How We Reinforce the Logic of Colour

When writers want to avoid controversy, they pick neutral subjects such as ‘Why the Sky is Blue’ or ‘Why 73 is the Chuck Norris of Numbers’. That’s the safe ground – and there are many who have built successful careers by mastering the art of writing without saying anything.

But when you explore subjects such as race relations, then you know you will cause controversy, and the least you can do is to listen for feedback keenly. Because so much can be at stake.

What if the race dialogue you try to initiate takes a course you hadn't intended it to take? Race dynamics, after all, are a two-way street.

I was talking to an Asian friend after this article was published in a newspaper and he told me that he wrote a long response to one of my articles but decided not to post it. His fear is - do I understand what it means to be a racial minority? What if the dialogue I try to initiate takes a course I hadn't intended? It's an interesting question - after all, history shows that simple actions can lead into a world war. But do we all consider these 'what about' questions in everything that we do? That said, we have a duty of care - so we will try to balance the narrative as much as we can. Race dynamics, after all, are a two-way street.

On the day that my article on workplace racism was published I met a prominent HR and organisation transformation expert and I asked him what he thought of the article. Having worked with banks, telcos, and other multi-cultural organisations, I felt that his insight into the corporate dynamics of the Tanzanian organisations was invaluable.

One of the organisations he helped transform had incurred significant losses in the 2000s. The management ascribed the losses to theft and integrity issues by local employees. Ultimately, they resorted to a wholesale importation of expatriates.

The Tanzanian Thing?

When he joined, he found the organisation with over 15 expatriates and the trend at the company was that some specific roles were identified for foreigners only – usually those with the ‘melanin advantage’. When there was a vacancy, some brought their friends even before the recruitment process was over. And a good number of them were not qualified for their positions. However, despite these issues and their relatively higher cost of maintenance, the expatriates turned the organisation around. In so doing they confirmed the opinion that to get results you have to address the ‘Tanzanian thing’.

Negative racial prejudices are amplified by people's experiences with the 'others'

We are all aware of the this 'our thing’, don’t we? You know – you go to a shop selling mobiles and try to get a discount from an elderly Mhindi but it’s just not your day. However, when he moves to the next customer, his Swahili assistant approaches you and asks you for your number and promises to get the phone out for you at the price that you want! Very Tanzanian, wrong?

Next time you are in a supermarket looking for a TV, someone passes you a message that if you wait in your car, he will get you the TV at a significant discount. You wonder how anyone can get a 55 inches TV out of a shop, but why care – it’s ‘zali la mentali’ after all, huh? You head to the parking lot fast. The Tanzanian thing.

But the business owners are not fools – soon you will start to see them recruiting more and more from India and Pakistan and not through local recruitment agencies. And you will see that at the top of all big projects - old and new - there is a person of non-African descent there. One super wealthy man in Tanzania is working on several multi-billion shillings projects and the people running the project are, you guessed it, not Africans. It's like a clockwork - their colour prejudices, if any, are amplified by their experiences doing business in Tanzania.

The mistrust runs deep and goes both ways too.

Prejudice Reinforced

Think of this guy who has worked for Wahindi for his whole career. ‘You see, Charles’, he usually argues, ‘They don’t care for you at all, only for what you can do for them, blah blah blah’. That’s not a very uncommon thing to hear, is it? What baffles me is how anyone can work for or with people that he mistrusts so much for so long! This is what creates a predatory and a mercenary mindset leading to the reinforcement of the logic of colour. Ultimately all that you have is a cat and mouse game between African workers and non-African executives. Unfortunate.

Mistrust creates a predatory and a mercenary attitude that reinforces the logic of colour

It’s no secret that we inherited an unequal system from our colonial masters. The Germans instituted this system and the British continued it - where people were segregated physically and socially based on race. Where one lived, the appointments one got, the skills that one was exposed to, and access to finance were all predicated on race.

Being of African descent, as a historian Chambi Chachage, PhD, observed in his very interesting treatise on the development of African entrepreneurship in the city of Dar es salaam, meant having no access to certain locations. But being a Mhindi or a Mzungu would give you access to the natives’ zones – especially if there were good opportunities for business there.

A good example is the Kariakoo market. Firstly, this was moved from Upanga for being 'unsightly' there. But when it was brought to Kariakoo - an African only zone - spaces were allocated for Indians. While the likes of Mohamed Tambaza and others were being threated for eviction from their properties in an Asian only zone, Indians were being granted space in an Africans-only zone.

When members of a community grow up being used to have their hands in every pot, an argument that the same privileges should be extended to others may appear incredibly hostile to them. I have seen people strongly reacting to the idea of others getting the benefits they used to get exclusively! When this privilege finds justification in the ‘our thing’, prejudice becomes institutionalised. Ultimately, everyone pays a high price for that - employees, employers, and the society at large.

The price that Tanzania pays for racial mistrust is very high

Restoring Trust

The author of the book ‘The Trust Factor’ and a business turn-around specialist, John O. Whitney, claims that up to half of the work done in organisations is wasted and half of the workforce is unnecessary because organisations are complicated by the need for excessive controls as a result of mistrust. Instead of meaningful information, you have useless reports. Instead of developing a learning organisation, you have a presumption of incompetence across the ranks. And instead of integrity and trust, you have useless systems and activities that diverts focus from goals and mission.

Mistrust leads to reduced productivity, increased marginalisation of some people, and limited opportunities for racial cross-fertilisation. The more controls you have, the less control you have, wrote Whitney.

These are some of the issues the HR expert observed and set to address them. Today, the number expatriates has decreased to less than 5 and the organisation performs even better. What did this expert do?

We will examine how he went about addressing the logic of colour to bring back the trust to acquire local talent at managerial levels in later articles. 

_______________________________________________________________________

What do you think of this article? Please leave your comments in the comments section below. You may also like it or share it to your networks. Thank you.