SUBSIDIZING AFRICAN MISERY
by George Jonas
National Post
August 14, 2005

Swiss taxpayers are beginning to
note that private jets are
expensive. In 2002, the Federal
Council of Switzerland spent
about 12 million Swiss francs ($11.5-million) on a modest model for its own
use.
That was just a small bite, however. The big bite for Swiss taxpayers was
the jet
Tanzania's government bought for its president. It cost almost 50 million
francs.

The Swiss taxpayers paid for both planes. Tanzania, proud if economically
challenged East African home of the new jet, was subsidized by the Swiss
Agency
for Development and Cooperation to the tune of $31-million last year.

The numbers demonstrate the First Law of International Welfare: The cost of
a
presidential jet is in proportion to the foreign aid a country receives.
The lower a
country's median income or GNP, the higher the model designation on its
Gulfstream. If the president travels in a G-II, the population still eats.
A G-IV
threatens starvation, and a G-V ensures it.

We live in times when an aid recipient's jet-propelled status symbol costs
four
times as much as a donor's. Switzerland receives no aid from any country,
least
of all Tanzania, which is probably why the Swiss government's flying toy
isn't as
plush as the Tanzanian government's (or the Ugandan's, for that matter,
which
cost a reported US$38-million).

The figures come from a recent issue of Switzerland's Neue Zurcher Zeitung,
couriered to me by a friend. Kurt Pelda's article, entitled How Africa is
being
paralyzed through money, brings to mind the famous Wa-Benzis of the 1970s,
subjects of much media attention at the time (not to mention a recent essay
in
these pages by The Spectator's Aidan Hartley).

In Africa, where everyone's identity is pretty much derived from his or her
tribe,
the Wa-Benzis emerged as a "tribe" of newly rich government officials named
after their Mercedes-Benz automobiles. The freshly minted African elite
siphoned
off the cream of the foreign aid and investment coming from the West,
diverting
it back to Western suppliers of luxury items. The taxpayers of North
America and
Europe weren't subsidizing the famished people of Africa as much as the
well-fed
shareholders of Mercedes-Benz.

Africa's big problem, however, wasn't the money that was stolen. The big
problem turned out to be the money that wasn't stolen. Africa could have
survived the loss of what was skimmed off the top by the kleptocracy of the
Wa-Benzis; it was the aid that reached it that brought the dark continent
to its
knees.

Booting up the computer and typing "Africa+aid+futility" into an Internet
search
engine brings 67,600 responses. The first one to pop up is a syndicated
article
from last month by Thomas Sowell, called The tragedy of Africa: foreign aid
and
debt forgiveness.

"Why would anyone think that promoting irresponsible government borrowing
by
periodically 'forgiving' their debts is going to help African countries in
the long
run?" asks Mr. Sowell. Because, he answers, "such policies benefit the
bureaucracies that administer foreign aid and enable vain people to see
themselves as saviours, even when they are doing more harm than good."

The same "vain people" would no doubt like to dismiss Mr. Sowell as a
racist.
This comforting course isn't open to them because the pundit in question
happens to be black. He seems at ease pointing out that India started
producing
surplus wheat when the West stopped dumping wheat into India as "aid"
during
famines. He comments on pickets surrounding G8 meetings in Scotland with
"Save Africa" signs: "Looking back over the decades and generations, Africa
has
been 'saved' so many times that you have to wonder why it still needs
saving."

One reason Africa needs saving is because it's being prevented from saving
itself.
It's prevented by policies of foreign aid and debt forgiveness.

It's prevented by programs that reward dependency, mismanagement and
misfortune, while punishing industry, productivity, foresight and even good
luck.
It's prevented by officials and academics who favour subsidizing
presidential jets
in Tanzania, while calling for the infliction of pain on ordinary
Canadians.

This isn't a figure of speech.

The director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, John Williamson, wrote
last
week in the Financial Post about academics in Canada calling on the
government
"to get radical" about implementing the Kyoto accords. Kyoto, of course, is
the
left's hare-brained environmental scheme -- or scam -- that intends to
reduce
pollution by paying other countries to pollute.

Under Kyoto, developed countries pay for polluting and less developed
countries
get paid for it. For total emissions, therefore, Kyoto means little change.
For
ordinary Tanzanians, it won't mean much. But for the president, it could
mean an
upgraded jet, depending on what kind of pay-to-pollute scheme is adopted.

For Canadians, Kyoto means higher energy prices, coupled with fewer jobs.
Professors Douglas Macdonald and Debora Van Ninjatten, respectively of the
University of Toronto and Wilfred Laurier University, are quoted by Mr.
Williamson as having written that the "infliction of such pain is
politically viable."

Maybe. Canadians have been gluttons for punishment. They've been champions
of wrong choices. But even they may be reaching the end of their tether.

© National Post 2005

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