Attention deficit on Africa
Thursday, July 3, 2008
THERE’S A LOT GOING ON. So it’s no surprise that even big news gets pushed to the margin.
I guess those of us concerned for Africa’s fate should be grateful that the charade of Zimbabwe’s “elections” last week gained widespread if rather simplistic media coverage.
Robert Mugabe’s trip to the African Union summit, immediately after being sworn in again as president (however illegitimately), gained extra prominence from his ludicrous altercation with journalists in a hallway, when he really did lose all pretence at composure – or even at making sense. In a slip that would give Sigmund Freud himself some pause, Mugabe actually called Britain’s Gordon Brown the “Prime Minister of Zimbabwe”, in the midst of his hurly-burly with reporters.
The summit by the Red Sea, in which Mugabe was treated overall with contempt but not outright condemnation, could have prompted the media to take a full look at how well or otherwise the continent-wide Union is performing as a regional forum – or even just a look at the big running stories affecting particular member countries, besides Zimbabwe. But that didn’t happen.
As 2008 was about to begin I noted in THE MEDIA BEAT that the year was to meant to usher in a complete overturning of the Union’s previous failed effort at peace-making in Darfur, and its devoutly wished-for replacement by a more robust combined operation – combined, that, is with the United Nations, who would provide extra battalions of troops (pictured at top). Well, that too didn’t happen, and this week marked exactly a half-year of the new failure.
Only a third of the 26,000 troops promised to the UN by force-contributing countries have in reality shown up now that it’s six months into the operation, and of the 26 troop-carrying helicopters judged necessary for patrolling the desert stretches of western Sudan, so far only a handful have gone into action. You’d be forgiven for not knowing about this dispiriting semi-anniversary, in view of the paltry western press attention being given to it.
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A RARE JOURNALISTIC EXCURSION HAS BEEN MOUNTED into this terrain that’s so hard to report on (though not as hard as it is for local citizens to survive in). The enterprising venture came from CNN, with the reporting lead taken by its roving correspondent Nic Robertson. He’s an impressively determined operator, and one who mercifully remains an under-celebrated network frontliner (mercifully for all of us star-saturated viewers, and I’m sure for the no-nonsense Robertson himself, too).
He had a professionally frustrating trip. He was accompanying UN personnel, but under the terms of an access agreement with Sudanese authorities, he wasn’t allowed to film anything of substance, except officially-sanctioned interviews. Apart from some surreptitious moves, using his wireless microphone while his cameraman video-ed him from a distance, hidden in a vehicle, Robertson was left to reflect (off-air) on the tantalizing availability of “great shots, if we were allowed to film”.
The conflicted newsman said afterwards:
“We weighed up the options - shoot it, get caught, our tapes confiscated and us thrown out, or take note for later. We chose the latter. Discretion, my parents taught me, is the better part of valor. And when you're talking about your colleagues' safety, never more so”.
Robertson also chose to wait till after leaving Darfur to report on one powerfully emblematic incident that represents in a small way the random violence taking place, but more broadly the pitiful inadequacy with which the international community is responding. He recounted how a band of 60 janjaweed (government-supporting militiamen) on horseback managed to surround a detachment of UN troops, and forcibly took from them all their weapons and their money. They also, in a further humiliating move, grabbed every cellphone.
IN THE MEANTIME DARFUR’S DEPERATE REFUGEES, who should of course be protected by the international force, continue to starve and be harassed, raped and killed throughout their wretched archipelago of tented camps. Some 300,000 have died in the past five years.
And the Sudanese government’s paymaster, the People’s Republic of China, seems meanwhile to have earned some kind of international media free-pass, after May’s terrible earthquake, and fewer critical reports have appeared about Chinese support for such human rights outrages in Darfur, or those in Zimbabwe (or, for that matter, about those committed directly by China in Tibet).
Again with little press notice being taken, the flight-plans of US President George W Bush (I can’t be the only journalist who feels a need to jog the memory and write in his name) have been pre-logged for August. First, Air Force One flies to Seoul in South Korea - and then on to Beijing, so the Leader Of The Free World can attend what for many should be called “The Genocide Games”.