walls, we sit passively waiting to buy the phones, hand bags, nail polish, colognes, perfumes and interior decorations created by cash-strapped Europeans.

This Maalo, this ordinariness, this plainness, even among those who are wealthy, is the underpinning characteristic of the African “middle class”.
Maalo is a Luganda word that is so rich in its imagery and exactness, but so difficult to translate.

In translation or transliteration, it describes the combination of naivety, a cluelessness, innocent unknowing, a lack of sophistication and the unawareness of how embarrassingly unsophisticated one looks and acts. It is the behaviour often associated with people just fresh from the village and living in towns and cities for the first time.

It is the school photographs we used to take while holding a radio cassette player. The photo of a school girl in plastic slippers posing for a photo just next to a flower plant, eyes turned demurely to her feet, too shy to look into the camera.

It is the businessman at Luwum Street who has just bought his first car and now wraps himself in gold chains and wears crocodile skin shoes. It is dressing the way Kofi Olomide, Kanda Bongoman, Awilo Longomba, Arlus Babele, Loketo and other Congolese musicians dress.

Bad Black image
It is the Bad Black types in Kampala and other girls of a certain breeding (whose day jobs start at night), who insist “I can only marry a Muzungu”. It is the imagery and character and acting style and love of flashy colours that form the character of Nigerian films.

It is in flying your daughter to Europe to have a baby while, as a government official hospitals under your charge don’t have drugs. BMWs, Mercedes comfortably parked next to a garbage dump.

It is the Christmas cards we send and receive of reindeer, snow and sleighs in the December heat and dust of Tropical Africa. It is in tens of thousands of young people in African cities who all have Facebook accounts but none has read a book longer than 300 pages in the last seven years.

The best time to see the maalo is at Christmas time, these days also around St. Valentine’s Day and most of all, at our weddings. Most of us are still trying to find ourselves. We are in social and economic transition, no longer able to fit in the rural villages without piped water and electricity but not yet fully, mentally urbanised.

It is the way, in other words, most of us that pass for the post-independence Africa live our lives and dreams. Maalo.

How can you talk of a booming continent when you have such a fragile middle class, living so precariously financially, burdened by so many bills and family obligations, with such simple and clueless goals?

Is this the middle class that is going to withstand the onslaught of the Chinese economic machine, soon to pour into Africa, buying up our ancestral land, taking control of our fresh water, fertile agricultural land, factories, supermarkets, mobile phone services, TV airwaves and win all the important infrastructural contracts?

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