208 african appropriations
MIMICRY AND OTHER SCAMMING STRATEGIESAccording to Nigerian popular belief, it is the lure of easy money that
makes recipients of 419 letters fall for the scam. W hile there may be some
truth to this argument, it downplays the agency of the authors who craft
the scam letters with the help of rhetorical strategies. Based on a close
reading of about 550 scam emails, Andrew Smith (2009) suggests that
their effectiveness in inducing credibility lies in the fact that they rely on
cunning mimicry of the common forms of the Western representation
of Africa. Referring to a phrase extracted from a 419 email, Smith (2009:
32–33) contends: “These scams rely upon their ability... to speak in the
context of the stories ‘you might have heard’ about Africa.” This holds true
not only for the news content and documentaries broadcast by cnn and
the bbc via satellite television, insists Smith, but also for Western feature
films and novels set in Africa. Moreover, such material not only shapes and
represents the common Western perspective on Africa but also the seem-
ingly “natural” relationship between Africans and Westerners. Feature
films like King Solomon’s Mines, Out of Africa, Hotel Rwanda, and Blood
Diamond, all of which circulate in Africa as well, continue to present ste-
reotypes about Africans and the roles they are supposed to play vis-à-vis
Europeans. Glickman (2005: 364) notes that “scammers are playing on
a racist stereotype: that Africans are childlike, intellectually unsophisti-
cated, innocent in business ways, and probably corrupt.” Within this logic,
an apparently naive and backward African who stumbles on a huge sum of
money and does not know what to do with it, comes as no surprise and it
may appear only “natural” that he should seek the assistance of a European
or American to invest this money abroad (Peel 2006; A. Smith 2009). One
may even question with Glickman whether emails containing an above-
average number of misspellings are composed with the deliberate intention
of instilling a sense of superiority in their recipients. In other words, what
those who write the scam letters do—either consciously or intuitively—is
mimic Western orientalist notions about Africa and apply these within
their rhetorical strategies. This orientalist mimicry serves to instill credibil-
ity and lull the victims into a false sense of security. If the story presented
to a mark remains within the framework of what he or she already knows
about Africa and Africans, why should he or she be suspicious?