Africa is the birthplace of the human race. About 70 000 years ago small contingents of people left the continent and moved to Europe and Asia. Some of these migrant groups developed at a greater rate than others and in time acquired many skills and invented useful implements and tools that improved their lives . Advanced civilisations sprang up around the Mediterranean , China and South America.
In comparison the people of Africa had made very little progress in the same period of time and when the Europeans set out on their voyages of discovery they seemed like alien apparitions to the primitive native people. The Europeans regarded them as barbarians of low intellect that could be exploited and used as slaves in their colonies in the New World.
When Africa was colonised mainly by England , France, Portugal, Belgium and later on Germany, the new rulers took whatever they found useful but also improved the infrastructure and introduced their technology and systems of goverment and missionaries started schools and converted the native people to the Christian Faith. The Muslim Arabs did the same in North Africa.
Later on schools and Universities were built so that when independence arrived (Ghana was the first in 1957) the French and British colonies were functioning quite well. Unfortunately the new breed of black leaders, many well educated , soon became dictators and the exploitation of the massas continued , only much worse. Democracy existed in name only, corruption became endemic and hardly any development took place.
This is the present situation in spite of billions of dollars of development aid that was either misspent or disappeared into the pockets of the rulers.
Our situation is also deteriorating fast and we already display many of the characteristics of a failed state.
That is why even the "anti-apartheid activist" Rhoda Khadali is considering emigration.
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