Kim du Toit has an essay titled "Let Africa Sink" from 2002. He was born in Africa and since moved to the United States, and he lists off some of the same difficulties facing the continent that I identified in my earlier "Africa is SNAFU" post -- but unlike me he concludes that the best solution is:
So here's my solution for the African fiasco: a high wall around the whole continent, all the guns and bombs in the world for everyone inside, and at the end, the last one alive should do us all a favor and kill himself.He certainly has more experience with Africa than I do, but I'd like to think there's some other way. But, he argues, everything has already been tried, and nothing has worked. Read the essay and decide for yourself.
I have some friends from South Africa and I'm going to email them and see what they think.
(HT: Who Tends The Fires.)
Thanks for the hat tip, Michael.
I'm undecided. I can see the same problems that both you and Kim do. Hell, AfricaNow and Africa Today and IOL are in my upper tier news folder just for their African coverage. There's so much of a wealth of indications that point to just the conclusions that Kim is drawing.
I'm still loathe to draw the same conclusion, myself. Is this wishful thinking on your part and mine?
A friend is going to Uganda and possibly Tanzania [depends on if he has time for both] for a month in late April... I've asked him to bring me back first hand accounts when he gets back. If I can, I'll post on them sometime in late May. Maybe then I'll have a first hand impression from someone to compare to the news we hear.
the disturbing thing about Africa's problems is that nobody is pointing out any bright spots. Even the liberal media reports a continent headed for the dumps.
Countries which were British colonies when I was young were successful at feeding themselves. the Brits left, and the replacements rolled the clock back to tribalism. Mugabe's Zimbabwe is the poster child for what is wrong with Africa.
Post apartheid South Africa is fast heading that direction, too. I suspect that in the near future sub-Saharan Africa will be a chaos of tribalism with no national boundaries as we recognize them. Private armies will provide security for the commercial ventures in minerals. The people will be written off.
Yes, it's a dreary prediction, but I read nothing to make me optimistic.
Kim's atheism permeates most of what he writes. I just find it hard to take him seriously.
??? I'm having a hard time figuring out what relationship Kim's atheism has with taking his analysis of Africa from an African native's POV? Would it invalidate his perspective if he were Christian? Or if he were traditional Cherokee in spiritual outlook, as I am?
Yeah, Cajun. My following of African history from the colonial era, and of the news that's been available since I started following it in the 70's keeps leading me to the same conclusion as you, Kim, Michael and the others. Depressing.
War Nerd comes to a similar POV from a differnt angle than us, also.
Been there, saw lots of bad stuff. Take Kim at his word--he's not exaggerating. The worst thing that ever happened to Africa was the end of European colonialism. It ended at least fifty years too soon.
JT: Well God could certainly work a miracle, but absent divine intervention the course of Africa looks pretty dire.
DM: Mut colonialism is evil!
Well, if Kim had said that white Africans and their descendants should kill themselves off, then he might have a point. ;-) Some of Kim's writings simply sound Hitlerish to me.
They don't need to: from Rhodesia to current South Africa, they've had the ANC working at doing it for them.
I lost two old friends in Rwanda a number of years ago. It wasn't whites committing the T'tsui genocides there, nor has it been whites eating pygmies in the Congo. Ko.. well, some of the UN troops fingering t'tsui's and mercs for cleansing were probably white - I'll give you that. It's not "Hitlerish" to make that observation, either.
Might consider that Kim once spent time in a South Afican jail for being a white protesting against apartheid before shooting off at the mouth, JT. But that might take thought and reading, so I don't hold out much hope there either. ;}
Now why would it make any difference whether there was apartheid or not if the goal (Kim's) is that all Africans should be killed? It is Hitlerish to say that all Africans should die.
As a seminary student, I met countless Africans of the highest integrity and moral values. But Kim would have them dead, as well.
Joel, find a dictionary and look up the word HYPERBOLE.
And if that STILL doesn't clue you in to the sadness and desperation in Kim's words on that subject, add this to your bonnet: Kim's mother and sister still live in Africa. Do you really think he wants them dead?
What you wish for, or click your heels together to make miracles happen, does not change the reality and perspective of the way things are RIGHT NOW. Hoping for a mirculous intervention is one thing, but ignoring the truth when it slaps you in the face in the way Africa does, is just stupid. That's not faith, that's ignorance.
Kim Du Toit has no right to speak of a country he has not lived in for 20 years now. As a resident South African I'm sick to death of the vitriol being spouted by people like him, Jan Lamprecht and others. They have done absolutely nothing to contribute toward a positive change in our country. Their biggest accomplishments in this regard? Web blogs and websites.
I must be missing something. Since when did a action in the virtual world result in positive change in the real (non-virtual world). Anybody can post on the net but I don't see these people working at ground level with various other NGO's and other organisations to actually action change.
I'd take more notice of Du Toit's words if he were actually here doing something.
The best solution is to do the reverse of what this wretch kim said. Put all whites in the world in a room and give each one a bomb and the last one do us the favor of suicide.