Nigeria, Ebola and the myth of white saviours, by Robtel Pailey
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/11/nigeria-ebola-myth-white-saviours-201411654947478.html
In a 2012 article published by The Atlantic, Nigerian writer Teju Cole exposed the white saviour industrial complex for what it is: a pathology of white privilege.
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At the height of Ebola, the myth of the white saviour has resurfaced again and again, framing Africans as infantile objects of external interventions. The white saviour complex has placed a premium on foreign expertise, while negating domestic capabilities.
We’ve been assailed with images of mostly white foreigners flown out of the Ebola “hot zone” with the promise of expert care abroad.
(...) While the US has been scrambling to address the few cases of Ebola on its shores with a series of policy missteps, Nigeria showed that it could be done by an African country on its own terms.
(...) Some narratives erroneously attributed Nigeria’s success to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO, and the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Yet, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie responded with a sharp smack-down of this “lie”. She openly criticised The Washington Post and The New York Times for deliberating concealing the fact that local, not international efforts, had contained Ebola. For instance, it was a Nigerian woman, Dr Ameyo Adadevoh, who insisted on isolating the country’s first Ebola patient before eventually succumbing to the virus herself.
(...) One thing Ebola has exposed about the white saviour complex is that it is voracious and unapologetic.
(...) In her celebrated essay, “Can the subaltern speak?”, Gayatri Spivak rails against the problematic narrative of “white men saving brown women from brown men”. In actuality, no one has the capacity to “save” another human being. Believing that one can is the greatest form of self-delusion and narcissism.
Contrary to the dominant Ebola foreign intervention narrative, Liberians, Guineans, and Sierra Leoneans are not waiting around idle, eager to be rescued by white saviours. While we welcome genuine collaboration, we remain our own heroes and heroines. The fact that more than 200 local healthcare workers died from Ebola is a testament to that heroism.