"Western Apathy Towards Africa Keeps Me Awake at Night"
Swedish best-selling mystery author and longtime Africa resident Henning Mankell, 56, discusses the anatomy of poverty in Africa, the AIDS epidemic and the breakdown of international aid to developing countries.
REUTERS
Aid workers distribute the food to the refugees using a system of ration cards under the scorching midday sun and stifling heat in the dry border area between Chad and Sudan.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Mankell, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair assumes the presidency of the European Union and the G8 countries next year, he plans to place the fight against poverty and disease in Africa at the top of the international political agenda. The new German President, Horst Koehler, has deliberately chosen Sierra Leone, Benin, Ethiopia and Djibouti as destinations for his first foreign trip. Are these signs of a new understanding for Africa's problems?
Mankell: I have learned to take a wait-and-see attitude before taking grand agendas too seriously. After all, this isn't the first time politicians have vocally announced their intentions to finally do something about suffering in Africa. Whenever this happened in the past, those same politicians went on a few trips, issued clever statements to the press, and that was about the extent of their political engagement. The people on the receiving end of their promises never really reaped the benefits.
SPIEGEL: You have to admit that the billions of dollars and euros in foreign aid that have been sent to Africa in recent years do seem to signal a change. Why such skepticism about the political will of the industrialized countries?
Mankell: The West's interest in Africa has changed dramatically, especially in the last 15 years. When the Cold War ended, the continent lost its military and strategic importance for the rest of the world. All of a sudden, no one was interested in Africa anymore. The upshot of that change is that today we know a lot about how Africa is dying, but almost nothing about life in Africa. Sure, we're interested in Africa's raw materials, whether we're talking about coffee, tobacco and minerals or soccer players. It's interesting to note that more African doctors practice in Europe nowadays than on the African continent.
SPIEGEL: What does all this mean for a country like Mozambique, where you have been living and working for months at a time for the past 15 years?
Mankell: Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries. But that hasn't always been the case. In fact, Mozambique ought to be a wealthy country. It has just about everything: water, rich fishing grounds, a diversified agricultural economy, minerals, perhaps even oil and outstanding potential for tourism. The country is blessed with more than 1,200 miles of coastline, endless sandy beaches, and a relatively sparse population. Mozambique has been systematically ruined and turned into a poor country.
DDP
Swedish author Henning Mankell
SPIEGEL: By whom?
Mankell: The fundamental poverty is a product of years of colonialism, when the country was essentially ransacked. When the Portuguese colonial authorities finally abandoned the country in 1975 -- less than 30 years ago -- they left behind a handful of Mozambicans with an advanced university education. They were completely unable to control the country economically and politically, while at the same time changing its institutional structures.
SPIEGEL: Isn't it a little simplistic to place all the blame on the country's colonial past?
Mankell: Not all the blame. If you want to find poverty in a country, the best thing to do is look for wealth. The streets of a city like Maputo, the capital, are filled with big Mercedes limousines. I've never seen as many luxury cars concentrated in one place as in the capitals and major cities of poor countries. The rich thrive on the fact that poverty exists, and much of their wealth comes from corruption, and foreign aid money often doesn't reach the people it's meant to benefit. In fact, international development policy has often played into the hands of corrupt third-world governments.
SPIEGEL: But isn't it true that the World Bank has pumped about $2.75 billion into Mozambique since 1985, most of it in the form of interest-free loans, but also as direct subsidies? These aren't exactly paltry sums.
Mankell: And what were the consequences? Most of these loans were made contingent upon so-called structural adjustment measures in the country. This usually meant cutting budgets for public expenditures. As a result, the country's last few functioning structures were destroyed.
SPIEGEL: Why do you say that? Requiring local structural reforms geared toward reducing expenditures isn't exactly unreasonable, especially when the intention is to minimize the amount of foreign aid that's siphoned off by corrupt officials.
Mankell: For Mozambique's already weak public health service, for example, this meant even further declines in the quality of healthcare, forcing important social service agencies to close their doors. But when you eliminate prenatal care programs, which is exactly what happened, the direct and brutal consequence is an increase in child mortality -- all this as a result of the World Bank's policies.
SPIEGEL: But it's long been recognized at the United Nations that things like good governance through democratic institutions, a well-functioning tax system, and effective measures to combat corruption are worthy objectives.
About Henning Mankell
For years now, Henning Mankell, a Swedish author whose books are bestsellers across Europe, has split his time between his Scandinavian homeland and Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, where he leads the Teatro Avenida theater. In Germany alone, Mankell's books have sold more than 4 million books, many in the popular Commissioner Kurt Wallander mystery series. In his novels, Mankell, 56, deals with issues ranging from poverty and globalization to moral and legal conundrums. In a handful of his works, he has created a literary monument to Africa's maladies, including Nelio, the touching story of an orphaned boy in Mozambique.
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Mankell: Good governance is certainly a good idea. But you can't just place it on someone's head like a new hat. This reminds me of Galileo's plea to the Inquisitors to believe what they could see with their own eyes. The World Bank should take a closer look at what happens in these countries, especially in the healthcare sector. If providing financial aid means that the few remaining functioning pillars of the healthcare system are destroyed, this inevitably means that many children will die. That's why I believe that in many cases the World Bank's policies have come dangerously close to genocide.
SPIEGEL: You can't possibly dispute that the World Bank's policies for fighting poverty in the world have also produced many success stories. Look at fast-developing countries like China and India.
Mankell: I agree. But comparing countries can be a tricky business. Mozambique lost at least ten years to a civil war fueled by forces in Rhodesia and South Africa. Any country facing similar conditions would have experienced similar problems. The World Bank failed to recognize this, and its policies dramatically worsened the situation. They led to the destruction of Mozambique's last functioning industry, for example.
SPIEGEL: What exactly do you mean?
Mankell: The production, processing and export of cashew nuts. The government had imposed protective tariffs to protect this sensitive industry. But the World Bank's champions of the notion of liberal market economies demanded an open, free market. They got what they wanted, and the results were horrific. Without government protection, the cashew processing industry was no longer viable. It's in severe decline today, thousands of workers are now unemployed, and the nuts are exported as raw material without being processed in Mozambique. And why did this happen? Because a liberal market economy is entirely devoid of restrictions and because there are no limits to our greed.
SPIEGEL: Those are strong words and serious accusations ...
Mankell: ... with which the World Bank now appears to agree. After all, World Bank President James Wolfensohn recently admitted himself that mistakes had been made.
SPIEGEL: What's wrong with a policy that makes financial aid dependent on the recipient countries being willing to introduce reforms so that at least some of the money actually reaches the people who need it the most?
Mankell: Nothing -- at least in theory. My only criticism is of the one-size-fits-all approach taken by the World Bank in implementing its policies. The World Bank, as well as other international development organizations, failed to understand that solutions must be tailored to each individual country's unique circumstances and requirements.
SPIEGEL: The European Union has essentially eliminated the protective tariffs, conditions and trade quotas that once characterized its trade relations with the world's 49 poorest countries. Is this a step in the right direction, as well as an acknowledgement of past mistakes?
Mankell: Well, at least it's a correct and important step. I'm happy to concede that the World Bank, despite all the shortcomings of its development policy, is a very important institution. It plays an important role as an instrument for controlling international financial movement on the capital markets.
SPIEGEL: Jan Myrdal, a friend of yours, a fellow Swede and a dedicated leftist, wants to see an end to financial development aid, because, as he contends, it does nothing but corrupt its recipients.
Mankell: I see this a little differently. It's important to combat corruption, especially at the governmental level. But there are two parties to corruption, the givers and the takers. At the same time, we also have to do something about poverty. Poverty is the African continent's basic evil, because all problems are connected to poverty: squalor, a lack of education and training and AIDS.
Part Two: In the West, people lead fairly normal lives with HIV, but in Africa they just die. I can't imagine a more cynical injustice. |
