Martyn Namorong

Take a look at that child above: in theory he could have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, if his father owned the land that is now Port Moresby.

Instead, he lives in a slum. Literally living on top of shit.

WHY?

Because the model of development that Papua New Guinea blindly follows is meant to disenfranchise indigenous people and serve the interests of those who came to colonize this land.

Today of course we don’t have the former colonizers but neo-colonisation exists in its various forms. The model of development we currrently follow is based on the template of suppressing indigenous people and subjecting them to colonial rule.

Imagine if a model of development recognized indigenous land rights without exceptions and the Hanuabadans simply collected rent on customary land they owned in Port Moresby. That kid above wouldn’t be living in a ghetto.

Instead, what the current model of development does is it creates the enabling mechanisms for the owners of Capital to exploit indigenous people. I guess the World Bank and Asian Development Bank call it Private Sector Development and Public Private Partnerships.

Lets take a look at another example, Limoa Holdings and Sepik Oil Palm Ltd. Limoa holdings is the landowner company that owns the lease to Portion 144C, Turubu SABL. But since they’ve converted their land to an SABL, they now own only 20% of a company [Sepik Oil Palm Ltd] that has rights to that land for 99 years. So they went from having 100% land rights to being only 20% all because they used the current model of development to try and bring development to their place. Basically they had no Capital so they went to bed with a Capitalist who had Capital to ensure he had a majority stake in the land.

As I‘ve mentioned earlier, this model of development is in favour of the exploiters, not the exploited.

I could go on citing various examples but I guess you get the point: this model of development creates the enabling mechanisms for Vampire Capitalism to thrive while the people of Papua New Guinea get screwed on Rabaul Queen, at Tumbi, on Airlines PNG, along th Fly River, along the Watut, in Bougainville, etc…