Let Africa Sink

When it comes to any analysis of the problems facing Africa, Western society, and particularly people from the United States, encounter a logical disconnect that makes clear analysis impossible. That disconnect is the way life is regarded in the West (it's precious, must be protected at all costs etc.), compared to the way life, and death, are regarded in Africa. Let me try to quantify this statement.

In Africa, life is cheap. There are so many ways to die in Africa that death is far more commonplace than in the West. You can die from so many things--snakebite, insect bite, wild animal attack, disease, starvation, food poisoning... the list goes on and on. At one time, crocodiles accounted for more deaths in sub-Saharan Africa than gunfire, for example. Now add the usual human tragedy (murder, assault, warfare and the rest), and you can begin to understand why the life expectancy for an African is low--in fact, horrifyingly low, if you remove White Africans from the statistics (they tend to be more urbanized, and more Western in behavior and outlook). Finally, if you add the horrifying spread of AIDS into the equation, anyone born in sub-Saharan Africa this century will be lucky to reach age forty.

I lived in Africa for over thirty years. Growing up there, I was infused with several African traits--traits which are not common in Western civilization. The almost-casual attitude towards death was one. (Another is a morbid fear of snakes.)

So because of my African background, I am seldom moved at the sight of death, unless it's accidental, or it affects someone close to me. (Death which strikes at strangers, of course, is mostly ignored.) Of my circle of about eighteen or so friends with whom I grew up, and whom I would consider "close", only about ten survive today--and not one of the survivors is over the age of fifty.

Two friends died from stepping on landmines while on Army duty in Namibia. Three died in horrific car accidents (and lest one thinks that this is not confined to Africa, one was caused by a kudu flying through a windshield and impaling the guy through the chest with its hoof--not your everyday traffic accident in, say, Florida). One was bitten by a snake, and died from heart failure. Another also died of heart failure, but he was a hopeless drunkard. Two were shot by muggers. The last went out on his surfboard one day and was never seen again (did I mention that sharks are plentiful off the African coasts and in the major rivers?). My situation is not uncommon in South Africa--and north of the Limpopo River (the border with Zimbabwe), I suspect that others would show worse statistics.

The death toll wasn't just confined to my friends. When I was still living in Johannesburg, the newspaper carried daily stories of people mauled by lions, or attacked by rival tribesmen, or dying from some unspeakable disease (and this was pre-AIDS Africa too) and in general, succumbing to some of Africa's many answers to the population explosion. Add to that the normal death toll from rampant crime, illness, poverty, flood, famine, traffic, and the police, and you'll begin to get the idea.

My favorite African story actually happened after I left the country. An American executive took a job over there, and on his very first day, the newspaper headlines read: "Three Headless Bodies Found".

As a result, death is treated more casually by Africans than by Westerners. I, and I suspect most Africans, am completely inured to reports of African suffering, for whatever cause. Drought causes crops to fail, thousands face starvation? Yup, that happened many times while I was growing up. Inter-tribal rivalry and warfare causes wholesale slaughter? Yep, been happening there for millennia, long before Whitey got there. Governments becoming rich and corrupt while their populations starved? Not more than nine or ten of those. In my lifetime, the following tragedies have occurred, causing untold millions of deaths: famine in Biafra, genocide in Rwanda, civil war in Angola, floods in South Africa, famine in Somalia, civil war in Sudan, famine in Ethiopia, floods in Mozambique, wholesale slaughter in Uganda, and tribal warfare in every single country. There are others, but you get the point.

Yes, all this was also true in Europe--maybe a thousand years ago. But not any more. And Europe doesn't teem with crocodiles, ultra-venomous snakes and so on.

The Dutch controlled the floods. All of Europe controls famine--it's non-existent now. Apart from a couple of examples of massive, state-sponsored slaughter (Nazi Germany, Communist Russia), Europe since 1700 doesn't even begin to compare to Africa today. Casual slaughter is another thing altogether--rare in Europe, common in Africa.

More to the point, the West has evolved into a society with a stable system of government, which follows the rule of law, and has respect for the rights and life of the individual--none of which is true in Africa.

Among old Africa hands, we have a saying, usually accompanied by a shrug: "Africa wins again." This is usually said after an incident such as:

a tribal chief prefers to let his tribe starve to death rather than accepting food from the Red Cross (would mean he wasn't all-powerful, you see)

an entire nation starves to death, while its ruler accumulates wealth in foreign banks

a new government comes into power, promising democracy, free elections etc., provided that the freedom doesn't extend to the other tribe

the other tribe comes to power in a bloody coup, then promptly sets about slaughtering the first tribe

The prognosis is bleak, because none of this mayhem shows any sign of ending. The conclusions are equally bleak, because, quite frankly, there is no answer to Africa's problems, no solution that hasn't been tried before, and failed.

Just go to the CIA World Fact Book, pick any of the African countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi etc.), and compare the statistics to any Western country (eg. Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland). The disparities are appalling--and it's going to get worse, not better. It has certainly got worse since 1960, when most African countries achieved independence. We, and by this I mean the West, have tried many ways to help Africa. All such attempts have failed.

1. Charity is no answer. Money simply gets appropriated by the first, or second, or third person to touch it (17 countries saw a decline in real per capita GNP between 1970 and 1999, despite receiving well over $100 billion in World Bank assistance).

2. Food isn't distributed. This happens either because there is no transportation infrastructure (bad), or the local leader deliberately withholds the supplies to starve people into submission (worse).

3. Materiel is broken, stolen or sold off for a fraction of its worth. The result of decades of "foreign aid" has resulted in a continental infrastructure which, if one excludes South Africa, couldn't support Pittsburgh.

Add to this, as I mentioned above, the endless cycle of Nature's little bag of tricks--persistent drought followed by violent flooding, a plethora of animals, reptiles and insects so dangerous that life is already cheap before Man starts playing his little reindeer games with his fellow Man--and what you are left with is: catastrophe.

The inescapable conclusion is simply one of resignation. This goes against the grain of our humanity--we are accustomed to ridding the world of this or that problem (smallpox, polio, whatever), and accepting failure is anathema to us. But, to give a classic African scenario, a polio vaccine won't work if the kids are prevented from getting the vaccine by a venal overlord, or a frightened chieftain, or a lack of roads, or by criminals who steal the vaccine and sell it to someone else. If a cure for AIDS was found tomorrow, and offered to every African nation free of charge, the growth of the disease would scarcely be checked, let alone reversed. Basically, you'd have to try to inoculate as many two-year old children as possible, and write off the two older generations.

So that is the only one response, and it's a brutal one: accept that we are powerless to change Africa, and leave them to sink or swim, by themselves.

It sounds dreadful to say it, but if the entire African continent dissolves into a seething maelstrom of disease, famine and brutality, that's just too damn bad. We have better things to do--sometimes, you just have to say, "Can't do anything about it."

The viciousness, the cruelty, the corruption, the duplicity, the savagery, and the incompetence is endemic to the entire continent, and is so much of an anathema to any right-thinking person that the civilized imagination simply stalls when faced with its ubiquity, and with the enormity of trying to fix it. The Western media shouldn't even bother reporting on it. All that does is arouse our feelings of horror, and the instinctive need to do something, anything--but everything has been tried before, and failed. Everything, of course, except self-reliance.

All we should do is make sure that none of Africa gets transplanted over to the U.S., because the danger to our society is dire if it does. I note that several U.S. churches are attempting to bring groups of African refugees over to the United States, European churches the same for Europe. Mistake. Mark my words, this misplaced charity will turn around and bite us, big time.

Even worse would be to think that the simplicity of Africa holds some kind of answers for Western society: remember "It Takes A Village"? Trust me on this: there is not one thing that Africa can give the West which hasn't been tried before and failed, not one thing that isn't a step backwards, and not one thing which is worse than, or that contradicts, what we have already.

So here's my solution for the African fiasco: a high wall around the whole continent, all the guns and bombs in the world for everyone inside, and at the end, the last one alive should do us all a favor and kill himself.

Inevitably, some Kissingerian realpolitiker is going to argue in favor of intervention, because in the vacuum of Western aid, perhaps the Communist Chinese would step in and increase their influence in the area. There are two reasons why this isn't going to happen.

Firstly, the PRC doesn't have that kind of money to throw around; and secondly, the result of any communist assistance will be precisely the same as if it were Western assistance. For the record, Mozambique and Angola are both communist countries--and both are economic disaster areas. The prognosis for both countries is disastrous--and would be the same for any other African country.

Africa has to heal itself. The West can't help it. Nor should we. The record speaks for itself.

It has certainly got worse since 1960, when most African countries achieved independence. We, and by this I mean the West, have tried many ways to help Africa. All such attempts have failed.

It seems that colonialism worked, at least for a time. It is hard to escape the conclusion that African independence has been a big mistake.

Kim Du Toit is dead on target. But then, he seldom misses.

Some wag once said that Africa was not a continent but a condition of the mind, and that it would remain forever incomprehensible to the West for that reason. Du Toit's essay points up some of the central factors in that disconnect.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

.....It is time for Africa to step up to the plate and stop the constant war......

What is happening in Africa is Darwinian selection in action. Those who are inferior will be eliminated and those who are strong will survive. Outside forces cannot change the basic tribal, read biological, diffrerences that are at work selecting those who will survive and those who will die.

White faces can not counter these forces except to kill the strong and merely prolong the conflict.

Joe, You're absolutely right about the education. I met some pretty decent guys in the Congo about 5 years back, but there's a good probability they've been chopped up by now, because education does nothing to stop a machete. So the only rationale for intervention is to create a situation in which your solution -- education -- can take hold.

A lot of European countries are trying to solve the Africa problem the wrong way, by offering more immigration slots into Europe while maintaining armies with only ceremonial roles. But in the end, neither increased immigration or handouts can stop Africa from becoming a source of disease and a breeding ground for terrorism. Europe is just importing the African problems into their own backyards without solving them. Just as terrorism won't be extirpated from the Middle East until their dictatorships are toppled, neither will the Africa problem go away until all those fake post-colonial "states" are straightened out. And besides, just what does the Belgian Army do these days anyway?

The problem with Africa is the complete inability to get past tribalism. There is zero cooperation with anyone not of your clan or tribe.

Your “solution” flies in the face of EVERYTHING Africans have argued for, the end of colonialism. White Europeans are blamed for EVERY ill on the continent, though most left in the 60's, and sending troops back would reinforce the argument. Let those that wanted the Europeans out, those here and in Africa, solve the problem.

"Your “solution” flies in the face of EVERYTHING Africans have argued for, the end of colonialism. White Europeans are blamed for EVERY ill on the continent,...

There's an old saying in Africa, which you may have heard, that if the worst thing the white man did was to come to Africa in the first place, the second worst was to leave it ... especially when the Africans were bound to follow to Europe. There's a standing Spanish patrol on the Med to keep the Morroccans from coming over. The African problem has to be solved for Europe's sake as well as the African's.

Colonialism's just a word made up by white people who can't apply the same concept to Hutus being ruled by Tutsis or vice versa. That's not colonialism is it?

Absolutely.

Every single nation where the guilty white westerners have allowed the native population to take over has seen that nation fall into savagery and barbarism.

The western liberals advocated the overthrow of South Africa's government and apartheid...and now South Africa is descending into the same third world hell of most other nations on the continent. South Africa is now the rape capital of the world. Crime is out of control. The white population are being killed, raped, robbed, and assaulted at record levels and you hear nothing in the western papers. Yes, the leftist, liberal vermin don't want you to know that their "multicultural Utopia" actually has descended into Dante's Inferno...

And every other nation taken over by the native blacks in Africa has turned into a violent, savage, hell hole - a total kleptocracy.

Uganda, Rwanda, Namibia, Nigeria, and Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

I say we leave these barbarians to themselves and let the savages work it out. Sink or swim. Not another western dime should go into that continent.

It's too late for the poor European whites in places like Zimbabwe and South Africa, but we shouldn't do any more to prop up these governments.

It ceased being our money before that. It was our money when money was not debt. That was when dollars were silver disks and gold disks and fractional dollars were smaller disks, quarters, dimes, 1964 and before. These were of a positive nature. People who had it owned it.

All money is now debt lent to us and the government by the Federal Reserve System central bank. It is of a negative nature. Debt by definition belongs to the creditor even when it passes hands as money. The people lost control of their government when the government no longer needed the peoples real money to function, and could borrow debt forever from the central bank to do what it wants.

So the only rationale for intervention is to create a situation in which your solution -- education -- can take hold.

But to what end is this education? In this land of triablism there is a very wide and very deep distain for manual labor. What does this have to do with education?

Only this:
History has shown again and again, that these educated folk do not open their own business/industry, or seek to work in one. They're goals are not to become doctors, engineers, agronomists, dentists, vets, biologists, nurses, chemists, etc. Their goal is to become a burocrat. Period. You know, indoor work, no heavy lifting, get to carry a brief case, wear a tie, get to boss people around, + let's not forgot all those government perks.

With an "education" mind set like this, well...what you've got, you've got in Africa.

Read Heart of Darkness; Conrad was saying similar things in 1901.

I visited South Africa as a little kid in 1977 (I think Vorster was PM); it was a gorgeous place, then. My Dad and I met a white farming family from (then) Rhodesia. Nicest guy in the world, with about 5 children who all knew how to use the automatic weapons in the house.

I wonder where they all are now.

Finally, Africans, like other primitive peoples (such as Hindus, Baptists and Catholics)

Christians are primitive people? All right, you had me agreeing until you inexplicably came out with that one. Perhaps your definition of "primitive" is different from mine....

I'm not Baptist, by the way, but as a Christian my doctrine is essentially identical to theirs....

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