I first got a taste of what life is like in post-colonial Africa when I went to visit my boyfriend and meet this family in his home country of South Africa. While I was thrilled to see South Africa and my boyfriend, of course, I could not help but notice the difference in socioeconomic classes, and, often times, race and ethnicity. I was in culture shock to say the least. Of course, I am aware that South Africa is still struggling to transition to a fairer post-apartheid country, but that hardly registered in my mind when I decided to take the trip. As I struggled to fully come to terms with the ways that people live their lives, I’m sure that I saw a biased view of life in South Africa. For example, I saw the lives of the people living in townships from a distance and only received information about their lives from middle class white people. I saw the poverty up close, but all the while escorted by people who hadn’t experienced it in their lives. Now, I’m not saying that every black person that I met was impoverished—that would be a huge over-generalization on my part, but there were more impoverished black people than there were impoverished white people.

          Upon reading NoViolet Bulowayo’s We Need New Names I recognized some similarities between Darling’s Zimbabwe and my experience in South Africa. After all, they are neighboring countries. I could only imagine her Paradise as the township on the edge of my boyfriend’s hometown, Prieska, and Budapest as the town itself. The way that Darling describes how all of the houses were surrounded by gates and fences is the reality of most of the houses that I saw on my trip. A South African who worked with my boyfriend, Janco, in America was even named TK. However, I never once saw a guava tree. Although, it was winter there during my visit so there weren’t many plants in full bloom. I remember taking a walk through town one day and seeing small children running rampant around town. Now, I can only see those children as Darling and her friends. While reading “Blak Power,” I could only imagine the house of the white people to be Janco’s family’s house and its inhabitants as his parents. I imagined Sbho shedding a tear for their loss up in the lemon tree in the backyard. I even imagined that the NGO workers as the missionaries that I crossed paths with on my flights to and from South Africa. As you can tell, it is very hard for me to be impartial and unemotional in regards to the issues addressed in We Need New Names.

          My trip and the novel sparked an interest in me. I wanted to learn why countries in Africa that have been subject to colonization have been recreated in the ways that they were when other former colonies, such as the United States, were successful in recreating a country where such socioeconomic disparities aren’t as common. What happened to the people of Africa that has held them back from becoming fully industrialized? Why was Africa subject to colonization and forced to change and conform to the lives of the colonists when Indians were able to force change on the British during the time that they were imperialized? I wanted to learn more about post-colonialism in Africa through an unbiased lens, a lens that I was unable to experience during my visit to South Africa.

          Now that I have given you a bit of background as to why I chose to look into socioeconomics in post-colonial Africa, I suppose that I should let you know what I have gleaned from my research, and yes, my own personal experience. This subject is uncharted territory for me as my education up until this semester has not had an extensive focus on Africa. I decided to start my search by using very broad terms and work my way into a more specific niche on the topic. I first went to Google and typed in “Post-Colonial Life in Africa”. I came across the Foreign Policy Journal, more specifically an article titled Post-Colonial Development in Africa. It gave me a definition for the term post-colonialism: “Post-Colonialism is defined in anthropology as the relations between nations and areas they once colonized and once ruled”. This article showed me what I should be looking for in my searches and gave me some information on the more recent state of post-colonial African nations. After that, I went onto Wikipedia and searched “post-colonial” I found information on post-colonial literature, diversity in literary systems, language barriers, and cultural boundaries, to name a few. One of the more interesting topics that was listed discussed the presence of foreign developers and foreign aid workers in developing African nations. Bulawayo created the Chinese mall developers and the NGO people to highlight this situation that is very much a part of Africa today.

          Of course, this example of “new age colonization” shows that Darling’s Zimbabwe doesn’t have complete autonomy over itself. There is a reason why countries in Africa in the post-colonial era have continued to be the subject of such people as the Chinese mall builders and the NGO aid workers in “Country Game:” “The Chinese men are all over the place in orange uniforms and yellow helmets; there’s not many of them but from the way they are running around, you would think they are a field of corn” (Bulawayo 44). Darling’s narrative illustrates that, though they are small in numbers, the Chinese developers held all of the power and authority at the future mall site. One of those reasons is the lack of power that the indigenous people of these countries had over their own land and their own lives. This problem was exacerbated by the rapidity in which many imperialistic powers left. They left a lack of infrastructure, economy, and leadership examples for the countries. According to the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s 2010 Multidimensional Poverty Index, Africa is home to the ten of the poorest nations in the world: Niger, Ethiopia, Mali, the Central African Republic, Burundi, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda. For these countries, it has been over 50 years since they gained their independence, as most African nations gained their independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Brett et al.). However, that is not to say that life for the indigenous inhabitants of these countries were better off under colonialism. It is only to highlight the lack of care that the European powers had for the fifty-three countries that they had created without a care for traditionally observed borders created by the tribes. These borders were decided by European powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885 to exploit Africa’s rich resources and avoid war among the European nations who were after these resources (Boateng 10). It seems that peace among European nations has caused strife among their African creations.

          At this conference, there were no leaders or representatives of African nations that were already created at the time. The demeaning nature in which the European leaders handled this division showed their complete disregard for the validity inhabitants of the African continent as equal humans. By imposing their laws over the people, they completely disrupted the indigenous people’s ways of life, and, by extension, their autonomy. Examples of this are highlighted in Fatuomata Waggeh’s Tedx Talk where she discusses how King Leopold II of Belgium used the Democratic Republic of the Congo for its rubber and ivory at the expense of the people. “The purpose of the Force Publique was to go into local Congolese villages and to make sure that Congolese villagers fulfilled their rubber and ivory quotas,” says Waggeh. If the villagers didn’t fulfill their quotas “They were beaten, parts of their bodies were amputated, and they faced other forms of human rights atrocities” (Waggeh). In an article published in 2010 by Encyclopædia Britannica, the oil rich nation of Niger, which was colonized by the British Empire, is discussed. The British divided Niger into three major ethnic groups: the Fulanis, the Yorubas, and the Igbos. This focus ignored many smaller ethnic groups in the country, and they received none of the profit from the oil. This led many of the minority groups into violence. I will expand more on the racial and ethnic problems later on as there is much that can be said about this topic. However, it comes as no surprise that a continent that has had its cultures violently torn apart by colonialism has struggled to adjust to life in a post-colonial era.

            Another factor affecting these countries in the post-colonial era would be their size. Some countries in Africa such as Guinea Bissau, Rwanda, and Swaziland have limited resources and raw materials available to them, and their size plays a role in that. Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese business man and philanthropist, had much to say about country size. At a conference in Tanzania in 2010, Ibrahim said:

            “Who are we…to think that we can have 53 tiny little countries and be ready to compete 

            with China, India, Europe, and the Americas? It is a fallacy…The fact is a large number

            of African countries are not viable…If they were companies, they would have been

            declared bankrupt. You switch off the light, you say bye-bye, it doesn’t work” (Boateng

            12).

The smaller countries do not have as much land to work with, therefore, they have less natural resources that they can utilize for themselves and for economic purposes. Along the western coast of Africa there are many small countries that face this issue. Another problem with resources facing many African countries relates back to the Berlin Conference. The European powers controlling them only cared for the extraction of the natural resources from the countries that they had created. I saw some of this first hand on my visit to South Africa.

            Although South Africa has been colonized by The Netherlands and England, it has been a tale of relative economic success in the post-colonial era. In the provinces of the Northern Cape and the Free State, there is an abundance of open pit diamond mines. In fact, South Africa produces one third of all of the world’s diamonds. On my first full day in the country, Janco took me to one such mine called “The Big Hole” in Kimberley. “The Big Hole” is an old diamond mine pit that was in operation from 1871 to 1914. It is about 234 yards deep and is now filled with water. It has been turned into a tourist attraction complete with a mining town and gift shop surrounding it. The success of this mine and mines like it in the surrounding areas gives a look at the kinds of natural resources that South Africa was able to harness for its own benefit. However, other African countries have not been fortunate to benefit from the raw materials that their country had because it was largely taken advantage of by the imperial powers that ruled them. A coercive and extractive example of Africa’s raw materials being used for European gain would be those previously discussed in Waggeh’s Tedx Talk. She brings up that after the initial striping of rubber and ivory, Belgium was after the Congo’s bauxite and diamonds.  The wealth from these products were not distributed back amongst the Congolese people, but rather the Belgian people. The lack of materials for the Congolese citizens to work with caused a lack of jobs and an unstable government, by extension. This forces workers to find jobs in other places, often out of their country.

            A prime example of job migration in We Need New Names can be seen in Darling’s family with her mostly absent father who went to South Africa in search of a job. Her mother has also resorted to travelling to the Zimbabwe-South Africa border to sell fruit for a better price than she could get by selling them in Budapest and Paradise. Leaving to seek a better life in South Africa is brought up several times over the course of the beginning of the novel and is brought up again when Chipo tells Darling that Bastard went to South Africa. This was, of course, Bastard’s plan from early childhood. “ ‘He did the right thing,’ Bastard says. ‘Who?’ Sbho says. ‘Moshe.’ ‘How?’ ‘By going to South Africa. That’s what I would do instead of working in this kaka place and getting all dirty. Do you see how they look like pigs?’ Bastard says, and laughs,” (Bulawayo 46). It is apparent that to Bastard, it seems that there are no employment opportunities worth pursuing in his own country. Therefore, he must pick up and leave. Chipo also tells Darling that Godknows has gone to Dubai and Sbho joined a travelling theater group.

          It is also mentioned early on that Darling and her friends do not attend school because all of the teachers have left for better paying jobs in other countries. “I don’t go to school anymore because all the teachers left to teach over in South Africa and Botswana and Namibia and them, where there’s better money…” (Bulawayo 33). Darling and her friends could not have an education anymore, and they are living in poverty. A lack of education is largely the cause for poverty around the world. An education allows for people to learn valuable skills that will help them in their lives, and without it, they are at a disadvantage. A lack of education causes a lack of skilled workers. As we know, skilled workers are often in higher demand and are paid more. However, as we saw with Darling’s father, a good education won’t get you ahead all of the time. Her father is a college graduate, but he still had to leave for a better job opportunity. “Mother had not wanted Father to leave for South Africa to begin with, but it was at that time when everybody was going to South Africa and other countries, some near, some far, some very, very far” (Bulawayo 93). Her father embodies real struggles that educated Africans face when their country cannot pay well or has a lack of jobs available.

          Due to the underdevelopment of the third world countries in Africa, educated people from these countries may choose to find a job in a different country where they can make better money. “Many African youth that receive education almost always leave their homes. They will either leave their homes for larger cities in search of work and education, or they will leave their countries altogether in an attempt to send money home to their families” (Mann). A college education is something that Aunt Fostalina and Uncle Kojo stress the importance of it to Darling: “…next fall I start at the community college and Aunt Fostalina is having me save for it” (Bulawayo 259). They tell her that she has to go to college so that she can make good money to help support her family back home. In post-colonial Africa, education is more available to an increasing number of native peoples. “Many post-colonial African nations have come a long way in terms of education. In the past, a quality education was only attainable by the rich and powerful within these states. Recently, we have seen higher education attainability rates throughout the post-colonial world” (Mann). Seeing the increase in education availability across the board is very encouraging for the future of Africa. Another problem, insufficient infrastructure, can be seen very clearly in We Need New Names and was also witnessed during my trip.

          In townships like Paradise, there is little infrastructure. Rather than having indoor plumbing, we see that Darling takes a bath in a wash tub out in her yard with cold water. “Jesus Christ died on this day, which is why I have to be out here washing with the cold water like this” (Bulawayo 21). It is only in the ransacked house of the white people that Darling and her friends see an indoor bathroom, running taps, and a refrigerator. The ways in which Paradise are described to the reader bear a striking resemblance to the townships that I saw in South Africa. Often times there would be small brick houses with tin roofs in closely packed spaces. When I would see abandoned homes like these on the side of the road, the tin would be gone and all that would be left was the barest of skeletons of the building that used to be. Presumably, the houses would be striped for parts that were either sold or used for other houses. More often than not, there was no electricity or running water in these houses. Often times, roads leading into townships turned from pavement into dirt and gravel. The roads that were paved were often only important streets in towns, such as main street, or highways that would take people to their jobs, jobs that were out of the tiny town of Prieska and other towns like it. There was a good deal of garbage in the road ditches and many hitchhikers at every major intersection of these roads. The hitchhikers that I saw were always black people, and I was informed that these were people who were trying to get to and from work but couldn’t afford the expensive bus fare or a vehicle of their own.

            Upon examining my research, We Need New Names, and my personal experiences it becomes easier to understand why post-colonial Africa hasn’t reached its full potential. Some of the most prominent reasons being the generations of oppression under colonial rule has divided the people of the nations into very different socioeconomic groups that are further aggravated by a lack of formal education, a lack of jobs, and a lack of effective government leadership. The lack of formal education is the biggest issue by far. Without formal education, people lack the skills necessary for high paying jobs, and they lack the leadership abilities that government officials need to help run a prosperous country. Of course, even if a country has effective leadership, the economy has to be stimulated to flourish. However, the issue then becomes that of stimulating an economy that has been stripped of its raw materials by European powers for their own benefit. If there is no money to be made from what a country has to offer, then it is hard pressed to reduce inflation and low wages. Post-colonial countries in Africa need to support each other in business and trade if they are to have any hope of success. For example, at the relative success the European Union has had since its creation in 1993. Small countries like Luxembourg and Belgium have been able to stimulate their economy and avoid inflation because of their shared interests. These countries have very little raw materials to offer, but they still manage to maintain a high standard of living that is associated with a first world country.

            In South Africa I noticed the remnants of the apartheid era racism among many people. I once overheard a passing white stranger comment that black people were so dumb “that they needed to be reminded to breath” while I was there. I was shocked and appalled that rhetoric such as this still existed. After all, apartheid was abolished in 1991. However, the white minority still holds much of the power in government and in jobs. A parallel to this was discussed in Waggeh’s Tedx Talk when she discussed Great Britain’s treatment of ethnic groups in colonial Niger. The Fulanis, the Yorubas, and the Igbos were enforcers of the colonial regime, and, therefore, benefitted from it. After Niger gained its independence, their socioeconomic statuses did not change. The same three groups were still in power and smaller ethnic groups, more specifically the Ogoni and the Igawa, were angry at this, so they rose up in violence against the injustice against them. “As History tells us…ethnic politicization during colonialism breeds ethnic violence in the post-colonial” (Waggeh). Bulawayo addresses this in We Need New Names in the chapter titled “Blak Power”. The black citizens feel angered at the presence of the descendants of European colonizers and want to make them “go back to where they came from”. The rioters sweep through Budapest ransacking white people’s homes and dragging them out into the streets. “‘Know this, you bloody colonist, from now on the black man is done listening, you hear? This is black-man country and the black man is in charge now. Africa for Africans’” (Bulawayo 120). The riot occurs after an election with unsatisfactory results for the black power group. However, the statement “Africa for Africans” causes Godknows to wonder “What exactly is an African” (Bulawayo 121). After all, the white people living in Budapest were born and raised in Zimbabwe and are just as African as the black men in the riot. The only difference between the two groups is the socioeconomic background in which they were raised and live in now. I am told that there is a song in South Africa that extremist groups like to sing that is primarily about a want to kill all white Afrikaners. The song is titled “Kill the Boer”. It is because of the divide amongst the people that African nation states continue to be underdeveloped with weak political systems.

          There are many countries in Africa today that are far from becoming a developed country like that. It is clear to see that the large class divides in post-colonial African nations are partly to blame for keeping the impoverished in poverty and the wealthy in power. I am reminded of South Africa’s current leader, President Zuma, who has, in 2009, received threats of impeachment for spending millions of tax payer money ($23 million) on renovations for his personal estate that were completely unnecessary, such as a swimming pool and a helipad. On top of that, he is illiterate and has been charged with rape various times in his past. Unfortunately, in post-apartheid South Africa there was a failure of integration of the formerly oppressed black citizens into the education and socioeconomic systems of the country, and, as such, the majority failed to see Zuma’s corruption before he was elected, focusing on the color of his skin rather than his policies and history.

          Often times in the media, we hear stories about African countries where women work in rock quarries to make ends meet and people who have to walk ten miles one way to get drinking water. We hear about violent dictators who have child armies and countries that face ongoing civil war. Post-colonial countries such as these need to focus time and money into improving the quality of life for their citizens as well as job opportunities within their countries so that people are not leaving in search for a better life and a better job. A course that I could take to further my knowledge on the subject would be English 456: Literacy, Culture, and Identity. This class would allow me gain a more thorough understanding of the effects that education, or a lack of, really has in socioeconomic divide in post-colonial Africa.

          The socioeconomic state of post-colonial Africa can only be improved once these changes have been made. Perhaps that means that countries such as the United States need to consider investing in more trade opportunities with African nations. Perhaps it means continuing with NGO programs and Peace Corps efforts to improve all aspects of life to those who need it. By helping to teach agricultural practices, teach English, and offer aid and healthcare opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to them, the Peace Corps and is able to provide help to countries who ask for it. NGO groups provide similar services to this. Through my research, it has become apparent that the citizens in the post-colonial world need to work together to better their countries. They need to set aside prejudices, get educated, and stick around to do what they are able to improve the quality of life for themselves and for generations to come. If they are unable to work together toward a better country and a better future, then they will not and cannot move forward. Socioeconomic inequality is at the forefront of post-colonial Africa’s problems. It is the root of causality for all of the other problems that these countries are faced with. A change needs to be made so that post-colonial Africa can move forward socially and economically for the betterment of the people who call it home.