Posted on 08/30/2009 7:18:09 AM PDT by Clive
There is one subject that invariably arouses intense emotions whenever it gets raised, as I found in my recent travels through a portion of North Africa.
The subject is colonialism. Invariably it gets raised in just about any discussion, even if it is only remotely connected to politics and history.
Everyone has an opinion about colonialism, of how not merely North Africa but the entire continent was raped and exploited by Europe's colonial powers.
There is no room for dissent, since everyone agrees as a matter of dignity that colonialism is responsible for Africa's woes past and present. But I gamely persist in these exchanges and I point in the direction of India and East Asia to illustrate how a sufficient number of people there have turned the page on colonialism to progress in making their own future.
My observation is unsettling. If I were not a person of colour -- someone whose history has been shaped by colonial power as similar to that of the people sitting with me in the cafe outside the Casbah in Algiers -- I might have experienced something more physical than the conversation swirling around me.
There is no escape in such encounters from history lessons freely given.
Europe's appalling treatment of Africa is repeatedly recited and when I get a break as a fresh round of coffee is offered, I ask about the appalling treatment of Africans by Africans after the Europeans left.
This is of course impolite. I am told the conflicts in Africa are the open wounds of Europe's dividing, or partitioning, the continent.
How is it that Europe, I ask, is responsible for the division of Africa when the continent prior to colonialism was divided among several thousand tribal entities? On the contrary, Europe's partitioning of the continent was paradoxically the forceful unification of Africa into some four dozen or more states.
I point to the situation on the Indian sub-continent, in size a tenth of Africa.
If it were not for colonial rule modern India, with a population larger than all of Africa, likely could have been a patchwork of states possibly locked in interminable conflicts, instead of being the world's largest functioning democracy.
These digressions are unconvincing. I respectfully concede the obvious, that Africa is too vast and complex for generalization.
But what the folks around me in Algiers, or most Africans, will not concede is also somewhat obvious. Africa needs to be left alone, to be itself and normal, or natural, once again.
The natural state of most things is illustrated when water finds its own level. Africa needs to stop mimicking Europe and the West, to cease berating Africa to be something other than herself.
It needs a lot of energy and machinery requiring constant repair, to push water uphill. Africa has been pushing water uphill -- as Albert Camus's Sisyphus rolled the boulder uphill -- to no purpose.
This is Africa's grief.
Africa's genuine liberation might come when she renounces efforts to be what she is not, a poor and broken copy of Europe, and find her comfort in being and doing things in the natural rhythm gifted to her by the sun, the wind and the water of her habitat.
salim.mansur@sunmedia.ca
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Why should they solve their own problems? Isn’t their favorite ‘son’ President of the United States?
A prominant African (I wish I could remember who) was once asked what USA can do to help the people there and he said “Stop sending money!”
The money goes to all kinds of corrupt politicians, making them more powerful, and free food sent is grabbed up by the people which puts llocal farmers out of business, making the following year even worse.
Obama is the favorite son of a single big tribe in Kenya. That means the rest of Africa look upon him quite warily at best.
I read a great book “Out of America” which deals with a black reporter who goes to Africa all starry-eyed about going back to Mother Africa, the mecca for all black Americans.
He was there during the early nineties during the Somalia crisis and the Rowanda genocide.
Needless to say, when he finally left, he sounded like Muhammed Ali saying “I’m glad my great grandpappy got on that boat!” when asked what he thought of Africa.
There were two things that the author of that book said that summarized it:
1.) “Nobody counts the bodies in Africa”
(He is stunned to go to South Africa where 15 black people are killed, and it is treated as a crime scene complete with police tape and all. In Rawanda and Somalia, bodies were uncounted, anonymously thrown in rivers or stacked like cordwood, sometimes to be buried, sometimes not.
2.) “Nobody farts with confidence in Africa” (A reference to the poor state of drinking water everywhere)
In the book (a very good read) he relates a common joke going around to illustrate the the vast disparity in growth and modernization between Africa and Indonesia (both of which have a colonial past and tribal issues) in an attempt to explain why Indonesia has flourished, and Africa continues to languish.
Two promising college students, upon graduating from Oxford, promise to meet again years later. 15 years later, the Indonesian student invited the African student, now near the top of his own government, to visit.
The African travels to Indonesia, and is taken to the gorgeous estate of the Indonesian who is a high government official, and as they drive up, the African is astounded at the wealth. Four Mercedes, a Ferrari, a huge colonial mansion, servants, etc. Wide eyed, he asks the Indonesian “How did you do it?”
The Indonesian points to a huge, modern highway in the distance, then grinning, taps his chest and says “I got 10%!”
The African, duly impressed, returns to Africa with a promise to invite the Indonesian official to Africa for a visit.
Ten years later, he finally goes to Africa to visit, and is stunned at how wealthy and affluent his African friend is, with all the servants, the mansion and the estate, and asks...”How did you do this?”
The African points to a bare, muddy pasture and says “Do you see that highway out there?” When the Indonesian says, dumbfounded, “No”, the African points proudly at his chest and says “I got 100%!”
Their are two forms of colonialism now coliding in Africa..China and radical Islam. No telling where all this will lead, but Wahabism is making significant enroads with the hlep of oil money and China is also out to get markets and natural resources locked up.
The West is become a minority player.
We have a family member who just returned from his latest round of research in W. AFrica..he is fluend in three african languages and French and makes contacts from the Govt, Education and down to simple shop owners. He sees this collison coming.
I differ. When comparing the son of a single African country against the son of a Western Devil Country, I believe most Africans of all countries therein would look upon him as ‘favoured’.
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Agreed. I have seen it coming for some time, too.
Camus, a pied-noir ("blackfoot"), a Frenchman born in Algeria, wrote Sisyphus, based upon the ancient Greek story of Sisyphus, who was condemned to spend his life rolling a stone up a hill, from which it would always roll back down.
A picture of the absurdity and ultimate meaninglessness of life, a theme favored by French existentialist intellectuals, who mostly ruined France. If you wonder why the French are so grouchy and cynical, look no further than their schoolhouse indocrination by Sartre, Camus, Ionesco and the rest of the Apostles of Hopelessness.
Africa was doing great before colonialism.
They have done a bang up job with Rhodesia(former breadbasket of Africa now just a basket case) and the destruction of South Africa is almost complete.
Hang onto your hats, chaps. Here we go!!! When the army begins to riot, it’s a sure sign that there’s trouble in the camp. It’s normally in tin-pot States with President-for-Life despots that these things happen. The army is a sure indicator that there is trouble on the way. It is also a good indicator of how the rest of the Black population are going to behave.The same army that was the pride of Africa has now descended into rabble, African style.
http://www.zasucks.com/?p=4867
Zimbabwe has done super since its liberation from white oppression. Many people are now millionaires there.
Africa is a sh*t hole and always will be one. It hasn’t advanced an inch in thousands of years.
The colonial powers cursed Africa with top-heavy 20th Century governments, which sucked up most of the bright ambitious people.
Unfortunately, Africa did not have the businessmen sufficient to both support a distended non-productive class and maintain the physical and institutional infrastructure left by the departing Powers. The governments of Africa are the primary enemies of their own people.
Thus poverty, with no hope of escape for now, except by emigration.
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Africa has to desire civilization.
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