Standing on the street near New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel several years ago, Rich Mkhondo was taken aback as empty taxi after empty taxi passed him.
“Finally, a white taxi man picked me up and asked how long I’d been waiting. I said 45 minutes. He said, `Do you know why? It’s because you’re black.’ “
The Washington correspondent for the Independent Newspapers, a 14-newspaper chain in South Africa, recalled on Friday his chagrin “at such distrust between the races” as he waxed sentimental and acidic about his three-year term here. It’s coming to an end.
His chain is closing the Washington operation to concentrate on African coverage and bringing home Mkhondo (pronounced MAH-kun-DOH), a talented reporter-columnist who is a member of a curious capital subculture.
It is the army of foreign journalists, whose outlook can be alternatively more provincial and more insightful than American counterparts. They need not be immersed in the incremental legislative happenings, though they’ll obsess over the smallest perceived change in U.S. policy toward their nations.
But they can, like Mkhondo, bring a refreshing, more global sense of context often missing in domestic coverage here.
When the International Monetary Fund and World Bank doled out $123 billion for Thailand, South Korea and Asia, a June 5 Mkhondo column wondered about the lack of such largess for the truly poorest nations.
“At the end of their annual spring meetings here last week, all leaders from the same rich and powerful nations and the same world financial institutions could muster were more promises that they are putting finishing touches to a package for their Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) initiatives which could be unveiled and hopefully adopted by leaders of the leading industrial countries. . . .”
And when Rev. Jesse Jackson returned from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, having gained the release of three American POWs caught in Kosovo, Mkhondo in May was taken aback by the chiding of Jackson for getting too cozy with a dictator, being played for a dupe, and engaging in a public relations stunt.
“Maybe they cannot stand the idea of seeing a black man making positive waves on the world political stage, unless of course he is Michael Jordan playing basketball or a talk-show host like Oprah Winfrey. Maybe they believe foreign policy is for white political leaders like the unsuccessful Russian envoys and Milosevic should have slammed the door, singing, `Black Yankee Go Home.’ “
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And as far as the focus on Albanian refugees, Mkhondo’s suspicions strayed in June from the subtle:
“African refugees may be experiencing the same horrors as ethnic Albanians, such as watching their husbands shot or bayoneted to death, children who watched as their parents’ throats were slit, women gang-raped, but no jets will ever be dispatched to fetch them from civil-war torn countries such as Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau and many other trouble-torn African countries.”
Mkhondo, 43, will return home with his wife and three children, the youngest just born. He will exit with distinct impressions, some of which don’t reflect well on his native land.
“First of all, there is the work ethic here,” he said. “People work very hard. I actually wish sometimes that my African brothers and sisters could come here and see that. I have been trying to understand why it is that the work ethic is so low on the African continent.”
“The journalists, the factory workers, every sector (works hard). Some people have three jobs. I met a taxi man (driver) with three jobs: carpenter during the morning, taxi man in the afternoon, restaurant worker at night. It is why when you call people in the U.S., you can find them at work at 4:30 p.m. In my country, they are already on their way home.”
Then there is the employment picture.
“I live in Virginia, and I go a lot to a Circuit City (electronics store),” he said. “Since I arrived, it has had a sign up saying, `Now Hiring.’ One day I asked a fellow, `Don’t you guys get people to take those jobs?’ He said, `Yes, but people leave, and we’re always looking.’ “
“In South Africa, you’d never see a sign like that because there would be hundreds stampeding outside. When a new company opens, people sleep outside the gates. Remember, there is 33 percent unemployment in my country.”
He wrote in May: “There is much talk of multi-culturalism and multi-racialism in Washington, but the reality of white skin privilege in positions of socio-political advantage and the belief in white skin superiority are common social and political factors that continue to influence every aspect of American life.”
And, yet, he comes away believing that Americans are too consumed with race as an issue.
“I am surprised by the lack of trust among races in this country, but also surprised by the amount of time Americans spend talking about hatred and race relations,” he said. The last week was the latest example, given the attention paid Matthew Hale, head of the puny, white supremacist World Church of the Creator, one of whose former members is blamed for a deadly shooting rampage.
“We in South Africa are struggling to deal with the kitchen table, with bread and butter issues, and crime,” Mkhondo said. “What strikes me as notable is that Americans have solved most of their problems, and are creating jobs, while we on the African continent face a situation where unemployment is sometimes 50 percent and actually going up.”
“When you are comfortable with prosperity, you concentrate on issues like race relations, and inadequate representation of minorities on television,” he said. “Now I am not saying those are not important. But I am admiring of the fact that this country has come so far, it doesn’t have to worry in the same way about issues like unemployment and crime.”
And it’s not that it doesn’t worry about the plight of others, only that Americans strike him as afflicted with “selective morality.”
“You spend pages and millions of dollars to report the plight of the Kosovo refugees,” he said. “For example, I read a story in the (Chicago) Tribune about the refugees now living in Chicago. But nothing similar has been written about the at least 100,000 African refugees who are in this country.”
But, as he conceded, it was notable that, as we spoke Friday, the House was debating a NAFTA-like free trade agreement for Africa. It passed not long after our chat.
“I’m thankful that I was here at an important time when the U.S. really did put Africa on the table for debate,” he said. “Nothing of that sort has happened before. In the past, nobody discussed the fate of the continent. At least now there is some noise. It is a beginning.”
Now, if the American media he has come to admire (“aggressive, assertive, independent”) might only pay regular attention to Africa, other than covering crises and AIDS, he’d be happy.
And, yet, I sensed a certain melancholy about his leaving what has been a terrific professional opportunity, one far from the segregated townships he covered as a cub reporter for the Rand Daily Mail. But the transition, in some ways, may not be that steep.
Two of his children, one of whom is news editor of her high school paper here, have been e-mailing chums back in South Africa and learning that life back there may not be quite so different as they feared.
“When it comes to pop culture, for example, America has Americanized the world, especially Africa. Our music is American–Tupak Shakur, Luther Vandross and Michael Jackson. `The Bold and the Beautiful,’ and other shows Americans watch are now the ones we watch too.”
“This country, in a way, is the best in the world,” said Mkhondo. “Everything works. Yes, there are problems. But they are not life and death, like the ones where I come from and am going back to.”
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.
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