Colonialism is Alive and Well

‘Sierra Leoneans have no work ethic’ he generalises, knocking back the country’s average daily wage worth of spirits with a deft flick of the rest. Meanwhile,  tired locals pass by selling the same wares they were hawking 12 hours ago in the burning hot sun. The man has taken great personal offence at his housekeeper’s temerity in tending to one of her orphaned siblings on a work day, and has deducted her wages accordingly.

I soon establish that the man is one of almost 100 McKinsey consultants working, alongside two other international consultancies, on the Ebola recovery project.  A firm famed for telling its clients to fire people makes an interesting choice of advisor for a country where diamonds are easier to come by than stable incomes. With even the most junior McKinsey staff being paid a good $10,000 a month, it feels to me like Sierra Leone needs McKinsey like it needs another outbreak of Ebola.

The aid model has gone through various stages and, whilst there is almost unanimous agreement that all the previous approaches didn’t work, everyone continues to insist, like a gambler down to his last chip, that ‘this one here’s a good ‘un’. But whilst indiscriminately funneling millions of dollars to humans rights abusers like Mobutu was clearly wrong, that doesn’t make channeling it through hugely profitable western corporations (or, David Cameron, funding ‘moderate Jihadis’) any more right. In the 70s you just had to be on the right side of the cold war divide; today you have to buy into the West’s insatiable appetite for consumerism. Different criteria, but those setting the agenda are the same.

The last 40 years of aid have been a complete failure... but this time it might just work for us!

Ultimately, the whole ‘International Development’ complex is built upon the whole predicate that westerners know how countries should develop, and that these countries cannot be trusted to lead their own development. If they could be trusted, we could all just save whole outlay on expensive consultants and white Toyota land cruisers, and just give the money straight to the poor. Because, if we’re being honest with ourselves, a slum dweller in Burkina Faso probably know a lot more about what poor people want and need than a rich consultant from Frankfurt, no matter how many degrees the latter has*.

Unfortunately, this is not the case: in the worst cases, beneficiaries are made to jump through more hoops than a circus performer, just to be in with a shot at actually receiving any material benefit. I have met many business owners who have told me how they have received ‘business training’ from a parade of different NGOs (sometimes verging on double figures); we’ve done income and expenses until we’re blue in the face, they tell me. We get that, but what we need is the capital to replace our broken machinery.

“What’s that, you need money for food? Hold on while I teach you about Neoliberalism”

It’s not that I doubt the good intentions of most expats (expat is what you call an immigrant who is white); King Leopold probably thought he was doing the right thing by civilising the Congo.  But good intentions only get you so far. If I’m working hard to solve a problem, and some-one comes and tells me I’m doing it wrong, and I should just do like they’re doing, my first reaction is to tell them to where to stick it. The point isn’t who’s right or not, it’s that often comes across patronising and demeaning to go around telling strangers that their methods are inferior to yours.

Imagine now that everything you do, your whole way of life, is subject to this condescending judgement. Imagine a group of people, all of whom incidentally have a very different outward appearance from you, constantly telling you that your way of life is primitive and backward, whilst handing out suggestions on how you can be as amazing as them. This would be bad enough if they had a good case, but when the lecturers in question are facing crises of economic stagnation, inequality, critical global warming, and growing depression, it becomes an unfunny joke.

Largely these third world Jerry Springers fall into two categories, both of whom can agree that the entire continent is a den of savages who, if left to their own devices, would be hurling shit at each other and rubbing sticks together to make fire; one believes that the way to salvation is that of the lord Jesus Christ (somehow the colonists weren’t quite thorough enough in their systematic indoctrination), the other a course of ‘market based reforms’.

Somehow, despite the former tend to be let their views be more clear: ‘they are evil; they eat their own children!’ ‘they worship the devil!’ etc; they decry their tribalism, ignoring the fact that most tribes were living in far more harmony than the cities and nations of europe before colonialists came a divided societies along tribal lines.

But, despite have seen more than enough poverty stricken individuals place 10% of their measly earnings into tithe envelopes (one preacher called all the unemployed in the church to the front and prayed for them, telling them to give the first fruits of  their labour to the pastor) and the disgusting scene of an american preacher telling a stadium of entranced listeners that God had spoken to him and told him all their ills will be magically healed if they would only put more financial faith in Him, the neoliberalists somehow manage to be more insidious; the loony Christians are clearly a joke, but these guys, quite literally, mean business.

“What’s that, you need money for food? Hold on while I teach you about Neoliberalism”

- Unidentified INGO big-shot

And if going around inflicting the living nightmare that is Quickbooks Pro on every small business that suffers the misfortune of coming to an NGO looking for funding is not rubbing enough salt into the wounds, there is the whole issue of appearances. It would not be an overstatement to say that, at least in some countries, the average expat working for an international NGO earns at least 50 times the average wage. And it’s not like they try and fit in, either; some of the eating spots frequented by said NGO workers are so out of reach of the average population they may as well have a sign saying Whites & Politicians Only; and, given their general reluctance to actually venture into the slums and general living areas of the people whose lives they should really be trying to understand, the clearest glimpse most people get of these people is through the tinted windows of their shiny 4x4s as they shield their passengers from the baying hordes outside. Humans are not rational being it doesn’t matter whether someone is here to help, ostentatious displays of wealth can be galling, especially if such wealth shows no tangible signs of trickling down to the man on the street.

The developing world represents potentially our greatest chance of salvation; billions of people with the opportunity to do it over, to come up with a new and unique model of development, of doing business. Unfortunately, a select group of people -mostly white power brokers and the corrupt but ultimately placatable cronies that wield power in the target countries, like  some sort of middle management - have too much of a personal interest in trying to make every country in the developing world a shitty version of ‘the West’ - complete with primark t-shirts, premier league football and candy crush - to let them go their own way.

A free t-shirt goes a long way… to destroying local industry and enforcing western cultural stereotypes.

My Capitalism is Bigger than Yours

‘Less regulation, more privatisation!’ my colleague exhorts, foaming at the mouth. I reach into my bag, frantically feeling around for an effective projectile.  All I can find is a copy of the communist manifesto, which really lacks sufficient heft. Where is Das Kapital when you need it?

Whilst not every proponent of neo-liberalism voices their views with the vehement verve of a robotic Richard Simmons, the general, and often unspoken, devotion to this norm is prevalent far beyond the corporate sphere. Nowhere more so than in the world of international development, where previously mild mannered idealists become free market exponents purely through a lack of imagination.

A likeness of my capitalist colleagues.

But the best evidence against the implicit raison d’etre of many of the biggest NGOs is right under their noses, they just need to look at their clients to see the folly of the capitalist creed. Take Sierra Leone, the country that tried and failed to make eating children’s hearts cool.

Since, in 1961, the British decided their cute little colony was ready for the big wide world and released it, bright eyed and bushy tailed, into the realm of independence, Sierra Leone has suffered under the yolk of a farcical parade of military coups and corrupt dictatorships, none of which has had strong regulation or infrastructure as a particular priority. A cynical person might say that some of them were more motivated by money than by the good of their people.

In fact, the successive governments of Sierra Leone have given about as much attention to oversight and regulation as the British government has given to monsoon mitigation. Any semblance of property or employee laws, intellectual property rights or environmental standards  hold no real way in practise. Tax rates can be negotiated with the tax authority, land rights generally come down to who pays the most, and any laws that are written down are riddled with spelling and numerical errors and unlikely to be taken seriously. An officer at the Ministry of Labour laughed heartily when I told him I wanted to operate in accordance with employee laws. ‘Sir,’ he said, gathering himself together, ‘If everyone followed all the rules in this document, there wouldn’t be any businesses left.’ He then wiped his face with a $100 bill and excused himself, presumably attending to his sex-weary concubines*.

The upshot is that, historically, businesses have been able to do as they please, provided they have money to grease the cogs along the way. Building on someone else’s land? Want to tear town protected forest? Nothing that has proved much of an impediment in the past; money talks here. Before you know it, you end up with an ecosystem where thousands of workers are paid below the minimum wage (the choice is between that or nothing), businesses save costs by driving 30 year old cars that spew poisonous black gases toward flocks of pedestrians too poor to afford transport and the transport system is operated entirely by 20 somethings who wear sunglasses at night and call themselves things like ‘Mr. International’.  This is a place where you have to pay a bribe just to report a bribe to the police, and homeless child labourers ask not ‘please, sir, can I have some more?’ but ‘please, sir, can I have some?’

Not only has Sierra Leone let its (weak and ailing) private sector take over all the essential functions of the country, but it has long since sold off the rights to its minerals and mines to foreign contractors; they have killed the goose, feasted on its innards, and then starved while the foreign multinationals dine out on its golden eggs.

Amidst these squalid free for all, the only wonder is that Sierra Leoneans are asked to pay taxes in the first place; given that the national tax authority’s buildings are about the only physical evidence of taxpayer money being spent, it begs the question: are they paying taxes solely to fund the collection of more taxes?

So for those who espouse more free-markets, less state involvement and less regulation; which really adheres more to you capitalist ideal; the United States, with its public health systems, massive investment in university and state research funding, and its network of national parks, or Sierra Leone, the country where mothers sell their children to witch doctors whilst their husbands buy underage girls at a dollar an hour? And which would you rather live in?


*This may sound silly but two officers at another government ministry introduced a quiet and shaken looking young secretary to me as ‘Comfort’. ‘That’s a nice name, I told her’; the officers laughed loudly, ‘that is; she’s our comfort’. Cunts.