quote:On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today's standards utterly offensive) new method to 'tame' and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent.
'My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,' wrote Galton.
'I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.'
Despite an outcry in Parliament and heated debate in the august salons of the Royal Geographic Society, Galton insisted that 'the history of the world tells the tale of the continual displacement of populations, each by a worthier successor, and humanity gains thereby'.
A controversial figure, Galton was also the pioneer of eugenics, the theory that was used by Hitler to try to fulfil his mad dreams of a German Master Race.
Eventually, Galton's grand resettlement plans fizzled out because there were much more exciting things going on in Africa.
But that was more than 100 years ago, and with legendary explorers such as Livingstone, Speke and Burton still battling to find the source of the Nile - and new discoveries of exotic species of birds and animals featuring regularly on newspaper front pages - vast swathes of the continent had not even been 'discovered'.
Yet Sir Francis Galton, it now appears, was ahead of his time. His vision is coming true - if not in the way he imagined. An astonishing invasion of Africa is now under way.
In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.
Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.
With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.
The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.
The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.
The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.
The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China.
Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals.
Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa.
All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'.
From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival.
'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.'
Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called 'One China In Africa' policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years.
China is hungry - for land, food and energy. While accounting for a fifth of the world's population, its oil consumption has risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now providing a third of it; imports of steel, copper and aluminium have also shot up, with Beijing devouring 80 per cent of world supplies.
Fuelling its own boom at home, China is also desperate for new markets to sell goods. And Africa, with non-existent health and safety rules to protect against shoddy and dangerous goods, is the perfect destination.
The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today.
However, there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war planes roar through the African sky, bombing opponents. Chinese-made assault rifles and grenades are being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often over the materials the Chinese are desperate to buy.
Take, for example, Zimbabwe. Recently, a giant container ship from China was due to deliver its cargo of three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 3,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,500 mortars to President Robert Mugabe's regime.
After an international outcry, the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, was forced to return to China, despite Beijing's insistence that the arms consignment was a 'normal commercial deal'.
Indeed, the 77-ton arms shipment would have been small beer - a fraction of China's help to Mugabe. He already has high-tech, Chinese-built helicopter gunships and fighter jets to use against his people.
Ever since the U.S. and Britain imposed sanctions in 2003, Mugabe has courted the Chinese, offering mining concessions for arms and currency.
While flying regularly to Beijing as a high-ranking guest, the 84-year-old dictator rants at 'small dots' such as Britain and America.
He can afford to. Mugabe is orchestrating his campaign of terror from a 25-bedroom, pagoda-style mansion built by the Chinese. Much of his estimated £1billion fortune is believed to have been siphoned off from Chinese 'loans'.
The imposing grey building of ZANU-PF, his ruling party, was paid for and built by the Chinese. Mugabe received £200 million last year alone from China, enabling him to buy loyalty from the army.
In another disturbing illustration of the warm relations between China and the ageing dictator, a platoon of the China People's Liberation Army has been out on the streets of Mutare, a city near the border with Mozambique, which voted against the president in the recent, disputed election.
Almost 30 years ago, Britain pulled out of Zimbabwe - as it had done already out of the rest of Africa, in the wake of Harold Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech. Today, Mugabe says: 'We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets.'
Despite Britain's commendable colonial legacy of a network of roads, railways and schools, the British are now being shunned.
According to one veteran diplomat: 'China is easier to do business with because it doesn't care about human rights in Africa - just as it doesn't care about them in its own country. All the Chinese care about is money.'
Nowhere is that more true than Sudan. Branded 'Africa's Killing Fields', the massive oil-rich East African state is in the throes of the genocide and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of black, non-Arab peasants in southern Sudan.
In effect, through its supplies of arms and support, China has been accused of underwriting a humanitarian scandal. The atrocities in Sudan have been described by the U.S. as 'the worst human rights crisis in the world today'.
The government in Khartoum has helped the feared Janjaweed militia to rape, murder and burn to death more than 350,000 people.
The Chinese - who now buy half of all Sudan's oil - have happily provided armoured vehicles, aircraft and millions of bullets and grenades in return for lucrative deals. Indeed, an estimated £1billion of Chinese cash has been spent on weapons.
According to Human Rights First, a leading human rights advocacy organisation, Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition for rifles and heavy machine guns are continuing to flow into Darfur, which is dotted with giant refugee camps, each containing hundreds of thousands of people.
Between 2003 and 2006, China sold Sudan $55 million worth of small arms, flouting a United Nations weapons embargo.
With new warnings that the cycle of killing is intensifying, an estimated two thirds of the non-Arab population has lost at least one member of their families in Darfur.
Although two million people have been uprooted from their homes in the conflict, China has repeatedly thwarted United Nations denunciations of the Sudanese regime.
While the Sudanese slaughter has attracted worldwide condemnation, prompting Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg to quit as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics, few parts of Africa are now untouched by China.
In Congo, more than £2billion has been 'loaned' to the government. In Angola, £3 billion has been paid in exchange for oil. In Nigeria, more than £5billion has been handed over.
In Equatorial Guinea, where the president publicly hung his predecessor from a cage suspended in a theatre before having him shot, Chinese firms are helping the dictator build an entirely new capital, full of gleaming skyscrapers and, of course, Chinese restaurants.
After battling for years against the white colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, post-independence African leaders are happy to do business with China for a straightforward reason: cash.
With western loans linked to an insistence on democratic reforms and the need for 'transparency' in using the money (diplomatic language for rules to ensure dictators do not pocket millions), the Chinese have proved much more relaxed about what their billions are used for.
Certainly, little of it reaches the continent's impoverished 800 million people. Much of it goes straight into the pockets of dictators. In Africa, corruption is a multi-billion pound industry and many experts believe that China is fuelling the cancer.
The Chinese are contemptuous of such criticism. To them, Africa is about pragmatism, not human rights. 'Business is business,' says Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong, adding that Beijing should not interfere in 'internal' affairs. 'We try to separate politics from business.'
While the bounty has, not surprisingly, been welcomed by African dictators, the people of Africa are less impressed. At a market in Zimbabwe recently, where Chinese goods were on sale at nearly every stall, one woman told me she would not waste her money on 'Zing-Zong' products.
'They go Zing when they work, and then they quickly go Zong and break,' she said. 'They are a waste of money. But there's nothing else. China is the only country that will do business with us.'
There have also been riots in Zambia, Angola and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The Chinese do not use African labour where possible, saying black Africans are lazy and unskilled.
In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans.
As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply.
In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of 'African' souvenirs.
Where will it all end? As far as Beijing is concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any minerals or oil to be extracted from the continent.
A century after Sir Francis Galton outlined his vision for Africa, the Chinese are here to stay. More will come.
The people of this bewitching, beautiful continent, where humankind first emerged from the Great Rift Valley, desperately need progress. The Chinese are not here for that.
They are here for plunder. After centuries of pain and war, Africa deserves better.
Interesting analysis. No doubt the chinese are not in Africa on some sort benevolent mission but to further their owns interests. To believe otherwise is naive.
Whether from the west or from the east, either way, Africa's had enough exploitation.
Posts: 426 | From: Cali-for-nia | Registered: Jan 2006
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We're on the same page here Mmmkay. As I said in my other posts if there's one thing that PISSES me off about Mugabe and other so-called leaders it's this --they're selling their country out!
Rather than tell the Chinese you can't flood us with your nationals or your goods Mugabe is deciding that Chinese mass-migration is the price he must pay for support from a non-Western power.
And considering that China is supposed to be some sort of boomtown, where opportunity is flourishing, there's no excuse for allowing this.
The Chinese did the EXACT same thing to the Phillipines: use bribes to kowtow the officials in Manila. then flood the country with Chinese. Next thing you know, you got a Chinese running the place. This article, to an extent --please notice my words I didn'd deny it's happening, or on a large scale-- does carry a certain propagandistic line and is clearly aimed at Mugabe more than any pretended concern for Africans. You have a UK publication saying, The Chinese are taking over Africa, when the whites still control most of the land and resources. Sounds like jealousy to me! Especially the part about private schools and gated communities where only Chinese are allowed, as if the whites never did such things.
But the thrust of the article is undeniable. China has had it's eye on Africa for some time. They didn't have the economic wherwithal to project economic force that far west before, but they have it now and are using it. Africa needs to wake up and expel ALL foreigners, white, arab and asian, while they still can. Africa needs a stong policy of protectionism and anti-immigration vis a vis the Chinese. The Chinese numbers on the continent must be stopped, then rolled back. And if Beijing doesn't like it --tough!
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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I'm not a 'continental" African either, just a run-of-the-mill African in America. But the article is a good post and deserves notice.
Everyone wants Africa to get investment, that's not an issue. But only a fool can't see that massive Chinese mineral explitation and immigration is a problem. At the risk of sounding racist the Chinese are known to, ahem multiply. That's not racist, it's a simple ethno-political FACT. Here's another one: They are running African businesses out of business and their country needs unlimited resources. In order to ensure they never lose that stranglehold they need an indigenous population and a large one. Now where does that leave africa? Re-colonized, that's where. We should all be watching China's machinations in Africa with caution and forboding. No matter what the warlords in Beijing say they are NOT in Africa to help.
Six days ago I was telling Heru-Behutet^*^ that China's vote to block sanctions against Mugabe shouldn't be overhyped, because "it's not like China's not getting anything about of this." Perhaps now my insistence on real politik is better understood. The west will spin Chinese economic incursion into africa as a "take over," the Chinese will spin it as a panacea for Africa and the forwarding of a world not dominated by white spuremacy. In truth it is neither. It's a game that only beijing can win...assuming the Africans are dumb enough to play along. Africa needs to change the rules, since it controls the prizes everyone is playing for. This is the time to tell everyone to play by Africa's rules of the blacks will take their ball and go home.
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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^ You posts on issues African and Africana have been noted. And they are commendable.
Nonetheless, there is a tendency on this forum to ignore or denigrate informed African commentary and opinion because it has not being gatekept by Europeans or their surrogates. Hence, my vigilance.
Posts: 387 | From: England, UK | Registered: Feb 2008
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In the immortal words of Dr John Henrik Clarke, "I want an Africa so dominated by Africaness than you can't walk down the street in Africa without wondering if your skin is getting darker, or your hair more curly." He also said if blacks are hoping for some alliance with China we "shoulnd't dream." History has proven him right.
He taught that Africa can depend on NO ONE but Africa --this Afro-Asian co-op stuff flies in the face of that. Dr Clarke also said that the whites and Asians would de-populate Africa of Africans and re-populate it with Europeans and Asians. There are currently something like 320 million Africans in the sub-saharan --I was SHOCKED AND HORRIFIED to discover our numbers are that catastrophically low. The Chinese, given their extraordinarily high birth-rate, and immigration flow, can surpass that in fifty years, especially if we see a million or more Chinese a year all suddenly getting the urge to relocate in Africa. As we all know mass-migrations (whether Mexicans in America, arabs in north Africa or Chinese to the Philippines) do NOT happen spontaneously, they are goverment-supported (if not outright run!) by the countries these people come from.
Small business is the backbone of ALL nations because they become big businesses one day. China is killing African business before they even get a chance to start. I want to see an Africa in which ONLY Africans feature as the richest people, and any foreigners who make money there are not even in the top 1,000 richest on the continent. Right now China's businessmen rank higher than Africans in Africa.
Allow me to give an example. Textiles are a MUST for any nation to rise economically --clothes are low-cost, sell in high-volumes and EVERYBODY needs them. This is how China began it's rapid ascent. But Africa's testile industry has been gutted by China. The few factories they had are closed --or closing!-- and no new ones are starting. And the same goes for manufacturing and construction. Oh sure, there are contruction projects, but where are the Africans? And on the few projects Africans are allowed into they either get low wages or none at all. The Africans can't seek redress because --SUPRISE!-- the Chinese have more clout with their govenrment than the Africans do. There's no labor boards or laws concerning foreigners paying the locals. So the end result --China is free to pay their own locals to build the economic machine that will ultimately re-colonize the Africans. This cycle creates a defeatist attitude among the Africans. All the while Beijing assures Africa that it comes in peace.
Africa must DOMINATE it's population, land, and recources if it is to be wealthy and independent. China's already making incursions on the population and resource front. Right now they're willing to enter into "co-op" agreements, as opposed to the "exclusive ownership" stuff the whites are doing. This will continue to be the line from Beijing until they feel they have enough leverage to demand exclusive rights. And Africa's governments will be so corrupt and divided that they'll go for it. It will be a fire-sale!
But those things don't frighten me as much as the Chinese invasion. Whether you have a democracy or a dictatorship you can't maintain soverignty when you allow foreigners to squat on your land. Getting the Chinese out must be a priority for all African governments. You don't see the warlords in Beijing inviting --or allowing!-- the Africans to mass-migrate to China. There's a lesson in that for Africa as well.
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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Get up off your lojac wearing, parole officer visiting ass and do something like start your own damn business and quit meddling in African affairs which you know nothing about.
You're probably some sorry ass AA living in a neighborhood where refugees from Cambodia, Vietnam, India, and West Asia run all of the businesses. LOL
Posts: 3085 | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ah, our resident dumbass has come to enlighten us with his pearls of wisdom. I have to admit I'm surprised to see they have internet service in your part of the trailer park.
Now that you've gotten you five seconds of attention, do us all a favor you jackass: put down the mouse and back slowly away from the keyboard.
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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He/she understands the sub-text of the article and the unintended consequences of your responses.
We must always be vigilant to the machinations of the enemy, which is always to undermine our dignity, dispossess of our sovereignty and ultimately control our destiny. The Topic Starter's intent was not to alert Africans to the ulterior motives of the Chinese but to highlight in the sub text the backwardness and inherent inferiority of the African and Africana.
Posts: 387 | From: England, UK | Registered: Feb 2008
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In repsonse to your quetion Heru, here's a few suggestions at random. Of course I'm no government planner or bureuacrat, just somebody who wants to see African nationlism in his lifetime.
First: Africa needs to figure out what it wants to achieve and it must be specific! What's the BIG IDEA. you have to first decide that you want Pan-African nationalism and that you don't give a damn what white person doesn't like it. Next you have to define it in concrete terms. Can any of Africa's leaders tell do that? Can Mugabe, or Mbeki, or Zuma? No. Even the best of them, Mugabe, doesn't have a far-reaching, visionary plan. All he wants is white rule to be gone but his planning doesn't seem to go much father than that. Without a vision of what black rule should be all his recent defiance will amount to is a momentary temper tantrum. When Mugabe dies will his successor be dedicated to an Africa First policy? Not just Mugabe's successor, but everyone in the country. Will they even know what that means? Will any Africa leader have the counrage to articulate and then fight for such a thing? Can Mugabe, or any other African leader, tell us how many businesss (not Jobs, but businesses!) they want to see their respective countries create over the next fifty years? Or even the next five? I can promise you the Chinese can answer that question. They can tell you to the number how many they want --one of the blessings of a socialist government where the ecnomomy is expected to be as well "managed" as a stage play. How many schools will Africa have and what will they specialize in? How many hospitals, how many houses, how many businesses? With all of these goes a constellation of neccessities. Workers to build the houses, and business establishments. Doctors to run the hospitals, teachers for the schools. Africa will have to produce all of these and each of these institutions will have to be imbued with the knowledge that they are AFRICAN institutions supporting their welfare of their people. This is something blacks at current lack, a group ethos. Those Chinese companies running the Africans out of business know exactly what role they're playing in China's growth. They know they're part of a team, and Beijing stays in contact with them. Now talk to the average African businessman, and ask him how much support he gets from his home coutry's govenrment. The African businessman must stand alone, the Chinese play as a team. Africa must as well.
So Africa must present a vision of Africa to it's people and the world: to it's people in order to inspire them; to the world so that they realize Africa won't let anyone rob them like China is planning to do. They are in a degraded position, and must play catch-up, but Africa's not the first to have to do so. If Africa must have advisers because it lacks sufficiently trained people of their own, then Africa must train it's own people --not bring in foreigners to do it. AFRICAN'S MUST BUILD AFRICA. Will they be experts at first, of course not. But neither were the Americans or British. And as we see on the news the Chinese still havne't compeltely gotten the hang of doing top-notch work.
Allowing foreigners to come in and give "supply and advice" is a bad idea. First of all they will --predictably!-- complain that the natives are "lazy" (this was a common excuse used by the Americans and Chinese when they colonized the Philippines) or that they're "unskilled/untrained" and that it's too expensive to work with such problematic labor. Next they will "advise" that things will go faster/smoother if they can bring in their own people and let the natives "just watch." Of course before long the foreigners are building all the public workds projects and as the government coffers grow the indigineous people see themselvse shut out. This is happening right now in Iraq. Foreign companies are brining in Saudis, Turks, Iranians and Kuwatis. The foreign "advisers" come in making no demands, but no sooner than you give them a plot of land to squat on they start demanding housing, food, and of course "a little taste of home," which usually takes the form of entertainment, run and operated by them. Very soon they'll want other types of venues, like schools, shops, boutiques, banks and currency exchanges. When you invite the foreigner in you become bound by the rules of hospitality, as he is bound by the rules of comity. It will be hard to tell them they can't have these things since everyone needs food, shelter and recreation. And while the foreigner doesn't need schools or banks how can you say "No" when you already gave them permission to set up a market to sell knick-knacks and foodstuffs from home? In econoimc terms there's no difference between a brothel or a bank --commerce is commerce. Or does anyone imagine that the guys who run whorehouses don't bribe officials? This is how foreigners buying off the government starts, with something small, something seemingly inconsequential. Which is why letting them in is a horrible idea --it's the thin end of the wedge.
Yes, the Japanese let westerners in to give supply and advice, but they kept the whites isolatd and put strict timetables on how long they could stay. Would the Chinese agree to give supply and advice so long as their econoimc growth in Africa was stopped? We already know they wouldn't. The Germans also brought in Americans to advise them on post-WWII rebuilding but the Germans soon decided the west's ideas were incompatible and sent the Americans home and decided to rebuild on their own terms. There's a lesson in that for Africa too, The Japanese protected their industries by requiring western comapnies to incorporate as a subsidiary of a Japanese-run companies and even then only after the government approved of it. They realized that letting the whites run around without supervision was a bad idea. In Ethiopia the govenrment required the Indian ruling class to hand their businesses over to black Ethiopians and their country hasn't collapsed.
Africa must have a policy of AFRICA-FIRST. That means keeping the money IN Africa, so the tax-government-consumer loop is complete. When you foster foreign businesses at the cost of your own you break that loop. When you allow non-Africans to have government contracts you break that loop. If foreign comapnies aren't required to hire exclusively Africans you break that loop.
If the Chinese want to say their workers are better trained then you require they give Africans training. Remember, the leverage Africa has is resources. Africa can get what it needs --supply and advice-- from anywhere: the US, UK, EU etc. China doesn't have that luxury where resources are concerned. Africa is losing consumer dollars to every foreign country on the planet. Nothing can be fixed there until this ceases. So stopping the bleeding is job one.
The Africans want to support African businesses, and would, but they can't because they're poor, which means they have to buy whatever is cheapest, they don't have a choice. Chinese goods are much cheaper than homemade African goods, so African companies can't compete. Africa's leaders must protect their markets by all but eliminating the amount of foreign imports. The Chinese will inevitably complain but so did American companies when the Japanese did the same thing during the Cold War. The Japanese had a hyper-aggressive PR machine geared toward silencing these white complaints. "We're still a poor, backward nation who can't stand up to the big, bad white superpower," they said, while they were busy buying Rockefeller Plaza in New York and Universal Studios in LA. After all Africa's gone through it needs to use this strategy to quiet the warlords in Beijing who will howl about how they're being shut out. The Afro-Asian "alliance" is not dependent on Chinese textile sales or Chinese immigrants. These are things Beijing wants in order to relieve domestic population stress. So deporting Chinese and closing their businesses is not a deal-breaker. Oil and minerals are what it's all about. That's why China is even there. If they wanted land they could go to South Ameirca, where Asians already have a significant presence. This is about minerals. Africa has the advantage in that it can go to anyone for help on building dams, roads etc. China doesn't have anywhere it can go. The US has locked it out of the Middle East; Russia won't let them past Siberia and the western hemisphere is under US's watchful eye. That leaves Africa as the ONLY game in town. China doesn;t have it's hooks into africa deep enough where the African's can't afford to throw their weight around, but in 20 years, as Chinese are voting in african elections and running businesses, they will. South Africa is the model the Chinese are pursuing.
I of course don't have to tell you about education, but as Americans are finding in the US, due to the high number of people who are unemployed even though they have college-degrees, schooling means nothing without a strong business sector to make use of that education. Even start-ups like Google and Dell were begun by people who already had a strong business sector in which to create, grow and market what they hoped to sell. In a continent like Africa which has no business sector they need a succession of bold visionary govenrments (one or two won't be enough, they will need several) who will create that business sector. This means that Africa-First can't be a slogan used once every five years. It has to be an article of faith, just as "One China" is for the men in Beijing. This will require a fundamental rethinking of African nationalism on the part of Afirca's "leaders." This means they will have to learn to think in holistic terms instead of purely personal. If the leaders of Africa have proven themselves able to enact policies that benefit whites and asians, then they can certainly do it for their own people.
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Jo Nongowa: Sportbilly:
The forum's Clown Jester is right.
He/she understands the sub-text of the article and the unintended consequences of your responses.
We must always be vigilant to the machinations of the enemy, which is always to undermine our dignity, dispossess of our sovereignty and ultimately control our destiny. The Topic Starter's intent was not to alert Africans to the ulterior motives of the Chinese but to highlight in the sub text the backwardness and inherent inferiority of the African and Africana.
So?
I could care less what their intent was in writing that propaganda. To me, our intent matters much much more.
Yes the *assumption* (you say intent) by those folks who made the article is that anyone reading such would believe that Africans are at the whim of and destined to be ruled by the European or the Asian, and the *intent* of them that write such is for whomever reads it to believe this as well..
Actually I see your point now, it is insulting, as if Africans are not thinking .. if Africans haven't been politically fooled so far, I doubt they (collectively) will .. but I myself am wondering about why African leaders make the decisions myself.
Can you fill me in?
I don't care if sportbilly's post doesn't immediately denounce the article, it's still on point, he knows what's up and we know what's up.
quote:This article, to an extent --please notice my words I didn'd deny it's happening, or on a large scale-- does carry a certain propagandistic line and is clearly aimed at Mugabe more than any pretended concern for Africans. You have a UK publication saying, The Chinese are taking over Africa, when the whites still control most of the land and resources. Sounds like jealousy to me! Especially the part about private schools and gated communities where only Chinese are allowed, as if the whites never did such things.
^Exactly!
I've been noticing these points (brought up by sport and Jo) in the posts of people who buy this propoganda for a while now..
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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Alive-(What Box) aka Jeeves (the forums butler) wrote:
----------------------- So?
I could care less what their intent was in writing that propaganda. To me, our intent matters much much more.
Yes the *assumption* (you say intent) by those folks who made the article is that anyone reading such would believe that Africans are at the whim of and destined to be ruled by the European or the Asian, and the *intent* of them that write such is for whomever reads it to believe this as well..
Actually I see your point now, it is insulting, as if Africans are not thinking .. if Africans haven't been politically fooled so far, I doubt they (collectively) will .. but I myself am wondering about why African leaders make the decisions myself.
Can you fill me in?
I don't care if sportbilly's post doesn't immediately denounce the article, it's still on point, he knows what's up and we know what's up. -----------------------
Listen to this boy, he's all over the place first he disagrees, then he agrees, then he disagrees again. Do you even read your posts before you hit the reply button to see if it makes sense?
"Yonis Bonds" is right. You are like a butler staggering around on the streets mumbling to himself.
Posts: 3085 | Registered: Jan 2008
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ALIVE, I see your point, but I don't care to denounce or support any position. All I want is make sure Africans are aware that bringing in outsiders to develop Africa is a devil's bargain. The outsiders tend to come in and keep coiming and keep coming. It's the presence of non-blacks --no matter how few!-- that I am violently opposed to. There's an old Athenian proverb: I fear the Greeks, even when they come bearing gifts. Alexander the Great claimed to bring enlightenment, and the end of Persian rule. That he did. And in their place he brought the idea of Greek indoctrination and Greek rule. China wants to cast themselves as Greece freeing the world from bondage and brining true, honest interntaional cooperation.
Well I say Africa doesn't need foreigners of ANY type to build it up. If they need "trained" individuals then they need to cultivate these experts themselves.
There's no reason for nearly a million Chinese to be in Africa, not even as tourists. Are these people there as "experts" to advise these countries on how best to develop? No.
There's no problem that Africa has that the Africans can't fix, so they should fix them and not look to anyone else. That China is imperialist (ask the Tibetans or the Filipinos if you doubt this) can't be denied. That they will keep coming unless they are stopped also can't be denied.
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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posted
All the most powerful countries act like the Mafia or gangs. They do what they want and take what they want and bully those who cant defend themselves. This is what has been going on all along. Unfortunately, Africa has been designated the local chump that is a easy mark so they all prey on her. Everybody hits up Africa because they know it is an easy mark. So basically everyone is taking turns making scoring on Africa and some of them are just mad because others want to move in on their turf.
Plain and simple.
And all this nonsense about why they are there and the fake facade of innocence they put on it is like a thief coming in your house and saying he "found" some money or jewelry there and didn't steal it or that you agreed for him to have it while locked in the basement of your own house.
Which means Africans get treated like pure d sucker behind chumps by these crooks.
And it isn't like the Africans don't know it, it is just that they aren't in a position to do anything about it. Just like everyone knows that the only way to get respect from a bully and the other bullies is to put foot in ass. Its as old as survival in the jungle and Africans know it too.
Posts: 8896 | Registered: May 2005
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TRAGEDY AND TRAVESTY. While China is Mongul today, few weigh or give note of its two populations on either side of the GREAT DIVIDE (the time before and after Ghangis Khan).
It is African (by phenotype) China the following are speaking of in China’s greatest city and accomplishment: Zhengzhou / Hangchow / Hangzhou. Hangchow. The equal of and perhaps it bettered ancient Egypt:
Ibn Batuta (the great African traveller) called Hangchow, the capital of Southern Song in Henan Province in China, “The biggest city I have ever seen on the fact of the earth.”
The Venetian Marco Polo visited Hangzhou in the late 13th century and referred to the city as "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world."
Hangchow served as the seat of the imperial government, a center of trade and entertainment, and the nexus of the main branches of the civil service. During that time, the city was a sort of gravitational center of Chinese civilization: what used to be considered "central China" in the north was taken by the Jin, an ethnic minority dynasty ruled by Jurchens.
Numerous philosophers, politicians, and men of literature, including some of the most celebrated poets in Chinese history such as Su Shi (苏轼), Lu You (陆游), and Xin Qiji (辛弃疾) came here to live and die. Hangzhou is also the birthplace and final resting place of the famed scientist Shen Kuo (1031-1095 AD), his tomb being located in the Yuhang district.
TRAGEDY AND TRAVESTY: China before and after the Khan’s
But, no one takes note of the fact that Hangchow had a mostly non-Mongul population before Ghenghis and Kubla Khan exterminated the population of China and that that non-Mongul population looked like the people of Harlem. People were attracted to Hangchow like flies to honey. And so was Ghengis Khan. China stands on the shoulders of Africans.
The tragedy and travesty of China colonizing and consuming Africa is that Chinese civilization today is the result of its African architects of the past.
ONE PROFOUND CONTRIBUTION OF THE AFRICAN – forgotten and unknown
The most profound thinking and philosophies the earth had ever known graced China for 5 millenniums with Buddhism, Confucianism, and Lao-Tze’s Tao. These great worldviews were synthesized in the 12th century by the philosophers Teishi and later Shushi. And yet, few know anything of this splendid, unprecedented era.
The able Ernest Fenollosa wrote, and of that most wonderful analysis I include just the following on the synthesis these African (by phenotype) philosophers evolved on the nearly 5 millennium of Chinese thought:
“They are only partial expressions of one and the same thing. Over all is Heaven; through all is harmony and beauty; nature and man are brothers; the soul is but a child growing more and more into that stature of its parent, Heaven. Surely this is well nigh up to the most advanced Christian philosophy; and goes far to solve the eternal antimony between the individual and society.” (p. 35).
All of this was to come crashing to an end at the sword of Ghengis Khan.
We have Chinese scientists noting that all Chinese carry African genes (these must be of the San who the Chinese by phenotype resemble – save the hair which was inherited, I believe, when whites from the Steppes travelled east and intermixed with the kinky-haired population):
Yuehai Ke and Li Jin, et. al., African Origin of Modern Humans in East Asia: A Tale of 12,000 Y Chromosomes, Science, 292:5519, pp. 1151-1153, Issue of 11 May 2001.
And now Africa is being gobbled-up by China and its people there for millions of years, pushed aside for a fate no human should face.
What a damn, crying shame.
Marc Washington
(I have more pictures of African Chinese from ancient and medieval times if anyone would like to see more. For instance, 16th century portrayal of the THREE FOUNDERS: Buddha, Kung fu tse, and Lao tse. For the most part, they look African.
posted
sportbilly and Doug M give me much food for thought as usual (Thanks).
I don't imagine if the Chinese got too cheeky, they would be as difficult to get rid of as the West have been.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Non-Africans are bad for Africa --period. I don't care who they are or where they come from, NONE of them should be allowed in. One Chinese/white/arab is too damned many! That's the real issue for me, not economics. Now in South Africa they have I think 4 million Dutch there, but as the Africans turn up the heat you'll see the whites self-deport to Australia, as many have already done The same should be done with the Chinese. They are guests (and not even wanted ones, since it was a few corrupt government types who let them in and not the people) not citizens and they should never be allowed to forget that. When they start acting like they did Africa some sort of favor by coming the blacks should kill a thousand of them and deport ten-thousand, just to make the point that Africa did China the favor, not the other way around. But do any of Africa's leaders have that kind of steel? Sadly, no.
It's not China's economic behavior that has me pissed, it's their immigration behavior. Japan has strict controls on immigration. They only have a 1 percent immigrant population, which doesn't really count since their definition of "immigrant" is anyone who's not full-blooded Japanese. So third and even fourth generation Koreans whose families came to Japan eighy years ago when Japan still had Korea as a colony are still considered "immigrants."
There's a lesson in that for Africa. If Africa cultivated it's own intellectual and industrial leaders they wouldn't even need China or anyone. They can still do that, but Africa's leaders are too busy looking for bribes. The Chinese who are there need to be put on notice that they can't stay. At the next Afro-Asian conference africa's leaders should make it clear to Beijing that for the sake of peace, the Chinese government needs to recall their people back to China, so that the Africans don't have to. I'm done with this topic/thread. Africa is selling itslef out and it makes me sick to watch.
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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quote:Originally posted by argyle104: Alive-(What Box) aka Jeeves (the forums butler) wrote:
Icarius Jeeves is a Mulatto he can't help it. Every Mulatto or Quadroon or Octoroon I know always contradicts himself mid-sentence EPECIALLY when dealing with African/black affairs they seem to either under-compensate or over-compensate for being of mostly non African ancestry.
I think it is the Euro and Afro genes conflicting with each other. If you saw his gay picture with the bird on his shoulder *giggles* and him admitting that he is of half European ancestry you would have known this.
Give him a break he can't help it Posts: 343 | Registered: Feb 2008
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quote:Originally posted by sportbilly: Non-Africans are bad for Africa --period. I don't care who they are or where they come from, NONE of them should be allowed in. One Chinese/white/arab is too damned many! That's the real issue for me, not economics. Now in South Africa they have I think 4 million Dutch there, but as the Africans turn up the heat you'll see the whites self-deport to Australia, as many have already done The same should be done with the Chinese. They are guests (and not even wanted ones, since it was a few corrupt government types who let them in and not the people) not citizens and they should never be allowed to forget that. When they start acting like they did Africa some sort of favor by coming the blacks should kill a thousand of them and deport ten-thousand, just to make the point that Africa did China the favor, not the other way around. But do any of Africa's leaders have that kind of steel? Sadly, no.
It's not China's economic behavior that has me pissed, it's their immigration behavior. Japan has strict controls on immigration. They only have a 1 percent immigrant population, which doesn't really count since their definition of "immigrant" is anyone who's not full-blooded Japanese. So third and even fourth generation Koreans whose families came to Japan eighy years ago when Japan still had Korea as a colony are still considered "immigrants."
There's a lesson in that for Africa. If Africa cultivated it's own intellectual and industrial leaders they wouldn't even need China or anyone. They can still do that, but Africa's leaders are too busy looking for bribes. The Chinese who are there need to be put on notice that they can't stay. At the next Afro-Asian conference africa's leaders should make it clear to Beijing that for the sake of peace, the Chinese government needs to recall their people back to China, so that the Africans don't have to. I'm done with this topic/thread. Africa is selling itslef out and it makes me sick to watch.
Africa isn't selling itself out, the leaders in power are selling out because the international band of crooks won't ALLOW any REAL PROGRESSIVE leader to take over. NONE of Africa's political systems are controlled by the people. So OF COURSE the people in power are crooks, that was the whole point of foreigners manipulating African affairs in the first place. It is the same reason that Patrice Lumumba was killed and Mobutu put in his place. Most of these leaders are puppets of foreigners using whatever tricks they deem necessary in order to pretend that they are doing something for the local populations of Africa.
Posts: 8896 | Registered: May 2005
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Well, it is now. Here's another example of exactly the wrong move. Mugabe is declaring that he's going to nationalize something like 350 foreign businesses. Good move.
Now here's the bad news. He's going to put these newly acquired businesses into the hands of local investors and "friendly" foreign businesses. And of course the "friendly" foreigners are...Da-Ta!! THe Chinese.
That seems to be Mugabe's answer for EVERYTHING! Don't try to educate the people --just call the Chinese to give "supply and advice." Don't try to build dams and public works projects with African labor and expertise --just call the Chinese. Don't take farms and industry and put them under black ownership --just call the Chinese to run it.
If anything makes me turn my back on Mugabe and say "Piss on this asshole," it's going to be his one-note policy of giving Africa to the Chinese. This is a slippery slope he's on, but a course he seems fully commited to. The smart move is to build Africa's internal strengths. Yes, it's faster to get infusions of foreign capital, but everytime you do that you give away greater and greater slices of the country. Soon the foreigners won't have to ask for more national properties, they'll have enough leverage and money to take it outright and your economy will be so hopelessly dependent on the foreigner, because you couldn't be bothered to develop and build the indigenous people's strength, that you'll have to resign yourself to foreign rule. Mugabe needs to look not to the East, but to his people. He seems to be panicking, truth be told and despreately looking to sell the farm (literally!) to anyone he thinks will keep him afloat a little while longer. He doesn't look to his own people, he has no faith in them, he looks to the foreigner. As a result, China is buying Africa for a song.
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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posted
But that is precisely my point. This isn't Africans doing this, it is the neocolonial puppets doing what they have been doing all along. Mugabe did the same thing for the British and former Rhodesians (many of whom are still in his inner circle). Mugabe NEVER represented the interests of Africans and was always a puppet of foreign capitalists. Same with Mandela and the ANC, and many other leaders across Africa. Yes, they ARE selling out, but it isn't because they are NAIVE, it is because that is what the neo-colonial puppet masters WANT them to do. Neo colonialism is colonialism with a black face and most of these African leaders are just that.
Posts: 8896 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: .. Mugabe NEVER represented the interests of Africans and was always a puppet of foreign capitalists. Same with Mandela and the ANC,...
You cannot let your wild eyed radicalism blind you to complexities of real politic. it is foolish to compare Mugabe to a low life such as Mandela. How can you say he "never" represented our interests when apart from educating his people, helping to keep the Ugandan/Rwandan invasion of DRC at bay, housed African freedom figters during Apartheid days, which is one of reasons why he is respected in south Africa today. Yes he is not the ideal African revolutionary but he is in no way a mandela.
Posts: 4165 | From: jamaica | Registered: May 2008
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[Rasol writes] ^ Wonder if this will turn into a 20 page thread:
Chinese are new to China.
[Marc writes] Rasol. What's your damn problem? Did I say anything to you? Why do you have to be antagonistic as that 20 page thread is mine and you are obviously making mention to my statement that whites are new to Western Europe (which they are). Why you have to bring the battle from another thread here?
If you read or understood the history of the peopling of China and the Mongul incursion, you'd know that today's Chinese are in fact new to China.
quote:If you read or understood the history of the peopling of China and the Mongul incursion, you'd know that today's Chinese are in fact new to China.
^ and....we're off......
Go ahead, destroy what semblance of sanity exists in this thread with your loony photoshop spammings.... Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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To the point: China had an African phenotyped population millenniums before the great Mongul incursions of the 15th centuries spearheaded by the Khans; though smaller incursions occured earlier.
quote:If you read or understood the history of the peopling of China and the Mongul incursion, you'd know that today's Chinese are in fact new to China.
^ and....we're off......
Go ahead, destroy what semblance of sanity exists in this thread with your loony photoshop spammings....
Now you feel inadequate compared to Marc. I can still help you get over your peculiar complex rasolowitz.
posted
The article should be noted but its source should also be noted. The Daily Mail is a very right-wing--almost fascistic British newspaper.
Somehow, I suspect that the number of Chinese in Africa as per the article is exaggerated. Secondly, the population of Africa is close to 1 billion with North Africa holding approximately 165 million--with much phenotypical variation in that population. The rest of Africa would be upwards of 850 million.
Note that Nigeria has approx. 145 million, Ethiopia, 80 million, Egypt 83 million, Congo 70 million, South Africa 50 million, Kenya 40 million, Uganda 33 million, Ghana 24 million, etc.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
The article should be noted but its source should also be noted. The Daily Mail is a very right-wing--almost fascistic British newspaper.
Somehow, I suspect that the number of Chinese in Africa as per the article is exaggerated. Secondly, the population of Africa is close to 1 billion with North Africa holding approximately 165 million--with much phenotypical variation in that population. The rest of Africa would be upwards of 850 million.
Note that Nigeria has approx. 145 million, Ethiopia, 80 million, Egypt 83 million, Congo 70 million, South Africa 50 million, Kenya 40 million, Uganda 33 million, Ghana 24 million, etc.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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--------------------- The article should be noted but its source should also be noted. The Daily Mail is a very right-wing--almost fascistic British newspaper. ---------------------
These beatdown bitter saps don't have enough sense to do such a thing. In their pathetic world blacks are wretched sorry losers gutless victimized dumbasses. Why because Powder told them so. Which is why they fall for every bit of propaganda and lies that Powder tells them.
Straight out of Frosty's playbook.
Posts: 3085 | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
If African political and state leaders (be they dictators or whatever) are courting to the Chinese at the expense of their own African people (seemingly or fact), do you think it is more of a "chess" move to rid themselves of European domination?
-------------------- Occupation: TRUTH!! Posts: 303 | From: Inside my Mind | Registered: May 2005
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posted
The issue isn't European domination it is WORLD domination. EVERYBODY wants Africa's resources and they DON'T care two twits about the welfare of African people. So the goal is to remove WORLD domination, not to replace one exploitative relationship with another. Africans aren't dumb, they know FULL WELL that they need gas to fuel their cars, wood to build homes and schools, steel to build infrastructure and they ALSO know that they have TONS of all the things that they need to make their own countries self sufficient. There is MORE than enough fertile land to feed Africans three times over. However, the problem is the leadership. The leadership is a pawn of the global economic interests, which is why they always are BEGGING for new "masters" to replace the old ones. That is what they are there for and this international economic system will tolerate NOTHING ELSE from its hand picked puppets. While EVERY OTHER country on the planet is trying to GAIN CONTROL of their own resources to build their OWN infrastructure and standard of living by building EXCESS CAPITAL that they can use to finance THEIR OWN businesses, building projects, education and healthcare, Africa is trying to find new ways of GIVING AWAY capital so that they can KEEP BEGGING for everything they need. This is NOT a sign of a political or economic system run by people with common sense or a WILL to provide for Africans. This is ONLY a sign of the CONTROL of the African political establishment by foreigners. WHAT LEADER would neglect THEIR OWN for the benefit of EVERYONE ELSE without being muscled? It defies ALL LOGIC as historically ALL KINGDOMS and groups have ALWAYS looked out for THEIR OWN FIRST before anyone else. Even hunter gatherers and seminomadic pastoralists did this and the King was symbolic of HE who could PROTECT the flock and keep their hunting lands or farmlands SAFE and PROVIDE for the people on a daily basis. So it isn't as if this is FOREIGN to Africa. It is all about FOREIGN control which puts the whole concept of leadership and society on its head in Africa.
Posts: 8896 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Serpent Wizdom: If African political and state leaders (be they dictators or whatever) are courting to the Chinese at the expense of their own African people (seemingly or fact), do you think it is more of a "chess" move to rid themselves of European domination?
Yes, I think so. It would be stupid IMHO for an African nation to just jump out and say "f0ck everybody". It makes more sense to first get rid of your ARCH NEMESIS even if it means trade-offs such as giving China some sort of advantage -which is a risk, but perhaps a well calculated risk.
I still believe the Chinese have better human values than Europeans.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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Well, if stupid African leaders are selling, then China's buying.
The problem is stupid African leaders, not smart Chinese leaders. Being smart is not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
It isn't so much a case of stupid, it is a case of leaders being under the influence of powerful interests outside of Africa. Traditionally, African leaders are paid off by the same foreign interests that they give all their resources to. So it isn't simply a case of being stupid as I also think it is also a good bit of forced coercion that goes along with the bribes as well.
Posts: 8896 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
^Nope. Nigerian elites (that's them & their families, their friends, and sadly, Nigerians in general) are simply not well informed which is a cause of Stupidity among humans and which also means there is a huge deficit in intelligence. Believe it or not.
Are the thriving Asian countries not coerced too? Why can they maintain some semblance of sanity in their society despite the heavy hand of the West?
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
A bit off but in the same context. Mbeki of SA just said publicly that he was deeply dismayed that some white people in SA are now showing signs of poverty.
I mean this is really weird!
Re the Chinese
The point is that the vast majority of African leaders are woefully ignorant of African history or most things intellectual for that matter and they just don't have a sense of anything other than being a silly " big man"--always racing through the streets of their capital sirens blaring and making a confounded nuisance of their sorry selves plus using up all that fuel with convoys of over 15 vehicles.
Is it ignorance or stupidity? Probably greater of lesser degrees of both. Plus a general inability to feel shame about the fcat that most of the modern economic activities in countries are controlled by Europeans, Lebanese, Indians and increasingly Chinese.
Kwame Nkrumah advised them what to do many years ago: scrap those silly play money they use as currencies for single regional currencies that would be convertible and have some heft, form regional economic units not just on paper but in practice, open cooperative banks so that the locals could compete with the Lebanese, Indians, Chinese and Europeans, etc. But to no avail. he fools just keep on fooling around--always flying here, flying there, meeting this one, meeting that one, signing this paper, signing that paper, etc.
It's pure tragi-comedy!
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Heru, I see you essential point, but I'd advise caution. You can't compare China/Asia to Africa. First off Africa's been under siege since ancient times, starting with the first Asiatic invaders. China's wars, like the conflicts of the Europeans and New World Indians were internal. Africa's wars were almost exclusively against several outside invaders at a time.
Secondly, during the white world's Age of Exploration/Exploitation they had an agreement among themselves regarding China called the Open Door Policy. Which meant that the white powers agreed that none of them would try to colonize China. Yes, there was Britain and the Opium Wars, but that was not Britain taking over, and neither was their seizure of the island of Hong Kong. In fact this policy of hands-off applied not just to China but to ALL of the surrounding area, like Korea and Japan. The only "exception" (for want of a better term) was French IndoChina, which was acceptable since nobody considered Siam, Burma and Laos to be part of China proper.
Even America, while not being a signatory (the Open Door Policy was more of an undeclared understanding than an actual treaty) abided by the agreement. When Admiral Perry's fleet forced Japan open in the mid-19th century the US did not colonize Japan.
Now compare that to Africa. It was open fucking season since Day One. There are some folks in this forum who have drunk the Kool-Aid. To tell the other nations to leave Africa the hell alone is EXACTLY what they need to do. Yes, begging China to build them roads and dams may seem cheaper in the short-term (just as taking a $100,000 mortgage loan from a bank may seem relatively painless in the beginning) but at what cost? China wants a PERMANENT tow-hold in Africa. That will require one thing above all --Chinese people to be brought en masse into Africa. Folks, that's called an invasion. Africa needs to take the hard line now, while it's relationship with China is still being formed. China doesn't have it's hooks deep enough into Africa yet to be dictating terms, but before long they will. That means once again Africa will have pissed away it's chance at self-determination.
Africa is sitting on top of most of the world's natural resources --they will NEVER have a lack of client states looking to do business. Are the British, who slapped sannctions on Zimbabwe pulling out? Of course not! So Africa has what the whole damned world wants. It's a poker game, and Africa is once again folding even though it's got all the cards! I read this story yesterday http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/playstation-2-component-incites-african-war/1231745 that Sony Playstation's have a metal in them that is mined from the Congo, and that Playstation sales are in fact feuling conflict there. Africa's refusal to turn away from strangers is in fact making Africa cheap and easy for Asians to buy. While Africa has most of the world's minerals, it's hardly an inexhaustible supply. What happens when it runs out? They'll have millions of Chinese aristocrats, and Indians and a few white scavengers wondering if there's any slave labor to be had.
As painful as it may be at the start Africa reaps the most rewards by going it alone. Think about it. What is China giving Africa? Yes, credit and loans, but mostly Africa is looking to them for engineers and technical advice. Why, not because Africa, or the black world, doesn't have the brainpower, but because Africa's leaders (and I include Mugabe in this) have become so psychologically Europeanized that they have contempt for the abilities of their own people, and in fact have contempt for them. So they would prefer to give their countries to strangers rather than trust them to their own people.
Posts: 248 | From: Way Down South | Registered: Sep 2007
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quote:Originally posted by lamin: A bit off but in the same context. Mbeki of SA just said publicly that he was deeply dismayed that some white people in SA are now showing signs of poverty.
I mean this is really weird!
Re the Chinese
The point is that the vast majority of African leaders are woefully ignorant of African history or most things intellectual for that matter and they just don't have a sense of anything other than being a silly " big man"--always racing through the streets of their capital sirens blaring and making a confounded nuisance of their sorry selves plus using up all that fuel with convoys of over 15 vehicles.
Is it ignorance or stupidity? Probably greater of lesser degrees of both. Plus a general inability to feel shame about the fcat that most of the modern economic activities in countries are controlled by Europeans, Lebanese, Indians and increasingly Chinese.
Kwame Nkrumah advised them what to do many years ago: scrap those silly play money they use as currencies for single regional currencies that would be convertible and have some heft, form regional economic units not just on paper but in practice, open cooperative banks so that the locals could compete with the Lebanese, Indians, Chinese and Europeans, etc. But to no avail. he fools just keep on fooling around--always flying here, flying there, meeting this one, meeting that one, signing this paper, signing that paper, etc.
It's pure tragi-comedy!
I agree with your take on this. And you know what? it's actually not that hard at all to get to the Nigerian elites. Nigerians of the Lagos & Abuja collective stay at most 2 degrees seperated (not literally, but in a 'familia' sort of way).
But why do we always seem to have the solution defined but never delivered?
One thing: MEDIA CONTROL. When we achieve that, we can go to the drawing boards or pick a ready solution from the repository. Why? because that's how you get to the people these days. Until then we're just talking.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:Originally posted by sportbilly: Heru, I see you essential point, but I'd advise caution. You can't compare China/Asia to Africa. First off Africa's been under siege since ancient times, starting with the first Asiatic invaders. China's wars, like the conflicts of the Europeans and New World Indians were internal. Africa's wars were almost exclusively against several outside invaders at a time.
Secondly, during the white world's Age of Exploration/Exploitation they had an agreement among themselves regarding China called the Open Door Policy. Which meant that the white powers agreed that none of them would try to colonize China. Yes, there was Britain and the Opium Wars, but that was not Britain taking over, and neither was their seizure of the island of Hong Kong. In fact this policy of hands-off applied not just to China but to ALL of the surrounding area, like Korea and Japan. The only "exception" (for want of a better term) was French IndoChina, which was acceptable since nobody considered Siam, Burma and Laos to be part of China proper.
Even America, while not being a signatory (the Open Door Policy was more of an undeclared understanding than an actual treaty) abided by the agreement. When Admiral Perry's fleet forced Japan open in the mid-19th century the US did not colonize Japan.
Now compare that to Africa. It was open fucking season since Day One. There are some folks in this forum who have drunk the Kool-Aid. To tell the other nations to leave Africa the hell alone is EXACTLY what they need to do. Yes, begging China to build them roads and dams may seem cheaper in the short-term (just as taking a $100,000 mortgage loan from a bank may seem relatively painless in the beginning) but at what cost? China wants a PERMANENT tow-hold in Africa. That will require one thing above all --Chinese people to be brought en masse into Africa. Folks, that's called an invasion. Africa needs to take the hard line now, while it's relationship with China is still being formed. China doesn't have it's hooks deep enough into Africa yet to be dictating terms, but before long they will. That means once again Africa will have pissed away it's chance at self-determination.
Africa is sitting on top of most of the world's natural resources --they will NEVER have a lack of client states looking to do business. Are the British, who slapped sannctions on Zimbabwe pulling out? Of course not! So Africa has what the whole damned world wants. It's a poker game, and Africa is once again folding even though it's got all the cards! I read this story yesterday http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/playstation-2-component-incites-african-war/1231745 that Sony Playstation's have a metal in them that is mined from the Congo, and that Playstation sales are in fact feuling conflict there. Africa's refusal to turn away from strangers is in fact making Africa cheap and easy for Asians to buy. While Africa has most of the world's minerals, it's hardly an inexhaustible supply. What happens when it runs out? They'll have millions of Chinese aristocrats, and Indians and a few white scavengers wondering if there's any slave labor to be had.
As painful as it may be at the start Africa reaps the most rewards by going it alone. Think about it. What is China giving Africa? Yes, credit and loans, but mostly Africa is looking to them for engineers and technical advice. Why, not because Africa, or the black world, doesn't have the brainpower, but because Africa's leaders (and I include Mugabe in this) have become so psychologically Europeanized that they have contempt for the abilities of their own people, and in fact have contempt for them. So they would prefer to give their countries to strangers rather than trust them to their own people.
I see your point. Things are indeed the way you've described. But things don't have to stay/end that way.
The right leader can design victory around the Chinese presence. It's really about the African leaders, not the Chinese.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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