African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [86]
‘In Britain I suppose we didn’t have a choice–we are an American cultural colony…’
‘Why Britain? All of Europe!’
‘All right. But there is no reason why this country should have made that choice. There isn’t money for textbooks in the schools and universities, the libraries are running down because there is no foreign exchange to buy books, you can’t send for books from overseas, because Customs makes sure you have to pay on them–’ (thirty per cent of the value of the books, as valued, arbitrarily, by ignorant officials). ‘But there is plenty of foreign exchange for “Dallas”. Not to mention rubbishy magazines from down South full of pornography. How do their minds work, this government, do you think? Why does Mugabe…?’
As in Britain, where people sit around, dazed by incredulity: ‘Why does she do this or that? What on earth does she think she’s doing, running down universities, science, research, libraries, the arts…?’
As always there are the two main kinds of thought, the Muddle Theory, ‘It’s just a damned cock-up’, and the Conspiracy Theory, ‘They want to fill the peasants’ heads with rubbish, it keeps them quiet.’
Here the Muddle, or Cock-up, Theory inevitably holds sway. Several times a day the talk turns to the general inefficiency, the new bureaucracy.
‘Tell me, if you are talking about inefficiency, have you been in Britain recently?’
‘Yes, but there are levels of incompetence. And you are surely not suggesting that he is allowing all this rubbish into Zimbabwe? He’s an educated man. Books were important to him–he has said so. What can be the reason for his penalizing books, culture, serious magazines, libraries? It must be a mistake.’
He of course is Mugabe. The assumption always is that he is on the side of the angels, that is, of whatever policy the speaker is favouring.
AN AID WORKER SPEAKS
‘If you ever want to understand what we really stand for, in these people’s minds, if you feel like having your nose rubbed in it, then go to a remote village in a Communal Area. There you are, sitting in a dusty space between trees–every tree has a branch lopped off for firewood, of course–and you are with five hundred or so people who have come in from miles around for the great occasion. It is not that they don’t know what television is. They know. It is “Dallas”. It is “Dynasty”. There is a moon shining away overhead. A late cicada is still at it. The crickets are clicking. There is one TV set in a hundred miles and there is America presenting itself for the admiration of the world on the small screen. Now, we have defences against it: it is only when you watch people who don’t have defences that you understand how well-armoured we are. We watch cynically, we think, Well, it’s a lot of rubbish but why not? But those village people sitting out there under the stars, they believe it’s for real. As murder follows murder, theft, double-cross, swindle, lie and racket, not to mention the fifty-seven varieties of sex, their eyes shine ever brighter with honest admiration: this is what the modern world is all about. ‘I wish I could go to America,’ you hear, as the programme ends. Off they go back to their huts through the bush, these poor people, but they know that if they are crooked enough, and unscrupulous enough, and cruel enough, they too can enjoy the riches of the world.
‘And it is the same in India, in South America–everywhere I’ve been part of the scene, poor people watching the American dream, in a dozen countries.
‘But why does America choose to show itself like this to the world? That’s the question.’
GRANITE
Yesterday, being