Rhodesia becomes a distant memory

Free Britannia ^ | November 1, 2002 | Sarah Tait-Hodgson

[wardaddy]

Nope, the Rhodesians made their beds, and now it looks like everybody in south-central Africa will have to lie in them.

Well, they are taking your ancestral kin with them....is that ok...cause it's a black thing? Do you hold whites to a higher standard? If so then why?

[wardaddy]

Many of the Boers have been in the Transvaal for longer than Europeans have been here in America.

[wardaddy]

Don't fret GB....don't you know that all is ok in the end as long as those oppressive white folks are replaced by even more oppressive and brutal black folks who can then excuse their savage behavior on the oppressive white folks who acquiesced to them in the first place. Hell...it's a veritable win-win for black despots and race hustlers the world over...works damn good in this country too.

White guilt(our biggest weakness in my view) has no bottom...not yet anyhow. Just look at how wishy washy we are at G-d forbid "profiling" moose-limbs.

I'm sorry for your country. It's gone...we all (the West) gave it away for you....good intentions of course mind you....I'm sure that makes you feel better..(sarcasm)

Bump to your Sealous Scouts...some of the best fighting boys from my tribe who've ever walked the planet!

[ArcLight]

It's idle to speculate on what would have happened if the whites hadn't shown up. My point is that they came enslaving and pillaging, and I can't feel too upset about the fact that they were eventually overthrown. This despite the fact that the aftermath of their well-deserved overthrow has proven to be so appalling.

[Spandau]

"Next time, the white folks can stay off land that doesn't belong to 'em."

Agreed, as long as non-whites will do the same.

"Hey, my ancestors were kidnapped!"

Full apology, reparations, and unconditional right of return are in order.

[glockmeister40]

It's so typical for american blacks to blame others for their countless failures. So I guess it's alright for black africans to do the same. Africa had slavery long before the whites got there. African tribal "governments" were made up of despots enslaving their own people. Africa is an abject cesspool of despots, aids, starvation and murder. It would have been this way if white people were there or not. The white people who settled there were the last hope of a dying continent.

[ArcLight]

Too late Goldenboy. You should have held that election a few years earlier, before Jimmy Carter could get in and really screw things up!

[Torie]

My take is that Zimbabwe is reverting to the SubSaharan mean as if the colonialists had never been there. Only Kenya has avoided that fate to some extent. Elsewhere it is largely a disaster. Blaming the colonialists is silly, but in any event, as the years pass, at some point, one must begin looking in the mirror.

[dennisw]

Next time, the white folks can stay off land that doesn't belong to 'em. Zimbabwe's a tragedy all right, but that doesn't excuse the racist imperialism that has tormented Africa.

Empty words. African nations were better off under European colonialism than under today's Black rule. South Africa is worse off now that apartheid is gone. Black rulers have shown themselves to be highly adept at ripping off their own people. At treating the national treasury as a personal piggy bank

[ArcLight]

Er...who said anything about blaming white people? Mugabe is black Zimbabwe's problem, no doubt about it. They wanted democracy, and they've got it--along with the consequences, which include the possibility of electing a stone thug, with a Hitler mustache and a mindset to match.

That said, the fact is that whites have rampaged through Africa leaving ruin and chaos in their train. Many of the continent's problems are indisputably traceable to the consequences of the 19th century "scramble for Africa." To point this out is hardly the same as engaging in foolish "blame whitey-ism."

[Torie]

Many of the continent's problems are indisputably traceable to the consequences of the 19th century "scramble for Africa."

How is that exactly? What problems is Subsaharan Africa coping with at this juncture that one can blame on the colonialists? Why isn't India similarly situated, or even Bangladesh of all places?

[ArcLight]

Oh, I think the India-Pakistan problem is partly the result of the British imperial adventure there. Still, you have a legitimate point, one which Africans seem unwilling to face. Lots of other regions suffered from imperialism--and benefitted too. Even Marx recognized that imperialism often conveyed great benefits to the colonized. But Africa has now had its freedom for nearly half a century and has done little more than decay. That surely can't be blamed entirely on the white colonizers, even if they do bear some responsibility--which they do.

But it's far past the time of blaming the evil white man. That's the disgusting policy of Mugabe, after all, and all he's achieved is the maintenance of his power, at the price of an impending famine that could kill Zimbabweans by the thousand. That's what "blame whiteyism" gets you, and the Zimbabwean experience should serve as a salutary warning to black people in the rest of Africa, and in the USA.

[EverOnward]

Would appreciate you listing other problems throughout the world you think whites are responsible for and why. Facts, please.

[EverOnward]

What was done to Blacks in the Belgian Congo was a stain on European civilization.

Would you mind expanding on the above statement? Thanks

[wardaddy]

My point is that they came enslaving and pillaging,

Arc, I would not have expected 16th-19th century man anywhere in the world to come bearing gifts and singing "diversity is our strength" mantras, would you? Shaka Zulu hardly exercised polite behavior in his conquests across Southern Africa as I recall. Again it appears to me that you hold whites to a higher standard. Enslaving has not been unique to Africa or whites. Pillaging seems a bit harsh. Mussolini in Ethiopia perhaps.

History is strewn with the pattern of the weak being overtaken by the stronger inter-continental or intra-continental-wise. Africa was and is no exception and I doubt much could have been done to prevent that.

Unlike here in America today where we are allowing the 2nd and 3rd worlds to overtake us and while we could do plenty...we do nothing.

I don't fault you for racial chauvinism...it has a strong pull for everyone contrary to the kumbaya's wishes to the contrary.

I disagree with you but my perspective is quite different from yours. I know from some of your other postings for you to be a decent fellow and I don't feel comfortable pissing on your boots any further. I commend you for "digging in" and answering your detractors.

Regards.

[ArcLight]

I don't think we're disagreeing as much as you think we are. Absolutely, every group of humans with the strength to do so has from time to time gone around enslaving and pillaging its weaker neighbors. I've never regarded whites as any worse than anybody else in this respect. It's just that the Euros were so much better at it than the others, for reasons that the historians, philosophers, geographers and such continue to argue about. There's no doubt, for example, that the 16th century Chinese had the technology to colonize the planet, had they chosen to do so. That they didn't is the only reason we're not speaking Chinese now.

I'm simply making the point that whites did indeed go rampaging about Africa, doing things that have had dramatically negative consequences, like enslaving millions of the inhabitants and setting up artificial countries with no relationship between geographical and cultural boundaries. They also imported idiot ideas like socialism. That's killed heaven knows how many black people!

[EverOnward]

Re post 37

You are right. We hear none of what you posted. We only hear about racist white people, especially British racist white people and that they're the cause of all of Africans' problems. Black Africans, it seems, are innocent and victms only of white racist doings.

[EverOnward]

white Rhodesian government deprived millions of blacks of their rights

and what rights are millions of blacks enjoying now that the Rhodesian government is no longer?

[Destro]

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. by Adam Hochschild (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
King Leopold of Belgium, writes historian Adam Hochschild in this grim history, did not much care for his native land or his subjects, all of which he dismissed as "small country, small people." Even so, he searched the globe to find a colony for Belgium, frantic that the scramble of other European powers for overseas dominions in Africa and Asia would leave nothing for himself or his people. When he eventually found a suitable location in what would become the Belgian Congo, later known as Zaire and now simply as Congo, Leopold set about establishing a rule of terror that would culminate in the deaths of 4 to 8 million indigenous people, "a death toll," Hochschild writes, "of Holocaust dimensions." Those who survived went to work mining ore or harvesting rubber, yielding a fortune for the Belgian king, who salted away billions of dollars in hidden bank accounts throughout the world. Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light. --Gregory McNamee

The Economist, Sept. 11, 1999
"To an already long list of tyrants which includes Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Idi Amin, a late addition is required. 'Late' only because King Leopold II of Belgium (1835-1909) should always have been there. As 'owner' of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908 he was responsible for what Joseph Conrad once called 'the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.' It is indeed a ghastly story of greed, lies and murder. And Adam Hochschild retells it well. 'King Leopold's Ghost' last week beat several excellent books to win the Lionel Gelber prize. . . . now the world's most important award for non-fiction. . . . Around the turn of this century in the depths of the Congo the bonds of humanity were unbound and the trappings of civilisation cast aside, releasing something diabolical which exists within us all. Mr. Hochschild conveys this particularly well." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.