Is Africa the Problem? or the Problem Africans?

[Type R]

Originally Posted by t.D.A.

I'd also add my observation that White people who control society tend to remain steadfast in the pursuit of the outcome - e.g. to maintain dominant in the world oil market- whereas we as Africans tend to get locked into discussing details that when all is said and done don't really matter e.g. discussing who should be in power as opposed to what policies we want out of our leaders.

That is very true.

Example: The West was determined that the liberalization, or at least reduction of trade quotas, in the international agricultural market would not take place. They fought and fought, and the W.T.O. talks collapsed, with no hope in sight now. African/Caribbean leaders went back home, and it seems the issue is dead (in their favour). Many Kenyan delegates were just joy-riders.

[mo-uk]

Root causes and challenges of the great lakes conflicts
speech by his excellency paul kagame,
president of the republic of rwanda
to the faculty members and students
of the university of dar es salaam dar es salaam


may 14 th , 2005
the vice chancellor;
deans of faculties;
faculty members;
students;
ladies and gentlemen;
i am delighted to be here today and to have a chance to speak at this historic institution. The university of dar es salaam has always been an outstanding centre for education, where men and women have nurtured ideas, concretised their thoughts, stretched their talents, and realised their dreams. This university has always grappled with the challenges of development. It has produced thinkers and activists who have gone on to play crucial roles in the liberation of their countries, and of africa in general. I would like to point out that three of our cabinet ministers are alumni of this university. We should all be proud of this legacy, and of the fact that this institution has refused to be a mere ivory tower, producing unworkable ideas, totally unrelated to the lives of the majority of our people. I have been asked to talk to you about the root causes and challenges of the great lakes conflicts. This is a wide and complex topic. I will, therefore, share with you a few points that i think are fundamental, and then invite questions, comments, and dialogue at the end. First of all, let me say that conflict is not exclusively an african phenomenon, neither is it endemic in the great lakes region. Although recent years have seen many regions of africa involved in war and external or internal conflict, we should not accept the prevailing view that africa is conflict-centric. The conflicts our region has experienced are a manifestation of serious structural weaknesses. Their underlying causes have internal as well as external components. The interactions between the legacy of our colonial history and the post-independence models of governance, as well as the international political, social, and global economic milieu in which this interaction occurs, is the appropriate context in which to place the recurrent conflicts. The structural causes of the conflicts include bad governance, the politics of exclusion, and widespread state sponsored or state condoned human rights violations. I would, however, like to dwell on some of the more fundamental causes that are hardly ever subjected to analysis by so-called experts on the region. In my view, the legacy of european colonialism has had a more devastating impact than we had imagined and we are only now beginning to see the ramifications of this legacy. First , the artificial boundaries created by our former colonial masters had the effect of bringing together many different people within nations that were not prepared for the cultural and ethnic diversity. The leaders of these communities, instead of building on this diversity, sought to exploit it for their own ends. In the process they ruptured social cohesion, and dislocated social entities and culturally homogeneous groups of people. In other words, post-colonial ethnic conflicts in the great lakes region, and in many parts of africa, have their roots in the colonial policy of separating language, religious and ethnic communities. Where ethnic communities, scientifically speaking, did not exist, as in rwanda, they created them. Where language served as a uniting factor, they discouraged its use, and substituted it with their own. We ended up becoming anglophone, francophone, and others, depending on the whims of the colonial master. So now, curiously, african leaders can talk to decision makers in paris, london, or washington more easily, than they can to some of their communities. Or they even prefer to see themselves as closer to, or representatives, of those decision makers from abroad. By contrast, if we look at the history of ancient african civilisations, we find that ancient african kingdoms and empires, were strong entities, with a well knit social fabric, sharing a strong sense of patriotism and a strong desire for nation building and social development. Even those kingdoms which were involved in expansionist wars, which some anthropologists have used to try and explain the current conflicts, never indulged in ethnic massacres, let alone genocide. This is not to say that they were without inherent weaknesses, which colonialists were able to exploit. Second , we could cite the infamous divide-and-rule techniques that were used to weaken and subjugate the african people, and helped to implement policies that weakened indigenous power networks and institutions. Third, was the emphasis on the exploitation of raw materials for export, and the generation of wealth for the colonial power, at the expense of a genuine desire to develop the basic infrastructure and to provide basic social services to the region. The concentration on a few major cash crops and extraction of minerals left the countries in the region vulnerable to fluctuations in the prices of these commodities on the world market. There was a deliberate effort to produce for markets of the metropolis while ignoring national and regional markets. As a result, our internal markets were destroyed; and our creative spirit was subdued. Thus, in rwanda for example, while we were forced to grow and produce coffee for export, at the expense of subsistence crops that our populations needed then, the country saw the first waves of migrants fleeing recurrent episodes of famine. It is no wonder we have witnessed the increase of poverty levels among the ordinary people, and a heavy debt burden which has crippled the region's ability to develop. And as you know, poverty, ignorance, and the feeling of marginalisation are some of the factors that fuel conflict in africa. In rwanda, we know that economic distress was exploited by extremists to recruit the masses into the ideology of genocide, who turned out to be willing converts because they had nothing to lose. Another factor that, in my view, contributed to the conflicts in the region that we know today, is the weak states and the self-serving leaders who appeared on the scene as colonialists departed. These leaders did not have any interest in the socio-economic development of their countries, but rather supported the colonial type of policies and, in effect, continued the siphoning of the region's wealth. With few exceptions, the colonialists left behind african cadres who widened and deepened the social cleavages entrenched by brutal colonial policies. The point i am making is that, although we need to take responsibility for the sorry state of affairs in the region and the rest of africa, and although we must address the urgent and critical issues of corruption, mismanaged leadership and governance in our region, we must also seek to reverse the legacy left by external actors, including the ideology of genocide, and the dire socio-economic performance during the last decades of the post-colonial era. A critical review of the post-colonial era would show:

--- failed institutions that undermined nation building;
--- rulers who were conveyor belts of the worst policies initiated during the colonial era;
--- massive poverty and a heavy debt burden;
--- over-reliance on external charity as a strategy for long-term survival;
--- exclusion of the majority of the population from participation in governance and formulation of policies, including in areas that critically affect them; and
--- the lack of political will on the part of the international community to take a hard look at the anatomy of conflicts-in-the-making. Distinguished ladies and gentlemen; you will agree with me that this lethal cocktail of factors created the conditions for the region's crises.

[t.D.A.]

Originally Posted by Type R

That is very true.

Example: The West was determined that the liberalization, or at least reduction of trade quotas, in the international agricultural market would not take place. They fought and fought, and the W.T.O. talks collapsed, with no hope in sight now. African/Caribbean leaders went back home, and it seems the issue is dead (in their favour). Many Kenyan delegates were just joy-riders.

Couldn't agree more. The way that countries like the US have used the international organizations they created - WTO, IMF, UN etc-to maintain dominance of the global market place-from winning over Jamaican milk and fruit to trampling all over Benin and Bangladesh cotton-is absolutely amazing. They may not have direct colonial presence over a lot of our economies but they certainly make sure they stay in control.

[Atabong]

Originally Posted by valhalla

finally, i was avoiding to go here: your comment regarding to chinese and arabs as invaders is unwarranted! i hope when you read and reply next time that you are indeed in africa and not invading another persons country. Unless there is some reason your very own standards do not apply to you-and that, as you well know, would be absurd.

picking nuts while crucial issues such as these are discused is unfair. The problems we face in sub saharan africa today are a resurfacing of ill intentioned colonial legacies. Read here ands you‘d realize that the historical roots of darfur’s, just like kenya’s and the rest of the sub saharan states problems are not different at all.

Note that the name sudan means ‘country of the blacks’; our situation as a whole, is getting worse because of identity problem. Sub sahara african leaders just don’t want to even think of ceding ties with the west because they’ll no longer have the kind of grip they have come to have on their people.

Regarding the power plays and hand pointing by washington and beijin concerning the mass massacre of black africans in darfur and what is fast becoming known as the genocide olympics, the chinese embassy in washington released a statement which said

as the darfur issue is not an internal affair of china, nor was it caused by china, to link the two together is utterly unreasonable, irresponsible and unfair

global times who published this statement also said:

even chinese citizens who complain about losing homes to olympics games projects opposed western pressure

those who don’t belong here and are hindering the black man’s efforts to pull out of the chains of his past are invaders.

They come like thieves in the night to plant the bad seeds among the good, to subdue, loot and ransack.

[Type R]

[Excuse me as I sidetrack from the main discussion.]

Originally Posted by Atabong

Regarding the power plays and hand pointing by washington and beijin concerning the mass massacre of black africans in darfur and what is fast becoming known as the genocide olympics, the chinese embassy in washington released a statement ...

I feel that this boycott idea should be pursued more strongly worldwide. China is legitimizing a bunch of killers. It's like trading with Foday Sankoh or Charles Taylor!!!

Today on TV, I saw Chinese soldiers shooting Tibetans who were fleeing to Nepal in the snowy mountains.

[Type R]

Originally Posted by TikTok

... to be honest with you I still cannot understand how Moddy Awori whose constituency experiences the budalangi floods could be so contented with a vice presidency that has no benefit to his people. I would have expected him to push through forcefully policy and legislation to once and for all put an end to floods. It did not happen. We are seeing Kalonzo repeating the same and five years down the line his people will wonder what was the vice presidency for.

I missed the above point at the time.

That kind of negligent behaviour by Moody Awori is mind-boggling. When you hang around tough-talking mzungus who know such details about Kenya and they tell you in public the same things TikTok has said above, you end up speechless.

I think we need to use the Awori/Budalangi case as a specific case study for the ineffectiveness and uselessness of Africans when faced with grand social problems.

[Realistik Dreamer]

Originally Posted by Smartass

Africa is doing poorly according to whom?
If you read history you may free yourself of the feeling of despair and frustration at the fate of Africa
Civilisations rise and fall, when the Chinese and Japanese had well planned cities with roads and sewage disposal methods the Europeans lived in cramped buildings and emptied their chamber pots on to the streets, it was not genius or planning that led them to change but calamity in the from of the plague and cholera.
When Pythagoras was seeking mathematical knowledge in Timbuktu the worlds centre of learning (in the Mali kingdom) the Europeans were fighting tribal wars When the pharaohs who were black (check out the pictures on Prof, Manu Ampim site) he Europeans were hunter gatherers.
My point is Kingdoms rise and wane. Who would have thought the sun would ever set on the British Empire or the USSR would crumble or the dollar would weaken or that there would be another currency to counter the dollar?
Do not despair its just our place in time in the vicissitudes of life we have had our highs these are our lows

Realistik Dreamer:
Smartass, I like your observations on the pendulums of history!I suspect (relatively)few African Kenyans really take the time to study ancient civilizations and how the greeks learnt all they came to know from BLACK African teachers!

I also think that for Africa to rise again from the ashes that Atabong describes clearly, we must be deliberate about it.

It will not just happen.

One can study for example Yew Kwan Lee's book on the Singapore Story.

It basically states that if you want to build a great economy, you must give your all to science& technology.

Not prayers to white jesus and allah and waiting for them to swoop down in inter galactic fury and majesty-to save our poor selves from poverty and disease.

In short, we Africans need a huge dose of our past glory-our real story not his-story of the whitey & arab mates.

A glorious factual story of BLACK world pre-eminence in civilizations. Kmt-6000 continous years!!!

Compare this to USA-a nation built on black African blood, sweat and lives (just about 300 years and it is already totering, watch the financial collapses......)

Let us demand that our governments in Africa increase more science & technical funding research/college, let us beg, borrow & steal technology.

Let us tell preachers ranting about foreign doctrines to look elsewhere for employment.

Let us live our lives based on Truth, justice & Righteousness like classical KMT practiced millenia before the bible was written up.

These will solve our problems as swiftly and majestically.

Like the Pyramids our great ancestors built millenia before the caucasians had even thought of venturing beyond the neighbourhoods of their caves in freezing europe.

[Realistik Dreamer]

[QUOTE=mo-uk;627168]Root causes and challenges of the great lakes conflicts
speech by his excellency paul kagame,
president of the republic of rwanda
to the faculty members and students
of the university of dar es salaam dar es salaam


mo_UK. Thanks for posting this. Incidentally Kagame is really into science & tech. Rwanda is a beautiful country and we need to learn what is going on there.

[Realistik Dreamer]

Originally Posted by willpress

Half the people in Africa ate maize meal yesterday.The other half just stared. . .that is the current status quo in Africa as we speak.Before we solve this problem i think many of the sober points raised here will remain just that.Forget tribalism,corruption and globalisation challenges. . .Poverty and food security are the main issues to deal with.
Unfortunately or not the very core of African history and institutions revolve around food.The number of proverbs and wise sayings centered on food is overwhelming and enough to spark major hunger pangs.So it may be argued that the wise men of Africa must have been well-fed. . .
With this in his genes the African is always hellbent on breadwinning.And that includes accepting bribes,running for public office,breaking into someones house,riggin elections or helping to push a stranded car to the garage.Its all a rush for the extra morsel. . .
I knw this is too simple a hypothesis but it does not hurt to try.Lets get a way of bringing food to the table of each and every African just as it was in the olden days where even outcasts had their right to nutrition.And then maybe, just maybe we will have wiser brighter faced Africans ready to deal with other problems.

Realistik Dreamer: Willpress you are so right! Economists/technocrat-like planners will lecture us on long-run (when we is dead & buried!) development plans.

They will advice us to free up our land (the source of all wealth on mental application) for things like flowers, vanilla, tobacco-even coffee tea.

For whose comfort you wonder?

Surely, the African ancients were true economists! Their take was that nobody should suffer from unavoidable hunger, leave alone starvation was a given.

Now these chicago boys and their adam smith followers and even the liberal keynesian pretenders have convinced africans that they are inherently unable to think up paradigms.

Food first! Surely this is common sense!

It is no wonder that Bob Marley chanted "........building church & universities, decieving the people continually.Graduating thieves & murderers......"

Shame on these learned clowns who should know better! If you look at a white man in the eye and tell him to quit lying (World bank prescriptions) he will back off.

Our "technocrats" so mesmerized on their jaunts to London & New York have chosen the easy way out. Intellectual laziness.

And bribes.

[Atabong]

I have written a bit on this subject before on the thread titled ‘atheist’. I will like to re-iterate my stand on this issue: that language imbue in us the ability to think and to express our thoughts.

It is a fact that without Language, we will not be human! It goes without saying that if we are not told/taught what wards/concepts stand for, we will never know, thus care-less and maybe live our lives in peace and tranquility. But since we have to know, we must re-examine the true meaning of these terminologies and concepts. Most of us are driven helter-skelter by nothing but little conceptualizations of a broad, loving, ever present and ever changing reality (ancient African spirituality) Reality is not problematic but us.


For example take some one who has never learned English; assume that an English speaker came to him and kept shouting GOD! GOG! GOD! JESUS! JESUS! JESUS! OR MUHAMAD! MUHAMAD! What will this non English speaker make of such a person? He/she will think this person is a complete idiot! Now you force me to learn your language, you tell me of God, of Christianity, of Islam and so on and at the same time expect me to take your ward for it.; not only that, adore and worship these wards!


Most of us live in fear, Frightened by big and ignoramus wards. Can you imagine that? NO, yet it’s as true as it sounds. We are nothing but hypnotized by wards: God, Christian, Muslim, pagan, theist, atheist and so on. What these wards mean exactly in our own mother tongues will remain always but a wild guess whereas that is the Language in which we are fully capable of thinking and expressing.

For true change to come to Africa we must re-examine not only what others have done to us but what we are doing to ourselves. To say that this one meant this in Greek, that one meant that in Latin and so on is not going to do us any good. We must think and express philosophy, the sciences, and the arts in our first Language first. The power to use language ought not to zilch down to mere guess work that is why we are poor, that is why we have wars, sickness and disease. We work ourselves to death trying to express in languages we’ll never be articulate in.

I do not ask anyone to accept or even take seriously what I’m saying but if you must read then you ought to look for truth/falsehood in my statements. I urge you to go through my postings with an open heart and without bias or fear, for we are all here not only to talk but to listen and to learn.

Before Dambisa Moyo proposed an alternative take on the so called western aid to Africa it was already/has always been an open secret. What Dambisa is proposing in her book ‘Dead Aid’ is a remedy not a cure; we have been singing this song even on Mashada. The true problem is that we are hypnotized by Western terminologies and cannot express in our first language, simple. Our inability to think and express in our first Language is costing us lives and dwarfing progress.

Without Language, thought or verbal communication would be impossible. Our ancestors would never have written literature that shaped (still shapes) civilizations, would not have constructed monumental buildings that baffle today’s ‘scientists’. Yet the western so called philosophers claim that our ancestors had no notion of knowledge or concepts. I listened to a teacher who claims that Ancient Africans did everything; that they built pyramids, they constructed all kinds of colorful buildings but they had no notion of concepts! Imagine that

I challenge anyone to tell me a people who lost their Language and survived. In fact everywhere we look we see people who survive because of their Language. English for example has come up as the most influential language of our times because of the persistent development, broad vocabulary and use.

The question of what is wrong with sub Saharan Africa goes far beyond ‘Dead aid’ or fiscal measurements or value of the dollar and it would be quite amateurish to consider it so. What we are doing is, with our bare muscles we try to push a car with a dead engine ^^^^up winding mountain paths.

Within/without the sphere of western terminology I am entirely invisible.



I trust in the ingenuity of fellow mashasites to propose a way forward.