"Forgive the typos. That was written in passion and in haste!" I understand the passion, my friend.
I was in Lagos on Bar Beach during the coup of Yakabu Gowon when the dissidents were tied to stakes and shot - not once, but several times to please the bloodthirsty crowd who had dressed in their finest and waited several hours for the event.
I was in Lagos when a curfew was in force at 8:00 P.M., and anyone caught outside after that time was shot.
I saw the bodies of the street people tossed into trucks in the mornings to be taken to the bay off Ikoyi Island for the sharks to eat.
I've stepped over people lying on the sidewalks dying of cholera and come back an hour later to see them dead with no one noticing their passing.
I've been propositioned by an eight year old girl to give me oral sex in exchange for enough kobos for a chunk of bread.
To give her money was to guarantee her death by the scores of bigger kids waiting to take it away.
I've witnessed the squalor and filth in Nairobi, Kenya, whose main source of income is tourism.
I've witnessed the graft and corruption in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where the local government had stored tons of grain donated by the US to feed the poor.
The grain was sold to an English entrepreneur who resold it back to the local government who then resold it to the people - all in a successful effort to cover their tracks.
I've seen the people in the bush beating back the jungle to plant their yams in every conceivable spot to have some hope that they could escape starvation.
I've seen the hatred of tribe against tribe when nothing would satisfy them but complete genocide.
And some American blacks want reparations??!
They should be on their knees every day thanking God that their ancestors were delivered into slavery!
Indeed they should. And they should realise that the "compassion" of liberalism has done immense harm to Africa with its botched, well-intentioned quick-fix solutions.
How many dictators has the West propped up by throwing money at them? Why are we so slow to condemn the hideous crimes of black leaders against their own people? Africa would be in far better shape if we reacted to all evil regimes like we did to apartheid South Africa. Instead Chirac insists on flouting a travel ban on the ZANU-PF leadership so he can make a few headlines by shaking Mugabe's hand.
Of course in many places the World Bank and IMF are setting tough but necessary economic recovery programs in exchange for aid. But because it took them so long to get round to that way of thinking it has made it tens times tougher for the ordinary people of the continent.
Liberal compassion benefited the ruling cadres, allowing them to buy mansions in the south of France, and betrayed 95 percent of the black African population. It was complicit in condemning them to penury, although the ultimate responsibility must rest with the leaders themselves. At the moment we are in a situation where the few things which do go right on this continent are because of the vision of brave African leaders willing to stand up to evil western neo-imperialists. And all the things that do go wrong -- yup, it's us evil Westerners again.
What were you doing in Africa? Excellent post. One of the things that disturbs me most about this continent is the appetite of the ordinary person for blood. Either watching executions (Bar Beach, Monrovia beach, Kigali stadium) or participating in them. Mob justice, another thing to blame on the West.
I have seen this happen many times but one occasion particularly sticks in my mind. A ten year old street boy in Nairobi stole a bulb from a street lamp and was caught by the mob. A wealthy businessman came past in a Saville row suit. He put his briefcase down and jumped on the child's head till his brain oozed onto the pavement. This man was hardly a member of the oppressed masses, filled with seething resentment against the injustices of society because he was one of those profiting, and profiting handsomely, from those same iniquities.