Image: “Choose to focus on the positive in Africa” by David Ker
I haven’t had the chance to study Mocha Club in depth but just watching the video and reading some of their press makes me feel like these folks are on to something. They’re slogan is, “I need Africa more than Africa needs me.” When I first heard that, my cynical response was, “Give me a break. They want us to see how poor Africans are and thus develop compassion for the less privileged. Gag me with a fork.” But it turns out their vision is far more sophisticated than that and, in my opinion, right on.
My recent post And a child shall lead them really bugged people. My basic thesis was that aid for Africa does not work. What is needed is functioning governments that allow personal freedom and open markets. When we feed the starving in Africa we are in fact applying a Band-Aid to a culture in the last stages of cancer. Africa is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a political crisis. And much of that is perpetuated by our good intentioned meddling. Africa does not need us. Africa needs Africans. The solution for Africa’s problems is Africa’s people. If while internalizing this truth, we can derive a residual benefit of understanding that happiness is not a result of materialism than Mocha Club is a big success.
There is a similarity between the US welfare system and aid to impoverished countries. Welfare gives a person just enough to survive, but without any incentives to develop skills to become self-sufficient. By providing Africa with food, clean water, and other necessities we take away the respossibility of the governments to provide for their people. Even though, it is hard for us to ignore poverty, disease, and injustice. Jesus said we are provide for those less fortunate,and by doing that we are serving him. Doesn’t that mean we should continue to give to Africans?
@Steve:
The US welfare system used to punish those who scrimped and saved, such as the woman who was saving up to send her daughter to college. No idea whether this continues, but many times we flood another country with free food in response to a publicized crisis, and in the process drive those who are growing and selling food out of business. The most important take away is that there is no easy answer.
I agree with David that continued interference is just prolonging the problem, but like you, I cannot ignore the horrid situation. And yet, if the real problems are political, as David says, then we cannot solve anything for Africa (witness Iraq), they have to come up with their own solutions that use their own cultures and histories to build stable, self-sufficient, and hopefully ethnically-inclusive governments and economies. Maybe we can help, but the real work is theirs and theirs alone.
So what do we do about Zimbabwe? Nothing? Intervene? When does non-interference turn into passive collusion to commit genocide?
Ah, another tough question! Here’s another one. Let’s say we support intervention. Are we talking about food aid, about counseling opposition parties on ways to prepare for Mugabe’s eventual demise, about military invasion, or about funding/training nationals for a insurrection?
Are we interested in a nation-to-nation solution, or will person-to-person solutions suffice?
I have no answer, save that I found Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq to be personally repugnant, but did not support national invasion for “regime change”. I’m wondering how far one must go for regime change to be a legitimate goal. Hopefully, whatever happens, we won’t wait until it becomes a repeat of the Rwandan massacre.
“My basic thesis was that aid for Africa does not work. What is needed is functioning governments that allow personal freedom and open markets.” Well, David, if you had stated your thesis instead of your abstract, I would have been less volatile in my response! I agree very much with the thesis. And I agree with Mocha Club (at least as much as I have seen). I think of my wanderings in Moz and Guinea-Bissau. Among half-dressed marketplace children with laughs and smiles that beat anything stateside. Among young men who hustle all day with their proudly owned wheelbarrows. Passing lady shoppers in two-year-old flip-flops, baby on back, who have flawless skin and actually smell nice. Clotheslines with bright colored, impeccably clean clothing, in the middle of trashy ghetto-slums. These let me know that the African people, more than anything else, are _thriving_, and grasping life with both hands. This they have to offer _us_, and they don’t even know it.
Say it again Will! You almost made me ready to go back!
What makes me nervous about things like Mocha Club is that they can be a way of praising mediocrity. AfriGadget is a good example. http://www.afrigadget.com/ Some of the stuff on that site is truly terrific but some of it just makes me say ugh. Don’t try to impress me with the ruins of Great Zimbabwe because I’ve seen the Palace of Versailles. There are things worth praising in Africa but don’t patronize Africans.
Don’t try to impress me with the Palace of Versailles because I’ve seen the Pyramids and the Temple of Karnak, in Africa. Versailles is in better condition, true, but only because it is a mere baby.
Fifty years ago the US supported a government change in Cuba, and they have struggled ever since. We will never know what would have happened if we hadn’t intervened, but maybe it would have been better than what resulted. The church has grown there while the economy has suffered. It doesn’t look like the powers that be have learned anything in a half century. There are probably other examples in South America and Africa where we should have stayed out of their business.
And in Iraq, Steve, surely? Looks like another Cuba in the making to me.