Man is Africa screwed up! Yeah this isn't an original observation.

[Locut0s]

Nothing original or new to see here. I've just been reading up on numerous African countries as part of my hobby to learn all the countries and capitals. Yes I knew before hand how screwed up Africa was but it really does bring things into sharper focus when you read up on the specifics. After the colonial powers pulled out right around 1960 everything started to go to hell. Actually it was a time of great hope for the future but when the colonial powers pulled out there was no transition plan put in place in any of these countries. Many of these countries had been ruled from overseas anyway and when the colonial powers pulled out there was this sudden HUGE power vacuum. This vacuum was filled by all kinds of Marxist ideologues who quickly became military regimes and then were overthrown by more and more military regimes. Every country seems to have been ruled by one crazy murdering dictator after another from 1960 through about 1990ish when things started to get a little more stable in most countries. Course 800,000+ people were killed in civil unrest in Rewanda. Then throw in famine after famine in which millions starved. Causing further unrest war and mass migrations. Then you have HIV rates close to 30% in some countries to say nothing of malaria, yellow fever, and on and on and on. Contaminated drinking water and food. Zimbabwe's inflation clocked in at several trillion percent at one point a few year ago:



There are signs of hope in some countries but it's really unbelievable how many seemingly insurmountable obstacles are facing these countries.

!!PLEASE PLEASE lets not have this turn into a race thread!!

[anonymous171]

1. The west needs to leave Africa alone.

And prevent China from exploiting it as well. They need to rebuild their cultures.

[elehhhhna]

4. yeah, except the whole planets been raping Africa since we figured

out how to get there.

[anonymous171]

6. I know. That's why I don't support interventions or proxy wars there. nt

[stray cat]

8. No More Aid for Africa and I guess that includes Aids and Malaria as well!

:sarcasm: We should let them all die and then the remaining survivors can start from scratch without any interferance. It worked really well in Lord of the Flies.

[Hannah Bell]

11. gee, how'd they survive before we got there? you think africans are incapable of developing drugs

without the dubious "charity" of bill gates & "us"?

africa contains cities, universities, & hospitals, fyi. it's not all jungle.

[anonymous171]

12. Western civilization developed the same way. Africa must be allowed to develop on its own

African countries where they were able to save their culture and heritage are thriving today. Botswana is a good example of this.

[TheWraith]

20. That's a little ridiculous.

Nothing's going to get "rebuilt" there without some kind of concerted effort to fight AIDS, malaria, and poverty there, and the local governments are NOT going to do it.

[anonymous171]

24. You don't think the African People (and their countries) are up to the job? nt

[Locut0s]

22. The problem is we've fucked them over so royally that it may take...

A very LONG time for Africa to get back on it's own feet. Most of the violence, warfare and corruption that exists there now, though having it's roots in colonial occupation have long since grown into an African problem. A problem that now feeds upon itself with or without outside intervention. I agree that the world is using Africa as it's dumping ground and slave labor market but many of their problems are now very much internal and will take generations of deaths to sort out. We haven't seen the end of the likes of the Rwandan Genocides or the famines of the 1970s and 80s.

[elehhhhna]

2. Read b"King Leopold's Ghost"

about his enslavement of the Congolese for rubber harvesting.

[Locut0s]

15. THANKS. I think you may have given me the Christmas gift I was looking for!

[elehhhhna]

16. You're welcome. Also "Don't lets' go to the dogs tonight"

about a young white woman's life in South Africa.

[Locut0s]

25. Thanks and here's my own suggestion: "The Fate of Africa".....

The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence

http://www.amazon.ca/Fate-Africa-History-Fifty-Independence/dp/1586483986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260567256&sr=8-1

Bought this for my father last year and he really enjoyed it. My father is the one I may buy King Leopold for. Thanks.

[enlightenment]

21. For a more literary take, be sure to read

"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe.

Amazing book.

[Locut0s]

23. This I have somewhere in our house. In my fathers book collection.

[enlightenment]

27. Find it. Read it.

It puts the efforts, the motivations, and the consequences of colonization into perspective.


edited for clarity

[mitchum]

29. I have reread that every year for the past 30 years

one of the finest novels ever

[marmar]

3. You lost me at hippie communist/Marxist idealogues.....

nt

[Warpy]

13. Me too. There was nothing remotely hippie-ish about those Stalinists

They had much more in common with every other tin pot right wing dictator in the world than they did with any flower person.

I guess a knee jerk hatred of hippies is a growth industry on DU, too.

[Locut0s]

14. Yeah sorry I shouldn't have said that. I'm a hippie myself :-)

[Hannah Bell]

5. the colonial powers never left. the recent news re warren & uganda = clue

why africa = "screwed up".

[elehhhhna]

7. "our" god has been the excuse for pillaging Africa for hundreds of years.

christainity has been one of the worst thing ever exported to Africa. Islam, too, now that I think of it.

[Hannah Bell]

9. missionaries = shock troops of economic conquest & occupation.

[elehhhhna]

10. Hawaii went down that way too.

[kestrel91316]

19. +100

[tabatha]

17. There was no gradual change from one culture to another.

That is the core problem - similarly, but not the same, in Australia and North America.
It is one of the reasons diabetes is so high amongst Native American Indians - they are eating non-traditional foods.
It is also one of the causes of obesity in Southern Africa.
And that is only with respect to food. There are other cultural problems, too.

And not all is peachy in Botswana - for instance, the San Bushmen:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1879429.stm

Botswana is for the most part undeveloped, and the bulk of revenue comes from mining

"Mining and livestock production remain the primary economic activities. Mining accounted for 34.2% of GDP and an estimated 79% of the value of Botswana's exports in 2000. Botswana has been referred to as the world's largest diamond producer in terms of the quality and grade of its diamonds. The country's growth is heavily dependent upon developments in the diamond industry, which in turn is affected by global economic conditions. The slowdown in the global economy that began in 2001 thus adversely impacted Botswana's diamond industry. Botswana's diamond reserves are estimated to last 30 years at 2003 production rates, and the government emphasizes the need to diversify the economy."

Botswana also has a high AIDS problem - probably because of lot of the men work in the gold mines of South Africa away from families for long periods of time where they probably get AIDS, and bring it home.

"Botswana is experiencing one of the most severe HIV/AIDS epidemics in the world. The national HIV prevalence rate among adults ages 15 to 49 is 24.1 percent, which is among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. The primary mode of transmission is heterosexual contact, with the military and young women at higher risk of HIV infection than other populations. Young men ages 15 to 24 experience an HIV prevalence rate of 5.7 percent, while young women in the same age group experience prevalence rates of 15.3 percent. HIV infection rates also vary by geographical region and are highest in towns, lower in cities, and lowest in villages. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that by 2010 more than 20 percent of all children in Botswana will be orphaned. Extended families and communities have exhibited resourcefulness and generosity in their willingness to absorb and care for these orphaned children, but this capacity is being exhausted, especially as the current generation of grandparents begins to die.<1>"

[niceypoo]

18. Extractive colonialism

[amborin]

26. Botswana had enlightened leaders and is doing well; so are some other countries

[Odin2005]

28. The homophobia and misogyny in Africa makes me sick.

:puke:

[Locut0s]

30. It's a sick culture(s). And by sick I mean mentally, morally, medically....

not sick as in disgusting (which it sadly often is as a result of the above). When all you have around you is death and destruction. When all you have ever known from childhood is cruelty. When kindness and well as cruelty only begets more cruelty... then there is no hope and any human depravity is possible.

[classysassy]

31. A just world

The european thugs,Cecil Rhodes and his ilk,raped the continent and some of the same people that benefit the most still blame the Africans,wakeup people you are the problem,return the stolen loot and then you'll have a right to complain.

[tabatha]

32. I agree with you.

The same mentality of Cecil Rhodes is now seen in the plundering corporations.

[applegrove]

33. The colonial powers divided up africa based on the land they had along shorelines. Europeans

couldn't make it far inside Africa because they had no immunity from disease. Once they divided up the coastline they drew lines inland to make colonies. People in Africa are not divided up by cultural group but by this horrid lines. One of the reasons why there is so much trouble in Africa is that these cultural groups were then played off against each other to keep them all weak during the colonial times. We are still seeing the results of that.. 45 years after the first African nations got their freedom.

[Locut0s]

34. Agreed. The africans were treated as so much useless garbage or as slave labour....

Even the idea that they had a society before the Europeans arrived would have been poo pooed, from their point of view they were too primitive to have anything like a society. Forget the fact that Africa had complex hierarchical societies and very complex ties between different cultures.