Cameron Duodu
LETTER FROM THE NORTH
I have absolutely nothing against people sitting down and talking together. But if I had my way, the sort of talkfest that has just taken place in Cairo between European and African leaders would not take place.
I mean, if all the fuel costs of the presidential jets, the allowances of the accompanying officials, the hosting costs of the Egyptian government and other unseen expenditures were added together, it could buy quite a few food parcels for Ethiopia and the other countries in Africa facing food shortages as a result of drought.
That apart, what new thing can the European leaders and their African counterparts tell each other at a summit? As they ranted on, private thoughts, hidden behind earphones, would have been flitting to and from the subject.
Such a one-man conversation between many an African head of state and his mind would run like this: “Can General X prevent Colonel M from overthrowing us? I wonder whether Mr K’s trip to Luxembourg bore fruit, or did he have to go on to Lichtenstein or Belize? Must remember to call the bastard – he’ll pretend he couldn’t get through to Cairo, but the phones here are better than those at home. Can’t trust anyone, can you?”
Meanwhile, European leader after European leader would be repeating the mantra: “We want to forge a partnership with you that will safeguard the environment from pollution, so that your children and ours will survive on planet Earth in the coming millennia.” Tch!
As far as Africa is concerned, there is only one thing to tell Europe: buddy, we would like to be in a position where we would not need to beg you for anything – not for debt forgiveness, not for technical assistance, not for aid of any sort. We want to be able to buy what we need, not be offered what others think we need. That means we must have purchasing power. In order to have that, we need fair trade, OK? Fair trade. That’s all. You hear, right?
I mean, look – what would you think if I came to Munich and told BMW AG that I would only pay the equivalent of $5E000 for the Z8? You would think I was crazy, wouldn’t you? In that case, why do you not consider yourself crazy when you only pay the same price for a bag of cocoa today as you paid for it 27 years ago?
You say you buy the cocoa (coffee/ tea/citrus) at that price because that’s what market conditions say you should pay. But you do not allow those self-same market conditions to be reflected in the price of a bar of chocolate in the shops, do you? When did the price of a jar of coffee in the shop ever go down because the price of coffee beans had gone down? You always have an answer – electricity costs the same; your advertising budget has gone up; you’ve been head-hunting managerial staff in a seller’s market. So the prices of your products are always high, irrespective of what you are paying for the raw materials.
But you do not care if cocoa and coffee producers also encounter higher production costs. You do not care whether the price of insecticides, machetes and other tools they use to produce the beans have gone up. You know they must sell to you because they have no storage facilities for the huge quantities of beans they produce. And to prevent them making chocolates at home to sell to you, you have put up high tariff walls to protect your own chocolate manufacturers.
Why, Europe, are you such a cheat? Why isn’t South Africa, which is an industrialised African country, allowed to manufacture Mercedeses and BMWs for the British market, which uses the same right- hand drive as South Africa? Don’t market conditions favour South Africa, which has a lower labour cost than Germany? Even when shipping costs are taken into consideration, couldn’t South African-made vehicles be cheaper? You fear for the loss of jobs in Germany if this happened? But are you not the one who preaches that in a “globalised” world, politics should not be allowed to mix with economics? You preach free trade – but only free trade for the rich and powerful, eh?
You probably will further retort that shipping cars from South Africa to Europe would be cumbersome. But you don’t think it cumbersome, do you, when you ship thousands of huge logs all the way from Ghana, Cte d’Ivoire Cameroon, Gabon and the Central African Republic to Europe to be used for manufacturing furniture?
You do this because the prices of doors and tables and chairs keep going up, whereas the price of timber goes up and down according to “market conditions”. Yet let these countries try to sell furniture on your market – you immediately erect tariff walls against them. So they have to continue selling the huge logs. Cutting the logs ruins their food farms and destroys their flora and fauna. Carting the logs by lorry to the ports ruins their roads and badly congests the ports. But guess who owns the majority of the boats that ferry the huge logs to Europe?
It is your cheating that must stop, Europe. If that happened, we would have enough money to buy what we want, and we wouldn’t need to borrow from you, or anyone else, at interest rates we cannot afford, and come begging for debt forgiveness. Do you hear, Europe? No, you don’t! You prefer a dialogue of the deaf – just like the charade you’ve just financed in Cairo.