"Last Train to the Zona Verde,” by
Paul Theroux, 2013
Theroux confirms that Africa is the home to the most
ghettoized cities in the world. Vast conglomerations
of shantytowns in each country surround the centers, with isolated pockets of
wealth behind gates. Rural areas of
poverty where villagers eke out a living, as hunter-gatherer lifestyles are
dead. Theroux taught for 6 years as a
teacher in Malawi, then took a famous trip from Cairo to Capetown in his book
of 10 years ago – “Dark Star Safari.” He now attempts to complete the circle by
going from Capetown to Timbuktu in sub-Saharan Africa, up the west coast of
Africa. At 70 years-old this lone and
intrepid white traveller wants to find out what has happened in Africa since
his last trip.
It’s not good. He
quits. Travel books are supposed to be
triumphant stories of new information and the overcoming of obstacles. They are not supposed to end in frustration
and misery. Theroux travels from a
luxury hotel in Capetown to the chaos and poverty of Luanda, Angola. Three of the people he meets along the way
die. The “Bushman” of the Kalahari put
on a show for him, pretending to be hunting in native regalia, then don their
regular torn t-shirts afterwards. Lying
ahead of him if he leaves Angola is the Congo of no roads and warlords. Above that is the Nigeria of Boko Harum and
violence. Above that is the Islamist
rebellion in Mali. He quits by
answering the question, “Why am I here?”
Theroux is not really political but he is an honest
observer. But all ‘honest observers’
also harbour inbred thoughts. He is dour
about the Cuban intervention in Angola against South Africa and UNITA. He somewhat resents the landless blacks of
Zimbabwe. He labels as ‘racism’ many
anti-white feelings. His view of the
Chinese work in Africa is more negative than the work of the ‘good whites’ of
helpful liberalism. Yet he also
pitilessly sees the crookness of so many African governments, which are mostly
kleptocracies. Angola makes millions a
day on oil and diamonds, and sits in a vast fertile country – yet almost none
of the money trickles down from the international firms and the permanent government
bureaucrats to the people, who live in squalor.
He also is aware of the ‘hooked’ value of international capitalist aid, which is
sometimes used properly, but more often than not is a neo-liberal placebo and
useless, or simply stolen. He makes fun
of Western ‘conferences’ that are supposed to ‘help Africa’ or fake emissaries
of hope like Bono and Angelina Jolie. He
hates seeing animals controlled or penned up in zoos, and prefers what few
remain to run wild. Almost none are left
in Angola – all killed for food or in the wars.
Theroux is not a fan of cities and values the natural
wonders of Africa, including its wildlife, vegetation and its village
life. This is the ‘old’ Africa, which is
dying as the cities grow, and climate change brings drought, or capital brings
large expropriating farms and dams. (see review of “The New Colonialism,”
below. Use search box in upper left.) In one contradictory chapter, he visits a friend who runs a safari 'elephant riding' camp for very rich Westerners. They sit on the verandas sipping tea while watching the elephants in the bush - who are then hobbled and forced to shoulder these wealthy fleas. Theroux admires his friend who runs the camp, yet can't accept the chaining of the elephants for the tourists.
Theroux visits the squatter townships around Capetown, and
except for one township, concludes that conditions have gotten worse since the
end of apartheid for the people that are flooding into the camps. He discourses on poverty tourism, where
Western tourists in South Africa are taken on bus rides to observe the misery
in the townships, containing ‘museums’ of labour squalor that resemble the
conditions outside. Apartheid was a vast
labour control system, after all. He
travels to Namibia and, except for the Germanic
and Dutch cleanliness of Windhoek town, above the ‘red line’ bisecting
the country lies a realm of rural isolation and depression. Everyone
there is afraid of Angola, which lived through 30 years of bloody war against
South Africa and then the warlord Jonas Saivimbi. This war included one battle at Cuito
Cuanavale in which 50,000 Angolans, Cubans and South Africans died – the
‘Stalingrad of Angola.’ Rusted tanks
still litter the countryside and mines explode, maiming and killing hundreds a
year.
Theroux takes the broken down cars, the rickety buses, eats
the fly-covered food, puts up with insults, shoving and menace, the theft of
his credit card (although who uses a credit card in these conditions...) the
noise, ignorance and death of this trip, and decides to quit before he too lies
moribund in some shanty alley – a dystopian reality that overwhelms him. As he alleges, he is not a chronicler of the
end of time.
Present Africa is a result of the impact of world capitalism.
It has become the ‘ghetto’ of the world.
It is a bleeding ‘zona verde’ from which capital extracts oil, minerals,
food and cheap labour like a syringe, while leaving the remainder – not so different for
now than the colonialisms of old.
Red Frog
July 2, 2014
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