Yesterday I passed by the Zimbabwean embassy in the Strand, London, where there was a small group of protestors, black and white, who asked me to sign their petition, which I did. I struck up a conversation with the elderly white (non-Zimbabwean) lady who was at the front of the stall, regarding the death of the last white Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Smith, last week. During our brief conversation, a white woman with a southern African accent - I think she was South African rather than Rhodesian/Zimbabwean - began extolling the virtues of Rhodesia under Ian Smith, in which, she said, the white people ran schools for their black servants and all sorts of other great things happened.
This is not the first time I've heard white (and even not quite white) people from that part of the world saying that Apartheid was better than Black rule. There seems to be an assumption that native people are vastly less civilised than "we" are and that they are really better off being ruled by beneficent whites. I've even heard it said that "black people can't farm", by people who've never planted more than a few garden flowers in their lives.
Will white people ever get over their colonial sense of superiority? The descent of Zimbabwe into "barbarism" is appalling and is not much under dispute, but the 20th century has many examples of white countries being offered democracy and going down the path of totalitarianism instead, with consequences every bit as appalling (the Holocaust and the man-made Ukrainian famine being the most notorious examples) as what has happened in Zimbabwe. What has happened in Zimbabwe, as to a lesser extent in South Africa, is a revolutionary and liberation movement thinking it has a divine right to rule after the revolution is finished, and the people going along with it.
In case nobody has noticed, there are other places in Africa where democracy has been established and has actually persisted since the post-colonial dictatorships fell - Senegal and Malawi are two recent examples. Democracy even in the white west, as opposed to the rule of a landowning elite, is actually a quite recent development. Given the behaviour of the South African Apartheid regime in its domination of the Black majority, and when it was challenged, I do not believe that white people have much to teach southern Africans about civilised behaviour.
In many cases, didn't colonial single-product economies facilitate the rise of kleptocrats after independence?
I think Nafeez Ahmed's (The Cutting Edge) neo-Leninist conceptualisation of the relationship between colonialism and contemporary imperialism seriously problematizes any claims to Western superiority. See: http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2007/11/hidden-holocaust-our-civilizational.html
Zimbabwe peobably wasn't as bad for most blacks under white rule under Smith compared with under Mugabe. The imposition of white rule was every bit as nurderous and destruvctive of native society, however. That is a completely different question to whether whites would or should have any right to rule even if there rule was less cruel.
Have to agree with George Carty.
Another sad thing is that administrative frameworks implemented by colonial authorities to exploit and suppress the "natives" still exist to this day.
Posts such as that of 'PC' (Provincial Commissioner), 'DC' (District Commissioner), 'DO'( District Officer) complete with their own Police Force known as the Adminstration Police (in Kenya, at least) exist purely to make sure any grassroots civic institutions, democratic grassroots processes, organised protests etc never happen.
These structures were originally put in place for the benefit of Lord Delamere and others like him(am guessing).
Right now,nobody needs these structures anymore but they exist to serve as a private army for whoever is in power -if Kibaki wanted to emulate Mugabe, all he has to do is issue orders to these shadowy soldiers.
They even still wear colonial uniform! -looking like characters in the film 'Zulu'.
White rule in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) was imposed (by Cecil Rhodes and others) in such a clear and bigoted manner, and with such atrocities (perhaps not carried out by Smith himself, but you must be aware of the mercenaries and links to the South African regime, with uranium and other links to the Israelis and their support South African nuclear program, and via much of the above to the Thatchers)... all, indeed, a charming bunch.
Talking about how benevolent white rule is (or was) in comparison to the dictatorships that follow is often intended to defend the weak moral response to the crimes of the former (by focusing on their 'virtues' to their supporters) while focusing upon the ills of the following regimes, forgetting that the reason that the people of Zimbabwe (including the leader of the opposition movement, the MDC) overwhelmingly supported Mugabe and thought he was beneficial for the country, and yearned for liberation from foreign rule.
May I ask whether any of those who agonise over the wonders of yester-year benefited in any way from the material profits torn from Africa and colonialism? And whether all the current cries over oppression are really sincere, since it doesn't really seem to bother Britain (BAE) how weapons and torture devices are employed by regimes like Egypt, Saudi and the UAE against their own populaces, or indeed it didn't matter until only a decade ago how apartheid was an appalling crime against humanity...
until you actually feel that every human life is worth what yours is, take life only in self-defense, and consider in the words of the Qur'an that to "kill one soul is to slaughter the whole world" - then all cries of human rights just sound like opportunistic agonizing, as much from Britons concerned about Zimbabwe but not about Palestinians or Pakistanis, as from muslims concerned with Gitmo but not with their own regimes or Darfur.
frankly, because of the uk goverment blindly demonising zimbabwe...the logic is that this is again civilised western christian propoganda. so not knowing too much of Zimbabwe, i hope that the natives go through the process of learning self-rule quickly and ward off the terrorist elements and covert destabilizing campaigns employed by the uk goverment in these kind of countries.
"i hope that the natives go through the process of learning self-rule quickly and ward off the terrorist elements and covert destabilizing campaigns employed by the uk goverment in these kind of countries"
So, you think President Mugabe and friends are British agents?
Well die hard racism never ceases to amaze me - and I come from there.
With an election coming up, I thought it might be interesting to poll Zimbo's on how soon they expect to be going home.
http://scotchcart.wordpress.com