Sir, - I am perplexed by Kevin Myers's assertion (May 10th) that the sad truth is that tribalism in Africa was, along with voodoo, a powerful engine long before the white man arrived. It possesses a virulence that we find perplexing much as Zaireans and Rwandans must find the feuding between to their eyes, ears and minds identical peoples in Northern Ireland utterly perplexing."
Is Mr Myers oblivious to the connection between colonialism and the installation of an ethnic hierarchy in Northern Ireland and the current conflict there? Did not colonialism in Africa institutionalise similar hierarchies and is that legacy not implicated in current conflicts? This is not in any way to excuse the actions of those involved in the atrocities in Rwanda or elsewhere, but rather to set them in their historical and structural context.
Mr Myers is also mistaken that international capitalism" is not implicated in the current African tragedy. As economic growth slowed in the US and Western Europe in the 1970s, the governments of these countries began to promote "free trade" globally to boost their exports. Through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, governments in the developed world have forced African countries to open their markets and to liberalise prices for food and other commodities. Many African manufacturers have been unable to withstand the resultant pressures of high interest rates, inflation and the competitive onslaught of imports. This has led to a "recolonisation" of African economies as they are once more condemned to produce low value-added cash crops and minerals.
The increase in poverty which this has engendered provides fertile ground for renewed ethnic conflict. Is it coincidental that the massacres in Rwanda took place at the same time as food prices rose dramatically under the auspices of a World Bank/IMF "structural adjustment programme"?
Conflicts in Africa are not pre-modern". They are not simply a continuation of the pre-colonial period but are informed by that continent's colonial history and the nature of its current insertion into the global political economy. Given that we are all implicated in the global market, and consequently in developments in Africa, I do not see how "doing nothing" may be morally right.
Rather, we have a duty to do all we can to try to enable African development to begin. The Irish Government's decision to suspend its contributions to the IMF is a worthwhile first step in this regard.
We must now work to build viable alternatives to "free market" orthodoxy. When apathy towards the Third World is the norm in Europe and North America, the people of Ireland's empathy with others in the "post-colonial" world is not something to be derided but something of which we should be justifiably proud. - Yours, etc.,
University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis,
USA.