This has been a long time coming. I wrote this piece for the school paper as well. I think Steve Biko would be proud!

Starts Here

Most people who know me know that I am South African, actually even those who don’t know me; they at least know that I am not from around here.

My country of origin is situated at the southern tip of the African continent. Now there seems to be a general confusion about “Africa.”

I want to take some time and this piece to clarify a few misconceptions about this continent, and yes it is a continent and not a single country.

Excluding the much disputed Western Sahara territory, the African continent consists of 53 countries that include the islands associated with the continent like Madagascar.

The nations on this continent have different social, political and economic structures.

In other words South Africa is different from Ghana, Ghana has nothing to do with Morocco and you cannot take a bus ride from Senegal to Tanzania, so the probability that I have a met a friend of yours that has traveled to Ethiopia while I lived in South Africa is zero to none.

So please stop asking me if I know a friend of yours that did volunteer work in Uganda and expect me to say I ran into your friend, as if Uganda is a twenty minute taxi ride from South Africa.

Why even assume that I have been to Uganda? I have found that even people of African descent (people who were born and partially raised in Africa) use the word “Africa” as an umbrella term when describing social, political or economic issues facing the countries in the continent.

Even “Africans” themselves, especially those in the Diaspora, keep on perpetuating the idea that “Africa” is a culture, as if there’s one homogeneous way of life across the continent.

Franz Fanon was much attuned to this phenomenon when he stated that “the native intellectual who has gone far beyond the domains of Western culture and who has got it into his head to proclaim the existence of another culture (which is the African culture) never does so in the name of Angola or of Dahomey.”

This overarching look at the African continent is not geographically sound and leads us to more misunderstanding of the continent, its countries and most of all, its people.

I was once told that I am a bad representation of “Africa” because of my sexual orientation.

This was puzzling on many accounts; firstly I have never claimed nor have I been elected to represent my country, let alone a continent. There is no one way to be “African,” no one holds a monopoly on “Africaness” (whatever that means).

There are various ways to be “South African” (Zulu, Christian, Xhosa, gay, Afrikaans, Muslim, farmer, straight, traditional ect.), can you imagine then the multiple ways one can be “African.” 

This leads me to the war(s) issue; although there are several conflicts going on in the continent involving different countries, the majority of the continent is fairly stable.

I am not saying attention shouldn’t be drawn to the bloody areas, what I am saying is that you need to be specific with regards to the “war torn Africa” you are talking about.

You can’t just throw around statements like “there’s war in Africa” without both qualifying them and stating where in particular is this war.

This blanket treatment of Africa is not only annoying; it shows a lack of geographical knowledge and an extreme sloppiness when it comes to details.

I am sure this happens with other continents too, like Asia but I still think it’s more exaggerated with Africa. It’s uncommon to hear people talking about Europe as a continent in the same broad way as people do about Africa; people are usually more specific about the countries located within that continent.

So next time, before you introduce me to your friends as “my friend from Africa”, after I specifically told you that I am South African, think about whether you would do the same to your German, English or Norwegian friends.

I think that there’s something extremely lacking in the geography departments (and society as a whole for that matter) in this part of the world when people who have graduated high school and are pursuing degrees in institutions of higher learning cannot distinguish the difference between a continent and a country.

The piece can be found here: http://www.universitychronicle.com/opinions/africa-a-continent-not-a-country-1.1994048#3