The Haiti connection

For the first three days of this week we've been looking at Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, by Richard Dowden. Mr. Dowden is a British journalist and has written for the Times, and the Economist. As the book tells you, he has spent many years travelling in and reporting on virtually every country of sub-Saharan Africa.

Dowden wants to be sympathetic to Africa and its people, but his conclusions are gloomy. Since independce, i.e. for the last half-century, Africa has declined into poverty and chaos, and the writer sees little hope of much improvement any time soon.

A reader has wondered about the relevance of this subject to today's news. Africa is not in the news at the moment. Somalis are killing each other. Comrade Bob Mugabe's regime continues to push white farmers off their land in Zimbabwe.

The president of South Africa has taken another wife (his 5th, by most counts) and admitted paternity of his 20th love child. (This is the same man who said in court that he was careful to take a shower after unprotected sex so he wouldn't get AIDS.) In other words, things are normal in Africa.

But there is a little bit of Africa in the western hemisphere which has been much in the news of late. That would be Haiti. Watch the video clips from the earthquake zone and note the similarity between the look of the place and the look and actions of the people.

Yes, Haiti is an African nation. The people are ethnically African, the descendants of slaves brought from Africa in the 18th century. Since Haiti was then a French colony, they did not have the admixture of Spanish that altered the ethnicity of their neighbours in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. They remain African.

Politically too, Haiti resembles Africa more than its Caribbean neighbours. The slaves revolted nearly two hundred years ago, expelled the French and established the western hemisphere's first republic. Since then there have been a succession of regimes, including dictatorships and one short-lived empire, not to mention the occasional invasion by America. In a word, western democracy has not exactly flourished in Haiti.

Visitors to Haiti before the earthquake could be forgiven for thinking they were in Africa. There was the same decay and disintegration, the same incompetence, the same corruption, the same slums and poverty...the same people.

Haiti was a mess, and that in spite of billions of dollars in foreign aid and the tireless efforts of thousands of white missionaries, aid workers and Doers of Good. Just like Africa.

Then came the earthquake, and now everyone's jumping on the Let's-Do-Something-For-Haiti bandwagon. Ah, the white man's burden -- perpetual guilt combined with a nagging fear that maybe the terrible racists are right after all.

Opening our hearts and wallets to the stricken Haitians (and those who will do well out of doing good) is very commendable. But do we really expect that when the dust settles and all the relief money has been spent, the situation of the Haitians who are left will be any better? Cyncial Walt says don't bet on it!