Pity versus Compassionate Action for Africa

The images of pain and of suffering move across our TV screen. They come from Iraq, Afghanistan,

Israel, Palestine and Africa. We see death and suffering up close and yet are comfortably enough removed from it. We see them as news, as images fed to us via cameras, satellite, video phones, still images. Each year we see thousands of them, they come from around the globe. Most of the time we see them as mere images and not as the people and lives, the families, the communities they represent.

This is the 9^th anniversary of one of the worst atrocities in Human History, the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. 100 days of pure hell, where hatred, murder and rage had its reign and forces of evil unleashed a force against anyone who was born a Tutsi, or sympathetic to them. The world stood by doing nothing. The US Government would not call it a Genocide and by treaty be obligated to be get involved, the French were more worried about losing a country to the Anglophone rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (they did get involved and actually sheltered those committing the genocide) and Koffi Annan refused for the UN to get involved in a manner that would have stopped the genocide. The world looked on in pity as up to 1 million people were slaughtered in a country of 8 million while at the end of the 100 days 2 million of those who caused the carnage fled into neighboring countries receiving aid from the Red Cross, the UN and various Western countries…we saw the images, we had pity, but did nothing.

We still see images from Africa, children starving, boy soldiers running amok in Liberia, Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan where thousands upon thousands have died. Now with Iraq needing to be rebuilt there will continue to be feelings of pity for Africa, but at the same time a continuation of the hands off neglect that has been the modus operendi for years.

For years I raised money for African Projects and found this attitude of pity, this attitude of feeling sorry for Africa but not putting it into action as the prevalent mood of the day. I would tell the story of Africa, its possibilities, its riches, its resources, the story of a people hungering for freedom, for the basics of life and I would get “that is nice, I pity them, but why don’t they have fewer children and their problems be solved – or – Why do we need to help – if all they are going to do is kill each other – I feel sorry for them, but Africa is far away and we have needs here in America, but I do pity them.”

Pity regards its object not only as suffering, but as weak, and hence as inferior, and I am sorry to say that such an attitude still exists in the year 2008. Africa does not need our pity, our feeling sorry for them, but it needs our compassion. Pity leads to inaction, we view the pictures of children with distended bellies, we see emaciated women, bloodied men and we feel sad, but do nothing about it. Pity leads to feelings of inaction, becoming anesthetized from the suffering, pain, injustice that is before our eyes on the TV screen or in print.

Compassion on the other hand leads to action that is not based on pity for someone lesser than, but reaches out to a fellow human being. Pity might give a handout, whereas compassion not only tends to the immediate needs at hand, but also empowers the person in need to be all that they are meant to be.

Africa needs more than handouts that will still (temporarily) the present hunger. It needs the empowerment of its children to become the leaders of tomorrow through education. Not just giving them a fish, but teaching them how to fish. Its farmers need a decent return on their labors and produce so that they can

move away from subsistence farming where the raw products are gobbled up by Western Companies to be processed in the West with the African only getting 50 cents a pound such as in the case of coffee. The next time you buy a coffee at Starbucks or someone Mocha dispensing Palace ask how much the farmer in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia is getting out of your $2.50 latte. If we all drank only Fair Trade Coffee we would send a lot of children in Africa and other places to school, we would clothe them, we would feed families and so on but then the latte might go up another 23 cents.

We could apply the above to most every raw product, every mineral that comes from Africa. You will not find many Processing Factories there; only warehouses that ship the raw goods to the West. Docks piled high with the produce of Africa but Africa continues to starve and ache.

That is where compassionate action comes in. Education, Technical Schools, Universities, not just aid for the temporary relief of the pain of the moment, but a long-range plan that will benefit Africa.

I have a friend who has a dream of bringing Cashew Nuts in a processed state from Africa to be sold in Western Stores from Guinea-Bissau. He knows that this would benefit the African Farmer in that country. He has tirelessly given himself to the raising of the funds needed not from governments but from private individuals who share his vision of empowerment of the African subsistence farmer.

A Ugandan woman asked me to help her to set her up with a cooker as she called a stove and a fryer. It would only be 50 dollars but it would give her the means to live in dignity by having her own business and an open-air eating-place. I did and the result was that for years I would pass by her place and see her cooking up her things for those passing by. I gave that small investment not out of pity, but out of compassion knowing that 50 dollars might just make the difference in her life both now and in the future.

A Sudanese Man in Nairobi showed me his self-help center. A place where South Sudanese women were doing tie and dye products and other crafts that they then would sell door to door and to tourists. Someone in UK had seen it as wise to invest a thousand pounds into the lives of some Sudanese women who now could make some money for food and school fees.

All the Aid that Africa receives is for naught, unless it goes to the person who is at the bottom of society struggling to survive. Aid most often lines the pocket of the rich and corrupt –the Wabenzis (Africans who have it all with their Mercedes) who do not need more, but Africa needs empowerment investments that touch every part of society beginning with education, small business loans, fair prices on raw products and the establishment of factories and processing plants that provide meaningful work for Africa.

Pity is a fleeting sorrow, but compassion says, “ I believe in you.” On this anniversary of the Genocide in Rwanda when the world stood by idly, had pity but did nothing, may we in the West, move into action that reaches out in compassion and gives the gift of empowerment to provide a future and a hope to Africa…jon (This page was originally written in April of 2003 on anniversary of Rwandan Genocide.

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Last updated: 01 March 2010

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