Lies, damned lies and Africans

Wazungu and wezi

I have now been robbed on four continents. After several years of moving around in parts of Africa where wazungu (Europeans, or white men) fear to tread, I received my first African mugging around the corner from my guesthouse in a part of town that is supposed to be safe.

You learn to anticipate what's going to happen when you've been robbed a number of times before. Muggers are muggers on any continent: their modus operandi varies a lot less than the weather.

So when the six young men started moving quickly in my direction as I came out of the shop, I had a fair idea of what was coming. When three of them started running to get ahead of me, I braced myself instinctively for the assault. When the kicks and punches started raining down on me, I was left in no doubt of their intentions.

"Never carry more than you can afford to lose; never resist if someone does try to rob you." The streetwise traveller's survival credo has served me well so far - although the lack of resistance sticks in the craw when all you really want to do is kick the shit out of the bastards who jumped you. (Wet liberal sentiments never did form part of my idea of socialism.)

But perhaps the former half of that credo merits some revision. The wezi (thieves) who robbed me got away with the princely reward of a packet of crisps and a can of soft drink - a scant return for their bravery. Convinced that I must be concealing a secret horde of hard currency somewhere on my person, they continued to kick and punch me in their frustration at being unable to discover it. The knife that one of them produced was probably meant more as a warning than for actual use, but it may be safer to carry a small sum of cash to save yourself the gratuitous violence you risk incurring if you have none.

You can hardly fault the wezi for making their misjudgement. An impecunious white man is a bit like an uncorrupt politician in these parts. They exist, but you can't quite believe it when you come across one. It doesn't justify the robberies one iota, but the gross racial disparity in wealth and income does help to explain why they happen.

In Arusha, in northern Tanzania, where my first African mugging took place, there are two principal types of wazungu. There is the tourist and there is the ex-pat who works for the UN or one of the other international agencies in the area.

The UN is here in the shape of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda. Its workers, earning western wages while facing east African expenses, are wealthy beyond the imagination of most Africans. A new, three-bedroomed palatial residence on one of the security-guarded Parastatal Pension Fund estates in the area will set you back about US$600 a month. A maid to do all your shopping, cooking and cleaning will cost about 30,000 shillings (US$30) for the same period. If food comes to more than about 10,000 shillings a week, you're in grave danger of obesity.

Not that there's any need to worry if you do put the weight on. You can work it off at the white South African-owned Genesis gym, also protected by security guards and barbed-wire fences, where a monthly membership costs about twice the average African wage.

Just around the corner, you can drink the night away for about a quarter of what it would cost you in London (and four times as much as it would cost you in town) at La Fiesta bar. You can fit out your mansion at the Interior Décor shop, pamper your body at the fashion boutique and beauty salon, and book an early-morning outing with Serengeti Balloon Safaris (price per one-hour flight about US$350, including champagne breakfast). There's even an "authentic Maasai village" on offer for that special weekend away, complete with luxury accommodation and swimming pool.

For many of the international workers, this is about as near as they get to the Africa experienced by most Africans. Terrified by tales such as mine into travelling everywhere by car, the humanitarian nature of their employment brings them no closer to the black majority than the colonialists of yore.

Some, to be fair, do see something of life outside PPF estate and the Arusha International Conference Centre building, where the UN tribunal holds its hearings. Some even get their hands dirty, involving themselves in projects such as Friends of Kids, which was set up a couple of years ago by UN workers to provide lunchtime meals four days a week for Arusha's street children.

But it's hard to get away from the sense that even the best-meaning wazungu, earning a handsome crust from their help in Africa, are separated by an insurmountable economic divide from the targets of their activity.

When it comes to violent crime, I've got about as much tolerance towards its perpetrators as a termite colony that comes across an aardvark on its turf. But to ignore the connection between increasing crime and increasing inequality worldwide is to fly in the face of reason. And that's a message that is as relevant to Britain, where another round of criminal legislation features highly again in next year's parliamentary programme, as it is to Africa.