Re, “darlings of radio discussion programmes”. I remember a late night Vincent Browne radio show with O’Shea and (afaicr) two similarly high up bods of Trocaire and/or Concern. It was about aid and development unsurprisingly, and it started off with the latter two trying to politely show O’Shea the obvious error of his views on development issues. Only to descend..

Errors such as his unerring focus on native African corruption despite the fact it takes two to tango in the game of corruption and we should focus on the powerful non-African partners in the IMF/WB looking for a minority elite to corrupt. They’re more than happy with an undemocratic regime once it follows their damaging prescriptions.

Or the general lack of focus on the continent’s economies being in control of the international institutions of finance, which in turn leads to disaster for non-corrupt democratically elected governments who aren’t really in control.

Or the historical route to development of most developed economies which runs counter to today’s prescriptions. A developmental route which should not be hampered by requirements for premature institutional development. A form of racially applied impurity with respect to holding back on native development and local choice, which just does not stand up to historical scrutiny anyway. etc etc

Africa grew steadily, if modestly, and more equitably, in the decades prior to the neoliberal era (as did Latin America) when African governments had more of a say over how they developed so we already have a real world example of how Africa has responded to local control of its finances in the past.

Some of the above was mentioned but O’Shea was having none of this and I remember it ending up in an exasperated if roundtable fashion.

*
(I see someone got in on Chang already but the corruption and development has been highlighted by Stilgitz and by Ha-Joon Chang in “Kicking Away the Ladder”, and the later Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies and the Threat to the Developing World.)

You are being fingered as the ‘hidden hand’ behind the disappearance of politics.ie by some of the wandering vagrant refugees on indymedia

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86559&comment_limit=0&condense_comments=false#comment222588

It certainly wasn’t a matter of taste.

What de Waal finds obnoxious about this particular case is the way in which NGOs appear to have believed that they could act in some apolitical fantasy world where their actions were not likely to have consequences. In fact, he asserts that the NGOs allowed the Hutu Power gang to play them like a cheap violin:

‘The extremists laid a trap for the humanitarian international and sprang it twice.’ How did they spring it? By encouraging the movement of thousands of Hutu civilians into Tanzania and Zaire, an exodus in which the perpetrators of the genocide could freely mingle. de Waal points out genocide perpetrators hardly fit the legal definition of ‘refugee’, but that this was ignored by NGOs. In fact, the issues of genocide and justice were ignored by NGOs working in the region in the aftermath of 1994. The media images of yet more ’starving Africans’ were a free gift to NGOs which depend for their existence on donations from the western public whose media does not adequately represent the reality of a situation like that in Rwanda during and after the genocide (that’s how you get Tipper Gore visiting the Hutu camps and saying ‘we’re glad to have met the victims of the genocide’!)

de Waal’s book also has a walk on part for John O’Shea. The post-genocide government wanted to register foreign NGOs, and make their personnel subject to Rwandan law. It also closed displaced person camps in the former ’safe humanitarian zone’ the French had set up during Operation Turquoise. When they closed the Kibeho camp, they botched the job, and in the ensuing riot between ’several hundred’ or ‘8000′ people were killed. NGOs, including Mr. O’Shea, started shouting the odds about a ’second genocide’, this time by Tutsis on Hutus. O’Shea is quoted as saying ‘it is silly to think we should help the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan government to establish itslef. Our government should nto now send the 1 million pound aid it has promised that regime. The dispute is ethnic. . . The Tutsi are bent on regence. The 8000 deaths at the weekend are just the start’.

Well, no, actually they weren’t the start, at least not in Rwanda. There does appear to have been targetting of Hutu civilians later on after the RPF intervened in Zaire/DRC itself; but that intervention was a product of the persistent activities of the Hutu militias, something for which the NGOs do bear a share of the blame. Like John O’Shea himself they are all too often part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Because NGOs are so-well equipped to take on heavily armed militias?

You’re stretching the point beyond breaking there. You can’t blame NGOs for everything.

I’ll have to get my hands on that DJP… sounds really focussed and sensible…

de Waal demonstrates that the refusal of NGOs to demilitarise the refugee camps they set up in Zaire after the Rwandan genocide (not camps for genocide victims, but for genocide perpetrators, btw) played a major in aiding raids by Hutu extremists over the border into Rwanda. Eventually the RPF regime decided to slap down the Hutu militias and intervened in Zaire (as Tomas points out the prize of Zairian/Congolese diamonds and coltan was another major incentive).

On a wider note, de Waal argues that by taking up the humanitarian slack NGOs block the formation of the ‘political contracts’ between ruler and rule which led to the conquest of famine in South Asia (de Waal follows Amartya Sen’s line about the political nature of famine). The final word: ‘the humanitarian international may be the ‘human face’ of neo-liberalism, but it is a charitable face with little or no accountability’. Quite so.

Anyhow, in the 50s and 60s, it was Africans’ communalist, traditional mindset that prevented development. In the late 70s and 80s, it was their preference for socialistic states and big spending. Now its their reliance on loans and their theiving, graft-loving ways… Which makes me wonder what’s the next proposed barrier to development, and worse still, the next Western-devised solution.