As I write this I am sat – for the second time in 10-hours – in seat 22C on Fastjet’s flight from Dar es Salaam to a smallish Tanzanian town called Mbeya. Now you may or may not have heard of Fastjet – depending on whether you travel much in sub-Saharan Africa, but the thing with Fastjet is that it isn’t terribly fast. It also isn’t very communicative.
Having sat on the runway for quite some time watching the sunrise, we were all off-loaded because of a technical problem that apparently had something to do with the communication system between the pilot in the cock-pit and the crew in the cabin. This really was the last time anyone at Fastjet concerned themselves with accuracy of communication – for the next 10-hours.
For the length of the day, we all sat in the small and unedifying Dar airport. We drank cups of tea, ate airport food and talked endlessly about nothing much; as you do when you are killing an indefinite period of time.
The only thing anyone told us over the course of the day was that the problem would take 5 – 10 minutes to fix (this is when we were still on the plane) but this was adjusted to an hour to two hours when we were being off-loaded. Oh, and around 3 hours in, a tinny Tannoy announcement told us that the flight had been cancelled altogether and we should all go back to our homes and hotels. This was followed immediately by an announcement in Kiswahili proudly telling us that the plane was fixed up and we would board shortly. Both announcements were wrong.
We eventually scrummed our way back onto the plane, elbowing one another out of the way in a desperate attempt to beat the irate passengers of a later flight that had also been delayed. We eventually took off in the late afternoon.
“For those claiming legacy of colonialism was ONLY negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water,” recent Tweet from former DA leader, Helen Zille.
The previous day we had landed at Dar airport from OR Tambo. As a foreigner working in Tanzania you need a temporary Visa. This must be re-purchased every time you enter the country (regularly in my case) for 200USD. Acquiring this Visa can only be done on arrival at the Dar airport and it is damn nearly impossible to do so. In summary: it takes around 3 hours for 2 hapless immigration officials to handwrite – no computers, not even an ink stamp – over 100 Visas. 35 degrees Celsius. No chairs. No water. Again, no communication.
During both of these airport experiences it was clear that systems, procedures and an understanding of the critical importance of good communication, were non-existent. I would say it was organised chaos but there wasn’t any organisation at all. It was just chaos.
I travelled to Tanzania with Helen Zille’s now infamous Tweet about colonialism fresh in my mind. In fact, it occupied much of my thinking during all the many hours we spent in the Dar airport (and later, the extreme Dar traffic). I condemn what she said with contempt but more, with great sadness. I assume that Zille has travelled extensively to places like Dar es Salaam and other former- colony’s; that she has experienced life in countries that are years even decades behind non-former colony’s. So, the issue should not be whether she believes that colonialism had some good points. The issue is whether – over years of doing battle as the official opposition to the ANC – she has become so hardened, so cynical, so insensitive that she has lost all perspective and indeed – heart. One can only assume that she is so jaded that she has forgotten what it is that she has been fighting for; a free and equal society under-scored by a total loathing for all that is and was unjust, oppressive, violent and dehumanising. She has effectively made herself one of the utterly heartless and brain-dead: “Things were better under apartheid” brigade.
You do not even need to move out of Dar airport to get the picture; to know just how despicable, how crippling colonialism was. And the denial of this fact is alive and well far beyond Helen Zille; all-too-often I hear people opining about how Africa (they try to hide their bigotry by making it a continental indictment rather than a racist statement) lacks innovation or how uncreative Africa is or how backward.
And I don’t know why Singapore works well as Zille referenced; maybe because it’s so small you can cover its length on your morning jog. All I know after spending some time in Tanzania and indeed around other parts of Africa, is that colonialism’s negative impact on Africa and her people was beyond measure.
So, let us travel our continent, viewing its unequalled beauty and meeting its superb people. But let’s be forgiving of her faults and her failings because the big white boss gang-raped her and left her for dead.
It is a miracle that she has come as far as she has.
Justin Foxton is founder of The Peace Agency.
His writing is dedicated to the memory of Anene Booysens and Emmanuel Josias Sithole
As insensitive as her thoughtless comments were, nobody died because of her thoughtless tweets. I am thinking of the 110 plus, mentally challenged people who died after being transferred to un-licenced NGO’s without even their next of kin being informed. Some shockingly died of dehydration and hunger. The MEC was allowed to resign, and it is all but over. I cannot help but compare the two “crimes” and come to the conclusion that politics plays a huge role here. Colonialism was bad, but I believe that one cannot judge what was “acceptable” in those days, by today’s standards. By today’s standards it was a crime that 110 plus people were “killed” by incompetent people in Government.
Hi Hugh,
I don’t get why condemning Helen ZIlle’s words seem mutually exclusive to condemning the actions of the government.
“Colonialism was bad, but I believe that one cannot judge what was “acceptable” in those days, by today’s standards”– yes, yes, we can. I don’t think it is fair to tell the people who were affected by such systems that they cannot judge colonialism by today’s standards when colonialism still till today plays such a huge role in the way societies are formed.
Step outside of your bubble of privilege.
Justin having experienced poor service at the airport and the delays and the contradictions about boarding the plane, and then the frustration on applying for your visa I thought you were realistically ready to ridicule the present administration. But no, you speak about the Rape of Africa. Well my friend its resources were exploited by those who chose to settle and improve the lives of an iron people and to their credit brought education, health, law and order, expanded the economies providing employment. Introduced a modern world for most of the inhabitants. Regrettably with the advent of Uhuru things have retrogressed on the continent. Liberia and many other states are in turmoil and the abuse of human rights overwhelms any injustice carried out by colonial governments – from Charles Taylor’s genocide in Sierra Leon to Zimbabwe ‘s Mugabe killing of 20,000 peasants – innocents in their thousands have perished. Incidentally Tanzania’s Nyrere experimented with a failed agrarian project involving millions of people; forced removal by any other name. He had the grace to acknowledge his mistake. By comparison we weren’t so bad. Thought a another view should be offered.
Yeah Ted, it was really nice to give infrastructure like that, but what happened when they wanted independance? Look at Guinea in the 50s, France took out 100 years of infrastructure and destroyed even things like medicines, purposefully making it difficult if not almost impossible for the country to succeed. It like ‘Here, we’ll give you nice things while you allow us to use your resources and screw you over in unfair trade deals, but if you want to have a say in how your government runs? Not acceptable.’ Its literally the definition of an abusive relationship, the useful things they brought are just a form of control, they’ve shown they aren’t giving out of the generosity of their hearts and wanting the countries to succeed. Your view is nice in theory, but you should look at the consequences of such ‘gifts’ and the darker side of what they truly mean