Interview with Maïka Sondarjee

In your book ‘Losing Sight of the South’ – as well as in your intervention at the 2024 Autumn School on Humanitarian Aid – you speak of the links between colonisation and capitalism, caused by the dynamics of power and exploitation inherent in both systems. Could you tell us a little more about this, and explain what the links are with international aid?

Maïka Sondarjee: International inequalities weren’t born with capitalism but have their origin in the beginning of colonial conquests. What’s more, the capitalist system (based on the commodification of work, private property and profit) didn’t appear in Europe because that continent had special intrinsic capacities. Along with the industrial revolution and large-scale factories, the capitalist system developed in Europe because the large-scale factory-owners had accumulated capital through colonisation and slavery.

For example, the conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires in Latin America made it possible for Europeans to accumulate and stock gold and other primary materials. Europe’s industrial revolution was therefore made possible thanks to the extraction of a major part of the natural wealth of colonised countries. At the same time, trade in people from Sub-Saharan Africa began. The profitability of plantations in the southern United States, based on the work of people reduced into slavery, made possible the accumulation of capital in the hands of a minority of owners of European origin, at the cost of destabilising African countries. According to estimates, the total volume of transatlantic trade in slaves reached between 9.5 and 15.4 million free women and men sold into slavery in America. Beyond the gains accrued to the Europeans, the transatlantic slave trade caused an incredible demographic shock to African countries and kingdoms, because of the sheer number of people displaced from one region of the world to another.

With the industrial revolution and the international division of labour, the North-South gap was created. The globalisation and liberalisation realised over the last fifty years made this phenomenon worse and made it possible for non-state actors such as multinationals to make more money than some small countries. In 2017, Walmart’s revenues were higher than Belgium’s GDP and Volkswagen’s turnover was higher than Chile’s GDP.

Adopting a decolonial conception of the institutionalised global order entails understanding the relationship between capitalism and colonialism (as well as the patriarchate), in their material, cultural and epistemological dimensions. For example, women subjected to racism in the North and the South experience differently the social and material consequences of globalisation, and they are in addition socially constructed as inferior beings. The global order marginalised the people of the South via a relationship of material exploitation, but also of dispossession and oppression. Capitalism, based on continuous, limitless growth, is untenable.

More concretely, what, in your view, are the structural brakes on a genuine decolonisation of humanitarian aid?

M.S.: During the last ten years, we’ve witnessed a new ‘colonial turn’. The term ‘decolonising’ is now associated with an often poorly defined, less tangible notion than the independence of countries that were colonised by metropolitan authorities. But essentially, decoloniality is a political project of human emancipation through collective struggle, entailing at least the following elements: (1) the abolition of racial hierarchies at the heart of the hetero-patriarchal, capitalist world order, (2) the dismantling of the geopolitics of knowledge production and (3) the re-humanisation of our relationships with others, and with nature.

It seems to me impossible for the field of humanitarian aid (still often based on North-South lines) to be completely ‘decolonised’. That would imply an end to capitalism, a complete abolition of racial hierarchies and purely horizontal ties of solidarity. Given the structure of funding, and the origin of major global issues such as climate change (caused by overproduction and incorrect usage of resources in the North), it scarcely seems likely that colonial power relationships will change totally.

Do you think the international donors are ready to embrace this idea of decolonisation? What types of action or what changes should they be considering in order to support a more equitable and more local approach to aid?

M.S.: In recent years, decolonisation has been broadly (and very vaguely) associated with the struggle against racism or with the defence of everything to do with equity, diversity and inclusivity (EDI). It’s become very fashionable to adopt the term ‘decolonisation’, even among the donors. The term has become popular in western universities and civil society, as professors and administrators realise (very slowly) how their institutions maintain systemic racism, colonial epistemologies and ethnocentric practices. By organising so many events around the idea of decolonisation, universities, non-governmental organisations, public institutions and private foundations are coopting the term from activist groups and from civil society.

At the same time, apart from depoliticising the term, several actions are possible to make humanitarian aid more ‘equitable’. First, we must recognise the existence of systemic racism and champion the rights of peoples who are still colonised around the world, whether in Palestine, Tibet or elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to the interests of our donors. Then, we must make our organisational practices more anti-racist. In particular, we must allow employees within our organisations who are either subject to racism or who come from the global South to feel free to tell us how to be better colleagues and employers. This entails encouraging ‘call-ins’, or encouraging transparent, open conversations about racism within our organisations. Then, we must modify project development processes, allowing ourselves to be challenged at every stage by our partners from the global South. That implies having the humility to be ready to change the direction of a project or a policy. Easier to achieve, we must modify our ways of communicating and the imagery we use in promoting our work and in fund-raising campaigns. Finally, we must be courageous about funding, ending the imposition of conditions and evaluations written in our offices in the North for the communities of the South.

The debate about the decolonisation of aid is sometimes seen as far removed from the realities on the ground. How, in your view, may we reconcile this imperative with the daily constraints encountered by humanitarian actors?

M.S.: In one sense, it’s true: the decolonisation debate is a mandate on too large a scale to be addressed at a pragmatic level. The advantage of the term is that it stimulates interesting conversations. But at a practical level, we must ‘slice the cake’ in smaller pieces. What can we do, now, to address colonial and racial inequalities in the world and in our work? We must, for example, change the narrative, modify our vocabulary, localise aid, and so on. In other words, it’s not a matter of being more ‘inclusive’, but of redistributing power.

Decolonising anything, therefore, is an ambitious political project. Although the many (mistaken) uses of the word have made new conversations possible, there’s a major risk of creating a new fashionable term which will lose its potential power for social change. Freeing ourselves from imperialism and from racial hierarchies, that’s to say the fulfilment, in dignity, of all humans and all non-humans, through a process conducted not by us but by the people who were historically colonised, will not be easily accomplished. It’s not just a matter of attacking the capitalist system, but of attacking too all its supporting structures, based on race, gender, sexuality, abilities and epistemic devaluation, to name just a few of the most important. ‘Decolonising’ signifies something specific to researchers who are autochthonous and come from the global South, and we must not depoliticise the concept. That doesn’t mean that the voices of researchers and autochthonous activists should be the only voices to represent the ‘decolonial turn’, but that the project of decolonisation will be tough, and long-term.

You make particular reference to the white saviour industrial complex, or ‘white saviourism’. Could you explain to us the role of this concept in the (de)colonisation of aid?

M.S.: The industrial complex of the white saviour (or white saviourism) is founded on the benevolence attributed to the people of the global North, despite their role in exploiting and dispossessing the people of the South. Whiteness (in the ‘white saviour complex’) doesn’t refer simply to white people, but to a power structure that upraises some people in respect to others. White people and people who have been racialised may therefore both equally be apologists for the superiority of whiteness.

The concept of the ‘white saviour industrial complex’ or of ‘white saviour syndrome’ has often been unconsciously associated with individual psychological traits. The concept has become a way of referring to some white individuals who are subtly racist but well meaning, who aim to help the people of the global South. Differently expressed, there are some ‘bad apples’ in the field of humanitarianism, while the majority can sleep soundly at night. However, that’s wrong. White saviourism isn’t limited to the mindset of some individuals: it’s a more widespread system. It refers to the irony that on one hand we’re subject to an imperative to help the people of the global South, while on the other hand, we support (often despite ourselves) a system of exploitation and dispossession by the people of the global North. In other words, it refers to the dissonance created by on the one hand the imperative to help the people of the global South and on the other hand the support we in practice give (but not intentionally) to a system [of exploitation and dispossession, as described in the previous sentence]. The Kenyan writer Teju Cole therefore speaks of the ‘white saviour industrial complex’ to designate what he prefers to describe as a system of plunder, exploitation and militarisation based on western interests, associated with what people like to call well-intentioned development. Cole compares the white saviour industrial complex to ‘a valve making it possible to release the unbearable pressures built up within a system founded on plunder’.