OPINION
Tsunamis expose West's hypocrisy
By PETER MADAKA
The world media have described the generosity of the international community to the victims of the South Asian Tsunamis as heart-warming and overwhelming. Citizens of Western countries have been profusely praised for opening their hearts and wallets to the victims-a response that, in large measure, forced their own reluctant governments to increase their aid beyond what was initially thought possible under the existing political and economic structures.
Within a single week, orphaned children and the surviving poor in the region who, until now were condemned to drinking dirty water and chronic shortages of food and medicines, were drinking clean, bottled water, had enough good food and even saw a doctor and got cleaner blankets-made in America, Germany, the UK, Japan Australia or Canada-a privilege the rest of the world had been told was unaffordable to the wretched of the so-called Third World.
Thanks to the tsunamis, the rapid and enormous transfer of so much wealth within so short a time now confirms that the rest of the world is poor, diseased and deprived because the West-both citizens and governments-have not the sense or felt the urgency to change their despicable conditions.
Whether the outpouring was because of the hundreds of naked blonds swept to death as they basked on the sandy beaches surrounded by starving locals or it was a genuine human concern that triggered this rare display of concern, what can't be argued is that, without warning, the tsunami flung open the closed world of White power and privilege -- as well as the hypocrisy -- better than anything the most ardent social activist could have hoped for.
Granted, the numbers of the dead run into the hundreds of thousands, but the reality is that this pales in comparison to the millions killed in Africa as a result of Western-sponsored wars, famine and AIDS; and in comparison to the millions of AIDS and war orphans left behind across Africa. Not a single Western government ever expressed a sense of urgency to relax its economic stranglehold on Africa so the continent could provide better for its people; not a single Western government ever relaxed its adoption or sponsorship laws to help Africans. At no point did the World Bank even pretend to shed the crocodile tears it is now shedding in South Asia. Is it because Africans are considered expendable?
The world is busy patting itself on the back, and with good reason. Still, this is a world fashioned by television cameras, radio and newspapers. This moment of disaster is a magical moment for public relations; a time for the West to polish its otherwise rotten image of a corrupt, greedy, self-indulgent and predatory group of nations grown wealthy on the back of the rest of the starving world.
Indeed, nothing better explains this than the competitiveness displayed as countries vied on camera for the first spot on the donors' list. But the world has seen this before. As soon as the cameras fade to black, the interest will die and the rest of the world will revert to its misery as the West, led by the World Bank, will revert to its old and destructive lifestyle.
It is unfortunate that social activists who, for a long time, have fought to see a fair redistribution of wealth, have gone silent at a time when everything that they have been saying is possible has been affirmed. For decades, they have argued that it is possible to end the social and economic injustice; that it is possible to live well without cannibalizing and eviscerating entire civilizations. Grief or not, this is the best moment for social activists to ratchet up the call for an overhaul of the destructive and predatory structures built by the West, now policed by the World Bank and a multitude of related agencies.
The year 2005 begins with an apparent show of human sympathy and shared humanity. Yet, just as in the case during the earthquake in Iran, the genocide in Rwanda or the famine in Ethiopia, world concern and the so-called shared humanity are fleeting and tend to disappear as soon as the cameras are turned off.
The tsunami was a perverse but important lesson to humanity. It was also the one unstoppable force that coerced the privileged and rich Western citizens to defy their governments-albeit temporarily-to look beyond racism and narrow economic self-interest to help people simply because they were a part of the human family. In so doing, Western citizens also confirmed that poverty, racism, deprivation and resource shortages persist because we-the privileged citizens of the West-feel it is in our best interest to keep it that way. Every person in the world could have access to water, food, medical care and shelter if we in the West collectively felt as human as we did as a result of the tsunami.
After what we have seen, it is difficult to defend the old and tired claim that the conditions in the Third World cannot be changed.
" I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins." Philosopher Antony Flew 1922 - .
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