By Martyn Namorong
The Black Cat Track tragedy highlights for us Papua New Guineans, what is the prevailing norm – many of our people are being exploited. I like the term vulture capitalism because it is well reflected in the bodies of these porters.
Father Gorgio Licini of the Catholic Church asked why the Government had not flown the porters from Lae to Port Moresby to receive adequate medical assistance.
Father Licini’s question also adds to the growing public perception that the Tracking Company involved essentially failed in its duty of care towards these men who risked their lives for the tourists.
The Black Cat tract disaster isn’t about giving a bad name to middle class or posh Papua New Guineans enjoying their lives in towns and cities here and abroad. Our own politicians and corrupt elite have already given us a bad name. The tragedy is that of the little men and women forced to squabble amongst each other over the morsels thrown at them by those at the top.
A recent media report indicates that the motive of the attack may be an economic one related to the sharing of benefits of the tracking adventure. Land in Papua New Guinea is owned by complex customary arrangements and each land owning group jealously guards the benefits derived over their land. It is not unusual for fights and deaths to happen over land and the resources within. It is believed that some landowners of the track were upset over the lack of benefits.
The fantastic trickery of the modern state is that it claims to own resources on customary land and then it efficiently transfers the wealth from customary land to the hands of PNG’s predatory elite in Waigani.
The fallacy that the sympathizers of this morally bankrupt system say is that the systems will work if governance is improved. After 38 years of independence, any sane and scientifically minded person who believes in empirical evidence would call the current experiment in government a failure of epic proportions. This system of government has failed miserably to translate natural resource wealth into socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable development.
At the recent SharpTalk seminar that was poorly attended by Sharp Talk’s keyboard warriors, someone asked, “What will it take to make Papua New Guineans angry?”
Perhaps the question was posed to the wrong crowd. Of course Sharpies are too comfortable to be angry. The best they can do is diffuse their anger on Facebook.
But the folks who are struggling to eke out an existence are angry. Does anyone recall the Lae riots? Those riots were over economic opportunities? Oh and in case you Papua New Guineans still cannot believe you’re capable of this – word on the streets is that the reason the entire Chinese family at Koki were decapitated was that they were exploitative, rude and disrespectful to the local community.
Our people are angry and about time too. The next step is to light Molotov cocktails and end the exploitation before all our resources get stolen by PNG’s own predatory elite. And for this, we don’t need to train our people on how to strike the matches. I’d rather see buildings and machines burning then poor people fighting and killing each other over scraps.
