There has been much coverage in the past few weeks of a major disagreement between Niall Mellon’s Township Trust and Irish Aid – the state funding agency for overseas development aid.
While the funding questions that Irish Aid have about the Trust may be resolved, I’m wondering about the questions about the sustainability of the project and the impact of the building of houses using what many call ‘experience tourists’ (self funded volunteers going out for a week to build houses) on the skillsbase and infrastructure of the local economy.
We’ve too often heard the mantra - it takes a village to raise a child – it also takes a community to house jobs to sustain mortgages. I’m wondering what NMTT does to actually create employment, seek investment, provide education and training and support communities to be able to pay for the houses that are being built by the Mellon army?
Mark Tighe reported earlier this month in the Sunday Times on the concerns of the Irish Government
An Irish Aid monitoring report last year found the South African government was concerned that NMTT “may be crowding out local subcontractors and South African companies who are losing business as a result?. It said: “There is concern that the fund-raising activities of NMTT enable it to tender at a commercial advantage.? The report found Mellon’s charity had reached its building targets, but failed to meet development goals. Its training for poor South Africans was limited.
These were questions that those monitoring the project were asking and I’m not sure what the answers are to them. Any use looking forward to Niall Mellon being asked about these issues rather than Des Cahill, Pat Kenny and others giving him hours of free time on their programmes in the months to come.
Mellon is recruiting another 500 people to go to South Africa to build houses and is running ads on television and says he’s oversubscribed.
I don’t understand why we’re not ‘just’ giving money for South Africans to build the houses and supporting the development of sustainable communities?
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Sending skilled Irish construction workers to Africa to train up local tradesmen on the job would be useful. Sending Irish office workers to learn how to become bricklayers in Cape Town is not useful. It runs counter to all good development policy.
Yes but it makes people feel good about themselves and unfortunataly that is really the aim of charity tourism.
“charity tourism” sums it up.
I would have thought this type of intiiative is close to yet another form of colonialism because it disempowers the local workers and the ‘foreigner’ decides what is built and where in what is an independent, democratic country. I’ve been suspicious of these ‘charity’ tourism projects, as they do not contribute to development policies in a really democratic way by creating any sustainable skills in-country. From visiting Cape Town some years back, I noted how the South Africans (however poor or not) are deeply proud of their independent nation, and really don’t want any sort of ‘handout’. That the RSA government is complaining about local builders being crowded out by the NMTT is somewhat concerning as ‘complaining’ is something of a taboo in the South African cultural context.
There’s a notion enshrined in various spiritual philosophies, and of course I can’t think of a reference right now. It’s the idea of giving without thought of return. The paradox is that the giving in that mode ensures a return always.
‘Givers’ like Mellon,Hewson and Geldolf are I feel in fact ideological operators. While preaching self-sufficiency they are ensuring dependency by way of financial colonialism. The pay off for them is that they get the plaudits, the awards and the gratitude of the recipients and a continuance of an economic system that has served them well. It is entirely contrary to their interests and what they see as their deserved ‘return’ that folk have control over their own lives.
Having said that there are many good, well-meaning people who have taken part in Mellon’s house-building operation who truly have done it on the basis of their best instincts.
There are several issues to be addressed here as it’s a pretty complex situation. First of all, yes, it is charity tourism. Although everyone travels to South Africa with the Niall Mellon project with their hearts in the right place, and many poor South African’s themselves do benefit from it with regards to getting new homes and better living conditions, one wonders what the real long term benefits are.
I travelled to Cape Town with the Mellon crew in 2006 to write about the project for the Sunday Tribune (can’t find the piece online because I don’t think our online archive stretches back to then) and it was a fascinating experience. I had been to Cape Town a couple of times before so knew the lay of the land as it were. Everyone worked their socks off, but a lot of money seemed to be spent on quite a flashy hotel, meals, gala dinners, books as gifts, that kind of thing.
Although the project gets quite a lot of coverage in the South African media, it’s pretty evident that South Africans themselves (and I’m talking here namely about white South Africans) are somewhat perplexed as to why people are coming over and helping those living in these slums. They couldn’t give a toss about them, and one wonders how sustainable it really is to be flying in Irish people to solve what is essentially an African problem.
The work that’s done over the week is amazing in terms of determination and spirit but you have to remember that a chunk of the people flying over do not work in the construction industry and are quite useless (I mucked in painting and labouring and that kind of thing, but I’m sure it would have been better even to replace me, a journalist, with someone who was actually skilled in construction.) The houses also have a huge carbon footprint, considering people are flying across the world to build them. At the time an architect I was working with said they were replacing shacks with concrete shacks, and I think that’s quite accurate.
I returned to Cape Town the following year to follow up on that build as I felt much of the media coverage was all very happy clappy and that the real wider issues weren’t being addressed. I have to say, I felt a little queesy seeing people like Sean Dunne cream good publicity by virtue of simply being there.
What I found on my return was evidence of a pretty dodgy rental scheme (http://www.tribune.ie/article/2007/nov/25/mellons-township-dream-is-soured-as-new-owners-ren/) in Imizamo Yethu, a township in Hout Bay where people who got the ‘Niall Mellon houses’ were moving into shacks at the back of them and renting the house itself out to others, thus defeating the purpose of getting a house in the first place.
I also returned to Mfuleni, the township where the Mellon project had been building the previous year to find someone I had written about in her new house. The difference in her living conditions was remarkable, although the township was quite menacing without the builders, staff, security etc and I had to make a quick exit.
So I think people should think before they throw money at such building projects (Haven is another one, no?) Mellon is a sound guy with the best of intentions. What they are doing is a drop in the ocean, but it’s something. The experiences many people have over there can be life-changing, and they’re certainly life-changing for those getting new digs.
But there are still questions, and people have a right to express reservations because nothing is perfect. What is the criteria to get a house? There seem to be mortgage or repayment systems in place, what are they? How much money is spent on accomodating and entertaining the visiting Irish and how much on construction? What kind of social programmes are being implemented to accompany the construction?
Unfortunately, long after the builders are gone and houses are built, the problems that caused these slums in the first place; poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, drug addiction and alcoholism, political corruption, racism, and the refusal of white South Africans to engage with their countrymen and women remain.
“I don’t understand why we’re not ‘just’ giving money for South African’s to build the houses and supporting the development of sustainable communities?”
You’re asking pertinent questions Suzy. As NMTT has another application in for a big whack of state funding we can only hope Irish Aid is asking itself the same question. It’s clear all concerns were brushed away for the 2007 application for €5m.
I hope to put some further details about NMTT and Irish Aid on my blog later this week. (Contrary to popularly held opinion the Sunday Times doesn’t think blogs are dead!)
Mark
A lot people used this as a sort of guilt footprint offset. It made them feel better about being pushy demanding sorts who thought they were owed the world at home. There is no way you would have found them doing the same work out in Neilstown in Dublin or South Hill in Limerick. It was all about touching photos of grateful poor and quaint dinner party stories. Then back out in the SUV, down the bus lane on N11 and into the office with sun glasses on the head and a nice tan.
I’ve met so many of them.
The idea of going to south africa is to not only help those in in the shacks or to train the people to build better homes for themselves, even though that in itself is a good enough reason,it is also to give the volunteer an experience that they can bring home and share with others that have not or will not ever see the shacks first hand and how these people live. Also if you would like to set up a similar programme in Southill or any other deprived area of ireland to build houses for the less fortunate im sure the locals would be only thrilled…..i don,t think .! but the type of people that do go to south africa or haiti are the type that will generally always be available to help others whether home or away .
the other argument being that those who talk about or encourage the public to help is a self defeating one. Even if it was true and in some cases that maybe so, does not any help to anyone less fortunate than ourselves outweigh the self gratification that these organisers such as geldof etc.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0224/1224265091612.html
It’s about time people started asking questions about Mellon. And not just the charity, for that matter…
Ah Maman you inspire so many it seems. Striking similarities between yourself and the Irish Times today even invoking Mark Tighe!
My question to Una is – just how many ‘white’ South Africans she might have spoken too. I am a white South African and I do care and comments like that are deeply offensive and simply act to negate much of what else she says which makes sense.
From a development potential the Mellon Foundation has a very limited impact and it would not be a model to apply in a macro situation. But actually, from a micro-level, it has a major impact on the families of the beneficiaries for whom the South African State is not in a position to help. From an Irish perspective it reinforces the concept of charitable giving to the poor, which is perhaps better served through structured development aid. Again however, it keeps international development issues in the limelight, and that is more than many international development agencies manage to do.
Why can’t they stay in Ireland and help demolish those ghost estates?
They do good work, build houses, and inspire people . Is that too complicated for the dickheads ?
It’s a flawed model of development, and the problems after people leave remain re jobs, income, society and community?
“But I Meant Well…” | The Freelancing Researcher // Jun 16, 2011 at 15:33
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