Things put back together?
What can I say?
Quarter-final. Scolari. Penalties.
Zimachitika.
* * *
Things are picking up at work, right in time. A lull was welcome after the budget, but two slow weeks were enough for me. The next few weeks should be busier, with the finalisation of the strategy that we’ve been working on, and a planning meeting to map out what we need to do over the next year or so. Before that, though, we’ve got a public holiday on Thursday: Independence Day.
Independence Day, shockingly, is the day that Malawians became independent from colonial rule. Colonialism has always been a very tricky topic to analyse dispassionately, being so fraught with emotional significance. Working in development it’s impossible to avoid the issue, though; so much of the political, geographic and economic landscape of the countries we work in were moulded by colonial rule and the equally damaging process of decolonisation. Take a look at a map of Africa – how many straight lines are there? It was literally divided up with a ruler, especially in the north-west. That’s one of the physical results. There were and remain deep emotional scars, too. Anyone who doubts the intense psychological effect of colonial rule should read The Wretched of the Earth.
My grandfather was an anti-colonial activist, well known enough for our house to be decorated by a number of fading photographs of him with some rather famous politicians and poets, fellow campaigners. He changed his name from the Anglicised one he was given at birth, and devoted most of his youth to working towards securing independence for his homeland. By the time he died, though, he hadn’t voted in the free country he’d campaigned so strongly for in years. He used to say he would only leave the office long enough to vote if there was a party who promised to bring back the British, so disillusioned had he become with the misrule of his country.
The point of this story is not to say that colonial rule was a good thing (though undoubtedly, for their own, usually selfish, reasons, some colonial administrations did do things that benefited the countries they were in). The point is that the winning of independence was only the start of the process of nation-building, not the end point. Of course, no-one was ever really naïve enough to think that it would be. But, for most countries, the legacy of independence has been a struggle to construct and assert a national identity that was denied by foreign rule. The upshot, in many cases, has been violence and war. More subtly, a great deal of damage has been done by the desire of so many Governments to assert their national identity through major economic projects, usually designed more as a display of strength than as something that will enable the poor to climb out of poverty. Even the best and most successful Governments in the developing world have been guilty of this, and it has not been restricted to Africa. Governments of countries everywhere, developing or affluent, undertake major prestige projects every couple of years to ensure the votes keep coming in, and to assert their differences from their political opponents. The problem is, in poor countries, everything a Government does has to be considered in the context of scarce resources and a population for whom food security is precarious and poverty rife – prestige projects come a distant second to addressing these issues.
It would be great if amid the celebration, all of this was raised and discussed, but something tells me that none of the political parties here will be keen to grasp this particular nettle.
* * *
As for me, I’ll be spending the weekend in a forest reserve not too far from here. Brace yourselves for another post about birdwatching.
Quarter-final. Scolari. Penalties.
Zimachitika.
* * *
Things are picking up at work, right in time. A lull was welcome after the budget, but two slow weeks were enough for me. The next few weeks should be busier, with the finalisation of the strategy that we’ve been working on, and a planning meeting to map out what we need to do over the next year or so. Before that, though, we’ve got a public holiday on Thursday: Independence Day.
Independence Day, shockingly, is the day that Malawians became independent from colonial rule. Colonialism has always been a very tricky topic to analyse dispassionately, being so fraught with emotional significance. Working in development it’s impossible to avoid the issue, though; so much of the political, geographic and economic landscape of the countries we work in were moulded by colonial rule and the equally damaging process of decolonisation. Take a look at a map of Africa – how many straight lines are there? It was literally divided up with a ruler, especially in the north-west. That’s one of the physical results. There were and remain deep emotional scars, too. Anyone who doubts the intense psychological effect of colonial rule should read The Wretched of the Earth.
My grandfather was an anti-colonial activist, well known enough for our house to be decorated by a number of fading photographs of him with some rather famous politicians and poets, fellow campaigners. He changed his name from the Anglicised one he was given at birth, and devoted most of his youth to working towards securing independence for his homeland. By the time he died, though, he hadn’t voted in the free country he’d campaigned so strongly for in years. He used to say he would only leave the office long enough to vote if there was a party who promised to bring back the British, so disillusioned had he become with the misrule of his country.
The point of this story is not to say that colonial rule was a good thing (though undoubtedly, for their own, usually selfish, reasons, some colonial administrations did do things that benefited the countries they were in). The point is that the winning of independence was only the start of the process of nation-building, not the end point. Of course, no-one was ever really naïve enough to think that it would be. But, for most countries, the legacy of independence has been a struggle to construct and assert a national identity that was denied by foreign rule. The upshot, in many cases, has been violence and war. More subtly, a great deal of damage has been done by the desire of so many Governments to assert their national identity through major economic projects, usually designed more as a display of strength than as something that will enable the poor to climb out of poverty. Even the best and most successful Governments in the developing world have been guilty of this, and it has not been restricted to Africa. Governments of countries everywhere, developing or affluent, undertake major prestige projects every couple of years to ensure the votes keep coming in, and to assert their differences from their political opponents. The problem is, in poor countries, everything a Government does has to be considered in the context of scarce resources and a population for whom food security is precarious and poverty rife – prestige projects come a distant second to addressing these issues.
It would be great if amid the celebration, all of this was raised and discussed, but something tells me that none of the political parties here will be keen to grasp this particular nettle.
* * *
As for me, I’ll be spending the weekend in a forest reserve not too far from here. Brace yourselves for another post about birdwatching.
posted by the Maradona of Malawi at 12:05 AM
