BY CHENGE MAHOMVA

In print | November 15, 2007

The African leaders’ chant, “Our old colonial masters continue …” rang out again last month in response to the Zoe’s Ark scandal. It has left me feeling mellow and perhaps silently sore. Zoe’s Ark is a French nongovernmental humanitarian organization that has been recently has been recently illuminated by the media’s spotlight after its cowboyish attempts to resettle 103 “orphaned Darfurian” toddlers from areas near the Chad-Sudan border became grotesque. The majority of the children were not orphans. In fact, Zoe’s Ark had the Chadian parents and caregivers under the impression that their children would be attending schools in a city within Chad. Most of the toddlers were not Darfurian but actually Chadian. Finally, their attempts to resettle the kids were dishonest and illegal. Founder Eric Breteau and his gang wrapped the children in iodine stained bandages and attached fake IV drips to the toddlers so that they could evacuate the toddlers under the pretense that they were injured war victims going to receive treatment in France. However, the cause of my silent pain is not the idealistic risky efforts of the “humanitarians” but the fact that the Chadian government has used this as an opportunity to deflect attention away from its own gruesome version of African leadership.

This time that familiar chant was sung in a note that was sickly sweet. This was because this note can only be produced by those who love to excuse their actions under the belief that they are perpetually wronged. The President of Chad, Idriss Deby, said in response to these events, “They treat us like animals … Listen to the children. They are crying for their parents. This is incredible! We will do everything to expose this odious crime.”

Deby, like other African leaders, must have both a selective memory and a hearing impediment that causes his hypocritical behavior. He claims that Chad’s former colonial ruler, France, treats his countrymen as animals. He must have forgotten that he has 7,000 child soldiers in his army. I would argue that a country where children (some as young as eight years old) are forced by circumstance to enter the army is treating its children like animals. He must have a hearing impediment if he can hear the cries of the 103 children from Zoe’s Ark but cannot hear the cries of the mothers who live in a country where one in five children do not live past the age of five because of malnutrition and starvation. It is an “odious crime” that, through greed and corruption, African leaders are able to create a situation were there is a need for organizations like Zoe’s Ark, regardless of how detrimentally idealistic these organizations are. For these reasons I believe that the Chadian government is just as guilty of the crime of making decisions with detrimental effects without taking into the account the opinions of those who will be affected.

What the media is now focused on is the debate over whether French President Nicolas Sarkozy should apply diplomatic pressure on Chad so that the seven members of Zoe’s Ark who remain in Chad can be extradited to France because no one knows whether the members of Zoe’s Ark will receive an unbiased trail in Chad. This is because it is very clear that the Chadians are enraged and if the “Westerners” are found guilty, they could be sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. The obvious counter-argument is that this extradition will show disrespect for Chad’s sovereignty and laws. With the EU wanting to place 3,000 peacekeeping troops in Eastern Chad, keeping Chadians happy would be a good idea. I’m indifferent on the issue of where the humanitarians should be tried, as regardless of what happens, some of these children may never to be returned to their parents.

Chenge is a first-year. You can reach her at cmahomv1@swarthmore.edu

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