Justine Sacco is not alone.

On December 20, 2013, Justine Sacco, the now-former director of communications at IAC made a tweet on her way to South Africa: “Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” The tweet immediately went viral, causing storm and strong condemnation on social, electronic and in print media. Sacco has since apologized for her reckless ‘joke’. In her statement, she regretted “For being insensitive to this crisis — which does not discriminate by race, gender or sexual orientation, but which terrifies us all uniformly — and to the millions of people living with the virus.” Sacco’s predicament is testimony that maybe the African gods, spirits and ancestors have said "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH".

Sacco’s insensitive tweet represents the longstanding Western characterization that Africa has endured since it first made contact with the Western world. Since pre-colonial period, Africa has had disdainful labels such as dark continent, primitive society, third world, least developed society, and, currently, high risk region, all coined by elements in the West. This western condescending attitude is represented, for example, in Hugh Trevor-Roper’s 1963 remark that “perhaps in the future there will be some African history… But, at present, there is none; there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness…and darkness is not a subject of history.” In 1969, Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state, amplified Trevor-Ruper’s statement when he posited thus: “Nothing important can come from the South. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What happens in the South is of no importance.” Even after making such a statement, Kissinger went ahead and won a joint Noble Peace Prize together with Le Duc Tho in 1973.

Sacco’s statement is reflective of the stereotypes that the West has fabricated about Africa. These stereotypical images of Africa are derived from movies such as lion king, and biased and superficially selective media coverage.  For example, for some people in the West, watching The Last King of Scotland, Kony 2012, and War Dance is knowing everything about Uganda. Yet, Uganda does not live in the past. Idi Amin, whom the movie Last King of Scotland is based on was deposed from power in 1979 (before many of us were born). The war in Northern Uganda, which War dance reflects ended in 2005. However, construction of realities about Uganda based on these historical experiences has continued even when conditions have considerably changed.

In some instances, the people who visit Africa only get obsessed with what they perceive as negative/bad experiences to feed their stereotypical sentiments about Africa. To convince their stereotypical friends and family members back home that they have been to “Africa” (they mostly say Africa instead of particular countries in Africa that they have visited), they take photo of bad roads, makeshift houses, homeless people, malnourished children, etc. In their world of imagination, a better Africa does not exist.

Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. An image like this is rarely captured by Western visitors who come to Africa.

This attitude has a lot to do with class struggle than racism. It is about hegemony and supremacy, both fueled by national origin more than race. It is a dangerous form of patriotism where national pride is built around the attitude of looking down upon other societies. I have met none-white people whose perception of Africa is extremely negative and patronizing. The interaction between Africa and the West, in most part, is infested with Africans being treated as kids and listening signposts that need to be lectured to. Before the 2012 elections in Kenya, Johnnie Carson, the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs lectured to Kenyans that “choices have consequences”. This is one of the very many cases where the West is presented as noble while Africans are perceived as savages that do not have and cannot find means to mobilize themselves and tackle challenges that affect them. 

For the West to retain relevancy and control over Africa, they have to continuously pander to and present the fabricated images of a helpless/needy, begging Africa. This is clearly reflected in the “Machine Gun Preacher (2011), a fiction film based on the LRA. In the film, a retired alcoholic and drug-using biker from Minnesota comes to Northern Uganda and South Sudan upon converting to Christianity. He finds the children under constant attack from the LRA and becomes the hero who leads armed raids to rescue them.” (Mwenda, 2012). The impression created in this film is that a Western retired alcoholic and drug-using biker is much more effective and efficient than trained members of any African military force.

As Steve Biko once noted, “One of the most difficult things to do these days is to talk with authority on anything to do with African culture [politics, economics, social issues]. Somehow Africans are not expected to have any deep understanding of their own culture or even of themselves. Other people have become authorities on all aspects of African life ... There is so much confusion sown, not only among casual non-African readers, but even among Africans themselves, that perhaps a sincere attempt should be made at emphasizing the authentic cultural aspects of the African people by Africans themselves.” This common consciousness that is cultivated in the West is getting deeply entrenched in Africa that for every problem on our (African) continent, a solution must be sought from the West (Mwenda, 2012).

Some continental Africans are squarely culpable for lending credence to this Western characterization of Africa. Executives, economists, artists, politicians, religious leaders, social workers, policy makers, researchers etc crisscross European and North American cities and boardrooms to market trauma, hunger, wars, malnourishment, AIDS, in exchange for handouts. The elites that stay home preoccupy themselves with founding non-governmental organisations and writing project proposals to attract donations from the West. The level of  dependency and “donorism” (as president Museveni calls it) has reached an alarming, self-defeatist, and appalling stage. Moreover, this money rarely reaches its proposed recipients.

Justine Sacco’s words are spoken everyday, by so many people, in so many different ways/versions. This is what we (African immigrants) are bombarded with in our day-to-day interaction with people in West and the Western media. It is time for Africans and non-Africans to come out and challenge this Western characterization that is symptomatic of deeply seated hegemony, "orientalism" (Said 1978), “alterity” (Mudimbe, 2013), and “orientalization and otherization of Africa” (Mazrui, 2005).  The African gods, spirits and ancestors are singing  "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" Let's all respond in chorus!

Alfdaniels Mabingo is a Fulbright Fellow at New York University