Primitivising Conflict_Reflection Memo

Throughout history the continent of Africa has been riddled with war and conflict, civil or
otherwise. From the safety of the West, while we have watched these developments unfold and
atrocities strike - we have also observed numerous efforts of western do-gooders and foreign
governments to bring peace and stability fail miserably. This raises the question of what have
these governments bodies and organisations been doing wrong? Are their current actions and
methods of peacekeeping ill-thought out, or are their shortcomings a product of the West’s
ignorant consciousness to the realities of these problems on the ground? I think it is a
combination of both. It is to no surprise to anyone that the Western world pushes a certain
narrative in regard to the continent of Africa and its cruel generalisation, but how much is this
dichotomy between our concepts and the actual reality negatively effecting the stability and
development of these African countries?

Views of any African conflict outside of the continent tend to be skewed, due to both a
combination of the publics lack of understanding of the conflict, but also for the country itself and
the culture, traditions and political environment it embodies - that of which are usually heavily
integrated into the conflict at hand. Not only does this allow a certain narrative to be easily
created and pushed, it allows for the the mindless consumption of these narratives by the general
public - exacerbating the root of the problem.

There are 3 narratives regarding the continent that have been penetrating the western media for
decades - Africa is hopelessly impoverished, Africa is a haven for wildlife and culture, African
people are primitive and barbaric. The latter, being the most dangerous in the arena of
international relations and peacekeeping efforts. Pushing the narrative that African people remain
primitive in their war strategies and conflict resolution methods promotes a general image of
barbarism onto the people of the continent, an image comparable to the Hobbesian state of
nature which he famously coined as ‘Nasty, brutish and short’, where humans are constantly
engaged in a anarchic state of war against one and other for survival. This is dangerous as it
allows the people who pull the strings behind the curtains of these conflicts to completely
overlook an integral part of the country’s attitude to the conflict - therefore overlooking their
motivations and tactics - while also disregarding the collective consciousness of the civilians
caught in the crossfire of the conflict in question.

Though the traditionalist beliefs of African countries may remain illogical and irrational to the
Western mind, it does not delegitimise the reality that these beliefs form an integral part of the
countries collective consciousness and therefore, their strategies in war. It is of utmost importance
for any body waging efforts of peace and stability to have a deep understanding of the traditional
beliefs and cultured rooted in the country in question, rather than brushing it off as another
‘downfall’ of the continent in terms of progressive development. An example of this is the use of
traditionalist beliefs of ‘mystical warfare’ utilised by the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) during
the Sierra-Leonian civil war against government forces, of which both soldiers and civilians blame
for the inability of the army to defeat them.

Another danger of the West’s tendency to push certain narratives when it comes to African
conflict, is the risk of over simplifying the conflict at hand and therefore disregarding key
components integral to the situation. KONY 2012 is one campaign that faced criticism for
oversimplifying the LRA (Lords Resistance Army) conflict in Uganda, in order to appeal to a wide
public audience and spread awareness of the atrocities committed at the hand of LRA leader,
Joseph Kony. Though the campaign was applauded for awakening a large audience to the war
criminals crimes, it also faced deserved criticism for over-simplifying the reality of the situation.
While KONY 2012 dramatically appealed to peoples emotions by painting an image of good and
evil through the characters of the Ugandan government and the LRA rebel movement, it failed to
give any background or political context to the war or information on prior peace negotiations,
and in doing so transmitted painfully misleading information on the conflict. This creates problems
while appealing to a large audience, advocacy groups and governments, as a misunderstanding
of the conflict is equal to a misunderstanding of how to approach the situation and resolve it.
The question arises of who pushes these narratives and why? Who is benefiting from them? The
framing of narratives takes place throughout all spheres of the mass media, serving a method of
defining a persons understanding of a particular incident/situation in their mind. A skill that proves
particularly useful in the eyes of government bodies and NGO’s advocating for Africa, as the
continent is vulnerable to negative stereotypes that can be manipulated to appeal to people’s
emotions and henceforth, benefit their own motives. For example, an NGO working to end child
hunger in Kenya, will always push the narrative that the majority of children in Kenya are starving,
in order to encourage people to donate money to the cause. However we can clearly see this
approach backfire with the case of KONY 2012, when the narrative of ‘Big Bad Kony’ pushed by
the American NGO ‘Invisible Children’ began to benefit the Ugandan government, who were in
fact not so innocent in the conflict, being responsible for the displacement of thousands of
Ugandans.