Statement of purpose for Tonga.Online, by Keith Goddard

“Twenty years after independence, arguments still continue about what is appropriate intervention in the Tonga area and what constitutes interference or corruption of these simple people. Why don't we leave them alone? Why do we wish to take them out of their natural habitat and whisk them off to foreign countries? Why are we spoiling these people by introducing them to our western ways? Why are we giving them false expectations in life that they can never realise and introducing them to unobtainable desires? Why are we displaying them to the world as examples of exotic culture? Why do we waste money on bringing computers and the internet to an area where people are dying of hunger and need the basics of grinding mills and fertiliser?

These are valid questions up to a point but they also smack of patronage and ignore the human quality we all share, whether we be Tonga, Ndebele, Namibian, Shona, Vadema or white”.

More: http://www.mulonga.net/archive/project/keith.html