[Q] A couple of years ago there were 2 movies made about Fairtrade. One supports it (The Black Gold); one questions it (The Bitter Aftertaste). In The Black Gold, Tadesse (from Ethiopia) said to the Western audience that “this is not about having a car or something like that, it is just about people have a decent living”. What is your opinion on Tadesse’s statement to the West that “people are not wanting a car, but just a decent life”?
[De Roy] Man has not remained in the so-called original state, where all that he needs is food to eat, a place to sleep and a cloth to wear. This concept negates humanity. It is when man has been overtly or covertly suppressed either by his environment or external forces that make him accept such a state. Rational human beings always aspire and yearn for a better life that brings comfort and joy. That is why we create, manufacture, innovate, design, build, etc, just to make life more meaningful and less of drudgery and toil.
If what Tadesse is saying that we don’t need car, then he is saying that we should remain in our original state and that is unacceptable. However, I believe what Tadesse is saying is that we need more than cars: we need our own aircraft to spray our farms, electricity to power irrigation machines, tractors to carry foods, fertilizers to engender good harvest, herbicides to clear weeds, first class roads to carry them to the downtowns, cities and market centres, so that we can get fair price to send our children to world first class schools. That to me is a decent life.
[Q] In some Fairtrade press release, it celebrates “young people following their fathers’ footsteps and come back to be coffee farmers”. Sophi Tranchell from Divine Chocolate said that “these people (Kuapa Kokoo Farmers, Ghana) are really talented in using machete and carrying stuff on their heads… they love living in the village (interview featured in The Bitter Aftertaste). Do you think this represents the reality? Do people from your country just want to stay in agriculture, that they prefer leading a primitive village life instead of modernisation, material comfort & bigger opportunities to move around or do different things in life?
[De Roy] Young people following their fathers to farm is nothing strange. At one stage in my life in my dad’s village, I followed my dad to work on his cocoa farm – I had no choice then! Today, I have a choice because of education and exposure. I’m now an academic. Throughout history, what one is born into is what one does first. E.g. if you are born into a cocoa farmer’s family or a Christian dominated family, the first thing you are most likely to become is one of them. So if you are born a farmer’s child, then obviously the first you will do includes using machetes and carrying stuff on your head and pretending that you have to live in the village and be a farmer, too, because you are not exposed and your talent has not been harnessed. But the hard fact is that, in Ghana today, very insignificant number of farmers wants their children to become farmers. Apart from the crude traditional methods of farming, which bring untold hardship, sweat, drudgery and toil, it is also not rewarding.
Man is a progressive being. Therefore, if generations upon generations of farmers have remained in the same state, then it means two things are wrong: the first is that the state that must create opportunities for its citizens has been highly irresponsible.
The second is the appalling thinking that if you are born a farmer’s child, then you must remain a farmer. People are born with different and unique talents. In our country, youths are constantly moving from the farmlands and rural areas into the city centres in search for better life opportunities and I am one of them. The various models under youth employment programme being implemented by Ghana government include youths in agriculture… Rather, they (the youths) prefer selling dog chains, meat pie, ice water, etc, by the roadside in the city centres just so they can be part of modern and city life, where they can get portable water, go to cinemas, have better healthcare, etc. Even university graduates with master degrees prefer to become receptionists, bank tellers, etc, than to become cocoa farmers in the villages.
Indeed, even the villagers and cocoa farmers cry for a modern living. This is why my 75+ year old mother in the village now uses mobile phones, gas cooker, refrigerator. Village schools in Ghana are on the government for computers, internet connectivity, science labs… All this attests to the fact that people are tired of the old form of life and need alternative, which is a modern and better life.
[Q] How do you see the fact that our world is being divided into “The First”, “The Second” and “The Third”. Or, “The Deveoped”, “The Developing” and “The Underdeveloped”? How does it make you feel to be put into a certain ranking?
[De Roy] We have had empires, chiefdoms, kingdoms, subjects, colonial masters, etc, so this categorization is not new; it is just a continuation of the class system and a demonstration of superiority. Such categorization throws a challenge for one to compare, do more and aspire for better. You can live in The Third World and aspire or do things that are better than someone living in The First World and vice versa.
[Q] How do you see that fact that so many Western NGOs, celebrities, politicians flock to Africa to carry out various types of philanthropic works?
[De Roy] Firstly, the flocking into Africa by these moral crusaders confirms the fact that there is a development challenge in Africa and we all recognize that. Who does not know that most people in Africa are poor? The unacceptable level of poverty and misery in Africa appears to have made Africa an all-purpose pulpit for celebrities and NGOs to display their pretences. I say pretences because I have not seen any celebrity or NGO campaigning for Africans to experience that kind of life and enjoyment that goes on in western countries. Neither have I seen any western politician clamouring for fertilizers, tillers, tractors and modern methods of farming for African farmers. Rather, they help to romanticize our appalling situation. It is also worth noting that almost all developed nations received one form of external boost or another in their development process. For example, USA had ample slave labour from Africa, Germany had help in a form of Marshall Plan from USA, Britain used colonial resources. What about Africa? The paltry financial aids that hardly come have very draconian strings attached.
[Q] Below are a couple of images from Fairtrade materials. In UK we see this type of “producer images” almost daily. They are farmers, they are working hard (smiling), and very often their hands have whatever commodities they have on offer. I asked the Fairtrade Foundation here if they think using images like these would foster racial stereotype & reinforce the current perception in the international division of labour. I got the answer that they are just trying to reflect reality. They always try to portray the producers as “dignified”, “positive” business people. What is your opinion on this? Do these images reflect reality to you?
(Left) Images of Fairtrade product leaflet; (Top Right) Fairtrade Media image – picking tea in Tazania; (Bottom Right) Decorative wall-mount image from Fairtrade Foundation office
(Left) Image from BMW ads, Men’s Health Magazine (UK), Nov, 2010; (Right) Packaging of The Co-operative Fairtrade Tea (UK)
[De Roy] Looking at the pictures displayed at Fair trade website, it is obvious that the Fair-Trade people are demonstrating the racial stereotyped mindset about Africa.
It is very natural for people to jubilate and be happy over a bumper harvest, especially against the backdrop of drudgery and toil they have to go through. However, it is false to state that people who weed with machetes, hoes and cutlasses, instead of modern farming equipment and machines are happy all the time. This is madness! These are people who hardly see equipment such as video camera, therefore, when they are so captured, their seeming smile is a reflection of the moment and but not that of their daily lives. How can people who can hardly produce [enough] to feed themselves and their families be smiling? How can people whose produce go waste before the next market day because of lack of storage facilities be smiling? These are people who cannot pay their medical bills when they get snake bite or malaria. These are people whose farm produces are priced by the metropolis. These people are perpetually entrapped in poverty and misery by conduct of so called fair traders. Indeed, on our farmlands, it is dirges that are sung to demonstrate the drudgery and toiling-for-nothing nature of farming in Africa.
[Q] Fairtrade Foundation also talks a lot about empowering farmers/producers. In its visual language, at one end we have the missionary, heroic position of the people here (those who “empower”, active voice); at the other end we see how poor people being “benefited” and their gratitude. How does it make you feel “to be empowered (passive voice)”?
(Top left & right) Newspaper cutting from Fairtrade Foundation office; screen grab from the Foundation’s online video: Fairtrade Heros; (Bottom left & right) Image from Divine Chocolate’s Materials; Salisbury’s Supermarket’s Poster (2010)
[De Roy] We feel utterly disempowered by people who purport to speak for Africans. There is an axiom in our Twi language that says ‘nobody takes a medicine meant for a sick person, but the sick person himself’. It is very insulting to hear that some people elsewhere have become unsolicited spokespersons for Africa when we have our own elected representatives.
The pictures showing women and fair trade heroes is a reflection of deep-seated deception planted in the minds of the people in the West that something good is being done for the poor farmer. These people don’t know the story of the farmer neither do they understand the reality, let alone to tell it. These so‑called heroes and influential women have not seen or held machetes, hoes or cutlasses in their lives before. They cannot be change makers, because they do not know the subject matter of the change, which is about promoting and expanding opportunities and choices of people to reach their potential. The pictures indeed are a reflection of the master‑servant/superior-inferior relationship that have remained unchanged over a long period of time.
[Q] Early this year Fairtrade has launched “Fairtrade and Fairmined (fairly mined) Gold”. It strikes me that places that can produce gold actually need to rely on “minimum Fairtrade wage & a bit of premium”. And actually, history tells us that Africa and Latin America are very rich in resources, yet these 2 continents happen to end up the poorest. At the same time, all resources happen to have ended up in a handful of rich nations. Looking at the issue from such context, how would you see world justice? trade justice? fairness?
[De Roy] Concerning world justice, I have little to write about, for the world has lost its conscience. Now it is about getting some pity and paltry money to do micro financing in Africa. It is not about constructing underground tunnels and railways from Ghana to Democratic Republic of Congo. It is not about building factories, aircrafts. Real development that creates choices and opportunities and liberates people is no longer on the world’s agenda.
Trade justice for me is not something worth commenting. Who are the people involved in trade justice? Who are the people heading all the big time trade organizations such as UNTACD, WTO? Anyway, what have we to trade as Africans? The raw materials? For us to do fair trade, we have to modernize our ways of doing things. We need factories and machines to process our raw materials in order to ensure value addition.
[Q] Below is an excerpt from two prayers downloadable from the Fairtrade Foundation website. How do you see such an act as to provoke people to imagine how others live? What is your opinion on the “powerlessness” of some people as opposed to the “powerfulness” of certain people – that the life and death of some people lie on a brink of shopping decision of the rich Westerners?
[De Roy] This excerpt smacks of absolute deception of what fair trade stands for. Stanza 3 tells us that people in Africa need hi-tech hospitals/healthcare, portable water and better life for their children. But these witty things are not what we want. We want real things that can change our lives for the better, which are just what are found in the developed world. ‘Ferrari for all’, as WORLDwrite says. We don’t want to be pitied.
[Q] How do you define development? What would you like to see your country become and your people to have in life?
[De Roy] Development is about taking people out of drudgery and toil and offering them opportunities and choices to liberate themselves from nature’s impositions.
I want my country to develop beyond where the West have reached and to become a centre of attraction and a beacon of hope for the rest of the world in terms of human, material and infrastructural development.
I want all Ghanaians to have a well furnished accommodation, portable pipe borne water hi-tech hospitals, world class schools and colleges, first class roads, giant shopping malls, electricity in all homes and villages. Indeed, we want a life better than even those living in the West.