University of California UCOP | Time Magazines Africa

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OK. What I would like to do today is talk to you about what I would probably describe as Time magazine's Africa. Time magazine, for much of the 20th century and certainly for an early part of the 21st century was probably one of the mainstream media publications that many, many people read.

As a kid growing up in New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s, my parents had a subscription to Time magazine. It's what I would read if I wanted to find out what was happening in the United States and what was happening in the rest of the world. It has less significance now to many of us, because it's become either an online publication or a less-frequently published hard copy.

But Time magazine, for much of the 20th century, as they say, gave you insight into what America thought about the rest of the world. One particular example I'll give is of anyone who took the State Department exam in the 1980s had to take a test, and that was based on the knowledge of information that they had derived from reading Time magazine. Even though the State Department didn't say that explicitly, that's how the exam was constructed.

So what I want to do today is go through a series of slides that show Time magazine cover pages of Africa from 1925 to 2014. This is all of the cover pages that are identified as being about Africa. You might well go on the website and find more. And I would encourage you to do so. And we'll talk about that in class.

But what I want to do is go through these, and as we go through them together, I want you to think about any patterns that you might see in the images, any sort of themes that might appear that tell you something about the way in which the West views Africa, how it compartmentalizes it, perhaps, how it stereotypes it, how it understands it.

So let's get started here in 1925, the first image of Africa, or at least that's listed as Africa on Time magazine. And this is a portrait, JBM Herzog, the prime minister of South Africa, the leader of a political party in South Africa that was committed to white rule and white supremacy and in particular to the protection of the rights of the Afrikaner people. The name Afrikaner refers to a particular group of whites in South Africa who took on the wood Afrikaner to suggest that they were in fact, African in origin, not in terms of color but in terms of ownership of the land.

So this is the first cover from 1925. And I'm going to go through them relatively quickly, just so you can return to them and look at them later. But let's look at the second one that appeared, Abdul Okhrim. This was a leader of resistance in Morocco to Spanish rule. Here he is, this is in 1925. He'd lead a rebellion against the Spanish in

1921. He in fact established a republic. He had grown up as a young man in Spanish-ruled North Africa. He'd become a journalist. He became concerned that people should rule themselves and not be ruled others. Here it in 1925.

Abdul Okhrim's forces were defeated that same year. And he was sent into exile. He spent the years from 1926 to 1947 exiled from Africa. He only returned, in fact, to North Africa in 1963, at a time when Algeria became independent. But in a sense, the image captures the fate of resistors to European colonialism in the early 20th century, none were successful in overthrowing European colonialism.

Next image, here's Haile Selassie, the leader of Ethiopian resistance forces, or the leader of Ethiopia or in fact, in 1930. We have another Time magazine cover of Haile Selassie in 1936. Man of the year at that time, when he was leading resistance against the Italians but ultimately was defeated by the Italians as they returned to Africa to take a colony that they had in fact not been able to conquer in the late 19th century. So here we have Haile Selassie, 1936.

Who's next? OK, Jan Christian Smuts in 1944. He at that time was the prime minister of South Africa. He had succeeded JBM Hertzog who had not wanted to into the war on the side of the Allies but in fact had been more favorably inclined to support the Germans who had supported the Afrikaners earlier. JC Smuts, himself an Afrikaner but he believed in working with the British. He is one of the founders of the United Nations. He's defeated actually in 1948 and replaced by the government that we would now call the apartheid government in South Africa.

Another person, this is a person that I, as a person growing up in the 1950s and 1960s I remember, Albert Schweitzer. He's a medical missionary in Africa working in French equatorial Africa. I in particular remember reading news stories about him as having been involved in the fight against leprosy, which we would now call Hansen's disease. And it conjured up an image in my mind of this European medical missionary fighting disease in

Africa.

On the other hand, we have the famous African author Chinua Achebe, who unfortunately died late last year, who said that the thing that he always remembered about Albert Schweitzer was Albert Schweitzer made the statement the African is indeed my brother but my junior brother, capturing that sense of here we have the medical missionary who goes but the paternalistic European. OK. Here's the Time magazine cover though, 1949.

This cover is from 1952, DF Malan, the prime minister of South Africa in that year, the man who'd been elected prime minister of South Africa in 1948. A government that ruled South Africa from 1948 until 1994. DF Malan was a white supremacist, believes that Africans should not be South Africans. He didn't believe that Africans were civilized. Here he is at that time. This is early 1950s. This is the period of the thoroughgoing establishment of apartheid in South Africa, at the same time that we have a rising civil rights movement in the United States.

But other changes are going on in Africa. It's a period when Africans are demanding independence and succeeding in gaining it. In this case, we have a picture of Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of a nationalist movement in the Gold Coast. Think of that, it's the name. The Gold Coast was called the Gold Coast because that's where gold came from. Later on, it's known as Ghana, it's present day Ghana. It becomes an independent state in 1957. But this is an image of Kwame Nkrumah in 1953 representative of a new and young generation of African leaders bringing independence to the country against the wishes of the colonial powers and often having to do so through armed struggle in a number of cases.

Another man, in this case, this is Secu Turei who leads Guinea, part of West Africa to independence also at the end of the 1950s into the 1960s. And here you get the little image there at the time, black Africa, the dawn of self- rule. There is a huge sea change as of around about 1957, '58, '59, '60. Nothing was independent almost at all before that time. Pretty much all of Africa becomes independent after that except for the white-ruled areas ruled by the Portuguese colonialists or ruled by the white imperialists in South Africa under the apartheid regime.

Another young independent African leader, in this case it's Tom Mboya, a nationalist leader in Kenya. This image is also from-- this one is from 1960. ' Again, he was seen as one of the hopes of an independent Africa who unfortunately died young.

Another image from 1960. This is Dag Hammarskjold. He was the Secretary General of the United Nations. The big issue in which he was involved around about 1960 was political instability in what had previously been the Belgian Congo but had become the independent state of the Congo, the Democratic Republic, and as we would know, it would later on be called Zaire. This is the image that Time magazine used.

What's interesting about this image is to look at the background that they've got and to think about why they chose to put Dag Hammarskjold's picture here. It goes with the subtitle, "The UN in the Congo, Out of Chaos, A Legal

Precedent." The issue arising at this time was the United Nations needed to be involved in what was becoming an internal civil war in the Congo. But as we have discovered since, the internal civil war was pushed by Belgians who had not really wanted to get out of the Congo, also pushed by South African mining interests interested in the vast resources of the Congo.

This is the cover that time magazine didn't use. They originally got an image, a portrait made of Patrice Lumumba, the prime minister of independent Congo. And as you can see, the same background is there. That's the background they used for when they just substituted and flipped it out and used Dag Hammarskjold's instead.

Lumumba was murdered in the early part of 1960. He was captured. And as we only discovered at the end of the Lumumba was murdered in the early part of 1960. He was captured. And as we only discovered at the end of the 1990s, he was in fact captured by Belgian paratroopers and taken away and executed, working in league with other people in the Congo. This in fact though, had only happened after the CIA had first attempted to poison him.

That's a picture that wasn't used. There's another picture that wasn't used by Time in 1960 either even though they had commissioned this portrait. And this is of Hendrick Vervoed. Hendrick Vervoed succeeded DF Malan as the prime minister of South Africa.

In 1960, Hendrik Vervoed had a referendum carried out in South Africa about the issue of whether or not South

Africa should remain a member of the British Commonwealth, because other British Commonwealth countries, including independent Pakistan and India and other countries were demanding that the country should be expelled from the British Commonwealth because of its racist policies. Vervoed decided to pull out of the Commonwealth independently.

And here, you have the picture of Vervoed himself with all of these hands raised, black hands behind, of people opposed to white rule in South Africa. Here it is, 1960. And as you are probably aware, as we'll get through with the Time covers, Nelson Mandela was not released from prison until 1990.

The national party that Vervoed led did not stop being the governing party of South Africa till 1994. Long-term rule was in place there.

In this case, here we have a picture. This is from 1961, Moise Tshombe. He was the leader of resistance to Patrice Lumumba. He worked in close alliance with Belgian ex-colonials. He worked with South African mining interests. He worked with the CIA.

He was responsible for kidnapping Patrice Lumumba and two members of Patrice Lumumba's cabinet and murdering them. He is though, betrayed. 1961, he himself is overthrown and dies not that long after.

But what you get here is a sense of the Congo as a place that's chaotic in many ways but chaotic for rational reasons, for acquisition of its resources, and particularly for the southern part of the Congo, Katanga, where Tshombe's from, which holds enormous resources in terms of minerals and precious stones.

The Congo again. It's referred to in this headline as the Congo massacre. This image is from 1964. It's Paul

Carson. I don't remember this cover, although I must have read this magazine issue as a child.

Paul Carson is an American physician. Actually born and grew up in Culver City. Who went over to the Congo to work as a missionary and as a physician in the Congo and got caught up in the conflicts which were taking place there and was killed. So he becomes, in a sense, a martyr for the missionary enterprise, the physician overseas. But again, this comes back, Albert Schweitzer doing his struggle against leprosy. In this case, Paul Carson fighting against disease but also getting caught up in a conflict that becomes very much a part of a Cold War conflict that takes place in the Congo and other parts of Africa.

A person that probably most of you will not be familiar with but certainly people of my generation who were growing and teenagers and a bit older in the 1960s will be familiar. And this is part of that generation like Nkrumah of young African leaders of nearly independent states, not states that was seen as poor or corrupt or weak or broken, but as very young and very progressive leaders of a series of states.

Julius Nyerere becomes prisoners of what's at that time known as Tanganika. It had once been German East Africa, then became part of British East Africa. Tanganika joined with Zanzibar and Nyrere to create Tanzania.

And it continues as a country to the present day. But here, we've got the subtitle, From Africa to Vietnam. New Politics in a Changing World. A sense that much was happening in the 1960s. So many African countries were becoming independent in a great rush.

Independence wasn't given to them. People were taking it, sometimes with violence, usually not. But there was a sense of great optimism that was flowing through Africa and in people's views of Africa at the time.

Here we have Hendrick Vervoed again, only this time it's a cover that actually was published. This was published in 1966. Henrik Vervoed was prime minister of South Africa. In 1963, a white farmer had attempted to assassinate

Hendrick Vervoed-- and we will see, at a later stage in this class, some footage of the assassination attempt-- by shooting him in the face, it had not succeeded in 1963.

In 1966, Vervoed was assassinated. He was sitting in his seat in the front of the parliament in South Africa as prime minister, and he was stabbed to death by a parliamentary messenger. A parliamentary messenger who was then found guilty but found guilty of also being insane and kept in prison in South Africa until the end of the 1990s, a man who was designated in South Africa as a colored and who has a very complicated life of his own. But here we have this image, Vervoed dead in 1966. The same time we have a younger generation.

This image deals with Biafra which is part of Nigeria. It's from 1968. As we will discovered during the course of this class, most of the boundaries, the political boundaries that you see in Africa that were laid out in the late 19th and the 20th century were laid out in the course of colonialism. We think back and think of well, what would Africa have been like if there hadn't been colonialism? In the last map in the introductory section, you can go back and look at that.

In this case, Nigeria was put together for a number of different regions that were brought together by the British. And one part of it believed that it was not getting an equal share of the resources and pulled away. And in this case, it's Colonel Ojukwu who led the Biafran secession from the late 1960s.

This is another image that is related to the same topic. Again, what I'm giving you here are all of the Time magazine covers that deal with Africa. So 1968, they had a cover on Africa, and they didn't have another cover on Africa until 1970. And this one is of Biafra as well.

The Biafran resistance was defeated and destroyed at great human suffering. Millions of people were killed. And it was forcibly reincorporated into Nigeria. We'll talk during the class about the reasons why and the causes and so forth.

Look at the imagery again. Biafra, end of a rebellion. Look also at that image of what Africa is meant to be as portrayed. And that's because we're going to see this image reappear again in later Time covers. And I want you to think about this almost as a subliminal message of what you would think Africa is if you're looking at Western media and particularly a mainstream piece of media like Time magazine.

Here, we're getting to a theme that runs through Time portrayals of Africa. Most of those course is going to be about sub-Saharan Africa, but we can also talk about parts of North Africa as well. And obviously, parts of North

Africa are going to include Egypt and Algeria and Libya.

And here, we have a image again. This is from 1973, Muammar Gaddafi. And you're going to see him a few more times, because he's probably portrayed more often on Time magazine covers than any other African leader.

Here, look at the titles. Libya's Strongman Gaddafi. In his early young phase when he's just taken over control of the state. And then the reference there, the Arabs, oil, power, violence. Again, think about the way in which that image is brought together, because this is at a time when OPEC was being developed as the Arabs sought to sort of create a monopoly and take advantage of the great strength that they had in oil production so that they could raise prices and get a better return for their oil than they had previously been receiving.

1976, Ian Smith-- you might ask your parents or maybe your grandparents if they know who Ian Smith was. Ian Smith was a white settler in southern Rhodesia which later on becomes known as the independent state of

Zimbabwe. Rhodesia's Ian Smith, who, rather than accepting the likelihood or the inevitability of black nationalist rule in Southern Rhodesia, led settlers in a war of Independence against the British. Actually, they made a unilateral declaration of independence and said that they were going to create an independent state.

And from the middle of the 1960s through to the end of the 1980s, Ian Smith lived these white settlers in ruling Southern Rhodesia as a white state until they were forced to the bargaining table in 1980. But here it is, 1976, Ian Smith. This is the image that Time magazine chooses at that time. Now, let's go back just for a moment. Here, we have Africa, Peace or War. Rhodesia's Ian Smith-- the portrait used is pretty value-free. It's just a straightforward portrait. it doesn't look like he's someone who's bad or evil or good. There's no judgment, but there's a choice there, peace or war with all of these people actually behind of course.

Well, let's go to the next one. The Wild Man of Africa, Idi Amin. Was he a wild man? Who knows? But this is the language that Time magazine uses.

So Uganda's Idi Amin, who had overthrown Milton Obote as the leader of independent Uganda. Milton Obode had been of the generation of Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyrere. And Idi Amin had been a soldier in the British Army in East Africa and had been raised through the ranks and takes over and basically rules it as a dictator for many years.

But the Wild Man of Africa. Think of the word that comes up, because this is going to come through in some of the covers, wild, just that very term as it's used.

Here we have a portrait. This is from 1977. Actually, this is the Time magazine.

It's interesting, actually, when I'm thinking about this. In 1977, I first went to South Africa and did research for my doctoral dissertation. And I spent a year in South Africa. So I would have read this magazine in South Africa, because I got a subscription to Time magazine so that I could find out what was happening in the United States.

And here we have Prime Minister John Foster standing there with his arms folded. He had succeeded Hendrik Vervoed in 1966 when the Vervoed had been assassinated. And Foster was leading a country that was essentially organized and ruled under apartheid policies. Apartheid means apartness, the separation of races.

Foster and Vervoed before him would have said separation of people on an equal basis. But in fact, that wasn't the case. It was essentially a racial hierarchy with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom.

But I also remember this particular issue of Time magazine when I bought it, had every single line of the story about South Africa blacked out with a black marker pen. And two things struck me about that at the time, one that the South Africans had a very, very elaborate system of censorship, of the news media. And the second thing is that they were ready to spend an awful lot of effort doing something that you think could have been more simply done by just either banning the magazine entirely or by just ripping the pages out, but they hadn't done that.

They'd actually employed people to go through line by line by line using a black marker pen to wipe out each of the lines, because they did not want to be charged with censorship, as in preventing a magazine from being distributed in South Africa. They just wanted to stop you reading the story. Anyway, that's from 1977, OK. So South Africa's coming through as a theme, obviously, in these covers. When you think back, who've we got?

We did have Mr Abdul Okhrim from Morocco, but we've got a fair number of covers about South Africa, which would include also Zimbabwe, and a number of covers about independent Africa, a number of covers about the Congo. There's certain themes running through.

This cover here is from 1978. You might want to talk to your parents about California's tax revolt and proposition 13, something we still live with today. So when you look at some of the little stories-- but here, Africa, a Political Jungle, Castro.

I forget, was it Brezhnev from Russia? I'm not quite sure who. Well, this is the missionary, I assume, with the Bible, and here's the French Foreign Legion still playing around in Africa. But this captures the image of Africa as a place of Cold War struggle.

And for much of the '60s and '70s and '80s, Africa was indeed a place that was fought over by the United States and Russia and their surrogates. And here we have it in 1978.

Certainly, when I went to South Africa to do my research in 1977, white South Africans constantly told me, when I said well, what are the causes of racism and you know why do you have such an oppressive government? They would tell me that I didn't understand the society, that I didn't know that it was the Russians were controlling the opposition, that I was just a pawn for the Eastern forces. And I didn't understand that, in fact, that South Africa was fighting against the forces of socialism and communism.

This image captures this notion. Africa as a place that's being fought over by people from outside. At the time of

1978, Castro had troops in Angola who had been invited to go into Angola because the South Africans had sent forces into Angola to overthrow the government. And Cuba sent troops in in response to that. Part of the Cold War struggle that was going on.

Next slide, 1981. Think back historically to the use of the words. Here, it's Gaddafi again, the young man with the military uniform. Libyans Hit Teams, the Specter of Terrorism, 1981. Think about the way in which you could study the use of the word terrorism. When does it enter our common vernacular? When does it become widely used?

OK. Here's terrorism, Africa.

This cover is from 1984. We didn't move on and have another cover until 1984, although you can examine the website and see if you can find more. Coups, Conflict, and Corruption. At the same time, life without Ma Bell. The monopolies are getting broken in the United States again.

But this image, Africa's woes. Think again about how that fits in with certain notions of what Africa's like. What is it like as a continent? Coups, Conflict, and Corruption.

Here we have 1985. Black rage, white repression, a challenge to US policy, focus on AIDS, Rock Hudson's ordeal. Probably the first, most famous person to die of AIDS.

1985 is a period in South Africa in which youth particularly are rising up. In 1976, there'd been a youth uprising in Soweto that essentially was the turning point in the struggle against apartheid. And that had been repressed.

1985 however, conflict was growing. And essentially, South Africa entered into a phase of a civil war, and this image captures that. Black rage, white repression, and here's the challenge to US policy.

What's the US going to do about it? Is the US going to continue having good relationships with the apartheid government of John Foster or his successor, PW Botha, or is it going to introduce sanctions?

At the time of this, 1985, Ronald Reagan is the President of the United States. He, along with Margaret Thatcher in Britain believe that in fact you should have good relations with the South African government to, perhaps over time, persuade them to change.

In the United States however, there was a great deal of opposition to that policy. There was a great deal of opposition to that policy on the UC campuses. And we're going to look at, during this class, of some video of the demonstrations that took place on campuses.

In fact, the UC became the biggest and most important university system in the United States to divest its investments from South Africa despite the opposition of people like Ronald Reagan, because they believed that you could not bring about change by persuasion in South Africa. You had to bring it by forcing change within the country. But that was only really just beginning at the time of this cover in 1985.

Here we have 1986, Target Gaddafi. There's a theme running through this, American problems with Libya, American problems with Muammar Gaddafi and his support for anti-US interests, his support for revolutionary movements. In 1986, Target Gaddafi.

Here's another cover from 1986, the Bombing of Tripoli in Libya in 1986. American attempt to bring about change in Libya by both targeting Gaddafi himself and targeting his capital city. That's the relationship again. So we're getting a theme here of Libya, terrorism, Gaddafi.

Another image from 1986. This one is about South Africa. Should the United States have sanctions against South

Africa? Should they be enforced by the government? Should we prevent trade with South Africa? Should we end airline linkages? Reagan and his governing party argued not, that you should continue to have relationships. This deals with this issue. Pressuring South Africa. If Not Now, When? If Not This, What? Reagan attempted to use his veto power to override legislation that was introduced into Congress to bring about sanctions against South Africa, his veto failed, and sanctions were introduced. And so from the middle of the 1980s onwards, you could no longer fly directly to South Africa, nor could you do business with South Africa, nor could South Africa import certain items from the United States.

It was a major issue on US campuses. It was a major issue in US society.

Time magazine from 1987, Famine. Think about this as you look at this image. Why are Ethiopians starving again? Because we're going to talk in this class about starvation and food production. But just the implication of the question.

Why are they starving again? There's a sort of irritation in that statement. Why can't they not starve? Why can't they feed themselves? Think about that.

And then this issue. This is, What Should the World Do and Not Do? The implication behind this is something of the implication that was behind that cover for Albert Schweitzer. What should we in the West do to help Africa because they can't help themselves?

This issue arises again and again. And I'm going to ask you to think about it, whether you think that that's true, whether you can find evidence of that in the media, whether you think it's an issue that occurs now or not. This cover, it seems to me, is-- again, it captures this image. Children with swollen stomachs from starvation, weariness, an inability to do anything. The person is not actually making things.

Let's look at some more covers. OK. Here we go. Hints of hope. South Africa in 1987, the same year that the famine cover is published.

The emphasis here is Afrikaners begin to unbend, a belief that whites in South Africa are changing their minds. And so these are three Afrikaners, people of the same ethnic group as John Foster, as Hendrick Vervoed, as DF Malan, as JBM Herzog, as Jan Smuts. So here the issue.

South Africa, Hints of Hope. This takes us back, 1987. Making the Illegals Legal, immigration policy in the United States. Not something that's new for now, but something that's been a continuing debate.

There's another theme that comes through in images of Africa, and it permeates some media coverage of Africa from the 19th century to the present, and that's wildlife. So this picture is from 1987. So here it is.

We got three from 1987, one is famine in Ethiopia, one is Afrikaners changing their minds perhaps in South Africa, and the third is wildlife, Africa, an Essay. And I want you to think about some of these covers, because I'm going to show you some illustrations from the 19th century to link up present day understanding of Africa with 19th century ideas.

Mandela in 1990, a portrait that doesn't particularly look like him at all. Some sort of generic portrait. But in February of 1990, Mandela was released from prison after 27 years of incarceration. It's the first time that his picture could be published in South Africa. It's the first time that any of his words could be quoted in South Africa.

I remember back to the fact that when I studied for my doctoral research in South Africa in '77 and '78 and was doing research with my wife there in '84 and '85 and '86 and '87 and '88, we had never seen any picture of Nelson Mandela. We could never read anything that he had written. All of that was banned by the same people who had censored that Time magazine issue in 1977.

But here he is, Free at Last. So here, something's changing.

1990, here's another image that, again, will be familiar to people according to where they were in life. Most of you were probably not born at this time. 1990, ask your parents what they were doing. Do they remember what happened when Nelson Mandela came to the United States? Did they live in Los Angeles? Do they remember if they lived in Los Angeles going and seeing Nelson Mandela when he came to Los Angeles and got the keys to the city of LA and met with 100,000 people in the stadium?

Here it is. A Hero in America. Think of those words, a Hero in America. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nelson Mandela was always described in the South African press as a terrorist and a murderer. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher said he should not be released from prison because he was a murderer, he should have been executed.

Think about the way in which the words that are applied to Mandela change, not according to anything that he does differently or says differently, but according to the way people want to perceive him and how they want to remember him or how they want to forget certain things about him. But here he is. He comes to America in 1990 as a hero.

Here we have Libya yet again. This is Lockerby, 1992. Although it was suspected at the time but not known,

Muammar Gaddafi was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103 which went down over Lockerby in Scotland with the death of all the people on it. This is terrorism in action, terrorism in practice.

This is 1992 also. We're going to have a series of images here that come in 1992. The Agony of Africa, Generic Starvation, just terrible times again. It's the image of the poor child, generally the person who suffers most, the one that appeals to our hearts. And obviously, there are many children who suffer, but it's the agony of Africa, and it's part of the theme of what can we do. Well, there's something that we can do, and it's captured by this image, again from 1992, and it's Somalia. And in 1992, there was conflict going on in Somalia, war. A great many people suffered in that war. Children died from famine.

And you get this image here of the gaunt face of the starving child, and the US to the rescue. Can the US go in and intervene and end this conflict, bring about peace, bring about food for the child? OK.

Here we have it. Here is the US actually intervening in Somalia, restoring hope. Clinton's First Challenge, If Somalia, Why Not Bosnia? And as we know, Clinton does indeed send troops into Bosnia into that conflict. But restoring hope, 1992.

Maybe there's a chance. Maybe the Americans can do something to improve things, especially in a country which in that same year, Time magazine published this cover, Inside the World's Last Eden, a personal journey to a place no human has ever seen. I have not read the story. Some of you might want to go online and go and read the story. I really can't believe that no human's ever seen it, because Africans have been living in this continent for thousands of years.

But gorillas in Africa, it's like lions. We're going to see some other images of Africa as well. There's an Eden here.

There's a contrast between animals, which we see a great diversity of in Africa, and we have to try and save, and starving people, who we have to try and save as well.

Now, here is an image that's really a very striking image. And I'd ask some of you, if you haven't already seen it, go watch the film Black Hawk Down, because Black Hawk Down, like this image here captures the horrors of what happened to the young American soldiers who got caught in the conflict in Somalia and died.

And in this case, What in the World are we Doing? Anatomy of the Disaster in Somalia. US Army Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant. This image of the cover and, like I say, the Black Hawk Down Hollywood version, but one that captures the intensity and horror of the battle and the suffering of the young people who were fighting on the American side in this intervention and suffering essentially in a war that America pulled out of, because there was too much suffering and there was nothing that they decided that they could do.

The image of the young man was from 1993. It's all part of the same action in Somalia that took place in 1992 through 1993.

Rwanda, 1994. We sort of miss this at first. There are no devils left and hell, the missionaries said, they're all in Rwanda, because in 1994, in April of 1994, a genocidal struggle began in Rwanda in which a million people were killed in 100 days. And we're going to read about that during this class. A million people were hacked to death, not shot or machine gunned to death, but hacked and stabbed and murdered in an intentional program of genocide that the United States, like most of the rest of the West, in fact, all of the West, largely turned its backs on and didn't notice.

The massacres started at the beginning of April in 1994 and continued thereafter for the rest of that year. But most of the media didn't capture it, because they were looking at something that was a little different.

And this was a much more positive image. And this was Nelson Mandela being elected in the first election that was held in South Africa in 1994 in which all South Africans could participate irrespective of their race. The 80% of South Africans who were black could, for the first time, vote in this election, the first time in their history, they could vote. This was April 1994, the same time that the Rwandan genocide is taking place. It captures more attention.

This is a man of the year for Time magazine in 1994, the peacemakers. And think about the intractability of some of the problems that we have in the world. This is the peacemakers, with from the left or right Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk who had succeeded PW Botha as the president of South Africa, Yasser Arafat.

We probably have had a resolution of its conflict in the middle, the one about the end of apartheid. We haven't had a resolution of the one about the Middle East. So 1994, the man of the year won.

But this is also 1994 at the end of the year when the media is actually picking up on what has happened in Rwanda in time. This is the beginning of the final days, this is the apocalypse from a resident of Goma, Zaire, where many people had escaped from Rwanda. And this is tangled refugees at the Rwandan border.

Now, with these refugees, we don't know if in fact they were perpetrators of genocide or not, because they might well have been, because as we'll see during this class, images of the people who were killed during the Rwandan genocide where they were slaughtered in hundreds in churches and their bodies just lie there, left to rot.

Here we have an image from 1998. So the last cover I gave you is Rwanda in 1994. The next cover that Time magazine has-- and this is a magazine that's published weekly, so it has 52 covers a year. So between 1994 and 1998, it doesn't have any covers about Africa, there's nothing there.

But in 1998, here's an image, Africa Rising. After decades of famine and war, life is finally looking up for many Africans, here's why. You can go inside it and read it. But there's possibility here of Africa.

But then again that same year, 1998, the US embassy in Tanzania and the US embassy in Kenya are both bombed. Americans and Africans are stunned by totally unexpected terrorist attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And this is obviously an image from it. The war on terrorism that we've seen referred to earlier with Gaddafi and the Lockerby bombing, here it is again reemerging. In that same year in which we've got the image of Africa rising, new possibilities but also of Rwanda, of Mandela, there's a number of contrasting images that are coming through here.

This is a Time magazine cover from 1999. So again, 1998, the bombing, 1999, the image, a special report from Mandela to Mbeki. As the Mandela era ends, can South Africa stay the course?

Well, the key thing about this cover is capturing that notion that you could have a peaceful transition of power in an African state. It's not an African state that's ruled by corruption or by a military dictatorship, like Idi Amin or the people who rule the Congo. It's a country in which there's been an election that was peaceful in 1994. Now, there's a peaceful transition. But again, it's South Africa.

How many covers have we had about South Africa in the coverage of Africa that we've had to date? The first cover and many others. You might want to count them up. And we'll talk about it in class.

This is a person that we're going to be discussing in some way. This is a cover from 2000, Robert Mugabe. Now, the last time Time magazine had a cover about Zimbabwe, it was 1976 with Ian Smith, the ruler of the white settler state who argued that, in fact, white settlers should continue in rural Southern Rhodesia as he called it. But he was forced to move out of power in 1980 and was replaced at that time by Robert Mugabe.

And Robert Mugabe rules Zimbabwe to the present day. Oftentimes, he's depicted as one of the worst rulers in Africa. But here he is. Robert Mugabe is using chaos to keep his grip on power. Could be, could be not.

This is the year 2000. Think about it, the battle of Elian. If you don't know who Elian is, ask you parents.

Here's another image from 2001. This is from the Congo as well. It refers to the Congo, but it refers more generally to health in Africa. This is a story about AIDS in Africa. Look at the pictures, read the words, and then try not to care.

It had become evident by the late 1990s and by the beginning of 21st century that AIDS was prevalent to an ever- increasing degree in Africa and particularly in southern Africa. There are more people with AIDS in southern Africa than in any other part of the world. There are more people who are both infected with it, and there are more people who are left without parents because of AIDS. It becomes a plague, it's like a black death.

Again, an image of Africa, disease. It doesn't mean that disease doesn't exist, but think of the context.

This is an image of the Congo from the same year-- well, actually from 2000. This is from 2001. In this case, Joseph Kabila's father had ruled the Congo in the late 20th century. He was assassinated, Joseph Kabila. His son takes over.

People Need Peace. Thrust into power by his father's assassination, Joseph Kabila wants to rebuild a shattered Congo. Remember, the Congo is the place we first saw depicted with the image of Dag Hammarskjold and not with the picture of Patrice Lumumba who had been murdered in 1960.

What is happening in the Congo? Why is it still a complete chaotic mess in 2001? Why do between six million and 8 million people die in the Congo in the past decade through deaths largely due to conflict, war, and such like in that country?

Here's an image from 2002. This is the cover. Out of Africa comes a face that may be 7 million years old. Is he big daddy? I'm not quite sure what the follow up was on this, but this captures that notion that humankind originated in Africa. And here we have Time magazine carrying this to a wider public, the findings of the archaeologists and talking more generally about it.

This is Time magazine again. This is 2002. This is Zimbabwe again.

Mugabe may Have Won Re-election, but Zimbabwe's Problems are Getting Worse. Nothing to Cheer About.

We're going to read some other material from the New York Times in particular about Zimbabwe. And I'd like you to think about to what extent is Zimbabwe used as a metaphor for Africa? To what extent do people think that what goes on here tells them more about the rest of the continent than just about that particular country? 2002.

Here we have again, 2004 we've had a break of two years in Time covers about Africa, nothing. But it's back to the animals again. Saving the Big Cats. The world's wild felines are threatened wherever they roam. What will it take to rescue them? Can we rescue these wild animals? What is it that we do that can make a difference in their lives?

2005, this is a Time magazine story about global health. How to Save a Life, a Special Report on the World's Most Dangerous Diseases and the Heroes Fighting Them. The reason why this image here-- this is a magazine Issue story, cover story about global health. So it's about diseases around the world. But the image they use is one from Africa.

This is the one where they would argue in the story that this is where the disease issues might be the most prevalent and the most dire, but it also is a continuation of this image of Africa as a place of disease.

This is 2005 as well. How to End Poverty Around the World. 8 million people die each year because they are too poor to stay alive, a provocative plan on how we can save them. In this case, an image that was taken from North

Africa. Again, you've got disease, you've got poverty. To what extent does Africa become a metaphor for suffering?

2006, Congo, the Hidden Toll of the World's Deadliest War. As I just mentioned earlier, it's estimated that something between 6 and 8 million people die in the Congo in the first decade of the 21st century from the war that takes place there that to a considerable extent is related to the Rwandan genocide, that's connected back to Moise Tshombe's overthrow of Patrice Lumumba, to the other things that we're going to talk about in this class.

But you've got poverty, you've got disease, you've got suffering, you've got war, and you've got resources, Africa's oil. This is a cover from 2002. The world is looking to West Africa for its next big energy bet. But can oil be a curse as much as a blessing? This time, which will it be? Africa's wealth portrayed in that cover.

This is a Time magazine cover from 2007. It's the 50th anniversary of the independence of Ghana, what had previously been known as the Gold Coast. The independence of Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah in 1957. And in this case, one family's tale of the hopes, disappointments, and resilience of a nation and a continent.

One thing that you might want to think about, to what extent is Ghana perceived as a success story in the Western media about Africa? And on what basis do they call it a success story or not a success story?

This also, this is an image from 2008. Mandela, the Secrets of Leadership, Mandela at 90. Eight lessons from one of history's icons.

And we'll see the imagery of Mandela constantly appearing as he'd previously done, not quite as many as I expected, but he's portrayed again and again. But this is an interesting magazine title.

And it's something that I want you to read and I'll provide a link to it on the class, because the same year that they published this image of Nelson Mandela, Time magazine published this story with the title Comeback Colonialism, All is Forgiven. And I don't want to talk about the story right now. I want you to go and read about it, because we're going to talk about it in class.

But I want you to think about it. What does that mean, Comeback Colonialism, All is Forgiven? Because what is it that this person is being nostalgic for, or who is it that they are talking about, who they're finding as nostalgic, and what is it that they're particularly nostalgic for? What was colonialism like? But this story came out in 2008. It's not a cover, but it's a story that caught my eye.

Here we have another cover from 2008, Bush in Africa. Here is George Bush, a journey across the continent and into the soul of a President. George Bush made a particular emphasis about efforts the United States should make in Africa and particularly to fight AIDS. The story's by Bob Geldof. Read it and see what you think about it. 2009, this is a cover, the annual special issue of Time. 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now, Africa. Look at title there, Africa Open for Business. What's that mean, open for business? What sort of business by whom with what effect? We're going to talk about that near the end of the class, what is meant by being open for business.

Most of you should recognize this if you're soccer fans or if you use the word football as people in Africa and Europe would use to describe soccer. This is the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa very successfully, when people thought that it perhaps was going to take place in a country filled with crime. In South Africa, the Revolutionary Sport. That's the only cover about Africa that came out in Time magazine in 2010.

2011 is Gaddafi again. Gaddafi's Last Stand. What if he Doesn't Go? And I don't know if you were watching television or listening to the radio in 2011, but if you were like me, laid out with an accident for several months and not able to move out of my house, I spent a lot of time hearing about what was happening on Gaddafi, from the original uprising right through until his unfortunate or terrible end, depending on the point of view, hunted down finally in a sewer and killed by a crowd. This is the last image of Gaddafi in Time magazine for all of those ones that we've seen from the 1970s onwards, the terrorist, the leader of an independent state, and so forth.

We can always be sure, however, in the Time magazine's covers that the animals will appear. In this case, Rhinos at Risk. How Asia's Appetite for Rhino Horn is Endangering One of Nature's Giants, and about how there's a great deal of poaching of rhino horn in Africa to provide aphrodisiacs for Asian men.

Were getting right to the end, the final covers. This is a cover from 2013. You can know who it is. You're probably familiar with it. Man, Superman, Gunman. Oscar Pistorius in South Africa's Culture of Violence. This links up the story of Oscar Pistorius' own personal actions in killing his girlfriend and living in a country in which guns are widely held by vast numbers of people and a great deal of violence takes place. The image again then there is violence in Africa, a lot of crime.

Two covers from 2014 which don't explicitly talk about Africa in the cover but obviously connect to it, or they do in this case. Chasing Ebola in America, in West Africa, Disease Out of Africa. It's not so long ago that you should now be familiar with the discussion in the media here about perhaps flights from West Africa should be forbidden, that perhaps West Africa should be quarantined from the rest of the world.

The image then of the people going. And they do indeed need to with this clothing for fighting Ebola. But do you need that? That's what you need when you go to Africa.

There's another image. And again, this is the person of the year Time magazine, the Ebola fighters, the Liberian surgeon, 46 turned his hospital's chapel into an Ebola treatment center. In this case, a Liberian doctor who fought it, but it's fighting disease. I want to finish these images of Time magazine up to the present. I haven't got one for 2005, but you can look at them yourself. I want you to reflect on the sort of topics that come up, the themes that run through it.

And I'll just finish on a final slide which is not a Time magazine one but which was published in reaction to so much of the coverage about the Ebola disease, and this was the notion that anyone coming from Africa would be bringing Ebola to this country or anyone going to Africa would be going into an African area. And it captures very graphically the idea that Africa has no Ebola, just like if you could put on Africa other than southern Africa, you can almost put no AIDS for most of it, not literally none, but very little. Or you could put on much of it no famine or much wealth. The mapping that you would do of Africa would be very different from the imagery that would develop out of this portrayal of Time magazine.

OK. I'll finish up at that point and just say we're going to have some discussion about this in class in general. But I want you to just think about this. To what extent to you make generalizations from this one example of Western media portrayals of what is going on in Africa? What matters?

I'd ask you, can you think of which cover depicted a female politician in Africa? Which cover depicted, other than the final one, an African doctor or an educator, or which cover depicted someone other than, say, a politician in

Africa? And we'll talk about this in class. Thanks.