In America, Africa is no longer the dark continent. Hollywood's finest, including George Clooney and Mia Farrow, have blazed a trail to Darfur, followed by increasing numbers of politicians. Clooney's latest film, Ocean's 13, raised $10m to help refugees who have fled the onslaught of the Sudanese government and its Janjaweed militia. Vanity Fair, the celebrity bible, devoted its July edition to Africa, filling the pages with upbeat copy on the continent's heritage and glittering prospects.
It is easy to satirise the juxtaposition of movie A-listers and the wretched of the earth. But for all the celebrity blather, something is actually happening. The American interest in Darfur, and the strong grassroots campaign for sanctions, has undoubtedly restrained the Sudanese government from using the most brutal means—chemical weapons and enslavement of whole tribes—which were pressed into service in an earlier conflict in the southern part of the country.
What is a reporter covering Africa to make of this? The gloomy conclusion must be that celebrity propels the story, particularly if the terrain is dramatic, as in Darfur. It also helps that the next president of the US might be Barack Obama, whose father is Kenyan.
Yet Africa correspondents have a lot to be grumpy about. They go through hell to report African wars, but ultimately the story seems to be framed by domestic politics and celebrity endorsement. Tim Butcher, formerly Africa correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, knows all about these frustrations. He was working in Africa at the time of the mother of all African wars, the civil conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has killed 4m people since its start in 1996. Even after the signing of a peace agreement in 2002, 1,200 people a day are said to be dying as a consequence of the fighting. In recent months, there has been more fighting in Congo than in Darfur—let alone the middle east.
Butcher has now got his revenge on an indifferent world. His book Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart tells of his fascination with the Congo and his journey along the Congo river in the steps of Henry Morton Stanley, the journalist-adventurer who won the scoop of the 19th century by finding Dr Livingstone. Everyone (including me) told Butcher that he was mad to go on this trip. No one had made that journey for decades, least of all a white man on his own. Travelling by 100cc motorbike and dugout canoe, it took Butcher 44 days to cover 1,250 miles. There were no roads, no trains, no river boats—nothing but jungle full of gunmen and unburied skeletons.
Butcher encounters a country that is "undeveloping," with more past than future, and where the rare pieces of asphalt are used not for driving on, but for sharpening machetes. He comes to a village where his Yamaha is greeted as the first motorised vehicle for 20 years. The forest, not the towns, offers the safest sanctuary, and grandfathers have been more exposed to modernity than their grandchildren.
One day, Butcher hops off a dugout canoe in the port of Ubundu. It was here that Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn shot The African Queen in 1951. Back then it was a charming place, and the only conflict was over who got the room with the balcony. Today, even after a so-called peace agreement, it is a hollowed-out town in the grip of fear, and Butcher has to beat a speedy retreat. Will Ubundu ever become safe enough for Clooney and Farrow to remake The African Queen there? The chances seem slim.
