In my lifetime, I’ve flown a lot on airlines. I took my first flight, which was international, in 1974 to attend high school in the United States. Over the years, I have literally flown millions of miles across all continents. I believe I’ve been to more than 150 countries, some of them more than once. I don’t give these statistics to brag — no, because flying isn’t a thing with me. Been there, done that.
I now do it as a necessity, often for international work and sometimes for leisure. My accumulated experience in the air has exposed me to a phenomenon I call food apartheid. There are many forms of flight apartheid, but cuisine apartheid is one of the most galling.
There was a time in global history when only the rich flew. Airline travel wasn’t invented for the poor — even today, when it’s more democratised. Still, on the plane itself, seating arrangements are segregated, unless you are travelling on a budget airline where everyone is packed like sardines or cattle.
Many, if not most, airlines have cabins classified by status, which is determined by the size of your wallet. Elite travel may include first class, then business class, and less luxurious categories.
Most passengers are crammed into the least pleasant back sections of the plane, with little legroom and no seat recline. Here, passengers almost sit on top of one another. Imagine an eight-hour trip jammed next to a smelly passenger.
It all starts at the boarding gates. The elite classes have their own special lane and board first. The attendants in their cabins genuflect to this elite. Sweet welcomes are offered, and champagne is the welcome drink as you settle down. They take your jacket and hang it for you out of sight.
The seat reclines and, after dinner, it becomes a bed on which you can lie flat and sleep soundly, as though it’s your own bed at home at night. You don’t share your seating area with any other human. It’s literally your exclusive “little apartment” in the air. The food there is exclusive, with a wide choice of exotic offerings and high-end drinks. All for “free”. When you land, this group disembarks first.
This is obviously class apartheid. Those with money live in exclusive suburbia on Earth. Those without live in the Kayoles of this world. Class distinctions hurt. But, like the different parts of your body, they live with us. Even up in the air. Humans have been socialised to accept money, or class, apartheid.
The Kool-Aid we are sold is that those with means deserve it because they “earned” it. Those without are poor because of their own moral failings. Of course, this is hogwash, but it’s Kool-Aid all societies drink every day. Up in the air, passengers accept the same logic as they make their way to the back of the plane, whence “human cattle” sit. They hope one day to sit in first class.
This is all disgusting enough. The only time there’s equality up in the air is when the plane crashes and everyone on board — rich or poor, in the back of the plane with the “cattle”, or in first class with the snobs — dies together instantly. On most international flights, first class is usually a preserve of whites or Asians on African routes. But mostly whites and a few snooty Black Africans who are generally high-ranking State officials. They own the “air”. I have flown in all these classes over the years.
Believe me, flying first class is sweet, in spite of my spoofing and lampooning it. But of all these “apartheids”, I find food apartheid very disconcerting and discombobulating.
The cuisine on virtually all airlines is usually European. In the last several decades, Asian fare has also been offered. Except for Ethiopian Airlines, which offers mostly European fare with smatterings of Ethiopian choices, African foods appear to be “banned” on airlines, including African ones like Kenya Airways.
I have longed to dine on muthokoi, mukimo, foofoo or ugali on an airline — African, European or Martian — but to no avail. Even nyama choma is never offered. I guess even our African airlines regard our foods as “primitive”. Instead, we are forced to eat strange foods, such as French cuisine, which I find utterly disgusting. But with food apartheid at work, I am forced to eat raw French seafood or starve on the flight.
What’s wrong with Black Africans? So-called “global” airlines serve their own national foods without fear or apology, no matter where they are flying to. Damn everyone who doesn’t like it.
Kenya Airways should serve ugali and muthokoi to its European passengers the way they serve us frog legs and raw meats. By not doing so, we accept the stupid and racist notion that African cuisine cannot be global because it’s inferior and unsophisticated. I say to hell with that idea. Food apartheid is one of the most unacceptable forms of discrimination.
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.
