Darwin's Nightmare - A Film Review

Just finished watching Hubert Sauper's documentary of the above name. A pertinent film that discusses a case in point of the 1st world/3rd world exploitative relationship I was talking about a couple of posts ago.

The film centers around the Nile Perch fishing industry on Lake Victoria in and around Mwanza, Tanzania. With hand-held interviews and scene-shooting, the film gives its focus a raw and uncensored feel.

The nile perch, is a huge predatory fish that europeans pay top dollar for. According to EU officials in the film, exports of the fish represent the largest export commodity that Tanzania has to offer. The fish however, has devoured other fish in the lake and also cannibalized its young. The result is complete devastation to the Lake's ecosystem. A meeting of Tanzanian government officials is shown a film detailing this destruction and quickly brushes it off as only showing the bad side of the nile perch. They speak of the importance of "selling Tanzania, and selling fish" over the problems it might present.

Even though, factories are producing 500 tonnes daily of the fish for export, none of the fish goes towards solving the desperat famine within the region. The film notes that while 2 million European whites eat the fish daily, only the useless heads and carcasses are allowed to be sold to the local communities. A local man is paid to guard the fish stocks from intruders looking for food, he notes that he only got the job because the last man who had it was hacked to death. The huge transport planes that come into the area daily are supposedly empty. It is noted, however, that they often carry arms and ammunition for sale to rebels in the D. R. Congo (see previous post) to sustain Africa's great war. As a Tanzanian journalist points out, this provides the Europeans with a double profit, guns come in, fish come out, while nothing goes to those who work the hardest.

The women of the film are widows whose husbands have died of Aids or famine and they come to work as prostitutes for the pilots. During a funeral, a pastor notes that the rebion can lose 50 to 60 fisherman in 6 months to "the virus". Yet he maintains that condoms are dangerous because they are a sin against God's law. The girls risk beatings from their clients, as the film ends we learn that one woman was beaten to death by an Australian client.

It is a very sad but extremely necessary film. The security guard says that he would welcome war because it would mean he would be well-paid for a change. Many stories are told in them film and they are all tragic. The fish industry may benefit the fat cats in the government of Tanzania for now, but a few years down the road, the entire country will be facing massive famine instead of just certain regions.

When I rented the film, a friend of mine who works at the video store told me to rent it if I wanted to depress myself. Charity fatigue doesn't just grip nations, it grips us. What can we do but listen, write, and open our eyes to the extremely exploitative relationship between the world that surrounds us and the world of Africa and other regions of the third world.