A language called “Developmentalese”
And this is what worries me – it’s that rather than encouraging innovative, creative thinking, we are working at a superficial level. Mozambican experts and specialists are reproducing the language of others, concerned with the ability to please and cut a good figure in workshops. It’s an illusion, a game of appearances, for which some of us are well prepared because we know how to speak a language called “Developmentalese”. Faced with seeking meaningful solutions for national problems, we are as much at a loss as any other ordinary citizen.
Buzzwords such as good governance, accountability, partnerships, sustainable development, institutional capacitation, auditing and monitoring, equity, advocacy, all these fashionable terms give added value (there’s another fashionable term) to so-called “communications” (in fact, one should really refer to them as “papers”). But if you don’t want to be in the same situation as a certain speaker, you should avoid word-for-word translation – I’ve already heard someone referred to as a painelista, which, apart from being not very nice, is a dangerous word – well, this speaker, in order to avoid saying that he was going to give a presentation using powerpoint, ended up saying he was going to give a presentation using ponta poderosai. This could be susceptible to malicious interpretations.
The problem with Developmentalese is that it only invites one to think about what has already been thought by others. We are consumers rather than producers of thought. But it wasn’t just a language we invented: a whole army of specialists was created, some of them with curious names, and I have seen them in a variety of meetings. I’ve seen specialists in conflict resolution, conference facilitators, adepts at workshops, experts in advocacy, political engineers.
We are committing our best human resources to something whose use must be questioned.
The greatest temptation nowadays is for us to reduce issues to their linguistic dimension. We speak, and having spoken, we think we have acted. Often, the same word has danced with a vast number of partners. So many in fact that whatever the party, certain expressions always take to the floor first. One of these words is “poverty.” Poverty has already danced with a partner called “the decade against underdevelopment.” Another dancer went by the name of “the struggle against absolute poverty.” Another case is that of the people. The people have specialized above all in masked balls. And it has assumed the mask of “the popular masses.” It has already been “the working masses.” After that, it was “the population.” Now, it dances with the face of “the local communities.”
The truth is that we are still hugely ignorant of the current dynamics, the living, practical mechanisms that this so-called people invents in order to survive. We know very little about issues of urgent and primary importance.
It’s not only the young students who look at the rural world as if it were an abyss. For us too, there is also a Mozambique that remains invisible.
More serious than these omissions is the image that has been created as a substitute for reality. It has become an increasingly common idea that development is the accumulated result of conferences, workshops and projects. And I know of no country that has developed on the basis of projects. You, more than anyone, know this. But whoever reads newspapers realises how deeply entrenched this belief is. All this merely illustrates the appeal of an attitude that prevails among us, and that is that others (in our modern jargon, the “stakeholders”) are the ones who have the historic obligation to haul us out of poverty.
Our being a world – seeking a family
At a conference in which I took part this year in Europe, someone asked me: what is it, for you, to be African?
And I asked him back: And what, for you, is it to be European?
He didn’t know what to answer. Similarly, no one knows exactly what is meant by African identity. There’s a lot of dross, a lot of folklore, in this domain. There are some who say that what is “typically African” is that which carries a greater spiritual weight. I’ve heard someone say that we Africans are different from others because we give far greater value to our culture. An African specialist at a conference in Prague stated that the measure of Africanness lay in a concept known as “ubuntu.” And that this concept states that “I am the others.”
Now, all these conjectures seem vague and diffuse to me, all this has surfaced because that which is historical has been accepted as substance. Hasty definitions of African identity rest on a basis of exoticism, as if Africans were especially different from others, or as if their differences were the result of some fact rooted in essence.
Africa cannot be reduced to a facile, easy-to-understand entity. Our continent is made up of profound diversity and complex hybridities. Long and irreversible processes of cultural mingling have moulded a patchwork of differences that constitute one of the most valuable patrimonies of our continent. When we mention these mixtures, we do so with some unease, as if a hybrid product were in some way less pure. But there’s no such thing as purity when we talk of the human species. There is no economy nowadays that isn’t built on transaction. In the same way, there’s no human culture that isn’t based in far-reaching transactions of the soul.
What we want and what we can be
I’m going to tell you about a true episode that occurred near here, in South Africa in 1856. A well-known spirit medium called Mhalakaza claimed that the spirits of his ancestors had transmitted a prophecy to him. And that a great resurrection would occur and the British would be expelled. For this to happen, the Xhosa people would have to destroy all their livestock and their fields. That would be the sign of faith required for wealth and abundance for all to spring from the ground. Mhalakaza convinced the rulers of the kingdom of the truth of his vision. Chief Sarili, a member of the Tshawe royal household, proclaimed the prophecy as official doctrine. Quite apart from the soothsayer’s vision, Sarili had a strange conviction: it was that the Russians were the ancestors of the Xhosa and that they, the Russians, would spring from the ground in accordance with the promised resurrection. This idea arose because the Xhosa monarchs had heard talk of the Crimean War and of the fact that the Russians were fighting the British.
The idea spread rapidly that after the Russians had defeated the British in Europe, they would come and expel them from South Africa. And what is even more curious is that it was established that the Russians would be black, under the assumption that all those opposed to British dominion must be blacks.
I won’t linger on the historical episode. The reality is that with the disappearance of their livestock and their agriculture, famine decimated more than two thirds of the Xhosa people. One of the greatest tragedies in all African history had been consummated. The drama was exploited by colonial ideology as a proof of the extent of superstitious belief among Africans. But the reality is that history is a good deal more complex than a simple belief. Behind this whole scenario lurked serious political disputes. Within the Xhosa monarchy, a powerful current of dissidence against this collective suicide took shape. But this group was very quickly labelled “infidels” and a militia made up of those considering themselves believers was created in order to repress those who were in disagreement.
It’s clear that this story, which is sadly true, cannot be repeated nowadays in the same form. But I’ll leave you to consider for yourselves parallels with occurrences in our part of the South, in Africa, in the World. Apprentice witchdoctors still construct messianic prophecies and drag with them, by unhappy means, whole peoples towards suffering and despair.
Our continent runs the risk of becoming a forgotten territory, of secondary interest to the strategists of global integration. When I say “forgotten”, you will think I’m referring to the attitude of the great powers. But I’m referring to our own elites, who have turned their backs on their responsibilities towards their own people, to the way their predatory behaviour helps denigrate our image and injures the dignity of all Africans. The discourse of most of our politicians is
made up of banalities, incapable of encompassing the complex state of our countries and our peoples. Shallow demagogy continues to replace the search for solutions. The ease with which dictators take possession of the destinies of entire nations is something that should alarm us. The ease with which present mistakes are explained by blaming the past should worry us all. It’s true that corruption and the abuse of power are not, as some would have it, exclusive to our continent. But the space we afford tyrants for manipulation is astonishing. We urgently need to curb the opportunities for the exercise of vanity, arrogance and impunity among those who grow rich through robbery. We urgently need to redefine the premises upon which our management models are predicated, and which exclude those who live outside the sphere of literacy and on the periphery of European logic and rationality.
We Mozambicans are living through a very particular moment of our history, with some perplexity. Up until this point, Mozambique believed it could dispense a radical interpretation of its very foundations. The Mozambican nation gained an epic sense in its struggle against external forces. Hell was always elsewhere, the enemy was beyond its borders. It was Ian Smith, apartheid, imperialism. In the end, the country did what we do in our everyday lives: we invent monsters in order to unsettle ourselves. But monsters also serve to placate us. We feel at ease knowing that they dwell outside us. Suddenly, the world has changed and we are forced to seek out our demons within our home. The enemy, the worst of our enemies, was always within us. We have discovered this simple truth and we are left alone with our own ghosts. And that has never happened to us before.
This is a moment of bleakness and despair. But it may also be a moment of growth. Confronted with our most deeply-felt vulnerabilities, we must create a new vision, invent other utterances, attempt different scriptures. We are ever more alone in our historic responsibility to create another History. We cannot beg another image from the world. We cannot persist in an attitude of appeal. The only solution is to continue the long, hard journey towards conquering a place that we and our nation are worthy of. And that place can only be the product of our own creation.
(A talk given to the Association of Mozambican Economists, Maputo, August 2003)
MIRAM AL-MASRI
Translated from the French by JILL SCHOOLMAN
from Elle va nue la liberté
MIRAM AL-MASRI was awarded the Adonis Prize of the Lebanese Cultural Forum for the best creative work in Arabic in 1998, the Premio Citta di Calopezzati in the category “Poesie de la Mediterranée” in 2007, and, in 2013, the Prix Antonio Viccaro and the Prix Al Bayane for Elle va nue la liberté.
JILL SCHOOLMAN is the founder and editor of Archipelago Books, an independent press devoted to world literature. In 2014 she was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Elle va nue, la liberté,
She moves naked, freedom,
sur les montagnes de Syrie
over Syria’s mountains,
dans les camps de réfugiés.
through the refugee camps.
Ses pieds s’enfoncent dans la boue
Her feet sink into the mud
et ses mains gercent de froid et de
and her hands are chapped from
souffrance.
cold and suffering.
Mais elle avance.
But she goes on.
Elle passe avec
She passes with
ses enfants accrochés à ses bras.
her children clinging to her arms
Ils tombent sur son chemin.
They fall upon her path.
Elle pleure
She weeps
mais elle avance.
but she goes on.
On brise ses pieds
Her feet are crushed
mais elle avance.
but she goes on.
On coupe sa gorge
Her throat is slit
mais elle continue à chanter.
but she goes on singing.
Les enfants de Syrie,
The children of Syria,
emmaillotés dans leurs linceuls
swaddled in shrouds
comme des bonbons enveloppés.
like wrapped candy.
Mais ils ne sont pas en sucre.
But they aren’t made of sugar.
Ils sont de chair
They’re of flesh
et de rêves
and dreams
et d’amour.
and love.
Les rues vous attendent,
The streets await you,
les jardins, les écoles et les fetes
the gardens, schools and dances
vous attendent,
await you,
enfants de Syrie.
children of Syria.
C’est trop tot d’etre des oiseaux
It’s still too soon to be birds
et pour jouer
and gambol
dans le ciel.
in the sky.
SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA
Translated from the French by MELANIE MAUTHNER
MELANIE MAUTHNER studied Modern Languages at Wadham College, Oxford and worked as a sociology lecturer before becoming a translator. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Her translation of Scholastique Mukasonga’s Notre-Dame du Nil will be released in 2014.
Born in Rwanda in 1956, SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA settled in France in 1992. The genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda two years later. Mukasonga learned that 27 of her family members had been massacred. Her autobiographical account Inyenzi ou les Cafards marked Mukasonga’s entry into literature. Her first novel, Notre-Dame du Nil, won the Prix Ahamadou Kourouma and the Prix Renaudot in 2012.
Fear
DO YOU remember who trailed us in Nyamata? Tutsi ghosts, lost displaced souls, scornful of the sun as it rose, clinging in the depth of night to their own shadows? Fear, of course. And still to this day, look how far I am from Rwanda, here on this boulevard I know so well now, among faces and places grown so familiar they fill my waking hours, well it’s fear that jolts me whenever I hear someone creep at my heels, who’s that following me? Fear that makes me suddenly cross to the pavement or sneak in that shop and hide, retrace my steps or take a long detour at the traffic lights. If I spot my stalker’s face in the window – a woman straining at her dog’s leash, teenagers cussing their way home from school, a man rollerblading, zigzagging, dodging pedestrians – well, if that’s all it is, I relax, shrug it off, this fear that haunts me in my adopted town, where no one, absolutely no one among these busy people even dreams of asking me – who are you, where do you come from? – where not a soul in this frantic crowd even for a second entertains the thought of killing me. That’s when I scour their faces, strangers – how on earth can I tell whether this dapper African in his smart suit isn’t just dawdling to observe me, track my every move and, with his accomplices, who’ll appear out of nowhere, plot some ghastly trap because he’s guessed exactly who I am and where I come from and as he grins, there, see him smiling, he knows I’ve outstared and seen through him so I edge away, I’m ashamed now and I speed up cursing this fear I wear like a witch’s shawl.
‘In Nyamata,’ my mother used to say, ‘you must always get it into your skull that to them, we’re just Inyenzi, cockroaches, snakes, parasites really. When you bump into a soldier, militia man, stranger, remember that his objective is to kill you, he knows that sooner or later either he or his buddy will kill you. And if he doesn’t come for you today, he’ll wait for tomorrow, see he’s still asking himself why you’re still alive. But he’s patient. He knows there’s nowhere for you to run to. It’s his duty to kill you, he knows that – it’s either him or you. That’s what they’ve told him, what the radio blares out, listen, can you hear him crowing? Look, he’s even got rosary beads around his neck so the abapadri’s god will bless him when he’s set to kill you. Be forever watchful, don’t believe a word even if
his voice is sweet-sincere, just remember that bloody wish he harbours to bludgeon you. Don’t be caught unawares, you know how death lurks ready to ambush you anywhere, everywhere. You must outwit her, sprint faster than a gazelle in flight as soon as you hear a rustling in the tall grass. Love the blue bottle fly, scan your body like she does. Front, back. Steal her eyesight. Colonise her brain. Be that bitch, she’s your role model: you think she’s asleep, snout between her paws, in such a deep slumber that even stormy thunder won’t shake her to her feet. A leaf swirls and up she springs! You, child, must imitate that sleeping hound. It’s good to be scared because fear keeps you on your toes. Alert, awake. Fear keeps you tuned to what the unsuspecting miss. You know, how the abapadri at catechism go on about how we’ve all got a guardian angel watching over us? Tell me, who’s our guardian angel? That’s right, fear.’
There’s plain everyday fear, ordinary twenty-four hours a day fear, who walks us to school; that’s when the blue bottle’s 360-vision, the gazelle’s hearing might be handy. The girls from Gitagata who attend Nyamata Secondary School all head in that direction together. But you never hear them speak or laugh or sing the way other girls do on the schoolrun, or mouth their lessons and recite homework out loud. They listen like jackals, watch and wait scanning the track as far as the eye can roam. Is that an engine whirring back there, a dust cloud ahead? If so, make a dash for thorn bushes, curl into a porcupine, cover your face with your palms, oh if only we could dig into earth, hunker like rattlesnakes, burrow like moles underground! There goes the truck, the soldiers haven’t spotted us nor fired their guns like they usually do when they overtake us here. They don’t always make us their targets, sometimes they just go AWOL, let rip into our legs. To scare us, just for fun. It’s hilarious to see petrified girls scamper all over the road, stumbling as we dart, crash, fall before we pick ourselves up, limping and leaping into spiky shrubs. The lorry rumbles on and look, there’s a soldier, he hurls a grenade onto the track, ‘bang!’ it explodes and sends us into a frenzy. A few girls lie wounded. So, we’d rather follow these long diversions to avoid this route that links Gako military camp to Nyamata. At some point though, we’ll join the track again before reaching Nyamata’s outskirts. Then we’ll run, faster and faster till we collapse breathless in the schoolyard. Assembly time: Mr Headmaster leads the whole school in the national anthem, all together now, choir-like. Crocodiles file into classrooms, hopeful that here in our sanctuary we’ll stave off fear for another few hours.