{UAH} Africa will arise when I write my Little Red Book

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Africa will arise when I write my Little Red Book

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By Charles Onyango-Obbo

Posted  Saturday, May 10  2014 at  13:57

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• Africa will arise when I write my Little Red Book

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang just did a four-nation African tour. It was Li's first visit to our motherland since he became chief over a year ago.

There was no doubting that Li is one of the most important men in the world. He was regal, walked straight-backed, and was unashamedly confident. That is what happens when you are the premier of the world's most populous nation, which is poised in a few years to be its richest.

Also, if you come to Africa and the other Big Men are bowing and scraping, and in the back of your mind you are aware that your country overtook the US as the continent's leading trade partner a few years ago, and that last year that business was worth $200 billion and counting, you are likely to perk up.

For all that, the most important thing for Africa should not be how rich China has become, and how richer it is set to be, but what its humble roots teach us.

My generation grew up with a strange picture of China. We believed the Chinese performed "magic." Their acrobatic shows did not seem humanly possible to us. Acrobatics — and the circus — was China's most important export of the 1970s and early 1980s to Africa.

The Chinese also liked to produce meticulously produced glossy magazines, with finely airbrushed women in kimono-like dresses, and smiling peasants in lush rice fields. Also, there would be photos of many people riding bicycles.

Otherwise, we knew that all Chinese men — except the founder of modern China Chairman Mao Zedong — wore short-sleeved white shirts and grey trousers or shorts.

When I was a teenager in high school and university, the Chinese offering was more grown up. At that point we got the Little Red Book, a compilation of Chairman Mao's quotes and thoughts, a lapel badge of, well, Chairman Mao and, sometimes, a "revolutionary" cap with the red badge favoured by, who else, Chairman Mao!

I am older now, have around been this fair world quite a bit, and have been paying taxes for many years, so I am a little wiser. I can make more sense of that old China.

Those days, the Chinese had to airbrush their women. Today, they don't have to. There are millions of them in real life who have money, wear designer clothes, and look more exquisite than the ones in the 1970s.

And that is the first lesson for Africa. To get to paradise, first you have to picture it in all its magnificence.

Second, if you can put on a world-class circus, like the Chinese did back then, and the world actually watches it in amazement, and then you can build a rich economy. Africa, don't ignore the circus.

Third, you have to believe in something and have a worldview. Africa needs its own Little Red Books. Finally, though Mao was a smart man and a brave leader, he was a womaniser, a near-drunk, a dictator, and all that. But he did the dirty work, without which Li's latest visit would have been insignificant.

Maybe, therein, is China's greatest lesson for Africa today. We should never allow our history to be in vain.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com. Twitter: @cobbo3

Ocen  Nekyon

Democracy is two Wolves and a Lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed Lamb contesting the results.

Benjamin Franklin

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