Margaret Kabamba "RETIRING THE DEBT" A Conversation with Jeannette Batz   St Louis, Missouri, January 1997

It's not easy being an African abroad. "Everybody wants you to send this and that because they think you are sitting on money." Margaret Kabamba groans cheerfully. She left Zaire for Belgium 12 years ago, moved to Toronto and then to St. Louis last year, when her husband was offered a job there.

"I try to explain to them, 'I can't even get that, because I don't even have that'," she continues. What do people ask for? "Anything. A gold watch, a VCR, a car." Kabamba laughs uproariously. The problem isn't naivete, she adds; it's pretentious expats who "go home with all the best garments and try to show everybody they live better. Maybe they live in the [housing] projects, but they will go downtown and take pictures of nice places. I know this guy who used to say he worked with Mitterand (the French prime minister). He'd go back to Zaire and rent a Mercedes".

Did he, work anywhere near Mitterand? "He didn't do anything!" she exclaims, pointing out that with Europe's high unemployment most Africans don't work. "They steal in stores and cheat the government," she says sweepingly. "If somebody I know goes to a store and steals a chicken, I will ask him, 'Where did you get the chicken?' and he will say, 'Colonial debt'."

Hence the title of Kabamba's book, written in French and translated into English. "The Zairean public considers 'Colonial Debt' the first book of its kind", she says, "because I talk about the myth surrounding most of the Western world. People dream of coming here; they think this is what happiness is all about. They think their problems will be solved here. I don't think so.

"Colonials made us believe everything we had was barbaric", she notes, resentment tethering her buoyant spirit. "They gave us their religion, their culture, their educational system. That's why we think Europe has the best." She's furious with Zaire's musicians: "They will sing about streets in Paris, not streets in Zaire; they will praise French and Italian designers. Development will come when we decolonialize our minds."

She just returned from the first book fair ever held in Kinshasa, capital city of Zaire. (She didn't steal any chickens; she was sponsored by St. Louis University, where she's earning a Master's in French.) "The question in my book is, 'Is (stealing and cheating) the best way to make colonials pay?' Others say, 'No, we have to work hard, get educated and better our country.' They use the Japanese becoming a superpower as an example." Clearly, she agrees with the second set of characters. "Stealing the chicken, where does it take you?"

When she arrived in Toronto, for example, she had translation experience and a degree in French and Latin, and she spoke Swahili, Zairean dialects, Spanish and English. "Everyone told me, 'You don't have a degree in translation'," she says. "So I got one, and worked at the same time." She shrugs. "I think racism is everywhere, but there is a way to go around it and get whatever you want to get."

This trip to Zaire was "the worst yet" she chuckles a minute later. Her brother-in-law had successfully started a union but was convinced it needed a European presence to survive. Her mother-in-law asked where the children were, and when Kabamba said, "Home with their father," she exclaimed, "With my son?" Then there were the requests: "Last time, in '94, a sister-in-law – her husband was our cousin – came asking for money and clothes. This time, I said, 'I don't have anything for you.' My mother said, 'You have to give her something!' I said, 'No, you have to do something for yourself and sell it, do a home garden, plant something.' And they said, 'Oh you have changed.'

"Yes, I have become tougher," she agrees, "because nobody gives to me. I have to work to earn any money I get. Zaire has extended families, and some people have always depended on others to live. They say, 'Oh, my uncle is going to help me. NO! Start by yourself!" Did this fiery initiative come from her family? "Oh my dad, yeah, God..." She looks out the window, silent for the first time. "My mother did not go to school. She's had a terrible life with my father. I remember him saying, 'If you leave me today, where are you going to go?' And I remember my mother saying to us, 'You have to study � that is your passport. Then no man will play with you." Eight of the 11 children are girls and all have degrees � "My baby sister, she's doing law," Kabamba finishes the list proudly. "Mother's situation made me write my second book, 'And the Woman Recreated Herself'.

Her voice becomes brisk again: "Africa will be developed by Africans, not by Europeans, and it's the same with women – they will be liberated by themselves. Society is always there to remind a woman she should not do this or that. So the liberation has to come from her."

When 'Colonial Debt' came out, the Zairean community in Toronto held a meeting. "They were very upset with me," Kabamba says ruefully. "How can she write things like this, she's going to make us look ridiculous!' I said, 'We look ridiculous already! We don't have a single highway in our country!

"In Zaire they shshsh-shshsh you; they don't talk about the problems," she finishes. "That's why I decided to write."

© 'Riverfront Times', The Weekly Newspaper of St Louis.
Reprinted with permission from the 'Riverfront Times', The Weekly Newspaper of St Louis, Missouri, USA.

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Last updated:Tuesday 29-April-1997.
https://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/AFLIT/intJBkabamba.html