The Troubling Appropriation of Black Voices in Alexander McCall Smith’s Series, The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency.

The appropriation of black voices in Alexander McCall Smith’s novels, The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, renders a non-racial reading of this series impossible.

Like all the other titles in this series, his latest novel, From a Far and Lovely Country is teeming with black race tropes and colonial myths about Africa. In this novel, like all the novels in this series, McCall Smith assigns his black protagonist cases with racist undertones. ?In one of the cases that lands on Mma Ramotswe’s desk, readers are informed about “a club that calls itself the Cool Singles Evening Club [which] is encouraging married men to pretend to be single and meet women under false pretences.” It is hardly surprising that a black man, in a white man’s othering narrative, is often presented as the embodiment of an accumulation of vices, particularly of a sexual nature.?

In his 2019 novel, To the Land of Long Lost Friends, the reader encounters a troubling, ventriloquised representation of the Batswana. In this novel, readers are introduced to Mr Potso, who is described as ‘emboldened’ when he utters the following; “along will come the baboons. They'll say…We are your cousins too – [from] a long way back…The baboons will say something to you…[t]hey will say, “Have you heard of this fellow called Darwin?” The use of black voices allows racist views to be casually shared, without McCall Smith himself having to use his own voice.

An Opinion article by Brent Staples titled, “The Racist Tropes that Won’t Die,” published by The New York Times, puts into perspective exactly why Mr. McCall Smith’s ventriloquised representation of Batswana’s cultural experiences, is deeply troubling and problematic. Staples reveals how the colonial simian-based insults such as the ones being so casually and insidiously shared in The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, are still pervasive in today’s western society. Staples reminds us how an African-American woman, who served as an adviser to President Barack Obama, was once referred to “as the offspring of an ape” by comedian Roseanne Barr. This is exactly what is being insinuated by Mr. Potso’s question, “Have you heard of this fellow called Darwin?” Charles Darwin claimed that even though all races were descendants of apes, Africans closely resembled apes, and therefore argued they were the missing evolutionary link.

The title of this particular novel, To the Land of Long Lost Friends, just like the latest title, From a Far and Lovely Country, misleadingly appear to have been chosen to highlight warmth and positivity, but insidiously hint at the evolutionary and physical distance between the Batswana and the western reader. Arguably, both titles seemingly imply that that Batswana are ‘Darwin’s missing link’.

Let us take the opening of the second chapter of McCall Smith’s first novel, The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, for instance. The chapter opens with the black female protagonist invoking the 19th century pseudoscientific racism which posited the view that black people are inherently less intelligent than white people. The protagonist informs McCall Smith’s western readers that; “Our heads may be small, but they are full of memories.” She goes on to ask; “Who am I? Who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people?” These two questions are immediately answered by a ventriloquised representation of the Batswana’s cultural and lived experiences, which seeks to assert, rather than challenge, the pseudoscientific racism.

The twenty-five novels in The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series are testament to McCall Smith views of the Batswana and Africans in general. He has tasked himself with the role of ‘cultural historian’ for what he believes are intellectually challenged Africans. The author’s unabashed intention to offer a ventriloquised representation starts in earnest with a first person narrative of Obed Ramotswe’s lamentable life of poverty and toil.

“As a boy I used to watch trains as they drew up at the siding asking for coins” from white people who “looked out of their windows, like ghosts…[who] sometimes would toss us one their Rhodesian pennies – large copper coins with a whole in the middle – or, if we were lucky, tiny silver coin we called a tickey, which could buy us a small tin of syrup.” Since we know for a fact that McCall Smith is not a black man but a white man, the memory he ascribes to the imaginary dying black man, is most likely drawn from his own childhood memories in colonial Rhodesia. This is likely a distorted/flipped memory of himself travelling on the train through Botswana, from Rhodesia.

Through this ventriloquised representation of a black man’s experiences, we follow the narrative to the South African mines, which allows McCall Smith to insidiously evoke the racially loaded and controversial narrative, 'Black-on-Black crime'. A phrase used both in the US and the UK, to insinuate that black people are prone to criminality. The reader is presented with a scene that could only be described as having been lifted right out of Zulu Dawn, a war film about the historical Battle of Isandlwana between the British and the Zulu forces in 1879, in South Africa. Reinforcing the savage and violent African stereotype, the reader is informed that the Zulus are in the habit of starting fights, seemingly for no reason.? Readers are told that a group of them once beat a man from Botswana, “with sjamboks and left him lying on the road to be run over.” In a conversation between Obed and one of his white mine bosses, whom the reader is told is a ‘good white man’, [presumably English/British]. Obed tells him he once witnessed four Zulus “standing at the edge of…[a mine gallery]…holding another man [later revealed as Xhosa], by his arms and legs…and threw him over the edge and into the dark.” What is disturbingly predictable about these unabashedly racist narratives, is that the black man’s criminality, cruelty and savagery, does not need contextualising or explaining.

Is The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series a credible (ventriloquised) representation of Botswana’s culture and Batswana’s lived experiences?

The answer to this question perhaps lies on page thirty-two of the first novel, The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. When the reader is given some background into Mma Ramotswe’s childhood, we are told that Precious and her cousin often “played a variety of Kim's Game.” I guess the assumption that McCall Smith’s western readers might make, is that the Batswana know what Kim’s Game is, since the books are about their culture and their lived experiences. Most Batswana, like the majority of McCall Smith’s readers, would have no idea what Kim’s Game is, unless they are familiar with Rudyard Kipling’s novel, ‘Kim’ which is set in British Colonial India.

In an introduction to the Puffin Classics reprint of Kipling’s Kim, by Susan Cooper, she describes Kipling’s protagonist, also named Kim, as “a crafty street-urchin…called Little Friend of all the World…[who collects] gossip [just like Mma Ramotswe].” But Cooper also warns, “Kim [perhaps like McCall Smith’s protagonist] is not quite what he seems.” Cooper goes on to remind us that Kipling “grew up with the Victorian vision of the Empire as a structure of strong, benevolent white Britons bringing order to [the]…uncivilized non-white natives.” Coincidentally or perhaps intentionally, Kim and Precious have a lot in common. Both have dying fathers at the start of their fictional journeys, and they are both outsider-insiders who are in fact ‘colonial’ spies. The echoes of Kipling’s Victorian vision of the Empire are palpably audible throughout The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, which has a discernible ‘colonising/imperialising’ tone. Mma Ramotswe is arguably Alexander McCall Smith’s own ‘Kiplinian’ Kim – ?Kim’s doppelganger.

In Jaydeep Chakrabarty’s seminar paper, Re-reading Rudyard Kipling's "Kim", Chakrabarty notes; “Several instances can be cited from the novel [Kim] that implicate the narrative in empire building either by way of indirect praise of the empire or by suggesting that the India of the past is urgently in need of change.” The same colonial and colonising theme implied in Kipling’s Kim, is explicit in The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series. There seems to be an implication that Botswana is still in ?desperate need of the white man’s strict guidance and moral education. Sunday school is presented as a significant part of the protagonist’s life in these novels. The reader is informed that Sunday School is the only place where “Precious Ramotswe had learned about good and evil,” and not from her black father or the Setswana culture or customs. The implication here is that, without the strict guidance of the white man and his moral education symbolised by “Sunday School,” the Africans populating McCall Smith’s fictional landscape, are unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

This perception is reinforced by the all-knowing [and presumably white] narrator who states that, “If people needed clear guidelines, there was nobody better to do this than Mma Mothibi [another blackface character], who had run the Sunday School…for over twelve years…[and] read the Bible to…[the black children] and made them recite the Ten Commandments…and told them religious stories from a small blue book which she said came from London and was not available anywhere else in the country.” The subordinate clause, ‘which she said is not available anywhere else in the country’, seeks to emphasise that the African’s moral education can only come from Britain/London, as it is the only place that produces the ‘small blue book.”

In The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, the ten commandments are presented as “the rules for being good” with the children being told that if they say their prayers every day, they will “learn to be a clever” Christian, “who will go to Heaven later on.” The implication yet again, is that without the white man’s religion and guidance, the black children will never ‘learn to be clever’ or ‘go to heaven.’ The consequences for not following these colonial rules, are demonstrated through the punishment given to a nine-year-old black boy, named Josiah. The reader is told that this black boy was ‘a wicked boy, although he was only nine.’ The reader is further informed that Josiah regularly exposes himself at Sunday school.

The addition of ‘although he was only nine’, serves as a reminder to the western world of the black man’s inherent lasciviousness. Josiah’s punishment is delivered by Mma Mothibi, whom we are told, “crept up behind…[him] and raised her bible into the air. Then brought it down on his head, with a resounding thud that made the [other] children start…[as] Josiah buckled under the blow”. The white author of these novels informs his readers that the seemingly unjustified violence that is being subjected to a black child, is necessary to stop Josiah from bothering “Precious Ramotswe or any other girl for that matter.”?

At the heart of The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series lies a belittling narrative of Botswana as a modern country and successful African democracy. In a scene involving an alleged ritual murder of a little boy, the narrator, in a statement that could have been lifted straight out of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, informs the reader that right "there, in Botswana, in the late twentieth century, under that proud flag, in the midst of all that made Botswana a modern country, this thing had happened, this heart of darkness had thumped out like a drum." The use of the adverb ‘there’ gives away the fact that these stories are written by an outsider who is not part of the culture being written about. The adverb ‘there’, emphasises the othering and racist tone that seeks to show the white western world that the African will never give up his/her savage ways.

The reader is further informed that the Botswana “police had a limited interest in pursuing [this sort of] crime, and [that] certain sorts of crime interested them not at all. [Readers are further informed that t]he involvement of the country's most powerful figures in witchcraft would certainly be in the latter category.” This is quite a bold and troubling defamatory statement.

Who are the ‘most powerful figures’ that McCall Smith insinuates are involved in alleged ritual murders in Botswana?

Undeniably, the taking of another human being's life is morally wrong regardless of by who and how, but when it comes to writing about such crimes happening in Africa, the representation is often mystified to suggest either inherent evilness or savagery, and the incompetence of the African. The UK, as I am pretty certain Alexander McCall is aware, has its own share of the most heinous child murderers - Myra Hindley, lan Brady, nurse Beverley Allitt, and most recently, Lucy Letby to name but a few. But are these individuals' evil acts viewed by white people as representative of an inherent wickedness of the European? No.

Let us recap what compelled Mr. McCall Smith to write this series.

In an interview with ‘New Books’, Alexander McCall Smith cites a scene from twenty-five years prior to writing the first novel, as an inspiration for the series. He notes that “a woman chasing a chicken around her yard in Botswana,” which was intended as a gift for him and his white friends, who were the woman’s guests, was the foundation for The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. The author goes on to claim that the seemingly insignificant scene made him want to write about a woman like her because it had made him wonder what “her story was…and… [he had] reflected upon how she probably had a very interesting past… [that she] had probably brought up a number of children with very little money.”

The would-be author of The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency; in this classic ‘colonial pith helmet’ moment, subjects the unnamed black African woman to the infamous colonial gaze. The kindness of a black woman who had invited him and his friends into her home, is reciprocated by stripping her of any individuality as the white gaze turns her into a commercial project. The question is why McCall Smith didn’t ask her about her life, rather than make judgemental assumptions that she was poor and struggling in life. In this interview, McCall Smith goes on to point out that the chicken chasing woman was representative of “those very resourceful African women who have to struggle against the odds.” A single encounter with a single black woman, is used by the author to bundle all African women’s lived experiences into one homogenous and racially stereotyped existence. In another author interview with BookBrowse, Alexander McCall Smith claims his books, “merely reflect what is there in those fine people”, further claiming that the Batswana, “appear to like the way in which their world is portrayed…[because he believes] that they recognize themselves” in his books.”

In her journal article, Refusing To Read, Musa Dube, (a professor of Theology at The University of Botswana,) rightly dismisses The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series as “just the same old colonial story of one more white man writing about Africa and getting famous for it.”? She describes her experience of attempting to read the books as, “downright boring” and goes on to say that “African readers have often found the Western-produced works difficult to read, because they are often produced from within a colonial framework..[which more often than not] includes portraying Africa as the dark continent, a place of misery, of underdevelopment, over-sexed people, childish and immature superstitious savages”. She goes on to point out that McCall Smith’s novels are “extremely hard reading for African people…[because] African readers cringe when they read Western writing about Africa”.

Dube refutes McCall Smith’s claim that his books are a mere reflection of how Batswana live. Dube rather states, we “do not recognize ourselves in such writing; in fact, it leads us to despise ourselves.” She also states that while academic and creative freedom should be celebrated and encouraged, she laments that the western “world would still rather hear about Africa from white writers than from Africans themselves.”

In a 2004 interview with Los Angeles staff writer, La Jolla, McCall Smith made the following confession; “It’s a matter of great regret to me that I never learned an African language…Obviously, there were racial barriers, which were a great tragedy.” Language and culture are intrinsically linked and in Botswana we say, ‘puo ya batho ke sefalana sa ngwao ya bone’. Our language isn’t only intrinsically linked to our culture but an inextricable part of our culture. As Mr. McCall Smith himself admits, he does not speak Setswana, which also means he lacks a nuanced understanding of Botswana’s culture and customs, yet he has made bold statements about Batswana’s perception of his books. There are clearly some serious moral and ethical questions raised when an outsider distorts and misappropriates an ‘othered’ culture. When that distortion and misappropriation is done by putting degrading and dehumanising words into the mouths of black people; the work has to be viewed and read as profoundly problematic and a potentially racial charged ventriloquised [mis]representation.

Mariam Makeba once said; “the conqueror writes history. They came, they conquered and they wrote….you don’t expect people who invade us to write the truth about us; they will always write negative things about us. They have to do that because they have to justify their invasion. ”

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