Clichés about Africa

Clichés about Africa are hard to avoid, both in mainstream culture and in your own academic writing. Recognising these clichés is a good way to stop repeating them, and Binyavanga Wainaina's satirical piece How to Write about Africa is the perfect place to start. This, for example, is what he has to say about animals:

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people’s property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

The video My African Mind by the part-Angolan art collective Bofadacara is a clever re-purposing of western clichés about Africa. It shows how these clichés are so enduring in part because they are so seductive.



The link for this video came via the tumblr I Studied Abroad in Africa!, which is a kind of Hackney Hipster Hate for Africanists. It is mean-spirited and very funny, but it has a serious message: travelling to Africa is often more about the traveller than it is about Africa.