A riposte to Kaure’s Holy Trinity

IT is not an entirely complex exercise to comprehend why Alexactus Kaure interrogated in his last potent offering ‘Africa and the Holy Trinity’ the existing dogma around the politics of HIV-AIDS, foreign aid and the fight against terrorism.

I argue this way not because of the various conspiracy theories that have permeated high echelons of Africa’s intelligentsia and leadership on these issues. However, in the form of a caveat we all remember well in recent times Thabo Mbeki’s almost reckless conspiratorial questioning of scientific wisdom around HIV-AIDS.Mbeki’s questioning of this issue as a policy-maker would have far greater implications for South Africa’s efforts in fighting that disease.Be that as it may, I agree with parts of Kaure’s argument that these three issues have important structural implications for our economies and our politics as a continent.Additionally, Kaure is also accurate about the negative perceptions that exist on Africa’s portrayal as a comatose continent as a result of HIV- AIDS.These perceptions are at times erroneous but as the aphorism goes ‘in politics, perceptions are more important than facts’.More so, as an African living in the Diaspora, I get to hear in seminars some white colleagues referring to parts of Africa as ‘des pays pourris’ (rotten countries), instead of the politically correct reference of “weak states”.And a friend who speaks basic Mandarin (China’s main language) last week told me with excitement over lunch that the equivalent of Africa in mandarin would be something like ‘dark continent’.Worse, my reliable Wikipedia states that that the characters for ‘Africa’ in Mandarin mean ‘wrong continent’.This shows that the world doesn’t hesitate to look at Africa with such demeaning adjectives.Therefore, we have to explain and defend just as Kaure did in some ways that fatalities are not everywhere.But on foreign aid, in part a critique to my earlier apposite comments on the un-kept promises to Africa by the G8, Kaure’s argument becomes thin on the ground as the attentive reader hovers through it.A rather strong conclusion is made when he argues ‘no one ever questioned whether we need this ‘aid’ thing in the first place’.Essentially saying implicitly that we really don’t need aid.This conclusion is problematic.At a purely philosophical level, we can debate the politics of aid and come to various elitist and ideologically driven conclusions.I infer here that Kaure read the arguments of the outstanding African scholar Samir Amin on delinking with the centre or it could be his own genie.In short it could be a position rooted in the excellent work of the German sociologist André Guenter Frank and his neo-Marxist inspired Dependency Theory of the 1960s or its critic Immanuel Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory and their collective assumptions about a capitalist cycle of dependence constructed in periphery-centred relations.However instead of deconstructing the aid debate, taking it out of this intellectual reference and power structures, filling us in on the pros and cons of aid, the argument is normative.It is laced with generalisations because Kaure ignores the impact that development aid may have on the lives of ordinary Africans.Kaure makes the mistake of only looking at development aid from a purely political or rational actor point of view.Evidently, development aid serves the foreign policy objects of donor countries.And during the Cold War it was used as a foreign policy tool to keep hard pressed undemocratic, but strategically important states on side.But we are no longer living in the Cold War ontology.Foreign aid does have a practical side to it that we should not ignore in any decent academic argument.I believe that a fine academic argument must not be removed from its social context and reality.On this score, Kaure’s argument is laid-back.Modern democratic industrial states just like businesses are concerned with how they are branded; these states are concerned with how citizens in other parts of the world look at them.Business students would call it corporate social responsibility and this would drive Namdeb to provide computers to learners at A.Shipena High School in Katutura or Microsoft’s Bill Gates to provide anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS patients in Malawi through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.Similarly, the British government would provide aid for security sector reform in Sierra Leone for sustainable peace or France would provide resources for Namibia’s decentralisation process to provide efficient public services.Furthermore, the US government provision of grants to Namibian orphans and vulnerable children to enable them to complete schooling makes an important change to recipient communities.These initiatives would free up funds for other priority areas such as education and health.At a continental level, the French, the British and Americans would assist with setting up and reinforcing Africa’s peacekeeping capacity so that we don’t need in ten years any European Union military intervention to keep the peace between the Lemas and the Hendus of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Whilst it could be a matter of prestige for an industrialised country to be known as the largest donor of development aid, the impact is largely practical.Mind you that China is out of pragmatism a recipient of foreign aid.We should keep our aid debate pragmatic too.Essentially, my argument here is that the aid debate is much more complex.In some instances, aid could be a survival issue or in some it could create what economists refers to as the ‘moral hazard’ (states acting irresponsibly knowing that they will be bailed out with aid).To conclude, I think that a more enlightened discussion should take place on the latter and also on the perversion that accompanies foreign aid in the form of exorbitant perks for foreign consultants and aid workers for these rob the intended beneficiaries of meaningful change.* Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in Political Science at the University of Paris Panthéon Sorbonne, France.However, in the form of a caveat we all remember well in recent times Thabo Mbeki’s almost reckless conspiratorial questioning of scientific wisdom around HIV-AIDS.Mbeki’s questioning of this issue as a policy-maker would have far greater implications for South Africa’s efforts in fighting that disease.Be that as it may, I agree with parts of Kaure’s argument that these three issues have important structural implications for our economies and our politics as a continent.Additionally, Kaure is also accurate about the negative perceptions that exist on Africa’s portrayal as a comatose continent as a result of HIV- AIDS.These perceptions are at times erroneous but as the aphorism goes ‘in politics, perceptions are more important than facts’.More so, as an African living in the Diaspora, I get to hear in seminars some white colleagues referring to parts of Africa as ‘des pays pourris’ (rotten countries), instead of the politically correct reference of “weak states”.And a friend who speaks basic Mandarin (China’s main language) last week told me with excitement over lunch that the equivalent of Africa in mandarin would be something like ‘dark continent’.Worse, my reliable Wikipedia states that that the characters for ‘Africa’ in Mandarin mean ‘wrong continent’.This shows that the world doesn’t hesitate to look at Africa with such demeaning adjectives.Therefore, we have to explain and defend just as Kaure did in some ways that fatalities are not everywhere.But on foreign aid, in part a critique to my earlier apposite comments on the un-kept promises to Africa by the G8, Kaure’s argument becomes thin on the ground as the attentive reader hovers through it.A rather strong conclusion is made when he argues ‘no one ever questioned whether we need this ‘aid’ thing in the first place’.Essentially saying implicitly that we really don’t need aid.This conclusion is problematic.At a purely philosophical level, we can debate the politics of aid and come to various elitist and ideologically driven conclusions.I infer here tha
t Kaure read the arguments of the outstanding African scholar Samir Amin on delinking with the centre or it could be his own genie.In short it could be a position rooted in the excellent work of the German sociologist André Guenter Frank and his neo-Marxist inspired Dependency Theory of the 1960s or its critic Immanuel Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory and their collective assumptions about a capitalist cycle of dependence constructed in periphery-centred relations.However instead of deconstructing the aid debate, taking it out of this intellectual reference and power structures, filling us in on the pros and cons of aid, the argument is normative.It is laced with generalisations because Kaure ignores the impact that development aid may have on the lives of ordinary Africans.Kaure makes the mistake of only looking at development aid from a purely political or rational actor point of view.Evidently, development aid serves the foreign policy objects of donor countries.And during the Cold War it was used as a foreign policy tool to keep hard pressed undemocratic, but strategically important states on side.But we are no longer living in the Cold War ontology.Foreign aid does have a practical side to it that we should not ignore in any decent academic argument.I believe that a fine academic argument must not be removed from its social context and reality.On this score, Kaure’s argument is laid-back.Modern democratic industrial states just like businesses are concerned with how they are branded; these states are concerned with how citizens in other parts of the world look at them.Business students would call it corporate social responsibility and this would drive Namdeb to provide computers to learners at A.Shipena High School in Katutura or Microsoft’s Bill Gates to provide anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS patients in Malawi through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.Similarly, the British government would provide aid for security sector reform in Sierra Leone for sustainable peace or France would provide resources for Namibia’s decentralisation process to provide efficient public services.Furthermore, the US government provision of grants to Namibian orphans and vulnerable children to enable them to complete schooling makes an important change to recipient communities.These initiatives would free up funds for other priority areas such as education and health.At a continental level, the French, the British and Americans would assist with setting up and reinforcing Africa’s peacekeeping capacity so that we don’t need in ten years any European Union military intervention to keep the peace between the Lemas and the Hendus of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Whilst it could be a matter of prestige for an industrialised country to be known as the largest donor of development aid, the impact is largely practical.Mind you that China is out of pragmatism a recipient of foreign aid.We should keep our aid debate pragmatic too.Essentially, my argument here is that the aid debate is much more complex.In some instances, aid could be a survival issue or in some it could create what economists refers to as the ‘moral hazard’ (states acting irresponsibly knowing that they will be bailed out with aid).To conclude, I think that a more enlightened discussion should take place on the latter and also on the perversion that accompanies foreign aid in the form of exorbitant perks for foreign consultants and aid workers for these rob the intended beneficiaries of meaningful change. * Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in Political Science at the University of Paris Panthéon Sorbonne, France.