Sovereignty & self reliance versus colonial development

MARTYN NAMORONG

NAME A COUNTRY that does not depend on foreigners? Answer: probably none

Martyn Namorong

The so called developed world is very dependent on the third world, as they like to refer to the rest of us, for natural resources.

A country like Ivory Coast produces about 50% of the world's cocoa but it would be much more expensive for the Ivorians to export chocolate to the developed world because the developed world would prefer that the Ivorians remain inferior.

That is what development really looks like folks.

Thirty-seven years on since so called independence, I empathize with the frustrations of many Papua New Guineans who see what's wrong with the current model of 'development'. What it is very good at doing is perpetuating dependence.

Ask yourself when your country will be free of aid dependency not just from other countries, but also from Churches and NGOs. Wanem taim bai yumi sanap long tupela leg blong mipela? [When will we stand on our own two legs?]

What most Papua New Guineans aspire for is national sovereignty and self reliance. The reason we're not achieving this is that we're using what I refer to as the dependency model of development.

What it does is to create the perception that Papua New Guineans are an inferior people who need outsiders to come and solve our problems. Which is why a lot of our Big Men with Big Egos speak like weaklings with major inferiority complexes.

Religion created the perception that a foreign god was superior to the local masalai.

Christianity told people that the sacred lands of Jews were superior to the sacred lands of Melanesians. People were told to accept the all powerful Jewish masalai over the Melanesian masalai.

Religion told people that they were in the dark and needed to come to the light.

And so the story of the subjugation of our Papua New Guinean ways began.

Many of those colonists, whether religious colonists or secular colonists, may have been decent people trying to do what they saw was the right thing.

But what they did was to create the cargo cult mindset that persists today in the form of expecting the government, foreign aid agencies, and foreign investment to sort out our problems.

All this does is undermine national sovereignty and self reliance by ensuring that the drivers of PNG's so called development agenda are foreigners. As soon as communities expect foreign companies and aid agencies to built infrastructure and provide basic goods and services, they hand over their future to foreigners and are no longer in control of their destiny.

The practical implication of this is that instead of communities working together to address their local issues, they wait helplessly for handouts. Over the past 37 years, many communities would have built themselves classrooms, aidposts, roads, airstrips and the rest but it seems they've been waiting for memba, gavman, kampani long kam wokim dispela samtin [MPs, government, companies to do these things].

Anyone with a rational, objective, scientific mind would look at the experience of outsiders failing to deliver and question the rationale for engaging with them or expecting solutions from them.

Everyone sees the problems around them but, when they think of solutions, they think of working with a system that, by it very nature of disempowering people, has failed to deliver so called developmental outcomes.

The root of the story of Development in Papua New Guinea was when some black bush kanakas were told that they were inferior to Europeans and needed to "develop".

They believed that story and still do to this very day. This is despite the fact that many of those bush kanakas own land unlike most landless Europeans.

For landless Europeans, economic growth and job creation are important so they can work in order to pay their bank loans. This landless European model followed by much of the West is not necessarily applicable in PNG.

Yet, everything Papua New Guineans have been taught from primary school to university is based on a type of society where people are essentially landless peasants.

The idea that yu nid long skul gut na kisim wok [you need schooling to get work] is European. Many young Papua New Guineans are being 'trained' for an economic reality that does not exist - skul pepa blong yu skul pepa nating [your academic education is worthless].

It's stupid to train landed people (landlords) to be peasants. It's disempowering and borders on deliberate sabotage of a nation and its people.

I'm not saying that we should start going back long taim blong tumbuna [to the time of our ancestors]. What has to happen is that we recognize that there are unique differences between Western and Melanesian societies. We're not landless peasants who need economic a growth for job creation.

What is most appropriate is to create the conditions necessary for Papua New Guineans to work their land, make a profit and pay taxes to the government.

PNG's national government is supported largely by money made by foreign mining companies. The implication of this is that the miners and foreign exploiters have greater political capital than Papua New Guinean citizens.

The people of PNG need to change this economic reality by contributing revenue to the government. This is national sovereignty and self reliance, as opposed to ‘Development’ where outsiders determine whether you get improved schools and healthcare or they get "improved investment environment" such as tax holidays for miners.

Perhaps if we follow the path of national sovereignty and self reliance; our children will have a different answer to the question I asked at the beginning of this essay.

Sourced from: Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE (http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2012/07/sovereignty-self-reliance-versus-colonial-development.html)