Comments on “(White?) African Blogger Conference in a Week”

Below are some comments on the last post I had on the upcoming African bloggers indaba. It turned out that AB&H is racist and illegitimate. I will be back to talk more about the attempt to codify the African blog space and make it part of a kind of NGO-ish, funded civil society space with established mores. In other words, the attempt to bring it in line. Original Post

Anonymous said…
I guess you’re upset because you didn’t get a free ticket to the conference, sorry for you.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 7:53:16 AM

MMK said…
anonymous – haha. Indeed, the obvious comment comes forth. Thanks for being sorry.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 8:06:58 AM

Binyavanga said…
Hey,I think I read on Ory’s blog that there were scholarships, whic irritates more because why were people not asked. Maybe some would come on their own steam?
Thursday, September 07, 2006 8:44:32 AM

Vincent Maher said…
The scholarship applications have closed, there were more than 200 applications and the final selections have already been made.This event was announced to the media and to several bloggers who linked to it. If you search for it on Google you will find 280 links to the web site. It was also sent out in the Poynter E-Media Tidbits list.Obviously we could not invite each person in Africa individually, and we hope that it will be successful enough for more applications next year.In general I think this blog post is unacceptably racist and misinformed but I have published my perspective on my own blog.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 8:55:03 AM

MMK said…
Scholarships. The assumption as ever is that Africans are broke, always in need of a (white?)helping hand. I am quite sure that the conference was advertised but as someone who spends hours online, I am puzzled that I did not run into it until yesterday. I hope that the sessions will be taped so that we can see who indeed is an African citizen, blogger, moblogger, vlogger, podcaster, hactivist and new media journalist.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 8:55:13 AM

MMK said…
Here is the link to a fuller explanation of why AB&H is now a racist blog that lacks credibility. The very credibility that can be enjoyed by joining the African citizens Code of Conduct.http://nml.ru.ac.za/maher/?p=137To the program of events: http://dci.ru.ac.za/documents/Draft_Programme2.pdf
Thursday, September 07, 2006 9:09:50 AM

Sammie said…
LOL at “The Hustle” that is the African situation. Africa sounds so hopeless a place to live in!I believe it’s a much better place than say Europe!I was reading somewhere that the American Dream is over, and seeing how self-respecting Africans are demeaning themselves in the name of asylum in Europe, i see where all this (mis)information is coming from.The hustle is further propagated by the brain-drain, where our brilliant minds are given scholarships, and attain green cards, citizenship and stuff, only to be dumped back here when wasted. Look at our current political class. Akina Musyoka, raila, Kibs, The whole lot of them; products of the hustle, turned activists.Pole for the long comment.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 9:14:07 AM

bankelele said…
Ory posted it at her site about a month ago with the scholarship mention. Am happy to have been invited.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 9:16:36 AM

Rista said…
Binyavanga and MMK, you are clearly looking in all the wrong places 🙂 [good looking out bankele] The ‘scholarships’ are always a good idea, but they should be renamed to read something innocuous like ‘conference/travel support’.Vincent, laudable work. Thanks for lending a helping hand to blogging in africa. It’s quite clear your efforts are still not reaching a (significant?) portion of your target audience… might want to rethink the strategy. That said, I wonder how many bonafide black south african bloggers will be at this conference. I am of the old school in believing that the word ‘racist’ cannot be used to describe an african, so i’d recommend you take a different tack when blogging in the ‘african’ space.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 10:05:17 AM

Vincent Maher said…
Rista, you may be right regarding our efforts though right now we’re focussing on Southern Africa.I can’t agree with you on your other point about Africans being exempt from racism, I have seen a lot of racism between all different races in my life, including Africans. Obviously you’re entitled to your opinion, as am I, and I respect that.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 10:51:54 AM
Zephyr said…
Ai mmk, even I, who is a relative bloggo-virgo heard about it.Sometimes, it is good to first, swallow the sour grapes. then blog. I’ll provide the whisky to down them :-). Of course assuming that you can do grapes with whisky.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 10:59:55 AM

Alex Maughan said…
After reading your post mmk, I initially got angry. But now, having spoken about it with the people that happen to be in the room with me… wait, before continuing, let’s count the races in this room for your sake, since you are so obsessed with skin colour: 1 “Indian”, 2 “blacks”, and 1 “white” – or is he more of a grey colour due his very dark body hair? – all are Africans by the way)..anyway, like I was saying, after discussing your rationale – if that’s what one can generously call your racism (and yes, rista, black people can be racist too… do the moral maths yourself, cos I don’t feel like wasting my time on your ignorant and short-sighted claim) – I now find it quite humorous, as do the others in the room. Your claims viz. the scholarships are especially funny. So now, having had a good laugh with all in the room, I am purged of my anger and no longer feel the need to break down the logic of your argument (which would have been done easily with the use of your own ideological premises, as I wouldn’t dare impose a “white” form of deduction on your subjectivity).Thank you for reminding me that even if people like you revel in subjecting everything to a white-on-black form of racism, there are many others (such as those in the room with me) that have more sense.So in the end, I have said nothing really, other than expressing my thanks, and, I suppose, that is enough. There is so much wrong with your argument, that I’ll end up wasting my time deconstructing it, and will enivitably waste your time too (since you will never be able to truly consider my overall objection until you remove that anger-filled race card that obscures your critical thought).Other than that, congratulations on a greatly informative blog (oh wait, what did we all learn from this again?… shucks, my red-neck, honke-rambling brain just aint wat’d used to be.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 11:54:05 AM

Binyavanga said…
Oh very juicy! Are fists flying? Some honke-rambling! Anger-filled race-cards! Good lord, must log on later. Nothing like a good ole conference to set thigs alight. Ah!! I have really missed South Africa…oh the rolling minefields!
Thursday, September 07, 2006 12:37:56 PM

Nic said…
I think that the comments above all illustrate the need for what is being argued against in this post: a code of conduct. For if there was a code of cunduct this post would be well without its boundaries and be disregarded as a worth while post/blog. As for the fact that “africans” cannot be labelled racist, that is the most absurd thing i have ever heard. Many years of political studies has proven to me that although my skin colour may not be black I am still an African. Well said Alex. Furthermore, if this is the case and a multitude or colours are labelled “African” by the informed, then why should there not be white/egyptian/coloured/green/purple/yellow speakers at the conference? If they are all African then who are you to predefine what is and is not African?
Thursday, September 07, 2006 2:23:10 PM

coldtusker said…
binyavanga – Same old, same old… as in Changez… I think you are just adding fuel to the fire & having fun!mmk – I wasn’t invited either but then I didn’t look out for it! It is a enormous web out there!Wacha this “racial” angle… Mark Shuttleworth (born in SA, so what if he is white, SA damu) is arguably one of the richest guys in Africa with real (yaani, NOT stolen/embezzled) money! I bet there are thousands of “black” Africans who were just as knowledgable as MS but toiling in the “West” rather than taking the entrepreneurial road!Tafuta na utapata (Seek & ye shall find)…I was blown away by the Indian IT industry. They are willing to hire US employees so they can “learn” from them! No flase pride, the Indian BPO campuses are similar to the USA. No squalor here! Idea exchange pow-wows!Africa (White, Black, Mwarabu) better get their act in order… We are the last on any list of being IT savvy (expect Polynesia & Micronesia) thus let’s keep the African spirit going!Tata Tea bought Tetleys (UK), Infosys & WIPRO have picked up a number of US firms. Hong Kong, Korean & Taiwanese firms are world-class with LG, Samsung, Hyundai becoming household names!The Asians have becoming globetrotters in 50 years while Africa…wapi?I could say the Egyptians but hey they look more “white” than “black”??? That doesn’t fit your “view”, does it?BTW, I really enjoy your takes on your travels!
Thursday, September 07, 2006 3:29:33 PM

MMK said…
Dear Alex Maughan, Vincent Maher and Nic. Welcome to AB&H. Never doubt the old adage that says living long enough allows one to see the impossible become real. For instance, the surreal sense I have of being called racist by white people in South Africa for asking whether a conference that announces itself as African is in fact disproportionately white. Racism used to be King Leopold’s administration killing 10 million Congolese, or 12 million slaves being carted off to the Americas or even apartheid. Now, so benign is it that it has become the act of hurting the feelings of white people by asking whether this conference is basically a bunch of them mouthing off with a few black tokens strewn here and there. The post for your information was actually meant very tongue-in-cheek; an intention that the fury of your response has now changed to an actual desire to probe further into the little talk shop that you are going to hold in a week’s time. Let us not suppose for even an instant that the label African is so problem-free that all one has to do is invoke it to be clothed in the armor of victimhood which Mr. Maughan and Mr. Maher wear so comfortably. Seeing that those to be empowered by the conference can be Nic’s ‘white/egyptian/coloured/green/purple/yellow’ African gladdens the heart. Where was I all those years when being called an African in South Africa and in Kenya was an insult to anyone without a dark brown skin – was actually being legally consigned to poverty and exclusion? Happily though, the troubles are over. Nirvana is here and all you have to do to join this racial paradise of harmony and fairness is pronounce yourself African. Especially when the whip and the fangs of the dog are safely locked away in history’s vault.

Let me ask the question in simpler and even more racialist language: How many black Africans are represented in your panels in percentage terms? You seemed to be quite willing to supply a painstaking enough count of even those participants who are a ‘grey colour due to his very dark body hair.’ Surely then it would not be too difficult for you to just tell me how many black panelists you have compared with the white/gray ones. Your spirited response to a post on my blog suggests that I have touched a raw nerve. And it must be one that is very often fingered in South Africa where racial positions and language are upended so that black folks are demanding access to influence and opportunity on the basis of race and ability to address decades of apartheid racism. I hate racial labeling myself but I do not kid myself that this is a dead and buried matter, that somehow South Africa and Africa have moved on from white privilege clothing itself in the virtue of helping the ‘darkies’ and speaking in their stead. In conference after Africanist conference, the black Africans from the continent are too often consigned to the sidelines. To be spoken for as they give good service as native or local informants to the important (white) thinkers who are made ‘African’ by the sheer love they lavish on the Dark Continent.

Thanks by the way Mr. Maughan for your kind compliment on my blog at the end of your angry comment. I felt sorry that you would so brutally flay yourself by writing of yourself as having a ‘red-neck, honke-rambling brain…’ This kind of masochism is really sad to see especially when it is a transparent attempt to simultaneously make you appear to be a victim and to enable you to hold onto that delicious frisson of racial pain. I doubt that you are a red-neck; at least not in the way you seem to understand this phrase which I hate. I associate nowadays not with the white violence during the reconstruction period in the American South but rather with a contemporary liberal America that has cast poor white people beyond the pale. Heaping on them all the evils of racism both present and past while they bask in the glow of good deeds – especially in Africa – untouched by the very real racism that is alive to this day.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 3:38:37 PM

MMK said…
coldtusker – have one on me please; I am craving a cold Tusker badly. This is not about invitations anywhere but rather about the anger and defensiveness of people who claim to be about opening up spaces on this continent. The power of blogging is precisely about being able to ask questions as an individual. Especially when I notice a concerted attempt to codify the African blogosphere and make it part of a tired, exhausted white liberal civil society with a few ‘native’ voices to spice it up.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 3:51:27 PM

coldtusker said…
mmk – Tusker…History:Initially brewed by a couple of white brodas in Kenya… I think one of them got gored thus “Tusker” the name was born…It was primarily Kenyan owned for many years until KBL ran into financial trouble. Guinness came in as a white knight & bought a huge stake by pumping in some Sterling…Regardless of Guinness’ control, Tusker is as Kenyan as it gets!So I use Tusker as my mascot (Of course, I love the rich taste!)…It represents all in all, the best of Kenya which does not necessarily mean “black” or “african” or “white” or… just great taste & quality.Oh, they beat the crap out of the S.Africans (fronted by njenga karume who made his money off a KBL distributorship)! I’ll take a Tusker over castle or miller or bud any day!
Thursday, September 07, 2006 5:10:58 PM

Binyavanga said…
Let’s get to a juicer subject. Rhodes University…been a while since I sampled that particular brand of nonsense. “We didn’t knoooow..we never kneeeew. If only we kneeeeeeeew what the Afrikaners were doooing. Our heads were in the sand, positioned nobly in with good intentions.”Travelling down the Eastern Cape in the 90s, I ended up having more respect for the redneck towns of the border, where black people were clearly tagged and demarcated – but at least recognised as even a threat a viable possibility, the boycotting people. Those silly “they they” attitudes of that leedle town called Grahamstown – where the township was the flithiest I had ever seen, the poorest and the most invisible. And the town: church-spiring and boater wielding, kind to blacks – a kind of island of civility that can only come from real violence – for it lives as if there is no threat, in a country still gaseous with possibilities and the whole messy angry “really so racist” country called South Africa was not in Rhodes, (RHODES) but out there but Rhodies (shall we call them) bravely read Cryyyyyyyy – The Beloved, Beeeeloved. Country. Then a friend telling me how her wide eyed and liberal friends at Rhodes used to thank the “Aunties” at the end of term by having them stand in a chorus and sing for the Undergrads. Some of these women were grandmothers. When she complained she was told, “Ohhhh they really love doing this!”I have often wondered how that little town which by sheer force of will decided to be Cambridge at Cape for over a hundred head-in-sand years, suddenly discovered over the final minutes of the Rugby World Cup that it was African, and African was a wonderful rainbow with free and easy membership.Oops. Not sure. Have I broken the code of conduct? Is the code of conduct actually going to specify who can use the term African; and demarcate where it is right and where it is wrongly applied?Oh Dear MMK…bad blogger. Bad Bad blogger. You have broken the code!
Thursday, September 07, 2006 5:43:34 PM

Ntwiga said…
Interesting post that has generated a ton of comments. While I agree somewhat witht he content of the post, I cannot subscribe to the way in which it was presented – but again, thats just me. Some thoughts;1. Being white and being African are not mutually exclusive so that part of the argument may be facetious.2. Arguing that this post is racist smacks of “but I have lots of black friends, how can I be racist”ism.There are so many ways of looking at this that it would be insulting to try and pretend to cover them all in a comment.It is however possible to do a quanlitative analysis: I count 6 out of 19 as being black. Does that mean that this counts as another Live 8 type event?Strike1here & here2Ory Okolloh3“Ashraf Patel” nothing here really – but there are lots of Africans named Patel so I make that three4Fackson Banda5 Emaka Okafor, just ignore the basketball player.6 Ramon ThomasStrikeMike StopforthTom Johnson – Nothing definite comes upStrikeRay HartleyJuanita Williams – Nothing definite comes upChris RoperStrikeAlex HoggStrikeIan GilfillanStrikeAndrew RensStrikeVincent Maher or hereStrikeAndrew Heavens ((l to r) Andrew Heavens, Ethan Zuckerman, Rebecca MacKinnon) from here.
Thursday, September 07, 2006 8:05:49 PM

Vincent Maher said…
As I said in the comments here, this conference is the first of it’s kind, it is going to be a lot of fun and it will be a step in the right direction for blogging on this continent.

I was born in Africa, lived here all my life and consider myself an African. I hate the colonial enterprises, the World Bank and whoever else has damaged this continent and I was not old enough to vote during apartheid. If anyone has a problem with that, tough.

Every year people travel down to Highway Africa to learn from people who have a certain type of media production experience and exchange their own experiences. It is a confluence and it works, so maybe you had better experience it before you shout from the sidelines that it’s a white thing. I certainly don’t think of a conference organised by black Africans as a black thing, so maybe that says something.

What I am tired of is being categoried along with the Eurpoean butchers and oppressors, if you met me you would know that I don’t fit into that category.

Friday, September 08, 2006 9:16:15 AM

sokari said…
BH is right in his assessment that this conference is white and not even African white for that matter and is an “attempt to codify the African blog space and make it part of a kind of NGO-ish, funded civil society space with established mores. In other words, the attempt to bring it in line.” – well said and anon- yes not particularly original in your thoughts. well we know two Africans, ory and bankelele who are the rest?
This fits in well with why I left GV last June – too many big white mothers and fathers – same old same old

Saturday, September 09, 2006 1:21:52 PM
sokari said…
BTW – zimpundit isnt attending after all for his/her own personal safety – understandable.

Binyavanga said…
The new thing is now that this whole brouhaha is based on the dea that “some people” (MK and Myself?) are bitter that they were not give scholarships and Mahler is upset at the entitlement of this. I am really loving all this. I am not even a blogger! Oh how anger reveals! So MK – do you want a scholarship to INDABA? At the lovely Rhodes? Will that pacify your bitterness? Man – I had really forgotten SA – that your objection to the premise behind something is an attempt to put your hand out and receive Black Empowerment? Is the shit there so cynical now? So now the voice is sanctimonious – saying that they can’t with all integrity bend to your subversive request for inclusion.

What would happen MK – if you write a hand-wringing private email to them and say you have “unresolved issues” and you “acknowledge them” and “your history and personal poverty and general desparateness for a scholarship” made it difficult to appreciate what “a sensible and earnest” thing it is that they are doing – what would happen?

Because that is the script.

cirdan said…
MMK, this guy is an African, if anybody is.