[Long-winded Rant] South Africa: An Omen For America?

You know who's really ungrateful? The Africans who were provided free transport to the Americas. In their homelands they didnt have powerful modern tools like a highly organized cash crop economy like the one based around growing and marketing cotton, modern mass farming techniques to properly exploit the land in a systemic and organized way, modern tools like leather bull whips and handguns, a fully organized criminal justice system with organized record keeping to ensure lawbreakers who try and skip out on their obligations have to go back and honor their debts. And modern veterinary care to ensure they were able to remain productive members of society as long as possible.

Sure there were pros and cons, but life was clearly much nicer in their new homes and the ingrates just refuse to recognize all the advantages that were gifted to them by their benevolant new landlords.

 

As usual, someone who identifies as "extreme left" tries too hard to tilt words to fit their narrative and wonders why no one outside their circle takes them seriously. I'm not here to throw rocks at brick walls. If you are not a brave enough person to look at pre colonial life, and where it would have left people in today's globalized society, then I can't dignify you with a response.

Things would have still chugged along in the Americas, at a much slower pace, but gone on nonetheless.

Brutal violence and colonialism was going on in Africa long before the evil white man came - not based on skin color, but tribe affiliation. Indeed, it was Africans who sent other Africans to their doom. Man was a bloodthirsty being in the medieval ages regardless of skin color.

 

This isn't even an argument that anyone is making. War has existed in every nation and it has, in the end, gave us the modern world.

Colonialism exploited those countries and it hasn't left them better off, it just made the colonial powers stronger because they got to profit off of the resources of other nations with little cost. Africa was just doing fine before colonialism and all colonialism did was rob many of those areas of their resources, drew lines through their territory, and belittled them.

It had little to no positive effect. I'm pretty sure that without it we'd see a lot more stability on the continent, and the continent wouldn't be divided up into 50+ different countries. What colonization did was prevent a modern African nation from forming in the first place. The normal wars and conflicts which would have made one tribe bigger and take huge swaths of land and assimilating smaller tribes didn't happen, something that happened in every continent (speaking of relatively modern times) was prevented in Africa because of the proxy-wars between colonial powers.

The point is, pre-colonial Africa (just like the Americas) was NOT a wasteland, it didn't need saving.

 

I don't want to put in the work to argue here. I will just say that I think your understanding of what was going on in the "medieval ages" is probably pretty vague, and if you murder someone it isn't a positive defense to claim that if you hadn't done it someone else would have. I'm also not very sure if you know what apartheid was like when it ended in 1992. I'm not sure if you can remember when Apartheid was the law in South Africa, but I certainly can.

Also, "medieval ages" ended with the start of the Renaissance in the 1400's, give or take depending on where you lived. The Dutch colonization of Africa didn't begin until the mid 17th century, and the Zulu weren't defeated by the British until the 1880's but I guess it was all "a long time ago".

 

The slavery is bad argument... gee such a hard and intellectually rigorous argument. Almost off topic. Wait. It is.

 

You've got revisionist history going. The tribal chiefs who sold hundreds of thousands of their own people to the invaders are also a testament to that.

How would the warring Africans extracted the resources they didn't use or value? It is a tragedy rich African culture was lost in the name of money, but as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and other writers who describe pre colonial life will tell you, it was not in a great state or one inclined towards progress.

"The fact that chieftaincy is mostly based on kinship, for instance, is problematic because of the exclusive nature of leadership that this entails, which is especially problematic in countries with ethnic antagonisms. Secondly, some of the customs of indigenous African society might have been effective in relatively smaller-scale societies but are less likely to be so in the larger states of present day Africa.

An example of this is that of consensus which in a large-scale modern African state would make the political process invariably slow, as well as prone to conformity and authoritarianism that could effectively silence dissent and result in uncontroversial and un-enlightened decisions. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in claiming that Africa’s pre-colonial peasant cultures had “oppressive reactionary tendencies” that were “only slightly less grave than the racist colonial culture” strikes a chord."

--

Although Achebe favors the African culture of the pre-western society, the author attributes its destruction to the "weaknesses within the native structure."

It's great you've got your own little narrative going, but I'll go with those who experienced pre colonial Africa and are celebrated academics.

 

Since "Middle Ages" refers to the period in the middle of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance, the events are measured by places with the Renesance and the Roman Empire - i.e. places in Southern Europe, even when you talking about places not in Europe.

Hence, you it is perfectly common to say "Midieval China" or "China durring the middle ages" and everybody knows you are talking about the thousand years between about 475AD and 1450AD, even though the Western Roman Empire never ruled China, and neither did the Renesance happen there.

And since the Western Roman Empire was never anywhere near Southern Africa, when you discuss "medieval" with respect to the area, that is the only respect in which the word can apply at all.

 

Well, you claim to know history but you don't seem to realize that they sold their enemies, not their own people.

Yeah, Africans had no idea what gold was until Europeans showed up...someone doesn't know who Mansa Musa was I suppose.

....none of what you quoted are the beliefs of either Achebe or Ngugi.

It's apparently some one's thesis and their own analysis...I'm not even going to dunk on the guy because he seems very well traveled and educated.

The last bit is from wiki and very selectively quoted from you.

Kind of funny you talking about narrative when you bring up fiction writers. Great, legendary writers to be sure...just kind of funny to me... While tremendously important, like say Orwell or Phillip K Dick, Achebe was an author...whose work has been analyzed by many and many do not come to the same conclusion as you do, that he was praising colonialism? I guess, it's art, it's up to your interpretation. People think Orwell hated socialism while he himself was a Democratic Socialist...up to your interpretation. You sure selectively quoted that wiki page too...

As for Ngugi, I mean, you were on wiki, since that's what you were quoting, you should have done a bit of a dip into who he is? He's no fan of colonialism.

I seriously doubt either have come to your conclusion, that Africa needed European colonization.

As for your point, it really doesn't hit for me. My point never was that Pre-colonial Africa was a utopia. Saying 'Life was hard' well...duh... life was hard in Europe too for most of the people. My point was that Africa didn't need colonization. Pre-colonial Africa, which extends back to ancient human history, did just fine.

 

You know what the South African Whites modeled the apartheid homeland system after? The American Indian Reservation.

Who's going to be the first to try and type with a straight face that Native American lives as a whole were made so much better by the arrival of White European settlers? I mean, even if we exclude the unintentional portions of the genocide.

 

The quotes were because I do not have the book on me. I can't comment on what I haven't read, but commentaries on pre colonial Africa don't remotely depict a thriving, harmonious society. The downfall came about from black on black crime, selling out tribesmen to colonialists who preyed on this weakness.

No one needed colonization, and Achebe et al did not "praise it". But it was the ideal marketed to the serfs and peasants in Europe, then to those colonized, live like a Lord to be worthy of anything. Or atleast have a hell of a lot of work, something which 99% of humans strive to do and scientific achievements invented by the colonists have made possible. My point was in an adapt or die world, as history repeatedly showed, the British certainly helped to advance the lifestyles of those who adapted in the Commonwealth (which was far greater than just Africa) by bringing about modern technical and scientific innovations. These who remained in the societies also chose to strive for it by leaving what was pretty much a communist tribal mentality.

Winnie Mandela was the one who said you don't have to dig in the diamond mines if you don't want the white man to be rich.White or black, it was the same seduction everyone gravitated towards.

 

Sooooo you are saying that stealing land is bad. I agree.

 

It doesn't have to be harmonious though, wasn't exactly my point. Europe's big boom period came after the Black Plague, which, to them at the time, literally seemed like the end of the world. My argument was never that pre-colonial Africa was a utopia, just that it was doing fine, relatively so, and would be better off without its colonizers.


Also, again, they basically sold prisoners of war.

I guess when it comes to Achebe, by the end of his books one could say that he saw some positives with the end result of colonialism, unintended ones to be sure...but it is still art and a work of fiction willing to be interpreted. Just like how both liberals and conservatives can read 1984 and think that it is an argument for their ideology.

Here is the thing. The tech argument, I get it. The issue is this, Africa didn't need to be colonized to learn new tech. That's the issue.

Europeans didn't have to be colonized by China to learn what gunpowder was, for example. Africans didn't need to be colonized by Europeans and that colonization meant that others, not them, profited off of their resources. A big part of why colonization hurt was the riches stolen.

So for me that still makes colonization unnecessary, the worst part of colonization was the exploitation of those country's riches, and some of those countries were still paying a colonial tax far into the future. Colonizers didn't come into Africa with the intent to teach anything, other than their religion and language I guess, but what else is new.

 

Senator claimed whites made things better for South Africas with their technology.

Enslavement is an example of people being transfered to a society with much higher levels of technology and paradoxically being reduced to a much worse standard of living.

European technology didnt benefit slaves in the USA and it didn't benefit South Africans herded into tiny "homelands".

 

recovering stolen property isn't bad.

 

Nice try but that is dishonest. Not all of the land was stolen and if it was they should go to court to prove it. It is clearly a blanket excuse for political support in order to carry out attrocities.

But apologize for it all you want.

 

What I said is accurate.