Madonna, Mercy and neocolonialism

In 19th century England it was fashionable for the middle-class and aristocratic English gentlemen and ladies to return from the West Indies with a black male or female domestic servant to serve in their lavish homes; such Africans were at times painted with this genteel class sitting by their feet like pet dogs or accessories. It exemplified that they were well-to-do, had travelled and had money. It set a trend among the English elite. Today, the vogue among Western celebrities such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie has reconfigured this practice.

Madonna’s recent adoption of Mercy James Chifundo, and the adoption by Angelina Jolie of an Ethiopian child, are not devoid of the usual patronising and unconscious Western stereotypes that have historically characterised how Europeans see Africans and have related to the African continent. In the 21st century new forms of colonial subjugation have engulfed Africa, racism has reshaped itself and Africans have continued to be co-opted as collaborators in their own subjugation, such as when Malawi’s Supreme Court lawyers recently permitted the 50-year-old singer to adopt the 4-year-old Mercy along with David Banda, who was adopted in 2006 at the age of 13 months. How many wealthy Africans do we see going to the Romanian orphanages to adopt orphans there? And if they did, would it have the historical baggage that resides in the relationship between Africans and Europeans? Would it be morally or ethically correct if they did so?

A recent documentary entitled ‘Madonna and Mercy: What really happened’ broadcast in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2009 was presented by the British investigative journalist Jacques Perreti. Its force was that it unearthed two dangerous and important facts: first, the involvement of the Kabbalah sect, related to Judaism, in the social and economic fabric of Malawian society; second, the collusion of the Malawian government in Madonna’s charity Raising Malawi that builds orphanages in the country.

In the 19th century the Scottish missionary David Livingstone came to Malawi to save African heathens. Unknown to many individuals in the West and in Africa is the fact that Madonna belongs to the religious organisation Kabbalah that has allegedly provided childcare centres to 160,000 children in Malawi.

Fundamentally, neocolonialism is thriving on the African continent in different permutations from its 19th century predecessors of formal colonialism and slavery that engendered direct colonial rule. During the Slave Trade, African people were taken to slave markets and auctions in the Americas and the Caribbean. They were inspected like cattle. In the documentary, we learn that Madonna’s first adoption of David Banda in 2006 was prearranged by her then husband, Guy Ritchie, who saw David. It seems David was not among the 12 children lined up for inspection by Ritchie, who somehow saw David in the orphanage and sent pictures of him to Madonna before she came to Malawi to see him for herself.

Her arrival is similar to those few European slave-owning women in the Caribbean, who were a minority but no less brutal in their treatment and attitudes to African slaves, as documented in the scholarly work by female historian, Verene Shepherd. Unlike those European slave-owning women, Madonna contends that her motives are benevolent and altruistic. Her charity Raising Malawi is run by Michael Birch, head of Kabbalah in the US, of which Madonna is a prominent member. Other celebrities donate to the Kabbalah organisation; they wear a special wristband that David Banda can now be seen sporting and they promote 'spirituality for kids'. Children are flown to the US for training and taught that they can expect miracles and returned to Malawi.

How different is this from the young Kikukyu boys British colonial officials rounded up to train to become tax collectors for the British colonial administration? Is it not disturbing that all orphanages are paid for in Malawi by foreign donors? The implications of this are that an entire generation of children are being 'raised' in the Kabbalah mindset. Is Madonna really doing good for Africa and the Mercys and Davids of Africa? To what extent is she different from the 19th century Europeans who arrived in Africa to engage in ivory hunting? Perhaps she is merely hunting in order to save babies, is she not? Some would argue that such children would otherwise lead a life of poverty, if not death.

The role of the Malawian government and the three Supreme Court judges who made the ruling on 12 June in favour of Madonna are fundamentally complicit in this neocolonial partnership. We need to ask the question: Why did Malawi’s Supreme Court judges allow Mercy to be adopted by overturning the decision of the lower court in April 2009? The provincial justice, Esimie Chombo, stated in April that special exemptions for celebrity adoptions risked opening the door to child-trafficking in the future. She blocked the adoption on the grounds that the American star was not a Malawian resident, but this argument was dismissed by the higher court on 12 June 2009. Even prior to Mercy’s case, going back to the period when David Banda was adopted by the singer, her adoption spree had been attacked both by local and international aid agencies and rights groups who believe it violates international child welfare and adoption rights. The Supreme Court waived the normal requirement of 18 months residency for any foreign national looking to adopt a Malawian child.

It appears Malawi’s three Supreme Court judges performed a not dissimilar role to the African chiefs during slavery. Such traditional leaders sold African people into slavery to Europeans, giving rise to African-Americans, Afro-Latinos and African-Caribbeans.

Those chiefs did not know the lands that lay beyond the Atlantic Ocean. The African judges who legalised Mercy’s adoption cannot plead such ignorance of life in the West. The Malawian government Spokesperson for Adoption Silas Chege appeared like a bumbling, disingenuous, buffoon character; like that of Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson. When asked in an interview whether he was concerned that Madonna and the Kabbalah organisation may be attempting to create a Kabbalah state, he laughed and said: 'My mandate is to speak on behalf of children and women. My area is not spiritual.' The minister was asked if he was aware that Madonna’s organisation was in the process of buying land for the building of a girls school and the fact that local villagers were not only concerned about being pushed off their land but that they had yet to receive the promised US$4,000 for the land, despite the fact that the government had marked up the land for Madonna’s contractors to begin building. He responded: 'I wouldn’t comment on that. I guess they are following procedures.'

What can be inferred from the minister’s evasive response is his sheer indifference because the government considers Madonna an important donor who has donated US$12 million to Malawi since the establishment of her foundation. The climax of the interview with Mr Chege was when the journalist put the following to the minister: 'Mr Chege, doesn’t it confirm to you the rich white missionary coming into an African country and preaching a new religion and saying "take this and you’ll be saved"?' The minister responded: 'No, because I think the missionaries when they were coming they clearly declared themselves as missionaries. Dr David Livingstone was moving with the bible.' To this Jacques Peretti replied: 'I think you’ve given the best answer I’ve heard since I’ve been in Malawi which is that the first missionaries came and they declared themselves. And that’s the difference between the missionaries of 150 years ago and the missionaries of now. The missionaries now are not declaring themselves.' To this, the minister could only respond with laughter!

Equally disturbing is the fact that little attention is paid – if any – to the reality that Mercy will be deprived of growing up in her own cultural environment by living in the West. The cultural alienation and covert racism that continue to be ingrained in British society are some of the issues that fail to be addressed in the complexities of the arguments. How will Mercy and David Banda (and others that are likely to follow this trend) deal with the issue of racial identity as they grow up in Madonna’s white English world? What identity will they be brought up with? Will it be Malawian, African, black, English, white, American? Will they seek to straighten their broad African noses like the late Michael Jackson? Or will they bleach their skin in a Western society still bound to historical notions of a 'pigment-ocracy' based on the notion that 'the lighter your skin complexion, the more attractive you are'?

Mercy and David will certainly, like Michael Jackson, have the financial means to alter their physical appearance via cosmetic surgery in the materialist world they will be immersed in. They will want for nothing in Madonna’s 'material world'. Yet, who will their role models be in such a world? What version of history will they learn at school? What cultural and moral values will they be exposed to and taught? Across Africa, there exists the philosophy that 'it takes a village to raise a child.' In the Western world different family values exist and are pervaded by individualism; each parent has individual possession over their children and children can report their parents to the state. Such a culture does not exist in Africa. In the UK the charitable organisation ChildLine exists, whereby children can report on anything from being bullied at school to their parents beating and abusing them, whereas in Africa every child has a line to many adults surrounding them in their extended family, for not only support and guidance, but for chastisement and advice!

What could Madonna do to help the thousands of Davids and Mercys? In the specific case of David and Mercy, they were never strictly orphans. They both had one living parent. David’s father Yohane gave up his son believing that he was breaking the cycle of poverty by allowing his child the opportunity to go to the West to get an education in order to return and help his people. This is a view that many Africans, even outside of Malawi, continue to uphold and revere. That Yohane loved his son is unquestionable, as he would borrow a bicycle to make the 50-mile trip to the orphanage where David was staying to visit his son. Similarly, Mercy’s 18-year-old father, who went into hiding when his then 14-year-old girlfriend became pregnant with Mercy, wanted his daughter but could not provide for her, as did Mercy’s grandmother, Lucy. Yet poverty was the decisive factor in prompting the decision to hand over the child to the pop star. The grandmother seemed to be powerless against the consensus of patriarchal opinion in favour of the young Mercy being adopted for similar reasons to that of David Banda.

The bottom line is, can a better standard of living, healthcare, education and loving adoptive parents ever make up for what is lost when an African child is removed from their country and culture? Could other solutions to this issue not be found? What are those solutions?

Firstly, more Africans at home and abroad have to take responsibility by positively doing something about the issue of Africa’s orphans by sponsoring such African children to go to school. In Malawi alone, it is reported that there are approximately 4,000 children orphaned by Aids.

Secondly, we need a new type of principled and progressive leadership across Africa that will put people – namely, women and children – at the centre of development and provide for their basic needs. The type of leadership and position demonstrated by Minister Chege must be exposed.

Thirdly, if the Madonnas and Angelina Jolies of this world really want to do something positive for Africa and African people, it could be argued that they could simply have paid a monthly allowance to the remaining parents of David and Mercy to have looked after their own children, with no strings attached. Yet such an arrangement continues the subservience of Africans to Westerners. Alternatively, with all their wealth and access to it, such Western celebrities could be involved in schemes to create jobs in Africa that would employ the skills of David and Mercy’s fathers so they could have the dignity to work in order to look after their own children, rather than relying on monthly handouts from a famous Western celebrity.

But ultimately, as long as the African state cannot provide for its own citizens' basic welfare and has to rely on the handouts of former colonial powers, foreign donors or Western NGOs – many of whom perform roles as the missionaries of the 21st century – African states will never be politically and economically independent. As far back as April 1958, Kwame Nkrumah had the prescience to warn Africans at the Conference of Independent States, hosted by Ghana, of the spectre of neocolonialism. He later advanced his ideas on what he described at the time as the 'new forms of colonialism which are now appearing in the world, with their potential threat to our precious independence' in his book ‘Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism’, published in 1965. Since Nkrumah, neocolonialism has advanced its operations and manifestations on the African continent. Yet the dignity of African people on the continent and in the diaspora will continue to be damaged by the arrogant paternalism, dependency and obsequious attitude that exists among some African ministers who collude with Westerners in our continued subjugation and dehumanisation. It is necessary to expose this pernicious and odious neocolonial relationship. More importantly, as Africans, we have to end it in order to regain our self-respect.

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