Finally! the real Hollywood comes to Africa, but for what purpose?

It seems that gone are the days when movies shot in Africa, about Africa would show the West’s stereotypical view of Africa by depicting Africans as barbarians and savages. Movies from the recent past, namely the Lord of War, Blood Diamonds and to a certain extent the last kings of Scottland have done reasonably well to expose the underhandedness of Western influence in the civil wars affecting many African nations. In Lord of War we see the main character (an American arms dealer) selling weaponry to both sides engaged in the civil war (the rebels and the government). Also, in Blood Diamond Western businesses visibly perpetuate the civil war in order to benef from the illegal diamond trade. Unfortunately the events depicted in these movies are real life occurences in Africa.

While I applaud these movies in showing the rest of the world the truth about African civil wars as opposed to the past stereotypes (of Africans as savages who kill one another for no apparent reason). Sadly, it won’t be long before Hollywood moves on to the next big thing and it also won’t be long before the rest of the world forgets about the plight of some of these African nations.

This makes me wonder, whether these movies were created for the purpose of alerting the world to the suffering of some nations or if showing the pain and suffering of others is influenced by the need to grow profit margins and possibly collect a few awards. I tend to lean more towards the latter, mainly because history has shown that movies based on real life stories have more potential of colleting awards, call me a sceptic or pessimist if you must!

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.

Eradicating poverty

In South Africa the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, with some segments of the population living well below the poverty line. How is that? Let's start by looking at our history. During the apartheid era, black males were lured from the rural areas into the cities to work in the mines and other types of manual labour and were housed in hostels. These men would rarely see their families. The need to be closer to their families led to the development of townships on the outskirts of the cities offering employment opportunities. This type of housing ensured that the men working in the cities were within reach of employment opportunities and were also with their families. Those wishing to explore employment opportunities in the cities would leave the rural areas knowing that they had secure accomodation with their relatives.

Fast Forward to the post apartheid era.
The post apartheid era saw an explosion of squatter camps. These are basic rooms constructed of corrugated iron and other materials - also consisting of plastics which are a cause of the deadly shack fires. These shacks can house an entire family. People residing in the shacks originally come from the rural areas in search of work in the cities, often not having places to live they seek shelter by constructing these shacks. The rationale behind leaving the rural areas is that it is better to live in a shack around places with better prospects of employment rather than the rural areas where there are no job opportunities. So the breadwinner would live first, bringing the rest of the family members once a shack has been built. Millions of South Africans currently reside in the shacks, with most women employed as domestic workers in the surrounding surbubs. The government has since 1994 undertaken to build and provide free housing in an effort to eventually rid the country of shacks. While well meant, this system is flawed for many reasons.

1. There have been no proper checks on the builders contracted to build these houses, and they therefore build using cheap materials, thus pocketing the bulk of the money and sometimes these houses never see the light of day, while the money disappears.

2. Free housing is not a sustainable plan on its own mostly because giving an unemployed person a free house brings with it an array of other problems, such as water and electricity rates – which will obviously be unaffordable.

You can not expect an unemployed house owner to be able to afford these rates. Furthermore, providing free housing will only motivate a further increase in shacks as people that are currently residing in rural areas will also flock into the cities to take advantage of free housing. This is not to suggest that people living in the shacks are not deserving of better and more decent housing. However, such house provision should go hand in hand with job creation to ensure that those occupying the houses can actually afford to live in them. Another challenge is that even with job creation, tche type of employent that can be created has to be labour intensive as large segments of our population are uneducated. This therefore creates another problem; you can only build so many roads - fix so many buildings. This further begs the question of intensive labours' sustainability.

The plan:
My plan is simple. The government should work closely with the farming community and offer incentives (in the form of tax breaks) to farmers willing subsidise parts of their land. On that land build the free houses, this would ensure that those living in the shacks are lured back to the rural areas. Provide employment oppportunities in the agricultural sector and ensure that it is attractive enough to entice the unemployed living in the urban areas to move back to the rural areas. Taking into account that some forms of farming are highly seasonal and largely dependent on external factors, alternative forms of employment could be created by getting some of the factories to move their production lines to the rural areas - this will ensure that they are within reach of those seeking employment and they (the businesses) will in turn have access to cheap labour.

In the end the there will be employment - housing that people can actually afford - ridding the country of shacks, the farmers and businesses get tax breaks for having operations and factories in the rural areas. The economy strives - and everyone is happy.

Only if things were that simple.

A nation of fools

Article coming very soon, will look at how forgiving and stupid we South Africans are as a nation.