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Who can fail to share a sense of heartbreak at the pitiful sight of African famines, the wasted human tragedy and sorrowful sight which plagues every TV screen throughout the western world. Who can help but feel sympathy for the ragged children, the skeletal images of thousands of people, the desperate plight of refugees, or the civil war torn mutilated victims of a continent lost to the savage in-fighting of tribal factions? Most certainly not me, and I guess, not you either.
All too often we watch images of refugee camps, fly covered people, and disease ridden souls and instantly leap to one automatic conclusion: these people need our help. But do they? Do they really need our interfering ways, or is it part of the interfering liberal elite that have brought about this affront to humanity? No doubt most of you, like myself have donated to one of the various charitable organisations after their envelopes have fallen through your letter box, their appeals with doe eyed celebrities have manifested through your television, or some halfwit pop star, has demanded in a foul mouthed four letter tirade, that you hand over your dough.
And like any individual suffering the rampant indignity of emotional blackmail you've coughed-up. I know I most certainly have. But if we're honest with ourselves, are we not just exacerbating the situation and perpetuating the misery. I know it's hard to see such heart wrenching images and not feel an element of contrition, but isn't it this very contrition which motivates and perpetuates the whole vicious cycle? Money buys food, food keeps people alive, people produce more people and the whole damned circus of depravity continues unabated.
Africa's problems really gathered momentum in the late forties. With the second world war at an end, nazi Germany and her allies defeated, the western world practically bankrupt and a new world order of Starlinist Russia and America taking over from the old world order, a new vision was developed along ideological lines: Communism and Capitalism.
The Africans would be forced to choose one of the other, as the old Imperial empires marched lethargically towards the sunset of Colonial rule. Unbeknown to the Africans, they never had it so good. The complaints about the British and French empires was no more than outside motivation by other nations, to a backward, illiterate peoples whose belief was motivated more by corruption than any semblance of achievement.
Quite simply these people were, and still are, incapable of governing themselves or their respective peoples. To replace the old Empires, a new body was formed in the shape of the UN, a hurriedly cobbled together bunch of compromise candidates from countries who couldn't fill their rice bowls.
With all the pomp and pageantry of empire, the UN building was opened in New York to great acclaim by a nation, the USA, who believed in their
naivety, they'd found a panacea for world domination.
Unfortunately for the
rest of the world, what they got was a mighty superpower unprepared to back its words with deeds. Where as the old imperial empires of western Europe were prepared, where necessary to commit combat troops, civil servants and administrative staff, the UN and its puppet master the US were prepared to commit nothing except an abundance of hot air.
The Americans planned to inflict a twentieth century plan on a people barely beyond a medieval epoch. Africa would be left to their own device, with just a watchful eye from a distant US administration. It was a recipe for disaster, a predictable fiasco for a people who, politically were not even out of short trousers.
Continued
Famine in Africa: Essay Page 1
Famine in Africa: Essay Page 2
Famine in Africa: Essay Page 3
Famine in Africa: Essay Page 4
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