Of murder and hate

I know I’m talking much about what the international community ignores in Africa, but let me tell you what they care about: resources and African markets. A strong man like our president who is willing to secure resources like gold, diamond, and lithium for the international community is called an important strategic ally. Our president is the one that secures Somalia’s coastline to ensure international trade is flowing. He secures the uranium, cobalt, gold, and diamond mines in the Congo. He secures petroleum deposits in South Sudan. He is the best proxy for Western interests the international community has in the entire region— A Murder of Hate

 

The vehemence with which America and China go after each other’s jugular is equal to the one with which they express their love for Africa. This love ‘one-tin-tin’ has been queried from time to time. Uganda-born-America-based writer and journalist, Yasin Kakande, doubts this love too. He has shown this in his writings.

In 2013, Kakande published ‘The Ambitious Struggle’, his account of his years in the United Arab Emirates. Two years later, he released ‘Slave States’, a frank assessment of the enslavement, trafficking, sexual starvation and general abuse of workers in the Gulf Arab Region. And in 2020, he blessed the world with ‘Why We Are Coming’, a clarion call on the need for serious and frank political conversation about why so many Africans are migrating to the West.

He is also the author of ‘Green Card Baby’, a book about the global migrant crisis, his personal story of how elusive the American Dream can be, detailing his struggle working long shifts as a caregiver and Uber driver to make ends meet while applying for legal status and hoping to bring his wife and children from Uganda to America.

Some weeks back, Kakande released his inaugural work of fiction, ‘A Murder of Hate’, the first in a crime trilogy. It opens with the discovery of the body of Sheila Musinga, a media studies student at the Essex University in downtown Boston. The deceased’s father is the brother of Ugandan president in whose cabinet he is foreign affairs minister. Her murder in a Sports Utility Vehicle discovered by a nurse on his way to an early morning shift is of interest to the CIA, which recommends Bus, an officer whose mother is Ugandan, to work with a police officer, Lisa, to unravel the mystery surrounding the death of the student whose white mother died at childbirth leaving her to be raised by her stepmother.

Murder is what they set out to unravel, but they unravel much more, especially Washington’s complicity in military dictatorship in Africa and many more.

The novel treats the vexed race issues in America in a way that raises posers such as: Are there no White people who are racists? And are there no Black people who are racists? We see how not all White people enjoy the much-talked about White privilege; we are told of poor White folks who toil day and night on farms and factories to meet their needs. Insights are also given about the other side of diversity initiative, especially how it can promote mediocrity and shut out qualified people because of their skin colour. But, it also raises the posers: are there poor white folks whose poverty is due to their skin colour? And are White people who often find doors closed to them solely because of their race?

The novel also deals with America’s interest in Africa’s resources and shows us that the Big Brother is no Father Christmas. We see the clandestine operations in the Shinkolobwe uranium mine, which was important to America’s interests in that part of Africa. This mine was the source of nearly all the uranium used to create the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. America called it the Manhattan Project, a project which essentially ended the World War II and made America the number one power house. Bus played a major role for America in the Democratic of Congo and Uganda decades after the WWII, signifying an ongoing interest in resources from the ‘heart of darkness’.

Kakande delves into the controversial role of Western lobbyists in promoting unpopular governments in Africa for loads of dollars. We see how lobbyists are employed to perpetuate deceit and sell falsehood to the people as the gospel truth. Devils are robed in the attires of saints and it takes the people’s continued suffering for the reality to dawn on them about the counterfeit that has been foisted on them as original.

The author demonstrates that ethics means absolutely nothing to these lobbyists. What matters is for the powers that be in London and Washington to see their clients in good light. What the people in the countries of their clients feel is immaterial. The West is the goal; every other person can jump into the Lagoon is their motto.

The novel also examines the role of Western media in helping lobbyists achieve their goals. It also points attention to Hollywood’s role in telling blatant lies about Africa, playing the cards of unseen hands and ending up portraying a people in a canvas far away from representative. And the book calls attention to how the United States usually turns the deaf ear and the blind eye to anomalies of its allies.

And there is a glimpse of the role of the scramble of China and America for Africa in the book. In the long run, it’s clear that the scramble isn’t borne out of love, but out of the need to decide the continent’s fate which, ultimately, has never favoured its masses.

Kakande’s ‘A Murder of Hate’ is a truly remarkable work of crime fiction; it thrills, it tantalises, it refreshes, it hums with harmonious rhymes.

My final take: Africa has its challenges, crazy and sometimes too bizarre to believe, but behind some of the problems afflicting the continent are unseen hands, the Big Brothers who enable bad leaders in the Third World in order to have unfettered access to their natural resources.

 

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