Skyrocketing Food Prices

'Haiti, Congo, and the politics of hunger'

by Jennifer Brea

Skyrocketing food prices have already sparked riots in Haiti, Egypt and Mozambique this month as a worsening crisis not only threatens to leave thousands vulnerable to starvation, but will test weak and ineffective governments in poor countries around the world.

Two francophone bloggers, one Haitian, one Congolese, respond, but rather than blame the proximate cause--subsidies for biofuels in rich countries--they criticize the politics and the politicians who left their countries this vulnerable to begin with. They write that the riots of these last few weeks and the riots to come, like the crisis itself, are symptomatic of deeper problems that cannot be solved by the simple magic of foreign aid.

Haitian blogger Natifnatal wrote an angry, heartbreaking post as she watched events in Haiti unfolding from thousands of miles away, in Abu Dhabi, which she suggests is a sort of self-imposed exile. It's called "When politicians serve hunger to score points."

These last few weeks, Haiti has returned to the front pages. As far away as you are, the news pulls you in, the images shake you, your throat chokes with embarrassment, and you burn with anger. You are, in effect, angry at the way in which your country is reduced in the press: to , destroying the few shops operating in a country that has not functioned in a long time. You are angry because it is impossible to respond to the reactions of foreigners who are watching like you and who understand nothing. Should I begin with 1492, talking about discovery, slavery, and the prosperity of the ex-Pearl of the Antilles, of the struggle for independence, of Toussaint Louverture? Or should I tell about the degradation that has punctuated our daily lives since 1804: occupation, dictatorship, massacres, the allure of democracy with Aristide that gave way to demogoguery, and then end with the kidnappings, coups d'etat, poverty, indigence, and the hopelessness that haunts us daily. For
those who don't even know the basics can present the equation: hunger + poverty + rising prices=demonstrations + the Prime Minister's resignation + violence, and argue that an increase in food aid would suffice to reduce hunger.

But those of you who know Haiti, who still breathe her air in spite of the distance between you, who still cry silently when you have a parent on the telephone, you know that the situation is far from that simple. You know that these demonstrations are not innocent, that there is an invisible hand behind these acts of violence, that these so-called demands are not the result of accident, that the dismissal of the Prime Minister or cash payments won't change much, and that the rioters are nothing more than pawns in the skilled hands of the maniacs in power.

Because you know the cold truth, and you are sick of it. You have run away from the political machinations, you have broken your ties with Haiti, you have resigned yourself to you condition of being "stateless," these moments are enough to make your pulse race, your heartbeat go irregular, to make you want to pull out your hair, to curse destiny, and prove to you, for the umpteenth time, that you were right to leave.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Musengeshi Katata at Forum Realisance, watching events in Haiti and Egypt, writes a post called, "Today, Haiti. Tomorrow, the world."

Katata touches on the relationship between the current food crisis, the ecological devastation of the planet, energy demand, biofuels, and how India and China, developing rapidly and without the latest in energy-saving technologies, are coming to Africa in search of natural resources.

He asks "Why is Africa so slow to understand that it's only going to get more difficult [to develop] in the future?" and predicts that "the next few years will be bad, so bad that we will ask ourselves if Hell is African" because "rich countries will, as they always have, place the heavy weight of this intensifying crisis on the shoulders of poor countries" [Fr]

But in the end, Katata puts most of the responsibility on African elites themselves, predicting that "many incapable governments and puppet regimes are going to implode" in the coming years unless they recognize their own self-interest lies with protecting the interests of their people.

...the Tsunami, as one of our Internet brothers wrote, will soon reach Africa with, as the World Bank has predicted, the inevitable revolts and famines. How can we present things to our black and African elites so that they will understand that they are asleep at the helm, that their view of things is disastrous and detrimental to their own well-being and future? Must Africans and their descendants continue to let themselves be run by the West, and to fail to see what threatens to happen, after decades and decades of the vicissitudes of chronic need and poverty? It's enough to ask, do blacks refuse to think and draw useful conclusions or are they just incapable?

All of those countries who live off foreign aid, all those under the aid and false promises of the industrialized countries who have not developed their own domestic agriculture will come to know, in the years that follow, hard years of bitterness. The economic crisis that we have known since what will soon be 30 years will intensify and eat away at the meager means of all the poor countries. And those who hope or believe that foreign aid can help ease the situation are fooling themselves yet again: this help, although a salve, is at the same time actually a poison, and in spite of the misery and the poverty, a stepped-up effort cannot make up for this type of shortfall in the future. Because, let's be honest, aid corrupts and enables deceptive appearances; that's what often stops people, as we know, from seeing [the forest for the trees], from seeing the problem as it is and remedying it as wisely as possible...

You may view the latest post at

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/18/haiti-congo-and-the-politics-of-hunger/