Happy Birthday Neslon Mandela!

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#21

Pre-colonial Africa wasn’t exactly a bowl of cherries for its inhabitants even by the rather brutal standards of European social arrogance at the time.

The same applies to colonial Africa.

But since the European colonialists left Africa following WWII, much of it has been a long, long, long way short of a bowl of cherries even by the worst standards of the meanest bastards living in Europe at the same time.

And that ain’t the fault of anyone but the people left in Africa to run their own show, regardless of the history of colonialism or the artificial national boundaries left by the colonialists or anything else.

It’s like blaming Britain for the Hindu / Muslim slaughter etc after Partition in India. Or the rest of Europe for Bosnia etc in the 1990’s.

There comes a time, which is long past, for people to stop blaming powers which aren’t there for the evils done by and to people who have the misfortune to be caught in such miserable situations created by their own indigenes.

These evils usually spring from ancient enmities and modern power struggles among various ethnic or religious groups which rarely have anything to do with advancing the interests of the people in general in those areas.

Mugabe is a well publicised current example among the many laughable but disgustingly dangerous black despots in Africa, going back to Idi Amin and many others before and after him who have managed to destroy whatever riches were available to their peoples upon expelling the colonialists.

I have more contempt for Mugabe et al than I do for the contemptible white regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia and so on. At least the white regimes didn’t pretend to be the noble saviours and best mates of the black Africans while they were screwing them for the benefit of a corrupt regime run by a murderous bastard.

#22

That’s a little too black and white (no pun intended), RS.

#23

I understand your view that it’s a bigger, more complex and more subtle historical problem than my last post contemplates.

We’ve had aspects of this discussion before.

But I think it’s time the world stopped excusing, or just tolerating, bastards like Mugabe as the supposedly and inevitably damaged product of European colonialism or other external factors when pricks like him dare to offend idealised and unrealistic liberal Western notions of the modern version of the noble savage as embodied in the glorious tradition of revolutionary self-determination of oppressed colonial peoples by turning out to be corrupt murderous shits of the first order.

He won the fight for his country and is in complete control, and has been for years.

Who else should be held responsible for the state of his country, and for currently oppressing his people?

I won’t accept that his betrayal of the principles for which he fought has to be laid at the feet of former colonialists.

He’s just a despicable corrupt cunt like all the other rampant power mongers of every creed and colour, and his people and the world would be a lot better off without him and his ilk.

Put it in a different context. Just because some black kid down the road from your house has had a shithouse life with poor drunken and violent parents, would you think it’s fair for him and his crew running your street to take protection money from you and your kids just because they can, because they think it’s justified to redress the discrimination their parents suffered a couple of decades ago?

I think that when someone is in the very rare situation of being in full control of his destiny, as is Mugabe (or at least was until his excesses made him a prisoner of his junta in recent weeks), they deserve to be judged by their own actions without regard to the ancient past which might have influenced their conduct. Their past may explain their bad actions, but it doesn’t excuse them.

#24

African intellectuals tend to attribute this state of affairs ultimately to colonial rule itself. They can point out that colonial rule was imposed by the use or threat of military force and that it largely disrespected the ideas about balancing and containing executive power that had previously prevailed in Africa. Once colonial rule was really established – which in much of the area south of the Sahara means a hundred years ago or even less – it was implemented by bureaucratic action formulated by functionaries of the state. By and large, only in the very last decade of colonial rule, in the 1950s, did colonial government in Africa contain any significant element of democracy. The process of decolonisation was in the end so fast that there was hardly
time to blink between the authoritarianism of colonial governors and that of African presidents. In short, many African commentators consider that the origin of the style of politics they have known since independence, including in those cases where political conflict and economic enrichment have turned violent, lies in the colonial experience. This, they maintain, was so crucial in forming the institutions of the states existing today as to have cast a shadow over subsequent generations.

#25

All of this is true enough. But the key consideration has to be in regard to the Implications of these observations. In other words:so what if colonial rule was oppressive? Africans have had almost half a century to put things right. Anyone who believes that a war Becomes inevitable because of things that happened decades or even centuries ago is, in effect, arguing that they do not have any significant control over events or even over their own actions. So heavy is the weight of “Many African commentators consider that the origin of the style of politics they have known since independence… lies in the Colonial experience”

#26

I have no argument in what you’re saying, regarding Mugabe. These are personality issues.

My concern is for the people of countries such as Zimbabwe and what they are going through.

It’s time that the free world with their market driven economies ( someone once said on this site “Welcome to corporate AMerica” well this is entirely the problem, it’s too easily dismissed, and not only by Americans) did something about the situation, stopped spouting about political correctness and why do we have the right to intervene, and do something. The UN is impotent in these situations, and so are UN sanctions. It’s up to the wealthier nations to put on the pressure. Not only on the regimes, but on those organisations which by dealing with the likes of Mugabe secure his position. It seems to me that the West has the power and they certainly have a duty, but have not the will.

As you have said there have been many criminals in the past. So, if we are to forget the past and look to the future, then something positive needs to be done to build a better future - instead of throwing rhetoric and at the situation and aid at the corrupt - something different.

#27

Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa analyzes the colonial relations of production – and the economic and political contradictions – that produced Africa’s underdevelopment and continue to plague Africa today. Rodney, who describes colonialism as a “one-armed bandit,” claims that colonialism, more than anything else, underdeveloped Africa. According to him, colonialism laid the roots of neocolonialism in Africa by creating Africa’s economic dependency on the international capitalist system. The introduction of capitalist relations of production and distribution, – for instance, the International Trade Commodity (ITC) exchange systems and values – created such dependency. Rodney (1981: 244) asserts that “previous African development was blunted, halved and turned back” by colonialism without offering anything of compensatory value.

http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/post/africa/omoregie11.html#wr1

#28

Indeed. What also needs to be considered though is the destruction and supplication of cultures which wrought havoc on the colonized:

Subject matters

Postcolonialism deals with cultural identity in colonised societies: the dilemmas of developing a national identity after colonial rule; the ways in which writers articulate and celebrate that identity (often reclaiming it from and maintaining strong connections with the coloniser); the ways in which the knowledge of the colonised (subordinated) people has been generated and used to serve the coloniser’s interests; and the ways in which the coloniser’s literature has justified colonialism via images of the colonised as a perpetually inferior people, society and culture. These inward struggles of identity, history, and future possibilities often occur in the metropolis and, ironically, with the aid of postcolonial structures of power, such as universities. Not surprisingly, many contemporary postcolonial writers reside in London, Paris, New York and Madrid.

The creation of binary opposition structures the way we view others. In the case of colonialism, the Oriental and the Westerner were distinguished as different from each other (i.e. the emotional, decadent Orient vs. the principled, progressive Occident). This opposition justified the “white man’s burden,” the coloniser’s self-perceived “destiny to rule” subordinate peoples. In contrast, post-colonialism seeks out areas of hybridity and transculturalization. This aspect is particularly relevant during processes of globalization.

In Post-Colonial Drama: theory, practice, politics, Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins write: “the term postcolonialism — according to a too-rigid etymology — is frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state, Not a naïve teleological sequence which supersedes colonialism, postcolonialism is, rather, an engagement with and contestation of colonialism’s discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies … A theory of postcolonialism must, then, respond to more than the merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism.”[3]

Colonized peoples reply to the colonial legacy by writing back to the center, when the indigenous peoples write their own histories and legacies using the coloniser’s language (e.g. English, French, Dutch) for their own purposes.[4] “Indigenous decolonization” is the intellectual impact of postcolonialist theory upon communities of indigenous peoples, thereby, their generating postcolonial literature…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-colonialism

#29

Well said.
Africans indeed had no any control over thier deeds…Even through the half of century of independence after colonian system fall down.
Hardly we can blame ONLY colonialism in all evil in Africa.
Just look in other former colonies like India or China - this is the most dynamic states of the world today.
They run forward to the civilization.
To the contrast in Africa there is no any hint on the improving the situation.

#30

That’s what i meant exactly.
We can’t blame SA "white " regime where there were at least laws ans some of order, whithout recognizing the absolutly unhuman black regime next down to africa, that has no any laws towards OWN black population.
The Apartheid indeed wasn’t so cruel to the blacks as their neighbourds to thier own peoples. The mass ethnical genocide like the 1994 massacres of nearly 1,000,000 Tutsis by Hutus, known as the Rwandan Genocide is very tupical for non-white africa.

#31

riiiight… sounds like the usual left-wing “post imperial guilt” claptrap. There is only one question that needs to be asked: on balance, was Africa better off when we left it , or before we came? If that writer thinks that Africa was going to develop on its own, he really needs to assess what planet he’s from.

#32

Do I detect an Astrologist in our midst? :slight_smile:

Good question. Care to submit your take on it?

On balance, was Africa better off before we took it?

#33

In my humble opinion, and on balance, Africa reached its peak in the last years of colonial rule, both in absolute terms and relative to European civilisation.

#34

As far as the institutions for law and order and government administration are concerned, you are probably right – although it does raise other questions.

These institutions were not a result of any democratic process, but rather they were imposed by colonial offices and run by colonial officers.

In other words:so what if colonial rule was oppressive? Africans have had almost half a century to put things right.

If the Colonail administrations reached their peak (best performance) in the last years of rule, then, it follows, that there were about a hundred years - more or less - of substandard administration leading up to this point, where problems were often solved by ‘gunboat diplomacy’.

#35

another crook who was made a hero by liberal media, south africa is a festering sore thas has got worse since aparthied’s rule. as i remember ,he and his cronies were linked to terrorist bombing, and his wife( i dont think she’s his wife now ) was involved in all kind of illegal activities .just another victory over the evil white menace.and i share his birthday

#36

Presumably, then, you apply the same standards of critique to the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the U.S. as we Limeys do? :slight_smile:

#37

hello, Bravo,
i didnt know that was the view the english had but i see your point of view,one mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist, but it was time for the colonists to govern themselves.and they showed ability to do so ,and defend it if neccessary, and to engage in trade and commerce on an intelligent level.south africa is a horse of a different color, figuratively not literally, and has not shown any added qualities after aparthied
god bless you,rick

#38

It probably isn’t what the English think, I just wanted to make a point. :slight_smile:

South Africa most certainly was, and is, a horse of a different colour (to quote from the Wizard of Oz), both before and after Apartheid.

I have difficulty reconciling your comments on how American colonists were ready for self government but the Africans of South Africa were/are not.

Simply because by that standard, the Africans, being an oppressed people (which the Americans were not, despite the spin) would never have been allowed to rise to a point were they were able to assume power, and the Afrikaans were in no way about to relinquish it.

The same can be said of most of the peoples of the African states and their colonial masters. Those African states/colonies which were allowed independence without having to fight for it, were given their freedom because of the changes in the global economy and the market forces that are controlled by it ( I seem to recall someone once posting “Welcome to corporate America”).

Yes. It is a long hard road for the African nations, but if the majority have been restricted to townships such as Soweto, how do they then acquire the skills, knowledge and experience to suddenly jump into the driving seat and run a state.

I would ask anyone: if they were a native of an oppressed country such as Zimbabwe is, or South Africa was, would they fight for their freedom or continue to procrastinate and consider whether they, as a nation, were ready to join, and be accepted by, a global community that, quite frankly, doesn’t give a fishes-tit about them, nor about their family’s mortality?

What say you??

#39

So far as Zimbabwe is concerned, the problem I have with it is that its blacks were supposedly oppressed by the whites who were overthrown by Mugabe’s revolutionaries but now its people, black and white, who aren’t aligned with Mugabe and his henchmen are oppressed, and often violently so, in ways never experienced under white rule.

Trying to explain the current situation as a consequence of colonialist oppression just doesn’t make sense.

Zimbabwe freed itself of colonialist rule and installed a government of committed freedom fighters opposed to everything colonialism stood for.

Its present situation is simply a consequence of the fact that Mugabe and Co are greedy, ruthless, murderous bastards who will do whatever they have to do to stay in power. In Zimbabwe, black Africans are fully responsible for every misery black Africans, and the remaining whites, are suffering and colonialism is utterly irrelevant to the present black despotism.

In answer to your question, yes I would fight for my freedom as a black in white run Zimbabwe but I’m not sure I’d try it in black run Zimbabwe because those bastards are more brutal and would just as likely kill my family in retaliation.

As for South Africa, it’s always assumed that it was a land of sweetness and light before the whites arrived. The fact is that what became the dominant elements of the Zulus were a greedy and aggressive bunch of brutal warmongers carving out a kingdom by force in far more violent ways than the whites subsequently did. When people go back into the past to point to the evils of white colonialism as the cause of current problems, why don’t they continue the process and identify the features in pre-white Zulu expansion and wars which might equally be said to have descended down the generations to cause modern problems? If that process is said to be irrelevant to the current situation, then why is it logical arbitrarily to focus only on white involvement immediately following and for a time contemporaneous with what the Zulus were doing?

I think there is too much of a willingness for well-intentioned people to find excuses in history to excuse bad conduct by people whose bad conduct is more probably influenced by other and more recent issues, such as poverty and lack of education and unemployment and the predictable social consequences of such problems, combined with the failures of governments now run by their own people after liberating themselves from white rule.

#40

And the gov’t forces under Leklerk were linked to fucking torturing people to death and opening fire on civilians…

And Mandela wasn’t linked to anyone since he was in prison when things degenerated to the dirty war…