Where Are We On The Social Responsibility Meter?

Madame:

Our use of contractors has indeed gotten nearly entirely out of hand.  This privatization push has enriched those associated with the security complex, often at obscene and deficit punishment to the Treasury and our credit and standing. The Snowden case is only an example, and not (incredibly) a glaring one.

My Grump Meter has been nearly pinging the poles recently, so I thought I would insert some encouraging news from what many consider the “basket case” continent—Africa.  A new generation is trying to make some inroads, while not be overbound by history (a BIG task).  Twenty years ago, Rwanda looked absolutely hopeless, a tragic place of Balkan-like blood feuds among tribes and ethnic groups that reached the savagery of genocide.  While it still has its deep troubles, a new group of (largely Western educated) leaders is trying to forge a new way.  Similarly, Uganda, also a place of deep troubles and savage history, is trying to stay in step.  There has been much backlash against selfish corruption, poverty, and squalor, to be sure, but more importantly, there has been a quest to return to African principles  of community and responsibility to the larger society.  It may not be perfect by our haughty American standards, especially as it is in a transition period as a police state and would doubtlessly enrage our hyper-individualistic culture, but take a look.  From the article “The Cleanest Place in Africa,” by David Dagan, Foreign Policy, October 19, 2011 (full article here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/19/rwanda_the_cleanest_place_in_africa):

“The centerpiece of the clean campaign is doubtless umuganda, a monthly day of

mandatory community service. The tasks are varied, but often involve litter removal and other beautification projects. Politicians are not exempt: Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, recently labored with residents of a Kigali neighborhood to prepare construction of a school building.  Rwandans must have their umuganda participation certified on a card by local officials (Professor’s Note: LOCAL officials, not centralized national ones).

Without that document, they can be denied services at government offices.

“Everybody in Kigali seems to be on a mission, whether it’s the workers carting goods about in wheelbarrows or the uniformed schoolchildren heading to and from classes. Begging is extremely rare, and there are few signs of homelessness. This absence of explicit human misery may be a function of Rwanda’s emphasis on social services. But not only.

“As (Kigali Mayor) Ndayisaba put it: ‘There are some who just are street people because they are irresponsible or because they are drug consumers. We take them; we bring them [into] re-education centers.’

“Kigali residents who are considered vagrants are subject to arrest and confinement in these centers. Residents are sent to the centers without trial; a spokesman for Ndayisaba said the decision to commit a detainee is made by a team of social workers as a last resort.

“The mayor himself was unapologetic about the policy, which he said applies to those considered irresponsible, but not to the sick.  ‘When you can’t take decisions for your  [own] good,’ he said, ‘we take it for you.’

We Americans often criticize those who see the world differently and conduct themselves differently in it.  While many here could rail against the measures taken in Rwanda about vagrants, etc., our policy of unbenign neglect isn’t working either.

Things to think about.  America’s rabid frothing about anything that remotely hints of social responsibility is holding us back from finding sensible mosaic policies of taking the best ideas from anywhere and giving them a try (even on a small scale) here.

And by the way, for those with short memories who want to criticize Rwanda severely, Taiwan and South Korea, among others, were once police states.  And while they had their problems, they didn’t have nearly completely nonsensical colonial arbitrary divisions on maps (and similar legacies).  And didn’t have ethnic divisions.  And weren’t recovering from genocide. 

Getting from A to Z rarely works.  One at a time, maybe!