Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent and thought it was a country. God, ignorance is bold!
Africa is a continent. And within this continet there is a country, the Democratic Republic of Congo to which the press dedicated a quarter of a page, in the best of cases, because there was a war there. A war which is called the African World War because of the repercussions it has in other countries in Africa.
Where did King Leon come from? if this will help Palin locate it. To whom does it matter what happens on another continent? While we`re here… Some information may help us reflect and press us into action.
In the D.R. of Congo
- 19% of men and 45% of women are illiterate
- Third grade schooling is at 1,3%.
- 2,4 out of 1000 inhabitants use the internet.
- Spending on education by the government is equal to 0.
The D.R. of Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world.
And this country is at war for various reasons. We are going to give two:
1.- The armed conflict in the Republic of Congo is maintained by the trafficking of gold. The subsoil is rich in copper, gold, silver, uranium, petroleum, lead, diamonds. The gold industry is one of the most profitable for the banking institutions. Africa produces 600 tonnes per year, which is a quarter of global production.
African manual labour is very cheap: the union movements are supressed quickly and environmental norms do not exist. Result: the margin of profit that the big companies obtain is bigger in Africa than in any other part of the world.
It may be of interest that the multinational gold extractors in Africa will publicise in a systematic and transparent way what they pay their workers because, to the surprise of all, the D.R. of Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world
2. – Amnesty International has recorded the importance coltan - a much used mineral in the manufacture of mobile phones and computer - has on an African conflict. According to this organisation, the dominance of this material is what contributes to the development of a war in which more than 5 million people in Central Africa have died to date. .
80% of world reserves of this material is found in the D.R.C. Here, areas of operation are controlled by the guerrillas of Uganda and Rwanda, but as The Congo is one of the poorest countries in Africa, it (the Congo) depends on the countries which commercialise it.
Will your mobile phone have anything to do with what happens in The Congo?
Figures, figures, figures:
Throughout the world there are 2,600 million mobile phones.
- In Spain there are more mobile telephones than inhabitants.
- Each year people stop using 20 million mobile phones
- In Europe only 10% of telephones are recycled.
Think about it!!
We can never get used to what we read/hear in one-time Zaire
- There are almost 2 million displaced Congolese.
- Some 7000 children fight as soldiers
- An undetermined number of children are used as sex slaves by the army and by rebel groups.
Because of the displacements, there is a shortage of doctors and the medical centres are overcrowded. They also need refuges, blankets, water, food. Because the D.R.C. is one of the poorest countries in the world!
Can we really live with our own passivity with respect to a country which is so far away from us?
