Sweetspeak: The Lingua Franca of Capitalism

A Reflection on its African Expression

By : Setargew Kenaw

Sweetspeak: The Language

Capitalism is the most powerful and complex systems mankind has ever witnessed. Unlike other systems, it does not rely much on brute force. It rather leans, I mean to a greater extent, on a set of highly sophisticated propaganda machines such as the media, the film industry, highly powerful public relation companies, international financial institutions, aid agencies, etc. As is the case with most propaganda machines, one of the instruments such institutions employ, and employ astoundingly efficiently is language.

The role of the Western public relation (PR) industry in this regard is a case in point. Let me take you to the very sensitive issue of genetically modified (GM) food by way of an example. (I will come to more relevant examples – relevant to our own situation – later on.) In the developed industrial world, whether people should use GM food or not has become a very hot and controversial matter. Those who are against consumption of GM foods do come up with a set of scientific evidence corroborating that eating GM foods would bring about short- and long-term health problems. Those who on the contrary are in favour do resort to various sets of evidence. And, more specifically, when it comes to companies that have huge stake in GM foods, they are usually engaged in launching promotional campaigns that largely consist of highly propagandistic language.

For PR companies working on the area in question, it is foolish to employ straightforward descriptive words. Words such as “biotechnology,” “chemical,” “DNA,” “experiments,” “artificial,” etc. should be dropped in favour of expressions such as “diversity,” “earth,” “farmer,” “organic,” etc. According to the PR companies, words such as “natural,” “organic,” etc. are important “trigger” words that push people to consume GM foods whereas terms like “biotechnology” or “artificial” do have very frightening overtones. That is why, those, one way or the other, involved in GM food sales promotion activities devise or formulate expressions that are highly couched with softness or sweetness. Sweetspeak is, in other words, their official language as English is to the British.

This language of capitalism works at different levels of sophistication. It is by no means restricted to ordinary consumerist promotional activities. Among other things, it also functions on the ideological and political plane. It would be enough to recall the speeches of Western leaders. They preach of freedom, democracy, liberty and equality. They never tire of speaking sweetly though what they do in practice is something bitter.

Socialist propaganda machines are very much naïve and stupid in this respect. They straightforwardly employ expressions that have negative connotations. Remember terms such as ‘red terror’, ‘white terror’, ‘proletarian dictatorship’, etc. But terror is terror whether it is white, red or yellow; dictatorship is dictatorship whether it is that of the proletariat, bourgeoisie, peasant or the military. I mean these expressions are obviously negative in their very nature. That is why in this age of Sweetspeak no one would declare that it is dictatorship, or that it is an organ of terror. Whatever it is in practice, any political system would prefer to call itself democracy to saying that it is dictatorship. It would prefer to declare that it is the fountain of equality, justice and freedom to telling us that it is the hand of intimidation or terror.

Sweetophones: The Speakers

Be this as it may, let me try to look into the sophistication of Sweetspeak in the hands of the agencies of the developed West on the grounds of the least developed world. I am here alluding to the language of international aid agencies and their impact on the third world political discourse. It is very important to note at this point that the question is not whether one is, so to speak, a Sweetophone. (I come to coin the term Sweetophone after the genre ‘Francophone’ or ‘Anglophone’.) It goes without saying that speaking sugary is not harmful in-itself. People obviously would rather prefer to listen to a hundred pleasant words to a single boorish word. But then, the issue I am discussing now is not only a question of whether one should speak sweetly or not. The question is what is behind such Sweetophones? Is it possible to quench one’s thirst for democracy by listening to the songs of the Sweetophones?

“Who are these Sweetophones?” Many may ask this question, and legitimately so. I am here referring to agencies such as the World Bank and IMF. They are the main speakers of the language. They speak sweetly or sugary. They talk of “good governance,” “the rule of law,” “accountability,” “capacity building,” “democratisation,” or what have you. Their documents are full of these sweeties, or highly delightful words. After all, who would hate to live under the rule of good governance? How many people would object to the rule of law? How many of us work against accountability if by accountability we mean the accountability to those whom we claim to work for on the political and economic sphere?

However, these charming or high-sounding words do have much to cover up. In other words, they don’t mean what they appear to mean. Let us take the idea of “good governance.” What most readers, I hope, would understand when they come up with the idea is something that addresses, in the main, fundamental political problems. When we talk of good governance, the question of justice must be something that should first be addressed. The important questions that should be answered are: What are the criteria a given society ought to use in distributing scarce resources? How do members of a given society share in goods and services? Who should have the access to education and medical care? Who should be allowed to vote or hold political power?

In principle, the idea of “good governance” must therefore have something that addresses pertinent political issues. Despite this, however, for the World Bank and other development aid agencies, the concept of good governance does have little to do with matters political let alone with the idea of liberal democracy. The expression is used as a catchword to describe anything. Whenever the Bank talks of the capacity building of government offices – a matter that is basically technocratic or managerial, it is an issue of good governance. When it is working on the area of micro-financing, it is a concern of good governance. Whenever it is organizing anti-corruption bodies, it is a matter of good governance. It goes on and on and on. At the end of the day, good governance is almost everything that it is nothing.

But mind you! This discourse of international development aid agencies, a discourse that is in effect part and parcel of Sweetspeak, does not stop here. Put differently, it does not end with as a set of empty phrases. It rather has a formidable power to depoliticise society. And, I think, it is what it is doing now in so many African countries. If good governance is nothing but a managerial or technocratic concern, is it too much to say that these global powers I am alluding to are engaged in trivializing real political issues?

Speaking in tongues?

However, what matters most is how we Africans receive this technocratic ideology. As many of us may probably realize, the language of Sweetspeak is very much diffused on the African ground. Recall a few regional or international meetings in ECA Hall here in Addis Ababa. Remember the press releases of governmental and non-governmental organizations in Ethiopia. Go to international or local NGOs. Go to Kebelle offices. Everybody speaks it. All of us are becoming Sweetophones. If one is curious in asking questions at this point, one of the interesting questions would be: Who the hell doesn’t speak this language?

But the problem again is we are not real Sweetophones. In fact, some of us may speak in dialects. And a few of us in Creole. Still then we may call ourselves Sweetophones though we may not speak Sweetspeak as those who use it as their mother tongue. The problem lies in when we are speaking in tongues. That is what we are witnessing when we come across official statements, government initiated meetings, NGO sponsored discussions, and discourses of the media. When we discourse in terms of phrases such as “accountability,” “empowerment,” “capacity building,” etc. we speak as if it is the spirit or Awulia of the World Bank that is speaking and not us.

According to traditional Ethiopian beliefs, when a person is possessed by a spirit, or a ZAR, it is not the human person that speaks or dances or what have you. That is why, when the possessed individual is coming out of trance, he or she would ask – this is in fact mostly the case with the novice – things like “What happened to me?” “What did I mutter?” “Where were I?” etc. That is why, analogously speaking, many African governments would tend to say: “Did I talk about good governance?” “When did I say I should be accountable?” “What other things did I mumble? “Did I say anything about political liberty?” “Oh! God forbid this!!” This is as if one is coming out of trance.

Most African governments take such stances when they enter into political crises. Whenever they think that they are in danger, they would forget, or seem to forget, the pledge they made to the “international community” or the international financial institutions, that they would enforce the rule of law, respect human rights, and facilitate the democratisation process. In situations such as this, they would immediately dispose of the package they received from their donors, and take harsh measures to the extent of picking up their arms. In fact, this is what the international financial agencies sometimes prefer to see despite their rhetoric. For they would like to see some kind of stability in the countries to which they lent money. Repressive regimes are sometimes prized for “good behaviour.” In the past, some governments were prized so because they were successful in repressing resistance to structural adjustment programmes. In this regard, in some cases donors have rather become instrumental to repression despite their rhetoric that they are pillars of democracy, liberty, etc.

The other nuance of this state of speaking in tongues is the cluttered nature of the discourse, and the muddled thinking behind it. Have you ever come across a lengthy official statement on “melkam astedader?” (“Melkam astedader” is an Amharic expression for “good governance.”) Largely, such sermons are monstrous jumble of words. Unless we consult an expert on the area, it is very difficult to decipher the codes. The lay would have the difficulty to make head or tail of it. In most cases, it is even possible that the speaker himself does not have the competence to interpret his own speech. Imagine an ordinary cadre discoursing on the notion of melkam astedader. His audience as well as he should consult a higher priest in order to approach or construe the meaning of the discourse in question.

The person possessed by a jinni – no matter whether it is benign or malignant, would usually mumble strange combinations of words when in trance. First an Amharic word, then a word from Oromifa, then one from English, then again from Amharic, etc. all in one sentence if one can produce one at all. According to tradition, the reason why this is the case is that the author of the strangely combined string of words is not the possessed person but the jinni. Hence the need for an expert to decipher the language so that the spirit is appeased or exorcised.

Similarly, we Africans need to be very much concerned before we end up with becoming parrots or mere conduits that simply pass over what has been authored by forces that do not know much about our real problems. It is one thing to seek the economic support of the World Bank and IMF and an entirely different matter to accept them as our fountains of truth. The current discourse on much of the African ground, including Ethiopia, is an assortment of bits and pieces salvaged from international aid agencies and similar organs.

Finally, there is one other trouble I would like to mention at this point: the rate of changeability of the fads with which Sweetophones are feeding us. Back in the fifties and the sixties, it was “modernization,” “industrialization,” etc. In the eighties, it became a question of “economic liberalization.” In the nineties, they added “political liberalization” – a scheme that was tailored to the rhetoric of good governance in the beginning of the 21^st Century. As we can gather from this series of schemes, it is not only that the fashion varies but also the life span of each one is increasingly shortened as time goes by. What other set of fads do we expect to have in the near future? Only our real Sweetophones from the North know what they have in store for us. Would the gullibility of their conduits and our African leaders continue unabated? That remains to be seen.

The other crucial questions we need to ask in connection to the issues I have been trying to consider so far are: What can we Africans do about it? Do we have any other choice than speaking in tongues? What is the force behind the authors of the language Sweetspeak? I will come back to these questions some other time.