Harmony Day

Saturday 21 March is Harmony Day in Australia, a day to celebrate our diverse society. It is also the United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This is not a coincidence – it’s just that our government, in their wisdom, didn’t want to have a day that had the “R” word in its name. Instead they decided to call the day something that emphasised the positives about living in a multicultural society. Well, I’m all for that, but let’s not forget that racism’s still out there.

The date chosen in fact commemorates what came to be known as the Sharpeville massacre – when in 1960 police opened fire gainst a peaceful demonstration against apartheid in Sharpeville, South Africa, killing 69 people. That’s  something we should never forget, although nearly 50 years on we can look back with pride and relief at the changes in the world, and the progress we’ve made against racism, since that shocking event.

Australians for Native Title and Reconcililation (ANTaR) have not forgotten the true meaning of the day and are are celebrating – if that’s the word – with a cute gimmick. By clicking on the lovely faces at left you can go to their site and get a sticker like this one (or smaller) to put on your facebook page, blog or website. You can also sign a pledge against racism.

Black comedy

I’ve often thought that AM and/or his brother 50 Cedis could have a great future in ‘ethnic’ comedy. They can do the accents, they know how to be irreverant and outrageous, and they’ve got plenty of material to draw upon in our mixed up bicultural family.

Ethnic comedy in Australia – at least in public – started in the 80s with Wogs Out of Work and in the past few years we’ve seen  comedians surface like Arj Barka and Akmal Saleh. I’m thinking that in a few years,  African Australian kids who’ve grown up in Australia – mixed or not – will take to the stage and give me a good belly laugh. Comedy as a way to relieve the tensions of intercultural families – I can’t wait.

And it seems I don’t have to – well, at least, not for an African-Australian comedian. Mujahid Ahmed is a Sudanese comedian by night and refugee resettlement worker by day who lives in Adelaide. (I know this because he said his mum washes clothes in the Torrens River … heheh). A profile of Muj is the lead news story on African Oz this week. Okay, some of his jokes are sexist, but he still had me rolling on the floor laughing. Even though he didn’t grow up here he has some spot-on observations about the African experience in Oz and – make sure you watch both parts of his show –  living in an intercultural relationship.

Check him out . Part 1:

Part 2:

I hope he’ll inspire a whole new generation. I know there’s plenty of jokes just waiting to be told.

No more blood chocolate?

Eaten these recently? Ghanaian cocoa beans.

I hear that Cadbury have decided to use Fair Trade cocoa in their dairy milk chocolate bars and hot chocolate powder in the UK. This is very good news.

I’ve been a supporter of fair trade products for many years, even before I married into a family of Ghanaian cocoa farmers, and well before it was easy to buy fair trade products.  It just made sense to me that people should get a fair price for their product and their labour. So it’s been good to see the slow growth of awareness, the appearance of the fair trade logo on supermarket shelves, and to reach a point where chocolate giant Cadbury takes such a progressive step is very, very hopeful.

Although I’ve been interested in the issue for a long time, I actually wasn’t fully aware of the extent of corruption and exploitation that have characterised the production of and trade in cocoa. I thought it was bad enough that my son AM had a two year old cousin with scurvy, and that I’d seen children in his grandmother’s cocoa-farming village carefully rescue a broken egg from the ground so that they could eat it. But thanks to a newish book on the subject, Bitter Chocolate, I am now much better informed, and the importance of a fair go for producers is clearer to me than ever.

Bitter chocolate, by Canadian journalist Carol Off, records both the violent and corrupt history of the chocolate industry, and exposes more recent horror stories in relation to what most of us think of as an innocent treat (apart from the calories!) A more apt title might be Blood Chocolate. I’m not the only one to imagine an action movie of this name – Richard Stubbs in his ABC radio program was actually able to suggest it to the author. The book, which I couldn’t put down, has all the right ingredients: child slavery in Cote D’Ivoire, the disappearance of a journalist investigating the disappearance of cocoa profits into the pockets of corrupt politicians, war over access to cocoa producing territory, purchase of weapons with cocoa profits, greedy multinationals turning a blind eye to the violence and injustice, and deliberately keeping prices low. If only it were fiction. But it is the reality behind our chocolate bars.

So it’s in this context that Cadbury’s announcement is particularly welcome. all me naive if you will, but I think the goal of the fair trade movement should be obsolesence, because all consumer goods and raw materials will be traded fairly in some better, future world. But because I don’t really trust multinationals, I think there will also be a role for watch dog organisations – to keep the bastards honest.  But with this vision in mind, Cadbury’s commitment is an enormously significant step.  And I hope, just the first step of many for this company, which was started more than 100 years ago by a Quaker family. Well done. And pay attention, you other cocoa giants – this is the way of the future.