Saul Jawara and Gassa,
I suspect you were both not referring to me in your postings. But that is
not the reason why I am writing. Fact is I normally tend to throw away such
issues into a rock pile of bushleague questions, and so I have not even once
commented on any of them. I mean stuff like Blair overflying Banjul,
relations with the U.S, Gambia's trading status, are all symptoms of a big
disease: Gambia's economic insignificance. In Gambia, there is no homegrown
money, and the little that comes around by way of grants and loans is
largely homeless! There is no oil, no minerals, only a little fruit and
flowers and peanuts. In fact we are so tiny (globally speaking) our name is
sometimes left out of the charity list. [When, sometime in the 1980s, the
EEC was granting aid to coutnries affected by the Sahelian drought, Gambia's
name was abruptly left out from the list including countries as far apart as
Chad and Senegal. Jawara's ministers braced up for a fight, demanding "What
About Us?" from the Brussel bureaucracy?]
Secondly. Dave Manneh paraphased Chomsky here, remember? If the leading
mafia don in town says baa and all the goons say boo against international
terrorism, little Gambia might just make the grade to get its name in
Washington's good book. Of course it is good that the APRC government
nurtures its relations with Washington. U.S aid and grants and diplomatic
parasol will always come in handy. There is nothing wrong with our living by
our wits. On the other hand we should not fool ourselves: For more than
thirty years, successive Jawara regimes enjoyed the support, diplomatic and
economic, of the entire Western world. What did Gambia benefit from that
good name? ZERO! minus hundreds of millions in debt!
Gassa wrote
"...I for one is for the utilisation of both grants/loans whilst at the same
time change our attitude from that of over dependency on loans/grants to
that of production and hard work....We must also sensitise our peoples about
our ever growing population. We must not use the raising of huge families as
insurance against posible poverty or destitution in old age. It is counter
productive these days".
I have no problems with Gassa's concern and sincerity. But I suspect his
reasoning here is tangled up. How do you rely on grants and aid while
fighting dependency? What in fact is over dependency? Such a position needs
obvious qualification?
But more importantly, birth control in the Third World has for long been
part of the tacky and matted aresenal of eager-beaver Western academics in
their crusade against population growth. Afrcia is under-populated, and
ignorance there is widespread. Raising many children is used as an insurance
policy precisely because people are poor. What has been practically proven
is that improving living standards (say by raising incomes of the poor) and
educating women are the best guarantees against using children as policy
agents while ageing without pensions. Such cruthcy phrases are dismal
because they tend to blame the African condition on our reproductive organs,
subliminally dumping the entire realm of politics and economics into the
safer retreat of biology. This way politicians and numbers junkeys are
absolved from their natural responsibilities. That must not be allowed!!!
Saul Jawara on the other hand has just shown tremendous courage in
confessing that he is a pessoptimist. I truly sympathise with him.
Have a Good Day!
Sidibeh,
Stockholm/Kartong
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