Reading Reviews #6

The Game between Government and its People

The Challenge for Africa is a great book that examines the challenges from a lot of different angles that special continent is facing. Due to historical reasons African continent was typically referred to as the 3^rd world. As a student from China (the 2^nd World) studying in America (the 1^st World) reading about challenges for Africa (the 3^rd World), I couldn’t help myself doing a lot of comparison while I was reading.

In the first chapter Maathai reflects the problem of unsustainable growth in Africa, using a woman she saw in Yaoundé who did a lot of subsistence farming that could do serious damages to soil and water as a microcosm of the bigger picture of Africa’s problem. I heard a lot of cases when people condemning their governments and industries or even the humankind of seeking profits by sacrificing the Mother Earth. What I perceive is that people from all over the world perform like this, to some extents. The major difference among their behaviors is the level of harming. The simplest explanation is that poorer people have fewer options in exploiting nature without doing too much of a damage, while richer people have more spaces in keeping it healthy and less environmentally detrimental. Mostly the problem is associated with the general wealth condition of the area, if you believe the regular pattern that when the country is bountiful, its citizens are civil, and when a person has met his wants, he is scrupulous. Well fed, well bred. According to Marx, mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.

Mathaai blames this situation on governments. “[I]f governments had concentrated on practical measures that helped their people rather than, at times, investing in grandiose, attention-seeking projects or misguided attempts to satisfy the demands of outside investors, often at the expense of their own peoples”… this quote makes African governments look so evil that they care less of their people than outside investors – but the thing is, what government doesn’t do that? Depending on the overall wealth condition (and thus education level) of the area, the people that form the governments all have their own agenda. They make choices balancing the need of the people and their pockets. When the general public is knowledgeable, the government has to at least look democratic and kind to compete for voters, but when the education level is low, things like “dictatorships, military juntas, oligarchies, [and] kleptocracies…” will certainly occur to make gains at the expense of the governed. In fact, the appearance of such institutes agrees with the law of jungle – “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Powerful people dominate the less powerful – if the powerful side has nothing to awe the less powerful side, it could arbitrarily hurt and exploit.

It always intrigues me how the vibe of one government comes into being. Right now, the vibe of each government just follows what it started to be, and the people who don’t want to be a member are crowded out or even kicked out by all means. If a government starts as a dictator, people who want to be kind and selfless just won’t be accepted as co-workers. If the society is full of people like this, it will be natural that the government looks like this; the fact that both government and military forces are made up of common citizens (at least before they join the unions) shows that these minority (comparing to the general public) are either the same way as their people or good at deceiving them. China has reached a point where a growing number of people (at least the educated ones) don’t believe what their government has to say so the government has to use smarter excuses to fool them, before which it only needed to brag about its accomplishments and squelched the ones with other opinions. Now most African people may still be very afraid of governmental power and the people who work for the government are so arrogant and controlling, but I think as the overall economy grows and general public more educated, the bluster on the government side will become lesser.