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 • "You hate being affluent? Then swap with us." by Ghanaian film-maker De Roy Kwesi Andrew - article at spiked online

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 • "You hate being affluent? Then swap with us." by Ghanaian film-maker De Roy Kwesi Andrew - article at spiked online

Posted by youngmarxist at 2007-08-29 07:58 PM
Ghanian film-maker and teacher De Roy Kwesi Andrew writes "You hate being affluent? Then swap with us" at spiked online magazine.

  The article describes his lecture tour of the UK to promote the film "Damned by Debt Relief", which criticises the debt-relief/Live8 approach to poverty reduction in Africa as being inadequete and a means for Western capital to control African development.

 Andrew says that industrial development, derided as anti-human by the West's pseudo-left (not his term), is desperately desired by poor people.

 A short version of the film can be seen at the worldWRITE website, here.

 This issue is expanded at spiked online by editor Brendan O'Neill in the article "Bob Geldof, you are not our Messiah".
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 • Re: "You hate being affluent? Then swap with us." by Ghanaian film-maker De Roy Kwesi Andrew - article at spiked online

Posted by arthur at 2007-08-30 08:27 PM
Corruption in Ghana

Above link is long and starts slowly but worth reading to understand some implications of the focus on "interference" being promoted by Spiked.

This highlights something I always find problematic in Spiked, going back to the support for Serb chauvinists against "NATO imperialism" and continuing with (somewhat muted) hostility to invading Iraq.

On the one hand much of what they say is both true and perceptive in exposing various hypocrisies - especially so when very effectively demolishing the pseudoleft outright reactionary hostility to development and progress.

But their theme of non-interference also plays right into the hands of those who sustain the status quo.

Loud mouthed denunciations of "neo-colonial" interference with local people who know best whats needed for development of their own resources are a natural response from local kleptocracies.

That fact doesn't negate the necssary critique of imperialism.

But ignoring it when its clearly a central issue cannot possibly be a step forward.
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 • Re: "You hate being affluent? Then swap with us." by Ghanaian film-maker De Roy Kwesi Andrew - article at spiked online

Posted by youngmarxist at 2007-08-30 09:12 PM
Thanks arthur, that was an interesting (if not yet very hopeful) article.

 The main point I take from it is that corruption is a tolerated part of life for most Ghanaians. Presumably this is the sort of society where small bribes to low-level officials, just to get everyday things done, is very common.

 I looked up "Stopping Corruption" on Google but I was mostly presented with moralistic exhortations to honest behaviour, such as:

 The slogan for the 2005 UNODC anti-corruption campaign is "You can stop corruption."  The campaign aims to raise awareness among the general public of the different forms of corruption and of how widespread it is, and to highlight that each individual can become actively involved in stopping such dishonest practices.

 I'm sure that people in Ghana are already fairly aware of different forms of corruption, and that it is widespread. Clearly this sort of approach is meaningless in a society where it would be irrational, and against one's own interests, to refuse to pay the bribes needed to keep your life running.

 So that leads to the question: is there any sort of foreign investment that would alter Ghana's society so that daily corruption would become less rational, and so that the power of kleptocrats would be weakened?
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 • Re: "You hate being affluent? Then swap with us." by Ghanaian film-maker De Roy Kwesi Andrew - article at spiked online

Posted by arthur at 2007-08-31 04:15 AM
The UNODC moralizing campaign linked does seem to epitomize the pointlessness (indeed corruption) of funding that type of international bucreaucracy.

Revolution still strikes me as the best answer rather than any form of foreign investment, but I am well aware that is currently an equally empty response.

I suspect that ruthlessly profit oriented investment by multinationals with sufficient clout to protect their profits from local kleptocrats will do more good (both for economic development and accelerating revolution) than the sort of "unconditional" aid implicitly advocated by Spiked's objections to "interference" as the latter sets up ideal conditions for strengthening the kleptocracy against the people.

Basically big capital tends to be more hostile to the petty haggling and cheating characteristic of early stages of capitalism as it just gets in the way of making (and dissipating) much bigger "legitimate" profits when things run smoother in larger and more developed markets. Ditto for corruption.

In maximizing (and protecting and repatriating) their own profits they might be more likely to focus on productive enterprises that exploit (and therefore also transform) local cheap labour and bourgeois entrepreneurs rather than just crushing them both purely parasitically like those diverting aid funds into corruption and "anti-corruption" moralizing bureaucracies.
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