If you lived in abject poverty that was brought on by your government's greed and by the rape of your country's natural resources by western multi-national corporations and when you went to vote your vote was ignored or tossed aside, then I'm betting you'd riot too. If you saw that the only way out of a miserable existence was to attach yourself to whatever dictatorial strong man was in power then I guess you'd take up a machete and try to hack off the heads of the people who wanted him out. If you skimmed food and cash off all the charity that flows into your country and you got fat and rich off it then I'm sure you'd do whatever it took to keep that flow going.
For years western countries like the US and Britain have forced alien political systems on African nations. They've told them, "You must be a democracy like we are!" Of course it doesn't matter to the US or to Britain that for hundreds of thousands of years Africans got along fine without democracy. The US, Britain, and other countries have insisted that multi-national corporations be allowed to plunder Africa's resources and to make low paid wage slaves out of their citizens. We've also shoved our twisted brand of Christianity down their throats for hundreds of years and we've done our best to obliterate their tribal past.
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I can't help but see that the past 40 years of trying to remake Africa into the USA and Britain has been a disaster for most every African and for Africa in general. Of course there have been some who have profited and have done well from our plunder of the dark continent, and as usual it's been the corporate CEO's and their henchmen in our governments.
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Maybe if we got the hell out of Africa and we stop forcing our political and economic systems down their throats, then Africans might just work things out for themselves. After all, the one country that has rejected the IMF and the World Bank, Botswana, is one of the most peaceful and economically sound countries in Africa. They do things in Botswana the way they think best and not the way the technocrats in Washington and London think they ought to. Most every other country in Africa has adopted western style economics and aped western style political systems to their detriment. If we got the politicians, the missionaries, the corporations, and the zealots out of Africa then life would be better for millions of Africans once again.
8 comments:
On a related note, have you ever seen the documentary, Sierra Leone's Refugee Allstars? It's pretty good.
Tough questions, these. The West has been raping and pillaging Africa for hundreds of years, whether for slaves, minerals,diamonds... and then the west self-righteously goes in and tries to sort THEM out with their self perpetuating foreign aid schemes... it's so twisted.
I found the Poisonwood Bible by B. Kingsolver very interesting, at least from the twisted religion point of view
we should also leave So AMerica --
Kenya was supposed to be one of the shining stars of Africa.....
i guess that star has become a black hole too
Excellent post, Monkey! I wholeheartedly agree! We need to get the fuck out of there and leave the Africans to sort out their own problems without our gov't playing parties, groups and leaders as pawns!
I am especially sensitive to the religious aspect of the whole thing-when I hear of evangelical missionaries in Africa and hear how they have helped, the poor, I think, yeah, at what cost-did the poor people have to pledge to change their own naturalistic, peaceful religion to the intolerant, non-inclusive "born again" belief system-bribed for food and clothes,even medical attn?
Great post, Monkey. Have you read Chalmers Johnson's Sorrows of Empire? It sums up nicely just WHY those "third-world" countries we supposedly try to help just never seem to get better. Great book.
I think Kenya's government has been independent for a long time, not that it has stopped multi-national corporations from plundering their resources, as you say.
While I agree that we should stop strong-arming African countries to enact or enforce policies that benefit our corporations, I can't really agree that Africans got along fine before we started meddling. Africa has always been a hot mess, and we've always been willing to exploit that for our own benefit.
GKL-Nope, I have not seen that yet. I'll look for it.
Gifted-It's simple really, if we left them alone and stop enabling the corporations and governments who rape them then a lot of the bad shit over there would stop.
Dcap-Yes, we should leave South America and central America as well.
Micgar-Yeah the missionaries scare me too.
Delia-I have not read that book but I'll look out for it. Thanks for the heads up.
Dr. Z-They may be independant in Kenya but they are certainly not free.
Vikki-Perhaps "Fine" was a bad choice of words but my point is after we've fucked them over for years now we demand they use our political and economice systems when both are utterly alien to them and their culture. We should remove all corporate and western governments as soon as possible and let the Africans sort out their own problems.
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