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Woza Africa!
Tajudeen Abdul Raheem
Extracted from Pambazuka News
August 30, 2007

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/43131

There are so many prejudices, insults and stereotypes between different peoples, races, religions, nationalities and other social groups in the world. Many of the violent conflicts unnecessarily claiming so many lives use such prejudices to justify themselves. But prejudice need not to be openly violent in order for it to be injurious to human beings. There are many such irrational attitudes commonly displayed in action, speech and conduct whose cumulative effect is to rob other human beings of their dignity, self esteem and right to equality with other human beings.

While prejudices are generally expressed by 'others' towards 'others' over time, some of the victims of such prejudices may actually internalise them and use them against themselves or believe them to be true. An obvious example is the widely used notion of 'African time'. If a European, American or Chinese person is late, nobody blames it on Britain or Sweden, America or China. But if Tajudeen is late the whole of Africa takes the blame. Even Africans use it to justify their lateness.

There are many other examples. But the one that triggered this week's column was a recent experience I had in Lusaka, capital city of Zambia. We had gone to one of the many South African-owned or designed shopping malls that are springing up in capital cities across Africa, paying homage to Africa's growing middle-class consumerism. We had scheduled to meet up with my good friend, veteran agitator, Sarah Longwe and her equally cantankerous partner, Roy Clarke of the famous Kalaki Corner, a satiric column in The Post Newspaper that irks Zambia's establishment so much that, but for the courts, they would have deported him back to the England he left decades ago, and in spite of being married to a Zambian woman.

Our rendez-vous was a popular restaurant and bar called Rhapsodies. I had gone with another friend and colleague in the UN Millennium Campaign, Salil Shetty. I was in my 'native' Nigerian up-and-down Kaftan and trouser with a traditional hat to match. As we made to enter, a burly security man in an ill-suited tight uniform beckoned me to stop. I asked why and he said I had to take off my hat because men are not allowed to wear hats in the bar. Roy and Sarah, who could see us from the open air verandah, were already agitated and leapt to their feet screaming at the security man.

They needed not have bothered because I was very prepared to deal with the situation. It has happen to me a few times in southern Africa before. The last time it was in Zimbabwe. I was staying at the Great Zimbabwe hotel by the Zimbabwe ruins. I had gone for supper, when this huge bouncer by the gate in ridiculous multi-coloured English costumes with bowler hat and long tail suit tried to deny me entrance because 'gentlemen are required to take off their hats for supper'. I told him that part of his statement was correct: I am a man, but as for being gentle, that may not fit, as he was to discover soon after. I asked him why I needed to take off my hat, and he said it was the rule. Set by whom? And how many years after liberation from the Rhodesians?

I asked him if I had been wearing a Jewish skull cap and looked Jewish if would he have stopped me. His answer was that the Jewish skull cap was a religious symbol. How did he know that my hat was not a religious one? He drew blank because these rules and conventions were imposed to keep Africans away. Or model Africans in a particular way in order for them to belong! Needless to say I did not take my hat off. The good sense of the manager prevailed after I threatened to leave without paying for the accommodation since I was not welcomed.

So my Lusaka expwerience was just an echo of that experience. When I pointed out to my Zambian bouncer that he was also wearing a hat his only response was that 'it is part of the uniform'. So I humored him that my hat could also be part of my cultural uniform but it was above his programmed mind to see the joke. By this time Sara was at the entrance and Roy was ready for a fight. Just imagine the scene: an Englishman defending the right of an African to wear African dress including his hat to another African in an African country! How insane can our world get?

I was not budging and Salil, an Indian, was just enjoying the spectacle. The opposition was unyielding and nobody came to his rescue so he stepped aside and I entered.

It is true that we live with ridiculous rules but there is nothing that says we have to implement them, especially when they offend our good taste and sense of being. In many of the cultures of west Africa the wearing of a hat is considered part of a normal or formal dress code. I know that in eastern and southern Africa the wearing of a hat has acquired religious connotation.

When I was living in Uganda when I wore a hat people generally greeted me with 'salaam alaykum', whereas when I was not wearing one, even if I was wearing west African tie-and-die clothe, they would not assume I was a Muslim. Christian missionaries and later colonialists attacked many aspects of our culture in their 'civilizing mission' but continuing with some of these petty rules so many years after the formal end of colonialism is a sign of the enduring legacy of the colonial mindset. Most of them are like a petty-apartheid, which we can do away with. For instance have you ever wondered our five star hotels and no-star ones offer 'continental breakfast' on their menu which does not mean the African continent? Can you imagine being in a hotel in Europe and asking for a continental breakfast that does not mean the European continent?

The late martyr of the anti-apartheid struggle, and Black Consciousness of Azania leader, Steve Biko, once observed that one of the best weapons in the hands of the oppressor is to set up his General Headquarters in the head of the oppressed. How true, sadly so, this is, in all manners and in every day things of our lives. In some countries it is still being debated whether African dresses could be accepted as 'proper dress' for formal occassions. The main reason why many of the anti-African biases and petty apartheids persist is because too many of us put up with them. We really need to wake up.

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