Posted on 12/18/2009 3:35:55 PM PST by St. Louis Conservative
Yes, Apartheid was wrong and oppressive, but does anyone think South Africa and Rhodesia would have been nearly as prosperous had they always had such 'enlightened' rulers like Robert Mugabe? Fact is, before Mugabe, Rhodesia was one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. It was known as the "breadbasket of Africa". South Africa was run by highly educated and industrious Dutch/German immigrants. They had a very advanced and wealthy economy, one of the finest Navies of a country of that size, and they were stridently anti-Communist. Today, they are a fraction of they once were, and have been slipping into the soft iron hand of leftist totalitarianism (Zimbabawe is already here).
I'm not excusing their racist Apartheid policies, but it seems that these countries (along with the help and pressure from the international left) threw the baby out with the bath water. It's quite sad.
Right-O
I don’t think South Africa was as bad as the claims make it out to be. The communists there were just better at PR.
All of Africa was better off under colonial rule
Yep.
Yes indeedy
I was a LDS Missionary in Zimbabwe & S.Africa in 1980-82. Mugabe took power in 1979. In the one year that I was there, already 25% of the grocery items dissapeared from being offered on the shelves. What has happened in these two countries is a travesty, not so much as for the Whites as for the Blacks. The whites generally have other options .... but the Blacks, have no other option but to stay and starve!
Zimbabwe & S.Africa have demonstrated that if Political Correctness as in is your highest priority .... sometimes that’s all you get!
another foreign policy triumph for jimmy carter.
Don’t bother the libtards with facts, especially by people who were there. They “know” that their untried utopian, politically correct, socialist approach is the only way, even though centuries of failure have proven them wrong. They want to try their science project here in he US because they think it is such a brilliant idea. God help us.
(it's not diversity if the minority is white European)
Culture matters.
..murder of hundreds of Afrikaner farmers and their families and rumors of ethnic cleansing of SA after Mandela’s death would have me immigrating to the US or Australia right now...
IMO,South Africa would have been better off being divided into two (or more) countries...at least one being majority black and one (perhaps *only* one) being majority white.Kinda like Hindu India and moslem Pakistan.
Such a division would have to have been done in such a way as to provide both the blacks and the whites reasonable portions of the land's minerals,fertile farm land,water,etc
But nobody consulted me,so....
Rhodesia was almost all on British Labour. Callaghan, I believe, did his best Jimmah imitation.
to paraphrase an old saying
A man could stand in the middle of a meeting of African rulers with a shotgun, fire in any direction and not risk killing an honest man.
I would love to visit South Africa one day. From the pictures I've seen, it seems like a beautiful place.
I hope I make it there before it goes completely pear-shaped.
Zim and S.A. are totally different cases. Zim is a basket case because of it's repressive dictatorship, but that's not because of black rule, it's like other cases elsewhere such as Cuba or Belarus.
Mandela took the opposite approach and S.A. has enjoyed GDP growth interrupted with relatively minor recessions since the ANC takeover. Not that there aren't serious problems, of course, but it is the 25th largest economy.
Are you trying to suggest that Canada and Australia were better off under colonial rule?
Just joking... but its is interesting what they grew into. The Africans could have done the same. Blessed with INCREDIBLE resources... but lacking in vision. Lacking in ideas excepting one area....
ripping off the white dude.
actually two places
Screwing their own progress.
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