I’m more obsessed with idea of assigning personal responsibility and not pretending that humans who exhibit savagery toward the innocent can be excused of it because of some other circumstance. It was not I who assigned the blame for the Rwandan massacre on the Belgians. I assign the Belgian brutality to the Belgians and the Hutu-Tutsi brutality to those groups.
It would however be ahistorical to ignore the fact that Belgian colonial policy greatly ratcheted up the Hutu-Tutsi divide, turning what had been a semi-flexible class division into a rigid caste division with an overtone of racialist superiority.
As I’ve argued before blame in such situations is not a zero sum game. Saying that 19th century Belgian colonial policies helped to set the stage for the massacres of the later 20th does not in anyway absolve any of the actual murderers of their guilt.
Well, that’s certainly the accepted story. I agree it does not–in any way–absolve anyone, and that’s the difference between my world view and the world view of those who find it easy to blame one person or group’s nastiness on the next person or group over.
My observation regarding current US liberal academia is that they somehow find it much easier to find external reasons for savagery among their pet victim groups than they do for the non-pet groups. So you’ll see fabulously fancy explanations why the Hutu-Tutsis butchered one another because of Europeans, but there aren’t quite as fancy explanations for why Europeans butchered one another. That’s what patronizes Africans (unintentionally) by not elevating them to the level of people who can take responsibility for their own actions.
The truth is, we’re all savages (Sudan being a lovely recent example) and we won’t get anywhere developing countries (in my opinion) until we stop making excuses and creating victims out of butchers. Post-division (if it happens) Sudan isn’t going anywhere until the Sudanese get a grip on themselves and hold themselves to account for their actions and direction. Should they, for example, decide to use tribal distinctions or religious philosophies as reasons to perpetuate violence and corruption, they are not going anywhere, even if the south ends up with Abyei’s oil resources.
No I got the point, you have an idée fixe and you think it a luxury to know anything about Africans or their history, but rather impose some pre-existing obsession.
Your ahistorical "personal responsibility"ignores that humans, including Africans are not tabula rasa and history and the like matter.
One sees this clearly in West Africa, the English side of the same ethnic group say split between Ghana and Ivory Coast have current modern political traditions that differ right along
It’s like a bloody laboratory for the differing impacts of governmental traditions - same ethnicity split in half, one is following an Anglo tradition (and with Ghana starting to emerge as having a real chance at something like an operating and sustainable democratic country) the other is following a French tradition of centralisation and Fonctoinnaire elitism.
Profoundly different, and solely because of the colonial heritages, the political cultures and structures that they left in place. Although in both these instances, neither we nor the French engaged in the kind of gross and shocking policies that the Belgians pursued (which were considered quite atrocious even in that period, which says something).
You can ramble on in glorious ignorance about the actual history or even current events based on abstractions all you want - indeed that seems to in effect be all you want.
In short, obsessed with an abstaction (based it appears on some American parochialism) to the point you can’t be bothered to learn or know about actual facts.
That is far more contemptuous of Africans or others than seeing the roots of current bad governance in Africa (or worse) and some responsibility in the bad governance of the colonial era (for all that I am a mitigated defender of our former colonial empire, as not being as horrible as oft described by the Left, it’s bloody damned clear that colonial governance in Africa, filled with racist contempt for the Africans left in place a bad political culture, and the differing results of political culture heritage matter).
But for you of course, only your American obsession on “personal responsibility” politics matters, not actual facts or history.
I largely agree with this (Bamako’s airport is certainly bus terminalish). Having the infrastructure matters, but only to the extent the infrastructure connects with realistic demand.
This by the way is also important relative to business. It’s expensive in time and money to do pan African business, and that has to add into the prices charged - whether for export or import. It makes doing business from much (but not all) of SSA massively harder.
Re flashy airports
Well slums I can deal with. It’s the flashy airport and nice road for about 5km petering out into nothing.
Better to have a dumpy if functional airport and invest in proper roads across the nation than have (for 5yrs before it goes to pot) a flashy airport hub leading nowhere.
The one thing I am amazed at is the Development people who seem to have zero sense of Supply and Demand. If one project works - eco tourism, carpet ladies - well obviously piling every one into “income generative activities”(I absolutely loathe that phrase, bloody Development people meet me, think I am will invest in / buy from this kind of crap.)
The Abyei issue might not be an issue anymore. Im optimistic that it will hold, as peace requires a clean amicable split with under a WELL DEFINED terms of agreement. A clean divorce gives everyone a beather to focus on the more important matter of actual administration and infrastructure development.
Why? I will be going, for instance. It has a fascination that e.g. Cameroon doesn’t have - novelty and all that.
To who?
And novelty is not a long-term destination development lever point mate.
This. I can believe that there will be a temporary surge in tourism to South Sudan - but I expect it’ll taper off pretty fast, as soon as tourists start reporting back that there isn’t a “there” there. No decent roads to get you to the interesting nature spots, no urban nightlife or musem culture to engage with while you wait on your trip into the bush, and so on.
I wonder: do you believe, that in the long-term (after a likely very violent short-term), that breaking Africa up into smaller indepent countries could lead to better long-term identification, and once they no longer feel threatened, to an EU-style union? The EU came about after centuries of war, out of both economic necessity and the wish for peace, and endures because countries are mostly on the same level regarding freedoms and so on (that is, they must have a certain basic working constitution beyond democracy=election to join).
Because from what little I hear, the attempt to get people in Africa to identify with the bigger unit of nation or country largely has failed, people mostly identify with their tribe and language group, but not with a state run by the corrupt other tribe.
Here is a comprehensive review of a book about just that point: why democracy alone without market control can be disastrous.
Interesting and insightful as always your posts are, but this reminds me of what PLAN tells on its infosheets about children’s naming traditions in other countries. They say that it’s not unusual to have a child in Africa or Latin America with the Name “Hitler” or “Stalin”, because literally all the parents know is that these people were famous. What they were famous for, or that they were rather infamous, they never learned about.
Nope. You don’t get the point.
If the Belgians come into Rwanda and elevate the Tutsi above the Hutu, it does not create an acceptable reason for the Hutus to slaughter three quarters of a million Tutsis when they get their shot at it. That’s my world view.
Your world view (and sven’s, I think) is that if we can just understand history–improve our ignorance about the facts–we can justify it. We’ll understand why it happened. Such an “understanding” in the case of this genocide is necessarily built upon a presumption that the butchers are victims of history and too dumb to account for their own actions. They are simply pawns of their Masters, unable to think for themselves.
But the real “Why” these sorts of things happen is a function of the human condition. We are all savages. To think that some external event–in this case, Belgian occupation–turned the previously noble Hutus into savages is not to understand the human condition. And since folks with your world view are willing to hold Europeans responsible for their behaviours but not hold Africans responsible for their behaviours, you patronize Africans and reduce them to children whose behaviour is simply a consequence of, and utterly dependent on, the vicissitudes of their Masters. I find that offensive, but it’s not my world view to defend.
Suppose, as a parallel, the Europeans conquered North America and elevated blacks to a status above Native Americans. Now the Europeans leave and the Native Americans rise up and slaughter the blacks…In your world view, the Europeans are responsible. In my world view, every group is fundamentally savage in its willingness to dominate and oppress when it can, and as thinking beings, personally responsible for its actions.
But if your Africans are too stupid to figure out the oppressors were the Belgians and not the Tutsi (in your reading of Rwandan history), then I guess I understand why you blame the Belgians.
Your ongoing pretense that my poor understanding of African history is the core issue here completely misses the point.
But there is a “there” there, that’s my point.
I think you’re underestimating the effect the considerable number of NGO/UN personnel has had on Juba. There is *already *a series of thriving waterfront lodges, bars and clubs to service the (mostly young, European) staff.
Juba airport gets 5 daily flights from E Africa, as well as several weekly ones, it’s one of the busiest airports in the region.
I was in Northern Sudan as a tourist a year ago. We (three + driver) spent about two weeks there driving from Khartoum up to a point about 100km south of the Egyptian border. There was loads to see… ruined pyramids, temples, lots of great desert scenery. We camped wild in the sand and had a wonderful time. The roads were good and infrastructure ok - even in the small villages.
In the entire time we were there, we saw 8 other tourists (all of them at Meroe). I don’t think Sudan (north or south) will get much tourism no matter what happens.
I’d go back there though - Sudan is in my top 5 best travel experiences.
I’d heard of Cameroonian students named “Hitler.” The explaination I got is that people have pretty fond memories of German colonialism (“at least they build stuff”) and people’s understanding of WWII boils down to “The Germans must be good, because they fought the French.”
I don’t think you’d know “current US academia” if it hit you with a stick. You appear to be operating on ivory tower stereotypes from the 80s and 90s, which were not all that true then but certainly are not true now. If you want to name individual authors and theorists, we can debate them. But right now you are just railing about what you imagine people must be saying. which doesn’t really have to do much with what anyone is actually saying. Please stop referring to “my world view,” because whatever you are saying is not my world view at all.
I think we are pretty good at looking at the historical context of European war and genocide. It’s pretty well agreed that the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles played a role in the rise of the Nazi party, and the centuries-old tradition of anti-semitism obviously played a role in the Holocaust. Today, we see that oil interests have contributed to our follies in the Middle East.
You are stuck on this idea that someone (certainly not me) is trying to say it’s okay for Hutus to slaughter Tutsis. Nobody, anywhere, is saying that. I find it extremely offensive that you would even imply that. I agree completely that we all have the capacity to commit evil acts. So why do evil acts thrive in one society and not in others? Historical context and material circumstances is surely a part of it. This doesn’t excuse it, or make it okay, or otherwise in anyway condone violent acts. But if we want to prevent this stuff in the future, damn straight we better look at what contributes to it.
I am not “stuck on this idea that someone…is trying to say it’s okay for Hutus to slaughter Tutsis…”
I am suggesting that in your world view, external events such as the Belgian occupation or Belgian behaviour ameliorate responsibility for those doing the butchering. I leave it to you to interpret your own posts, such as the quote below.
(by even sven: )
“For an example, look at the Tutsis and Hutus. In pre-colonial times, these labels barely had any meaning. They were barely considered different ethnic groups. The Belgiens, seeking a local system of control, began classifying people and making those classifications meaningful by allocating power by these often newfound ethnic labels. We all know the end of that story. The moral here is not “Colonialists were bad,” but rather that it is perfectly possible to create new and murderous divisions in a society out of whole cloth, basically by naming them and giving them some significance.”
The labels “…barely had any meaning…”? Except where history may have been grossly distorted to extend a pretense of noble pre-European harmony, the history of Rwanda is basically the Twa getting the short end of the stick by the Hutu who in turn were displaced to an inferior position by the Tutsi way before the Belgians showed up. Were that not the case, there wouldn’t have been any groups to favor, for goodness’ sake. When the Hutus got their chance to slaughter, they did so quite enthusiastically. What I am labeling as nonsense is not the argument that there are triggers for these sorts of mass behaviours. It’s the sort of language you use to present an African Utopia (“barely any meaning” for the Hutu-Tutsi labels) which was destroyed following Belgian occupation because they “create(d)” new and murderous divisions in a society out of whole cloth."
Bullshit. The idea that there were no significant divisions until the Belgians came along is a product of a liberal world view that just can’t tolerate the notion that their noble Africans can be as vicious as Europeans, thank you very much, and are equal and enthusiastic participants in the depravity of mankind.
I won’t distract the thread further to help you understand why your other standard theories in the post above equally miss the point of why we behave the way we behave. (Hint: The fault, dear sven, lies in our selves–in our genes–not in our stars, that we are murderers.)
Whatever. You are the only person, in this whole thread, in any thread, ever, to talk about absolving anyone of anything. Nobody but you has any interest or even a second thought of absolving murderers.
As for the fact that pre-colonial African society was divided- sure. I’m sure there were other divisions. As a woman, I can’t afford to idealize any pre-modern society, really. Life has sucked for pretty much everyone, everywhere, through most of history.
That doesn’t change the fact that the specific labels “Hutu” and “Tutsi” gained their power in the colonial era, and the significance these ideas gained in colonial times lives today. To give another example, Kenya’s occasionally violent Kikuyu majority came together as an “ethnic group” in the 1950s, when British military recruiters broadcast radio advertisements starting with the words “Kikuyu…” which translates as “I tell you” in a pretty middle-of-the-road language. Everyone whose language was close enough that they understood the meaning of “kikuyu” came together, and out of basically nothing a new and currently extremely important ethnic identity was born. African ethnic identities (or European for that matter) do not go back to the dawn of time. They are modern things subject to modern forces.
Again, it is you alone who is talking about the noble savage. It is you alone who is talking about absolving anyone of responsibility. Nobody else is saying these things. Te “world view” you are so upset about does not exist, and it is an act of willful ignorance that you continue to attribute that fake worldview on people who in no way espouse it.
I agree with you that common ethnic labels (“English,” “French,” “Italian,” etc) are relatively recent and fluid categories; however you are attributing the formation of Kenya’s largest ethnic group to a 1950’s English invention. I’m going to need a citation…
No doubt the arrival of a non-literate mass media (radio) contributed to pre-existing linguistic divisions and a rising class of educated elites probably continued to strengthen this social/ethnic cohesion into the modern forms we see today. However, I can find articles on JSTOR from the 1850’s that make passing reference to “Kikuyu land in the Southwest” which shows to me that this ethnic label (or level of social organization) already existed and went well beyond the local grouping of clans. I see this as an ebb/flow relationship between higher and lower levels of self identification and would compare it to the exact parallel of the clan/ethnic identities which existed in Europe (which eventually congealed, in the 17-1900’s, into the nation states that we see today).
I’m EXTREMELY skeptical whenever I hear of European/foreign origins to local/native African politics/society; I find that European/foreign roles are almost always embellished or even fabricated. I’ve seen this done in both positive and negative ways with Europeans/foreigners playing the role of the heel or the root of even entire (native) civilizations.