So I finally got a copy of Harri Englund’s book “Prisoners
of Freedom.” Englund, an academic, spent considerable time in Malawi between 1999
and the mid 2000s studying the work of human rights NGOs and the impact, or
lack thereof, of that work on the socio-economic conditions of Malawians. His main argument is that human rights NGOs in
Malawi have refused to promote and work towards the better realization of Malawians’
socio-economic and collective rights.
Instead, by focusing exclusively on the promotion of political and
individual rights, they have actually disempowered the ability of Malawian’s to
change the vast political and socio-economic disparities currently present in
the country.
The reviews of Englund’s book by fellow academics, Western
and Malawian, were overwhelmingly positive.
For an academic Englund spent a considerable amount of time in Malawi,
became fluent in ChiChewa, and consequently collected a large amount of
information upon which he bases his arguments.
His commitment to first understanding how donor-funded human
rights and civic education programs were in practice implemented rather than
to quickly engage in an ideological or theoretical critique of such programs is
refreshingly industrious. As someone who
has spent a reasonable amount of time in Africa himself observing various types
of development projects, most of what Englund reports is familiar and rings
true. It is unfortunate that more such
accounts are not published as they would give ammunition to those of us who are
arguing for a more complex understanding of what exactly donor-funded
development programs accomplish. The
fact that those who have been most critical of it come from development
backgrounds themselves is sad but not surprising. According to this crowd anything that seems
to question the success of development efforts is labeled as Afro-pessimism.
On the other hand I’m not sure that Englund and I are
entirely on the same page. Clearly he is
concerned that human rights development projects have not in his estimation improved
the socio-economic welfare of the majority of Malawians. I think he is mostly right about this, but I
am not sure that, given the political, economic, and cultural space within
which these projects live, we could have reasonably hoped for a different
result. And before you label me an
Afro-pessimist myself, let me quickly state that this need not be a depressing conclusion. In fact it is only depressing if you, as
Englund seems to, rigidly hold onto the belief that an effective human rights campaign is the only way, or at least an
essential element, to improving the socio-economic welfare of the majority of
Malawians. For all of his sophistication
in exposing the hypocrisy of Western-led human rights discourses, Englund seems
to be more frustrated that projects promoting it in Malawi were improperly and
incompletely implemented and therefore had perverse results than he is
interested in critically examining whether or not such discourses, even in
theory, are appropriately applicable to Malawi.
Instead he takes the more traditional critical approach of simply exposing
and lamenting the difference between an ideal and reality without really
examining the ideal itself. I think this
is ultimately naïve, philosophically blinkered, and most importantly leads to unnecessary
pessimism about the future prospects of African development notwithstanding
Englund’s denials.
Let me explain with an example. In chapter two of his book Englund talks
about how Malawian civic educators failed to do their jobs in an egalitarian
manner by creating status barriers between themselves and villagers. They wore
fancy clothes, carried cellphones, and associated mostly with the upper classes
in the villages they visited. As a matter of fact, this observation is likely
true. But should it be surprising? Why should we expect Malawians to act in
anyway but a shallow one to a set of Western created human rights norms? Particularly when the amount of time spent
explaining those norms to them is so minimal.
Englund describes well the social and economic reasons that Malawians entertain
such norms to the extent that they do but he seems to think it is a problem
that they don’t more fully and authentically embrace them. Beyond being naive, such a position, more problematically
disregards the possibility that such norms are inappropriate to Malawi, i.e.
that there may be good reasons for such shallow engagement, and that other local
norms may be more effective at promoting the overall socio-economic welfare of
the majority of Malawians. Afterall
Malawians have their own social, cultural, and philosophical resources to define
for themselves what is, and what is not, a just Malawian society. Although Englund himself must certainly be
aware of these resources he doesn’t engage with them much. And unfortunately too often the international
community’s irrational fear, ignorance, and paternal pessimism of what they
condescendingly label as “traditional” culture, and sadly the self-loathing of
that culture by many Africans themselves (which Englund also documents well),
has so far stifled the ability of such African conceptions of justice and
governance to provide a foundational basis upon which Malawians might build
their own political, economic, and social structures. The argument is not that Western concepts of
human rights or governance have no place in Malawi but rather that the
political and cultural space in which Malawians choose to adopt, or not adopt, such
concepts should be one in which they are not privileged over African concepts through
a combination of international economic and political pressure. I am actually agnostic as to whether or not
such African concepts could actually deliver more socio-economic development
but I do argue that it would be a more moral approach to development and that the
current approach, as Englund so skillfully shows, isn’t living up to its
ideals.
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