I live in South Africa. My family was from England. My grandfather was a steam train inspector for British railways, and would work anywhere where the British colonies were. He and his family, my father with his sister's lived in many colonies, Palestine, Ceylon (Sri Lanka today), Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today) and the Republic of South Africa (just South Africa today).
My Father finally settled in Durban, South Africa, where I was born.
I can remember the city of Durban from the 1970's, and the neatness and order of life and the infrastructure of the time, the neat way people used to dress and the orderliness of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian.
We moved out of the city while I was still young, and only went back to visit family there from time to time.
South Africa gained independencein 1961. But it remained under white rule until 1994.
The national debt in 1994 was a little more then ZAR13 billion. This was paid off under Nelson Mandela in 8 years. An amazing achievement, helped by a desire to make things work, and to do things well.
Mandela had a university education, after several attempts, by his own admission he was not the best student, and he wrote his articles and qualified as a lawyer in the early 1940's, and finished his education while in prison for terrorism, with his involvement in the bombings of citizens in South Africa in the 1960's.
The reason I'm including Nelson Mandela in this story of colonialism is to show that even though colonialism brought about wonderful innovations, structure, order, improvements, and national growth, despite the negative points of institutional racism, segregation and poverty in the working lower class, he was able to maintain and even improve on some levels, that level of order, national growth, and structure. I believe it was out of a desire to serve his country, not greed.
He was no saint, he did institute laws against white businesses, known as Affirmative Action, (which would have been labeled as institutional racism under a white government) and there was some later exposure of corruption, but generally, I liked him and the effort that he made to avoid outright war with the white minority. Things were tense for a while, but it was slowly subsiding.
However, the leadership that took over from Mandela did not have his caliber of self control, leadership, education or morals. It slipped very, very quickly into the usual African corruption that is so famous around the world. It was perfected as an art form with each successive term.
New businesses were created by nepotism, and then tenders were created for them and awarded to them under the guise of it being necessary for the country, and for the uplifting of the people. Millions was not a large enough number. Billions was more acceptable.
White management positions were handed over to black people, often with no education in that area of expertise or training.
One example was an acquaintance of mine who was a local branch bank manager. He was driving a lower employee from A to B, and the employee asked him to turn off the route to make a personal stop. It was a short distance, if I remember correctly, of about 2km. The manager was questioned and then fired without a letter of warning. It was obviously a trap. The new manager was placed in his office and his salary was tripled within 2 months.
Salaries were generally, drastically increased from what the white managers were paid. Our local mayor, now retired but still alive, had a salary of R2000 plus expenses. He is old, and it is expected there should be increased salaries over time, in line with inflation. But this is what is happening now:
“The moves come as documents obtained by Independent Media show that the cash-strapped Buffalo City Metro in the Eastern Cape spent more than R10.2million on 14 full-time bodyguards for its mayor, Xola Pakati, his deputy, Zoliswa Matana, and speaker Alfred Mtsi.
The municipality’s financial statements for the year that ended in June showed that it spent more than R11.2m on the bodyguards last year.”
“In terms of the salary increases approved by Mkhize, the top-earning mayors will be paid MORE THAN R1.35m a year, and the lowest paid R752 000.
I'm writing about something I see, that we've experienced over the last nearly 30 years under the ANC government, and 20 years before that. I'm sure there are many who will write opposing views, perhaps trying to re-write history from a different perspective than what we experience on the ground. I'm sure there are many factors that can divert attention away from these views to other views. But the reality does not change. I am not writing this to cry over what has happened to either white or black people. What has happened has happened. The question is if colonialism is responsible for Africa being poor. If you had good leadership, how could black people suffer under black rule? If you have bad leadership how could you blame someone who is not in power for the bad decisions and corruption that your leadership is making?
You can almost copy paste that scenario to any other African country, with a few exceptions.
Botswana is one of those exceptions. They have a stronger economy than South Africa. They became independent in 1966. Here is an excerpt from worldbank.org:
“Botswana is located at the center of Southern Africa, positioned between South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. One of the world’s poorest countries at independence in 1966, it rapidly became one of the world’s development success stories. Significant mineral (diamond) wealth, good governance, prudent economic management and a relatively small population of slightly more than two million, have made it an upper middle-income country with a transformation agenda of becoming a high-income country by 2036.”
It is also one of the most peaceful countries in the world. And they strongly oppose bribery and corruption at every level.
Compare that to Zimbabwe next door:
They were known as “The bread basket of Africa" under white rule before the 1980's. They declared independence from the British South Africa Company, which was basically, in effect, the rule from since about the 1890's, in 1923, and became known as Southern Rhodesia. It was still a British colony, but was self governing.
They became a republic in 1970, still under white rule for a few years. Then, after a gorilla warfare of about 15 years, declared a de jure sovereignty as Zimbabwe in 1980.
They changed the name to Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979, and then just Zimbabwe in 1980. Some of my family fled for their lives around that time, because people were being killed, burned, raided and having farms expropriated. The targets were not only white, it was anyone who opposed the government, but whites were the scapegoat. They “sold the idea" that whites were the problem to divert attention from their rampant theft, and the killing of all opposition leaders and their followers.
They have been talking about doing the same thing in South Africa for about 4 years now, but so far only farmers are attacked and targeted, and farms have only been expropriated on a small scale.
But compared to Botswana next door, who achieved independence about 1 year apart, (although, the first black president Canaan Banana only took the reins of Zimbabwe in 1980, and then Robert Mugabe in 1987) they declined into abject poverty in the same time that Botswana was rising from poverty. Many farmers fled to Botswana, and were welcomed for their knowledge and contribution to the development of the country. There is one old ex-Zimbabwean, Botswana farmer, who was asked by a Zimbabwean to sell maize to him in Zimbabwe. The farmer said he would rather burn his crop like they burned his farm down than help them with food. That is the kind of animosity that there is between them. I know one old lady who lost 8 members of her family over in Zimbabwe, targeted because of race.
The government under Robert Mugabe was rolling in foreign aid, living in a marble palace, while his people were starving. They are currently eating rats today in some places.
Why did one country rise from poverty to wealth, and the country next door went from developed and prosperous to abject poverty in the same amount of time?
Botswana has diamonds, and they partnered with De Beers. But diamonds are not the only part of any countries potential income.
Zimbabwe has natural resources, they had excellent soils for farming. Now they are an over grazed semi desert. I flew there from South Africa about 4 months ago, and the Limpopo River border was like a dividing line between paradise and apocalypse. One side was lush and green, and the other side, without fading, was a thorn tree wasteland.
Corruption and hatred are, in my opinion, the two legs that carried them from potential, to disaster.
And good governance and determination were what helped Botswana rise up from their poverty.
They are the exception, as I've said. Out of 74 countries in Africa under black rule its difficult to find happy endings like that.
South Africa is only holding on to its underpants because of the sheer determination of a few. White people have nowhere left to go in Africa. Many who could, have left. By being prevented from getting any support from government, many white people, like myself, have created jobs, instead of waiting for someone to bail them out.
We are “unfavoured" in regard to access to government grants, government tenders, tax rebates for no Black Economic Empowerment status, jobs in the governments etc etc. So, many have taken the initiative to start something.
I don't make millions, but we are not suffering, despite the amount of energy employed against the white minority to succeed.
Yet small to medium business is the largest supplier of jobs in any economy, and if they supported anyone in business, regardless of race, who were employing people, the country would have a similar result to Botswana, instead of following Zimbabwe down the tubes, albeit at a slower pace. And that is only because our current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, stated (before he became president) that “we" should treat the white man like a frog in a pot of water. If you make it hot too quickly he will jump out. But if you boil it slowly it will remain in the pot until it dies. I'm not kidding!
This is what brings a country down. Trying to gain votes from some by pushing others down so you remain in power, and filling your own pockets before looking after the state of your country’s economy.
We have seen multiple billions “disappear". We've seen even Covid Relief Fund money “disappear". We've seen money spent on “buying" businesses, like the Vrede scam:
“The Vrede Dairy Project is a dairy project established in 2012 on Krynaauwslust Farm, near the town of Vrede, Free State Province, South Africa. The dairy was established as a public-private partnership with Estina, a Black Economic Empowerment company, as part of the Free State provincial government's agricultural project, Mohoma-Mobung.[1][2]Estina was given the land under a free 99 year lease.[3]
The aim of the R250m dairy project was to empower black farmers, but bank statements show that no payments were made to black beneficiaries. The dairy farm was just a shell through which money was sent to India.[4]”
Or like this scam:
“Senior officials at the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture have allegedly misspent almost R200 million in taxpayers’ money meant to assist emerging farmers in rural areas around the province. And despite forensic reports fingering senior officials in the supply chain management and imploring the department to act against them, the officials were yet to be sanctioned – one year after the reports were completed. The DA has described the fraud as “probably the biggest financial scandal to hit KZN in the last 21 years of democracy”
How can a continent of people, who, after being given a running country, run it into the ground so efficiently?
It wasn't colonialism that made them rape the financial coffers. It wasn't colonialism that made them kill off anyone who opposed them. It wasn't colonialism that dragged them down the gutter.
It was despite colonialism. Africa never even had the wheel when colonials came here in ships that crossed oceans.
There was no technology above fire and cattle grazing. No building with a second level above it, or with cement of some sort to hold it together. How many buildings can you find in Africa that were not built by colonials before colonialism arrived here?
You cannot even say there was much government, or record keeping of any sort.
If you want to attack colonialism, attack it for the bad things that were perpetrated, such as racism, segregation, exploitation and so on. But you can't blame the corruption of bad people and bad governance of modern leaders on something that no longer has any substantial physical influence on them. Many of them were never even born yet. Colonialism has been around for at least 3000 years. Have you heard of the Greeks? Have you heard of the Romans? Have you heard of Genghis Khan? They usually brought death, not just racism and segregation. But they also brought advancement and technology. Do you blame the colonizers when you fail to run your own country?
If you want to do a good job of removing colonial influence in Africa, and revert back to the “good old days" of pre-colonialism you need to hand back your car keys, move out of your double story brick house, give up your Ray Bans and Levi jeans, burn down the schools and hospitals and start digging up all the non-indigenous fruit trees and vegetables like potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes and sugar cane.