When Africans are cheap

For several days up to last weekend, there were two stories running side by side that you could not quite avoid. One involved an exciting tennis player. The other involved very depressing economic refugees.
At Wimbledon, the third of this year’s four Grand Slam tournaments, the Tunisian tennis star, Ons Jabeur, was mowing down her victims on the finest grass courts anywhere.

Apparently a very likable person of Arab extraction, Jabeur was being claimed by fans on the basis of several identities.

Being Tunisian, Arab, African and non-White, Tunisians, Arabs generally, Africans and non-White people easily identified with her. And people who are trapped in one (or a combination) of these descriptions cheered her all the way to the 15th July final, where the Czech player, Marketa Vondrousova, claimed her scalp.

The first African and first Arab (woman or man) in history to reach a tennis Grand Slam final was one of the songs. In her conversations with the media, she talked garrulously of her excitement, and the feeling that she was representing Tunisia and Africa.

Story number two: During the Wimbledon fortnight, hordes of Black African migrants from different countries were being held in humiliating detention or camp-like conditions against a backdrop of Arab Tunisian citizens who did not want them in their country.

A Sierra Leonean woman who was interviewed by the BBC spoke very emotionally about the humiliation as she waited for an opportunity to make the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.
But Italy was only a steppingstone. Almost like a child, she said that her ambition was to get into Switzerland.

Just that: Switzerland. Not primarily to advance herself at a skill or profession, or work on something to make Sierra Leone better; this was not her mindset. Her fantasy was to live and (presumably) enjoy the highest standard of living on earth.

From underdeveloped Sierra Leone, she enters and waits in Tunisia; a kind of limbo. She proceeds to Italy; a kind of half Heaven. And you would think super-developed Switzerland, the highest chamber of Heaven, was her birthright.

That is one way of being ‘cheap’.
It has probably not occurred to her that the disdain the Tunisian Arabs show her directly, the Swiss might subtly wrap in turned-up noses.

I do not know whether Jabeur and her beautiful game have brought the Tunisian Arabs closer to other Tunisians and Africans in general, or the Tunisian Arabs and their unwelcoming attitude towards the migrants made the Arabs and Blacks more polarised.

Now, there is a fairly common expression among our people: To die like an officer.

It refers to the pride a dignified person refuses to surrender, however difficult the circumstances. Like hunger with an empty pocket, and the refusal to beg or ask for free food. Doing so would make the dignified person (or ‘officer’) look ‘cheap’.

But we have Ugandan Africans who are not even exactly hungry, and who are running all over the place trailing, ambushing or hunting for two or three powerful military officers who have mysterious money they allegedly dish around on dubious grounds.

Hunters include politicians, entertainers, bishops, fake prophets, witchdoctors, investors, fake investors and journalists; almost anyone who thinks they are someone but is ready to grovel and lick another person’s boots; or whatever needs to be licked.

How seemingly substantial and sometimes respected people allow themselves to look so cheap is always amazing. You have to take accommodation in a proper brothel or steal things like underwear to look less dignified.

Alan Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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