Is the African Woman Allowed to Speak?

Paper submitted to 21^st Scientific conference of the IAMCR,

Glasgow, Scotland 26 – 30 July 1998"

Participatory Communication Research Section

Is the African Woman Allowed to Speak?

An Indian philosopher, Ashis Nandy, argues that even when we describe things that are unknown to us, we can only do so in terms that are partly or fully familiar to us. Instead of admitting the failure of our categories, we try to shape our experiences to fit them.

He refers to an Indian fairytale which shows that this tendency is not unique to the West. Once upon a time some villagers saw their very first pig. For a start they were totally confused, but then one of them declared with great conviction that it was a rat which had eaten too much. Another man disagreed and declared just as confidently that the animal must be an elephant which had shrunk because of famine. Neither of them was willing to transcend their categories and admit that this was a new experience.

Spivak’s Subaltern

Two rather different discourses have inspired this paper. First, I came across two articles written by Norwegian male journalists; which both focus on African women, first and foremost women in Mozambique, and especially women who, as the journalists perceive it, offer themselves or their sexual services, to the white man for cash. (Appendix 1 and 2)

I encountered the second discourse by reading Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s "Can the Subaltern Speak?" She refers to Foucault and Deleuze who claim that if the oppressed are given the chance, and on the way to solidarity through alliance politics, can speak and know their own conditions. And she voices her doubt.

"We must now confront the following question: On the other side of the international division of labor from socialized capital, inside and outside the circuit of the epistemic violence of imperialist law and education supplementing an earlier economic text, can the subaltern speak?»

She argues that the "clearest available example of such epistemic violence is the remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other." In the so-called periphery (a Western concept), one finds the marginalised people, be they farmers, illiterates, workers in 3rd world cities, and "for the "true" subaltern group, whose identity is its difference, there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject that can know and speak itself; the intellectual’s solution is not to abstain from representation."

She writes that the leading powers of the west seldom represent the reality of the Other as an individual, or the Others as being capable of the sort of complexity and heterogenity (as groups, or as "people") as they do when they are representing Western individuals ("We", ourselves) and collectivities.

The Other as Different

In an interview, a Norwegian journalist who has written many articles about our immigrant communities, particularly people in Oslo of Pakistani background, said that difference (between them and us) is more journalistically interesting than is similarity. This corresponds well with general news criteria, which focus more on the unusual, the extraordinary, than on the usual. «Their» difference, relative to "our" standards of what is normal, easily becomes their identity.

On the other hand, when emphasising what divides rather than what unites us human beings, one risks a considerable level of de-humanising of the Other. Viewed journalistically through the lens of difference, the Other looses individual context and becomes a mere category.

Journalists carry a great responsibility when it comes to representing the Other for the general public, and in this context they are often blamed. Through this small study one may gain the impression that the more a journalist creates an Other which is (supposedly) unlike him/her, the more he/she generalises or stereotypes the Other, and the more homogeneous the group of Others tend to become. Or from a geographical point of view: the further away "The Other" lives, the greater is the scope that the journalist allows himself to generalise when constructing Otherness.

Which African Woman?

My objects of study are two articles:

a) One called: "When Everyone is For Sale", from a leftist daily, focussing on the situation in Beira, Mozambique, 1991.

b) The other one is called "Her Price is 35 kroner", with the subtitle "African Women Want White Men", from Tete, Mozambique, in a "serious" Men’s magazine, 1998.

One would expect two articles of two such unlike origins, to be very different from one another. The leftist daily (Klassekampen) habitually advocates critique against neo-colonialism, and promotes women’s rights. The men’s magazine (Vi Menn), on the other hand, although less filled with nudes and soft pornography (more hunting, wildlife, sports and cars) than most others, still attracts readers by publishing pinups and articles with overtly sexual topics.

But as these two articles reveal, they have some common features.

Both articles are about Mozambican /African women, but the journalists hardly quote them: they describe them.

The two reportages present a content of observations, reflections and references to sources from "the North". But in both articles it seems the most important source for both, is the journalist himself.

Both journalists are surprised that so many black women in Mozambique offer them (rich white men) sexual services.

In both articles, the level of generalisation (i.e., reductionism) is high.

 

They do, however, differ when it comes to trying to explain what they "see":

The reportage in the leftist daily offers the war, imperialism, inequality between rich and poor as the phenomenon’s explanatory factors, and states that these factors has lead society to a moral collapse. The article in the men’s magazine emphasises to a greater degree what the journalist calls "historical tradition and culture", but also mentions poverty and need.

Everyone for Sale

In "When Everyone is for Sale" (Klassekampen) the main title is put together with three pictures of women who seem to flirt with the photographer (who in this as in the other case, is the journalist himself). The title characterises all the women in Beira, a city of some hundreds of thousands. How can the journalist tell? What is empirical research upon which this conclusion is based?

His observations are made at the beach, near the posh hotels and in areas where the rich live. He does not report from the slum areas, or from the market, where as in most towns across the world there are women to be found who have other objects to sell than themselves.

The lead furthers the generalisation suggested by the title:

"When prostitution reaches far beyond the usual professionals, when "the daughters of the people" almost stand in line to sell themselves to white visitors with dollars in their pockets, the norms and morale of society must have collapsed. This was the reality which met us in Beira, the second largest port city of Mozambique. A collapse, which was the city’s response to the misery and collapse we had earlier witnessed in the countryside of Mozambique. But is this a horror vision for the future Africa, a continent falling apart?" (My translation, EE)

The first sentence is a modifying one: prostitution is performed by more women than the "usual professionals". This is a phenomenon to be observed in many countries, among them our own. One can also ask: What does the label "professional" mean in this context? But already in the next sentence, the focus is widened: one finds prostitutes now among the "daughters of the people"; i.e., ordinary dignified people are now recruited to the ranks of professionals. Between the lines one can read that the ones who usually work as prostitutes are Other, Different, their morale is Not Good, and "Professional" in this context has a negative connotation.

Charitably, one could interpret the journalist like this. He is really shocked to see so many different women (and family members, not the least, brothers) offering their "services". He calls it a symbol of breakdown in a continent on the verge of collapse, that is, the antithesis to normal society.

But in the last sentence of the lead he leaps out of the city of Beira to encompass the rest of the African continent: will the whole continent develop like this? Without further explanation in the text that follows, this possibility is launched as a question. Why?

Another experienced Africa correspondent has said "Rwanda is as typical for Africa as Auschwitz is for Europe».

"When Everyone is for Sale" was written in a period when some African countries were engaged in civil war (often helped by silent partners in the "North") and others had started democratic development. Despite this complexity, the continent, which includes more than fifty states, is treated as one entity, one country, one reality. In popular communication too, one can register this phenomenon: people say: I’ve been to Africa,, while they would never say I’ve been to Asia...

One of the captions also underlines the level of generalisation:

"These young girls at the beach of Beira are just like the women we met when we went for a walk along the streets. They are the "daughters of the people", and in Beira they almost queued up to sell themselves to white visitors who could pay in dollars." (My translation, EE)

How can the journalist know that they are "just like" the women he met along the street? Nothing in the text indicates that he has spoken to them/listened to them at all. Nobody is quoted in the text, except one that looks at him and says, "follow me" in an intense voice. To a certain extent, their body language is "quoted", some women walk past him, and one of them demonstratively rubs a bottle against her thighs.

No Culture for Love

In Vi Menn’s article the title "Her Price is 35 Kroner", also functions as a caption to the picture of Monique (16), and she is projected as an example of the "African women who want white men" (subtitle). The level of generalisation here is also high. Women from Pretoria, Khartoum, Ouagadougou, Dakar and Tangier are placed in the same category.

The way a price tag is put here, is maybe something special for men’s magazines, they have to be service-minded and cater to their readership. Articles on prostitution, bordering on the genre of consumer guides, are often found in this kind of magazines.

The lead goes like this:

"She does not dare to let her black eyes meet mine. Instead Monique fumbles with a plastic bracelet and is really shy. Only the most beautiful of the beautiful can make a career as prostitutes in Mozambique. Her price for sex is 35 kroner. She awaits my initiative." (My translation, EE)

The picture of Monique contradicts the lead: she is looking in the direction of the camera, but maybe the camera feels less dangerous than the unveiled eyes of the journalist. Or maybe she does not know the purpose for which the camera is being used in this context. Here, as in the other article, we register a journalistic way of representing these women, who are so far away from our own borders: they become Other Others. Norwegian prostitutes are hardly photographed in this way, and they are more likely to know how the pictures would be used, accustomed as they are to Norwegian media.

The lead also contains a generalisation: only the most beautiful of the beautiful... How does the journalist know this? And is 35 kroner really a low price? No attempt to compare the price to the monthly salary of a worker is made.

Other generalisations found in the text are:

The Portuguese were not racists (because all of them usually had children by many African women)

The upper class women are either married to men of the new, black upper class, or they are whores

Today prostitution penetrates the African society totally

African sexual practise is beyond any comparison

There is no culture for love in Africa

If you offer an African woman money for sex, she will not take it as an insult; as a rule she will accept it as a compliment

African women are more faithful than Swedish women (quote, unchallenged, from a Swedish man’s perspective)

 

These are all statements collected from the text, and with one exception, they belong to the journalist himself, based on his own observations – and generalisations.

This, in reality, as Said (see below) might have argued, might be a narrative more about the journalist than about African women. Clearly, the journalist must have been seduced or shocked by his own impressions and the power he - as a white man - suddenly seems to have over women.

The narrative and its impact

What kind of narrative is presented in these two articles? Is it possible that they really tell more about the reporters than about women from Mozambican cities/towns?

I shall argue that it might be so, for the following reasons:

The women are practically gagged; they are seen through the male, white gaze, without any attempt of lens correction

They are homogenised to an absurd extent, with the journalists claiming that all women of Beira are the same, or that "African Women" in general are flattered when you offer them money for sexual services.

They are made very (and only) different from ourselves: for example they are described as possessing no culture of love. Can this emphasis on difference be interpreted as a dehumanisation?

The whole African continent is homogenised: A continent in free-fall?

 

Clearly, both articles are written in various stages of crisis in Mozambique. And clearly, an increase in prostitution in itself is a sign of crisis; it is not surprising that the journalists were shocked by these phenomena. However, they were not shocked enough to travel beyond superficialities, to speak with the women they met, or look up other women who might have explanations, and provide a context for the journalists’ observations.

Are these articles representative of the Norwegian press? Yes and no. Yes, because it is a common phenomenon for journalists to feature prostitution or other degrading treatment of women in the "3^rd World". Norwegians might of course be less happy if foreign journalists came to our country and focused mainly on prostitution or pornography. The answer is also a hesitant no, because the level of generalisation might be higher than average in the two articles.

The impact of this kind of generalisation, if they are representative, is rather obvious. Such portrayals will not make it easier for African women who visit or migrate to our country. Whether they do so to lecture, to study or to marry, they might (as long as they are fairly young) be deposited in the same journalistic category by many Norwegians. Here we see the fortune hunters from Africa, from the continent where all women are punting after white men, and where you can easily offer them money for sex without risking offence.

At a seminar in the Barents region a critique was raised by Russian journalists, who felt that since some Russian women had offered sexual services to Norwegian men during their visits to Northern Norway (Finnmark), the Norwegians all of a sudden started treating ALL Russian women crossing the borders as prostitutes. They blamed the press, and claimed that its sensationalist, generalising manner had created these false expectations.

Do these two constructions of Mozambican women have something to tell us about journalism in a North-South perspective, or about the way "WE" project the Southern "Other"? Have they also much to say about how we portray ourselves?

They certainly speak from a specific journalistic trend or tradition. This tradition reveals how journalists sometimes allow themselves unwarranted license when they work in unfamiliar territories, where the sources and the people they characterise cannot defend their own points of view, sue them or criticise them. They are too far away; language bars these people from interfering; they often find themselves in an unempowered and vulnerable position.

"We sometimes leave our code of ethics at home", is a popular saying among journalists who travel widely. This is not always the case: seldom dealing with presidents or generals. It is more frequently done when dealing with the so-called weaker sections of society. One sometimes finds parallels in the way journalists at home deal with drunkards or drug abusers, who might not be fully aware of how they are used by the press to create sensational stories.

They, also, are not like "us". Consequently, they risk being treated to a lower level of ethical standards. In the Norwegian Code of Ethics for journalists it is clearly stated that:

Words and pictures are powerful weapons. Do not misuse them.

Show respect for a person’s integrity and identity, private life, race, nationality and beliefs

Show concern for people who are in a state of grief or psychic imbalance

Show particular concern for people who cannot be expected to know the impact of their quotes. Do not misuse the feelings, misjudgement or lack of knowledge of others.

(My translation, EE)

Is a special code of ethics needed when travelling far from the journalists’ usual home environment? One could argue that the consequences of the two articles would not have a specific impact on the women pictured or written about. They are published far away, and they will not reach them. On the other hand, as I have already mentioned, the impact for their African sisters at large, can be considerable, and not very positive. I think the existing code of ethics should be applied, it should not be left at home.

Difference and common humanity

«Each age and society re-creates its «Others,»» writes Edward Said. It is a logical human way to cope with society.

Adam Kuper quotes Clifford’s critique of Said’s Orientalism, where he claims that it is so all-embracing that "he has left himself no means of speaking decently about difference". According to Kuper, Clifford "has the equivalent difficulty with the specification of similarities", since he is ready to question each stable or essential basis for human equality. He adds that Clifford "does not wonder what the political consequences might be of undermining our sense of common humanity."

Kuper finds that current American anthropology, like all anthropologies, is "torn between universalist and radical pluralist discourses, between cosmopolitanism and a celebration of difference", and he traces the roots of this discourse in the history of anthropology.

I suspect that in the (so far unwritten) history of Norwegian press coverage of the South (the South viewed here as Other Other), the coverage of marginalised people in so-called Third World countries, celebrates difference to such a degree that it overshadows any emphasis on common humanity. Difference is more exciting; exoticism often penetrates the journalists’ minds.

Difference might not be bad in itself, but in covering the South, or the "Orient", the difference, according to Said, "is always to their disadvantage, they are irrational and superstitious, stubbornly conservative, driven by emotion, sexually uncontrolled, prone to violence, and so on."

One impact of an unjustified celebration of difference, is that it can make it more difficult for the reader to identify, and thereby empathise with, the people and events reported. The Other becomes a distant different, disconnected from the Northern reader’s capacity for emotional understanding.

Donors and recipients

In a study made in the late 1980s, Vaage found that countries or people in the South were very rarely represented as contributors (in "our" terms, to the world development, in their own terms, to their own development) or outright donors. In most cases they were represented not as producers, but as recipients, needy people. Since world statistics (World Bank Annual Reports then and now) showed and still show a different picture, with cash flow from South to North far overshadowing the reverse flow, one can only conclude that this macro perspective was to a large extent ignored. Essentially, in articles dealing with giving and receiving, WE, in this case Norway, were presented as donors or contributors.

In another study of the coverage of a nation-wide fundraising campaign where the beneficiaries were «Women in the Third World», the target groups (i.e. poor, but not necessarily speechless, women of the South) were almost silenced in a majority of the articles. The most quoted sources were middle class persons, either from the South, or from Norway, who spoke on behalf of the target groups. The poor women were however better represented as colourful people in the photographs, but often with no names mentioned in the captions.

This is a common feature also in "journalism at home", where expert sources more often than necessary are invited to speak on behalf of the "experts of consequence", the grassroots representatives, who learn about political decisions, new laws, economic priorities, from a people’s , citizen’s perspective.

A female, anthropological grass roots approach

Is there an alternative journalistic approach? Of course there is, but a common denominator for this more modest trend, is that the journalists have spent more time trying to understand society and its people. Maybe they have tried to learn more from anthropologists’ participant’s observation. An experienced Norwegian reporter wrote a series of articles on prostitution in the Philippines in the late 80s. She stayed with the girls for several weeks, had long conversations with them in their leisure, learnt their life stories and projects; and in the end, her focus was quite different from the articles discussed above. She turned her camera on the customers; her focus was on their faces between the thin, dancing legs of the bargirls.

A few years ago another journalist wrote a series of articles on everyday life in Senegal, taking as a point of departure, her friend’s family, with which she kept in close contact during her year in Dakar. She wrote about going to the movies; about love, makeup and hairstyles; about emigration to France and about elections, seen from the grass roots perspective. She claims the response to these articles was different from what she had experienced before.

Still another journalist was sent to pre-war Rwanda to write about AIDS. She stayed for six weeks in the house of a nurse whose daughter as well as herself suffered from AIDS. Only occasionally did she go «up hill» to the «Aid People» to take a shower or speak with someone else. Her stories turned into a series of articles, and a book.

All these three journalists were women; the two latter were educated respectively as anthropologist and psychologist. It might be more than a coincidence. Female travelling journalists given a certain amount of time, often find that ice breaking in encounters with women comes through celebration of similarity; the fact that we are women, and eventually have children, gives us a common ground for communication. This common ground is badly needed if we are to build a journalism from the grass roots which represents human beings, who are more than a merely distant and different collective.

And then, maybe, the subaltern, the Other, will have the opportunity to speak to "us", both of commonality and difference. If she finds it worthwhile.

Elisabeth Eide is Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism Oslo College, Norway. She has published several articles and reports on Gender and Journalism and on Development journalism. She is at present working on a project on "The Reporter’s Methods in Encounters with The Other". She has also published two novels, the third is due in October 98.