NAIROBI: Kenya’s population grows by about 1 million persons per year. The population will hit 80 million by 2050. In the 1970s and 1980s, the campaign for family planning was vigorous.
Today we do not hear much on population control. The argument for population control is not always sound. There is indeed a dark side to the campaign.
Before I plunge into this age-old issue, let me say clearly that the mantra ‘give birth to children you are able to support’ is very valid and reasonable.
No one should wholly depend on public institutions to feed, clothe, educate, to discipline, and emotionally support his children.
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Family planning and population control are based on the controversial theory that there are simply not enough resources for everybody. This is true when narrowed down to economics 101; our needs are limitless while resources are scarce.
However, the argument is loaded with racial and class undertones. To see this, it is necessary to dig deeper into the history of economic growth and development.
In short, the fear that poor, hungry and illiterate masses at some point could organise and invade the rich has always been in the social consciousness.
And if one Karl Marx is to be believed, this would be violent. Some comments by right-wing European political parties give a vista of the dark side of population control.
Hear Bjorn Höcke, one of Germany’s AFd ultra-right wing party leaders: “As long as we are prepared to take on this population surplus, Africans’ reproductive habits will not change,” Höcke said, referring to the immigrant crisis facing Europe. Thousands of African immigrants have been pouring into Europe.
In Israel, a country whose diaspora has historically suffered like no other, right wingers have been discriminating against African emigrants, claiming they should not be allowed into the Jewish state because they ‘breed like rats...’.
The story of the US policies on population control of underprivileged minorities is a poorly hidden secret, and is part of its history of mainstreaming birth control policies throughout the world.
Now this is not a new concern. In fact it has always been there since the industrial revolution in Europe in the 17th century. In 1790, Rev Thomas Malthus expressed this worry in some of his critical works.
It is the guy who famously said that by 2050 (it was a very long time then, 300 years away) the world will be unable to sustain its population, projected then to be 12 billion human beings.
It is in now just 24 short years away. At the time Malthus was writing, the global population was about 1 billion. About 2050, the world will then grind to halt, towards doomsday.
What Malthus and other doomsday theorists did not count is the sheer human resilience and innovative spirit.
These were prophetically emphasized by economists like Ester Boserup, who countered the Malthusians by pointing out that the world will feed her children because people will invent better methods of agricultural production.
Nothing will remain constant. Given the right conditions people will engage in constant innovation and ‘gales of creative destruction’ as Joseph Schumpeter put it.
Charles Darwin took the fear of large population and applied it in biology, concluding that the poor stock in nature, including human beings, will die out, leaving those who have superior genetic material to thrive.
His cousin, Francis Galton, came up with ‘eugenics’, the notion that the world needs breeding programs that would promote only ‘superior human beings’. In the 20th century, Hitler took over in politics, whipped base emotions in Germany and decided that the ‘poor stock’ meant Jews, Gays, Gipsies, Africans and whomever the German collective anger could be vented on.
These should therefore be eliminated. You know what happened in the Second World War. Today, this ‘superior gene’ nonsense is much alive (minus direct extermination). Such institutions like the Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes are still seen to implicitly promote such ideas.
Malthus believed the poor should be forced to have small families that they can afford. If this sounds familiar in Kenya, it is because the family planning policies are directly based on Malthusian teachings.
Yet some of the highly populated countries in the world, India, China, Bangladesh are also self-sufficient in terms of food and even have surplus for export.
Now China has suddenly realised its one child per family (preferable a boy) is untenable. Recently, the Asian country allowed families to have two kids.
The hidden truth is that the dragon used its mighty population for economic development and today, the country of 1 billion-plus souls is where we all want to go.
Kenya is billed as one of the countries that will leap forward courtesy of a large, educated population. What is needed then is to ensure equal distribution of opportunities and the wealth created.
