Out of touch about Africa

It is a year now since Piero Ronci's interesting letter Potential appeared in The Jakarta Post of Aug. 21, 1996. In response to the said letter, I pointed out that "enlightened people exist everywhere" (The Jakarta Post, Aug. 27, 1996, Africa and the Western media).

Reading Baskoro's letter of Aug. 22, 1997, I have no choice but to repeat that statement once more. This is because Baskoro's letter suggests he's one of the "few" Asians whose maturity and enlightenment greatly helped them to detect the West-biased, old age propaganda against Africa, which is aimed at making the international community believe anything from Africa is "garbage". And anything from Washington, London, Paris or Canberra is "gold".

This is why, Mr. Baskoro, you find that people generally know nothing about Africa except if its negative. I guess you must have heard the world's biggest lie that says AIDS originated from Africa. One of my life regrets is that we Africans have no powerful media to counter the above slurs so that the world would know us properly.

I will mention here a few of Africa's glories for the benefit of those who want to know us properly. I should first state categorically that there are only a few countries in Africa that are currently at war. Meanwhile, wars are going on in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Kashmir.

The terrible hunger that is killing North Koreans is really a big threat to humanity. But uninformed people mistakenly think these problems exist only in Africa.

Economically, a number of American, European and Asian industries rely on Africa's raw materials like petrol, cotton, coffee, cocoa, coal, gold and diamonds, to mention but a few. Nigerian oil is preferred in the U.S., and Mali and Burkina Faso supply quality cotton to so many Indonesian textiles industries. Not to mention the Japanese industries that would be affected should Africa stop supplying raw materials to them.

African doctors, engineers, scientists, pharmacists and academics are assisting in development in many parts of the world. African intellectuals such as Ali Mazrui and Wole Soyinka in the U.S. and Ben Okri in Britain are just a few retained by Western universities. South African technology can't be underestimated by honest people. This is a country that exports weapons to other developing nations, in addition to the nuclear power it developed for peaceful purposes.

Kofi Annan, an African, has already been described as one of the best UN General Secretaries the organization has ever had.

Lastly, let me call Baskoro's attention to this point: media propaganda against Africa doesn't come only from the West. The same is true in many parts of Asia. But in case of Asians, we understand their problem from two perspectives.

First, they know very little about Africa, so they import all African news from the West. Second, a few Asian nations are competition-minded. They have to prove they are high achievers by heavily publicizing Africa's misfortunes. Malaysia, according to a source, is a typical example of this.

We hope Asians may one day realize how positively they are perceived in Africa, and that they will reciprocate in their view of us.

BUHARI ABDU

Jakarta