It’s a shame that Athelé Wills didn’t have a better time during her holiday in the United States (“A world gone crazy“, January 10). She could really have enjoyed herself if she had stopped obsessing about what she perceives as the US’s responsibility for starvation in Africa and environmental degradation the world over.
The US indeed has its share of obese and ignorant people, as do the United Kingdom, Germany and South Africa. And it’s also true that the average American is as ignorant about world affairs as the average South African who gets his news from The Star or The Citizen. But the US, like South Africa, is also chock full of natural and cultural splendours and warm, friendly, attractive and generous — even intelligent — people.
One can forgive her cultural prejudices, but Wills raises more serious charges that need to be answered. Americans do waste food. Anyone who has attended a big dinner party in poorer countries in Asia or the Middle East will see mountains of uneaten food taken out of the dining room into the kitchen, from which it is distributed to beggars at the back door. In Johannesburg I give extra food and old clothing to the lady down the road who tries to support five children on a domestic worker’s salary. In the US these items go in the “trash can” because there is no one to give it to. Just about everyone in the US has enough to eat and no one wants to wear hand-me-downs.
When I was a child and left food on my plate my mother would tell me to think of the starving children in China. I could never quite make the connection between my eating habits and starvation in Asia. Just as, now, the eating habits of the middle classes in the US (or South Africa) haven’t the slightest connection to starvation anywhere in the world. Does Wills think that if Americans or South Africans ate, say, one less Big Mac a week it would fill the belly of even a single starving South African? The problem is not lack of food, it’s lack of money with which to buy food.
Many, if not most, Americans recycle their waste. Littering has become socially unacceptable in the US. In Europe most people figure that if recycling were important the government would do something about it. In South Africa the plastic Pick ‘n Pay bag has become the national flower.
As for the wedge of “napkins” (okay, call them “serviettes”) that get handed out with every fast food meal — I assume Wills has driven by the enormous timber plantations in Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, which produce the trees that make the paper that goes into the serviettes that Steers hands out in this country. She may have noticed that these are plantations, growing a sustainable and renewable crop. She might as well weep for the potatoes brutally uprooted to make the chips that Steers, Spur and Nandos serve.
As for the “over-consumerism” of Americans, it has arguably contributed to one of the greatest explosions in wealth the world has ever seen. According to the World Bank, China has experienced real per capita gross domestic product growth of nearly 7% a year since 1965, rising in inflation-adjusted terms from around $200 to more than $900. This has added more than $600-billion a year to the incomes of Chinese citizens, far outweighing the extra $50-billion to $100-billion Wills urges the rich countries to spend each year on additional development assistance to poor countries. Most of this growth has occurred since 1980, when China began to encourage foreign investment while the US and Europe began to open their markets to Chinese-made goods. In just the period from 1990 to 2002, the percentage of Chinese living below the poverty line fell from about 36% to 4,6%. That’s 300-million people. Mothers nowadays rarely talk about the starving children in China.
In contrast to development aid, much of which gets spent on white elephant projects or flows into the overseas bank accounts of the elite, this new money has created jobs and an industrial base, and put money in the pocket of the average citizen. It has allowed them to eat better, drink cleaner water, educate their children, live in better housing and afford better health care. It has also enabled people to graduate from starvation to a modest consumerism.
This phenomenon has also occurred in other countries, including India, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, Mauritius, Malaysia and, now, Vietnam, where the percentage of people living below the poverty line fell from 58% to 37% between 1993 and 1998, owing mainly to Vietnam’s emergence as a huge exporter of clothing and coffee. In fact, the American and European consumer’s desire for newer, flashier, cheaper “sneakers”, designer coffee, bell-bottom jeans, belly-button rings and flat panel TVs has lifted close to a billion people out of poverty over the past 20 or 30 years.
Yes, far too many people remain poor, especially in Africa. But it is ludicrous to blame this on American over-consumption or the machinations of multinational corporations. The real problem is that Americans don’t consume enough of what Africans can produce. And they don’t, in large part, because African governments have historically done almost everything possible to discourage productive investment and international trade.
This has begun to change. The US government has sought to address this problem by opening its markets to African goods under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. Many African governments have begun to respond by improving their business environments and ceasing to treat investors as evil exploiters. European, Asian and American investors have built factories in Africa to address this new market opportunity. Development aid has its place, especially in areas such as water and sanitation and health care. But in the final analysis it is the demand of the insatiable American consumer, and the business people striving to satisfy this demand, that will pull Africans out of poverty.
Without the American consumer poor countries would be a great deal poorer. And the sacrifices we make! Obesity, longer working hours, crushing debt, higher levels of stress. We really deserve some thanks. Maybe you South Africans could share some of your generous leave time with us.
Charles Krakoff is an American investment and trade consultant living in Johannesburg
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A world gone crazy 13 January 2003