Observations on celebrity by Brendan O'Neill
Walk into any newsagent and you will see Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie looking back from the glossy covers and telling the world about the special experience they had in Namibia. Hollywood's golden couple went there in April because they wanted their first child born in the "cradle of humankind", and little Shiloh Nouvel duly arrived on 27 May.
"I'd just like to thank the people of Namibia," said Pitt in a television interview before leaving the country last weekend. "They've been so gracious and made our stay here very special."
The people of Namibia, however, are not feeling quite so grateful. Some claim that the couple's security staff, along with the Namibian government and police, restricted freedom of movement and expression, harassed local people and even altered border arrangements in the name of protecting "Brangelina" from the paparazzi and the hacks.
"Never in my life have I seen two individuals exercise so much power here," says Phil ya Nangoloh, executive director of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), Namibia's leading human-rights organisation. "They effectively captured the state."
Pitt and Jolie were treated "as if they were a king and queen rather than celebrities", he says. Their security staff, with the support of Namibian police, created a "paparazzi-free zone" around the Burning Shore resort in Langstrand, western Namibia, where the couple stayed. There was even a no-fly zone.
Most strikingly, Namibian officials - desperate to keep the couple happy in the hope their visit will do wonders for the tourist trade - granted Pitt and Jolie the right to decide which foreign journalists could enter Namibia; any who wanted to cover the Brangelina story had to get permission in writing from the couple before crossing the border.
"Imagine if a celebrity couple controlled England's borders," says Nangoloh. "This is very anti-democratic."
Some journalists who turned up without the couple's approval were deported, he says, and one South African reporter had his passport and camera confiscated. "This time it wasn't apartheid rulers restricting his freedom of expression, but government officials in thrall to Brad and Angelina," says Nangoloh.
Local journalists also complained. Donna Collins, who was warned not to go near Langstrand, accuses police of "army barracks behaviour" and says the film stars' security staff "kept going mad at the sight of my camera".
Nangoloh describes all this as a "blatant violation of Namibia's constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech". His organisation was set up in the 1980s initially to protect reporters - Namibia has a poor record on press freedom - so he found it especially galling to see two US celebrities giving the government a new pretext to clamp down.
"Ms Jolie is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, yet she seemed to tolerate the removal of human rights that are guaranteed by the UN," he says.
Some Namibians believe the affair helped turn the clock back on democracy. Tomas Lorry, who lives on the Omaheke farmland of eastern Namibia, says: "The restricting of local and international press, and this pseudo-royal attitude, are the exact opposite of what Namibia needs . . . People who, for years, tried to build a democratic society can only shake their heads at this."
Nangoloh is demanding an inquiry into the whole affair. "We have around 150,000 orphans in this country, and a lot of crime. I want to know how much money was wasted protecting two actors."
Brendan O'Neill is deputy editor of spiked (www.spiked-online.com)
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