VULNERABLE MISSION

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 134–153
146
Use of the term “black” . . . is applied to people of African origin wherever they are now
living. The term “African” is reserved for those black people who are living in (and are
assumed to have been born and raised in) Africa. 49
Thus Harries concurs with the assumption of his Luo neighbors that a white person
cannot be African. 50
My thoughts turn to Alexandre, Huambo’s local veterinarian. He was born, raised, and
educated in Huambo. His parents, too, are from Huambo. But he is white. Alexandre
says he is Angolan, and his passport agrees. Through his paternal grandfather he can
trace ancestry back to Portugal; but his identity is formed by his story, not by his ancestry.
At the end of the work day, Alexandre walks home with his black receptionist who shares
his story, for she is also his wife. It would never occur to their two mestiça daughters that
a white man cannot be Angolan.
The racial divide runs so deep, writes Harries, that “for a white man to become a leader
in black Africa in other than an ‘oppressive’ way, is almost impossible.” 51 But no one
informed José Luís de Melo Marcelino, Huambo’s municipal administrator, that such
was the case. Marcelino is white, Huambo born and bred, and in a government position
of great responsibility. He is also respected by the people of Huambo: black, white, and
mestiço. From an elevated vantage point, he shares the people’s identity because he shares
their story.
Examples could be multiplied. The point is simple. Through ethnolinguistic and even
racial integration, Angolan identity has shifted from its roots in tribal ancestry toward
new roots in the shared national story of struggle, survival, and rebuilding.
Westerners maintain economic and cultural hegemony over Africa.
The last of Harries’s assumptions with which I will contend is that, because of the great
economic gulf between rich Western nations and poor African nations, Africans are
forced to follow Western leading, hoping for a handout. This particular strand of the
dependency virus, he maintains, has infected Africa at the national level, the institutional
level, the communal level, and the personal level. 52 His analysis is perceptive and convincing;
it rings true with much of what I have seen in other parts of Africa.
What makes Angola different? In a word, petroleum. Crude oil. As Africa’s second
largest producer of oil, Angola has no shortage of cash. 53 On the contrary, the nation
has emerged from its war years to find itself in a position of considerable economic clout
in the global arena. It did not take long for Angolan politicians to discover the ease with
which petroleum dollars can overturn American idealism, French justice, and interna-
49 Ibid., 164. Harries is here explaining his own non-pejorative use of the terms black and African.
50 Ibid., 169.
51 Ibid., 180; cf. 169.
52 Ibid., 70, 173 (national level); 171 (institutional level); 85 (communal level); 169 (personal level). In these
discussions, he repeatedly describes the cultural and intercultural dynamics which make it virtually impossible
for African leaders to refuse offers of international aid, even if that aid will harm the community in the long
run.
53 A wealth of diamond mines also contributes to the national status as “rich boy on the block.”