Why is it that Africa, which has defied the grim predictions and resisted the Coronavirus pandemic fairly well up to now, is always looked at through the prism of impending doom? Why is it that in the wealthy countries of the Global North that it is minorities - in particular black people - and the poor who have been hardest hit by the Covid-19 virus?
These are some of the issues discussed during an interview that the Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne has given to Mediapart, in which he talks about the pandemic and the inequalities and prejudice that it has laid bare. The academic, who lives in New York, is currently on a sabbatical from Colombia University where he is Professor of French, and Chair of the Department of French and Romance Philology, to write a book. The author of En quête d’Afrique(s)'' (published in English as 'In Search of Africa(s): Universalism and Decolonial Thought'), co-authored with anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle and published by Albin Michel in 2018, Souleymane Bachir Diagne also warns of the deep socio-economic crisis that awaits the world after the pandemic and highlights the need to fight poverty and inequalities.
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Mediapart: Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic Africa has only been spoken about in the context of a horrifying present and future, as if the continent is doomed to experience only catastrophes and massacres. Why does the North always look at Africa in such an alarmist and negative way?
Souleymane Bachir Diagne: The first main reason for that is force of habit and the strength of prejudice. Prejudice is judging in advance. As soon as you judge in advance the Africa that you think you know, obviously the same images and stereotypes come back: that it's a continent that you inevitably have to feel compassion for, a continent steeped in such poverty that you no longer consider it to be short-term, a place of disease. Unfortunately these old images still persist in many people's unconscious.
So epidemics are often associated with Africa. The idea that efforts by Africans and Africa's ability to respond count for nothing stems from the strength of the prejudice. That's why when Covid-19 arrived we had catastrophic talk: 'It's going to be a disaster, an uncontrollable cataclysm'. That said, it shouldn't be denied that the health infrastructure is under-equipped. Based on the number of beds and ventilators, African states would not have been able to withstand the same pandemic trajectory that European countries and the United States faced.
This simplistic talk leads me to a more general thought. Paradoxically, though there was a colonial relationship which might make you think that there was greater knowledge of Africa, the countries of the North don't know Africa. Many have not seen the progress achieved in Africa in recent decades. Despite everything, in Africa you now have the emergence of more educated middle classes, with their own purchasing power.
The country that realised this first was faraway China, which came and set up and massively invested there. By coming to Africa China brought everyone with them, with other countries coming to compete. By investing in Africa China ended the notion that the only links you could have with the continent were traditional ones based on a continuation of colonialism, or through compassion with a humanitarian relationship.
Mediapart: Can the origins of so much of the prejudice be found in the colonial past?
S.B.D.: All colonial literature – the famous book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is emblematic - represents Africa as a continent where diseases fatal for Europeansare rife, as the perfect breeding ground for infections. It is this colonial outlook which translates into the various forms of prejudice seen with this pandemic.
We've seen French medical researchers from INSERM [editor's note, the French health research institute the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale] on television talking about Africa as a source of people available for clinical trials.
Africa is also reduced to its demographics, with the fear that its people might pour into Europe, performing a great replacement [editor's note, a far-right conspiracy theory popularised in France about the replacement of white Europeans by other ethnic groups]. That's the main obsession of futurists in relation to Africa.
That's obviously a completely mythical Africa which doesn't correspond to the Africa of today which, while it does has some very real problems of unacceptably underdeveloped infrastructure, is also an Africa where there are democratic handovers of power, and which has states that are more legitimate and who have been able to manage the pandemic with limited resources; and which has young people who, while they need to be given schooling and jobs, are innovative. The world doesn't want to see these virtues, often because of the blinkers of stereotypes.
Mediapart: How does one stop this way of looking at things which has lasted so long, how does one decolonise imaginations?
S.B.D.: Imaginations are going to decolonise by themselves. You saw that in the reactions after the [health] researchers' comments. It's not about begging the world to look at Africa differently. It's about Africans themselves telling the world that today's Africa is an Africa which believes in its capabilities, its strengths, an Africa to be reckoned with, and which has its own debate about itself. Africa must stop being the object of others' rhetoric and itself think about what it is and what the future is that it's working towards.
Mediapart: How do you look at this pandemic on a global level from New York, where you live and have been locked down now for two months?
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S.B.D.: The United States is today among the [countries] in the world that have been most affected by the pandemic. New York State where I am has the most deaths [editor's note, more than 20,000 deaths and with a lockdown extended until at least May 28th]. There is an equalising side to this pandemic: it's not just the less fortunate countries or the least powerful or the poorest which are hit, everyone's been hit. The most powerful country in the world has been obliged to undergo a pause, like the rest of humanity. It's an extraordinary phenomenon.
For someone like me it's also a privileged opportunity to observe a very important reality: the value of a good government. And I have a ringside seat to observe that in New York State. We're in an era of the triumph of global capitalism, it's been repeated over and over again that the state should be as small as possible, that the real government in the world should be the markets, with the role of states reduced to a minimum. This pandemic teaches us their importance.
In such a major crisis it's the people themselves who call for the state to become what it should be: the citizens' protector. We have seen in real time the ability of governments to inspire confidence or not, to inform citizens fully or not so that they can adopt the individual or collective behaviour needed to respond to the crisis, which isn't self-evident. From this point of view New York State was well governed.
Mediapart: From Chicago to Seine-Saint-Denis – a département or county next to Paris and one of the most deprived areas of France – the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities, particular racial inequalities. Why is it that it's minorities - and in particular black people - and the poor who are the most severely hit by the virus?
S.B.D.: It's very important to focus on this observation because some absolutely far-fetched theories have been doing the rounds and claiming that black people were the best protected from this pandemic. Not only is that not true, it's the opposite of the truth. We knew that there were major inequalities in our world and that they are deepening, but the pandemic has revealed what this means in reality.
These are inequalities in the face of life and death. When issues of life and death arise, it's the poorest who pay the biggest price. And it is the racialised, as one puts it, who are the biggest victims, because it's they who suffer most from poverty. You can't deny the ethno-racial characteristics of poverty.
What's more, it's the poorest – and thus those from racial groups – who are the essential workers. When you tell everyone to take refuge at home to escape the disease, you're at the same time asking the [essential workers] to go to the front line. Because they make buses, the metros, the hospitals, the shops and so on work. They're doubly exposed: first, because of the inequalities that were already there and secondly by finding themselves on the front line.
Many also suffer from comorbidities too, as poverty and inequalities harm and undermine health. Poverty has a snowball effect when a pandemic such as Covid-19 breaks. It's imperative that lessons are drawn from this pandemic and that we tackle these inequalities.
Mediapart: Unlike Anglo-Saxon countries such as the United Kingdom or the United States, statistics on ethnicity are prohibited in France. Is that an obstacle to understanding inequalities?
S.B.D.: There's something noble in the ideal of just seeing citizens and not skin colour. But you also have to be able to identify problems and, literally, get the measure of them, in order to tackle them. And to have a way of evaluating the effectiveness of the measures taken.
Mediapart: Will the post-pandemic world be able to draw lessons from these inequalities?
S.B.D.: It would be absurd and stupid to go back to the world as it was before. First of all, because it won't come back. After this pause we're not going to restart the engines and find the economy at the same point. A deep socio-economic crisis awaits us. Major measures need to be taken to fight against poverty and inequalities. Between and within nations.
The world will have learned lessons from the pandemic if the debt of poor countries is cancelled without delay. That's not compassion but an act of good sense. In recent decades we have seen an emergent Africa and now it's time to think of a real partnership with Africa, an Africa which contributes to the economic advancement of all. To prepare for this the burden of debt needs to be lifted to help the continent's recovery.
The economy is not just about capitalist competition and rates of growth but what has been called human development and I underline the word 'human'. The world should be rebuilt on that basis, not on the humanitarian sense of compassion but based on the idea of 'human', which gives a sense of meaning to humanity.
Mediapart: What's the role of philosophy in these unsettled times?
S.B.D.: We live at a time when we have to explore philosophically the wisdom that exists in every region of the world, everywhere where humans think, where they reflect on life, death and their meaning. We must rethink many things, in particular our association with nature. This pandemic reveals the environmental crisis that was already there, those wounds which we continue to inflict on nature.
We must reflect on the meaning of the presence of humans in nature, to restore them as part of living nature and not, to cite Descartes, to consider humans as masters and owners of nature who assume the right to turn it into natural resources. So it is important to decolonise our minds, including in this domain too.
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- The original French version of this interview can be found here.
English translation by Michael Streeter