JavaScriptDonkey wrote:Here's a curve ball for you to metaphysically meditate on. I was chatting to an ex-Pat from Nigeria who spends most of her time her but regularly flies back.
Her opinion is that many things in her country were better when it was run from London. There was less corruption, less crime, less racism(*) and more reliable justice than now. Her view is that the basic culture of her part of Africa is based solely on the idea of grab what you can.
I did point out that there were some downsides to the later Empire but her view was that such lack of 'freedom' only ever affected the power hungry anyway; for most people, most of the time, simple things like low taxes, good roads, honest Policemen and a reliable State were more important than democratic freedom.
A survey for a Jamaican newspaper suggests most islanders believe the country would have been better off if it had remained a British colony.
[snip]
Jamaica is due to celebrate 50 years of independence next year.
It is not clear what main reasons the respondents had for their choices.
But the island has struggled with high levels of poverty and crime.
The Gleaner has interpreted the results as suggesting "six in every 10 Jamaicans...long for 'the good old days'".
Exactly the same attitude from a woman interviewed as part of a recent BBC documentary about a railway in Zambia (could have been Angola). She basically said that since the whites left, the entire country disappeared down a hole of endemic corruption. And you have to wonder what a survey of Zimbabweans would come up with.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
I can do a straw poll. I know a couple of Zambians, a couple of Zimbabweans, a (black) South African and a Nigerian. Also a Romanian or two (for the communist/capitalist angle).
2 As and a B wrote:I can do a straw poll. I know a couple of Zambians, a couple of Zimbabweans, a (black) South African and a Nigerian. Also a Romanian or two (for the communist/capitalist angle).
What's the question?
Was life under white colonial rule better or worse than it is now under self-rule by blacks? Romania is in a different category, I think.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
2 As and a B wrote:So a different, but analogous, question for the Romanian(s) then.
There is no valid analogy. There is a repeating pattern throughout the world wherever there was once a white colony which is now self-ruled by blacks. The pattern is very high levels of crime, corruption and poverty. This is why many people in those countries think life was better under colonial rule. Romania just doesn't come into the same category, partly because it is white and partly because the "colonist" in this case was Communist Russia, not one of the traditional western colonial powers. I haven't heard of many people from ex-communist eastern Europe longing for the good old days of Soviet occupation, not least because life in those countries has improved since then.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
2 As and a B wrote:Er. Was life under communism better or worse than it is now under capitalism?
The answer(s) might surprise you.
OK, I agree that it is an interesting question in its own right. I don't doubt that some people miss the certainties of the Soviet era. They are two different situations, though, for reasons which ought to be pretty obvious. Even if you discount the race issue for a moment, there is still a very different historic and cultural situation in the case of eastern europe compared to Africa.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
UndercoverElephant wrote:
Exactly the same attitude from a woman interviewed as part of a recent BBC documentary about a railway in Zambia (could have been Angola). She basically said that since the whites left, the entire country disappeared down a hole of endemic corruption.
My brother was a senior agricultural advisor to the Zambian government a good while ago. He tells me that in his time there, after decolonization and while Kenneth Kaunda was in power, the government ran things pretty well and there was a year on year improvement in many of the useful measures of well being such as standards of health care and education.
Things have got much worse in more recent times but there have been a complex interaction of factors. It's commonly acknowledged that KK was a great leader but his passing is by no means the whole story. External influences, principally the global commodity prices (Zambia produces a lot of copper) controlled by western-based cartels, and the dumping by USA and the EU of food surpluses grown with government subsidy, undermining the Zambian agricultural economy, have made any governance of Zambia difficult. It is, of course, much easier to blame local corruption (and there's no doubt there's plenty of that) than to start investigating western corporate greed and the 'legal' corruption that is endemic in the western-dominated world economic order.
biffvernon wrote:
Things have got much worse in more recent times but there have been a complex interaction of factors. It's commonly acknowledged that KK was a great leader but his passing is by no means the whole story. External influences, principally the global commodity prices (Zambia produces a lot of copper) controlled by western-based cartels, and the dumping by USA and the EU of food surpluses grown with government subsidy, undermining the Zambian agricultural economy, have made any governance of Zambia difficult. It is, of course, much easier to blame local corruption (and there's no doubt there's plenty of that) than to start investigating western corporate greed and the 'legal' corruption that is endemic in the western-dominated world economic order.
Indeed. Anyone who thinks the Third World's problems are entirely of its own making would do well to read and
Of course the primitive African political culture presented fertile ground for corruption, but the loans, with their rapacious terms, that the West gave to many countries had one aim and one aim only - to siphon off the profits from those countries' resources into Western bank accounts.
I agree with UE about many things, but I think he adheres rather too rigidly to the cock-up theory of history.
Last edited by Ludwig on 11 Jul 2011, 18:35, edited 3 times in total.
"We're just waiting, looking skyward as the days go down / Someone promised there'd be answers if we stayed around."
UndercoverElephant wrote:
Exactly the same attitude from a woman interviewed as part of a recent BBC documentary about a railway in Zambia (could have been Angola). She basically said that since the whites left, the entire country disappeared down a hole of endemic corruption.
My brother was a senior agricultural advisor to the Zambian government a good while ago. He tells me that in his time there, after decolonization and while Kenneth Kaunda was in power, the government ran things pretty well and there was a year on year improvement in many of the useful measures of well being such as standards of health care and education.
Things have got much worse in more recent times but there have been a complex interaction of factors. It's commonly acknowledged that KK was a great leader but his passing is by no means the whole story. External influences, principally the global commodity prices (Zambia produces a lot of copper) controlled by western-based cartels, and the dumping by USA and the EU of food surpluses grown with government subsidy, undermining the Zambian agricultural economy, have made any governance of Zambia difficult. It is, of course, much easier to blame local corruption (and there's no doubt there's plenty of that) than to start investigating western corporate greed and the 'legal' corruption that is endemic in the western-dominated world economic order.
Always somebody-else's fault, isn't it? The fact that Africa is disappearing down the toilet faster than everywhere else is entirely the responsibility of non-Africans. How can these people be expected to take responsibility for their own destiny when people like you keep blaming anybody but the Africans themselves for the problems which are endemic in Africa?
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
UndercoverElephant wrote:
Always somebody-else's fault, isn't it? The fact that Africa is disappearing down the toilet faster than everywhere else is entirely the responsibility of non-Africans. How can these people be expected to take responsibility for their own destiny when people like you keep blaming anybody but the Africans themselves for the problems which are endemic in Africa?
Breathtakingly contemptible... on so many levels. I think I need to step away from this board for a while.
UndercoverElephant wrote:The fact that Africa is disappearing down the toilet faster than everywhere else...
I'm not even sure of that 'fact'. Just look at the data for Sub-Saharan countries, metrics like infant morality, life expectancy, literacy etc... Over the last 30 years these areas you say are "disappearing down the toilet" have improved at a faster rate than anywhere and anywhen in the world. It took Europe a century to achieve the same improvements many African countries have achieved in a few decades.
That it's not smooth is hardly surprising when in just a few generations a society gone from nomadic hunter/gather to working in a factory or even a call centre!
Cleaning up African corruption can only be done by African countries themselves. What we can do is stop our companies from making the situation 10 times.worse. This is realistic and doable. If big western multi-nationals would take a more ethical approach, either through law or consumer pressure, then the supply of corruption would maybe dry up a little. We can only do so much by treating the problem from an african perspective, birth-control and charity, so we must start sorting this side of the equation out. Or do nothing. Either way is better than aid.
This seems reasonable to me but not by many of the posters here?
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