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• Pirates

  January 26, 2010 @ 2:46 pm | by Bryan

  Rihanna has released a version of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song in order to raise funds for people in Haiti. As the pop star told Oprah, “This song, for me, any time there was a difficult situation, I always listened to this song. It’s so liberating. Even now, I listen to it when my back is up against the wall. I feel the people of Haiti need to hear something inspiring.” Hmmm….

  Redemption Song is my favorite Bob Marley track. Rita Marley said that her late husband was already in a lot of pain when he wrote it. I don’t know if that pain is what separates the song from others. Or if it’s the simplicity of a man singing with nothing but a guitar to aid him. Or maybe it’s the knowledge that there’s something subversive in the lyrics, even if you don’t know what that something is.

  Years ago, in a dingy room in one of the halls of residence at the University of Zimbabwe, a friend tried to explain to me exactly why those lyrics are subversives. Imagine genuinely believing that someone had literally saved your soul from eternal damnation; pulled you out of ‘the bottomless pit’, so to speak. Imagine then that the same person, minutes later, put you in chains and sold you into a cruel, brutal captivity.

  Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
  Sold I to the merchant ships,
  Minutes after they took I
  From the bottomless pit.

  What does that have to do with Haiti’s earthquake? Simply put, I think you, me, Rihanna and anyone else who can afford to get onto the internet and read this, we’re today’s pirates.

  I once lived in a cockroach infested house. They were invisible most of the time and would only come out after we had all gone to bed. But if you got up in the middle of the night and switched on a light, especially in the kitchen, you would see them scurrying towards the closest hiding place. The response to Haiti’s earthquake reminded me of that house; I felt as though I were seeing the same process, only in reverse. Disaster struck, and where many saw international solidarity and good will, I saw a swarm scurrying onto a vulnerable population for all sorts of reasons – some, genuinely there to help; more for chess-like geopolitical positional advantage; and even more for marketing reasons, in order to gain greater brand exposure and recognition for one’s country, company or organisation. And I suppose it was inevitable: a disaster like that, it was bound to have a huge television audience.

  And let’s be honest, under normal circumstances, who cares about Haiti? Who really cares about it’s history? So what if the French and Americans have plundered and sucked it dry? And if it’s political instability is in good part the result of the meddling of Western countries (including the seemingly benign, like Canada) and institutions like the United Nations?

  What if said meddling leads to your financial gain and mine? Thomas Pogge, in several books and academic papers, argues that if we are involved in, or benefit from institutions that exploit or in other ways harm people, even if those people are on the other side of the world, we are guilty of harming those people and have a duty towards them. Pogge, in my opinion, convincingly makes his point, and he clearly demonstrates the fact that we the global aristocrats – we who don’t worry about whether or not we’ll eat anything tomorrow – do in fact benefit from institutions that harm people in places like Haiti.

  But if we took the likes of Pogge seriously, we couldn’t continue to live as we do. So when Senator David Norris suggested on radio yesterday that people in Ireland may be partially responsible for the situation in Haiti, he was unsurprisingly put in his place by his audience. Not only was he told that the Irish are incredibly generous (the Department of Foreign Affairs have been very busy lately because there has been a lot to say about the Irish government’s response to the earthquake), but what happened in Haiti was a natural disaster. It wasn’t, of course. There may have been an earthquake, but the exaggerated loss of life resulted from the structural failures that led to poor infrastructure and administration in that country. Those structural failures, if you believe Pogge, come back to you and I.

  So what are we to do? We’ll express remorse. We might even learn where the country is on the map. Some will give. Some will give a lot, maybe even of their time. They’ll try to raise funds for the disaster relief, and they may even go to Haiti or other miserable places to help comfort the suffering. But for most of us, something else will capture our attention in the coming months. The World Cup maybe. Or we’ll find out that some other celebrity had an affair. Or a row will erupt over whether bankers should be burdened with an additional tax on their second imported luxury car. Whatever it is, we’ll forget about Haiti until its next disaster.

  Institutionally, the likes of John O’Shea and The Economist will do their best to turn Haiti into a modern day colony, only with benevolent colonial masters. Bill Clinton will probably get another term in office, even if it is a smaller one. Naomi Klein will despair as she watches the process she described in her book unfold. Things will probably go wrong. Poor Haitians are likely to go on being the wretched of the earth (or at the very least, the wretched of the Western Hemisphere). And you and I will be the better for it, even if we oblivious to the workings of the world.

  I wonder if that is what Rihanna had in mind when she decided to fundraise for Haiti with Bob Marley’s song? Probably not. But I’m sure Marley would have seen the irony in the fact that I gain financially from this piece. I too am a pirate.

• 2010 pessimism

  January 4, 2010 @ 9:00 pm | by Bryan

  Regular readers of this blog may find the next statement hard to believe. I am, by nature, an optimist. Really, I am. But over the course of 2009, a cloud of pessimism settled over me. And to be honest, I don’t see it lifting over the course of the coming 12 months.

  Here’s an example of where my negativity stems from. Based on conversations with a mix of people in Belfast, it seems as though one of the largest determinants to peace and stability is economic well-being. Money, or more precisely, the process of pursing ‘the good life’ with a reasonable expectation of one day attaining it, can be positively distracting – in a “an idle mind is the devil’s playground” sense. Granted, an argument could be made for the role of things like intrusive body scanners and remote controlled planes that can bomb whole villages to smithereens. But does anyone really think that airport security, a hypertrophied ‘intelligence community’, or wars in far off places will rid the world of people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, let alone the people who armed and trained him?

  Once upon a time, before that great IMF idea that was economic structural adjustment, Zimbabwe was a relatively prosperous little country. We were wealthier than most of our neighbours, so we did our bit to keep out the poorer Malawians and Mozambicans. Those who got into the country were tolerated, but I’m pretty sure we tried to keep them to a minimum. And then the IMF came along and in a relatively brief period of time, income inequality within the country soared. People who were relatively well off built large walls to keep out their poor fellow citizens. For the most part, the walls served their purpose, but with increasing regularity, some found ways over them. They would then help themselves to things they couldn’t otherwise afford while the owners of the big houses were asleep. There came a point where we wrecked the country. Things got so bad that even those living in big houses behind bigger walls began to struggle. So a lot of Zimbabweans, rich and poor alike, made their way to neighbouring and distant countries, sometimes illegally scaling real and metaphorical walls and fences.

  So why am I pessimistic? Because, it’s easier to build, buy and install body scanners and to blow stuff up than to try to understand the world on the other side of our walls. The world seems destined to imitate the likes of Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro, who have found it easier to live with their fear than address the structures that give birth to their underworld. I’m pessimistic because I get the feeling that we’re a year closer to the day parts of the world are relegated to rubbish heap status, while others become fortified cities.

  But I could be wrong.

  Happy 2010.

• Di-Aping, climate change and the Holocaust

  December 21, 2009 @ 8:28 am | by Bryan

  

  [The Copenhagen Accord] asks Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries. It is a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces. – Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping (Chief negotiator for the G77 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen).

  You’ve got to hand it to the Sudanese chair of the G77. Europe is still pretty touchy about the holocaust, and the suggestion that the continent is helping to get the gas chambers cranked up was always going to evoke a response. Di-Aping knows how to make headline grabbing statements, but is there any substance to his charge?

  First of all, there’s the suicide pact stuff. On that, I’m with Di-Aping. The smaller countries don’t really get much consideration (and that’s me trying to be as generous as possible to the rich and powerful ones). Barack Obama didn’t take Malawi, Bangladeshi, a couple of Pacific Island nations and Paraguay into a private room to discuss their grievances. Part of that is Malawi et. al. aren’t responsible for much of the greenhouse gases the world produces so they can’t be expected to be at the forefront of a new green revolution. That said, because they aren’t very well off and don’t have much political clout, the views of Malawi et. al. aren’t going to be seriously considered. Let’s face it, Greenpeace have a better chance of getting a hearing from the Obama administration on the effects of climate change than Malawi. I’m not the only one who thinks as much. According to Michael Levi of the Council for Foreign Relations, “The climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere.” “That elsewhere,” speculates the New York Times, “will likely be a much smaller group of nations, roughly 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions,” i.e. the 30 most powerful nations. As for the weak, heard of Darwin?

  Then there’s the values stuff. What values led to the holocaust? I’m no expert in this area. On some level, ‘The Pearl’ must be right – there was money to be made in the exploitation and murder of millions of innocents. More interesting philosophical and sociological explanations have been put forward, but when all is said and done, most come down to the fact that we (people) like situations that work to our favour, especially if the consequences (or victims) are safely out of sight. The structure of the global political economy, for example, is such that I can easily afford to buy a cup of coffee most mornings, while the farmer who grew and harvested that coffee might struggle to feed her family. The distance between us allows me to sleep peacefully at night.

  So maybe Di-Aping is right on both counts. Maybe the small and vulnerable will continue to pay the price for the short-sightedness of the rich and powerful so long as ‘the dollar bill’ lies at the centre of our global value system.

• Adichie, Ballantine and the chip on my shoulder

  October 14, 2009 @ 2:16 pm | by Bryan

  I’ve been accused, perhaps accurately, of having a bit of a chip on my shoulder about the ‘ownership’ of the developing world in general, and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. That’s not how I would describe it.

  I would say that I share the sentiment frequently expressed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of a Yellow Sun. Like her, I think that if you really want to know about a continent, ask its inhabitants. More than that, if its inhabitants only play a relatively minor role in telling their stories, the audience is bound to get a distorted picture. It largely comes down to what I think philosophers call ‘ontology’ – the way we see the world. One’s view of the world colours one’s interpretation of ‘facts’.

  That said, I’m not an ‘absolutist’ (if that’s even a word). I wholly believe that different perspectives can enrich everyone’s understanding. One of the non-African perspectives on the continent that I find most enriching, is that of Carol Ballantine. I don’t always agree with her take on things, but if you want to learn about development from an Irish development practitioner’s perspective, I don’t think you’ll find a more honest, considered and rounded view than this:

  …In Sierra Leone and Rwanda, I met with so many people, and I tried not to stare at their visible scars. I am a lousy reporter, because I can’t dream of asking people about their experience during the war: I have no right to. After years of doing this work, so that now I’m introduced in meetings as the “expert” (on governance, or democracy, or monitoring and evaluation), I still have no idea how to fathom collective trauma …

  When I came home, some of my friends asked me if I would blog about my experiences. But there’s so much about the countries I have visited that I don’t understand, so little that I saw and could report back fairly. I look through the window of a 4×4, and I’m looking through the lens of countless newspaper articles, tv documentaries, prejudices and assumptions. I simply cannot fathom what life is like, even for the middle class colleagues that I visit in some traumatised countries… (Read on)

  I hope she continues to blog.

• Poverty tourism

  September 30, 2009 @ 9:21 am | by Bryan

  

  A view of the “informal settlement” of Mathare at Nairobi, Kenya. Photograph: Frederic Courbet.

  This isn’t new. It happens in parts of South Africa, and I’m pretty sure it also happens in other places. Kenya is now home to a new kind of income generating scheme – poverty tourism.

  That’s right, poverty tourism. People pay to see the misery of others and then… I don’t know what happens then to be honest. I’m sure the whole thing isn’t meant to be sadistic. I imagine that those paying to see these slum dwellers do it for noble reasons, like the desire to understand how the other half live, so they can more effectively campaign for them. But to me, it smells like the horrible product of a George Orwell and Stephen King collaboration.

  What’s next, Survivor Khayelitsha? A show in which regular folks from various rich nations get to spend twelve weeks in South Africa’s largest township with nothing but the average income of the typical shanty town’s resident? Following District 9’s lead, the contestants might have to supplement their diet with rats and who knows, maybe cat food? At what point does concern and empathy become vulgar voyeurism?

  In a fascinating report from Kenya, Fintan O’Toole shared a debate between two Masai men on modernisation and the future of the tribe. Arguing for the path of modernisation and integration into the wider Kenyan society, O’Toole reports that Leina Mpoke, programme director with Concern, said the following:

  …Masais are kept in the same category as wildlife. Even when tourists come to look at wildlife, without the Masai next to a giraffe or a Masai village near the lions, it’s not complete. I refuse that kind of consumerism where the Masai is rated the same way as a beast. But the Masai man of the old time is not the same as today. The Masai warrior insisted on facing his enemy man-to-man and believed that even arrows were for cowards. And they got killed.

  Unfortunately, the path favoured by Mpoke isn’t much brighter. The majority of those Masai who ‘integrate’ end up in slums. History suggests that it will be years before that group works its way up the social ladder. Until then, those who escape the humiliation of being photographed as part of the wildlife may very well end up being captured by the camera lens of another kind of tourist. This time, as the wildlife itself – part and parcel of the urban safari experience.

• Hooray for the G20?

  September 25, 2009 @ 1:50 pm | by Bryan

  

  “The fact that 20 or so individuals right now are determining economic trade policies for four to five billion people just isn’t right,” Mr. Griffith said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  Most news organisations are making a big deal over the fact that the G8 is being replaced by the G20. The fact that a handful of the most powerful ‘developing nations’ are being added to the elite club that gets to set the economic rules for the rest is supposed to represent the dawn of a new inclusive era or something. It does no such thing.

  Let’s take a look at some of these ‘developing nations’. China. India. South Africa. Turkey. Brazil. These aren’t exactly the nations that I would pick were I trying to get a good understanding of the concerns of the typical state in the South. China is China. India, while being home to some of the world’s poorest people, is also incredibly wealthy. So much so, the Indians not only sent a rocket to the moon, they were also the ones who recently discovered water there. They’re not exactly Malawi or Haiti – nations trying to come up with a formula for growing enough food to meet domestic needs. As for Brazil, the OECD has been trying to woo them for a while. The OECD, you may have noticed, have not expressed much interest in Cuba or Paraguayi. The G20 is so inclusive that neither Nigeria nor Egypt, Africa’s second and third wealthiest nations, were deemed worthy. And yet, just about all of Europe is represented there by the EU. But just to make sure, France, Germany, Italy and Britain get their own special seats. The same is true of North America – the US, Canada and Mexico are all members.

  So just to re-cap, the G20 is made up of Europe, North America, and everyone else with too much economic clout to ignore. And what happens when only the powerful get to make the rules? Let’s look at the response to the recent financial crisis, shall we? As was recently demonstrated on the excellent three part BBC television series, The Love of Money, the politically powerful got together with the economically powerful to craft a solution to the crisis. Unsurprisingly, it was decided that to avoid catastrophe, the economically powerful could not be allowed to fail. Equally unsurprisingly, the chosen mechanism of their rescue was a transfer of wealth from the rest, to those deemed to large to fail. Could it be that the proposal to transfer wealth to struggling mortgage holders instead of, or in tandem with the banks bailout, would have got more of a hearing were struggling mortgage holders part of the deliberations? Hoping that China, Brazil or even South Africa will represent Malawi’s economic interests is like expecting AIB or Bank of Ireland to ask the Finance Minister to consider my local credit union’s needs, and give some of the taxpayer money allocated to the banks to St. Anthony’s Credit Union instead. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  Like Trevor Griffith, I have serious problems with a small group from the most powerful nations making potentially life and death decisions for the rest of the planet. If however, that’s the direction the world is going to take, then at least let’s be completely honest about it and get rid of the charade that is the United Nations General Assembly. Maybe let’s get rid of the UN altogether? It can’t be that important if the real decision makers use it as a pit stop en-route to G20 meetings.

• Owning Congo

  August 19, 2009 @ 1:44 pm | by Bryan

  I have a friend who recently went on the dole. Determined to be independent, she began a new career doing freelance work. She doesn’t earn enough money to live off this, but it’s a start. What frustrates her is that there are times when she has to turn down work because of the structure of the welfare system. Sometimes, a little extra work can mean a disproportionate reduction in her welfare subsidy.

  Her situation came to mind as I read and thought about the infrastructure for minerals deal between China and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The DRC is probably the country most richly endowed with natural resources in Africa. Unfortunately, the former Belgian colony has been plagued by conflict since its inception. From Belgian, French and American sabotage soon after its birth, to what some dubbed ‘Africa’s World War’, it is little wonder that the country has had its share of tyrants. As Chomsky has pointed out, a harsh environment cultivates a certain type of leader because only they survive long enough to take the reins of power.

  But then Kabila Jr. and China happened. A deal was struck between the Congolese president and the Chinese in which the latter would build roads, railway tracks, hospitals and even two universities in exchange for copper and cobalt. The deal, valued at $9 billion, would see much needed infrastructure development in the DRC in exchange for vast quantities of its mineral deposits.

  To cut a long story short, the IMF decided that the Chinese weren’t offering the Congolese a fair deal, and that the DRC would be straddled with even more debt. Complicating matters is the fact $11 billion worth of debt relief that had been put on the table by Western donors would only be released on condition of IMF approval of the Chinese deal. In fact, IMF approval would also mean access to more development aid money and loans from Western governments and institutions.

  Yesterday, China and the DRC agreed to scale back their initial deal in order to obtain IMF approval. Honestly, I’m disgusted. Once upon a time the DRC belonged to King Leopold. Now, while they may not own it, the IMF has a lot of control over it’s economic and development policy. How that country choses to utilise its mineral wealth is subject to the wishes of the IMF. That’s even worse than my friend having to turn down work. It’s more akin to her being told by the department of social welfare which jobs she can take on and which she may not.

  All the antipathy towards the Chinese, based on the fear that they want to re-colonise Africa. misses an important point. Africa is already a colony in lots of ways. Just ask the Congolese.

• Clinton in Africa

  August 6, 2009 @ 1:57 pm | by Bryan

  

  As an aside, Hillary Clinton has moves! I’ve seen video clips of her boss dancing, and I’ve got to say, she could teach him a thing or two.

  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is on an African tour that includes Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Cape Verde. It’s an interesting group of counties.

  Kenya is hosting the AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) forum, a US – sub-Saharan Africa economic gathering which includes discussions on trade matters. South Africa is the most politically and economically influential country in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria is an important supplier of oil to the US. Angola is Africa’s largest oil producer, a recipient of large amounts of Chinese investment, and China’s biggest oil supplier. The DRC has enormous deposits of minerals and other natural resources.

  I’m sure Secretary Clinton will say all the things an American diplomat of her stature is expected to say. She has already stated that the US wants to be a ‘partner, not patron’ of Africa, a message that is in keeping with President Obama’s speech in Accra a few weeks ago. Democracy, human rights, corruption, good governance, and other catch phrases will be used liberally. But at the end of the day, what really matters is ‘securing US interests’. And that’s why China is so popular in sub-Saharan Africa.

  It is often said in Europe and America that China is a negative influence on Africa because it condones poor governance and it is only interested in exploiting Africa’s resources. Implicit in that assessment is the idea that Western governments instead care about poor Africans. Recent history does not necessarily bear that out. The difference between the Chinese and the US is that Chinese self-interest is more closely aligned with African interests, for the present time at least, than US self-interest. Chinese investment comes with infrastructural development. American investment comes with speeches on governance which America itself ignores if applying those ideas means losing out on Nigerian oil or the prospect of an Islamic militant group in charge of Somalia with popular support.

  There is an interesting video discussion on this topic here.

• A compromised dream

  July 29, 2009 @ 3:29 pm | by Bryan

  

  According to his biographer, Mark Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki’s chief concern as South Africa’s first democratically elected government assumed office can be summed up by Langston Hughes’ poem, A Dream Deferred:

  What happens to a dream deferred?
  Does it dry up
  Like a raisin in the sun?
  Or fester like a sore–
  And then run?
  Does it stink like rotten meat?
  Or crust and sugar over–
  like a syrupy sweet?
  Maybe it just sags
  like a heavy load.
  Or does it explode?

  Based on my experiences in Zimbabwe, foreign news reports of riots tend to be exaggerated. Often, fairly contained events are blown up or made to look more widespread than they really are. I suspect that’s true in the case of the riots in Johannesburg.

  That said, Mbeki was right to worry about the Dream Deferred. Lord knows what will happen when poor South Africans of colour eventually discover that their dream was compromised away a long time ago.

• A giant leap for mankind?

  July 21, 2009 @ 3:33 pm | by Bryan

  

  “Let others go to the moon,” said Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere, “We must work to feed ourselves.”

  I share Nyerere’s ambivalence towards space travel. There are so many problems here on earth, that I’m not sure if things like the race to land on the moon, or to land on Mars, are a wise use of limited resources.

  Granted, useful technologies are invented in the process of getting to the next NASA frontier, but I don’t think the world’s greatest challenges are technological. Global inequality has worsened since 1969 while technology has advanced drastically. Let’s face it, technology is great for those who possess it, but since most of it doesn’t come cheap, the technological advances that were birthed from the space program probably haven’t translated into anything of practical value for the majority of the planet. Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to get my emails delivered to my mobile phone. I’m just not sure that convenience of that sort counts as helping to make the world a better place.

  I remember, years ago, asking a fellow Zimbabwean if he was planning on doing anything special for the Independence Day holiday. His response that while the country was free from British rule, he didn’t feel independent of the people running the country so he planned on deliberately not celebrating. Maybe he rubbed off onto me. I couldn’t care less about the fact that yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the moon landings. A massive transfer of wealth to those who currently have nothing would be a giant leap. Stepping onto another planet … that affects ‘mankind’ how?

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