What a story! It's the story of Africa. On UK TV, we see appeals for Africa for water aid, supporting students financially, etc., but no-one seems to ask why the largest continent with the most resources, still is without sanitation and electricity. I knew Magafuli called out the fake PCR tests which did not go down well, especially for him. My cousin spent his working life in Botswana, working for De Beer, which allowed him to retire at 50, over 20 years ago, and furnish him with an extremely comfortable retirement!
Thank you for this, Markker! Your cousin's De Beers retirement is exactly the receipt the essay is pointing at. That's not accidental wealth. That's the architecture working precisely as designed: the people closest to the resource, but on the right side of the corporate structure, retire at 50. The people who actually went underground in Marilani earned $3 a day and had a 41% chance of dying if they got injured.
You've named the most important unanswered question in development discourse on UK charity appeals. Nobody asks why because the charity model requires Africa to stay legible as a problem to be solved, not a system being actively drained. The moment you ask why, the appeal stops working. The donor becomes implicated.
Magufuli and the PCR tests is a separate essay I'll get to, but the pattern holds. Leaders who start asking the right questions about who benefits from which crisis tend to have very short remaining tenures. Whether by election, coup, or cardiac event. More coming. Stay close.
What a story! It's the story of Africa. On UK TV, we see appeals for Africa for water aid, supporting students financially, etc., but no-one seems to ask why the largest continent with the most resources, still is without sanitation and electricity. I knew Magafuli called out the fake PCR tests which did not go down well, especially for him. My cousin spent his working life in Botswana, working for De Beer, which allowed him to retire at 50, over 20 years ago, and furnish him with an extremely comfortable retirement!
Thank you for this, Markker! Your cousin's De Beers retirement is exactly the receipt the essay is pointing at. That's not accidental wealth. That's the architecture working precisely as designed: the people closest to the resource, but on the right side of the corporate structure, retire at 50. The people who actually went underground in Marilani earned $3 a day and had a 41% chance of dying if they got injured.
You've named the most important unanswered question in development discourse on UK charity appeals. Nobody asks why because the charity model requires Africa to stay legible as a problem to be solved, not a system being actively drained. The moment you ask why, the appeal stops working. The donor becomes implicated.
Magufuli and the PCR tests is a separate essay I'll get to, but the pattern holds. Leaders who start asking the right questions about who benefits from which crisis tend to have very short remaining tenures. Whether by election, coup, or cardiac event. More coming. Stay close.