From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Oct 30 2009 - 07:09:49 EST
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-africa-has-to-learn-lessons--the-hard-way-if-necessary-1929014.html
Kevin Myers: Africa has to learn lessons -- the hard way if necessary
By Kevin Myers
Friday October 30 2009
Writing on these pages two days ago, Concern's CEO Tom Arnold wrote: "I am
being constantly asked by people 'Why food shortages in Ethiopia again? Why
are we always being asked for money to keep people alive there? What is the
Government doing?'"
The questions were good. How did he answer them? Well, he didn't. For he
continued. "The implication is that the Ethiopian government is doing
nothing. . . The implication is that nothing has changed."
Tom. Do us a favour. Spare us what you think people might be implying when
asking these questions, and simply answer them. So back to question one:
"Why food shortages in Ethiopia again?" Go on: the answer please. Question
two. "Why are we always being asked for money to keep people alive?" The
answer, again, please. Question three. "What is the Government doing. . ?"
Oh please.
True, later he pointed to a rise in food prices as a sort of general
explanation for why six million Ethiopians now need feeding. (But food
prices have risen round the world. And six million people are not queueing
for foreign relief in India or Brazil). He added that a number of measures
were needed, including watershed management, environmental regeneration,
greater use of drought resistant crops, da da da da. . . "It takes time to
achieve structural strange," he cautioned. Indeed it does. But if structural
change is being simply overwhelmed by population increase, then it can
achieve nothing.
There's one word that all our aid agencies never use when asking us for more
money: demographics. I'll go over this again (just in case there's some
other body of state-employed bullying layabouts which hasn't yet hauled me
up before the Press Council or An Garda Siochana for having the temerity to
disagree with them, and they think now it's their turn to have a go). So
let's stick with Ethiopia, which at the height of the famine 25 years ago,
had a population of around 34 million. Its population (conservatively) is
now 72 million.
Excuse me. Just what on earth are we doing, continuing to sponsor,
subsidise, promote, encourage and reward population growth at such
catastrophic levels? What will we get, but only tens of millions more
Ethiopians expecting us to feed them? Then scores of millions; then hundreds
of millions. Though of course, at some stage, sooner or later, we shall stop
feeding them, simply because. . . oh, just because.
Ethiopia is the sterling exemplar of why it's time we seriously re-examined
our responses to the gathering catastrophe that is Africa.
One, its population growth is out of control. Two, it cannot feed the people
that it has, never mind the future population it is generating. Three, its
already deplorable water-management skills are deteriorating. Four, rapid
environmental degradation is reducing the absolute amount of agricultural
land available to grow crops. Five, Islamic fundamentalism is growing
amongst Ethiopia's millions of Muslims. Six, for all the billions poured
into Ethiopia, we haven't even demanded the basic quid pro quo, that
Ethiopia abandon female circumcision, which kills thousands of little girls
every year.
In other words, this is the genuine nightmare state, whose only prospects
are more population growth, more environmental degradation, and more famine,
prompting rescue and chronic dependency: to be followed by more population
growth, more environmental degradation and more famine, prompting another
rescue, and an even more chronic dependency: followed by even more
population growth, et cetera. And that's it. That's been the pattern over
the past 25 years, with absolutely no prospect of that pattern changing --
none whatever.
Moreover, this vicious and idiotic cycle is protected and perpetuated by a
coercive and dogmatic silence in the lands which fund it. Even to say this
cycle is self-destructive madness is to court allegations of racism. When I
wrote on this subject last year, I was subjected to a criminal investigation
by An Garda Siochana, one half-witted prig in the 'Irish Daily Mail'
virtually compared me
with Eichmann, and the Press Council said my remarks were "offensive to
Africans in Ireland". Ah, the poor dears.
Listen. There should be nothing quite as offensive to Africans -- here or
anywhere -- as Africans starving to death in Africa, by their tens of
millions, as they will certainly be, unless Africa's headlong rush to
armageddon is halted. That means Africans having to learn simple things like
sexual continence, and long-term planning, and deferred reward. We cannot
teach them. They must teach themselves these lessons, the hard way if
necessary.
They have not yet known the hard way. Ethiopia was rescued by outsiders from
its self-made famine 25 years ago, and it then rewarded this kindness by
promptly doubling its population, but without doubling its own food supply
or its economic base. This is stupidity on an epic scale, for which only
Ethiopia is answerable. Furthermore, it's long overdue that the Irish people
abandoned their patronising and racist conceit that we can save Africa. We
can't. Only Africans can save Africa, and the longer we interfere in their
business, and the longer we continue to reward the outstretched begging
bowl, then the longer it will take Africa to learn that basic lesson.
- Kevin Myers
Irish Independent
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