Activists claim that colonialism was an unmitigated disaster. Yet decades after independence, ex-colonies are still benefiting from the legacy of colonial rule.
I grew up in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. My father was in the South African Communist Party (SACP) and, as such, I only visited South Africa for the first time in 1993 when the ANC and SACP were unbanned and my father allowed to enter South Africa for the first time in decades.
As we drove over the border post I asked my father why the border was so fortified against people coming in. "I thought South Africa was supposed to be bad, dad - why do they need to stop people from coming in?"
"That's because the standard of living is so much higher in South Africa than elsewhere on the continent, and if they didn't have a strong border, all of Africa would be here".
That statement from my father rocked my mind. Here was an anti-Apartheid activist admitting freely that life in Apartheid South Africa was self evidently better than life outside of it.
Many people other than Western liberals and African elites acknowledge this as a self evident truth. When I was a boy in Zimbabwe many black adults I spoke to who had lived under both the colonial regime and the Mugabe regime spoke about the colonial days as being far better: health, education, infrastructure, salaries, everything.
To this day the older generation of the working classes openly speak about the "old days" being better. They are accused of being "self hating" and of "lacking consciousness" by black elites who have a vested interest in advancing the myth of postcolonial improvements and who have the luxury to believe otherwise: This coming from people who educate their children in Europe and get medical treatment in Europe.
Sadly it is mostly this class of people who are vocal in the West and who are adept at playing European identity politics to their advantage.
A couple of years ago I visited Cape Town and went to Robin Island (where Mandela was held for 20 years). I was gobsmacked to see his prison cell and the meal rota still written on the wall.
What once was a testament to the inhumanity of Apartheid had unwittingly become a testament to the opposite. One man to a cell. Three square meals a day. Exercise. Clean linen.
My cousin went to prison in Zimbabwe for 10 years. He had 1 meal a day of ground up maize with water. There were 20 people to a cell and a single bucket as a communal toilet, emptied once per day. Cholera, typhoid, TB and hepatitis were rife. The prison guards would often bury people while they were still alive, knowing that they were as good as dead in any case.
The unfortunate reality is that someone like Nelson Mandela could only have been produced in Apartheid South Africa. Only the Apartheid state had a sufficiently independent judiciary and justice system to allow someone like Mandela to have a trial to begin with and to have any hope of being acquitted of the charges against him.
All the latter day Mandelas are lying in shallow graves, nameless and unheard of, long ago executed without trial or killed by disease and starvation.
For some reason Westerners appear to think these postcolonial states are "free" while constantly obsessing over the "evils of the past" without so much as taking the time to visit a hospital, prison or school. They maintain a "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" mentality that does my country (and other ones like it) no favours.
It’s interesting that all of these “oppressed” groups are clamoring to get into Western “imperial” nations like the United States and Great Britain, fleeing the squalor of their own indigenous roots for the upscale grandiosity that they rail against? What more really needs to be said?
The CEO of Google himself came from India, and rather than being thankful to his new Country, he chose to vilify the culture and it’s people for no other reason than to promote his own agenda and monetary success. He thanked White Americans for his privilege by trying to erase the from history? He is a man of great privilege and wealth, allowed to create that wealth in a nation he condemns, all the while hiding the fact that India has the highest number of humans living in modern day slavery. Why is that never brought up?
At least in the United States and Great Britain, slavery is outlawed, but in India, it goes on unimpeded by such concepts of human rights. Perhaps if more people talked about that, and educated people about that, this whole scam would end? We have millions pouring across the open borders to get into a country where they can have a better, more equitable life than in their own squalid home countries, why is that never discussed because it is such an obvious hole it’s the Marxist argument?
I think this is a matter where truth is so hard to prevail because of two factors, a)the mainstream media which promulgates white guilt will of course emphatically deny any existence of beneficial effects of colonization and b) the current elites of the previously colonized nations are extremely unlikely to even suggest colonization had salutary effects because they have to govern a highly nationalistic society that have a deep, whether misplaced or not, animosity towards their former colonizers. So these two factors work together to shun any evidence on the actual effects of colonization
This is a disgusting take. I constantly criticize the people that want to blame past atrocities to then shame or humiliate or even oppress people now, partly because they usually use a partial account of history to paint themselves victims. But it is equally as insane and disgusting to try to whitewash the colonial legacy.
The reason you see this overall trend of ex-colonies being more economically productive and literate and socially progressive chiefly in the actual colonial hubs, is that for one thing the colonial hubs were chosen for their preexisting markets and enterprise, they were often the capitals of the states or monarchies that collapsed under colonial rule. They thrive now despite former atrocities and not because of them. Which relates to the second reason, during colonial rule all industry was systematically destroyed in the rest of the occupied territory. There were strong migration pressures for every capable person to rush to the colonial capitals in order to escape horrifyingly brutal conditions(I challenge anyone to have an honest look at the average person’s life during colonial times and to try and justify it in the name of better development). The *relatively* better development of these places is not the positive legacy of colonialism that you think it is.
Every civilization and ethnicity has atrocious things in its historical legacy, things that most normal people should feel disgusted and ashamed of. Why try to pretend it away by selective analysis? Look at statistics that make the professional victims uncomfortable, by all means, but also look into why the statistical trends exist. Otherwise, you are no better than they are.
Perhaps we should compare the improved outcomes of colonialised states to the advantages enjoyed by the children of the rich, or a derivative of white privilege or whatever. That would bend a few brains.
The Bornu empire was located in Northeastern Nigeria, not the southeast.
And yes, only the elite and the traditionalist fools would deny the comparative benefits of colonial administration. I remember reading Gilley's thesis cum proposal and being very impressed and sad at the same time. Sad that such an obvious truth which continues to ring true till today would never be countenanced. The hypocrisy of most African states is revealed in their usual their usual choice of coaches for their national football teams. Many often preferring to go for foreign coaches, often of European descent. Why? Because international sports is one arena in which their nepotistic, mediocre, and corrupt modus operandi can never generate false result.
I grew up in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. My father was in the South African Communist Party (SACP) and, as such, I only visited South Africa for the first time in 1993 when the ANC and SACP were unbanned and my father allowed to enter South Africa for the first time in decades.
As we drove over the border post I asked my father why the border was so fortified against people coming in. "I thought South Africa was supposed to be bad, dad - why do they need to stop people from coming in?"
"That's because the standard of living is so much higher in South Africa than elsewhere on the continent, and if they didn't have a strong border, all of Africa would be here".
That statement from my father rocked my mind. Here was an anti-Apartheid activist admitting freely that life in Apartheid South Africa was self evidently better than life outside of it.
Many people other than Western liberals and African elites acknowledge this as a self evident truth. When I was a boy in Zimbabwe many black adults I spoke to who had lived under both the colonial regime and the Mugabe regime spoke about the colonial days as being far better: health, education, infrastructure, salaries, everything.
To this day the older generation of the working classes openly speak about the "old days" being better. They are accused of being "self hating" and of "lacking consciousness" by black elites who have a vested interest in advancing the myth of postcolonial improvements and who have the luxury to believe otherwise: This coming from people who educate their children in Europe and get medical treatment in Europe.
Sadly it is mostly this class of people who are vocal in the West and who are adept at playing European identity politics to their advantage.
A couple of years ago I visited Cape Town and went to Robin Island (where Mandela was held for 20 years). I was gobsmacked to see his prison cell and the meal rota still written on the wall.
What once was a testament to the inhumanity of Apartheid had unwittingly become a testament to the opposite. One man to a cell. Three square meals a day. Exercise. Clean linen.
My cousin went to prison in Zimbabwe for 10 years. He had 1 meal a day of ground up maize with water. There were 20 people to a cell and a single bucket as a communal toilet, emptied once per day. Cholera, typhoid, TB and hepatitis were rife. The prison guards would often bury people while they were still alive, knowing that they were as good as dead in any case.
The unfortunate reality is that someone like Nelson Mandela could only have been produced in Apartheid South Africa. Only the Apartheid state had a sufficiently independent judiciary and justice system to allow someone like Mandela to have a trial to begin with and to have any hope of being acquitted of the charges against him.
All the latter day Mandelas are lying in shallow graves, nameless and unheard of, long ago executed without trial or killed by disease and starvation.
For some reason Westerners appear to think these postcolonial states are "free" while constantly obsessing over the "evils of the past" without so much as taking the time to visit a hospital, prison or school. They maintain a "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" mentality that does my country (and other ones like it) no favours.
It’s interesting that all of these “oppressed” groups are clamoring to get into Western “imperial” nations like the United States and Great Britain, fleeing the squalor of their own indigenous roots for the upscale grandiosity that they rail against? What more really needs to be said?
The CEO of Google himself came from India, and rather than being thankful to his new Country, he chose to vilify the culture and it’s people for no other reason than to promote his own agenda and monetary success. He thanked White Americans for his privilege by trying to erase the from history? He is a man of great privilege and wealth, allowed to create that wealth in a nation he condemns, all the while hiding the fact that India has the highest number of humans living in modern day slavery. Why is that never brought up?
At least in the United States and Great Britain, slavery is outlawed, but in India, it goes on unimpeded by such concepts of human rights. Perhaps if more people talked about that, and educated people about that, this whole scam would end? We have millions pouring across the open borders to get into a country where they can have a better, more equitable life than in their own squalid home countries, why is that never discussed because it is such an obvious hole it’s the Marxist argument?
I think this is a matter where truth is so hard to prevail because of two factors, a)the mainstream media which promulgates white guilt will of course emphatically deny any existence of beneficial effects of colonization and b) the current elites of the previously colonized nations are extremely unlikely to even suggest colonization had salutary effects because they have to govern a highly nationalistic society that have a deep, whether misplaced or not, animosity towards their former colonizers. So these two factors work together to shun any evidence on the actual effects of colonization
This is a disgusting take. I constantly criticize the people that want to blame past atrocities to then shame or humiliate or even oppress people now, partly because they usually use a partial account of history to paint themselves victims. But it is equally as insane and disgusting to try to whitewash the colonial legacy.
The reason you see this overall trend of ex-colonies being more economically productive and literate and socially progressive chiefly in the actual colonial hubs, is that for one thing the colonial hubs were chosen for their preexisting markets and enterprise, they were often the capitals of the states or monarchies that collapsed under colonial rule. They thrive now despite former atrocities and not because of them. Which relates to the second reason, during colonial rule all industry was systematically destroyed in the rest of the occupied territory. There were strong migration pressures for every capable person to rush to the colonial capitals in order to escape horrifyingly brutal conditions(I challenge anyone to have an honest look at the average person’s life during colonial times and to try and justify it in the name of better development). The *relatively* better development of these places is not the positive legacy of colonialism that you think it is.
Every civilization and ethnicity has atrocious things in its historical legacy, things that most normal people should feel disgusted and ashamed of. Why try to pretend it away by selective analysis? Look at statistics that make the professional victims uncomfortable, by all means, but also look into why the statistical trends exist. Otherwise, you are no better than they are.
I've been reliably informed that cannibalism is good, and only evil Christians put an end to it.
Homer Simpson said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6SNxNIV08
Perhaps we should compare the improved outcomes of colonialised states to the advantages enjoyed by the children of the rich, or a derivative of white privilege or whatever. That would bend a few brains.
The Bornu empire was located in Northeastern Nigeria, not the southeast.
And yes, only the elite and the traditionalist fools would deny the comparative benefits of colonial administration. I remember reading Gilley's thesis cum proposal and being very impressed and sad at the same time. Sad that such an obvious truth which continues to ring true till today would never be countenanced. The hypocrisy of most African states is revealed in their usual their usual choice of coaches for their national football teams. Many often preferring to go for foreign coaches, often of European descent. Why? Because international sports is one arena in which their nepotistic, mediocre, and corrupt modus operandi can never generate false result.
What about ex-colonizer?