Mourn your own! #Parisattacks

The past week I have seen and heard complaints mainly from Africans, regarding the western media’s coverage of the Paris terrorist attacks. The main complaint is that while there are attacks in other parts of the world every day, those are not widely covered hence giving the impression that it is only European and American lives that matter. The accusation was also thrown at Facebook for reacting to the Paris attacks by activating a feature that made people change their profile picture shaded by the French flag while this never happens anywhere else.

Some Zambians are up in arms against their fellows who have shown solidarity with the French people and accusing them of all sorts of things ranging from worshipers of colonialists to hypocrites who do not do the same when fellow Africans are killed.

My view… my thoughts…

My take is simply that everyone has the liberty to mourn, show solidarity with whoever they wish. This accusation that the western media is giving too much coverage to events in Europe and Americas at the expense of other places is baseless really. Why do I say so?, BBC is a European media house with headquarters just across Paris to the English Channel. These are their neighbours, and relatives for God’s sake. BBC will run with that story for days and I will not find any offence in that.

The same goes for CNN. France has been a big ally of America and I assume the Americans feel closer to the French people than they do say the people of Chad or Gambia. So CNN will cover the story in Paris as much. These are their stories. I know for sure that AlJazeera does cover a lot of stories from the Middle East and generally the Arab world, these are also their stories. I also know that on Thursday 12^th November there was also a terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon and this was widely covered by Aljazeera and many other news stations in the region even way after the Friday November 13 attacks in Paris.

In short, we should not cry for BBC, CNN or whoever to cover our stories here in Africa as much as they do their own stories. It won’t happen. Blood is thicker than water. Nothing stops us from covering our own stories for days on end. Nothing stops us Africans to design a social media platform the type of Facebook where we will change our profile pictures to the green and white flag of Nigeria every time Boko Haram strike.

South Africa has E-NCA channel and they do cover a lot of the African stories and of course they will go days on end to cover their own South African stories. I watch E-NCA channel quite a lot and I know at times it bothers my office mate who asks if we live in South Africa for us to be watching South African news all the time. Well, I do change to watch TV2 News which comes every two hours or so, particularly watching the 10hrs and 12 hours news. Besides I relate to stories from South Africa more than I do stories from say Atlanta Georgia. Hence I watch more of E-NCA than I do CNN or BBC.

Recently the E-NCA channel has been covering the #feesmustfall student protests and I have the feeling this is what is also going on in my country so it is closer to home. It’s just last year when a student committed suicide at the University of Zambia after being denied a bursary and the students rioted. That life is more important to us Zambians than it should be to CNN so I won’t stress if CNN doesn’t cover that. ZNBC and all the other media outlets should be in the fore-front to cover that. This is how we will make our stories heard (edit to read funerals too). CNN will be busy covering stories closer to Atlanta and other places from within America and their allies.

The irony in all these complaints against CNN, BBC, SKY and Facebook giving too much attention to the Paris terrorist attack is that, there have been no complaints against the rumour (I haven’t heard it on the news yet, except social media) that Kenneth Maduma has been fired from ZNBC for airing a clip of the police brutally beating up Copperbelt University students who on independence day protested against the continued closure of CBU. It is Ironic that we want to censor our own stories but we want the west to cover our stories. Which stories do we want them to cover? We have hidden our stories.

On 14 January 2010 the Zambia police shot at a group of youths who had gathered in Mongu to be enlightened on the ever contentious issue of the Barotse 1964 agreement. I can say that story was also censored except the post newspaper that gave it a lot of coverage. These are our stories. Let’s tell them. The four or five lives we lost in Mongu are important too. Let’s ask questions why these un-armed youth were shot at. Let’s ask what happened to the officers who pulled the respective Kalashnikov triggers. Let’s ask what happened to the person that ordered the police to carry live ammunition to a gathering of youths irrespective of the motive of their gathering.

Alas we have shelved our stories and even censored them, yet we want to climb the mountain top and question BBC for ‘too much’ coverage of an attack in Paris. It is preposterous. Clearly those that run our media houses and their minions want to use them as propaganda machines and these people are void of any morality and elementary ethics that are the bedrock of professional journalism. This is why our stories are not told. It is not the fault of the BBC.

The other week social media was at it again blaming BBC and Bloomberg for the way they covered the National day for prayer fasting & reconciliation. The accusation came after the respective international media organisations reported that the Zambian government had failed to deal with the local currency which had been in free fall and thus decided to seek divine intervention instead.

Well, we didn’t need the BBC to spell to us what the prayers were all about. It is what the government leaders said. Even though the theme of the prayer day had reconciliation somewhere in the sentence, reconciliation itself was highly conspicuous by its absence before, during and after the prayers. What we were all told was prayers for the currency and the economy. Regrettably some sections of our society chose to disparage the BBC and Bloomberg for their accurate reporting. We can go ahead and promote the kind of copy and paste journalism that we do best in Africa and more so in Zambia, but we shouldn’t blame those that report as they see things without any influence.

We should not always find other people to blame when we haven’t done what we are supposed to do ourselves. Clearly we need to learn to mourn our own. Nobody will mourn us if we don’t mourn ourselves and our loved ones. We can’t always blame other people when we haven’t done our part.

The simple rule of life should be that once you bear children you should be responsible for their welfare and nobody else. Of course in Africa the main argument against this is that we should embrace the extended family. I agree because I am a product of the extended family system. However, my simple contention is that the extended family system should apply bringing us together and not help us duck our responsibilities. For instance, one cannot bear eight children and expect the extended family system to take over the welfare of those children.

On the other hand, if one has 12 children that one is taking care of and meeting all their needs, and such a person dies, then and only then, the time the extended family should come into play. I know my stance may not be a popular position to take considering the circumstances of our relationships in Africa and our expectations of the extended family system. However, as long as we live, we should be responsible for our own children. We shouldn’t expect too much from others. When someone lends a helping hand to us in whatever form, we should be thankful but should also know that they are not obliged to give us that helping hand.

We are responsible for our own units starting with immediate family and then the bigger extended family of friends and neighbours, all the way to a nation and extending to the continent and finally the entire globe and all of humanity. 

In short, we should do more for ourselves before we expect other people to do something for us. This attitude must extend to sad situations like death and funerals. The one who is in mourning is the one who has lost a loved one. If the neighbor joins us in mourning, then we should appreciate their action to mourn with us and consoling us. If they don’t mourn and console us, there should be no offence taken.