Rhodesia doesn’t exist; it’s difficult to be “an authentic part of Africa” when your country doesn’t even exist. Gone. Over. Now if you are a citizen of an existing country of Africa…that would make you an African by default. Regardless if you claim a 0.1% or 100% descendance from European settlers or whatever.
Hell, IMHO if you’re human and want to claim yourself as African, why not. 
Watch your trap.:mad:
Large-scale governments in a non-Colonialized Africa were rather unstable–possibly even more than today’s Africa.
Further, there was little interest in infrastructure, until Colonial government demonstrated the benefits.
Name the route of a paved road in pre-Colonial Africa; or name an improved port facility, before you throw the word “racism” around.
Yeah, I don’t see it either. Yet nobody is saying that Nigeria and Sudan are illegitimate nations that shouldn’t be recognized. On the other hand, the entire world said that Rhodesia was an illegitimate nation that shouldn’t be recognized, and bullied and sanctioned this prosperous and successful country into relinquishing its statehood to a gang of murdering thugs who have since run it into the ground.
Yes, not colonialism.
Et alors? That happened over a thousands years. Even now not all speak Arabic, but any Maghrebin will tell you he is a Berber who came to speak Arabic.
Since this did not happen, I can see a difference. Most of the rulers of the Maghreb were of local dynasties, most often independents from the Caliphates of the East. They are not like the East in history. The Arabic came assimilations because of the high status of Arabic in Islam, and also the influences of the later Arab tribes who migrated in, sometimes by inviation, but just being bedouine in general.
The flows of North Africa
[quote=“Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor, post:22, topic:576386”]
Watch your trap.:mad:
Large-scale governments in a non-Colonialized Africa were rather unstable–possibly even more than today’s Africa.[.qyuote]]
Cite your evidence for this judgement.
.
cite your sources for this judgement.
Name your justificaiton for the assertion of lack of stability, your claims for lack of interest in infrastructure, and what you know of the West Africa kingdoms.
Your demands for “improved” ports, roads are misdirections, most recent the late 19th and 20th century, developments, and you make the gross and unsupported supposition that independent development would not occur to raise capital and learn from outside examples. That is racism.
[quote=“Argent_Towers, post:23, topic:576386”]
Nigeria[/qyuote]
That is nice, since no Arab army ever went to Nigeria.
?? There is no comparison - and the black revolutoin that kicked them out did fine until Mugabe went crazy.
They were running an Apartheid regime. To defend that…
Who counts as “indigenous” and for what purpose is always going to be a debate, as it should be. There is no one single answer. You’ll find these debates in every multi-ethnic nation, from India to South Africa.
Berbers go back 12,000 years in Africa. Various ligher skinned people have been a part of Africa since pre-history and well before Bantu speaking people started populating most of what we think of as “Black Africa.” On the flipside, a lot of the seemingly ancient villages are products of population movements and trends in the last 100 years. Africa’s history is dynamic and complicated.
My point here is simply that race and ethnicity in Africa do not fall along the lines we might think they do (just like an African in America might look at a classroom full of Latino, light-skinned black, Middle Eastern and Indian kids and declare the whole room “white,”) and that “black Africa” and “Arab Africa” or whatever are not two separate and distinct populations, but rather a complicated continuum encompassing all kinds of ethnicities and identities that may or may not think of themselves as being on the black/not-black spectrum. To try to separate it neatly into black/African and Arab/non-Africa is absurd and has nothing to do with reality.
Of course white European descended Africans are an “authentic” part of Africa. Once you reach the point where you can’t go back to where you came from, you become a part of where you are at the moment. Their culture and history is an inseparable part of Africa, and vice-versus at this point, though that varies according to what particular populations you are talking about. That doesn’t mean you aren’t going to be judged if you are a huge asshole and try to set up stuff like apartheid.
It is also silly to call the Islamic conquests of most of north Africa colonialism because they were not made in the manner of running the conquered territories for the benefit of a Metropole, as colonies. They were just conquests, and the Maghreb became quickly its own place, like the Omayad Spain. We can say that at the start, the Oman conquests in East Africa were colonies, there the facts fit to the name, in the beginning. But the others, no, conquests, not colonialism.
Yes, I agree with this. I did not think of denying the White Africans of the descendants of settlers of many many generations becoming indigenous (although I don’t know enough about the Rhodesians, but the Afrikaaners are certainly there).
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: June 29, 2008
Life expectancy in Zimbabwe has already dropped from the low 60s to the high 30s…
When I grew up in the 1970s, a central truth was that Ian Smith was evil and Mr. Mugabe heroic. So it was jolting on my last visit to Zimbabwe, in 2005, to see how many Zimbabweans looked back on oppressive white rule with nostalgia. They offered a refrain: “Back then, at least parents could feed their children.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/opinion/29kristof.html?oref=slogin
What you wrote did not happen. Of course first they were mostly making war on another Empire as strange to the North Africa as them, the Byzantines. Calling imperial wars colonialism is silly and makes the word without any meaning.
The Ummayad did not convert everyone to Islam - that came much later, and mostly from indigenous dynasties.
The Ummayad did not do much to spread Arabic, that came many centuries later by the Beni Hilal and other migrating tribes, which is no way colonialism (since they were not even states, then we get to a very weird use of the word and we must call the German tribes of Europe colonialists and the Turkish tribe migrations colonialists).
Calling these things colonialism is stupid. Imperial conquest between empires, certainly. But just because the name is sensitive and you want to draw some equivalences does not make it useful. Apples, oranges. I am not saying on or another is better, but it is not the same fruit.
Yes, of course Mugabe in the past ten years has destroyed Zimbabwe. I did not write otherwise so it is silly to post that as a response. He turned mad and destructive.
Yes, but for these purposes, “white imperialism” in Africa dates from the beginning of the Age of Exploration – and of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which had very disruptive effects on the African states and societies. (There had always been slavery in Africa, but a lucrative export market, even bigger than the Ottoman Empire’s demand, was new. And not only could bandits make money off it, but the states could sell POWs and convicts as slaves. This had effects on public policy.)
And America practiced outright slavery until the end of the Civil War. Does that mean that America should have been toppled over and destroyed?
The end of Rhodesia did not signal black majority rule. All it signaled was Mugabe rule. The average black citizen of Zimbabwe is no better off than he was under Rhodesia and in many cases is worse off. People think that racial discrimination is the absolute worst most horrific injustice that mankind is capable of…and are so obsessed with this ideology that they’re willing to replace white-dominated stability with black-dominated starvation and then somehow convince themselves that the latter is a better situation.
Well the southern part of it certainly was.
Slave trade is not colonialism either. It is bad, but it is not colonialism.
That was in effect the civil war, and so you confirm my opinion. And?
No, that is not true. It signaled black majority rule, which after perhaps ten years, gradually Mugabe hijacked and drained of its legitimacy.
Do not write nonsense about things. It is non historical and prejudiced.
Now, yes. It did not have to be that way, as South Africa shows. Life clealry improved at first and there was unlike under the Apartheid regime, opportunity and hope.
There is no good basis nor reason to confuse the beginning with where Mugabe took things. In fact the better part of the settlers did well under black rule before Mugabe went spiralling into evil madness.
Your deliberate smearing is not enlightening and it is not even factual.
Well first of all it’s arguable that the slave trade really did hurt Africa. Note arguable not definitive. You can actually make good sound arguments both ways.
That said, the main problem with Africa today is lack of leaders. Outside of Tutu you have not had a strong African leader that was interested in HIS/HER country. So far all the leaders are interested in is lining their own pockets.
African leaders are content to take the profits, send their children to Western schools and let their countries decline.
The next problem is borders. These were drawn without any regard to tribes. After independence the OAU and later AU made a hard commitment to not altering any boundaries. Indeed only Eritrea has managed to break away with de Jure recognition. Somaliland has broken away defacto but is unrecognized. And South Sudan is likely to be the second de Jure country to break away.
Countries like Mozambique are as rich as California and have no reason not to be as successful, except there is no one really interested in building up Mozambique as much as lining their own pockets
It is impossible to prove a negative, & you know it, Ramira.
But facts talk, & BS walks.
While it is logically impossible to prove a negative, you could easily disprove my position–if one square foot of paved road existed in sub-Sarahan(sp?) Africa.
And it doesn’t.
Neither do large stone dams.
Nor improved harbors.
Nor did sub-Sarahan Africa build ships for trade.
The only sub-Sarahan, non-Arab city built of stone I know of, Great Zimbabwe, was abandoned before Colombus sailed, & even they never got beyond the Iron Age.
You got nothing.
Just whiney accusations of racism.
So, that’s where Conan comes from? 
Do not insult other posters with unfounded accusations of racism in this forum. Whatever beliefs you might have about the motives for others’ opinions, stick to debating the facts and logic and leave character assumptions out of it.
If you have a problem with another poster, report it. Do not continue the bad behavior by engaging in it, yourself.
Knock it off, both of you.
[ /Moderating ]