Utterly vapid; devoid of any shread of new insight. Masquerading, unsucessfully I might add, as important, urgent and interesting. Gerald Caplan's earnest failure is his lack of insight (and bloviatory prose), the result of whch deadens even the most stomping vibrations of truth.
Utterly vapid; devoid of any shread of new insight. Masquerading, unsucessfully I might add, as important, urgent and interesting. Gerald Caplan's earnest failure is his lack of insight (and bloviatory prose), the result of whch deadens even the most stomping vibrations of truth.
Personally, the article was fantastic, well written, and thought provoking. With an equal amount of money going in as goes out of Africa it makes one wonder if western charity is the newest form of indirect taxation.
To the first commenter: Did you really just use the word "bloviatory" to describe someone else's verbose writing style?
To the first poster: Perhaps written to enlighten the average Canadian rather than the latest PHD in African studies?
As one who has spent a number of years in Anglophone West, and East and Southern Africa, and guilty of being a high priced consultant, I think the article is generally spot on. I do believe we need to pay more attention to the inherent capability of Africans and to the integration and functionality of their communities. (We pay attention to their capabilities by raiding their best trained) At one time I was convinced that the solution was to shut the gates. Keep talented Africans (there are plenty) at home and keep consultants and exploitative corporations and our war machines out.
Africa is not about race, it is about community culture no longer able to serve its original purpose, about clans as islands, clans interlocking, clans witchbound, clans jealous; and about 'donors' and carpetbaggers from all over who sustain the corruption, the waPajero amidst the shanty lines. There is as yet no notion of a nation state here in Africa, of something lying beyond self and the clan; and the waZungu have gone; no critical mass of western liberal democrats able to help Africa to achieve Fanon's assertion that "it is the destiny of the black man to be white." Only the Chinese now, squatting at the airport, awaiting their bus.
Being from South Africa I'm pretty sure there is a conspiracy against Africa. The end of Apartheid was orchastrated to collapse the South African economy so that vital minerals could be bought cheaply. It had nothing to do with human rights. Both the South African and Zimbabwean currencies were stronger than the US dollar during parts of the 70's. Look at them now. The fact is that black Africans cannot rule. Democracy is not part of their culture. Unfortunately the author is too naive to see this. South Africa will fall next, Zimbabwe has been ruined by Mugabe. No one lifted a finger to intervene, but during Apartheid, the whole world was swept up into ending it. You must ask yourself why? South Africa would have become a superpower if the Americans and it's western allies did not conspire to stop it.
Personally, as a student in high school, I found the article incredibly effective. Why? Because it was accessible and written with more than a bit of heart. Teenagers today are becoming too superficial and part of the reason why is because information is not being communicated to us in a way that makes us say,'hey, this is important.'
Information is delivered to us only after it has been morphed into a huge jargon. Too many authors try to impress with the eloquence of their language ,the sophistication of their prose. The result: issues like genocide, gender inequality, and racial discrimination, in short issues of great important, become lost in the mind of teenagers. Basically: we don't understand
Yes, I entirely agree with Caplan's central thesis. Yet there are exceptions that beg deeper understanding. However odious colonial rule was, there were gradations that left significant positive impact decades after independence. In particular, British rule was generally more benign than other European nations'. The very factors that Caplan cites as being positive moves for the future of the continent - what we would nowadays term a "civil society" - were rooted within a functional bureaucracy and judiciary that Britain left behind, and that no other colonial power matched.
What happened next, at independence, was as much due to the vision of the Big Man as anything else. In Zambia, Kaunda recognized quickly that tribalism had to be countered, and implemented a policy of always posting civil servants away from their home territory. The net result was significant intermarriage, such that today Zambians seem almost embarrassed when asked where they're from ("Zambia," they respond), and it takes some probing before a tribal identity can be ascertained.
The ethno-political mess in Kenya, best highlighted in the modern era by the aftermath of the last election, can be contrasted by the peaceful coexistence in neighboring Tanzania. In Tanzania, Nyerere, for all his faults, instituted the "failed" ujaama program. Discredited even by the ruling party, one can argue that one positive aspect of ujaama is, as with Zambia, an affiliation and identification with the State rather than the tribe.
Leaving aside these arguments, a couple of other points. First, as is well known but not touched on even in passing in Caplan's otherwise excellent piece, the infection that is today's tribalism is not new to the continent: the 20 million enslaved souls were provided to the Europeans, who had only the most tenuous toe-hold on the coasts, by fellow Africans. Ditto the East African - Arabian slave route.
Second, for anyone who believes in conspiracy theories, here's one provided to me by a black South African regarding Mbeki's outwardly stupid response to HIV/AIDS. There's an awful lot of uneducated blacks in the country, and no prospect for jobs. Fill in the rest yourself.... There's a certain terrible logic to it.
Finally, a question that has intrigued me for quite a number of years. Why is it that the Niger river is the only major waterway flowing through arid lands that shows no archaeological evidence of a "hydraulic civilization" (i.e., a canal-based irrigated agriculture that yields sufficient surplus for non-laboring elites to emerge)? Some of the recaptured history that Caplan mentions in passing does indicate that canals were known and used for warfare between the empires of Mali and Ghana, thus it was not a question of lack of corvee labor. Later Arab accounts of Timbuktu in the 15th/16th centuries show as much as 3/4 of the population dying of starvation during droughts, so clearly there was a need for an assured agricultural surplus from the river's flow. If a team of social scientists could answer this question, then perhaps the world can better come to comprehend the impediments that held (and apparently continue to hold) Africans back and that result in the hopelessness and resultant mayhem that Caplan cites in his litany of African failed states.
The leader of catholics stated that the producers of condoms infect them with AIDS consciously. The archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Mozambique Francisco Chimoyo asserts that some antiviral preparations have also been infected, “in order to lead African people to the rapid loss”,:::::
The attempts to solve problem are doing: on the statement of United Nations, anti-retrovirus preparations (ARV) proved to be are very effective in the treatment of patients by AIDS. Tablets are not panacea, but they fight with the virus in several directions immediately.
Oh dear,
One of the liberal idiots running riot in grief for standing up against Ian Smith just to realise the demise of Zimbabwe as a result of your ignorance? Haven’t you heard of the Matabele Land Massacres? Yes, the same people you sided with at that time, who brutally murdered thousands of innocent woman and children?
Poor you! You question the intellect we had as Whites in Africa to govern with an iron fist, rather than seeing the decay of what we built up with our bare hands in the midst of nothing? And dare I say, even bled for what we held dear, with Queen Victoria and her bastard English invading our Republic purely out of greed!
Why, you poor soul, have you seen how people are murdered in South Africa today? The statistics are higher than that of countries in war!
May God forgive you?
I certainly don’t see why you wrote this, you asked for it, haven’t you?
Confirms most of my suspicions, for people adding comments; read the whole article so you get a clear view unlike the previous commenter who I doubt read all.
You should see South Africa now. Come and live here and find out the hard way how bad it is for a person to be white here. Come and see for how mant deaths America and Europe is responsible for by fighting against Apartheid. the world has no idea what is REALY happening in Africa. White farmers are being slowly removed from the living and another holocaust is starting and the West is responsible for it.
To the last commenter above, are you trying to to suggest white lives are worth more than black? That s a bit annoying to hear, but then I guess you expect a black man to be grateful he can even read your outrageous comments!!!!
To all commentators above, as an African I am also at a loss why things are the way they are but I dont for a second buy the argument that we are less intelligent, a point that is insinuated in many fora though not often stated. I know we have for a long time ended up with wrong kind of leaders and many of us are mad and are trying to make a difference. Some blame has got to go to the West as well, for example the SAPs imposed on Ghana in the 80s by world bank ended up collapsing their vibrant rice industry with subsequent flooding of American rice.
Africa will never improve its a black hole into which the worlds billions will fall into. It will perish in a couple of centuries
You all know what the problems are and it's not the black natives. It's you. Yes, you have blood on your hands. Your forefathers are devils and the have cursed Africa and her children, for if ever she rise you will all pay. Don't want to do that, do ya?
dear confused
do you poor people not understand what goes on behind the mirror?
- in media race will always be PUT in conflict
_ land with natural resources will always be at war
- the ignorant will always be controlled by the one who knows more
- China will be just the next master of you all
wake up and start to reverse engineer what you think goes on instead of believing what you
see and hear!
I guess now that \'\'they\'\' have taken out Gaddaffi you gat a better understanding of why Africa is always in chaos, resources resources resources, Rothschilds and friends control all wars dear.
The opposite of the \"resource curse\" is the blessing of tinkerers. Repair, refurbishing, reselling, knock-offs, reverse engineering - these are the ways the Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Guangdong, Penang, etc. emerged. A lone repairer/fixer/geek in a dorm room can add $400 in added value to a discarded laptop in 30 minutes. Look at Michael Dell, this is the hope of Africa.
Unfortunately, this repairer/fixer/tinkerer/geek path to development is being torn apart by well-meaning environmentalists, who have it in their heads that poor Africans are pooling tens of thousands of dollars to import computers which they then burn, at a loss, as \"e-waste\". In fact, these are the signs of hope, African geeks are starting to do the same importing-for-refurb as South Korea did.
http://www.motherboard.tv/2011/3/31/why-we-should-ship-our-electronic-waste-to-china-and-africa
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/11000554-ewaste-recycling-hoax-ngo-basel-action-network-profits-from-racist-images