Unwanted Gift No. 5: Dominatricks
And lastly, if politics is your bag then why not buy a voice for the poor? The idea is to give a voice to a community, which is as absurd as it is patronising. The idea that you can export confidence to the poor and give them a voice, training them to lobby for a better life, makes a mockery of people’s own sense of agency, their abilities and their desires, and simultaneously thwarts and undermines the political process in these countries. To think that NGOs who are unaccountable and who hold no political responsibility in a country are better than the democratic processes of such countries merely demonstrates our own disillusionment with politics here in the West. This belief needs to be fundamentally challenged. To have a Chinese or an African NGO training workers in Britain on how to demand better working conditions or to have a decision-making exercise for voters would be unthinkable. Yet this gift is not only seen as acceptable, but even as essential for poor or rural communities. In fact it is precisely this “voice” that many developing countries detest. When we visited slums in Accra, Ghana’s capital, we found people were more than equipped to voice their ideas for a better life, and in fact were forthright in criticising western NGOs who assume that they are hapless victims in need of a steering in the “right” direction. The idea epitomises the politics of western interference and diktat in developing countries, often done through lessons in advocacy and good governance. This gift does not recognise the fact that freedom, democracy or indeed the will to lobby cannot be exported. Ironically it ignores the “voices” ideas, aspirations and ambitions of those it is supposed to benefit especially “voices” which demand growth, serious development and autonomy.