The "Famous, Rich And In The Slums" beamed across the world by the BBC for Comic Relief during the past two weeks is not mere rhetoric. The latest reminder of this has come in the Kenyan slum of Kibera The lethal combination of upward-spiralling unemployment, poor sanitation and substandard health facilities makes Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire Mumbai slums in India look like paradise.
The truly harrowing scenes documented left funny man Lenny Henry, Eastenders star Samantha Womack, Angela Rippon and Reggie Yates broken in tears after only spending a week living in the poverty stricken Kibera. They were strongly moved by their experiences and it is inevitable that many other viewers were too. I am sure the prejudices of many have been challenged during and after the show.
It is a commendably clear account of the difficulties faced not only by Kibera but all developing countries. This wide effect of poverty is something that I experienced firsthand as a child in Zimbabwe. I have also witnessed poverty in developed countries, extending to too many areas across England today. This rightly recognises the need for the world to do more to alleviate poverty - the single greatest collective challenge the world faces today.
We have to applaud the celebrities for their careful mapping of a complex dilemma. They simply reinforced the disbelief that many are not conscious of. However the documentary also highlights a weakness of purpose, THere are further alternatives to their possible conclusion: you can donate to Comic Relief or you can ignore the suffering of others. It means finding a line of least resistance by deliberately setting up a false dichotomy.
I am not anti-aid but questions need to be asked, like why and how these slums exist in the first place. I don't want to drag this whole affair into the cause and effect of colonial capitalism (which converted foreign public resources into private property and substituted cooperation for competition). I can't quite understand why people who did harm are the very same preaching the gospel of altruism. On a fair not, colonial history is no major excuse. Africa's former colonies have, on average, fifty years of independence during which they have turned in to professional beggars. Ask them, but they wont admit this.
Now the damage has been done, why are they surprised by the aftermath? Accordingly with due respect, though reserved, Comic Relief and the celebrities are misdirected in their tasks. They shed tears over the effects, but do not treat the cause. Aid merely prolongs the troubles we are seeing in sub-Saharan Africa, India, Bangladesh and others. Indeed their efforts are part of the wider problem. They try to solve the problem of poverty by replacing on form of poverty with another. What those poor children and their families want is a permanent solution, one that will give them a sustainable future. Give them the bread crumbs falling from your table today and tomorrow they will wake up hungry again.
Historically, in such poverty hit countries, people rely on government provision to provide a fallback when their mode of living fails. But is the government really the only source? In most cases they are an option because they are recipients of foreign aid and sole custodians of a country's budget. The donor community through non-government organisations (NGO's) provide for most of healthcare and education on the basis of need. Redistribution of income to the less well off by developing countries' governments has always been a subject of political and economic debate.
But we are talking of a large population of failed children here. Do they have to suffer because their parents had no means? Children do not vote for a family to be born in to. Neither is it a choice for them to be on this earth. We know most of them are not in a position to make the best choices for themselves. Given their initial endowment in life I am of the opinion that they deserve better merit goods and so is the importance of ensuring universal access to healthcare and education. By any means necessary, this is a widely acceptable form of social redistribution that brings equal endowments among citizens.
Politicians, because of great corruption and greed, divert funds and resources to line their own pockets at the expense of the intended recipients - the poor. This paints a truly tragic portrait of our ability to develop in Africa. So politicians should perhaps be held to account when it comes to aid redistribution itself. Distributional justice is always a cause of concern where social choices are not prioritised.
Furthermore, aid to governments and individuals has introduced many incentives for unholy actions that are not optimal. Recipients have been encouraged to overstate costs and understate benefits in order to maximise their entitlement to handouts as we witnessed on the screen when Lenny paid for one slum resident to purchase a house.
It must have been great for the celebrities to confront and make the legislators responsible for the slums to issue a statement. That, in so many respects, gives those a shame-and-blame in the fullest degree. I never forget the day Joanna Lumley ambushed the former Labour Immigration Minister on live television over the Ghurkha rights to settle in Britain. It was fun, but it also worked.
In the case of a country where not many people pay taxes because of higher levels of unemployment, can communities improve themselves through forms of collective stewardship? Yes. Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa cocnept of alleviating poverty through cooperatives in Tanzania was a great model in Africa which needs a rethink; in the event people have condemned it to the slums. His aim, as what the world should aim to do is to rebuild our communities in such a way that poverty will be impossible.
Other people have argued that it is an insult to ask a poor man to eat less. After my encounter with Darwin's Origin of Species and Dawkin's The Selfish Gene, I began to have a clear picture and understanding of why it is debatable to advocate for population control as a means of reducing poverty. Campaigners of free will (genuine choice and responsibility) concepts agree with this. In life we need not determinism but common sense. We do not require great philosophers to tell us that one hungry man plus another hungry man equals two hungry mouths. While the jury is still out, I leave the reader to do the arithmetic of altruism and selfishness.
There has been a constant argument whether there are gains in terms of reducing poverty within developing countries - from full multilateral trade liberalisation. Many have suggested this benefits the rich and not the poor. But what really happens when countries specialise in production according to comparative advantage and engage in free trade? I suppose relative to restricted trade scenarios in which countries operate behind tariff barriers, specialisation and free trade enhance world production which can be distributed among free trading nations including developing countries. These models in which trade restrictions are removed can work within countries as free trade zones e.g. South Africa's Orania, enterprise zone, growth points etc. Eventually this will better a poor man, it will give them an oppurtunity while we acknowledge that investors want a return on their capital. There is no dilemma here.
It is possibly right to suggest charity does prevent communities carrying out the aim of alleviating poverty. Escaping the bondage and necessity of living for others, is undoubtedly the essence of fairness and morality. Upon realising this fact people can move forward and forget the absolutely repulsive slum life we see today.
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