That’s great and all, but I was specifically referring to a comparison of mineral resources.
Well, except for that whole Italian east africa thing…
…and the fact that it is in the Sahel has nothing to do with this? Plus, you could still hear “Kids are starving in Japan” in popular song in the 90s and get the reference. Also, Ethiopia has the strongest (non-oil) economic growth in 08/09
Yet as little as fifty years ago, they had this. Again, what I’m saying is, Africa has only just passed out of the colonial phase. They are now where China was 50 years ago. So why are you comparing them to the China of today?
We also are good for Gold and Platinum, Chrome and Tourism. Wine. Beer. Oh, and telescopes. Big telescopes. Hopefully soon, a very bigtelescope.
The Ethiopians beat the stuffing out of the Italians at the Battle of Adowa in 1896(being the worst defeat of a European army by Africans in history), and Italian East Africa lasted for maybe five years being a purely military occupation that ended in 1941. They never conquered the entire country, the Abyssinian government never surrendered, and for all intents and purposes never colonised the country or managed to get it into their “sphere of influence” in any meaningful way.
I don’t understand what you’re talking about here. 
Africa passed out of the Colonial phase at the same time the Chinese Civil War ended and India became independent, so really, they all started from more or less the same position at the same time. Yet China and India are doing pretty well for themselves, and Africa isn’t. I think the comparison is valid.
Most of those things are available elsewhere. I’m not saying South Africa has nothing to contribute to the global economy (because that’s patently not true), but it’s hardly a Big Player anymore.
Aah, there’s that weasel-word “meaningful” again.
That Ethiopia being associated with famine might not have much to do with the situation on the ground there today, and more a holdover from the 80s, just like “Kids are starving in Japan” was still used in the 60s when it really was a post-WWII thing.
Wrong. The 70s and 80s were the end of the colonial phase in Africa, with some holdouts until the 90s.
Not platinum, not chrome. Not nearly as much, or as easy to mine.
I don’t think it ever was a Big Player. But it is the driver for the rest of S-S Africa’s economy, and so does have global importance out of proportion to its size.
There’s a massive difference between colonising a country for decades/centuries and managing to occupy part of a country with soldiers for a few years. Nothing “weasel-wordy” about it.
I’ve never encountered the “Starving kids in Japan” thing before, but Japan wasn’t exactly popular around here after WWII, for obvious reasons.
According to Wikipedia, the vast majority of African countries became independent between 1960 and 1965. The only holdouts to the 1980s and 1990s were Rhodesia (1980, originally independent in 1965 before brief reversion) and Namibia (1990), which was being run by South Africa under a 1920 League of Nations mandate in the aftermath of WWI, so I don’t think it really qualifies. Neither does Eritrea, which seceded from Ethiopia in 1993, or the Spanish Sahara, which is legally under Spanish administration, is de facto split between Morocco and Mauritania, and in reality appears to contain almost quite literally nothing except sand with some phosphate deposits.
Even taking 1965 as the average date for independence in Sub-Saharan Africa, that’s still not that long (12 years) after India or China entered the world stage, and 12 years ago China and India were still in far better shape than most African countries are today, IMHO.
Compared with other African countries, Botswana has done very well indeed. They’ve had almost 45 years of relative stability in which to see what they can accomplish. They’ve been able to leverage their raw material resources (particularly diamonds exports, which account for about 75% of export earnings) into a stable income, and almost 3/4 of their population is above the poverty line of $1.25/day. Life expectancy has suffered from the devastation of AIDS and is around 40 years. They have certainly demonstrated an ability to govern themselves, be fiscally sound and participate in a market economy.
What I’m looking for though, are examples of innovation, or success in producing a layer of individuals who are competetive with the educated elite from any other country, or indigenous development of industry or manufacturing, --basically anything that would serve as a proof case that there is no fundamental difference in the depth of raw potential in Botswana versus any other country.
I agree. Just like there’s a difference between the “never” and “not really, by any meaningful definition”. Guess which one you used first.
Never heard Weird Al’s “Eat It” either, I take it.
I’m sorry, but that article is bullshit. South Africa only truly became independent in 1994, not 1961.
But there’s a huge difference between 1960s and 1940s, anyway. And much less difference between the 60s and the 70s-80s, which is what I said. Note that nations becoming independent in the 70s include Angola and Mozambique, which then immediately fell into Soviet-backed vs Western-backed civil wars, so I’d hardly call them independent of colonial powers even then.
James Watson pointed this out a couple of years ago. That isn’t an answer people want to hear though.
OK, I’ll say “Never”, as I don’t think a 5 year military occupation shortly before WWI counts as either “Colonising” or “Bringing into Sphere of Influence”.
I have, but that doesn’t change the fact that Japan is not thought of as a third world famine-plagued hell-hole these days (and hasn’t been since, well, just after WWII, a position in which it was hardly unique) and Ethiopia is.
How do you figure that? Just because it was South African-born Whites oppressing Blacks instead of people in the UK ruling the country doesn’t mean the country wasn’t “Independent”. You can’t accuse me of weasel-wording the issue of Ethiopia’s status during the Italian occupation and then turn around and dismiss the Independence dates of African countries because you say Europeans were still meddling in those countries afterwards or a particular Ethnic group was still being oppressed there etc.
Which supports the OP’s assertion that perhaps they shouldn’t have become independent in the first place, or at least not at that point in time.
Riddle me this - when did Australia become independent? 1901? 1986? Some other date? For the purposes of this thread, based on the OP, we seem to be dealing specifically with when black Africans acquired their independence from whites (or why would the question of black competency even be an issue?). Note that the Wiki list is internally inconsistent - why a 1980 date for Zimbabwe when UDI was in 1965? Because that was when the white regime was overthrown. So why not the same criterion for SA?
Well, yes, I can. The one is an issue of internal consistence, the other is just a semantic argument. I do not disagree that Ethiopia was never really fully conquered, but to assert that it was never really in the sphere of any Colonial powers is bunk. Fuck, the whole Eritrean/Ethiopian relationship is because they were part of the same colonial unit, and that independence war has had a huge effect on the region. Ethiopia was not some unique African paragon untouched by European influence yet going to hell anyway. It was very heavily affected by European influence, and that had to have a post-colonial impact.
The Italians built infrastructure, exiled the Emperor, moved their own citizens in and had plans to move many more, played around with regional borers in a way that would have far-reaching repercussions - how is any of that not “Colonising” or “Bringing into Sphere of Influence”. Just because they were at it for a lot less time? They had enough impact, I would say.
I would say Japan was thought of as some Third World shithole until well into the 50s, which matches the difference in time from the 80s famine in Ethiopia to when they actually pulled out of it. My larger point is that you do not seem to acknowledge the difference between your perception of the place and the reality of the place.
January 1st, 1901 was the date that the Australian colonies formed the Commonwealth and became independent of the UK. The fact they chose to follow the UK’s lead for some time thereafter doesn’t change the fact that they were independent from that date.
How about “Because after the UDI, Rhodesia reverted to Colonial rule for a period before becoming independent again in 1980”? Nothing to do with Blacks becoming independent of Whites. Especially because if you want to argue that “becoming independent of Whites” is the criteria for Independence, then Australia, New Zealand, and Canada still aren’t Independent today, as the Native inhabitants in those places don’t run the country.
By that token, SA was independent in 1910 with the Union. Not that I agree, mind you
How big a gap between recolonisation are you willing to allow?
I was quite specific that I was talking about* for the purposes of this thread*, which is specifically about handing over power to indigenous inhabitants.
Well, that *and *they still have a foreign Queen as HOS and Governors-General. South Africa is independent, Australia is only “mostly” independent.
That and the thread is specifically about Africa and its *indigenous *peoples, so I was going by the OP in discussing when the *indigenous *people aquired power from foreign masters. And for all that they’ve been here for generations, and may properly call themselves Africans, Whites still can’t claim to be indigenous.
Yep. Reading the memoirs of Lee Kwan Yew, I was struck by how backwards Asia was just after the end of the colonial era. In many ways, African countries, which had the benefit of mineral resources, were economically better off - South Korea, for example, was poorer than Nigeria - and this balance of power was reflected in third world international relations. For example, the first thing LKY did to get international recognition for Malaysia was to visit a dozen African - not Asian - countries, since among third world nations they had more clout.
It also had about 10 years of Communist silliness that caused “famine, disease and incredible poverty”. A lot of Ethiopia’s problems can be blamed on Mengistu, who committed genocide, engaged in really crappy and poorly thought out land reform, created remarkably inefficient state farms, engaged in massive resettlement of people, initiated price controls that led to farmers refusing to sell their food, and deliberately kept food from going to areas he and the Derg didn’t like.
Australia (& Canada, New Zealand, etc) is fully independent. She has full control over her own affairs foreign, domestic, & military. The Queen (who technically is neither a citizen or a foreigner) only acts on the “advice” (ie instruction) of the Australian government, not the British government. The Governors-General have been selected by the Australian government since the 1930s and since the 60s they’ve all been local Australian notables (much to Prince Charles’s dismay).
There’s also the nontrivial issue of state boundaries. The current borders are built out of colonial-era boundaries of the great poewrs and their districts. However, these always split some tribes and shoved others together, when these tribes may not have a great deal of love for each other and/or serious cultural mismatch. Some modern conflicts are mischaracterized as tribal conflict (Rwanda, for example, was not an ethnic clash but a sociocultural one within the same supra-tribal group).
Nevertheless, this has seriously destabilized sub-saharan Africa, much as the similar problem in the Middle East has led to a great deal of tyranny. Iraq under Saddam, for instance, saw non-Sunni seriously oppressed; there were cultural, ethnic, and religious differences which led Saddam to support “his” people on the backs of everyone else, with the understanding they would do the same. The immediate post-war “patriotic rebels” leftist on this very board were fond of quoting were in fact just Sunni trying to retake power and spouting a good PR line.
I was being facetious.