Mugabe began as a member of a pro-Soviet political party, and then became aligned with Maoists. He maintained very close ties with China. His army was trained by freaking North Korea.
I agree that it’d go way too far to say Mugabe is a product of the cold war, but it’s influence is there. The bigger picture is that Mugabe’s ability to gain power was a product of it’s times, which included a lot of East-West pressures, Mozambique’s struggle for independence, and the existence of Apartheid South Africa. The situation is very different now and the Africa of the 2000’s is not the Africa of the 1970s-1980s. A completely different set of larger forces is at work.
I may be overly optimistic. I am going there to work with what seems like a very well-organized project in a very forward-looking community- and that speaks to a kind of internal hope that I honestly did not see much of in west Africa. I’ll see what I see when I get there, I guess.
Actually, according to Finkelstein and Silberman, the Jews were there first – and made up the Exodus story, because in those days conquest was universally regarded as carrying more legitimate title to territory than ancient occupation.
Not exclusively. the GA act was also responsible for a lot of rural displacement, like in the Western Cape, which got off lightly under the earlier acts. Black workers were removed to the homelands to set the WC up as a “Coloured Labour Preference Area” area, and the removal of tenant labour of their historic smallholdings.
Also, not a big deal but neither the Land Act nor the NLTA are Apartheid legislation sensu strictu, being pre-1948.
But the general thrust of your point is very valid, and i don’t want to suggest that the GAA was the be-all or even the most important law in question.
A state that’s illegitimate to 13% of it’s populace is simply not as big of a failure as one that illegitimate to 95.5% of it’s populace. The sufferings of Blacks in the USA could be marginalized; Rhodesia was a born failure.
Ya know, you say you’re not advocating “Rhodesia’s system of racial inequality,” but then you go ahead and advocate for white rule in Rhodesia. It’s quite incoherent.
Quite frankly Rhodesia did “work out its racial issues.”
Okay, it’s a “failure” because you are wearing these blinders (the same blinders that so many people have) where racial injustice is THE ABSOLUTE WORST EVIL THING EVER and everything else is totally negated and unimportant. There happen to be worse things in the world than racism. Starving to death is worse than racism. Dying of AIDS is worse than racism. Shitting yourself to death with intestinal disease because there is no clean water is worse than racism.
You realize that the United States was built upon the land of the Native Americans. Huge tribes, whole cultures and civilizations with societies and religions and languages were just pushed aside to make room for the white man. Does that mean that America has also been a “failure”?
Again, you are looking at this with this unbelievably shallow one-dimensional “ZOMG RACISM” viewpoint. There are other factors to consider. Agriculture. Economic prosperity. Standards of living. Literacy. Education. All of these things were available to blacks in Rhodesia. It’s a fact. If they weren’t, thousands of blacks wouldn’t have volunteered to fight for the Rhodesian government. Blacks were not drafted by the Rhodesian army. Only white citizens were ever drafted into the Rhodesian army.
Look for yourself at photos from the Rhodesian bush war of the Rhodie troops. They show black and white soldiers happily fighting alongside one another. The pictures do not lie.
Land-locked, fairly demographically uniform, and no Nelson Mandela. Not a huge industrial base, either, just agriculture and mining. Plus Mugabe is a fucknugget.
Not this bullshit again. Yes, the Bushmen were marginalized - outcompeted for resources and left adrift in the progress of technology is more accurate - but the Khoe got on just fine with the Xhosa and intermingled just fine. Nelson fucking Mandela is part-Khoe. Khoekhoen were at the Cape for 1000 years before the Bantu migrated, they were there when the Europeans arrived. Now there are no Cape Khoekhoen - see the difference? What Blacks “did” is not the same “this” as what Whites did by any means.
This whole “Blacks did it too” is just a story Whites tell themselves so they don’t have to feel so bad for the shit they put *both *the Bantu and the Khoekhoen through.
I know this has become a pet concern of yours lately, but in regards to South Africa at least, you should recognize that you are speaking about something you do not understand at all. You have never experienced anything like being a black person living under apartheid. You’re making an implicit comparison between apartheid and modern day political correctness in the U.S. Racism in the U.S. in our lifetimes does not look anything like apartheid. It’s not in the same league as being a disenfranchised black South African. It’s not just that you’re wrong, and I do think you’re totally wrong about this (I find your opinions about Rhodesia bewildering). You are making this argument vehemently and without regard to the fact that you are making claims about something far beyond your experience.
So were cholera, warfarin and anthrax,freely available. Because the White Rhodesian military were fucking scum, of the exact same order as the SS-Totenkopfverbände and Unit 731.
Anyone who would defend Rhodesia at all, well, I know exactly what to think of that person.
The problem with this idea is that the Rhodesian state had no interest in working out its racial issues.
Rhodesia and South Africa are and were not the United States. Here, blacks were a relatively small minority (about 13% of the population in 1950, IIRC). In SA and Rhodesia, blacks were a sizable majority.
In any event, Rhodesia was being propped up by South Africa, and it was the loss of South African support that doomed it, not “bullying” by the US and UK.
[QUOTE=MrDibble]
…no Nelson Mandela
[/QUOTE]
This is key. Mandela’s greatest legacy isn’t majority rule; it’s the protection of the rights of the minority that came afterwards. Gandhi’s attitude toward Muslims in India is similar.
Blacks fought for the Apartheid government, too. Hell, there were a few Blacks in the Confederate Army, too. Janissaries and sepoys are not a new phenomenon.
The same is true of almost everyone who ever posts about this issue here. That doesn’t stop them from dogmatically declaring that white Africa’s racial policies are the most evilest thing to ever scourge the planet.
They’re not saying what you are, which is that being part of the oppressed majority in a profoundly racist state was not so bad.
Nobody’s actually said that. But their version is still closer to the truth than yours is. For all of modern South Africa’s severe problems, you’re romanticizing the past.
seriously, though, it seems like we’re confusing social and economic success. South Africa has failed at both.
I am tired of this rose-tinted glasses shit when it comes to ‘developing’ economies. (I think Third World isn’t PC.)
Look, if you want to hold up South Africa as a gem of what ‘them dark folk’ can do after whiteys are out of power, go ahead. It’s not saying anything good about non-European cultures if that is your standard.
Towers and I (I don’t think) aren’t trying to make an argument that South Africa *can’t *fix itself. We’re saying that its government, efficient programs, and lack of relative democracy has kept it back – and it’s only getting worse.
Taking land and giving it to new people isn’t going to fix it. Sorry.
There are a lot of people who fled both SA and Zimbabwe when they were no longer the privileged elite. They do tend to run off their mouths to anyone who is inclined to listen. “Whenwes”, we call them - “When we lived in Rhodesia…” is a never-ending refrain. I find “Actually, I think you mean Zimbabwe, you racist fuck” tends to shut them up. But sometimes their overactive whining mouths have already done the damage elsewhere.
