In the Past, was the Future Better? by Mia Couto

Coming back to my  favorite writer and personality, Mia Couto, I'll try to translate a speech delivered last June 16 before the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency DEZA, about the 30 year anniversary of the independence of Mozambique. Again I apologize for any shortcomings in my translation. (The Portuguese original in .pdf here.)

Mia Couto
30 Years of Independence
In the Past, was the Future Better?

I was born and I grew up in a small colonial town, in a world that has died already. Early I learned that I should have to live against my own time. The colonial reality was there, in everyday life, tidying up men by race, pushing Africans beyond the suburbia. I was myself, privileged by my skin color, considered a "second rate white". Every day I had to live with the humiliation of barefoot blacks, forced to take the rear seats in buses, in the rear seat of life. At home, we lived door to door with fear, facing the threat of prison pending over my father, who was a journalist and who taught us not to lower our eyes before injustice. National independence was for me the end of that universe of injustice. That is why I embraced the revolutionary cause as if it had been predestined. I soon became member of the Mozambique Liberation Front and my life was, for a while, guided by an epic feeling to being about to create a new society.

In the day of Mozambique's Independence I was 19 years old. I was then nurturing the idea of one day seeing my country's flag raise on a pole. I believed that the dream of a people could translate into a simple flag. In 1975, I was a journalist, the world was my church, men my religion. And everything was still possible.

In the night of June 24, I joined thousands of other Mozambicans in the Machave Stadium to witness the proclamation of National Independence, that would be announced by the coarse voice of Samora Moisés Machel. The announcement was scheduled for midnight. The beginning of a new day, the dawn of a country. Twenty minutes after the hour, Samora hadn't taken the podium. Suddenly, Samora's guerrilla uniform emerged from the guests. Ignoring the schedule's accuracy, the President proclaimed: "at zero hours today, July 25th...". A magic pass had caused the clock's arms to go back. Time was right, time was ours.I will never forget the eyes lightened by an unique enchantment, I don't forget the screams of euphoria, the shots of the guerrilla men announcing the end of all wars. There was party, the celebration of us becoming people, of owning a ground and deserving Heaven. More than celebrating a country, we were celebrating a different destiny for our own lives. We who had waited centuries would not notice those extra twenty minutes.

Thirty years later, could we still make the clock's arms go back? Does the same belief live in the Mozambican citizen? No, it doesn't. And it couldn't live. In 1975, we held the firm but naive belief that it would be possible, within the life of one generation, to change the world and redistribute happiness. We didn't know that the world is a sticky web where some are prey and others predators.

Thirty years is almost nothing in the history of a country. We are already distant from the colonial injustice. But we are still far from fulfilling the dream that made us sing and dance on the night of June Th. Part of that expectation is unfulfilled. Today we wouldn't run with the same faith to celebrate a new annunciation. That doesn't mean we are less available to beliefs. We are instead more aware that all things require a path and a time.

We can get explanations, point accusing fingers. All that won't be much productive. You can't expect a country just out of the backwardness of colonial domination to fulfill what independent old nations are still building. Mozambique is learning to be sovereign in a world that accepts little of others' sovereignty. The sky that seemed infinite became narrower and narrower to the so-called small flags.

In the same year that the Portuguese colonial empire collapsed, in 1975, the United States were defeated in Vietnam. Time seemed to run in favor of the "small" countries, able to face the arrogance of the mighty. These victories created the illusion that a fairer world was coming to be. But the world system readjusted those failures soon enough. The Independence of Mozambique had to face a duality: it represented a cut with colonialism but, at the same time, it worked as a step toward a wider integration into a capitalist system that was becoming global. We would not be able to avoid that ambivalent condition.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,

In my novel Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land) I created a character that, still to be born in the Independence Day, June Th, was christened Junhito (little June). The story takes place our civil war that extended for a period of 16 years.

A certain night, Junhito's father is assailed by a premonition: his son would die soon. That was what the war claimed: the death of those born in June. To save his son, the family decided to transfer him to the chicken run in the yard. There Junito learned to behave like chickens, eating left overs and sleeping outside. Resigned to live without glory, without shining, without substance.

Junhito gradually became a shadow and, at home, his relatives were not even allowed to mention his name. His mother, even she seemed to have accepted it. However, hidden by the night, she would visit the chicken run. She would sit in the dark and sing a lullaby, the same she had sung before to put his other brothers to sleep. At first, Junhito would join his mother singing. But later, the little boy didn't even know how to spell human words. He would screech some cockle doodle doos and duck his head under his arm. And that´s how he would go to sleep, dreaming that once he would have been a man.

The metaphor of the novel is simple, almost linear. At the time, I was denouncing our progressive loss of sovereignty, and a growing taming of our boldness of spirit. We could be a nation but not too much, we could be a people but only if well behaved.

In a difficult and conflict ridden beginning, Mozambique created the reputation of being an exceptional case in Africa. That good name, I must say, is well deserved. That prestige was conquered, it isn't a gift from any paternalism. We were able to produce Peace. We were able of creating a formal democracy, of building stability and of ensuring freedom of expression and of thought. I am proud of that process. But I'm also afraid. Because the path we have traveled hasn't been exactly chosen by us, nor is it being tested to our will. Our success can't continue to be measured only by the success of the application of a directory of political and financial recipes. On the contrary, we should be valued by the way we creatively re-think our place in the world.

During the glorious years of fighting for freedom we used to cry "Independence or Death, we will win". Today we know: independence is not more than the possibility of choosing our own dependencies. In the seventies, the world offered the opportunity of different options and strategic alliances. Today the national economies line up to a model without any alternative. We choose what others have already chosen for us. A part of our soul has been, even without us realizing it, lead into the chicken run and there it now forgets the irreverence, the originality and the desire of being unique.

The decrease in sovereignty is not a process that targets Mozambique specifically. It is a generalizes process. All nations are today less national, every citizen owns himself less today. Some say that now we are all world. But nobody can belong to the world if they don't belong to their small town.

HOW EUROPE SEES AFRICA

Continents are above all representations made and remade according to their times. Africa today is an euro-African-American co-production. The most recent version of that co-production is marked by death and decadence. TV chains are confirming that agony, among illnesses and wars. The excess of images depicting African tragedies has had a perverse effect: the continent is no longer visible. It has lost visibility because everything seems to have been seen already. To the eyes of the rest of the world, Africa (or a good part of it) no longer exists. From the pink map emerged the monochromatic map of desperation.

The African apocalypse remained on the shop window for too long, it has been excessively filmed, photographed, twisted and distorted for use of compassion. The availability to understand what lies behind those images is no longer there. Famine and war are, after all, nothing but signs of an older and deeper tragedy. That tragedy is based on internal reasons but also on the peripheral location of Africa and on the unequal exchanges of the world trade.

A certain European left has moved from sympathy to a militant pessimism. The solidarity tear has been replaced by indifference and discredit. Africans, in turn, have perpetuated a feeling of blaming others, believing it is just the continuation of a "plot" to decimate them. from both sides, impatiences and disappointments piled up. The same ignorance of the Other has been passed through history. To the Prophets of socialism followed the Prophets of neo-liberalism waving quick financial profits to save the poor. But poverty insists, stubborn as an incurable disease that devours us from the other side of the Mediterranean.

The option for donor countries seems simple: either give more or stop giving. Recent news show that in the near future a little more will be given. At least in some nations the more humanitarian alternative has won. However, not many people will question the need of changing the quality of the relationship between North and South.

HOW WE LOOK AT SWITZERLAND

Switzerland has already been to many Mozambicans not a country but the name of a religious mission. The Swiss Mission settled in Southern Mozambique, facing terrible suspicion of the Portuguese colonial regime. Henri Junod has been expelled from Mozambique in 1985 because he was teaching the so-called "native languages". The missionary helped Mozambicans like Eduardo Mondlane to Mozambique themselves while, in the process, he was becoming an African himself, ending by requesting to be buried in Mozambique soil.

Seventy years later, another Swiss came to be a figure of almost mythological dimension. It was the doctor René Gagnaux, a new wave philanthropist, a man who dedicated his life to serving the poor. Switzerland, for many, was the homeland of Gagnaux. One of his children, a Mozambican now, leads one of the main political organizations in the city of Maputo.

Today we have a more modern perception of Switzerland and we call it by a curious name: "donor country". The world today is divided by those who give and those who get. Like a natural condition, genetic, perpetual. We, the receiving end of is called "aid" have had different names: we were third world, developing countries, Southern territories, undeveloped countries, peripheral nations.

The dance of names is not over yet. Now, within the frame of the politically correct, we have for the first time the right of sharing the same name: we are all, rich and poor, called "partners". This new name is nicer but it collides with a matter of principle: you can't resolve in words what is not resolved in substance.

THE MUTUAL BLAMING

The Swiss Ambassador in Mozambique, my friend Dr. Adrian Hadorn, is a witness to my insistent intervention in Mozambique to fight the tendency of victimizing Africans suffer from. While we go on blaming Europeans by our own failures we won't be capable of looking at ourselves as the principal motor for change. The assume the condition of an historical being: that was the biggest and most compelling challenge of the National Independence.

The sum of arguments to justify the rule of theft and corruption within the African continent is endless. Some African intellectuals see in the import of external models the origin of all evil. This justification finds space in some donors. In the modern language of the consultants reports, this problem would be reported like: "lack of ownership of structural reform". Imposed from the outside, these reforms could not be implemented. But on the contrary everything shows that part of those reforms has been quickly and deeply taken by national elites that have used them to favor their own enrichment. The problem doesn't seem to lie in the origin of the models but in their political nature. Africans have africanized tapioca. The elite have done the same with structural reform.

If some Africans think the blame is the Europeans only, in the inverse sense, some Europeans think the blame is the Africans only. A healthier relationship between the ones and the others would force profound break, it would imply starting again. But that return to zero does not exist in history. We need to question the given of our reciprocal relationship.

I have elected for this text some loose topics. I'm not an economist, I am a writer whose passion lies in a world that doesn't exist. But I can't remain indifferent before some issues that determine our common destiny. Here are some questions that I would like to share with you.

1. The false sense of waste.

Public opinion in Europe and in the U.S. maintain the idea that African can beat the crisis if the donated funds are well managed. Aid is only insufficient because it isn't used well.

It is correct that some donations have been deviated to benefit minority elites. Some of those stolen fortunes are here, right in the heart of Europe, in criminal bank accounts. But the greater truth is that even if well managed the current aid could not resolve the vital problems of impoverished nations. On the contrary, the current aid situation may be worsening the condition of misery in the Third World.

Let's go back to the main idea that aid numbers are astronomical. In reality, those amounts need to be placed in context. American citizens believe, for example, that their country puts aside 15 to 20 per cent of its budget to foreign aid. They are wrong. The U.S. spend less than 1 per cent on aid, peanuts when compared with the millions the Government pays every year to arms suppliers.

A writer can tell, not sum. But an economist who's my friend helped me with some numbers and I would like to share the results with you. With the 175 billion dollars that the U.S. has already spent in the Iraq war since March 2003, the following would be possible:

1) Start up 40.000 small production companies, relatively modern and competitive in Sub-Saharan Africa, directly generating 12 million new jobs offering salaries and other benefits above the actual average. This way, 60 million Africans would be permanently taken away from the web of poverty. Besides, this investment would allow African economies to take real profit from trade opportunities already there today, such as AGOA (Preferential trade with the U.S.) and EBA (everything-but-arms, preferential trade with the E.U). This means that in a relatively short period of time, the GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa could be tripled, not at the expense of aid but based on the real development and growth of the economy and a better distribution of the generated profit.

2) In addition to those companies, the money spent in Iraq could also be used to build more 600 professional school where every year about 300.000 qualified workers could graduate to jump start the development of agriculture, agro-industries, fishing, industry, tourism, services, etc. This training would allow the above mentioned companies to work well with qualified workers, and having immediate repercussions in productivity and the quality of life of most Africans.

Or, shuffling the numbers again: the billions of dollars spent in Iraq are enough to employ more than 4 million elementary teachers for a year, or to vaccinate all the children in the world against different diseases for 58 years, or to feed the world for the next 7 years, or still to end malaria in Africa and build 2 million new basic houses. These other options for the billions of dollars would be perhaps a more effective way of fighting insecurity. Because there is an invisible terror that may be feeding world terrorism. That is the terror of hunger, of poverty, of ignorance, the terrorism of despair before the impossibility of changing your own life.

(second part on my next posting)