The curious case of subsidising poverty
By The Journeyman
Thu 12 Apr. 2012, 10:00 CAT

AID can kill. Giving can snuffle the life of its recipient. It can stifle the very life that it is intended to thrive. Aid ought to be intelligent, measured; it must have a specific purpose for it to achieve the desired outcome.

A chap came to me one day. He wore shoes that had numerous holes in them, shoes that had never benefited from the nourishing effects of polish for a long time, shoes that had once been black but were now grey, the leather hard, leather that if inadvertently had been rubbed against your skin, would cut your skin, now razory. As if convincing testimony for the local use of copper, the shoes had copper wires for laces.

I wanted to laugh but I didn’t.

This chap was thin, not because of having an Atkins diet but for want of food. His oversized clothes were filthy and over-worn. He was the kind of chap that would have made the perfect poster for global aid. Evidently, he was a victim of chronic hunger.

He was the kind of chap, this one, that would have made Bob Geldolf and U2’s Bono quickly shed tears of compassion. He was a sight for sore eyes. It was clear that this chap needed more money in his pockets. He had none.

All the 90 days after the 2011 elections he had waited, with bated breath, for more money to be put in his pockets. Nothing of the sort had happened. Someone had pointed him my way. Just looking at him made my eyes water with tears. Instinctively, I made a sign of the cross.

‘Help me with money,’ he said, as if without my support his life would soon end.

Quietly, I stared at him, a myriad of thoughts turbulently swirling in my mind.
‘Please,’ he implored. ‘I am in trouble.’ I could see that.

Finding my voice, I bluntly said: ‘Yes, I have money with me. But I will not give it to you.’ To accentuate the effect, taunting him, I placed a ward of fifty-thousand Kwacha bills on the table.

His face instantaneously contorted, as if in pain; whether at the time my words had occasioned shock and disappointment in him, I could not readily tell. He seemed on the verge of an epileptic fit.

I went on, pontificating: ‘If I give you this money, I am sure that your condition will not change. I know that based on the promise that was made to you, that of the government “putting more money in your pockets”, you are one of the many Zambians that brought this new government to power.

If I give you my money, I will only cushion you from the requisite action that you must take to sustainably change your circumstance. My action might act as a negative subsidy to you, blind you to the very source of your misery and its cure. I am sure that the pain that you now feel has a purpose.

I am afraid that my taking your pain away by giving you my money may actually accelerate your death, it might stop you from doing that which nature dictates that you must do. God has a lesson for you, my dear man. Now go and act on your misery. There is immense value in the torture that now has become your life.’

You see, I did not think that money was what the chap really needed, maybe Jesus.

He was speechless, too stunned to use his malnourished vocal cords.
An awkward silence then followed. It seemed to last forever.

Finding his voice, and as if entitled to my money, offensively, he then said: ‘Mwayamba ku meka, boss.’

I remained quiet. I really had nothing else to say to him.

Given to giving, it was very difficult for me to say what I said. But like quinine, it might be very bitter to swallow but it sure takes the disease away, so I consoled myself.

As I watched him forlornly walk away, appearing thoroughly dejected, I lowered my eyes and cried.

In their book, Aid As Obstacle, Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins and David Kinley, make the following case: ‘…food aid shipments depress the incentive of foreign farmers to grow their own food…if you give people food they will not want to grow food for themselves.

The fact is that dumping large quantities of low-priced American grain in under-developed countries makes it impossible for the small domestic producers to compete. Unable to get a fair return for their grain, such producers are frequently forced to sell their land and become landless (and often jobless) labourers.’

They go on: ‘Concerned Americans should not think of food aid as the way to help the hungry. Dwelling on food aid - how much and what criteria should be used - diverts attention from the process of how hunger is created.

It allows us to forget that the overriding impact of the United States on the ability of people to become self reliant is not through food aid but through the corporate, military, economic and covert involvement of the United States in their countries.

We are thus advocating not only an end to chronic food aid but an end to all forms of aid to countries where there is not already under way a fundamental democratisation of control over productive resources.’

Granted, people need aid. And the best support that people can ever get is inspired leadership. People need to be shown the way out of poverty for such a way exists.

Giving people fruits that they have not earned may confer upon the donor a satisfying sense of beneficence and may indeed be life-saving in the short-term, but when this becomes chronic/perennial, it obfuscates their development paths, it makes them dependent on receiving as opposed to producing. It cripples them.

Indeed, there are limits to giving.

‘Official aid to Africa (that is, money given by governments or international financial institutions funded by governments, as distinct from private charity giving) has many harmful effects that have actually increased poverty in Africa and put off the development of states capable of fulfilling the rights and needs of African citizens.

In reality, in many African countries aid has meant more poverty, more hungry people, worse basic services for poor people and damage to already precarious democratic institutions…

I have slowly come to accept that aid is not the answer to Africa’s poverty…further dependency on aid from foreign donors has undermined the development of the basic institutions needed to govern and the vital link of accountability between state and the citizen…

If the first reason to stop campaigning for aid increases is that aid may be doing more harm than good in some countries, the second is that all the emphasis on aid is obscuring the far more important policies the West should be adopting to help Africans out of poverty Glennie Jonathan. The Trouble With Aid: Why Less Could Mean More For Africa. Zed Books. 2008.’

Note this parallel. A child-plant that grows by its parent-tree and spends much of its life in the sheltered existence of its parent’s foliage soon stunts. In time it wilts, and faltering, it fails to fully express its potential, and prematurely it dies. Take heed.

William Easterly in his book, The White Man’s Burden: Why The West’s Efforts To Aid The Rest Have Done So Much Ill And So Little Good,’ advises as follows: ‘…

When you are in a hole, the top priority is to stop digging. Discard your patronising confidence that you know how to solve other people’s problems better that they do.

Don’t try to fix governments or societies. Don’t invade other countries, or send arms to one of the brutal armies in a civil war. End conditionality. Stop wasting our time with summits and frameworks.

Give up on sweeping and naive institutional reform schemes. The aim should be to make individuals better off, not to transform governments or societies…the West can end the pathetic spectacle of the IMF, World Bank, and other aid agencies coddling the warlords and kleptocrats.

It can end the paternalism and hypocrisy of conditionality. It can end the inherent contradiction between “country ownership” and dictating conditions from Washington… and aid won’t make poverty history, which Western efforts cannot possibly do.

Only the self-reliant efforts of poor people and poor societies themselves can end poverty, only borrowing ideas and institutions from the West when it suits them to do so.’

What is hardly discussed is that it also must be noted that aid can be used as weapon. The recipients of aid can deliberately be weakened by making them dependent on it, and when it is timely, can then be manipulated to behave in a manner that, though discomforting for the recipient, suits the interests of the giver very well.

In such a strikingly informative and authoritative manner, a way that gives hope to many Africans, our own Dambisa Moyo, Dr Steven Moyo’s daughter (Dr Steven Moyo is one of the new, recently sworn-in anti-corruption commissioners) warns and tell us: ‘In most poor countries today, aid is in the civil service, aid is in political institutions, aid is in the military, aid is in healthcare and education, aid is in infrastructure, aid is endemic.

The more it infiltrates, the more it erodes, the greater the culture of aid-dependency…and the notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty, and has done so, is a myth.

Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but have increased. Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world…in the early stages of development it matters little to a starving African family whether they can vote or not.

Later they may care, but first of all they need food for today, and the tomorrows to come, and that requires an economy that is growing…and what is clear is that democracy is not the prerequisite for economic growth that aid proponents maintain.

On the contrary, it is economic growth that is a prerequisite for democracy; and the one thing economic growth does not need is aid (Moyo, Dambisa. Dead Aid. Allen Lane. 2009].’

It is curious to note dear reader, that, in the 70s it was observed in Cuba, where there was no democracy, that nutrition problems resulted more from overeating and bad dietary habits than from starvation. Quite revealing, wouldn’t you say, dear reader?

Dear reader, the case for being wary of aid has now been made. Aid that is not focused on ‘teaching you how to fish’ but instead focuses on giving you fish to eat, might be a sure way to your enslavement, your loss of person survival power, and the beginning of your end of days here on earth.

I hope that the poor chap I did not aid with money, the one that needs ‘more money in his pockets,’ the type that has made Bob Geldof and U2’s Bono the ‘heroes’ that they are, will have a chance to read this paper, that is if he is able. If he is not, please, pilgrim, pass on this message to him.

Word has it that he has now formed a civil society against poverty. I hope he will not be deregistered. You see, I just might lend him a hand, do his speeches or something. I sincerely wish him well.

Pilgrim, pass on this article to our own Michael Sata as well, the Republican President. Let him read it over, say, a cup of Indian herbal tea as he recuperates. It just might help him govern us and our country better.

We are all in this national boat together, you see. Watching it sink from the sidelines is synonymous with national sabotage. It just won’t do.

It is indeed possible, desirable even, for all of us to have more money in our pockets. The formula is there. It exists. Nonetheless, each one of us must earn the reward.

Free things, you see, are very costly, pilgrim. Umanena catsitsa dzaye kuti njovu ithyoke mnyanga. Cuma, mwanawe, cili m’nthaka. Take heed.