“Can Africans make it collectively and individually without enslaving others, without exploiting others? Without enslaving some of their population, like China did, like India is doing?” Kole Omotoso, an author and academic argues!
Here we go again, another African academic talking nonsense. Europe developed by exploiting Africa and since Africa can not exploit Europe or any other nations: Africa has to turn on itself.
“It is also important to remember that those who wage war against oppressors of one type or another insist on first destroying and then, from destruction, building up again. A question that is never asked is whether the new South Africa can be built without destroying the old South Africa,” Omotoso writes. That is music to President Zuma and all the dictator and tyrants across Africa. They are doing Africa a big favour destroying everything and dragging the continent into the dark ages.
What Omotoso conveniently forget is that the “old South Africa”, the racist apartheid SA died and was buried the day President Nelson Mandela took office. What Zuma is destroying now is the solid foundations for a free and democratic SA that were laid by Mandela.
Africans did not seek independence because it was “better for Africans to rule themselves badly than for them to be ruled well by foreigners”. That is nonsense; I do not care whether Kwame Nkrumah ever said that; it is still nonsense. You have just said yourself that Europe developed by exploiting Africa – how does that constitute being “ruled well by foreigners”?
Kwame Nkrumah “counselled the oppressed to seek first the political kingdom, after which all other things would be added unto them” you write. What you should have then said is that Nkrumah failed to deliver on the very first promise as did all the other African leaders who have followed. The political kingdom of one-man-one vote, the right to a life with dignity and the right to life itself never came. And there lays the heart of Africa’s post independence road to self destruction and back to the dark ages.
I have to reject your central argument that we have to destroy or enslave someone else first in order to prosper. There are many other countries that have done very well thank you without ever having to exploit others; notably the Scandinavian countries and in more recent times the four-tigers nations for the far east.
Kole Omotoso, you should visit Zimbabwe. You will meet Professor Jonathan Moyo, Professor Arthur Mutambara, Professor John Makumbe and Robert Gabriel Mugabe – reportedly with no less than seven University Degrees and countless honorary one - amongst many others Zimbabwean intellectuals who talk nonsense endless. As we say in Shona, muromo wavo haumharwe nenhudzi – they talk all the time that not even the most determined housefly can ever lands on their lips! You will be in wonderful company.
@ Chimbido Warvet in the UK on September 11, 2010, 8:16 pm
You say President Obama “has enough of his own domestic problems to be concerned about Zimbabwe and quite frankly it is none of his business”. I am not asking him to in the marines or anything like that. All I am asking is that he should stop patronising Africa. Your problem is in understanding the meaning of that word, patronise – please look it up!
@ Mariko Jones
“President Obama has been working closely with PM Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC. The fact that the later have proved to be a waste of time is hardly the West and President Obama's fault!” My point exactly; I find that to be patronising and counter productive.
The United States of America’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe rubbished the GPA between MDC and Zanu PF as full of holes “one could drive a truck through”. He was not alone in that many others in Zimbabwe and outside said the same thing. So why did President Obama not only work with Tsvangirai but when the later visited him in the White House he praised him to the rafters! This was no different from the treatment gave Mugabe until ten years ago.
The Western nations were tripping over each other in showering Mugabe with praise and honours. The British even had him knighted. This continued to happen even after the Gukurahundi mass murders that help Mugabe establish a de facto one-party state. And, of course, Mugabe has never held free and fair elections. “There are all ruthless tyrants totally incapable of self government, old boy!” The white racists conferring the honours in State House and White Hall must have answered. “You must not judge these savages with the same yard stick you judge Western leaders; use a two inch stick instead!”
I had expected President Obama to come up with “Yes Africa, can have good and competent government!” to paraphrase his “Yes we can!” slogan. It is clear he did not think so. He must have known that GPA was a waste of time and that Tsvangirai was foolish to even believe such a ill thought out agreement would work. President Obama worked with Tsvangirai because he too must have believed Tsvangirai was the “best” Zimbabwe had to offer.
By giving people like Mugabe and now Tsvangirai their unqualified support the West has undermined the few inside and outside Zimbabwe who were seeking meaningful change. There are a few within MDC with a bit of grey stuff between their ears and a clear message from the West that they would not support the stupid GPA would have strengthened the hand of the thinking few in MDC.
The West expected post independent Africa to fail and, in many ways, they paid good money to ensure that happened. A change of American policy towards Africa will cost America nothing but will give Africa hope. With a Blackman in White House, it was the best chance ever for Africa. After two years of the same patronising white supremacist approach every thinking African has good reason to be disappointed and shout it from the hill top too!
999999
Workers of an American AIDS Clinic arrested in Zimbabwe for running a clinic without a health licence.
Was it really necessary to arrest and imprison the Aid Workers? Surely the Police could have told them to close the Clinic until they have the required licence and qualified staff to run the clinic. In a Police State like Zimbabwe, it was clearly necessary.
The regime has presided over the closure of schools and hospitals throughout the country because there were no public funds to pay for these basic services. The country continued buy Mercedes Benz and other luxuries for the ruling elite; but that is a different matter. The little service there is today, is largely funded by donors. The regime continued to hurry and harass the donors and the Zimbabwe public at large just to remind everyone that they are the boss to be feared and worshiped!
@Dread Dread6
What is this? You are defending the Americans or you doing so because I have been critical of American policy?
You talk nonsense as usual that even those you like to defend - Mugabe and his cronies, Fungayi etc - they must dread having you on their corner. In Shona tradition, you will be asked to go and skin the goat - enda endo viya mbudzi. You talk such nonsense no one wants to hear from!
99999
Zimbabwe’s black empowerment law is being tested in the fight for the control of the Meikles Kingdom group pitting blacks against whites.
Zimbabwe has a massive problem of unemployment largely because of Mugabe’s failed black empowerment policy that saw 90% of the country’s productive farms taken over by the country’s ruling elite. 80% of our people are out of work forcing many to join the informal sector – kukiya kiya!
If anyone has money to spare and the ruling elite clearly have - no one else will have the money to buy the 51% shares all white owned businesses are being force to sell – why are they not using the money to start up parallel businesses and thus create jobs for our people. Buying shares in an existing company will only create one or two jobs – the new black owner would want an MD position created for him complete with two or three cushy jobs for his mistress and relatives.
The Zimbabwe economy will never recover as long as Mugabe and his cronies continue to occupy the farms. The same people want to extend their rich into mining and all private businesses by forcing existing and new businesses to go into joint operation. Mugabe and his cronies are holding the nation to ransom. What the country needs is a strong and decisive leadership that rein Mugabe and his thugs and put an end to this madness. Tsvangirai has turned out to be too feeble mentally and political; his policy of appeasement has only encouraged the gang of thieves to be even more arrogant!
This is a race that is going nowhere. No nation can possibly thrive economically in the face of such rampant corruption and criminal waste of human and material resources.
888888
Duduzane Zuma, President Jacob Zuma’s son, promises to give away to the poor 70% of the shares of a dodgy business deal after COSATU threatened strike action against SA’s increasing corrupt Black Economic Empowerment drive that has largely benefited the rich. The Trade Union movement had named the deal involving Duduzane as one such dodgy deal.
To paraphrase the great Economist, Adam Smith, “It is not through the generosity of the corrupt that the nation’s poor will be saved from a life of abject poverty but through the prudent management of the country’s human and material resources and avoiding the waste of corruption.”
If SA is serious about stamping out corruption then there must be a high powered investigation into this deal to establish how this was allowed to happen. R 9 billion is a lot of money, of which Dudu own R1 billion, only to give it away!
55555
@Sterling
Well, it is hard to believe that the dictator is supposed to be on a travel ban to America! What I find hard to believe is that ever since the targeted sanctions were first imposed in 2001 the State Department has failed to find ways to fine tune them so that they would hurt Mugabe and his cronies. Mugabe has imposed his own real tough “sanctions” against the ordinary people in Zimbabwe which have resulted in the economic collapse and increased political repression. And sometimes, as happened with the arrest of American citizens, foreigners are caught up in the net.
2 comments:
@Fungayi
Last time I was in Parerenyatwa Hospital - the biggest hospital in Zimbabwe, for those not familiar with Zimbabwe - I was surprised to hear this young lady tell me she was the matron. She must have just finished her nursing course, she was that young. She told me trainee nurses are working without supervision because there is a chronic shortage of staff. Many of the qualified medical staff, like many other professionals, left Zimbabwe; they could not work for the pathetic wages the country paid them any more.
We can not even ask: who is running the clinics in the backwaters in Gokwe and Binga? Many of these clinics closed down a long time ago. So why is the regime insisting of qualified staff to run Donor funded Clinics when its own government clinics are not even functioning? This is regime that loves throwing its weight around, period!
@Sterling Furgson
It is within the West’s economic muscles to rein Mugabe by expanding the number of his cronies on the sanctions list beyond the current 200 and making sure the sanctions hurt. The West can also cut aid to the African regimes that continue to prop him. I really can not understand why they are not doing it. What the West do not seem to understand is the protracted soft sanctions have not helped the ordinary people who are at the cutting edge of the dictator’s economic melt-down and political repression.
Yes some blacks sold their fellow man and woman for trinkets two centuries ago. Sadly there are still in business. Fungayi and all the Mugabe cronies will have close relatives who have died unnecessarily because the health system has collapsed but they simply refuse to see that ruthless dictatorship as the root cause because Mugabe gave them some of the loot! Indeed many of them have blood on the hands - they have been killing to keep Mugabe in power!
@Nkosi Chaka and George Spitts
There are three things which you do not seem to understand:
1) Zimbabwe’s health system collapsed completed, there are no drugs in the clinic and hospitals and most medical staff have left. It is the donor community that has propped up the system. The patients who were relying on this Church clinic had no alternative.
2) If the Aid workers were supposed to have a licence then the Police only had to tell them so without all this hoo-ha.
3) Zimbabwe is a Police State and it is not the first time the regime has thrown its weight around regardless of the tragic suffering this may cause. Being arrested and thrown in jail is something that no one can take lightly and the patients who were relying on the Church Clinic for the medication have no medicine right now!
Life expectancy in Zimbabwe has dropped from 65 years in 1980 when Mugabe took office to a misery 34 years in 2004 – it is a lot worse now! That is the reality every Zimbabwean has had to face. No my friends, it is you who have been blinded by loyalty to a ruthless dictator and gang of thugs because they were the heroes of the struggle to end colonial rule. Mugabe understood freedom and human dignity before independence but he has changed; in his drive for absolute power he has shown contempt for human life itself! You have the luxury of pretending not to see Mugabe for the monster he is; except for his cronies no Zimbabwean can afford to do the same.
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