‘The British Tribe Next Door’- Deepening the divide between ‘the West and the rest’
This week, Channel 4 released a docu-series that surprised me yet simultaneously did not. The programme entitled ’The British Tribe Next Door’ centres on Gogglebox star Scarlett Moffatt and her family being shipped out to a remote Namibian village to live amongst the indigenous Himba tribe. We follow as their strikingly contrasting worlds collide in the most acute fashion. My only question is:
Who on Earth gave this show the okay?
I am going to, for a moment, imagine that the show was intended to purely demonstrate the emotions evoked in a clash of civilizations. While at first glance, one assumes that the Himba will learn from the Moffatts, in a surprising turn of events, the Moffatts actually end up learning from the Himba. As Scarlett shares her insecurities surrounding her body, she looks to the Himba women- entirely naked- for inspiration. While obviously a touching sentiment, surely the cons of releasing a programme as insensitive as this outweighs this relatively minor pro? It is not as if this idea has not been tried and tested before (see The Great British School Swap), so why would this African village provide a novel view to an already tired cliché? To suggest that this show is purely a ‘social experiment’ is to imply that we are living in a world free of racial and cultural bias. Unfortunately for us, this is a rather reductive and simplistic view of a much more painful reality. In fact, Scarlett’s focus on her physical appearance reflects the all-consuming narcissism plaguing contemporary Western cultural pathology. The producers feed into the noble savage trope by portraying the Himba as one-dimensional characters, stripped of all of the appendages of a modern Western existence, to emphasise the ‘beauty’ in a primal native lifestyle. By doing so, Channel 4 plays right into the hands of the shameful British colonial history that much of the establishment are keen to erase from living human memory.
The series is not unlike many instances where the West have exploited the poor condition of Africans in order to generate sympathy or shock. The perfect embodiment of poverty porn. In 2018, residents of Kibera slum in Nairobi, stated in response to wealthy foreign tourists frequently visiting their home: ‘we are not wildlife.’ The same logic applies to the Himba. They are not wildlife. What makes this show particularly hurtful to me, personally, is the fact that thanks to the British education system, for many people, this programme will be their only exposure to Africa. This, combined with the famous 1984 Band Aid song which exclaims Africa to be ‘the land where nothing grows, no rain or rivers flow,’ it is no wonder I was often asked upon my arrival to England, whether I lived in a hut or had elephants in my garden back home in Africa.
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, the renowned Nigerian author, spoke eloquently in her Ted Talk about ‘the danger of a single story.’ Adichie explains how as a young budding author, the characters in her novels would often have blonde hair, blue eyes, they would eat apples and incessantly talk about the weather. What she soon realised is, she herself, did not have blue eyes or blonde hair, she had never eaten an apple and never spoke about the weather as, in Nigeria, there was never any need to. Adichie had thought that because all the protagonists in the stories she had read harboured these characteristics, that hers had to as well, thus demonstrating the danger of a single story. Now let’s think about the danger of the single story in this case. For decades, Western media has relentlessly painted Africa in a negative light. All you hear about Africa is how impoverished it is. Charity campaigns clad with starving African children with flies on their faces are fairly common features of prime time television. What the West fails to acknowledge is that Africa is a continent of growth and opportunities. As Larry Madowo indicates, ‘mobile money transactions have been commonplace in many parts of the continent for well over a decade.’ Africa is also a global world leader in environmental protection: ‘in most parts of the continent, plastic packaging is outlawed and some countries have had these prohibitions in place for over a decade. The ban on plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds won’t even come into force in the UK until 2020.’ Yet no ordinary Brit would know any of this about Africa, but I suppose, why would they?
For decades, the British establishment has remained tirelessly committed in its quest to ensuring that its responsibility for the poverty in Africa has gone unnoticed. In 2013, the victims of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya sought reparation from the British government for the role it played in resisting the 1950s Kenyan struggle for independence. The claimants found that the British Colonial Office had implemented a programme with the sole objective of systematically destroying or hiding evidence from the public. Codenamed ‘Operation Legacy,’ precise instructions were found in correspondence between colonial officials suggesting exact methods to be used for the destruction of documentation. As Akala points out in his recently released polemic: what is a greater admission of guilt than the physical destruction of evidence?
Adichie’s story demonstrates ‘how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a single story.’ Adichie describes herself as coming from a conventional middle class Nigerian family. To the average Westerner, those words would almost seem oxymoronic strung together in a single sentence. Like Adichie, I too come from a conventional middle class African household- a lifestyle of which British television has failed to represent. Though, why should it? Why should British television represent Africa at all? If that’s a question you are asking yourself right now, then I would tend to agree. If the British media are not prepared to reflect all sides of Africa, the seethingly wealthy upper echelons of the Nigerian oil elite, the up-and-coming Nairobi middle class as well as the traditionalist minimalism of the Himba, then Channel 4 and other mainstream media outlets should steer clear of the subject altogether. You can’t have it both ways! If you want to continuously project the negative African stereotypes, simultaneously counter it with an educational curriculum awash with evidence of Africa’s rich and diverse history prior to the barbarity of colonialism.
The premise of the show surrounds ‘the pampered yet esoterically impoverished Westerner contrasted with the primitive but wise African.’ This infantilises the African in the same vein as the cliché that ‘we can learn so much from children.’ The comparison between ‘the Westerner’ and ‘the African’ also serves to imply the two are monolithic civilizations without agency: one destined to be ‘primitive’ and the other ‘advanced,’ playing directly into colonial tropes.
Some Tweets from viewers in response read, ‘this documentary has seriously made me grateful for everything I have’ and ‘programmes like this make you realize how lucky we actually are’- clearly evoking the exact emotions the producers aimed to achieve. The programme mocks traditional ways of living rather than applauding the Himba for managing to retain their native culture in the face of Western imperialism. As the organization ‘No White Saviours’ argues, ‘this is the only narrative people in the West want to see portrayed about us.’
Let’s flip this around, if we pitched the reverse to Channel 4, the middle class African elite come and pitch up their mansion on a council estate in East London- can you imagine the uproar? Rather than acting as a lesson in consumerism and materialism, veiled in fake sympathy, the Moffatt’s visit is more offensive than revelatory. What the reader is meant to take away is essentially: look how much we have and how little they have and they’re still happy. Revolutionary. The irony in this is, as Professor Kehinde Andrews states in an episode of Russell Brand’s podcast ‘Under the Skin’,’ the West has literally built its wealth on the back of exploiting the Third World. So the very economic system that has enabled Moffatt in the Western world to be able to afford all these worldly possessions is the very same economic system that has left the Himba lacking. As is highlighted by ‘No White Saviours,’ ‘they benefit from keeping us in a constant state of ‘underdevelopment.’’
Africa Brooke, founder of the Cherry Revolution, has previously spoken in depth about the bastardization of the word ‘tribe’ in Western culture. It is not only inconsiderate and distasteful but also ignorant to casually throw around this vocabulary when referring to a non-native existence. ‘Tribes’ have been and continue to be a constituent part of modern African identity. In the West, the lexicon has been stretched and morphed into a signifier of ‘primitiveness.’ I am part of a tribe. A complex ethnic grouping, awash with diversity, hierarchy and sophisticated political organisation. Not like the ‘County Durham’ tribe that the Moffatt’s describe themselves as hailing from. Yet, it is often the case with expressions of white privilege to fail to acknowledge the complexity and heterogeneity that comes with an existence unfamiliar to their own. Like most instances of ignorance, ‘The British Tribe Next Door’ is ‘a racist cringe fest’ which only serves to deepen the ‘cultural chasm’ between ‘the West and the rest.’ Far from serving as an educational opportunity, the programme is condescending, painful and problematic. I feel sympathetic towards Scarlett Moffatt because she carried herself very well in the programme and comes across as a very likeable person despite the obviously awkward circumstances. The entire show is just poorly thought-out and frankly ridiculous, especially in 2019. But I guess leaving a watering borehole is enough penance for continuously propagating negative African stereotypes.
