Notes on
Michela Wrong’s “I didn’t do it For You”
Written in the
spirit (– if not style) of an old Anthropological monograph, “I didn’t do it
for you” by Michela Wrong is a book full of contradictions; if not just for its
content, then certainly for the approach to the subject – namely, Eritrea.
Perhaps in
this regard, it was ironic that Wrong’s talk about her book was held at the
School of Oriental and African Studies. SOAS of course is the bastion of
Anthropology’s old guard – of men and women academics who, after spending a
mere six months in some village in Africa or Asia, author a ‘definitive’
monograph they proclaim to be a solid representation of the ‘native’s way of
life’.
The book is
about the journey of Eritrea through history – from colonial time to present
day. It sets out to examine the ‘scars’ that foreign occupation left on
Eritreans – the experience of a people whose nation was betrayed by the world,
most notably, by the UN.
Wrong puts in
a great deal of research into exploring the Eritrean colonial experience and
its legacy; a goodish effort indeed. She has evidently expended a lot of time
and energy into the construction of her Eritrea under the Italians, the
British and the Ethiopians.
However, her
enterprise hits a snug right from the beginning. Of course the research is
there, albeit highly selective. Furthermore, even the seemingly thorough
research cannot hide the various inaccuracies that are part and parcel of the
book; no doubt, a result of lazy journalistic approach.
In Wrong’s
view, the role of the Eritrean in the making of his own history is limited to
that of a passive spectator. For her, the account of the Eritrean subaltern –
the ordinary Eritrean – vis-à-vis his own history is irrelevant and does not
merit any inquiry at all. It is for this very reason that she ends up
constructing a skewed picture of Eritrea.
While
investigating Eritrean history under Italian colonialism, she braves the heat
of Massawa in search of “the last Italian” whom she describes as a man who
“personified a closing chapter of colonial history.” For her, it seems that the
colonial history of Eritrea is to be told from the point of view of anyone
except an Eritrean! In this regard, she makes her position quite clear early on
in the book and follows it up all the way to the end.
In Massawa,
she meets and interviews an embittered and self-loathing man of 77 by the name
of Cicoria. There, during their conversation, he intimates in her of his hatred
for almost everything. While reading Wrong’s description of the meeting, one
cannot help but wonder what the point of Cicoria’s account is. Apart from
expressing his abhorrence for his son and daughter, his brother, his ducks as
well as his depiction of Eritreans as imbeciles, there is not much else to his
wisdom, let alone knowledge of Eritrean history. But he nevertheless makes a
good anti-hero for a semi-fictional setting that characterises the book – as
you would expect.
As far as
Wrong is concerned, Eritrean history under Italian colonialism is about the
bitter rumblings of Cicoria or the diary entries of Martini – the one-time
governor of Eritrea; under the British, about Sylivia Pankhurst’s short
biography; under the Ethiopians, about the baseness of American GI’s of Kagnew
Station, and so on – the ordinary Eritrean is nowhere to be seen.
Because Wrong
overlooks the ordinary Eritrean, she fails rather miserably in her attempt to
piece together a picture of how the colonial experience shaped Eritrea and how
Eritreans see themselves now. Most importantly, she robs herself of the chance
to know and understand Eritreans. Her book (– and her reputation) could have
benefited a great deal if she had tried to see Eritrea through the eyes of the
average Eritrean – but alas, she is, like many self-styled Western liberals
writing about Africa before her, a product of a racially prejudiced
intellectual setting and driven by a sense of paternalism towards the little
people of Africa.
Yet still, the
book contains some interesting bits and pieces of historical relevance mainly
extracted from archives – such as the systematic dismantling of Eritrea’s
industrial infrastructure by the British Military Administration and how the
United Nations Commission for Eritrea betrayed the people of Eritrea.
The most
enduring feature of the book is the lack of genuine inquiry on the part of
Michela Wrong. Her approach comes across as quite superficial from the point of
view of an Eritrean because Eritrean colonial history is reduced to a mere
description of Cicoria’s excesses, John Spencer’s recollection of Haile Selasse
etc. Likewise, her approach to contemporary Eritrean history is again typified
by consistent reductionism.
The book's
most fatal shortcoming comes to the fore when it comes to present-day Eritrea.
Her treatment of the current Eritrean state of affairs, for the most part, is
entirely based on anecdotes and lacks in in-depth analysis. Wrong does not even
bother about putting up a smokescreen to hide the lack of honest research
unlike the previous chapters dealing with Italian or British colonial period.
Had she
applied a more decent approach for instance, she would have been able to
construct a well-rounded picture of the struggles of a young 14 year-old
nation; that way also, she would have understood why the incumbent government
of Eritrea orders certain priorities in the way it does or why it opts for some
policies than others. And may be also, we would have been talking about a
decent work of inquiry.
On the
contrary however, Wrong seems to gloss over the most important period of
Eritrean history and thereby paints a sketchy picture of present day Eritrea.
The most detailed account of post-independence Eritrea is in fact a chapter
that is almost entirely dedicated to President Issaias Afwerki – and at that,
the core of it is a narration of anecdote-cum-fantasy unworthy of a writer who
aspires to be a respectable one.
In many
respects, Wrong seems to be more concerned with the sensibilities of the ‘True
Believers’, amongst which she considers herself to be one, than conducting a
frank analysis of the facts that shape present day Eritrea. The true believers,
she says, are those Westerners who believed in Eritreans irrespective of how
‘unrealistic’ their aspirations appeared to be. But their dream – that of the
‘True Believers’ – was to be shattered as Eritrea, according to her, became
just another African cliché.
There is a
scary level of dramatization as she recounts how Eritrea’s ‘fall from grace’
caused her and her fellow true believers a lasting trauma. Gifted with a
peerless power of invention and a talent for stringing fluid prose, she manages
to put together an Eritrea complete with people who bear no resemblance to real
Eritreans.
But if truth
be told, unlike Michela Wrong, Eritreans are not ‘True Believers’; they are
just believers who believed in their inner strength. In fact, the story of
Eritrea is a story of a resolute people who, irrespective of all obstacles,
abandoned and disparaged, succeeded to realise their destiny; the problem is,
Eritrea’s story cannot be narrated properly through the tinted eyes of a
self-styled ‘True Believer’ Westerner intent on penning paragraphs full of
self-evident ‘facts’ to pass them as the fruits of authentic observation or
research.
In her talk at
SOAS on January 24, organised to promote her book, Wrong explained that she had
a Western audience in mind when she wrote it. Her admission was revealing in a
sense and may explain her inability to go beyond what she set out to find out
in Eritrea at the beginning of her project. In other words, Wrong’s book was a
result of an effort to confirm her preconceived notion of Eritrea. Consider
this for instance: what could go wrong with regurgitating the idea of the
‘African cliché’ to unsuspecting, and at times passive, audience?
The formula is
quite simple really: Eritrea is in Africa; Africa is nothing but a stereotype;
therefore, Eritrea explained within the confines of the African stereotype will
just be accepted unquestioningly. For someone who has only been to a handful of
African countries, and at that for a few months at a time, Wrong speaks of the
‘African cliché’ with arrogant authority. So much so that she makes a false
distinction between the aspirations of Eritreans and Africans.
Her logic is
that many so-called True Believers were impressed by Eritrea because it
exhibited a unique push in terms of wanting to be self-reliant, driven and
completely free. According to her, while the rest of Africa wallowed rather
passively in its hopeless predicament typified by poverty and dependence,
Eritrea wanted to break free.
While it is
true that Eritrea’s drive to be self-reliant has been unwavering, this attitude
is by no means unique. All Africans want to be free and self-reliant. The
stereotype that portrays Africans as passive victims of global injustices and
inequalities is just a sketch that sits conveniently in the minds of those who
know very little about Africa – Unlike Wrong’s view of Africa, Africans are
actively fighting to emancipate themselves.
But then,
thank God for Franz Fanon! In the final line of his book ‘Black Skin, White Masks’, he once wrote, “Oh my body, make
me always a man who questions.” Many Africans will question people like Wrong
and their skewed reading of Africa and Africans; challenging them always will
help rid Africa of such patronising racial supremacists in liberal-skins who
perpetuate the distorted image of our continent.
So finally, an
anecdote of my own; well, not really – not an anecdote – I was there myself.
On January 24,
I attended Michela Wrong’s talk held at Khalili lecture theatre in SOAS. The
diminutive Ms Wrong sounded quite nervous with her voice breaking up as she
read from her notes. Present were the usual suspects; black beret-clad
egotists, undergraduates studying African Studies or some similar discipline at
SOAS and surrounding colleges, members of the Royal(!) African Society and
fellow Eritreans. The talk was chaired by none other than Martin Plaut from the
BBC.
Eritrea, Wrong
contended, was suffering from posttraumatic stress
disorder. Of course, not so many of us knew quite what she meant by that. Then
she went on to say much more; and the overall theme of the talk, as it was an
extension of what she had already said in her book, was that Eritreans were made
to be what they had become by their colonial masters. Put simply, sitting
helpless and rather passively, they were moulded into a colonial construct.
This
claim of course dismisses everything else that Eritrea was before colonialism:
the culture and the very Eritrean humanity itself that makes the Eritrean an
Eritrean is completely written off; but most of all, Eritrean history, from the
point of view of Wrong, starts with its colonial experience.
Naturally,
many people would not agree with this view. And many of us expressed our
objection to some aspects of her book and some of the things she said in the
lecture – if you can call it that.
Twenty
days later on February 14, an article by her appeared in the New Statesman
magazine. Just like her book, the article, written with such arrogant
presumptuousness, was revealing of Wrongs’s mentality. Sounding bitter and
feverish, she exposes herself as an intolerant brat who cannot stand for anyone
questioning her.
In
it, she dismisses those who disagreed with her conclusions as hirelings sent by
the government of Eritrea! Talk about ego-trips. I for one asked a question
during the lecture regarding some glaring inconsistencies in the book. I did so
not because I am a government employee, which I am not, but an Eritrean who
felt uneasy about the wrong portrayal of Eritrea.
Wrong’s daft assertion, indicative of an armchair journalist, was that many of those who raised objections could not have read the book since most bookshops had not got round to stocking it. Of course a simple phone call could have revealed to her that Foyles, situated not very far from SOAS, had had a stock of 30 hardback copies since January 12 – almost two weeks before the talk.
Lastly,
probably the most inane and revealing thing that Wrong says is the following: “But when they [Eritrean Diaspora] do
meet, they can exchange only the most anodyne of banalities. This is where a
book written by a western outsider can, I hope, play a small but helpful role
as pressure valve and catalyst. In effect, it becomes possible to stage a
political conversation by proxy, without self-exposure or embarrassment.”
There, in
those few sentences, is summed up Wrong’s mindset. Her firm belief that
Africans are incapable of shaping their own history as well as conducting
constructive political conversations – unaided – comes across strongly in her
book and is then reiterated in her article.
According to her, the role of the Westerner is to guide the little
children of Africa and teach them the ways of the good – the missionary’s
burden, as it were.
…
“I Didn’t Do
it for You” is a book that every Eritrean and indeed African must read. It
helps you understand the cast-iron preconceptions, often the basis of
ignorance, which many Westerners have about Africa. It also highlights the
discrepancy between the stereotypical representation of Africa and the real
Africa. The root cause of the problem is that writers such as Michela Wrong are
either too afraid or lazy to do away with their prejudices and see Africa for
what it really is.
In the
contemporary world nowadays, it seems that the hardest thing is to do the
bravest thing where writing about Africa is concerned – and that is, to break
with stereotype and really discover Africa. In order to do that, first and
foremost, a writer needs to be genuinely interested in an honest and comprehensive
inquiry.