Regional
(2010-02-01)
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AURORA, CO
(KUNC) -
Another benefit concert will be held this week to help Haitians following last month's devastating earthquake in the island nation. But KUNC commentator Pius Kamau says real, long-lasting change will involve more than just throwing money and the problem.
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Evangelist Pat Robertson recently invoked the devil to explain the latest of Haiti's misfortunes. By opting to fight their French masters, Haiti's slaves cast their lot with the devil, he said. The fact that a fault runs under Port au Prince meant nothing to him. For him and men of his ilk science, reason and history are unimportant. History's lessons hold little sway in their minds.
The island today resembles Hiroshima after America dropped the Hydrogen bomb. As tragedy after tragedy have befallen it, Haiti has served me as a cloudy mirror of what the African continent has endured. In addition to their black populations, there are fascinating and instructive parallels between Africa and Haiti. For 200 years Haiti has been invaded, settled, abandoned, and abused by the Europeans and Americans. Africa was also colonized and brutalized by Europeans for two centuries. Perhaps the Congo where Belgian King Leopold murdered more than 8 million Africans in the 1880s best illustrates the bestiality of the European colonization of Africa.
The Scramble for Africa in the 1880s saw the continent cut up into ribbons that had no rhyme or reason, and no benefit to the natives. For a hundred years Africa's white masters never bothered to train the natives in the essentials of governance. And after the second World War, the movement towards colonial independence gathered steam. To Africans the idea sounded good, except it was hollow and meaningless. Europeans cynically waited to see Africans fail, which many did. Notwithstanding Africa's poor governance Europe has stripped it of its natural resources, often supporting murderous leaders.
As is true of Haiti, at each new African crisis the US and Europeans have returned, always for short spells. Who can forget the many famines; Live Aid concerts to raise funds for starving Africans? Huge sums of money are thrown at crises with little thought and less long-term planning. Despite chronic failure, no attempt has ever been made to hold a reverse scramble for Africa.
Each crisis and the West's attempt to combat it costs huge sums of money. That is true in Haiti right now, as it is true in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. I have always thought that a sustained effort at educating, making nations whole physically and mentally would have been more humane, wiser and in the end more economical.
The silver lining maybe that this tragedy might lead to a new approach towards the island and its people. Perhaps we will try to minimize future tragedies, by constructing a new society, on a firmer foundation. One able to withstand future economic and political hurricanes and natural disasters like earth quakes. This too is true of Africa. If we want to see a healthy continent, the former colonial powers must return with a long-term commitment to teach and build viable societies.
The time has come to put to rest the two century long tragedy of Haiti. The former slaves who fought to free themselves must be helped to enjoy the fruits of true freedom. Not to do so means we are simply treating a gaping and bleeding wound with a package of Band-aids.
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