Africa: cry, the beloved continent
Africa is a beautiful place, they say. The cradle of humankind, mecca for animal lovers, exotic and wild, with spectacular scenery.
Ridden with disease, violence, poverty, and corruption.
There’s no dearth of possible culprits to blame: bad luck, bad climate, bad predators, bad slavery, bad colonialism, bad post-colonial decisions, bad tribalism, bad religion, bad education, bad Soviet influence, bad nurture, bad nature?
Yesterday commenter “RA” offered a link to this article on the subject by Kim du Toit. Entitled “Let Africa Sink,” it makes for exceptionally chilling reading.
Can the situation really be that hopeless? Is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness still just a sinkhole of horror? What I know about Africa is shallow, and it’s all gleaned from book learning, but I do know this: once a country or a region falls apart, it is a million times harder to put it together than to make it work in the first place, and the latter isn’t what you’d call easy, either. And maybe in Africa things haven’t been together for centuries.
A while back I read Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature, about how human violence has been steadily declining during our long history. At first I laughed at the thesis; with the history of the 20th century alone, who could even think such a thing? And yet about a hundred pages into the book I was becoming convinced—if you look at the big picture, which Pinker does.
Here’s a summary of Pinker’s main thesis (which is exhaustively documented in the book), taken from one of the reader comments at Amazon:
Pinker’s sequence of the decline in violence is based on synthesis of a large volume of literature generated by archaeologists, ethnologists, historians, sociologists, political scientists, and psychologists. Pre-state societies, while low in absolute population and absolute number of violent acts, had very high per capita levels of violence. The emergence of states resulted in some decline in violence and the gradual strengthening of the state resulted in a progressive decline in interpersonal violence, even as states became more capable of waging war. This is best documented in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present. Pinker highlights a number of important parallel processes. The “Civilizing Process” described by the great historical sociologist Norbert Elias of the increasing importance of self-control, manners, and social amity from the Renaissance onwards is prominently featured as a key feature in the decline of violence. Similarly, Pinker emphasizes the humanitarianism of the Enlightenment and subsequent reform movements…
But Africa may be some sort of exception (or at least a less dramatic example of violence’s decline), and reading that summary it’s possible to guess at one of the big reasons why, although certainly not the only reason. Many African countries seem to have skipped some of those stages. The African continent is not the only place on earth that happened, of course. But it’s the place where such movements have “taken” the least, and possible answers to the question of “why?” lead us back to that long list of “bads” that I offered towards the beginning of this post.
The entire question is a fascinating although depressing one, and it led me to a couple of hours of reading last night, with the Google query “Why is Africa such a mess?” leading the way. What I discovered was a certain consensus, and although I don’t think it goes deep enough it’s certainly a credible piece of the whole.
The gist of it is that, after colonialism ended, when Africa had a seeming chance to set its own trajectory, its countries rejected liberal democracy and capitalism in favor of strong men and socialism. The strong men exacerbated the corruption, and the socialism led to—well, the bad economies to which socialism tends to lead. Both choices (if you can call them that) almost certainly made things worse in Africa than they would otherwise have been.
Here’s one discussion of these phenomena (which I think is far too simplistic, by the way; the problem with Africa certainly doesn’t have “nothing to do” with this author’s list of things):
What I have done is give you, in a nutshell, why Africa is in a mess today. The reason why is has nothing to do with colonialism. It has nothing to do with the slave trade. It has nothing to do with the African people. It has nothing to do with lack of resources for Africa. The basic reason is that the leadership adopted two defective systems. The first one is a defective economic system in which a great deal of power is concentrated in the hands of the state. Socialism as an economic policy was wrong, totally wrong and alien to Africa. This I condemn very strongly.
The second mistake they made was adopting a defective political system that had no democratic accountability and a passive state system that gave the leader maximum power. The combination of these two, the concentrated economic and political power in the hands of one leader was what led to the ruin of Africa.
Because these leaders, once they had that power in their hands, discovered that they could do literally anything they wanted with their countries. They could throw anybody who opposed them in jail. They took over and gagged the press. They took over and padded the judiciary with their own cronies. They declared themselves President for life. You couldn’t run elections against them.
Another theme that runs through these articles is the idea that conditions on the continent are so very desperate that even those who despise colonialism think Africa might be better off if the system came back:
Things are so bad that many people remember with nostalgia “the good old days” of colonial rule when they could at least afford basic necessities and even freely express their views without fear of being locked up for simply speaking up. Colonial rule was oppressive and exploitative. There is no question about that. And it did not allow Africans to have the kind of freedom they normally would have under democracy. But when a leader like Archbishop Desmond Tutu says he had more freedom of speech under apartheid than other Africans do in independent African countries under the leadership of fellow Africans, as he said in Nairobi, Kenya, in the early nineties; then one gets a pretty good idea of what kind of mess we are in as a people across the continent.
Many older people also remember that during colonial rule, in spite of its curtailed freedom, they were allowed a degree of freedom they don’t enjoy today in most countries even in this era of democratization that was introduced across Africa in the early nineties following the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. Whether we like to admit it or not, it is true that there was a degree of freedom during colonial rule. That is why African nationalist leaders were able to organize and form political parties and campaign for independence right under the nose of our colonial masters. It is the colonial rulers who allowed them to do that, although within prescribed limits to stifle nationalist aspirations. But they did allow our leaders to continue mobilizing the masses for the nationalist cause. Yet, after we won independence, many of our leaders went on to deny us this very basic human right, freedom of expression, they claimed to cherish so much.
Country after country is rich in resources but is bled dry by its leaders, and aid from the West mostly flows to them, too:
One of the strange paradoxes about Africa is that some of the richest countries on the continent are also among the poorest. Therefore most of the poverty in those countries cannot be attributed to lack of natural resources but to bad leadership, wrong economic policies, rampant corruption, and sheer waste and mismanagement including well-meaning incomptence. And no case better illustrates the utter waste of such potential than that of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, under Mobutu Sese Seko, one of the most brutal, and most corrupt, dictators on the entire continent.
…The idea of recolonizing Africa is highly inflammatory because it implies that Africans, especially black Africans, are nothing but a bunch of idiots incapable of managing their own affairs…
…[R]ecolonization schemes are either racist or paternalistic, or both. Few, if any, are altruistic. And they all provoke furious responses, especially being labelled racist…
Looking at Africa today, one can’t help but think of a line from Dante’s Inferno: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!”…
AIDS by itself is bad enough. Throw in rotten dictatorships, Marxism, corruption, iliteracy, racism, genocide, tribal and national wars, and the term “utter hopelessness” is inadequate to describe Black Africa’s plight. For years we’ve counseled investors to avoid sub-Saharan Africa, saying it was headed down a corrupt one-way road to collapse. It’s arrived. Black Africa teeters on the edge of a yawning abyss, and at the bottom lies total anarchy and chaos. Many say it can’t get much worse. We say: it can and it will.
The above excerpts are from a book entitled Africa is in a Mess by Godfrey Mwakikagile, a Tanzanian scholar of African studies, whom I assume is a black African (from his name and biography, although I can’t find a photo). The above passages were apparently written in the first few years of the 21st century. In the time that has passed since then, has Africa already fallen into that abyss? Or it still only poised on its edge?
[NOTE: The title of this post is a riff on the classic book Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. I’ve written about the book before, in this comment thread, and in my opinion it’s a poetic and tragic masterpiece.
Here’s a very sobering article written in 1998 by Paton’s widow, explaining why she is leaving South Africa.]
If I remember correctly Dinesh D’Sousa pointed this out in his first movie, America 2016. He spoke of the reason India and some other countries have good government and legal systems is because they watched the British and used their systems. I believe he discussed this also with the brother of Obama in that movie.
Economic historian Douglass North says that prosperity depends on a culture having the institutions (broadly defined) such that the return on wealth-creation is better than the return on wealth-redistribution. There haven’t been many societies that have managed that. Africa has no history of it. The institutions – laws, markets, customs, education, et cetera – that were introduced through colonialism didn’t take root in Africa. There are a few reasons for that.
One is that Africa was colonized late. Earlier colonizations were about discovery, exploitation, and evangelization. Africa’s was primarily about exploitation. Europe wasn’t there as long, and they didn’t wipe out most of the native population as they’d sometimes done before (on purpose or by accident). African nations didn’t win its independence through organization and patriotism; they were just sort of allowed to wander away. The old European institutions were discredited.
An African state today doesn’t have the tradition and institutions necessary to allow the people to expect economic gain by investing effort and wealth.
‘Bad’ culture; African cultures do not embrace education, a strong work ethic, personal responsibility and accountability nor delayed gratification. Socioeconomic success is impossible without them.
‘Leaders’ cannot rule without followers.
Good ‘luck’ is when preparation meets opportunity. Bad luck is when a lack of preparation meets a challenge. Lacking the resources to cope, due to a lack of preparation, crisis results.
Regarding Africa’s colonization. In general, Africans rejected European influences. Japan on the other hand, adopted those European and American influences that it perceived had value. As did India.
IIRC, John Derbyshire had similiarly discouraging words regarding Africa. I remember reading Mr du Toit’s post shortly after he posted it, and wondering if he did have a point. Nothing that we had done in the last umpty-ump years had done any good, would never do any good, and perhaps the best thing would be to just walk away and let the Africans sink or swim.
Israel is surrounded by enemies. Its internal dynamics are certainly influenced by the risks it faces but they are not defined by them. Israel is not rich in resources the way Russia is, but I have no doubt the standard of living is much higher in Israel than in Russia. The same goes for Japan. Very limited resources. Tensions with neighbors. Very high standard of living.
So what ails Africa? Its culture. Who controls the culture? They do.
Throughput for food aid in sub-Saharan Africa: 5%. Five percent.
The 95%? is kept by the various kleptocrats.
The Second Wave of Colonizing Africa = the communist/socialist takeover, also instigated from the outside, after the end of old-style colonialism. (See Cuba, the USSR, and China’s activities for the last several decades, and the West’s guilty abandonment of the field.)
I haven’t read all the books Neo referenced, but I did live in Africa for several years during my childhood. The part of Africa I lived in was Rwanda next to Lake Kivu.
Personally, I found Kim du Toit’s article offensive. He talks about how life in Africa is cheap and how he himself has hardened his heart and has come to regard [African] life as cheap. I doubt Mr. Toit really devalues all life to the same extent. Undoubtedly he thinks his own life is priceless.
In my experience, Africans probably to have a substantially lower IQ than Europeans as measured by IQ tests, probably due to a combination of genetics and harsh environment. However, the difference in IQ is limited to certain types of cognitive tasks only. In the use of language, the ability to socialize, and the ability to feel both love and hate, Africans are fully human. Their feelings are undoubtedly just as keenly felt as those of any European. Africans value their own lives just as much as anyone else does.
It is impossible to separate the tragedy of Africa from the Muslim jihad against Africa which was documented by David Livingstone the Christian explorer and missionary. David Livingstone encouraged European colonization of Africa because he thought that colonization was the only way to stop the Muslim invaders and to halt the slave trade. Eventually through Livingstone’s influence the British did colonize Eastern Africa. Livingstone’s hopes for the abolition of the slave trade in Africa were realized when his friend Dr. John Kirk who used his power as a colonial ruler to finally end the slave trade.
Was English colonization of East Africa exploitative? Perhaps, but they gave the Africans much more that they took. They ended the slave trade, gave the Africans the rule of law, established an education system, studied tropical medicine and tried to instill public health measures which saved African lives, and built infrastructure for the Africans.
Whether Africans were better off under colonialism or as free nations depends on the European country doing the colonizing and on the free African nation. King Leopold of Belgium was an evil man who took over the entire Belgium Congo and ruled it with violence with little or no regard for the welfare of the Africans. Congo was a basket case when the Belgians left. The English were generally fond of the Africans and did a good job of improving life for the average African and left the Africans with decent infrastructure and a decent educational system. So colonialism was a mixed bag.
Not all African countries have been abject failures. Botswana has had successful democratic elections since its independence in 1966. It has a GDP of about $16,400 per person per year as of 2013. Not bad! Nambia their neighbor is recovering from a civil war but is also headed in the right direction.
Until America or the West fixes our own problems and traitors, what makes anyone think they can fix Africa?
Ridiculous.
There is no question about that. And it did not allow Africans to have the kind of freedom they normally would have under democracy.
These clowns seem to be under the impression that Canada, American US, and Australia weren’t colonies and thus had democratic freedom.
Democracy is a poison. Africa was just not strong enough to tolerate it for long and didn’t build up much of a resistance before bad things happened.
Instead people should ask themselves why the Japanese can safely and orderly distribute emergency supplies via top down and bottom up hierarchies in their various natural disasters, when new Orleans and Africa is all F uped.
Get the answer to that, and maybe people will become qualified to judge African issues.
There’s also the indigenous tribal multiculturalism of the African countries that creates a witches brew all its own. A friend of ours is Nigerian and speaks three of the almost two hundred native languages. English is the language of the upper classes but many of the rest speak only one of the many mutually unintelligable languages. We once hosted an event for about thirty Nigerian graduate students. Even among that group most could only speak to each other in English not in their native tongue.
They could throw anybody who opposed them in jail. They took over and gagged the press. They took over and padded the judiciary with their own cronies. They declared themselves President for life. You couldn’t run elections against them.
Is this supposed to be current day Africa or future day North America?
Paul, the Chinese solved that issue by using military might to conquer most of the provinces and introduce a unified writing system. The spoken system was still the local dialect, but people merely had to write and read the same things.
I submit that political correctness presents the biggest obstacle to understanding why Africa is failing.
“Here’s a very sobering article written in 1998 by Paton’s widow, explaining why she is leaving South Africa.”
The link for the letter returned a 404 error.
A search turned up this copy for those interested.
Fly the beloved country by Anne Paton I am leaving South Africa. I have lived here for 35 years, and I shall leave with anguish. My home and my friends are here, but I am terrified. I know I shall get into trouble for saying so, because I am the widow of Alan Paton. Fifty years ago, he wrote a book called Cry, The Beloved Country. He was an unknown South African schoolmaster and it was his first book, but it became a world bestseller overnight. It was eventually translated into more than 20 languages and became a set book in schools all over the world. It has sold more than 15m copies and still sells today at the rate of 100,000 copies a year. Two films have been made of it. As a result of the startling success of this book, my husband became famous for his impassioned speeches and writings championing the cause of the black man in South Africa and bringing to the notice of the world their suffering under apartheid. He campaigned for Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and he worked all his life for black majority rule. He believed that at last the black man would come into his own. He was incredibly hopeful about the new South Africa that would follow the end of apartheid, but he died in 1988, aged 85. I was deeply upset that he wasn’t alive for Mandela’s release and the birth of this new South Africa. I was so sorry he did not witness the euphoria and love at the time of the election in 1994. But I am glad he is not alive now. He would have been so distressed to see what has happened to his beloved country. I LOVE this country with a passion; but I cannot live here any more. I can no longer live slung about with panic buttons, bunches of keys, special gear locks. I am tired of driving with my car windows closed and the doors locked, of being afraid of stopping at red lights, because this is where one can be attacked. I am tired of being constantly on the alert, having that sudden frisson of fear at the sight of a shadow by the gate, of a group of youths approaching – although nine times out of 10 they are innocent of harmful intent. Such is the suspicion that dogs us all. I am tired of the endless litany of disaster that is repeated every time friends gather together. “Do you know what has happened to so-and-so?” is invariably the opening gambit. Among my friends and the friends of my friends, I know of nine people who have been murdered in the past four years. One old friend, a very
elderly lady, was raped and murdered by someone who broke into her home for no reason at all; another was shot at the garage. We have a saying, “Don’t sack the gardener”, because of the belief that it is so often an inside job – the gardener who comes back and does you in. All this may sound like paranoia, but not without reason. I have been hijacked, mugged and terrorised. A few years ago my car was taken from me at my local post office at gunpoint. I was forced across into the passenger seat as they intended to take me, too. I sat there frozen. But just as one man jumped into the back and the other fumbled with the starter I opened the passenger door and ran away. To this day I do not know how I did this. But I got away, still clutching my handbag. That was when I lost my first car. On May 1 this year, a public holiday, I was mugged in my home at three in the afternoon. I used to live in a community of big houses, with big grounds, in beautiful rural countryside. It’s still beautiful and green, but the big houses have been knocked down and people have moved into fenced and gated complexes like the one I now live in. Mine is in the suburbs of Durban, but they’re springing up all over South Africa. That afternoon I came home and omitted to close the security door. I was careless in those days. I never shut my front door. I went upstairs to lie down. After a while I thought I heard a noise, perhaps a bird or something. Without a qualm I got up and went out onto the landing. Outside there was a man. I screamed and immediately two other men appeared. I was seized round the throat and almost throttled. I could feel myself losing consciousness. My mouth was bound with Sellotape (my own, which they had taken from my desk) and I was threatened with my own clasp knife (Girl Guide issue from long ago) and told: “If you make a sound you die.” My hands were tied tightly behind my back with string and I was thrown into the guest room and the door was shut. They took all the electronic equipment they could find except the computer. They also, of course, took the car – this is when I lost my second car. The complex was full of people, all watching a rugby match on the television. But my house is fairly private and the thieves were able to load up my car and drive away without any problem. It was made easy for them because the keys were hanging tidily by the front door. A few weeks later my new car (courtesy of the insurance company) was comfortably in my locked and fenced carport when I was woken by its alarm in the early hours of the morning. The thieves had removed the radio, having cut through the padlocks in order to bypass the electric control on the gates. Radio thieving is quite sophisticated here. There
are organised gangs that “do” areas, taking as many as they can in one night. A few weeks ago came the last straw, shortly before my 71st birthday. Once again I returned home in the middle of the afternoon and walked into my sitting room. Outside the window there were two men in the act of breaking in. I retreated to the hall and pressed my panic alarm. This time I had shut my front door on entering. I had become more cautious by now. Yet one of the men ran round the house, jumped over my 6ft steel fence and proceeded to try to batter down the front door, shouting to be let in. Meanwhile, his accomplice was busy breaking my sitting room window with a hammer. All this took place while the sirens were shrieking. This was the frightening part – that they kept coming, in broad daylight, while the alarms were going. They were not deterred. They know that there has to be a time lag of a few minutes before help arrives and there is time for a “smash and grab” type of action where they can dash off with the television and video recorder. In fact, the front-door assailant was caught and taken off to the cells. Recently I telephoned to ask the magistrate when I would be called as a witness. She told me she had let him off for lack of evidence. She said that banging on my door was not an offence, and how could I prove that his intent was hostile? I have been careless in the past – a fence topped with razor wire and electric gates give one a feeling of security. At least it did. But I am careless no longer. There is nothing unusual about my housing complex, they are all equally vulnerable. No fence – be it electric or not – no wall, no razor wire, is really a deterrent to the determined intruder. Now my alarm is on all the time and my panic button hung round my neck. While some people say I have been unlucky, others say: “You are lucky not to have been raped or murdered.” What kind of a society is this where one is considered “lucky” not to have been raped or murdered – yet? I know there is a moral ambiguity here. In the past whites felt in charge, no matter what their politics were. Whether they supported apartheid or not, they were top dogs. The Africans were contained. Now we are simply a small minority no longer in charge, and there is an atavistic fear among us. The contrast between the present and the years Alan and I spent together could not be greater. I was born in London when Britain ruled the world and jingoism was the
order of the day. When we opened our school atlases, the world was covered with red blobs denoting the Empire on which the sun never set. Right down at the bottom of the map was the small red blob of South Africa. I married a South African who was with the RAF and we came here with our two children in 1963. I first met Alan under very unfortunate circumstances. We actually lived next door to him in a place called Kloof, though we never met socially. He was regarded as a rather dangerous agitator. I was quite unaware of his fame and just thought of him as a nuisance neighbour, whose servants were rowdy at the bottom of his garden and upset mine. One day some birds flew across from his garden and promptly dropped dead in mine. I phoned up this bird poisoner and gave him a piece of my mind. I thought no more about it, but suddenly up my drive there walked a rather disreputable elderly gentleman, wanting to look at the corpses I had by then buried. I gave him another piece of my mind and he tottered home to his ailing wife, muttering about that harridan next door. He was, in fact, a fanatical bird-lover and would no more poison a bird than his friends. Within a year or so, his wife had died and my husband and I were divorced. A mutual friend, deciding that I needed a job and Alan needed a secretary, arranged for us to meet. So I brought order out of chaos, and my initial awe and terror of this great man turned to love. We were married in January 1969. Alan had a unique attribute: you never knew from the tone of his voice whether was talking to black, white, coloured or khaki. He treated everybody alike. Our life together was quite rocky. He was 25 years older than me, with a brilliant mind – a genius really – while I was a simple soul with an inferiority complex engendered by the fact that I had not been to university. Alan never talked down to me or made me feel inadequate, but some of his friends did. Most of his friends did not like me. Before I came on the scene they had free access to him at any time of the day or night, they wanted him to speak at functions, write this and that, lend his influence here and there. They gave no consideration to his advancing years. He could not get on with his writing and his life was not on his own. Some of his friends were quite unscrupulous and would make use of his name and fame for their own ends. I changed all this. Everybody, except for a selected few, had to make appointments to see him. All sorts of ploys were tried to get round the dragon at the door, and I made many enemies, but Alan was delighted at his newly ordered existence. He got back to his
writing and literary life. At the time Alan had no passport. It had been taken away from him at Johannesburg airport on his return from a trip abroad after he had said derogatory things about the government while he was in the United States. At the end of 1971 he wanted to take up an offer of an honorary degree from Harvard and to do research in Spain. He was reluctant to apply for a new passport, however, because he thought that by doing so he was being disloyal to his banned and restricted friends. The government would serve a banning order on anybody it considered dangerous. Banned persons could not attend gatherings of more than three people, were restricted to their own districts, and sometimes to home. Alan’s greatest friend, Peter Brown, one of the leaders of the Liberal party, was banned for 10 years and could not even attend his son’s speech days. Yet it was Peter who persuaded Alan to apply for a passport. He was given a restricted passport for one year. This opened a new life to us. We travelled the world, usually starting off in the United States at some university, where he would work immensely hard for a few days lecturing. Then we would set off on holiday. The American universities are extremely generous and would pay our fares back and forth with a little extra as well and this would enable us to indulge our passion for journeys. Travelling with Alan was like travelling with a child. I would pack the suitcases, load the car, drive all day, arrive at our destination, book us in, unpack the suitcases and do the washing, while he would sit down happily with his cigarette and whisky. But we loved travelling; it was the one interest that we really had in common. Because of the difference in our ages, intellects, education and background, we had divergent views on many things, and we had very few friends in common. In fact, my friends were terrified of him. When we were at home I managed his life 24 hours a day as secretary, housekeeper, cook, handyman, hostess, protector, accountant. The telephone shrilled constantly for him. Newspapers wanting comments on items of news or for him to write articles. Holidays were a blissful relaxation away from the telephone and the mail. This was prodigious. Alan had a huge amount of fan mail, mainly from America, and much of it from students who were “doing” Cry, The Beloved Country and wanted answers to the most complicated questions. Every letter he answered. People used to ask us what we talked about. Well, two of the things we
did not talk about were religion and politics. Alan was a deeply religious man and insisted on going to church every Sunday. I was not a faithful worshipper like him and found it difficult to accept this routine, and it was rather a bone of contention between us. As far as politics were concerned I was not quite on the same wavelength as Alan, and so by tacit agreement we never really discussed it. But we talked about everything else under the sun, and played endless word games, and quoted poetry, and made up silly stories about our friends. A character in Cry, The Beloved Country said: “I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving they will find we are turned to hating.” And so it has come to pass. There is now more racial tension in this country than I have ever known. But it is not just about black-on-white crime. It is about general lawlessness. The black people are suffering more than the whites. They do not have access to powerful private security firms, and there are no police stations near them in the townships and rural areas. The majority of hijackings, rapes and murders are perpetrated on them. They cannot run away like the whites, who are streaming out of this country in their thousands. President Mandela has referred to us who leave as “cowards” and says the country can do without us. So be it. But it takes a great deal of courage to uproot and start again. We are leaving because crime is rampaging through the land. There are no jobs for these gangs of marauding youths, and doubtless they have minimum education. The evils that beset this country now are blamed on the legacy of apartheid. One of the worst legacies of that time is the result of the Bantu Education Act, which deliberately created an inferior quality of education for black people. Illiteracy and joblessness make for crime. This apartheid education act denied blacks the chance to build a middle class, which would have helped the post-apartheid state to prosper and stop crime. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that there is virtually no deterrent. The criminals know that the chances of being caught are negligible, and if they do get caught they will be free again almost at once. So what is the answer? The government needs to get its priorities right. We need a powerful, well-trained and well-equipped police force. And this means good pay and assurances of compensation for families. This means money. The right kind of person has to be attracted to life in the police, where he can do a job he can be proud of. The police force today is hopelessly undermanned, undertrained and undermotivated. We need hundreds and thousands more policemen. We need a visible police presence, with men walking around on the beat. Now the only visible form of protection is provided by private security guards, employed at great
expense by shops, banks and, of course, private citizens. We have had a recent incident where a shopping centre was broken into in the afternoon. A call to the police station elicited the reply: “We have no transport.” “Just walk then,” said the caller, as the police station is about a two-minute sprint from the shop in question. “We have no transport,” came the reply again. Nobody went. In these circumstances how can crime not be a resounding success? Of course, there was a lot of crime in the wicked old days but nothing like this. It was a police state. If people were wandering around, the police would drive up and say, “Where is your pass?” and lock them up. Now you can do anything and go anywhere. Here is another quote from my husband’s book: “Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.” What has changed in half a century? This quote is as apt now as it was then. A lot of people who were convinced that everything would be all right are disillusioned, although they don’t want to admit it. The government has many excellent schemes for improving the lot of the black man, who has been disadvantaged for so long. A great deal of money is spent in this direction. However, nothing can succeed while people live in such fear. Every available rand (and there is much money available) must be diverted and poured into the creation of a viable police force. We are reduced to spending more and more money on doing our own policing and protecting ourselves. Those of us who lose their nerve, or have too many fears for the future, emigrate if we can. I do not want to be a target for the rest of my life. I want to live in peace, where I do not constantly have to be minding my back, where I can sleep at night. In the middle of last week, six or seven miles from my home, an old couple were taken out and murdered in the garden. The wife had only one leg and was in a wheelchair. Yet they were stabbed and strangled – for very little money. They were the second old couple to be killed last week. The next day a chap was shot nearby in his car, the father of three children. It just goes on and on, all the time. We have become a killing society.
As I prepare to return to England, a young man asked me the other day in all innocence if things were more peaceful there. “You see,” he said, “I know of no other way of life than this. I cannot imagine anything different.” What a tragic statement on the beloved country today. Black & white “Because the white man has power, we too want power,” said Msimangu. “But when a black man gets power, when he gets money, he is a great man if he is not corrupted. I have seen it often. He seeks power and money to put right what is wrong, and when he gets them, why, he enjoys the power and the money. Now he can gratify his lusts, now he can arrange ways to get white man’s liquor … I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it… I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.” ______________________________________________________
From that linked Kim du Toit essay: “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.”
Wow. I really don’t think that’s something “linkable.” Mr. du Toit sounds like a malicious nut-case.
Slave societies generally can’t rule themselves when they kill their masters, if they kill their masters and remain free.
Because the only hierarchy and order they have ever known is Violence, Fear, Resource control, and domination. Cooperation, agreement, bottom up hierarchies, don’t exist. They never existed for them.
So by portraying whites as being slave masters, people in the West ultimately created the very problem they claimed to solve. But it was done because people wanted their own slaves, fighters that would fight because the propaganda ginned them up for it. People become more like their enemies when they fight and win. Thus you should choose your enemies in the world with more care. Especially if the enemies are what they seem to be due to WMD(eception).
Steve –
“So what ails Africa? Its culture. Who controls the culture? They do.”
The value of North’s analysis is that we don’t, as individuals, control the culture. The culture is the product of history more than the actions of anyone today. It’s like the QWERTY keyboard – it may be terribly inefficient but it’s impossible to change. To establish a successful business, one successful business, you need to convince everyone involved that stability and prosperity are worth betting on. In Africa, that means stable politics, currency, personnel, and every other thing. A $20 business that can survive calamity is going to look more appealing than a $20 billion business that demands constancy.
All this brings to mind another discouraging book called The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs by David Pryce-Jones (esp. in light of Steve’s comment about Israel). Arabs too have failed to develop political organizations accountable to large masses of people and national identities that can transcend tribal ones. The result is a constant jockeying for power by men who use any means at their disposal to gain advantage.
About Africa– Thomas Sowell said that among other things Africa was hampered in its development because of a lack of navigable rivers. Tribes were isolated from one another, thus didn’t trade or learn from each other. And yes, a Ugandan who left when Idi Amin was in power told me things were better there when the British were in charge.
In my experience, Africans probably to have a substantially lower IQ than Europeans as measured by IQ tests, probably due to a combination of genetics and harsh environment.
Most of them with higher prospects leave for Europe and America. You never noticed?
That can bring the IQ down in any gene pool, if all their brainpower leaves at once, every generation.
South Africa, from what I have heard, is a place that produces relatively good martial arts training and trainers. Merely because the constant current of violence and survival lends an attribute of pragmatic issue to daily life that isn’t present amongst the slap fighting popular in the States.
I find it impossible to understand how a rational person can be a muslim and the ingrained tribalism of sub Sahara africa. To me, it is as if they live on a different planet and have alien dna. But then, I can not truly comprehend how ‘progressives’ believe that the right dear leader will bring about a utopia where unicorns fart one hundred dollor bills, and all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
Massive economic inequality lies behind much of Africa’s present-day woes. This piece provides data and discusses some things that can be done to combat such inequality. Worth a read.
Ymarsakar Says:
“Most of them with higher prospects leave for Europe and America. You never noticed?”
Good point. When I was in Rwanda as a child few natives from the area were immigrating to the USA or Europe.
I’m posting this for the record, as it appears that these concepts are heresy for Americans.
1) Western politicians didn’t suddenly become more moral and far-seeing than the ancient monarchists.
2) What changed was the critical threshold Smart Fraction of the European populations.
3) This was amplified in the American colonies because by dint of transport self-selection the average IQ of colonist was shifted about one standard deviation to the right of European norms.
4) It is STILL not appreciated that the immigration cohorts left the dummies behind. This is ALWAYS true, has been always true, and will remain always true.
The extreme example is our astronauts. The very first enabled to leave our planet were deliberately selected to be at the extreme apex of athletic, martial, intellectual, and educational achievement.
The EXACT SAME selection can be seen even in ancient fiction: Odysseus did not sail with retards, cripples, or cowards. Rather, each, in their turn, was credited by Homer with bringing positive benefits to the harmony of the crew — and the esteem of Odysseus.
Alexis de Tocqueville’s America was a land of self-actualizing communities. THAT’S what he found so striking. No-one was waiting for any central authorities to organize ANYTHING.
His narrative is a dead give-away that those communities were over-weighted with Smart Fraction personalities.
The larger body of conservative-liberalism in the Jeffersonian-Washingtonian sense wants a minimalist central government so that they can SELF-ACTUALIZE. To await upon higher authority is actually repulsive to such souls.
One can’t help but note that Stalinism and Hitlerism positively shut down self-actualization. Both totalitarians immediately launched state organs to absorb all civilian organizations, with the Boy Scouts pretty much first on the list. [ Any ethos that indoctrinates young boys with self-reliance and preparedness must be subverted — perverted into a leadership cult.]
&&&&
In EVERY society that comes up way short on its Smart Fraction, politics becomes centered on that tiny segment of the population that can ‘play the game.’
THIS is the driving reason why monarchies, despotisms, and royal families/ blood-lines keep popping up in EVERY ancient polity
Ethics, religion, nostrums about economics, local histories — NONE OF THEM MATTER.
The above arguments about the tragedy of the ex-Colonial era aren’t even wrong — they aren’t even close enough to the truth to even make it to wrong. They are off in some other intellectual space that must be constructed for angels. It certainly bears no relation to the exigencies of humanity.
The REAL reason why the ancients — all of them — were so obsessed with royal houses/ blood-lines / established families was because it was the first crude attempt at selecting better intellects for clan/tribe/national leadership.
As we see with Barry, we’re still stuck with that very issue.
The ancients had absolutely no conception of DNA, per se, but they sure understood that brains had a major heredity bias.
They also had utterly impossible technical problems should they try and poll a large number of citizens. This is the sole explanation for the small/ micro-sized nature of ancient democracies.
Instead, the standard drill was that a few, elite, families were permitted to be politically active — and that, after a fashion, they selected the replacement leadership. [ In ALL primitive societies appointments are for life. The process of elevating a new leader was always so fraught with risk that every society wanted their leader to live forever. It’s not for nothing that “Long live the King” is a phrase that has universal provenance. ]
%%%
The REAL reason that Africa — in EVERY case — devolved back to One-Man Rule was because there were not enough Smart Fraction souls to make a republican democracy work.
The reason why the colonial era is looked back upon with some favor is that the Whites ONLY SENT Smart Fraction Whites out to their colonies.
That’s why a mere handful of British subjects — in Malaya — could be so economically productive. They were filling an economic niche that was left vacant for a lack of talent.
This dynamic is also entirely why Fiji is over-run with Indians, why the expatriate Chinese families run Thailand and Indonesia (going on for centuries now — you’d need a playbill to know who’s ‘officially’ Chinese, BTW.) Any parallels to the Ashkenazi Jewry of Europe are dead on, of course.
&&&
There is ONLY ONE COHORT that can make Africa take off and join the rest of the planet: American Blacks.
Like Ashkenazi Jewry, they’re a full standard deviation smarter than the native population.
American Blacks are ALREADY accepted across Africa as the smart Blacks. Where and whenever they conduct business — they are successful. As you might guess, those American Blacks that have gone back to Africa are self-selected to be a full standard deviation smarter than the American norm, if not more.
They all hit town like they’re Sidney Poitier. They’re also RARE, kind of like astronauts, they are. They’re not exactly publicity hounds: you’ll usually track them down by high level (Black) government connections, American big business connections, and being very much in the jet set.
Like American political lobbyists, their ‘economic arrangements’ both pay well — and would prove embarrassing — all-the-way-around. (Can you say: Dash/ Baksheesh/ grease) Yes, yes, American Blacks have a niche in the ‘sales department’ — The ‘K Street’ of Lagos and other points African.
[ If you really want to draw attention to a deal — send in James Bond with pin stripes. Otherwise… ]
&&&
Since African Blacks are not ever going to accept even the best intended advice from Whites, Yellows, Reds, Browns, — even Purples — the practical solution is to use American Blacks as the bearers of ‘better ways.’
Like Lawrence of Arabia: it’s all to the good that they are NOT of any local tribe. Instead, they are deemed to be of the AMERICAN tribe. You don’t get more prestigious than that.
&&&
And then there’s the reality that Whites are being ethnically cleansed out of Africa.
Since they are virtually, to a man, Smart Fraction players, every time a White leaves town it’s everyone else that suffers.
In Zimbabwe this is so pronounced that the natives are begging their White managers to stay on. This is strictly a retail pleading. The national government wants the Whites to leave or die. The wholesale abandonment of productive farms is just something that Mugabe is prepared to live with… the old coot.
&&&&
Forget local culture, local religion, local histories, and the legacy of the former White colonial government. They have absolutely NOTHING to do with the lack of Smart Fraction talent — which is the RATE LIMITING factor in African economic and social development.
You can’t have smart African politics without smart Africans. QED.
American Blacks are by far the largest pool of Smart Fraction talent that can be accepted by Africans.
The Peace Corps has got to stop sending White kids, like my nephew, into Africa. Such expeditions are entirely futile.
It takes two to tango, and Africans will absolutely dismiss White culture, White norms, White instruction, White anythings. The locals have a vote — and it’s a vote to dismiss.
In a larger sense, du Toit was pointing out the consequences that result from an r-selected human population. Blacks co-evolved to survive THEIR environment. Black behaviors that Whites find distressing are the direct result of r-selection.
In an r-selected population, monogamy is NOT the norm. Mortality is so great for African males that it’s far more important to be a member of the clan — than to point to any specific father. Whites just can’t wrap their minds around this reality. Whites also can’t face up to Black birth rates. Africans are hardwired to expect high infant mortality, early maternity, and short lives. If you don’t really expect to live into retirement (retirement is an alien concept in Africa) then why would you ever save for retirement?
These impulses are still in the DNA long after mortality drops through the floor. Hence, Somalia has a TFR that’s in orbit, just like Yemen. Both are jihadi hot beds, ‘natch.
Ann:
A link means I find something interesting and thought-provoking, not that I am in complete agreement with what it says.
mike:
I think the link is fixed now.
Ann…
Nice link.
That author… indeed that entire faction of modern society… hasn’t even made it up to wrong… they are THAT clueless.
BTW, the poverty stricken underclass is — in economic terms — stunningly useless.
They are a legacy of the ancient ways: when humanity waited for the coconut to fall or the snare trap to spring.
They CAN’T self-actualize. They CAN’T produce anything that anyone would want.
But… they are angry.
Wealthy, Smart Fraction, Blacks flee with their monies because they can’t figure out how to invest profitably, either.
Western banking is quite impossible. The general society is innumerate.
Formal education doesn’t ‘stick’ as it has no economic utility — and is quickly forgotten for lack of use.
(When was the last time you used statistics or calculus in your daily life? For Africans, this dynamic kicks in with arithmetic!)
Mother nature washes away roads, railroads, power lines…
She floods just about everything, …
The ground won’t support any major gravity dam.
(Grand Coulee is a ‘gravity’ dam — so named because it relies entirely on its own weight/ gravitation attraction to the center of the Earth to stay in place. This is contrasted with Hoover/ Boulder dam which is anchored into canyon walls. Since it straddles a major massive fault line, Hoover dam must fail catastrophically one fine day. Don’t invest down river!)
( Three Gorges, Itaipu, High Aswan, are all gravity dams.)
It’s of no small significance that the Congo has no world scale gravity dam. It’s watershed is epic. If you were to name one single project that would change (central) Africa, damming the Congo would be it. It’s stumped the experts unto this very day.
Stored foods, assets of any kind, spoil, rust, …
And you can’t defend your turf from piratical boy-armies. (!)
&&&
Instead, the link vaguely points to re-distributionism as an improvement. (The back implications for the First World are too obvious, natch!)
Inequality in Africa exists because those with the money — all of them — can’t find ANY productive use for their capital. Indeed, if it was so obvious, even foreigners would bring in capital investment.
For lack of local talent, the ONLY thing that anyone sees as financially worthy is mineral/ oil extraction.
The Congo basis has no transportation grid. Even the railroad is constantly falling apart — for LACK OF TALENT. It’s not falling apart due to nature.
BTW, the moment anyone is trained to maintain the locomotives and rolling stock — they promptly get hired away — with a HUGE wage bump. THAT’S how talent starved the Congo basin is.
Even a lifetime career at high wages (vs local norms) is not enough to stop other employers from over-trumping!
Yet, the Leftish press hasn’t got a CLUE as to what the problem is.
Natch.
http://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/grand-inga-hydroelectric-project-an-overview-3356
I see that South Africa is finally trying to get a world scale gravity dam built across the Congo.
Their dream dam would appear to be entirely too large, problematic in financial terms, and an ecological nightmare.
It will have to rely entirely upon other people’s money. Even when completed, the locals can’t afford to pay for its output.
It would take immense electro-chemical engineering contracts to cover its nut.
I don’t see it happening in my lifetime, later, perhaps.
The various (artificial) nations of Africa are by and large doomed to be disfunctional. They are riddled with antagonistic tribal friction, lack a common language other than the language of the former colonists, and have a large portion of their populations stuck to the web of superstition. Thus, they suffer. I say let them continue to suffer. There is nothing the west can do to change their ways. Perhaps, once hundreds of millions die from tribal warfare, disease, and starvation they will be left with hardy survivors who will harness Africa’s bountiful resources and build stable societies free of the scrounge of islam and other superstitions.
The widow Paton’s diagnosis is “Illiteracy and joblessness make for crime.”Yeah, sure. Where have we heard that before?
And Africans before colonies lived in a Rousseauvian State of Nature and Grace, right?
The truth can not set you free if the truth is not politically correct.
Blert,
You seem to blithely dismiss what the article I linked to states about the availability of education in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa:
Lots of reasons for such a situation; here are some basic ones:
There is hope for Africa. Botswana has had slow but steady economic progress for many years now. They followed successful Western ideas of free markets, protection of property rights, multi-party politics etc. They will be a model for other African countries in the future. As well as countries outside Africa. Its always darkest before the dawn.
Lots of interesting comments. I don’t agree that the native black people in Africa are inferior or lacking in abilities. Here’s why:
I spent two weeks in Kenya and Tanzania in 1997. I fell in love with the country. It was a an incredible experience to see life in the bush there. Being in the bush is to experience nature to the fullest. All around you the drama of birth, life, the struggle to survive, and death is played out on a daily basis. The drama is played out on a stage, the plains of the African plateau, where all the activity is in view. Unless you are simply unwilling to understand what happens there, you cannot help but be moved by it.
Kenya and Tanzania are on the African plateau and the Great Rift Fault scarps are a big part of the geography as well as the remains of volcanoes – Mt. Kenya, Kilimanjaro, and Nguru. As a result, although Kenya lies on the equator, the climate is not tropical, but more like the high plateau country of Colorado with two seasons — dry and wet. Most of the plains or maras are semi-arid grasslands that support huge numbers of grazing animals. To balance that population of game there are numerous predators — lions, hyenas, leopards, cheetahs, buzzards, etc. In addition, the birds are unbelievable in their variety and uniqueness. The place is a veritable naturalist’s paradise.
The people I met were not dumb nor lazy. Of course, those working in the tourism business are well educated and self-starters. Our two guides, one a Kikuyu from Kenya and the other a Chagga who was a Muslim in Tanzania, were both highly intelligent, well educated, responsible men. They were not only conversant with all the wildlife, history, geology, and geography in the two countries, but were expert auto mechanics as well. Traveling in the bush in a four wheel drive on roads that can only be described as tracks required occasional repairs, which were carried out expertly. We took a day-long walking safari in the Masai Mara with a Masai guide who was not only knowledgeable about the wildlife but could converse with us about current events, politics, and Kenya’s future. I saw incredibly talented people doing woodworking and very industrious people performing back-breaking work in farming. I had discussions with Ibrahim, our guide in Tanzania about Islam and what it meant to him. In other words, I didn’t find the African blacks that we encountered to be stupid, lazy, or criminal. My observation about the tragedy of Africa matched those mentioned in your post. The people are captives of socialism and tyrannical, kleptocratic governments. It is a country with tremendous potential that is being stifled by the failures of their governments.
Until/unless they can reform their governments, any aid only goes to keep people alive and to line the pockets of the kleptocrats. It does little or nothing to help them become self-sufficient.
Whenever people bring up Africa it makes me sad. It is a classic example of the way socialism and “big man” governments can ruin the most promising of places. The same can be said about the Muslim world. They are only slightly better off than Africa because of their oil wealth. The big difference is that the Africans aren’t trying to destroy us because of our religious beliefs. We should help Africa whenever there is a chance to effect governmental reform. Beyond that, let the UN and missionaries do their work. They (the UN and missionaries) won’t change Africa but it makes them feel good and does save some lives.
Some good books about Africa are:
“DARK STAR SAFARI” Paul Theroux. A Peace Corps volunteer goes back to Africa after 25 years.
“PLEASE LET’S NOT GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT” Alexandra Fuller. Life in Zimbabwe when it was Rhodesia.
“WHEN THE CROCDILE EAST THE SUN” Peter Godwin Another memoir of Zimbabwe.
“COCKTAIL HOUR UNDER THE TREE OF FORGETFULNESS” Alexandra Fuller. Life in Zimbabwe after the war and under Mugabe.
Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was the most prosperous of African countries under British rule. It is now one of the least prosperous. It’s a microcosm of what happened to Africa after colonialism ended.
Probably the most important thing anyone could do to help Africa, more important than dams and infrastructure, is an effective vaccine against Malaria. Islam, Marxism, Malaria and sleeping sickness are the major stumbling blocks to African development.
It is important to remember that Africans are the most genetically diverse population in the World. This makes sense if our ancestors originated in Africa and then split into small bands of related individuals to populate the rest of the Earth. With the amount of genetic diversity already in Africa, there is plenty of material to select from to develop a native African :smart fraction’ if the correct political and economic regime is set in place to select for the best and the brightest. The question is how to build a bridge from here to there.
One thing we know for sure, Africa does not need to be molested by Muslims or leftists. Both are like locusts devouring Africa. It is the left which trained so many African leaders in Marxist thought and it is the left that has done everything it could to whip up racial animosity against Europeans and Indians, and it is the left that has taught African leaders to hate capitalism. Because the left considers leaders such as Mugabe “authentic” they encourage this type of totalitarian leaders in Africa.
Incidentally, sending American blacks back to Africa has already been tried – in Liberia. The American blacks did have enough knowledge above the native population to form a ruling elite but Liberia is not one of the top countries in Africa. Also, surprisingly, because Mandela was smart enough to encourage Whites to stay, South Africa despite its serious problems with crime is still growing economically. It is one of only four African economies ranked as an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank along with Botswana, Gabon and Mauritius.
Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was the most prosperous of African countries under British rule. It is now one of the least prosperous.
Jimmy Carter had a hand in that. All those who put him into power, congratulations. You helped destroy a nation and didn’t even know about it. That’s American superpower at work, destroying people you don’t even notice or know about.
As for malaria, the cure was DDT. Which the West stopped because….
neo…
My nephew was sent to the absolute HEART of HIV South Africa.
He really ought to write a book.
His take is that HIV has wiped out the locals as surely as Stalin murdered the Kulaks.
The population figures bandied about are gazzillion miles off: HIV has wiped out essentially the ENTIRE reproductively active adult population.
The grand-parents and great-grand-parents are raising the (HIV infected) survivors. Because African sexual activity starts early and stays often, the reproductively active adult population starts at about 14 years of age, though some girls are impregnated even earlier. (Their lovers would typically be 15 years of age.)
There are essentially no living adults in the age cohort between 17 and 45 years old, so you have a real ‘Lord of the Flies’ cultural situation.
It’s also very much a matriarchy. Menopause and ugliness caused a survival bias towards old hags. The few male survivors were old enough to be impotent — a condition that strikes much earlier in African Blacks than in Western societies. One might think of it as male menopause.
Other than one extremely old fart, everyone who was anyone was an old hag. HIV killed off the patriarchy!
On the whole, there were few visits by outsiders. The entire extended area was considered a cursed land. So many had died that the central government had long ago stopped dropping by — even for a second.
The village go-between was a fulsomely corrupt old hag who was discovered (by my nephew) of looting all of the international aid she possibly could. Having always lived in a money-less ‘economy’ the villagers never had a clue that she was diverting a ‘flood’ of charitable monies. (Everything is relative, by DC standards, her theft would be peanuts.)
He had to blow the whistle — as the monies were critically needed to drill a water well.
[ Somehow I suspect that the true source of the funds was Bill Gates — an easy touch for water well drilling. He has, no doubt, discovered that he has to fly around and make sure the wells get punched. Western aid that is sent unaudited is stolen/ diverted every time, you betcha.]
My nephew gave his ‘Power Point’ presentation on germs — which went over like a lead balloon. His audience was either totally set in their ways (ancients) or too young and dumb to follow the pictures. (malnourished children)
Speaking of which, even meal preparation was problematic for lack of adults. (!) The kids were missing meals all-of-the-time. The entire village would qualify as an orphanage — whose working talent mostly consisted of young teenagers. (13 year old girls)
Mental depression had reached pandemic levels among the adults.
To see a society bereft of (active) adults is pretty strange, at first. It kind of resembles an elementary school whose staff is on the edge of retirement… and the school day never ends.
That’s not to say that there were absolutely no adults around. It’s just that they didn’t want to stick around if they were above ground. The village — if not regarded as down right accursed — certainly was regarded as a ‘dead zone.’
My nephew figures that any true and correct census would show a horrific collapse in population. The elderly looked like they were in sad shape, and then a ‘Lord of the Flies’ society would kick in, big time.
When we think of a pandemic, we can’t truly imagine it going so far as to shut down humanity. For this village, without outside inputs, the kids would’ve simply entered the food chain.
HIV — at least for South Africa — largely echoes the old Star Trek plot: Miri.
Unlike Miri, we are still bereft of a cure.
Ann Says:
September 22nd, 2014 at 7:48 pm
You’ve punched my button:
The single WORST investment in the Third World is educating young girls.
Why?
No other society on this Earth progressed by prioritizing female education. NONE.
In ALL Third World societies the girls are needed exactly where they are: as wives and homemakers.
Until their societies progress, any formal education actually works AGAINST their better interests. It makes them harder to marry. (off) And, it’s a pretty good bet that an over-educated wife is going to be a very unhappy wife. It’s a truism in the First World.
Every girl in the world, ever born, wants to marry UP. She want’s to dedicate her life to a prince who will treasure her, protect her, and provide food and shelter. Such basics are hard to come by in the Third World.
Until the sons are educated, literate, and able to make their way in the world, no society can waste time and resources on daughters. Once the boys are economically effective, THEY will make sure that their wives and daughters are taken care of — by themselves.
An educated boy becomes an educated husband and father. Such a man is in a position to not only educate his son, but to make sure that his daughters are also educated.
This progression has been the universal norm. There has been no society that did not follow this progression.
Western attempts to jump-start female education have resulted in:
1) Countless murders of girls and teachers.
2) A complete halt in all education as both schools and instructors are burnt out.
3) A rise in hard line reactionary fanaticism across all polities. Adult males in every society must regard this campaign as being anti-social — as in anti-THEIR society.
4) The ACTUAL politics taught in all such schoolings run w a a a a y to the left of center. It’s the same tendentious junk protested right here in the USA — just translated into Dari, or some such.
5) Essentially NONE of the material covered has any economic utility. The girls being educated have to immediately go out into a world without periodical literature, without libraries, without books,… In many Third World societies, a woman is in dire trouble even shopping. (alone)
Is it ANY wonder why primary educations confer no positive utility to those girls?
6) In most Third World (highly dysfunctional) societies it’s taboo even have co-ed classes. So educating the girls punches ALL of their fathers buttons straight off. It’s the PERFECT way to start a counter-revolution against any liberal, modernizing, Third World government.
That’s just perfect.
It’s a theme we’ve seen played time and time again across the Muslim Middle East. But why stop there? It’s true across the entire Third World.
No father wants his daughter so over educated that she’s an instant reject for marriage! And in many Third World societies, the young boys HAVE to stay out of school to tend to the family farm/ livestock. Dropping out of school to tend to the farm certainly happened to my forefathers.
My (genius) grand-mother found that she had an almost impossible social problem: she could not be hired — any job — and prospective spouses ran away. She ended up marrying a widower. (!)
She ended up being the ideal housewife and mother. The prejudice against a brainy woman was universal in her day.
If you REALLY want Third World girls to be happy — make it easy for them to be married to happy husbands. That does not take a formal education.
AFTER their society enters the modern era, THEN their daughters will naturally become educated. This is the progression, same as always.
In a world of limited resources and social rigidities, DON’T get side tracked into what you’d want for your daughter. Just think about what would be best for their daughters.
The fact that the progression is going to take an extra generation or two is utterly meaningless in the overall story of mankind.
The key thing is to not blow up liberal republican-democratic government by ripping target societies apart.
The USSR did exactly that in Kabul. (circa 1970s) They emphasized daughter education, too. Look how that’s turned out!
Commenter “RA” is old-timer Richard Aubrey whose name and addy have suddenly become allergenic on several blogs–but not on others. Go figure.
I recall reading not long ago that it wasn’t until the 1950s that the Brit lower classes grew to be as tall as the upper classes. Saw a pic of the Gloucstershire Regiment marching to their POE for Korea. Long shot from front to back Bunch of short guys flanked, every platoon length, by a tall guy, the officers. So even into the twentieth century in Britain, class differences in nutrition made a difference in ultimate growth.
The effect of inadequate pre-and-post natal nutrition on cognitive development is inevitable. The benefit of high school might be what they learn in high school or it might be that the kids who can benefit get there and those who can’t don’t.
Oh, yeah. Heard about a flight from one African airfield to another. One of the passengers went up to look in the cockpit. He told the other passengers that the pilots were white. That was apparently good news, but puzzling, since the pilots were black. Apparently, again, it’s an attitude or a set of characteristics.
Talked to Peace Corps volunteer who said he’d improved health in an Andean village by convincing the locals to rinse their dinnerwear before putting it outside to..dry or something.
Another guy set up an ag cooperative in the Andes someplace. Worked well, the farmers cooperated and prices of grain and inputs stabilized. He left and another American came in to take over the co-op along with the other work. The think kept on keeping on. That second American’s tour ended and he was not replaced. The co-op fell apart because the locals wouldn’t trust other locals, or only Americans. Something like that. They went back to being poorer. That’s called “bad luck” according to Heinlein.
Blert. There’s a story that van Leeuwenhoewhatsits showed a friend the “animalcules” in a drop of water through the microscope, putting the guy off water for the rest of his life. Bet it would, too. Maybe if your nephew started with a real, live ‘scope? Presuming he had it chained to his wrist, I mean. Then he would go to a drop of blood….
mike:
Some people, including Paton, may have had honorable intentions to end apartheid. Unfortunately, the motives of the principal actors were anything but honorable. Their motives were redistributive and retributive change. Not the life, welfare, and pursuit of happiness of the white and black Africans. The international force was motivated by a capture of developed resources. Mandela’s faction was motivated by defeating competing Zulu factions and retribution against native South Africans.
That said, the same international interests attempted to exploit the rhetoric and emotional appeals to defeat Israel, with notably less success. Something has changed. Perhaps its a nuclear-armed Israel. Perhaps people do not support genocidal actions to forcefully end “separation”. Perhaps the outcome of the “progressive” experiment leaves a lot to be desired. Not only is South Africa a prominent “rape capital”, but illegal aliens are murdered and raped by the “integrated” people. Apartheid through murder and rape is unambiguously a worse outcome than “separation”.
Anyway, the original apartheid was instituted to preserve the culture and standards of South Africa. They were threatened by the same change we are observing in America: large-scale immigration, where immigrants, legal and illegal, not only fail to assimilate, but actually pursue internal subversion of the native people.
blert:
I agree with your comment about women’s development in a society. It is naturally limited until there is an effective religious (i.e. moral) philosophy or coercive regime implemented in order to promote or force, respectively, respect of individual dignity. Until then, it is the male’s responsibility (e.g. chivalry) to preserve the dignity of women and children. This is an uncomfortable reality for first-world women and men. Even today, we have standing armies and security forces, so that we may go about our business of economy and family.
You present a surprisingly objective analysis of human development. It’s not often that people are willing to rationally discuss the limitations imposed by the natural order and human egos. So-called “enlightened” people are ironically the most likely to speak in terms of instant or immediate gratification without consequences. While this may be ideal, it is highly impractical, with often brutal consequences, where misaligned development is the least of people’s concerns.
blert:
How do you foresee Chinese immigration and intermarriage affecting the development of Africa? The Chinese have both a resource and social incentive to “colonize” many places throughout Africa. And they have the knowledge and skill to develop the land. Perhaps with localization of their population, they will also have sufficient incentive to moderate extraction and distribution for local development.
I remember reading Kim du Toit’s essay years ago at his old blog. I miss him. His blog was a regular read for me. I hope he’s doing well.
His recommendation of building a wall around Africa is precisely my prescription for dealing with the Muslim world. Let them have their caliphate. Then we surround it with an electrified fence, and kill anyone who tries to get out. Forcibly evict all Muslims from the Western world at bayonet point.
No trade either. They want to live in the 7th century? Have at it. Let them eat sand and drink oil.
A moderate Muslim is one who is moderatly Muslim. That means what, for us, exactly?
Moderate Muslim = Stealthy Muslim.
All Muslims are compelled towards the same end state: the totalitarian subjugation of all humanity — them and us.
The ultimate Islamic state today is KSA. It holds the distinction of having less religious and intellectual freedom than Stalinist Russia or Hitlerist Germany.
Wow. That’s saying something!
Kevin Richburg, an African American journalist who covered Africa during the 90s, talks about some of this in his book Out of America. He also talks about staggering corruption levels among the African political elite, and iIRC has a fair amount of blame for a certain type of donor/political activist who chooses to make excuses for these leaders and/or just throw money at the problem without looking to see if that money’s actually doing any good or getting to where it needs to go.
I think he also says there is a rule of thumb among old Africa hands that if you want to know what place is doing the best, head for the place that was under British rule the longest, but I may be misattributing here.
My sister in law went to Zimbabwe years ago with a group toting a ton of donated glasses. Thing was, they’d do an eye exam and give the local the glasses they had with them with the closest prescription. That was going okay but they couldn’t figure out who to bribe to spring the ton of glasses from the customs guys. Ended up giving everybody a sheet with their ‘scrip and telling them to come back when their countrymen let go of the glasses. I believe it happened eventually, but that meant two trips by foot for some of these folks over a long distance, instead of one.
My complements to all the posters in this thread it has been a very engrossing read. Punctuated by a hearty belly laugh courtesy of RA & the story of scoping out the pilots to see if they were white !!!
Comic relief, it points to our common humanity, a sense only available to God & us !!!
Also I never gave much *thought* to female education & just went along with, *must be a good thing* but I can see when pointed out how fraught with *problems* it turns out to be.
Interestingly back in Euro history educated women were set up in their own *society*, so to speak
a Female Abbey, a nunnery, where modest, useful, education & domestic female skills were utilized.
There was a hierarcy in the nunnery the head being referred to as the Abbess & they operated autonomously except for necessary*faith* matters.
In our own family we had a laugh the other day in a conversation harkening back to prehistoric times.
I happened to mention Africa & commented that it is the *cradle* of humanity “that’s where we all got our start” then we all chuckled THAT we’d like to give a heart slap on the back to our long ago forebearers who had the *smarts* to get out of that place & never look back ! LOL. Sure they traded the *fruited plain* for a tougher life in a
4 season climate with formidable winters, but I have read that the challenges of THAT climate
caused increased brain development that was so pervasive that it became capable of being passed on genetically.
Neo, you covered a lot in that post and the comments have been informative. My sister and her husband have been in Mozambique as missionaries for 4 years now. I was originally highly opposed to their choice to leave their young adult children and head to that country. We invited a priest serving at our church with permission of the Archdiocese of Nigeria to discuss with him, Africa and missions, etc. We have formed a friendship and he blessed our daughter’s marriage (having been married in a civil service in San Fran) and performed Last Rite’s for my MIL. He and another visiting priest (both relatively young men, as priest these days in America are relatively old) from Kenya, who we invited to our home for dinner, on the fly when he brought a message on missions in July of 2013, are 2 of the best priests I have encountered in the last 10 years. They regularly keep in touch with me, requesting prayer and sending benedictions (via text). Last year our youngest (24 years) went to Mozambique to help his uncle work on their home that they built there. His opinion of Africa meshes with some of what is recorded in the comments here. He came away with an opinion of general low intelligence, however there were a handful of people that he felt the highest respect for because of their honesty and work ethic. Really is that any different than what we are experiencing in our own crumbling Republic? We are finding we are now outnumbered by the takers as opposed to producers. Among the academic and political elites, there is adherence to foolish, destructive understandings and policies. I can’t remember the book, but an economist studying poverty came to the understanding that the fundamental premise of a society must be the respect of private property. This fits with the biblical demand that “Thou shalt not steal”. That commandment automatically assumes ownership exists. In Paton’s widow’s unhappy account, theft and murder are what drove her out. In our own country we are seeing this on all kinds of levels, from the confiscatory policies of our city, state and federal government, all the way to the products of our public education system, many amoral individuals, a number of whom are out there robbing, stealing and murdering in our midst.
The only Western education I would provide to women in Africa or Afghanistan are the medieval swordmanship schools, warrior virtues, and the psychological WMDs of the West.
That’s about it. The goal isn’t to teach their girls to obey a different authority than their fathers. The goal is to teach their girls how to kill enemies of their family’s clan. The result would be somewhat different than what people see with “Westernization” these days.
Strength, first, foremost, only. Westerners have given up on the concept of might or right or strength. They lack a spine to do much but meddle and call it Good. Even the virtuous Westerners, the missionaries, can only change the locality minutely. And that’s assuming they aren’t assassinated.
African politicians becoming dictators simply follows in the tradition of tribal chiefs, or strongmen.
In that case, western governance is actually the unnatural state.
A more interesting theory is offered by Nicholas Wade in A Troublesome Inheritance: That Africans share too many behaviorally-modifying genes that promote impatience or violence.
Starting on page 53, he describes the gene MAO-A. People can have 2 to 5 copies of the promoters in their DNA, and the fewer they have, the more violent they are.
In a study with 2,524 African-American subjects, 5% had the two-promoter allele and significantly higher rates of arrest and imprisonment. Caucasians were found to have only a 0.1% rate of the two-promoter allele.
Wade’s central thesis is that social institutions have arisen under the influence of genetic differences, especially for behavioral genes.
If genes like the two-promoter version of MAO-A have been selected for in Africa, thereby selecting for more aggression, then the failure of African cultures to escape from the strongman paradigm takes on new meaning.
Of course, this is highly inflammatory to the current politically correct crowd, many of whom deny that there’s even a genetic basis for race.
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Of course, this is highly inflammatory to the current politically correct crowd, many of whom deny that there’s even a genetic basis for race.
They also deny that DNA separates male and female. Sex operations are natural and a human right, they consider. This is like eugenics, except flipped on the obverse. They thin human tech gives them the power to play God, yet at the same time say environment is being damaged by tech. So a combination of technocrat with luddite, whereas Sanger though tech could wipe clean the Race.