'Stop blaming the colonists!'

2005-09-26 10:21

Nearly 50 years after the liberation of Africa from colonial servitude, the sad reality is that the continent on the whole is still a very sorry mess and, in many cases, much worse than during the time when the foreign overlords still held sway.

At this rate, it is doubtful that we shall ever get our act together and save this continent from ourselves, and for ourselves.

Why are we Africans often guilty of being perceived as thoughtless, unthinking people? Why do we embark on activities which lend credence to such perceptions?

There is a haunting billboard along the double-decker M1 South freeway, near Johannesburg central police station, showing a severely malnutritioned and crying black child.

It is an SAfm advertisement, bearing the caption: "This year the world will spend three trillion dollars on arms".

The emaciated child is an apt metaphor for what we have done to this bountiful continent.

The caption implies that there is something amiss with the world's spending on arms.

But looking hard as I often do, I have never been able to decipher what implications there are in the picture of Africans ruining their continent to the point where human life becomes nearly meaningless.

'It not our fault'

Some defensive types will jump up at this and shout the usual: "Hey man, colonialism and racism are responsible for the mess we are in. The foreigners looted our continent blind, and used the stolen wealth to build their own countries. And now they tell us we have foreign debts to the World Bank and the IMF."

Instead of purchasing arms of war, they have a duty to help poorer nations towards creating a better life for themselves and eradicating poverty" - or something similar.

I used to argue like that, saying colonialists never prepared their vassals for eventual independence, and when they departed left a largely clueless populace in charge of administrations they did not understand and therefore mismanaged.

But at some point sophistry becomes evident even to its most ardent practitioner - baloney, however thinly you slice it, remains baloney.

I am well aware I will be crucified as being "hankering after colonial oppression and exploitation" or some such rubbish, but can we please have some sensible debate on the ills afflicting Africa, and try to propose some concrete solutions?

Much of Africa today is a refugee camp, housing millions of people displaced from their countries for a variety of reasons: political instability, wars, ethnic fighting, hunger and natural causes like drought.

Back in the day

When I was growing up, the scene was one of secessionist strife in the Congo, no doubt fuelled by the Belgian colonialists.

In Algeria some French millionaires and absentee landlords were not very happy about giving up "little France", and the British and MauMau in Kenya slugged it out toe-to-toe.

Then the world caught the lingering images of despair and kwashiorkor from the Biafran secessionist struggle in Nigeria, and Africa went mad.

The advent of people such as Milton Obote and Idi Amin did not help to give this continent a glowing image; the death of Haile Selassie heralded the divisions in Ethiopia, and suddenly tinpot dictators developed a keen liking for toppling the man in power and summarily executing him.

The recent holocaust in Burundi and Rwanda is still fresh in our memories, and Sudan is a live powder keg: Darfur is a crying shame.

What is wrong with us?

Just what is wrong with us? Will we ever rid ourselves of the demons that possess us?

The corruption that one sees taking firm root here at home - Africa's last liberated nation - does not encourage one that things will turn out differently here than in other African states.

Accuse me of Afro-pessimism, but I think the weight of corruption has long passed its critical mass and the thin membrane of orderliness and civility is wearing thin, and pretty soon the heavy claws of lawlessness will rip apart the flimsy veneer.

Trouble is we have become home to all sorts from the African continent, and many of them unfortunately bring with them many of the unsavoury traits and practices they learned from the countries which they fled.

And they find very willing pupils among some of us, eager to learn the wrong things.

Let us begin to look very critically at ourselves, and stop blaming others. Then, perhaps, we will reverse our downward spiral to doom.

Jon Qwelane's column is published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article.

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