Siphumelele Zondi
@SZondi
For as long as I can remember British musician, Sade, has
always played at home. I have memories of her and Kenny G. in my father’s car
when we were going on long drives. That’s probably why Sade and her band are my
favourite music group of all time. I also fell in love with British movies I
was too young to watch such as Trainspotting
and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
So it was probably the arts and their history that sold Britain to me as a
place I wanted to study in and indeed I found a huge appreciation of poetry,
cinema, theatre and music here. I have a Zimbabwean friend who was drawn to
this country by football; he is a huge Manchester United fan. I would say that is
what Britain has sold to its former colonies and those are the images we have
bought.
When I watch British television I hardly see positive
images of the developing world. They talk of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe
sometimes, but that is to criticise him. Last year they had many stories on
Libya, Gaddafi was just a bad North African dictator that had to be conquered
to save his people. Now we see stories on Syria, a Middle Eastern country which
has a horrible leader that kills people every single day. I have also seen
stories on South Sudan and how hungry people are there with a currency that isn’t
worth much. I have actually never seen a positive story on Africa or the Middle
East on TV here. One would think their culture is perfect and needs no saving,
but it takes no expert to realise that is not true.
