Theres a long history of it, and allot of it is thick with an exocitized racism towards white South Africans and allows little room for black agency.

For a start, why did Jenny Diski not spend more time with black South Africans?

I don’t know if you can say if this woman is racist or not.

Let’s analyze the nastiness of this particular woman. According to the author she was always against apartheid.

“After the change of government, she taught nursery-aged black and coloured children of returnees from exile, in an impoverished part of town.”

Thats obviously fine. Actually commendable for a white South African.

“The country is being ruined by the greed and resentment of the Africans”

There are many commentators including black ones like Xolela Mangcu and Rhoda Kadalie arguing exactly the same, in strident terms, if more eloquently.

‘They’ve got bad values – which is the result of cultural collapse because of the loss of traditional structures, but then again, cheating is the nature of Africans.’

This ‘bad culture’ and the whole argument about the role of the mythical Trickster, is what Bayart & co writes about, albeit couched in academic language.

I don’t quite follow the joke.

For all I know this woman might be ‘a racist’. For all I know the writer might be ‘a racist’.

It’s an overused and over simplified term.

Unfortunate if your white (especially if your white African) and try to make sense of the predatory and corrupt practices in African politics your almost certainly run the danger of being labeled racist.

Thx for the digression into Bayart’s work. It’s unclear, though, just what it has to do with the nastiness displayed by Jenny Diski’s friend. Perhaps you’ll enlighten us.

Interesting article.

It so happens that Jean Francois Bayart (Director of CERI Paris), Stephen Ellis (Afrika studiecentrum Leiden and former editor of Africa confidential) & Beatrice Bibou (CNRS and the Centre d’etude d’Afrique noire, Bordeaux) have published a book called “The criminalization of the state in Africa.”

They make many points as to why African states turn into private criminal vehicles, (like for instance and counter to popular opinion African culture is highly individualistic and the importance of the politics of coercion etc etc).

They also have a chapter about the Trickster.

“In the corpus of African folk tales studied most notably by Denise Paulme, the Trickster plays a role in various forms.

The Trickster is by definition one who shows the ability in turning circumstances to his advantage and in particular have ‘others take his place, creating a situation in their own interest’ and is defined by ‘flexibility’, ‘cunning’, ‘duplicity’.

They compare it to the Greek concept of Metis.

And then they say: “In many ways the notion of Metis is a useful tool with which to consider politics and economics in modern Africa, with its lexicon of trickery and sudden changes of alliance and the frequency of social redistribution, shameless social parasitism and cynical appropriation.”

Often this belief in the value of trickery is born out of a sense of having to survive and a very hostile and dangerous world.