The other day, I was telling dear reader that the rich countries in the world are those who have behaved like gangsters while the poor ones have merely become their prostitutes. A lady reader wrote to explain that, a relationship in which one of the parties seeks no material benefit or personal gratification will not exactly fall into the good old category. The person who pays for sex is usually as desperate as the seller.
But who wants to worry his head over definitions, especially of a profession that has never become anybody’s career, and yet continues to be a trade? There are serious events unfolding on the international stage. As you read this line, a child has just died of hunger in Sudan. Before you finish the next sentence, another will die in a war which his parents have no excuse to have started in the first place.
Does dear reader realise that this year alone, rich nations have spent £561 billion on arms and ammunitions? Yes, that is how much the world has invested for brothers and sisters to kill and destroy a promising generation. Even at the peak of the Cold War, £547billion was enough to buy weapons. If we are serious about eradicating hunger from the third world, we would need 17 times less this amount.
In fact, alleviating world poverty could take as little as what a president spends on a birthday gift for his first lady. If the wife of a powerful president in Europe or America decides to forfeit her birthday celebration, the money saved will be enough to afford some 1million children in Ethiopia wheat and meat.
The total debt of all developing countries is £275billion, more twice the amount we have used to purchase weapons this year. If developing countries decide to go berserk, like the beggars in Aminata Sow Fall’s Beggar’s Strike, will the alms givers chase us to give us some more? You see, this is where the prostitution bit comes in. We have shamelessly collected money in return for a service. We are obliged to perform the service regardless of how many wives and concubines our client may have.
So, what about the grants and aid poor countries receive every year from rich nations? The G8-group of some rich nations in the OECD-Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, recently promised £6billion during the Glen Eagles conference in Scotland. My worry is not that they have not as yet honoured that promise, my problem is why poor nations have been made to appear shameless recipients of western aid when the total amount they receive annually is only £32billion.
I don’t know how dear reader feels when pitiful images of malnourished children in Africa are splashed on western television and newspapers. I felt a natural need to assume a defensive position whenever I watched BBC news with my English girlfriend. It is either a child whose ribs are virtually poking out from the skin or a distressed mother beckoning the heavens to save her dying child. The children look like tadpoles and their bottoms seem to have been plunged inwards by the sheer force of hunger and deprivation. Every minute they survive without food is a miracle.
She would sometimes ask jokingly: “were you also like this as a baby?” Other times, she would inquire about female circumcision and wonder what will happen to her little girl if I travelled home with her someday. Of course, she had her own prejudices and weird sense of paranoia, but as unenlightened as she was, her feelings underscore a very disturbing reality about general attitudes and perceptions of wetincallit.
Sympathy may be a virtue but I am not comfortable when people pour rose water over my toad. When you are always sympathised with, it follows that you are also jeopardised. Otherwise, why would a British newspaper survey reveal that 75% of Britons believe that giving aid to poor countries in Africa, to help fight hunger and restore peace is a waste of resources? At the same time, many Britons are prepared to sponsor a child in a poor country.
September 21 just went past. It is the date the UN, by resolution 55/282 set as the International Peace Day in 2001. The resolution states: “…the International Day of Peace shall henceforth be observed as a day of ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the day.”
How do we celebrate global peace when people in Iraq define a peaceful day as the day only two suicide bombers were at the market centre? Afghanistan is a death trap at the moment, as Hizbollah and Israel continue to see who can finally flex a bigger muscle. Dafur has seen no improvement since a former US Secretary of State, Colin Powel, declared two years ago that the case of Dafur is a case of Genocide.
Anyhow, there is a black spot easily identifiable in the ‘blackout’ brought on this generation by the scourge of war. The blame game is becoming too typical of poor nations. We could take it as far back as the slave trade era and ask for reparation and apologies. Or we could question why the west is so bent on the war on terror in the Middle East when more than 400,000 people have died since 2003 in the Dafur Genocide. Some 2million people have been displaced while 250,000 are packed into refugee camps. This makes Iraq’s 40,000 death toll since 2003, a tolerable tragedy, which nevertheless, demands some urgent concern.
May be, these wars have not been very bad. At least, the leading arms companies in the world have made phenomenal gains. Sales increased by 60% in 2000, from £86billion to £146billion in 2004. So, who are the warmongers wasting money on senseless wars? America and the Middle East have won the top prize in this competition but some of the poorest countries have very big purses for war nonsense. Where did Sudan, DR Congo, Rwanda, Botswana and Uganda get billions to spend on arms over the past twenty years? Those billions could have helped save the lives of millions but their governments continue to relish bloodbath.
Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh spent more on arms that they did on health care between 2002 and 2003. It is not surprising that some poor people are sceptical of western aid and are actually calling on the donors to close their wallets. You see, a black thing is always going to be come out dark. The Arab Janjaweed Militia in Dafur are as black as the Muslim brothers and sisters they are exterminating.
Even in their very conscious state, some Dafurians think themselves superior to other Dafurians. Dear reader may know some ethnic groups in Ghana who would want to push their unique quality down our throat. That is why our politicians and our black American friends do not appear too concerned when the motive behind a crime can be pinned down to the black thing. They find it too black to spot a space to reason.
Shaka Zulu was murdered by his own half brothers in 1828, just as Martin Luther-King Jnr was stabbed by a black woman on September 20, 1958. In the US and the UK, and most countries in Europe, most black killings are engineered and finished off by fellow black brothers. The black is eager to supply his black brother cocaine or a juicy gossip but not a winning formula for a business proposal. But when they meet in church on Sunday, shalom is on their black lips and the response is spontaneous.
Even so, I believe world poverty is going to end one day, the same way slave trade ended, to the delight of William Wilberforce. Apartheid was an institutionalised tyranny but it ended in the life time of Nelson Mandela. Contrary to Booker T. Washington’s infamous Atlanta Compromise speech in 1895, blacks will not relent in their quest for better conditions in this era of globalisation and golden age of business.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.