From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Mar 08 2010 - 08:40:26 EST
"When the governments of Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Congo and any
other African nation hand over arable land to a foreign country, they are
going into those deals with their eyes open. They are going into those deals
knowing what happened last time there was a scramble for Africa. They know
the Europeans, the Saudis and the Chinese are looking out for themselves.
But they turn a blind eye to the warning signs and sign on the dotted line.
You can’t call a man a colonialist if you are a willing capitulator"
African land grabs: New colonialism or African apathy?
*2010/03/08/*
Across Africa large tracts of land are being sold or leased to foreign
countries and companies to grow food, flowers and biofuels. This land is
handed over for a song and offers food and resource security to the richer
parts of the world — Europe, the Middle East and Asia. But denies thousands
of African people of the food they need to survive.
My natural instinct is to see the large firms and the bigger nations as the
aggressors: the ones who are strong-arming smaller nations into deals they
don’t want. It’s a new form of colonialism that takes advantage of the poor
to feed the rich. And in some ways this is true.
But it’s all too easy to leave it there. It’s all too easy to leave
responsibility to other people for an African problem. It is the way most of
our brains have been geared to work. The liberal, the conservative, the
commie and the fascist. We all have a tendency to see Africa as incapable of
solving her own problems, incapable of standing up to her wealthier
neighbours to the north, east and west. And frankly, that is bullshit.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. We’ve all heard that
saying. Especially when George Bush completely fumbled it in a speech in
Tennessee. One of the greatest moments in modern politics in my opinion. But
we shouldn’t jest, because across our continent, leaders are not just
fumbling the words, they are fumbling the practice.
When the governments of Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Congo and any
other African nation hand over arable land to a foreign country, they are
going into those deals with their eyes open. They are going into those deals
knowing what happened last time there was a scramble for Africa. They know
the Europeans, the Saudis and the Chinese are looking out for themselves.
But they turn a blind eye to the warning signs and sign on the dotted line.
You can’t call a man a colonialist if you are a willing capitulator.
Of course I am not privy to every reason why these leaders are doing this. I
am not in their shoes. But what I do know is whatever their reasoning
(short-term profit, foreign investment or personal gain) they are giving
away their people’s right to survival. They are giving away their future.
They are breaking their promise to their nations, to their constituents and
to themselves. And it is the moral duty of the people of that country and
every other African country to stand up and say: “WTF? You can’t do that!”
Imagine if Germany gave away so much of its land to a Chinese company that
ordinary Germans faced starvation. There wouldn’t be a single European who
wouldn’t protest. If the Saudis sold off their nation’s grain supply for
biofuel, you’d hear about it.
But in Africa, the complaints of the poor go unheard. The tribesmen, the
impoverished farmers and the average Joe Shmoe just has to lump it. Even
when successes are achieved, like in Madagascar where protests forced
Daewooto cancel the purchase of half of Madagascar’s arable land, it
received
little or no coverage. Even the article published this weekend in the M&G on
the matter is taken from the *Observer*. Why does it take a foreign
journalist to raise this issue? Surely the loss of Africa’s food supply is
something that concerns us?
I don’t want to sound like another lame ass white afro-pessimist sipping on
his Shiraz and bitching about things. I don’t want to give fuel to the
people out there who will say: “Look, I told you so”.* I just want to see
someone in power on this continent give a fuck about this issue. It’s
important. It’s our food we’re talking about.
*Yes, Lyndall Beddy, that includes you!
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