The other day, the comedian and Talk Show host Trevor Noah got into a bit of a tiff with the French Ambassador to the USA. At issue was a joke about the French team that had just won the football World Cup in Russia. The world’s news media were awash with images of celebrating French citizens thronging the Champs Elysees.
Trevor had remarked, tongue in cheek, that the French team was really an African team.
Of course, on one level, the large number of black players in the French team might be held to be reflective of contemporary reality in France, and to a lesser extent of other European nations, especially the United Kingdom. The countries which had a tradition of colonizing other countries and races, have ended up being ‘colonised back’ by the races whose countries they invaded. In everything but name, these European countries were already multiracial, multi-cultural entities, even if they originally started from supposedly pure Aryan stock.
The dislocations caused by recent wars and challenging conditions in Africa and parts of the Middle East have led to a huge wave of emigration. In addition, there were hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and suffering in Syria and Afghanistan, heading for Europe. They were predominantly Muslim, while their presumptive hosts on the European mainland were predominantly Christian.
This latter-day wave of immigration, more than any other issue, has influenced politics in Europe and America in the recent decade. While many liberal-minded people take a compassionate view of the issue and are willing to welcome refugees and be their brothers’ keepers, an increasing minority are worried about welcoming large numbers of ‘strangers’ onto their shores. The dimensions of the problem, for the people who are opposed to immigration, include a perceived threat of dilution of their national stock and culture, a sense that the immigrants might take away jobs and housing that are not even enough for ‘indigenes’, and a sense that the threat of terrorism, already present in their countries – especially from Islamic extremists – such as ISIS, would be multiplied if hordes of immigrants were allowed in. An ideological hard edge has always existed on the subject in these societies, advocated and represented by ‘far-right’ parties, such as Jean Marie Le Pen’s party in France, and UKIP in the UK. In the past few years what was previously regarded as ‘right wing’ sentiment appears to have become more popular with the masses, and the fringe has taken on a mainstream presence. In some countries, they have won elections outright, or become major coalition partners. Other issues have helped to bring matters to a head, such as the referendum in the United Kingdom which committed the country to ‘Brexit’ – an exit from the European Union, and the emergence of Donald Trump as President of America. Another truth was that even the most liberal of citizens recognized that there could not be totally unlimited and unregulated immigration, and people seeking to become citizens of any country at a minimum would need to empathize and identify with the core values of that society.
It has not been the most ‘innocent’ of public discussions, of course. At the heart of the whole ‘nationalism’ movement in the USA, as in the countries of Europe, is a hard core of racialist sentiment that resents the presence of non-white peoples, period. They disdain their humanity, and are opposed to their further presence in the public space. Such sentiments are probably not newly minted, but expressions of long-suppressed racism which has now been rendered safe to express in the backlash to the first black presidency in the USA, and the ascendancy of the obnoxious Mr. Donald Trump.
This was the context in which Trevor made his joke about the French team.
The French ambassador might have been better advised to see the joke and leave well enough alone. Instead he felt compelled to ‘stand up for the Republic’. The world champion team, he said, in an official letter to the comedian, was a French team, not an African team. If there were members who were of African origin, or even Arab origin, they had been assimilated into ‘French-ness’ and were effectively as ‘French’ as – well, even President De Gaulle (these were not his words!).
His well-meant riposte merely provided fresh grist to the young comedian’s mill.
‘French-ness’ – he remarked, was a gift the French felt free to dispense when it suited them. Most black Frenchmen lived in high crime, low income ghettoes in Paris and its suburbs. When a black man committed a crime, he was an immigrant. When he won the World Cup, he was a ‘Frenchman’. He called up a ready example of the absurdity. A young Malian immigrant who climbed ‘like Spiderman’ up five storeys of a building to rescue a baby was instantly made a ‘Frenchman’ by President Macron. If he had dropped the baby, he would have been – yes, an immigrant, according to Trevor.
Of course, for any honest discussant, there was another side to the story. If those African footballers had not somehow found themselves in France, their chances of winning the World Cup would have been virtually zero, realistically. Africa, let’s not forget, and no matter how hurtful it may be to have to acknowledge it, is still a land of poor governance, failed leaders, and rampant corruption. From Nigeria with a Sports Minister who appears not to know anything about anything, and an coach of the Super Eagles who was recently caught on video collecting a bribe in a sting operation, to the Cameroons, where the father of Kylian Mbappe, the young ‘French’ man who emerged as the superstar of the whole World Cup, told the story of how he wanted his son to play in the Cameroonian team, but could not afford the bribe he was asked to pay for the ‘favour’, which was why he ended up playing for France! There is an undoubted opportunity to being French, and there is an undoubted ‘opportunity cost’ to being African.
In the end, it is not just about the colour of the skin.
The truth is that Africa has to get beyond the cheap theatrics of claiming heroes nurtured by others to providing a climate suitable for the grooming and nurturing of its own talents and heroes at home.
Femi Olugbile
