Stop Trying To 'Save' Africa - Page 2 - Political Forum

W.E.B. Du Bois · #11 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 12:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by africanhope

I think this is a case where both sides havesome truth on their side. Let me firstmake it clear. Just giving aid to Africa has not worked, and will not work. Much more is needed, including free trade. Africa must not be safed, but Africa must be helped to help herself.

It is good that some highflying celebs has but Africa on the agenda. But you get good ones and bad ones. I find Bono to do good work. I also think Operha does some good work, although her methods sometimes show little understanding of the African way of doing things. Madona's adoption I do not aprove of, and I have many friends living in Namibia (I used to work there) and they have nothing good to sday about Jolie and Pitts taking over of Swakopmund for the birth of their baby.

I have no problem with Africa being helped, but it is the way she is helped that we must seriously consider, and, I mustagree with Oz, the image we do project of Africa when we do these things.

AH

OK, I will be happy to discuss with you about serious policies that benefit Africa, however let me just address your comments on the issue here.

Madonna OK, so Madonna has a reputation for doing really outrageous stuff. Where is your proof that she did not adopt a child out of SHEER COMPASSION? You can show a picture of her in a stupid outfit 10 years ago. That is not proof that she adopted just on a whim.

As for Angelina. What is wrong with their adoption? Is it better for a child to be an orphain in Ethiopia or grow up with parents in the US? Is life as an orphan in Ethiopia better or have I lost my mind?

WEB

W.E.B. Du Bois · #12 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aegis

I agree. With certain exceptions Africa is a train wreck socially and economically. The cause? Years of internal warfare and a leadership that has leeched the wealth of Africa for their personal gain.

The author's solution would seem to be leave us alone and we'll solve our own problems. They haven't managed to do so very well in the past so what makes anyone think that Africa can go it alone in the future?

I too donate monthly for the care of a child in Uganda. Why does that make me an elitist or a snob? I'm just trying to help someone. Why should I feel guilty about African colonialism?

Well Africa's problems are really quite complex. I would suggest that anyone interested in the subject read up on African history.

I definitely agree though that it is deplorable to condemn someone for altruism.

WEB

Brother Oz · #13 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 12:46 PM

Quote:

With certain exceptions Africa is a train wreck socially and economically.

I don't agree with that. I would say it is, currently, the other way around. Most of it reasonably okay, but there are exceptions (Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sudan). Yes, 20 years ago the continent was ravaged by wars, but most of it is relatively peaceful. A good number of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are democracies. Corrupt ones yes, but probably less corrupt than, say, early 19th century Britain. The Congo war which blighted the centre of Africa is over, as is the civil war in Sierra Leone which destabilised a large amount of West Africa. Africa is now on the road to recovery.

Aegis · #14 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by africanhope

Sorry, when did Africa have the opertunity to do things on their own? I am not deyning that Africans should take responsibility for their own shortcommings, but the world did play a role. Many of those corrupt dictators where kept in place by both sides during the cold war, when Africa was used as a pawn, and quite a few proxy wars fought there, some of wich still continue

AH

Rwanda, S. Africa, Angola, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Rhodesia and others have all taken action towards self determination. They may not have been successful, but they took action.

I appreciate the history lesson but how will the proposed selective acceptance of aid benefit Africa? What's your solution?

If Africa doesn't want or need my meager financial assistance let me know and I won't send it.

africanhope · #15 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 12:49 PM

I did not coment on the Jolie adoption, but on the circus in Namibia when she gave birth. Also, I did not say MAdona's adoption was without compasion, but the laws of Malawi, laws there fora good reason, was 'ignored' when she adopted that child, and that is not right.

africanhope · #16 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 12:53 PM

In the cases mentione, Aegis, there was involvement from the west, some good, some not so good. The solutions are not something that can be said in one paragraph, as it involves ,many things, some of them very integrate. But Istill maintain that a good start is morefair trade, so that Africa can compete. Also, the AU shouyld take the lead. More African states (as has been happening the last 10 years) should say 'enough with bad government' and get rid of the old corrupt governments. Africa should take responsibility for it's future. And the world should it her in that, this also includes having a serious look at the debt issue

AH

Inan’Ta · #17 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by W.E.B. Du Bois

Yeah, I agree. Angelina Jolie adopting a poor African kid makes her an evil snobbish bitch. I donated some money to Africa too because I am culturally elitist asshole. Anyone who does a good deed for Africa is obviously a racist, culturally oppressive hater.

Dummies like the author are exactly what Africa does not need.

WEB

There's no need to twist words. Angelina isn't doing any good deed for Africa. She's merely adopting an African child, which will be Americanized. Yes, that's exactly what we need.

Bashir Goth wrote the article "Adopt villages, not pet children".

Quote:

Adopt villages, not pet children

The current celebrity craze for child adoption took me down memory lane. I happened to be in hospital in Hargeisa, today’s Somaliland, at a very young age for injuries I sustained after an air raid on our border village.

Being very young, about seven-years-old, and due to the lack of a vacant bed in the male wards, I was admitted to the female ward. One day, an American woman, a Peace Corps teacher, visited me. She was walking outside and she saw me from the window. She stopped and looked at me for a while. Then she entered the ward and asked permission from the staff nurse to talk to me. She sat next to me on the bed, held my right hand in both her hands and looked at me with eyes full of kindness, motherhood and inquisitiveness.

As I couldn’t speak English at the time, we communicated through natural ways: touches, looks and feelings. I somehow felt that this strange white woman sitting next to me and holding my hand was not a stranger at all. I felt as if I knew her forever. I felt completely comfortable in her presence and I was gripped by a strange sense of not only familiarity but love of motherhood.

After more than 40 years, I can still envision her face. I can see a woman in her late 20s, a little plump, with an angelic face, a shy look and a held back smile. She said few words to me and when I couldn’t respond, she called the staff nurse, Sakin Jirde, to translate for us. Sakin told me that the American lady whose name I never learned wanted to visit me everyday and teach me English. I accepted it immediately. Then she left me but not without a motherly stroke to my head.

As soon as she left me I felt loneliness. I looked at her as she departed and she glanced at me several times. For the next six months she came to see me almost every evening and taught me English. She brought me a book called Fifty Famous Fairy Tales, which is still in my possession. When the time of her departure became closer, she showed her interest to adopt me. She loved me so much she said and wanted to make me her son. I had also developed such great affection for her. A word was sent to my father and his answer came back with a simple “No”.

The American woman did not want to give up and she asked the hospital staff to convince my father that I would be given good medical treatment and a good education in America and that she would bring me to visit my family once every couple of years. But still my father’s answer was in the negative.

I loved my father, my mother, my siblings and my village Dilla, but if I had been given the choice that day I might have accepted to go with the American woman because we had a genuine feeling of mother-son relationship for each other and I had such a burning desire to learn English and speak as she did. We departed each other with broken hearts. When I was discharged from hospital and returned to our home, I couldn’t stop crying for a whole week.

Retrospectively looking at the event, I cannot but admire my father’s wisdom in following his parental inclination of no other love or material comfort ever equalling that of a father looking at his own child growing before his eyes and passing down to him his people’s culture and history. I wonder if my culture and my village would have a home in my heart if I were raised abroad.

I have related this story to show that there was a time when child adoption was a case of a strong and genuine feeling of motherhood that a stranger child had evoked in a woman’s heart. A feeling that grew bigger with time until it became impossible to deny.

This is contrary to what we see today with American celebrities who go on a spree of child shopping to Africa and other poor countries. It just hits them like that - to get a toy brother or a toy sister for their pampered children - and all it takes is to make a media-hyped trip to the open African market to view poor, naked children and select the best toy money can buy to satisfy their fantasy: just like they would hit the nearest boutique to satisfy their craving for the latest fashion accessory.

Just as the Europeans justified the scramble for Africa in the19th century and the slave trade before it as being the white man’s burden to civilise the “half-devil and half-child”, the celebrities of today justify their child poaching as being in the name of philanthropy and altruism: saving poor children from the heart of darkness and bringing them to the world of light.

Anyone who thinks my argument is unfair or hostile would have to convince me otherwise. How could a person go to an orphanage in a poor, foreign country, ask the children to be paraded for them, pick up a “lucky” one, pay cash and get away with their prey.

Adoption by itself is a genuine human need and a noble action that gives a child to a childless person and a good home, comfort and a future to an orphan or poverty-stricken child. Needy children however are everywhere: they are in America as they are in Africa and Asia. But why do the celebrities not adopt American children instead of going overseas to adopt African or Asian children.

The answer is there are no children for sale in America. Anyone who wants to adopt goes through years of gruelling procedure to qualify for child adoption. Over there, children are human beings and cannot be bought as toys, playmates or pets for celebrities’ children. But in Africa, people are still sold in exchange for beads, tobacco and petty cash. And as a Malawian journalist said, “We are showing to the world that our poverty has extended to the brain”.

One may ask, however, what if these celebrities are really honest about their feelings to help poor African and Asian children? No doubt sometimes the most honest feelings could be misrepresented by the means with which they are fulfilled. Changing child adoption into child shopping is a grotesque representation of a noble gesture. But with such big hearts and philanthropic feeling to save the children of the world, the celebrities can do a better job and save more children from poverty if they adopt whole villages in Africa and Asia instead of only one or two children.

By providing whole villages with schools, clinics and water wells, we will have thousands of young Zaharas and David Bandas owing their welfare and future to celebrities’ charity. Africa would reap large revenues as curious visitors throng to see and learn from the Angelina Jolie and Madonna villages. It would make a drastic change to the way we do charity and foreign aid and would embody the epitome of western altruism and philanthropy. The Colombian singer Shakira is already leading the way in this trend and it is a trend that is worth emulating.

Adopt villages, not pet children - On Line Opinion - 14/11/2006

W.E.B. Du Bois · #18 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inan’Ta

There's no need to twist words. Angelina isn't doing any good deed for Africa. She's merely adopting an African child, which will be Americanized. Yes, that's exactly what we need.

Bashir Goth wrote the article "Adopt villages, not pet children".

You're the only one twisting words in your attack on altruism and charity. Adopting an African child helps Africa, unless you are prepared to now argue that the child's life is irrelevant.

WEB

W.E.B. Du Bois · #19 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aegis

If Africa doesn't want or need my meager financial assistance let me know and I won't send it.

With the diplomatic skills of the author in the original post, the above response is the only thing they achieve. Maybe if they cared a little less about Africa's image and were not so nasty to people trying to help, then their message might be better received.

WEB

Inan’Ta · #20 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by africanhope

Sorry, when did Africa have the opertunity to do things on their own? I am not deyning that Africans should take responsibility for their own shortcommings, but the world did play a role. Many of those corrupt dictators where kept in place by both sides during the cold war, when Africa was used as a pawn, and quite a few proxy wars fought there, some of wich still continue

AH

In a democratic African country, the desired outcome will be independence between political leaders and the citizens. The citizen will 'elect' and pay taxes to the governments which politicians form, but only on one condition: satisfactory performance. If that satisfaction in performance is not achieved, the citizen will not at first elect that failed political leader, but if that leader persists in power, the citizen will not pay taxes. That means the politicians will always strife to perform better in order to be elected/re-elected, and the citizen will be obliged to elect and pay taxes . The tax pays the politicians income and maintains his stay in the office.

However, this process is turned upside down by aid. When the leader can get income in the form of aid, he wont find the need to 'perform' or serve the citizens well, even if the citizens fail to pay taxes. Aid replaces the democratic interdependency between the eleted and his electors. Usually if aid isn't available, the leaders are forced to make their citizens happy and enhance their local economies due leadership competition. So the whole country is benefited by such leadership competition and interaction between the leaders and their voters. It is a hard job but it works wonders. On the contrary aid cripples both the local politics and economics, because it does away with leader/citizen interaction and interdependence. Leaders are kept power by foreign aid but the citizens are left to suffer. Aid creates misery and dependency.