The world isn’t watching: Part one

A change of plan. This week I was going to start on a multi-part piece on my experiences in theatre (as an actor and producer), mostly focussing on blunders and bloopers, in an attempt to give my readers some harmless amusement. But three days ago I read a commentary article online which was so stunning and thought-provoking I thought I’d share it with my readers. Also I wanted to get this in hot on the heels of my review of Dipo Faloyin’s book; Africa is Not a Country, as the article and the book share common concerns.

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The article in question, which you can easily find on Google, is titled “The World Isn’t Watching” and it is on the immense humanitarian crisis currently unfolding in Sudan and on the way the world is largely ignoring this.

The author, Azhar Sholgami, is a PhD student at Cornell University in the US. A young person, then, but already a terrific writer, insightful and articulate. Sholgami is Sudanese. Now, the region known as Sudan has been one of the world’s major battlegrounds, one of its worst hell-holes for suffering humanity, for half a century. A brutal on—off–on again Civil War, fought on ethnic, race, and religious lines, led in 2011 to the splitting of the country Sudan (capital Khartoum, predominantly Muslim) into the present-day Sudan and South Sudan (capital Juba, multi-ethnic and largely Christian or animist).

South Sudan then suffered its own complex series of civil wars. More recently, (Khartoum) Sudan has been torn apart by warfare between two rival bodies in the armed forces—a battle of competing generals. In this latest conflict an estimated 8 000 000 people have been displaced—that’s more than three times the population of Lesotho.

Sholgami contrasts the response of the (not watching) world to the Sudan crisis, despite its magnitude, with its very concerned response to the wars in Ukraine and in Israel/ Palestine. She notes, for example, that in contrast with those other crises, “The Canadian immigration pathway has taken in almost 100,000 more refugees from Ukraine than from Sudan” and asks “why do certain lives hold more value in the world of humanitarianism than others?”

And in this context she quotes Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe, author of the mind-opening study Necropolitics saying: “the West is presented as the birthplace of reason, universal life and truth of humanity.” And so, in glaring contrast, what you get in Sudan is what the world expects you to get. Sholgami here is at one with Dipo Folayin when he cites: “the West’s very specific need to portray the African continent as functionally helpless in battling its own problems . . . the view that Africans can never be the solution, that they are without agency, and that sunshine and hope can only come when cradled in the warm, bright embrace of the Western world.”

To quote further from Sholgami: “the black man’s needs, regardless of how critical they may be in comparison to other emergencies, are always put last.” It has to be said that this neglect is not entirely universal. Some aid agencies and NGOs do seem to have woken up to the horror and suffering in Sudan.

When, for example, I shared “The World Isn’t Watching” with my friend and former NUL colleague Alison Love she pointed out that “Christian Aid has been careful to include attention to Sudan at present—both in the funds raised and in information, prayers, etc.” But Sholgami’s argument largely holds true and we should be appalled that this is so.

To be concluded

Chris Dunton is a former Professor of English and Dean of Humanities at the National University of Lesotho.

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