There are wells even in the desert, thankfully

Today (as I write), June 30, I am thinking of deserts. And wells. Deserts and wells mark this day on account of two notes sent to me, the first a quote and the other a speech, the first a timeless love story and the second a signal to two murderous governments and a most ‘natural’ death.

The first, a line from Antoine de Siant-Exupery’s lovely story, ‘The Little Prince’: ‘What makes the desert beautiful,’ (says the Little Prince), ‘is that somewhere it hides a well.’ Now these are not happy times for Sri Lanka, some might say, what with Ban Ki-moon in his wisdom appointing a panel (supposedly) to advise him on Sri Lanka in a rank insult to our status as a member state of the United Nations (and in blatant abuse of office and contravention of protocol) and the European Commission imposing a set of conditions that no government of a sovereign country with any sense of dignity could agree to and as such would inevitably lead to the withdrawal of GSP Plus concessions.

On the other hand, as many have argued, beggars cannot be choosers and if we continue to see ourselves as the mendicants that outfits such as the UN and EC want us to believe we are, then we have no cause for complaint. The plus side is that we are beggars more by choice rather than by circumstances. So when my friend Errol Alphonso sent me this lovely quote, it was, well, a well of pure spring water, unadulterated by the poisons that ‘development’ and its necessary accompanist, dependency, inject into the groundwater reserves of our sense of being and becoming.

There are, then, deserts and deserts, some which are dry and some which though verdant beyond belief still appear arid and barren simply because we’ve been divested of the eyes to see green, wealth and potential and therefore necessarily see dust, desolation and nothing. Withdrawing GSP Plus does not amount to sealing the wells that could quench our national thirst, no. It is a measure that can, unintentionally of course, help open eyes so that we can see the reservoirs that we have access to.

GSP Plus was a special concession that we were offered post-tsunami. As the President has pointed out, we’ve all but completed post-tsunami recovery. There’s a point beyond which we should not willingly see or subject ourselves to mollycoddling. We crossed that point years ago.

We need money, yes. There are two ways of obtaining money. We can borrow or make use of concessions (the Begging Bowl Option or BBO). We can save (the Thrift Option or TO). It looks like BBO hasn’t got us very far. There is therefore only TO left.

Starting from the top. Cut corruption and wastage, prune down tamashas and we will have all the money we need. Every project, from the construction to a public lavatory to the building of a state-of-the-art harbour comes with dozens of hoardings and newspaper advertisements. It is one thing to claim credit and quite another to brag to puke-point.

This is not a Sri Lanka specific phenomenon. We have not been singled out for punishment. It’s a long story. And here’s where the second note comes. June 30, 1960, exactly 60 years ago, someone made a speech. That someone was assassinated a little over six months later. There is a personal dimension to this story. My father, then a student at Peradeniya, helped organized a march to protest this assassination, orchestrated by people who, ironically, talk about fair play, democracy, decency and civilization. The march ended in Kandy where the protestors tried to bring down the statue of Henry Ward. The rope had snapped, but legend has it that the Ward Statue was brought down that day. My father told me this story years later when the Ward Statue was finally taken off and replaced with that of Madduma Bandara the child hero chosen deliberately for martyr-branding by the British (as opposed to the daughter of Kivule Gedara Mohottala).

The man who was assassinated made a speech on June 30, 1960, exactly 50 years ago, Tissa Pilimatalawa, Tissa Maama to me, reminded me. This was Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the Congo (Zaire). Independence Day. He outlined eloquently the struggle, the sacrifice and the challenges ahead.

‘We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon, and evening...’ he reminded his people. We can say the same thing today, 50 years later (thank you Ban Ki-moon). ‘We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws which in fact recognized only that might is right,’ he said.

‘We can see the same thing. ‘We have seen that the law was not the same for a white and for a black, accommodating for the first, cruel and inhuman for the other.’ This is not Malinda Seneviratne calling Ban Ki-moon a spade or perhaps a more appropriate evacuating tool. This is Patrice Lumumba. In the year 1960.

Lumumba thought the bad days were a thing of the past: ‘we tell you very loud, all that is henceforth ended.’ Six months later, he was assassinated. He thought the Republic of the Congo was now in the hands of its own children. He was wrong.

‘The Congo’s independence marks a decisive step towards the liberation of the entire African continent,’ he proclaimed. It was not to be. Not then, not 50 years later either. Patrice Lumumba was murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the Governments of Belgium and the United States of America.

My father told me about the signature slogan of the protest: ‘Meruwe namuth lumumbaawa, merune nehe aprikaava’ (Lumumba was murdered, but Africa did not die!). That was a well in the desert. Africa is not dead. Neither is Sri Lanka. We have to understand that there will always be wells. Wells for the willing, those who have the eyes to notice them, those who have the will to look for them. Our wells. Our water. Our life-blood. The future of our children.

malinsene@gmail.com