Eh, I've heard worse. I used to turn WWF New York into "The World" nightclub on Fri/Sat nights, and one night I had one of the spend-$800-on-a-bottle-of-Cristal VIP monkeys with his hairy-chest, gold chain entourage tell me "You know, you'd do much better, make much more money, as my personal n!gger, my personal slave." Smokin' Joe Frazier, at the table next this suicidal mooncalf, heard this guy too; he just laughed as I threw him out; we had 20 groups waiting for those tables anyway. So asserting that a return to colonialisation is the best thing for Africa is not surprising to hear, particularly on BS.
What is this, the NYT's Africa Week? They'll be on this issue for the length of time it takes you and I to read these articles, then they'll engage Africa as regularly as Judith Miller checks her sources.
Actually, they cover Africa regularly (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/africa/index.html). I'm just posting some articles to hopefully provoke a little discussion about some of the most important issues on the planet Earth AND to hopefully learn something. So far I've learned that a Dutch guy thinks colonization is a good idea even though it resulted in multiple Holocausts in recent history.
Yes, okay, but with Interactive Features such as "Is There Any Hope in Africa" and all that the very titling of something like that presupposes? Even so, the following is fair: And the BS idiocy quotient always must be met before, or in the course of, rigorous critical analysis of any topic here. Hopefully that's out of the way, but I fear that "Africa," as a BS topic, will meet as much critical engagement as the third invasion and gov't overthrow of the Bush cabal, Haiti. Not that I'm contributing effectively with anything I've offered so far, but still.
spare me the "political correctness" Ask yourself this: "Was africa better governed in colonial rule than it is today?" See, it's not so unbelievable now is it?
Political Correctness?????? Are you f-ing nuts? Europeans murdered tens of millions of Africans and you want a sequel? This article (did you read it?) suggested investing in African health care education and sending foreign health care professionals to Africa. Isn't that more sensible? Geez.
Did I say that? It's you that's twistng things. You seem to think that colonization = mass murder and holocaust and concentration camps. Haha, yeah right. Not all African nations were completely bled dry, infact many African economies were built up, people actually got educated for example. My first comment in this thread was tounge in cheek you know, I wasn't being seriously. But now that I think about it, it has a point. How many times have their been articles like this? They appear every month. Giving money to Africa doesn't solve problems, or should i say "waisting" money. Many people believe that giving money to africa has actually caused problems. What needs to be solved is African leadership, which is crap. Robert Mugabe for example, he's done a fine job of governing Zimbabwe hasn't he? I mean let's compare just how great Zimbabwe is now compared to colonial rule..... He's got rid of white farmers, putting uneducated farmers in their place simply because they were black, and that was only in some farms. He destroyed his countries agriculture and starved his own people in the process. What happens when elections come around? People get beaten in the streets, political opposition get tortured. Zimbabwe used have a great tabacco farming industry, now 75% of that is gone. This is just one example. Also the leader of South Africa, his brother actually said a few months ago that Africa was better off in colonial rule.
Er actually, just to let you know, most African countries that were colonized had many massacres. LOL, you actually think that Europeans left the countries because they suddenly felt morally obliged to...?!? They left because the hassle outweighed the gain. There were only 2 decent African economies, Zimbabwe and South Africa given over after independance. On the education front, if you had ever been to a rural school, you'd take that comment back. They got educated in the Western ways, only to be told that that is of no use to them as it doesn't fit with the economy of the country. It can be very distressing. Correct, throwing money at Africa doesn't do anything except breed coruption. What would help is if the richer nations cared a little more. Then they would stop the corruption and the devestation that is caused by companies like Nestle. Er actually for the first 15 years, Mugabe was a great leader for Zimbabwe. Ok so he killed many Matebele (the second largest tribe to his Shona tribe) in the early 1980's, but economically he did very well. Education wise, Zimbabwe still has exams and grades of european level. It is an education system to be admired. Unfortunatly with Mugabe, he got greedy and tried to hang on when Zimbabwe needed freshness. He took back many white farms, but lets face it - 90% of the ones he took were taken from the blacks in the 1960's by the government of Ian Smith. So they were not "in the familly for generations" as the Western media tries to claim. The land needed to be redistributed - undeniable fact. The problem being that as Mugabe tried to cling to power, he gave it to friends who didn't know how to farm it properly. But this has been exaggerated completly by the Western media. The real test will come in March 2005, when the next elections are to be held. There is a big possibility of a civil war.
Africa is a mess pure and simple. It has never developed. All that potential wasted. How many people on here would go to Africa to help? I don't see volunteers. We all lament the loss of life, but deep down we know the problems go much deeper than sending money. You have tribal societies. Until a dominant one develops, there will continue to be problems.
I travel to Zimbabwe once a year as I have many friend there. Most work for either community service agency's, Red Cross or World Vision. Ive been to many of the projects in the various townships around Harare and in the rural area's and have seen the poverty and desperation first hand. One of the major problems is the dominance of certain tribes. Until this STOPS and tribes realise that they must be equal, blood letting will continue.
I read an article the other day (I'll try to find it) which stated that thousands of African doctors come to the US to practice every year.
Could I ask some of you guys to define specifically what you mean when you say "tribal"? The danger in just tossing it around is that too often it's an inaccurate code for "primitive," which I hope (and I don't think you do) nobody in this thread intends, as that's just a step away from racist, ahistorical explanations of African misery as being a natural result of being African. Based on extensive literature about human social organizations and what little research I've done on Africa, I'd say the problems confronting Africa now are not the products of tribal societies, but of the societal type called the nation-state. Historically speaking, while tribal societies have been more warlike than, say, band-organized societies (e.g. most hunter-gatherers), they have been vastly less warlike, invidious, and economically oppressive than state organized societies. The problems afflicting Africa now are products of it's colonial past--in which extractive states were imposed upon it--and present-day, locally produced corruption. That some present day African leaders use tribal structures to facilitate their own corruption, excercise force, and generally inflict misery is absolutely true. It's also true that tribal identities readily adapted to the violent identity politics that developed worldwide during the latter part of 20th Century. However, these phenomena are no more inherent products of tribalism than is pollution. Specifically, tribalism has almost nothing to do with the lack of HCPs in Africa. As Gringo Tex suggests, worldwide economics is a far more significant factor.
yep - reality sucks - survival of the fittest whether a tribe, a group of people, a nation state or a terrorist organization. But on this board today - in one corner we have the offer of colonialism - and in the other corner the offer to rip apart the industrialized world to fix all of Africa's problems. Neither are going to happen - and blood letting will continue. Until (1) one side wins - but since there are so many "sides" in the vastness of Africa - that is unrealistic for a long time or (2) the majority of tired of all the killing - when will that occur?
The Nazis actually used the concentration camps build for the Herero in German South-West Africa (Namibia) as a model for the Holocaust.