The Difference Between White Elephants and Black Elephants in African Politics

The first time I saw a real elephant was at Kasungu Game Reserve and I must say—after the folklore stories I had heard before that—I was the least amazed at the rather lack of comparable bulk and height of the beast. Until then, I had walked around with a Jurassic Park imagine of an elephant. The untowering beast was hardly a wonder story. Hence, it took the white man, in my company [he was the first to see it], some doing just to isolate the animal from the shrubbery background and convince my incredulous eyesight that amidst the bushes lurked a breathing entity.

And when I did ocularize; the elephant’s appearance defied folklore. It was neither black nor white. It was greyer than I had imagined; probably because the beast had—for improved ventilation—stopped and wallowed at some mud pool! So are elephants off-black [because of dried loom mud] or off-white [because of physical discoloration]?

It is such language vexations that extend to political nomenclature and neo-colonial tongue-in-cheek deliberations of African economic failure. Are African leaders—besides Idi Amin who had fridge loads of human livers—gallery players turned on by ‘white elephants’?

By definition a political ‘white elephant’ is a project involving one form of construction or the other. African Presidents are known for ceremoniously emerging from their Stately Palaces to inaugurate and/ or commission this brand of elephants. African leaders will plaque their names to major highways, bridges, buildings etc. In themselves such constructions are not the point of the usual derogative ‘white elephant’ references. Rather it is the fact that, in more cases, the physical construction itself is either irrelevant and / or an expensive project whose economic value is likely to have passed long before the project was commissioned. Generally painted white and huge against the surrounding backdrop [shrubbery] these projects have been labeled ‘white elephants’.

So, in turn, what are ‘black elephants’? These must either be real or live elephants because some of those beasts can really be pot black! But it is quite rare to find a truly black elephant because—for reasons of Darwinian adaptation—they need to merge with the surrounding environment. Besides pitch darkness [which happens after daylight], black elephants would be real targets of sightful ‘poachers’; in the Game Parks. At worst, they will be targets for real predators within the natural survival hierarchy. So elephants have adapted—created the illusion or camouflage—through mud-smearing techniques in order to merge with the environment and freely forage without undue interference.

In political talk, black elephants are the illusion created by the people who stand behind the African politician. When you live in the private sector where managers’ power is nearly absolute it is easy to assume that the State President has the power to ‘command’ anything. But, anecdote increasingly has it otherwise. The truth is civil servants, including those around the State President, are so powerful that they decide everything that he does. Civil servants may subserviently bend an ear towards their politicians but it is just that. For public consumption. The civil service in any African country is a runaway bus; hell bound down a ravine of its choice; driver or no driver! The man who wrote the British TV series ‘Yes Minister’ had the grasp of the issues involved here.

Civil servants are the real black elephants. However, to fulfill their Darwinian supremacy—they need the shrubbery [the ‘illusory’ element]—behind which they can then freely operate. Therein is the twist. How does an animal serve both as the black elephant as well as the illusion?

I have yet to fully grasp Nicolo Machiavelli’s arguments. However, one lesson I have grasped from him is that in all his writings he fancied himself a ‘king maker’—never showing or seeking to become king himself.

There are vast rewards—once you have joined the ‘king maker tribe' [civil servants]—in capturing the elephant's and not ‘illusion's’ station in the scheme of things. The ability to see one’s vision translated into reality and the moral satisfaction that one can actually influence the pace and direction of history are some of the reasons why civil servants readily and sub-optimally exist in a low pay, low perk national job system.

Now, am I confusing you? Yes, the politician, not the king-maker tribe, is the illusion; The politician is the shrubbery behind which the elephant enjoys succor. Generally, ‘white elephants’ framed against forlorn backgrounds [at a cursory glance mud smeared elephants look more white than black] would be easy targets for poachers. Hence, they have in politics been points of study and derision! The poor state house fellow—seeking to have his name plaqued into historical obscurity—ends up being blamed for the ‘white elephants’ that dot the political landscape of his reign.

For instance, in Malawi we live under the illusion that Kamuzu created and/or introduced the Import Substitution Industrialization [ISI] model—with all its indefensible and dead-end consumerist practices. Granted Kamuzu mouthed these things and ISI and its related infrastructure became the negatively resilient reality we exist in today. But who actually had wished ISI onto Malawians?

The illusion is that this was Kamuzu’s baby through-and-through. It was him who had watched aspects of ‘catch up’ models tried out in the post-war Europe he lived until 1958. He became sold to these and when western ‘experts’ appeared at his State House, purveying ‘take off’ alternatives, he was an ‘already sold’ adherent. The rest—the white elephants [the Capital City at Lilongwe, the Import-driven Industrial sites at Makata and Kanengo etc] as they say—is history!

But how true is this? Twice Chipembere and friends had to ‘hunt’ across England for a reluctant Kamuzu. They nearly started a crisis at Chileka Airport, in early 1958, when Kamuzu performed a ‘disappearing act’: sorting out some marital mix ups in England. Malawian masses gathered at the airport threatened to storm the BOAC plane supposedly carrying Kamuzu; only to learn that Chipembere et al had misread Kamuzu’s promise to return home. Instead, Kamuzu had somehow unilaterally melted into the London under-system; deciding not to board the plane at the agreed date. Urged by these king-makers Kamuzu eventually showed up in July 1958!
The Chipemberes needed Kamuzu—to come and play the white elephant role—while they fulfilled their 'black elephant objectives. Yatuta Chisiza went into the bush because Kamuzu—the supposed 'white elephant'—suddenly showed un-scripted signs of a 'black elephant'.

Earlier, it was the same king makers that had agitated for the end of the Federation and political independence. In that order you can include John Chilembwe as one of the king makers. The story line is the same. At no point did any of these people find anything repugnant about the ‘import substitution’ system that colonialism had, since 1898, put in place. Indeed when, in 1955, Roy Welensky proposed an export-oriented alternative—the Bangula Dam and a fully fledged Federation—that would liberate rural Malawi [at least the Lower Shire would have been the richest part of Malawi today] the king makers rejected it. The Nyasaland African Congress wrote urging Kamuzu to do the same; and onto soap boxes in Trafalgar Square soap Kamuzu spent hours: denouncing the Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. Once back home, to Kanjedza and Gweru Prisons they all eagerly went in rejection of the genuine liberation of Malawians. Am I defencing colonialism here? No! The facts though are making my case.
Colonialism, Federation and post-independence Malawi have one common thread. None wanted anything to do with a model that would genuinely empower the Malawian poor. Since colonialism—save for a white district commissioner located in a rural part of the colonial extraction enclave practicing 'thangata' as a weekend sport—the development model in Malawi has pointedly ignored rural Malawi from its accumulation value chain.

If you doubt my argument think through this: what was the main gist of the fight for political independence in Malawi? Simple... It was about the African majority earning the ‘right to shop at Kandodo’: through the front door. Rub shoulders with the whites! The African majority were resisting being asked to shopping through a side window. Yet, how many of these ‘we-want-to-shop–at-Kandodo’ Africans were truly from the countryside? Who in rural Malawi had the economic means to seek out a packet of Rhodesian sausages from the paraffin fridge in Kandodo’s Butchery section let alone push out a trolley-ful of monthly groceries?

It was the rich African middle class—including the upward mobile youth in Zomba; on the day Kamuzu dared to jump—butt naked into the ‘whites only’ swimming pool at Bishop Mackenzie in Zomba. It was the young turks and ambitious men of Zomba who stood across the stream, at now Lwangwa Parish, and cheered as Kamuzu's black Humber arrived from his Limbe Surgery! Of course, Kamuzu had no legs to show off in public—he didn't jump into the 'whites only' pool. These were mere shenanigans aimed at ‘capturing’ the colonial value chain. Meanwhile, there never was intent to replace this value chain with anything that would involve such unpalatable alternatives as allowing dirty villagers to also butt dive into Bishop Mackenzie swimming pool. Ye-c-h-h-h!

Typically, Kamuzu—the 'white elephant'—was allowed and went about putting his name on all plaques thrown at him—Kamuzu Highway, Kamuzu Procession Road, Kamuzu Stadium, Kamuzu Bridge, Kamuzu International Airport, Kamuzu this, Kamuzu that! 'Zonse Zimene!' They coined the song and he lapped it! Meantime, beneath him, we [the black elephants] got our ISI model. We had achieved our free foraging rights!

In his personal biography [circa 1997] Chipembere is emphatic we egged Kamuzu into the ogre he became. As long as we convinced ourselves Kamuzu was ‘too foreign’ to understand our personal agendas we connived to use his over-bearing physical presence to deliver what we had failed to wrest from the Nyasaland Legislature and the Federation Assembly in Salisbury. And whenever the illusion would 'wash off' we would rush back to the mud pools for another mud bath or is it 'whitewash'. So when Kamuzu threatened to leave [the mud threatening to wash off] unless we guaranteed him free reign, we made him ‘life President’—a 'white elephant in perpetuity' while ensuring we did not lose sight of our objective.
Keep the rural poor subjugated!

When, for selfish reasons, Asians sought to liberate rural Malawi through provision of cheap and easy access to goods and services, the civil servants moved in to stop such a 'nefarious' intent. It would release ‘captive’ rural Malawi from our king maker clutch. We made it possible—Kamuzu only stood up to announce the policy—to relocate Asians into urban Malawi where we would keenly spy on their ‘unbridled economic tendencies' on the back of poor Malawians.
Am I twisting history here? No—facts speak for themselves. Who among the rural poor and/or us, the so called 'urban rich' [the other day someone finally told me that it is foolhardy to think rural or want to retire to the countryside] , had the means or know-wish to run even a basic ’Tea Room’ in those premises left behind by the Asians? None. But, we cheated Kamuzu that we would do it. Way back in 1978, Mlia [Urban Geography of Malawi] was already talking of a new phenomenon  called ‘ghost towns’. Are they gone yet? Those were [and still are] black elephant creations—Kamuzu merely white elephanted them.

But why? The answer lies in how—years after Kamuzu’s demise—our blood tends to curdle everytime the possibility of Asian returning into Songani, Malosa, Thyolo No. 1 and/or Lilongwe New City Center is mentioned. As average Malawians—fully aware that we will never make Tengani, in Nsanje, the vibrate towns it was during the aMwenye time—we simply cannot countenance that thought. Not because of the 'Asian' factor [Those are gone. There are very few 'shop attendant' Asians left to want to do that kind of thing].
It is us. We are ready to ensure those places remain bushes—our rural brothers and sisters remain in oblivion in order to safeguard the one precious thing in our lives. To develop rural Malawi would amount to liberating the rural kindred. Unfortunately, in so doing, it would also remove the one precious reference point in our success story. You see in Malawi we measure wealth—'richness'—through comparisons: I am rich because he is poor or if he is poor it is because I am better than him; therefore I am rich. Thus, if the poor were to be removed or uplifted from their current poverty stations, then our wealth comparison would be hard to apply!

It has become instinctive. It influences every decision black elephants make. Indeed, long before Bingu came onto the scene, we had designed 'Operation Dongosolo'. We merely waited for the right moment to attach the ‘negative white elephant’ bit to his name. As part of the usual 'externalization' process that goes with such actions—the white mud on the elephant may never become part of the black elephant—word is sent out: 'to oppose Operational Dongosolo is to oppose Bingu'! Surprisingly, it is the blood temperature of the Malawian ‘middle class’ that rose in decibels when mention of vendors returning to the streets was recently made. Clearly, it is not State House that doesn’t want those vendors on the streets. It‘s us, the black elephants, who hate the sight of the poor achieving something for themselves right before our eyes. Such an eventuality would rub off the dividing sheen between their 'poverty' and our 'richness'!
Meantime—and here is the unexplainable double standard—we secretly 'shop goods and services' from the same poor whenever they appear outside our office windows [too rushed to go to the crowded markets where we have 'crowded' them]! We travel into the countryside to collect food parcels etc from our poor kinsmen because it is the most natural and convenient thing to do; all the time lying aloud about how when we were at Chancellor College we internalized Schumpeter's—‘small is beautiful’ [nothing succeeds best than small]. In this Import Substitution economy—responsible for the disappearing forex and fuel shortages and foreign direct investment taking forever coming—who ought to be our small and beautiful? Isn't it the vendor that we are persecuting day in day out? Granted, once there was some unwarranted thieving and harrassment on our street pavements, but was that good reason for resourceful people to throw out the baby with the water?

Here is another example of black elephant role in messing up and the reasons why we cannot lock up the vendor genie in the countryside. It was the king makers—not Kamuzu—who studied German rural growth models. King makers are currently ill studying Japanese and Chinese alternative models to Capitalism. These await the next 'white elephant' to inaugurate. But, back to rural growth centers—king makers developed the rural growth concept [wrongly too] before inviting Kamuzu out of Sanjika to put a name to a plaque. Thereafter, we ‘shoveled’ him right back into his Stately ‘prison’! The short of it [because the black elephant knows best] is that it is the elephant that picks and choose the camouflage it needs to sustain its own Darwinist agendas.

Because this is an analysis of African politics let me add an internationalist example. For all the arguments posited, it is increasingly clear that 'micro-managing' Robert Mugabe has never been in control in Zimbabw. All his political [white elephant] antics are actually the makings of the king-makers around him. The other white elephants around him have known all along. Hence, the bitter political tears that were shed when the mulilated and burned body of General Solomon Mujuru [Rex Nhongo]—a king maker—turned coat against fellow king makers—was found. White elephants are always aware of the dangerous machinations of the black elephants around them. Ticks and mud on the body of an elephant know when to flake off to safety. Meantime, these too are involved in the fight for juicy positions on the ['white' or 'black'?] elephant’s body. Yet, another confusing illusion we must contend with.

I wonder if Machiavelli understood who actually decides that a pretender politician—threatening the agenda of reigning king makers—should be hanged. Who decides—just to warn others [white or black?]—that the slain politicians body should be dragged into the center of town and left there as food for dogs and buzzards?

The author can also be contacted on zivaiclaude@gmail.com