Distortions, exaggerations and untruths come easy when reporting Africa because they build upon a set of common themes in which certain stereotypes are taken for granted. Attitudes to poverty, corruption, crime, etc. provide a foundation on which other narratives are built. These narratives are dominated by a viewpoint from those outside Africa.
Some NGO’s also use this language to raise donor funds as suggested in Hiding the Real Africa. Leftists, in wanting to side with the poor, also fall into the same trap believing they will stoke righteous anger and raise awareness and funding to support poverty or corruption eradication programmes.
The recent report The Sakawa Boys: Inside the Bizarre Criminal World of Ghana’s Cyber-Juju Email Scam Gangs, on motherboard.tv has indeed stirred a righteous anger when republished with an offensive commentary on CNN, but the anger is from Ghanaians and others living in Ghana who have had enough of the falsifications and re-echoing of ‘wrong’ stereotypes that a researcher should be able to easily see-through after a couple of months in Ghana.
Journalists from the socially degenerate nations, such as the USA, often see only a mirror reflection of their own world when they report on socially developed countries such as Ghana. They are often not here long enough to make sense of their observations; instead looking for confirmation of what they already believe, based on the common set of themes. The compliance of Ghanaians in the larger society, often supplies the confirmation they need. Mistaking smiling, nodding and affirmative replies as agreement, they fail to see the dangers anthropologists are aware of.
Hence the journalist, Thomas Morton, mistakenly fell for the stories of a local criminal finding a tenuous link between e-waste, the informal industry surrounding it and general traditional religious rituals, and internet fraud. This brings into question his journalistic research methods.
However, these misrepresentations are not as harmful as the untruths which appeared in the additional commentary on the CNN site, either written by Mr Morton or the result of a CNN editorial.
The fabrications about the environment in Accra, begs the question whether the writer has actually seen for himself or heard second hand.
- Writing that the President’s “Palace” is surrounded by dirt-roads is a lie.
- His addition that the “Presidential palace” apparently “gold-columned” is perhaps a code for “rich, fat, corrupt African dictator lives here”.
- A statement suggesting that 99% of Ghanaians sell ‘pure water’ on the roadside whilst the other 1% languish in luxury in bars with a $50 entrance fee, is an exaggeration that is laughable and inaccurate.
- The accusation that ‘most’ Ghanaians have to use crime to buy a nice car betrays the obvious reality of Ghanaian life.
For the criminal, Sefa, his stories may have been in return for payment but certainly for acceptance in, and also a distancing from, the criminal world of which he plays a part. Over exaggerating the situation allows him to assume a “big man” identity, making him important enough to speak to the ‘white man’ from the press. The journalist plays along encouraging us to pity Ghanaians whilst romanticising the criminals as heroes fighting the ‘corrupt rich pigs’ living in their “gold-columned presidential palaces”. Neither approach is real or helpful.
The sad reality is that very few Africans have enough influence to be heard within the international media, telling truthful stories from this continent. These media corporations are part of the same structures that reinforce the dominance of the North in the world through misrepresentations about the African continent. We don’t need pity but we do need righteous anger at structural injustice and the lies it generates. We need to keep talking, writing and challenging those journalists whose consciences can be jogged. Africans cannot leave it to others to define who they are but must assert their identities on the world stage and force the world to listen.
Related articles:
Recommended: Ghana gets the VICE treatment
Sign the Petition: End the Substandard and Racist Journalism on Africa
Another Fool Writes on Ghana–Bad Reportage Akwaaba
Motherboard – I am from Ghana and I don’t sell bags of water
…and CNN got Ghanaians upset
CNN Gets Ghana Wrong
Bloggers React to Demeaning and Misleading Article
…why Africans can’t speak for themselves?
Bad News is Good News (especially when it comes to Africa)
I am sorry Graham, but my dad, who travels to his hometown Swedru often, agrees with this Morton guy. He says, in Swedru you will come across young men under the age of 21 spreading money around under the assumption that they needed to spend a certain amount of money before the stroke of midnight. They have be told by the juju man that by doing so, they will be more convincing to the greedy ‘whites’ to send them money. These young men are known by the community at large.
Hi Tetakai,
Thanks for your informative comments. I didn’t mean to suggest that the internet fraud doesn’t exist. Or that the scammers (mistakingly) believe in rituals to increase their chances. Instead I’m challenging the framework in which this issue is discussed. I’m not so much focussed on the video as the accompanying text on the CNN site.
@Tetekai, I am also sorry to inform you that your dad is probably talking about one person he saw. The share thoughts and perceptions about Sakawa is woefully exaggerated. May be you would like to come to Ghana to see for yourselves. There are a lot more Ghanaians, I mean several thousands of us, including myself going through legimate means to be successful and overcome unfounded stereotypes created by western media whatever purpose.
And where ever you are I bet there are more gruesome ways people make money than you can find in Ghana. What is worse than people killing people because of drug money. This is rampant in the United States and Mexico. No amount of juju can compare to that.
I read the article and I was so appalled by the share editorial stupidity I was amazed CNN of all media houses published it.
Pls Tetekai, it would do you a great favour if you come and see the amazing things that young Ghanaians are doing. Dont stay there and be a stereotypical straight jacket built on propaganda, some times over-estimated perceptions of the superiority of the, sorry for my french, “the white man”.
Tetekai are you a Ghanaian by the way?
Derry, I had a long response typed out but lost it.
In the words of my friend, Kobina, “Sakawa is an industry” in Swedru. He lives in Mankessim. My dad was the assemblyman for his village for 8 years and though he did not stand for the recent assembly elections, he is still part of the planning committee for his village. After I had read Morton’s article to him and expressed the same sentiments you have, he proceeded to tell me if i have not seen such practices in my vicinity does not mean it does not exist. He said i should go to Swedru, Sakawa is big business there for most young men under the age of 21. The people of the communities these young men come from, know and can identify them.
I don’t dispute the fact that there are many young people who are engaged in industrious activities earning honest money. I know and are friends with some such enterprising and entrepreneurial young people, Derry.
I am Ghanaian and have been living in Ghana for most of my life. I am still living in Ghana and have stayed in about four regions in Ghana. I think I know my people too.
THE CNN , BBC AND MANY WESTERN MEDIA MISREPORT AFRICA TO HUMILIATE, CONFUSE AND MANIPULATE THE ORDINARY PEOPLE. THEY CREATE A COMPLEX WHICH MAY MAKE THE AFFECTED AFRICAN FEEL INFERIOR TO THE DECADENT WESTERNER. THUS MAKING IT EASY FOR FALSE, USELESS WESTERN CONCEPTS TO DOMINATE TRUE, USEFUL AFRICAN IDEAS AND PRACTICES. MISINFORMATION IS THE WEAPON USED BY THE CAPITALISTS, NEOCOLONIALISTS AND THEIR PAID MEDIA AGENTS IN AND OUTSIDE AFRICA TO EXPLOIT RICH AFRICAN, HUMAN AND NATURAL RESOURCES. Tony
Very well said.
And you did say a lot.
I thought the point of the motherboard.tv report was to be humorous so it should have stayed there. CNN shouldn’t have echoed it by overdoing the satire.
“Distortions, exaggerations and untruths” etc are not unique to Africa!!! these are general human failures and so called Africans do it to so called Europeans and so called Asians do it to so A called Americans and it’s all over!!!
So really i don’t see the big deal. The writer of that article actually can get away with his exaggerations because he provides no references that you can hold him to and for me that’s hilarious and i’d rather just enjoy the article that way and see him as childish. i marvel at children for their childish ways. it’s fun so!
@Novisi I get what you mean. But in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons or The Healers, he had a group of individuals who thought what the whitemen were doing is childish: how could they sell land? How could they have humans impose over others? Yet in the end they realised that they have contributed to the reign and rule of the whiteman by doing nothing and thinking it is childish and would go away by itself.
If you don’t speak against it, it would be considered the norm. Yes, people have stereotypic mentality about people. But I can tell you that our stereotypic minds about Whites is generally one of amazement and wonder. How many times haven’t we said ‘look, the white man is wonderful ooo’. Yes! This is the stereotypic mind we have about them. Because they are not wonderful and whatever we wonder about them, can also be done by us. This is what we must state. I am tired when Africans also look inward and curse themselves with words saying ‘the african man is that … the african woman is that…’ If you don’t speak about the haircut you are receiving, you would definitely receive a bad haircut.
@ Novisi. It is all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Africans & the Image of Africa has been hurt and it is articles like the one being discussed here that slows us down on our way to that level playing field with the rest of the world
@Mike, if anyone says he/she is hurt we’d have to check with swiftness to see if it’s genuine and needs surgery or just a wash with spirit or just some prank.that should make us laugh at ourselves with all our limitations as humans. well, i’m not into the sectarian business of Africans or Europeans or Ghanaians or Americans or whatever so maybe that’s why i don’t care about this but seriously i don’t see the big deal. what Africans haven’t done themselves to paint themselves as horrible? why should ecowas claim Ouattara won an election when they had no verifiable basis for doing so? i choose to be me and not what someone chooses me to be.
@Mike, if anyone says he/she is hurt we’d have to check with swiftness to see if it’s genuine and needs surgery or just a wash with spirit or just some prank.that should make us laugh at ourselves with all our limitations as humans. well, i’m not into the sectarian business of Africans or Europeans or Ghanaians or Americans or whatever so maybe that’s why i don’t care about this but seriously i don’t see the big deal. what Africans haven’t done themselves to paint themselves as horrible? why should ecowas claim Ouattara won an election when they had no verifiable basis for doing so? i choose to be me and not what someone chooses me to be. i’m that selfish.
Novisi – you are lucky to not be a Ghanaian, European or American. By riding above the problems of colour, culture, discrimination, power imbalance and structural injustice you have freed yourself. Please understand that the rest of us are trapped within these concepts and feel obliged to talk about our prison.
@Novisi, I guess in your mind you can call yourself an Earthling, but don’t forget that you exist because people think you exist. Let me put it this way. You can call yourself anything you want but what counts is what others see you to be. In fact you can’t just walk into the airport and say hey ‘this is my ticket I am going the USA, can’t you see I am an Earthling?’ It doesn’t work that way. You may choose to belong to nothing but to others you belong to something. It is now left for you to choose which you want to belong to. The issue of what haven’t Africans done to paint themselves horrible could easily apply to what Americans haven’t done to paint themselves horrible. But let me ask you? How do you see them? You see them different because they fight every thing that is thrown against them in terms of words and descriptions. They vehemently challenge issues raised against them. For every African bad leader there are ten Westerners… Note that the Popes who issued the crusaders weren’t Africans and so too were Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinoche, George Bush, Blair, Lenin, etc. For every bad individual you see roaming on our streets there are more outside there… there is Josef Fritzl and the Columbine Massacre… there is Loughlin and many others.
So you can choose to laugh. That’s okay with YOU. But not okay with the majority of us.
Well said.. Nana…
@Tetekai, whiles I’ll like to agree with you on Swedru’s local economy running on sakawa money [because I've heard your claim from other sources], the scientific-fact-finding part of me wants to see hard evidence. I’m game to go get some video evidence. But then again, if Swedru is so sakawa-plagued, maybe Mr. Morton would have heard about them and gone to get his evidence there.
Mr. Morton might be a photojourno-in-training or simply got funding and decided to trust the word of a ‘criminal’ rather than dig around for real evidence and not the fetish-priest-at-durbar/traditional-event pictures he used as proof of sakawa rituals. Where in his video or write-up did he say for instance that ‘I interviewed about 50 people’? And if 99% percent of Ghanaians sell ‘pure water’ what percentage is left to do sakawa? or that was just so he can say that the remaining 1% are politicians plundering nation’s wealth? I’d say that no one will do any such spell-casting in public if it involves human (blood) sacrifices to enable people dupe others of their money. No bad or evil thing happens in public…no sire! Not in Ghana.
The attempt to get CNN to give our rebuttals same or similar prominence might not work because of what we call ‘western media agenda’ and what makes such attempts fall on their backside is the attitude of indifference being demonstrated by Novisi.
To claim that because Africans commit same mistakes is grounds for The West to commit same or makes up for their mistakes as well is a fallacy; tu quoque fallacy. But that is not my only contention; you finding the article worth laughing over and going your jolly way makes me wonder if you understand issues like reputational risks and costs [or denial of benefits] that may arise as a result of something that in your estimation is childish? What was it on Motherboard.tv that made you assume this is even [a bad attempt at] humour?
When a news corporation as big, wide-reaching and respected as CNN carries something this fraught with so many inaccuracies and disjoint logical reasoning it begs many questions:
1. Does CNN have an editorial policy with respect to social-cultural issues emanating from Africa? (We know that they have expert poring over all economic and political news)
2. Did CNN carry this article just to ‘shit bomb’ Ghana? Being that we have [and are being touted as] a success story in Africa?
These are the things I pondered when I saw the article. Then I asked myself: Does CNN have an agenda to soil our reputation by giving credit to an article that makes a blanket statement like “….. as we discovered when we went to Ghana with our video cameras, not only is Sakawa the country’s most popular youth activity and one of its biggest underground economies, it’s a full-blown national phenomenon.”
You will want to start thinking yourself counted among that sad statistic and anyone who trusts CNN and has read this article will view YOU differently. Heck, I think all Ghanaian bloggers, facebook, twitter and other social networking sites users are sakawa peddlers. If that is something you want to walk away from, then I am tempted to ask if you care about your Ghanaian citizenship. Because I feel my chances of success in the global business-world are threatened if a *insert expletive* Thomas Morton can simply put the credibility of every Ghanaian youth in question by making statements about us and get a re-echoing on CNN.
So I say, CNN has been most irresponsible and needs to review its editorial policies on reporting socio-cultural issues in Africa among other things. In the meantime they’ve lost my trust as a credible source of unbiased news.
,After-thoughts: The term dark-continent was not in reference to the tone of African skins but the fact that we were [or to a large extent are] uneducated. Any such mistakes as you mentioned made by Africans are because we don’t know better [and can be ignored as childish] but I can assure you that CNN and co know better and have chosen not to bother.
To what extent will western media allow itself to be used by western governments to promote their agenda or weaken Africa’s minor gains? We will never know but we have our skepticism and that is all one needs to pursue the truth.
To Novisi, I say Truth Stands!
You must watch this:
After writing such rubbish about Ghana, would you be surprised when governments begin to curtail the freedom of the press in Africa? Obviously the writer is hiding under the free Ghanaian press to spew words that only lead to chaos.
Such NONSENSE!
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION TO HELP REMOVE THE THOMAS MORTON GHANA ARTICLE FROM CNN.
HERE IS THE LINK:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/noracistreportingonafrica/
THANK YOU