Western democracies stink of raw hypocrisy

In Last week's post card, I discussed the controversies in the World Conference against racism with specific reference to Zionism and Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Some Israeli sympathisers wrote back condemning me for supporting “Palestinian terrorists”. They point at the “suicide bombings” of this week as proof of the insecurity that Israel faces. This is where the arguments get muddled because the same people convince themselves that Israeli missile attacks and deployment of sophisticated weaponry are just retaliation for the suicide attacks. This is very desperate indeed. What is the lawful or moral basis of punishing ordinary Palestinians for the crime of a hard core of committed activists who are desperate enough to blow themselves up along with their victims? If the perpetrator of a crime dies in the process of committing the crime, why should the rest of the population be punished? It is not Israel we are concerned with this week but another aspect of the controversies about the UN conference, namely apology for slavery, its recognition as crime against humanity and demands for reparation. Nothing exposes the duplicity and hypocrisy of Western liberals than their somersaults over these issues. You see the liberal conscience is a very tortured one. They believe themselves to be ‘nice’ people, wishing well for all humanity, imbued with good values and motivated by great ideals. They will want to do good all the time except when their material interests, crass consumerism and unfair domination of the world's resources and its peoples are at stake. And this is very often. Consequently they are unable, or to be frank, unwilling, to live up to the ideals of their high values. It is like that great film in which Sidney Poitier masterfully played a leading character: Guess Who is Coming Home to Dinner. A young, idealistic white woman, from a good bourgeois home with politically correct liberal parents, fell in love with an older bright university professor who was Black. The film explores the prejudice on both sides. The liberal parents of the woman were pillars of the liberal establishment, love their black maid and are anti-racist but their good hearts did not extend to contemplating their daughter bringing a Black man home as a suitor! Standing up for one's principles and beliefs is sometimes easier at the level of proclamation than practice. This is why a country like Britain claims to be home to “mother of all parliaments” while the USA behaves as if it invented all democratic values but still stand opposed to apology for slavery and do not wish to support demand for reparation. It should not surprise us. When the Universal Declaration of human rights was proclaimed, most of Africa was in the throes of colonial domination and African-Americans had not even won the right to universal adult suffrage yet the Western powers had no qualms about universalising human rights. The demand for apology is not just a symbolic one, it is a call for rehumanising the world. It is a Christian process of atonement that there cannot be absolution without admission of guilt and a show of remorse. In legal terms, once there is an admission, then there are implications for compensation. This is what they are afraid of. But reparation is not just about money. Convoluted debates about who sold who, when and where are diversionary. It is not also a surprise that some prominent African-Americans like the current Secretary of State, Colin Powell, like Susan Rice (former Assistant Secretary of State for Africa) before him, consider the issue as 'past' and we need to 'move on.' They cannot demand more reparation because they are already over- compensated. They got their reparation packages. It is not odd too that many African leaders are very silent on the issue because their countries, when the chips are down, need reparation from most of them, for continuing slavery in other disguises. Some of them are even under the illusion that by remaining donor-friendly and playing safe, they are getting some reparation. However, whatever aid or grants they get cannot be compensation for the continuing legacy of slavery and colonialism responsible for the underdevelopment of Africa today and the blighted lives of the majority of people of African origin in the diaspora. I bought a T-shirt in NewYork a couple of years ago. It had a picture of a dreadlocked brother in one of those fashionable 'respect' poses wit the words: “Damn Right! I have an attitude. My people worked 400 years without a paycheck. Reparations are due.” They are overdue. Whatever the wording of the compromise that will finally appear in Durban, the reparations Movement can only grow and grow pricking at the conscience of the world for a new deal for Africa and Africans and people of African origin, against all the predators, historical and contemporary.