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Making the Move From Outside the EU
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 17/02/2008, 18:34
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Jura
Joined on 28/11/2005
Posts 805
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Re: Moving to France from South Africa
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Cut it short maybe, but come in with a better remark than that please. In short, Africa has not thrived under African rule.
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17/02/2008, 21:22
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woolybanana'sbrother
Joined on 18/01/2008
Posts 1,321
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Re: Moving to France from South Africa
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Jura, read between the lines.
Do not try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
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17/02/2008, 23:28
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tegwini
 
Joined on 19/09/2007
Wiltshire & Vienne
Posts 278
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Re: Moving to France from South Africa
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Hi W-B's brother
Neither Jura, (nor myself) have put out a tirade - it's more a lament & regret for what has happened in Africa & especially in my case in southern Africa- my husband's family roots go back there for hundreds of years & it's hard to accept what is happening there,
Empire loyalists probably have not really helped, not only did they not understand Africa, but their loyalties & interests lay elsewhere & not in Africa. And now many in the UK think the Commonwealth ( the empire now liberated) , is wonderful, functions well, is democratic, full of economically sound countries with well-principled & honest leaders. Some of this is misguided guilt. And we know that the commonwealth is really full of leaders who are despots, incompetants, & often see their country's wealth as their own.
That's what this lament is about & that we are helpless to change anything.
regards
tegwini
ps it's also sad that so many think Mandela is a saint, his first (abandonned) wife, Evelyn (mother of his 4 children, none of whom he helped) disagrees.
I think, therefore perhaps I am...
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18/02/2008, 8:59
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woolybanana'sbrother
Joined on 18/01/2008
Posts 1,321
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Re: Moving to France from South Africa
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Mandela got Western support because he delivered a violence free handover to black majority rule and cooled some of the "hotheads " in the ANC. Whether there could have been alternatives is open to question. Whatever they might have been, they would have been subjected to the rule of the big corporations who did not want their money making operations interrupted. I wonder whether the presence of the Chinese would have made a difference?
Do not try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
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18/02/2008, 12:12
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Quillan
Joined on 23/08/2004
Forum Moderator
Posts 3,919
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Re: Moving to France from South Africa
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 Jura wrote: | | Cut it short maybe, but come in with a better remark than that please. In short, Africa has not thrived under African rule. |
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By your standards. The expats from these countries really don't have a clue.
In the main it was the Brits, Dutch and a few others that divided the African sub continent up and oppressed the 'black' and of course taking them for slaves (and yes we do know that some were given by their chiefs to the slavers).
Before African was colonized there were no 'countries' as we know them only tribal areas. It was the whites that created the different countries that we know now, it was the whites that destroyed the 'black' way of tribal life. Some of the great tribes had a far higher level of civilisation than anything the whites bought to the country. Still, even today, the expats talk down to the blacks and your comment is so typical of the attitude that is only to often seen by the rest of us. In fact you could very easily read rasism in to it if you wanted to read between the lines. The current situation in Africa is because the whites won't accept the responsibility of their past ***-ups, they would rather sit there when it goes bums-up and say 'I told you so'. The whites were only in Africa for one reason and one reason only which was to make money at the blacks expense. When the blacks stopped working they whites shipped in 'slaves' from india and China. The blacks only behave the way they do because they have learnt their ways from the white man.
I am reminded of this attitude by some older Australians who thought just the same way about the Aborigines there calling them lazy drunkards. The question is who made them that way, they were not like that till the white man arrived. Clearly these people had no understanding.
As for the comments about the commonwealth, walk down any UK street and ask a person who the members are, very few will know what it is let alone who is a member or the head of state. For most of us it has long gone now and slipped in to oblivion so it is pointless mentioning it, its just an excuse for a nice jolly for the politicians.
http://www.chambresdhote.com
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18/02/2008, 19:57
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CJR
Joined on 18/02/2008
Posts 5
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Re: Moving to France from South Africa
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I do not want give a history lesson but I think you should you need one especially one in economic history.
The poor inhabitants in England, France, Germany, Russia and other European countries were also exploited in the 17th and 18th centuries. What distinguishes western society from the current situation in Africa is that our socities have become better managed through eduction and discipline, and we have a legal and social framework in which to manage our economies for the people.
We do not have leaders like most African leaders who think that when they rise to power with the sole responsibility of managing and controling their economies they often act so irresponsibly that their people suffer from starvation, lack of education, training, housing, a suitable infrastructure and internal investment in their local economies. Take South Africa, as well as a lot of other countries in Africa which have vast natural resouces: oil in Nigeria and Angola, massive mineral wealth which is a huge capability for generating vast energy needs. These have been largely badly managed through corruption and greed by the political leaders in Africa.
How can you blame the colonials for the poor and corrupt leadership of the majority of the countries in Africa ?
The colonials left a fairly healthy infrastuctrure on which the indegionous populations could build, yet they have wasted this instead they have let these infrastructures decay and degrade into what they are now. Take the examples Kariba , Cabora Bassa no longer generating electricity at the moment also the current power situation in South Africa with the blackouts etc which is affecting industry and jobs. There has been no planning or management of these strategic assets by the indigenious leaders. There are so many examples of these situations in throught Africa. This is not about race or the Colonies in Africa but about the culture of African leadership and politics.
Why is it that we have such huge illegal immigration into Europe and America from Africa ? It is because what these societies offer compared to those run by the morally bankrupt African leaders. It is these corrupt and incompetent African leaders who are responsible for the appaling state of Africa.
CJR
CJR
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18/02/2008, 20:37
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tegwini
Joined on 19/09/2007
Wiltshire & Vienne
Posts 278
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Re: Moving to France from South Africa
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Hi Quillan
Not sure what you mean by 'ex-pats' ...
Last night we watched 'Zulu Dawn' on TV - ancient, and a repeat, but it does show a lot.
The ex-pats in this film were the arrogant upper-class British officers & British colonial officials who made disasterous decisions that brought about the deaths at Isandlwana of nearly a thousand British men & about 450 Zulus. British men signed up to join the army often out of poverty, from the slums of British cities where many were exploited by employers & were often jobless & hungry. Rourke's Drift was on the following day - another disaster. Three months later they brought Gatling guns to Africa & destroyed the Zulu tribes & imprisoned Cetswayo on Robben island near Cape Town.
This was NOT South Africans fighting the Zulus, but foreigners, the only South African (a Boer) in the film gave sensible advice (use the wagons in a laager) but Lord Chelmsford et al insisted on the Brit way of fighting & lost. Lots of examples of incompetance: eg bullets in sealed boxes leading to shortages etc - these ex-pats didn't have a clue!
Not long after, in 1899, the British decided to go to war against the Transvaal & OFS- on very spurious grounds, & again brought out an ex-pat army - as many as 750,000 trained soldiers from Britain & the empire against a max .of 30,000 farmers (Boers) not soldiers.
It took Milner's scorched earth policy & concentration camps for women & children, of whom nearly 30,000 died, to bring about surrender by the Afrikaners. The new government was almost entirely ex-pat - Oxbridge types for Milner's new government in Cape Town and also more decisions made- even some of the groundwork laid for apartheid by these ex-pats from Britain. At this time the Union of South Africa became (unwillingly for many) part of the glorious empire/commonwealth.
Europe & the UK also started with a tribal structure, millenia ago, stronger, fiercer tribes conquered others & ultimately we ended up with a royal family- some of whom might be described as ex-pats too.
Sorry this is a bit long, but this is a complicated topic, but remember above all, that many white South Africans have had family in South Africa since 1652, and they are not ex-pats.
tegwini
I think, therefore perhaps I am...
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19/02/2008, 8:54
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Quillan
Joined on 23/08/2004
Forum Moderator
Posts 3,919
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Re: Moving to France from South Africa
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Talking of facts?
Firstly it gives the wrong impression when you say that there have been white south Africans since 1652. What you are really talking about is the Dutch who invaded and set up a trading camp (Dutch East India Company) to supply stores to ships passing the cape. They had hardly taken over the whole continent at that time.
The others, the French, Dutch, Scandinavians etc were mainly escaping justice or religious reform and came to run farms that were set up to supply the DEIC with food to sell. When, in around 1688, the farms had run out of local help they started enslaving the local population and importing slaves from Madagascar and Indonesia who after being interbred with the whites became known as the Cape Coloureds.
So we are not talking about South African we are talking about a Dutch run business. It wasn’t till around the late 1700’s, early 1800’s that the Dutch started trekking inland and only then when they finally managed to get their hands on guns etc. This was really because the British took the Cape in 1795 so basically the Dutch legged it.
Now these people who went on the ‘treks’ were basically farmers who wanted to grow stuff for themselves so they went off looking for pastures new. The word for a farmer in Dutch is Boar, a Boar is not a South African, just an invading, land grabbing (Dutch) farmer. The Brits had to put them down because they kept grabbing land from Xhosa and starting all sorts of problems (for the Brits).
So that’s how it all started, by an invasion for financial gain by a company. Don’t forget we did much the same in Rhodesia but for diamonds. All this before they discovered the vast mineral wealth and more recently the oil.
Now then, western managed society, are you having a laugh or what, just look at us. Not happy to tax our own to death and let rapists, paedophiles and murders go free after a short prison sentence we encourage people to borrow beyond their means, we start wars in countries that have nothing to do with us, we have practiced genocide on the grandest of scales, need I go on because I can if you want. Now I wonder where the modern black African leaders got their ideas from? The point is we ‘educated’ these people in to our ways, they are trying to return to the past or as it was before the white man came, back to their tribal system that worked for over 2,500 years and was not financially orientated. Unfortunately all their history has basically disappeared, they are lost and we should help them and give them as much money and help as they need. After all we have taken so much for so long.
When people talk about, in respect of Africa, education, infrastructure, health, economic management etc what is it in relation to, western standards, and that’s what we measure things by. Has anyone stopped to think that there may another way and that perhaps these people were better off before we enforced all this upon them. We have made them what they are, we should have left them as they were. We had absolutely no right to do what we did to Africa or any other area of the globe that we colonized.
As I said before these people were civilised, look at Cetswayo just one of the great and just Zulu Kings, not by our standards or ideals but his people loved him because he was fair and just by their standards. As he is reported to have said before the battle at Isandlwana “How would it be if I went to England and stood in front of Queen Victoria and told her how to run her country?”. Of course we put these cheeky blacks down in the end by using machine guns against spears, I mean how dare they. Not the first time the Brits have practiced genocide and it won’t be the last, think of India New Zealand, West Indies. I rather think we need to sort our own problems out before we attempt to ridicule and judge others.
All smacks of white supremacy to me but their you go.
http://www.chambresdhote.com
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France Forum » Moving » Making the Move... » Re: Botswana - good government ?????
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