Posted on 09/23/2004 5:47:20 AM PDT by tjwmason
President Thabo Mbeki's denunciations of western imperialism were contradicted yesterday by his brother, who said Africans had been better off under colonial rule.
Moeletsi Mbeki, head of the South African Institute of International Affairs, told a meeting in Durban that Africa was in a spiral of decline.
"The average African is poorer than during the age of colonialism," the president's younger brother said. He accused Africa's post-colonial rulers of neglecting development and wasting money on "enormous entourages of civil servants".
He contrasted this with the record of colonial governments who built the roads and cities that Africa depends on today. Mr Mbeki pointed out that China had lifted 400 million people out of penury during the past 20 years while, over the same period, 90 million Nigerians had fallen below the poverty line despite their country's oil wealth.
A United Nations report published in July found that Africa was the only continent where most people were poorer than they were two decades ago.
Mr Mbeki added that South Africa should take a tough line against President Robert Mugabe's regime in neighbouring Zimbabwe. "We should not tolerate the use of violence, torture and rigging of elections and, if necessary, we should support the opposition," he said.
Mr Mbeki's analysis of Africa's history and of its predicament today differs fundamentally from that of his brother. Thabo Mbeki has pointedly refrained from criticising Mr Mugabe's excesses. Instead, he opposed Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth and he blames the legacy of British colonialism for the country's crisis.
In the domestic arena, the president has dedicated his government to addressing the grievances left by the era of white rule. A Black Economic Empowerment policy is designed to give black South Africans control over what remains a white-dominated economy.
But Moeletsi Mbeki is intensely critical of this approach. In a recent interview with This Day, a South African daily, he said his brother's flagship policy was creating "a culture of entitlement" among blacks.
Businesses were being handed over as "free assets" to people without the "technical know-how" to run them.
Like the president, Mr Mbeki, 58, spent much of his early life in the West. He was educated at Harvard and at Warwick University, returning to South Africa in 1990 to pursue a career in business.
He professes to be proud of his brother's achievements, but adds: "I don't get my opinions from him and he doesn't get his from me. And the South African government is not a family business."
I didn't know he had a brother. Why isn't his brother in charge???
Where's the print edition? I don't read where he actually says that in the article.
ummm...because, sadly, the brother makes sense...the brother is not a socialist promising free handouts...sad that colonialism - the benevolent dictator idea - is better than anything an African has yet offered or delivered ?
Would you like to live under an benevolent dictator?
Damn, good to see a progessive African, just wish such were in charge. Too bloody bad there are not more with his mind set. Africa is such a beautiful continent, rich in natural resources, but thanks to it's stupid and greedy leaders, such a freaken disaster.
He is not a politician, he is a capitalist. Easy to see who gat the brains in that family.
I agree. The best thing that could happen to Africa would be to dissolve the current national borders and allow people to reassume their natural ethnographic boundaries. A system of Trusteeships under the auspices of the UN or the G8 or NATO would be set up allowing major world powers to keep the peace, administer justice, and provide for the orderly disposition of aid and investment money within their respective areas. These trusteeships would follow language lines; Francophone areas would be administered by Francophone powers (France, Belgium, etc.) while English, Portuguese, and other language group areas would have trusteeships governed by Commonwealth, American, and UK powers. The whole program would be overseen by a Trusteeship Council composed of the leaders of the Trustee Nations, and the Council would be responsible for overall African affairs. Financing for this system would come from the sale of raw resources and of Africa Bonds; with stable government in place, investors would be encouraged to purchase such securities and to build factories in Africa. Proceeds of the bond sales would go to finance infrastructure on a continental scale; a Pan-African Highway System, a Pan-African High-Speed Rail Network, a Gibraltar Bridge, etc. (In each case, the Council would only fund startup costs and infrastructure; private African operators would own the trucks and railroads.) The Council would also provide for the control of infectious diseases within the continent. Advantage would be taken of Africa's equatorial location in the building of modern space launch facilities (and the high-tech industry needed to support them) and possibly even the first Space Elevator.
All this done well, Africa's cheap labor would be made available to manufacturers, enabling the birth of a true African middle class; and, with road and rail links to the world, the products of these factories could be rapidly shipped to the markets they serve. With the Trustees around to crush any little warlords that might arise, and with trustworthy cops, courts, and laws, I see no reason Africa could not be "turned around" in fifty years or so.
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It's a fine plan. My only concern is that I don't know if that is what Africans want.
That's precisely the point. The Trustees would be there with guns to enforce order and keep the peace whether the Africans wanted it or not. Any troublemakers who got out of line would simply disappear in the night and end up in Guantanamo.
Like the Japanese of the World War II era, Africans are tribal people — and tribal people respect power. Send in a Douglas MacArthur, show them you've got the power, and they'll willingly cooperate.
So you are proposing to drag Africa into the 21st century by force? Will the trustees then stay there forever, or will they leave after a while, just for Africa to implode again? I like the idea of trustees, but I'm not sure about the part where they should hold the military power. Unfortunately, I can see that at least initially, there will have to be some measure of that if the plan is to work. The challenge in Africa is to get political systems and economic systems that work together, not the current state of mutual exclusivity, if life is going to be good for all Africans.
They sure were better of then than now.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I think this article was excellent. I really do wish it was him as president of Zimbabwe and not his wicked brother. Were a man like him installed after independance, Zimbabwe would be on a very different path.
I meant South Africa, not Zimbabwe. I had Mugabe on my mind after reading he spoke in NYC (why he was allowed in the country amazes me still).
<< The best thing that could happen to Africa would be to dissolve the current national borders and allow people to reassume their natural ethnographic boundaries. >>
That is precisely what is already happening and is what is driving what is accurately described above as the spiral of decline.
Africa -- whose entire veneer of Civilization was imported and/or created by the generally generous and benign-at-worst British [Who then abrogated their every responsibility to what they had created and to their Black and White African Subjects and ran away] -- and by only slightly differing from one another degrees of simply bloody awful Euro-peon colonialists -- is, as its white-man-created infrastructure crumbles and rots, devolving, degrading and degenerating into and via old tribal groupings and back to villages and kraals and into the dark ages of pre-colonial times.
And, except in some powerfully Christian pockets where there is great hope, will re-emerge -- if it ever does -- only after many more years and perhaps centuries of evolution.
Thanks for the ping, Clive!
I fully believe in christianity and the power of God to save Africa, not people. I don't know about centuries, and certainly don't put my faith and belief in anything evolutionary. Not saying it will be overnight either to be sure.
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