After Empire
Posted by Hobsonphile
On 04/15/2003 12:44 AM EDT with 6 comments
City Journal ^ | Spring 2003 | Theodore Dalrymple
After Empire Imperialists can change their subjects, but not in any way they choose.
Posted by 68skylark
On 06/09/2003 1:20 PM EDT with 7 comments
OpinionJournal.com ^ | June 9, 2003 | BY THEODORE DALRYMPLE
As soon as I qualified as a doctor, I went to Rhodesia, which was to transform itself into Zimbabwe five years or so later. In the next decade, I worked and traveled a great deal in Africa and couldn't help but reflect upon such matters as the clash of cultures, the legacy of colonialism, and the practical effects of good intentions unadulterated by any grasp of reality. I gradually came to the conclusion that the rich and powerful can indeed have an effect upon the poor and powerless--perhaps can even remake them--but not necessarily (in fact, necessarily not) in the...
Small excerpts from this article: ............Unlike in South Africa, where salaries were paid according to a racial hierarchy (whites first, Indians and "coloured" second, Africans last), salaries in Rhodesia were equal for blacks and whites doing the same job, so that a black junior doctor received the same salary as mine. But there remained a vast gulf in our standards of living, the significance of which at first escaped me; but it was crucial in explaining the disasters that befell the newly independent countries that enjoyed what Byron called, and eagerly anticipated as, the first dance of freedom. The young black doctors who earned the same salary as we whites could not achieve the same standard of living for a very simple reason: They had an immense number of social obligations to fulfill. They were expected to provide for an ever expanding circle of family members (some of whom may have invested in their education) and people from their village, tribe and province. An income that allowed a white to live like a lord because of a lack of such obligations scarcely raised a black above the level of his family. Mere equality of salary, therefore, was quite insufficient to procure for them the standard of living that they saw the whites had and that it was only human nature for them to desire--and believe themselves entitled to, on account of the superior talent that had allowed them to raise themselves above their fellows. In fact, a salary a thousand times as great would hardly have been sufficient to procure it: for their social obligations increased pari passu with their incomes. These obligations also explain the fact, often disdainfully remarked upon by former colonials, that when Africans moved into the beautiful and well-appointed villas of their former colonial masters, the houses swiftly degenerated into a species of superior, more spacious slum. Just as African doctors were perfectly equal to their medical tasks, technically speaking, so the degeneration of colonial villas had nothing to do with the intellectual inability of Africans to maintain them. Rather, the fortunate inheritor of such a villa was soon overwhelmed by relatives and others who had a social claim upon him. They brought even their goats with them; and one goat can undo in an afternoon what it has taken decades to establish. It is easy to see why a civil service, controlled and manned in its upper reaches by whites, could remain efficient and uncorrupt but could not long do so when manned by Africans who were supposed to follow the same rules and procedures. The same is true, of course, for every other administrative activity, public or private. The thick network of social obligations explains why, while it would have been out of the question to bribe most Rhodesian bureaucrats, yet in only a few years it would have been out of the question not to try to bribe most Zimbabwean ones, whose relatives would have condemned them for failing to obtain on their behalf all the advantages their official opportunities might provide. Thus do the very same tasks in the very same offices carried out by people of different cultural and social backgrounds result in very different outcomes. Viewed in this light, African nationalism was a struggle as much for power and privilege as it was for freedom, though it co-opted the language of freedom for obvious political advantage. In the matter of freedom, even Rhodesia--certainly no haven of free speech--was superior to its successor state, Zimbabwe....
.....These considerations help to explain the paradox that strikes so many visitors to Africa: the evident decency, kindness and dignity of the ordinary people, and the fathomless iniquity, dishonesty and ruthlessness of the politicians and administrators.....
His other essays can be found here: http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1218
and here: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/cfml/cj_author.cfm?author=47