The Lies of Africa
In “The God’s Must Be Crazy” Africans are misrepresented and described as everything not the same as reality. The very evaluated film is a case of how African history was and still is stereotyped, misconstrued, and bent to suit the depiction of Africans in a negative casing. However, “The God’s Must Be Crazy” is finished satire, the general premise of the film is an extremely basic theme in representations of African history. Shockingly, the legitimacy and believability of such created history is never raised doubt about, generalized, or repudiated. Sunjata is an exact delineation of how African society and culture truly were. The two sources have striking contradictions in their substance, featuring the hole between falsified and authentic representation of Africans. Achebe’s “Africa’s Tarnished Name” explains why Europeans associate Africa with a negative connation, through a comparison of the sources you can closely see methods in which this is finished.
The underlying message of “The God’s Must Be Crazy” mistakenly relays that Africans, in this case Bushmen, are simple, primal, oblivious individuals. Despite the fact that the film is supposed to be an insightful source of what African culture resembles, it is based around a story line of two European characters who begin to look at each other in a romantic view. In short, the film starts as two separate plots that converge into one. One plot being the European story line, and the other about the Bushmen. The film opens with the storyteller describing the Bushmen. He speaks about the Bushmen in an uncorrupt tone, causing one to think of children when watching leading the viewer to delegitimize the self-sufficiency of Africans.
The narrator sounds similar to a teacher reading a story book to an elementary class. Even more demeaning, he dehumanizes the Bushmen by talking about them in relation to the wild animals, and indirectly saying they aren’t humans. “For the next nine months there will be no water, causing the animals to move away….humans avoid the deep Kalahari like the plague because there must be water for the humans to live. So the beautiful landscapes are devoid of people, except the little people of the Kalahari. Pretty dainty small…” (TGMBC) This sets the Bushmen apart from other humans, saying they aren’t normal. As Achebe says, “Europeans tend to see Africans as being “not like us”, as being so different that maybe they are not completely human.” The narrators tone causes the viewer to pity them. Furthermore, the Bushmen is shown living in a barren landscape and described as having “no crime, no punishment, no violence, no laws, no police, judges, rulers, or buses.” This enhances the main goal of dehumanizing the Bushman. What society can function with no government or rules? How fragile. The plot continues when a coke bottle falls from a plane, the Bushmen assuming the gods sent it. The coke bottle destroys their simplistic abode and causes one of the Bushmen to set out to throw the bottle off the edge of the world. The fact that the Bushmen are constructed to still believe such a dated, distant, concept renders them to be “silly” and out of tune with the rest of the world. On the quest of the Bushman he runs into the European characters. Once the plots merge, it evolves around these two European characters, and the rest of the movie is a degrading picture of how the Bushman don’t know anything about western cultivation, or civilization. The Bushman is shown not knowing what walls and building are, driving a car backwards, and even talking to a baboon. These extremes are drives to convince the citizens of the racist South African government that Africans are not intelligent humans. Even when a movie is supposed to be about Africans, it has to revolve around Europeans. This is strategic, the racist South African government that produced the film doesn’t want anyone to think about Africans as independent. The government believed that Africans would be lost without them, and needed them for guidance, and they sought to covey those beliefs through “The God’s Must Be Crazy.”
Conrad’s Sunjata completely falsifies, discredits, and contradicts everything that “The God’s Must Be Crazy” claims about Africans, and their heritage. The tale of Sunjata truly depicts real aspects of African history. Their complex government, technological advances, societal roles, luxuries, systemic lifestyle, etc. is all shown as a banished prince, Sunjata, makes his triumph of reclaiming his kingdom. Sunjata covers a wide range of concepts thought to be taboo to Africans. It really represents the impact and difference an internal source can have.
The book is set up in such a way that it reminds us of typical European, or American tales. In grade school we are not taught any pertinent history about Africa, so it’s not first nature to envision anyone’s ideas or tales about the African culture as true. It was incredibly eye opening to gain this new insight and way of thinking about Africans culture. One of the elements that are included in an epic story is lineage, Sunjata illustrates the point in the text “Sassouma Berete, the daughter of a great divine, mother of King Dankaan Touman.” Placing this small element in the story emphasizes the importance of heritage. It is a great way to reveal the importance of a well-established family, and society, but displaying an innovative way to record traditions and passed on. Outlined in the text, it says, “I am a griot…we are vessels of speech, we are the repositories which harbor secrets many centuries old.” These are two of the first noteworthy examples of how the pre-colonization in Africa isn’t as it is described by the South African government in the “The God’s..”, instead full of organization, and sophistication in how things are carried out.
In contrast to “The God’s” the book highlights materialism, delegated roles in society and technology advances. “The two young hunters, handsome and of fine carriage…. were carrying shining bows of silver on their shoulders.”(Conrad.27) This one sentence is packed, and only one example of the complexity and maturity of the society. The text itself is not only a great Epic, but it effectively tears apart common misconceptions, and the inaccuracy conveyed by the South African government. Sunjata helps us to realize that we have completely and easily over looked the history of Africans due to misconstrued accounts and stereotypes. A lesson that African Americans can take from the Sunjata is that regardless of what past inabilities or hardships one experiences, they can achieve achievement in view of their confidence and assurance. Experiencing every one of the hardships, he in the long run turned into an intense ruler and set up one of the biggest kingdoms.