How imperialistic are we?
December 25, 2008
“I throw what I can’t eat into the bin. I THROW WHAT I CAN’T EAT INTO THE BIN! I THROW WHAT I CAN’T EAT INTO THE BIN! And children in Tanzania fight for a cup of rice.”
These were the words I kept reiterating to myself as I watched Darwin’s Nightmare by Hubert Sauper.
The Nile perch, a voracious predator, was released into the lake in the 1960s[1] and as a result other species of fish have become extinct in Lake Victoria. Believed to be an experiment, release of the Nile perch caused the extinction of all other species of fish in the lake, and the Nile perch has become Tanzania’s best selling export to European markets. “ [However] economically it’s good ” says the European Commissioner.[2] This new flourishing industry of the country has created new characters; an army of local fishermen, factory workers, civil servants, pilots of cargo aircrafts, delegates of the European Commission, and communities living around Lake Victoria. Because the Nile perch is farmed commercially, all the prime fillets are sold to European supermarkets, leaving the local people to survive on the festering carcasses of the gutted fish.[3] Carcass consumption, which leads to more illness in the country, is eaten because of the ecological wasteland Lake Victoria has become.
Increased weapons in Tanzania are another problem. This problem has led to increased violence in the country. Massive epidemics, food shortages and of course civil wars rage in this area, taking place in a kind of moral oblivion.[4] There is increased power in the wrong hands, and these people’s wishes lead to the formation of child soldiers. Boys are not the only ones suffering from this socioeconomic system; girls become prostitutes in order to earn any kind of living. Increase in prostitution causes an increase in sexually transmitted diseases, since there are no effective ways of health protection. However, these sexually transmitted diseases do not stay within the country. Popular clients of these prostitutes include Russian pilots. But why are these Russian pilots in Tanzania? Answer: Because they are the ones who fly guns into Africa. Hence, we have come full circle.
It may seem so. But in fact, these pilots’ primary objective is to fly out the Nile perch.
Over-fishing, environmental degradation, and rampant use of unsustainable means to fish have combined to cause decline of the Nile perch. Tanzania lost about 9.2 million U.S. dollars as export revenues dropped nearly 10 percent from Nile perch. [5]
I find it incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery. If it is a “survival of the fittest” world, as Darwin concluded, then the capitalist interests that fund the gunrunners are climbing the evolutionary ladder on the backs of the Africans in this Darwinian example.[6] Anybody who has watched the documentary Darwin’s Nightmare will understand that the film shows Darwin’s theory of “the survival of the fittest” in two different contexts: in Lake Victoria it is the domination of the Nile perch; in our world it is the domination of imperialistic countries over countries like Africa.
Hubert Sauper says he could have made the same kind of documentary in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds; in Honduras, it would be bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, it’s crude oil. Most of us claim to know about the destructive mechanisms of our time, but we cannot fully envisage them. We ‘want’ to believe the fact that imperialism ended with the Second World War. However, it didn’t!
Imperialism continues at full speed, and most of the global issues we face nowadays, such as poverty, inequality, lack of basic health and education, arise from imperialistic acts of capitalist countries. The arrogance of rich countries towards the third world is creating immeasurable future dangers for all people.
Yet, we are unable to “get this”, unable to actually believe what we know. Deadly socioeconomic systems don’t have ugly faces, nor for the most part, bad intentions. Such participants include you and me. Some of us are ‘only doing our job’, some of us simply fight for survival, while others just don’t want to know, but we all need to know and take steps to help end these horrific practices of inequality, before globalization ends in Armageddon. Because otherwise, our children will continue to receive toys for Christmas, while children in Tanzania receive guns. We will continue to eat the delicious prime fillets of the Nile perch, while they eat the carcasses of the gutted fish.
So Merry Christmas to you all. Bon-appétit!
Basak Tulga
You can visit http://www.american.edu/ted/PERCH.HTM, if you would like to learn more about the current situation in Tanzania, and help people suffering from this deadly system.
[1] http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/darwinsnightmare,
[2] http://worldfilm.about.com/od/documentaryfilms/fr/darwnsnightmare.htm, Jürgen Fauth
[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin’s_Nightmare)
[4] http://www.caprifilms.com/images/press/Darwin/DARWIN_press_kit.pdf
[5] http://worldfilm.about.com/od/documentaryfilms/fr/darwnsnightmare.htm
[6] (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424024/plotsummary)
