"Imagine there's an African mosquito-net maker who manufactures 500 nets a week. He employs ten people, and this being Africa, each of those employees supports as many as 15 relatives on his modest but steady salary. Some 150 people therefore depend on this thriving little cottage industry, producing a much-needed, low-cost commodity for local people.
Then, Moyo writes: 'Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses and goads Western governments to collect and send 100,000 mosquito nets to the afflicted region, at a cost of a million dollars. The nets arrive and a "good" deed is done.'
The result? The local business promptly goes bust. Why buy one when they're handing them out for free? Ten more people are unemployed, and 150 people are without means of support.
Not just a pretty face: Angelina Jolie has visited much of Africa to highlight the poverty faced by its people
Like all such aid hand-outs, it's an idiotically short-sighted way to treat a complex problem.
And that's not all. In a year or so, those nets will have sustained wear and tear, and will need either mending or replacing. But the local net-maker is no longer around.
So now those previously independent and self-sufficient Africans have to go begging the West for more aid. Intervention has actually destroyed a small part of Africa's economy, as well as its spirit of enterprise. Thus aid reduces its recipients to beggary in two easy moves."
BUT is "economy" what has been destroyed or something far more important? The Africans have lived quite ably and satisfactorily for thousands of years. Suddenly an outside culture views them as being in crisis! Why? There are two reasons. (1) Because the West who has a dark history with Africa, after liberating the slaves into Western society now think they can continue the process and liberate the Africans from Africa, and (2) Because the imposition of "economy" has destroyed African culture. Moyo who probably wears western makeup, western clothes, drives a car, has a pension, a big salary, a western house she knows very little about Africa, she has been liberated from her African roots. Noone knows very much about Africa itself because Africa itself, even in the minds of Africans, is synonymous with poverty and "under development". Even Moyo takes this line by accepting these concepts and definitions of Africa.
Yet as I have argued at length in this blog - where is the "under development" in living in a mud house and dying at 35 years of age? Jade lives in a mansion and is dying at younger than this. What is the meaning of comparison? Why do we compare and for what purpose?
There is no "under development". Poverty lies only in the eye of the beholder. We know this is fact because for thousands of years the Africans lived in perfect happiness in what the Western culture views as poverty.
The whole problem stems from a sickness in the West where we view "material measures" as corresponding to well-being and happiness. Yet as I write the West is slowly discovering that it has got this all wrong and NGOs are having to go around the world to ex-colonial states and reeducate them that actually they had it all right in the beginning and their current woes are due to Western intervention and ideas. My sister is studying International Peace Keeping and these are the "new" ideas.
And I don't need to repeat myself ad nauseam that the whole reason for this smug comparison with "other" cultures and nations is because of the need for status in human beings. A small Polynesian Island who had lived in complete isolation from the outside world for centuries without difficulty or trouble suddenly has a missionary land, learn the language, and then explain to them that the rest of the world thinks they are like animals and they can be shown a better way. Who would not be offended and upset by such "kindness". Apparenty (according to recent reserach) "status" is a concept that whole nations hold and a nation's perception of what other people think of them is one of the most important elements of their thinking. Quite innocently the Islanders become Westernised only to learn that dislike for their culture and to become second class citizens in the Western world - poorly educated, and lacking the skills to compete with westerners. Thus poverty is created and they become the animals that they were previously running from.
The only true answer is to abolish this disease which has achieved its apotheosis in Western society. The disease of self-hatred which stems from comparing ourselves to others - the having of Status. In small societies this seems to be well managed along culturally accepted lines, but when cultures clash them whole populations get alienated as their whole way of life gets attributed a "status". Poor people are simply marginalised people, and they become marginalised because they are not allowed to be who they are - either by way of external influence or internal self-rejection.
Its a simple equation and Moyo like all Africans who want to be African needs to stop thinking through the eyes of a Westerner at a problem that through the eyes of an African simply doesn't exist! Just be African, there is nothing else to do. Live in a mud-hut -or whatever the culture prescribes, eat what the local foods are, marry the partner that is right to marry and die when the age for dying comes - and learn a bit of wisdom in the language of your mother too. What else is there to do in Life? Honestly that is not a glib question!
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