Tanzania: Why I Love-Hate Euro-America

3 July 2009
opinion

Chambi Chachage doesn't hate America, he actually loves it 'a lot'. It 'could be a model for deracialising the continents', Chacage believes, as 'probably the only habitable continent for humans that is not really seen as a continent that belongs to a particular "race".' But says Chachage, America is also haunted by what President Obama describes as the 'original sin of slavery and racism', epitomised by the Atlantic slave trade and the genocide of native Americans. Chacage concludes that what he feels is actually what historian Colin Legum describes as a 'disappointed love' - the colonised 'believe there has been no proper recognition of, nor retribution for, the injury of colonialism', while the colonisers 'feel let down because Africa has not lived up to the expectations of European liberal values.'

When and why did I 'cynically' encounter the West/Euro-America? In fact I didn't spend a lot of time in Euro-America, unless South Africa is also regarded as a part of it. My great disappointment in 'America the Beautiful' was to see a lot of Tanzanians there who had given up what might have been a bright future back home in search of the 'American Dream'. I am saying 'might have been' because the 'Biblicanism' in me says I cannot afford to play God who sees the end from the beginning. Yet the testimonies of some of those I have met here in Tanzania after at least five years of their search for 'makaratasi', that is, the 'papers' such as green cards that can guarantee their return home without the possibility of being denied a visa to go back to the land of the 'American pie in the sky' have made me sense their shock at how their 'Tanzania' has left them behind.

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