Cameroon, which gained independence in 1960, is a country in which its former colonial masters have inflicted much death and destruction after “independence”.

As many as 1 million people, mostly of the Bassa and Bamileke tribes, were killed during the periods 1955-1960 and 1960-1970 respectively. Some have called this a “silent genocide”.

http://www.panafricanvisions.com/special/LessonsFromTheRecentUnrestCameroon%5B1%5D.htm
“we have decided to learn from these mistakes by sending not a fax message but a carefully researched comprehensive complaint file, over 270 pages, (prepared by ourselves) to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to the UN Secretary General and to the international community at large, calling for the indictment of President Paul Biya and some other political and military leaders of French Cameroun for genocide and other crimes against humanity which we know they have already committed but have carefully concealed.”

The 279 page Report is viewable on-line at
http://www.postnewsline.com/2008/03/yaounde-elite-d.html

>What you do is to portray the Afrikaner as less
than sub-human species

Please quote a posting of mine, with time and date and a few consecutive words (sufficient to do a search). I will apologise in the unlikely event that I portrayed Afrikaners as such.

>your approach try to sugarcoat the African tribes
violent past

I’m only aware of the violent past of the Zulus during a very short period in history (a period far shorter than say the 300 years that the Vikings spread terror, pillaging and destruction in Western Europe).
I do not know enough about the history of the other black tribes in SA to comment on their past, in terms of violence prior to 1960.

>That the famous MK committed terrible crimes in
their concentration camps and you appear to have
no quarrel that people that have blown up innocent
citizens and now are about to have street named
after them.

I never ever supported or condoned such actions, whether in real life or on blogs.

About the San, I even acknowledged that large numbers of them were killed by Nguni tribes.
I merely stated that disease may (and I emphasize “may”)have killed more of them, both proportionally and in absolute numbers, than fights with more powerful foes, black and white.

>complain about the lack of education.

I never claimed that there was a lack of education under the Nationalist govt – I complained about Bantu education, designed to educate blacks for no more than semi skilled jobs, and I complained about discriminatory salaries for black, coloured, Indian school teachers. govt.
Significant percentages of very good black and coloured school teachers left teaching in SA, and this had a serious effect on the quality of education in the schools they left.
Many black and coloured teachers lost confidence in the educational system, and where possible sent their own children to previously all white schools, knowing that the educational system in those schools was better than in township schools. This process began during the 1980s. (and continues today because the present govt. did not fix the inherited problems in education in township schools).

>you left them under the impression that no higher
education for Blacks was available under the
Apartheid regime.

Only a fool would try to learn about a country’s history purely by reading a solitary blog/discussion thread.

On other blogs, I quoted references and commented upon those, where it was mentioned that special universities were set up for blacks and (one each) for coloureds and Indians during the late 1950s.

A foreigner wishing to learn SA history via internet would either read easy to find articles such as found on Wikipedia or search for academic articles or read both types of article.
Verwoed’s ideas on education of Bantu is a topic by the way which is extensively quoted – almost 9000 hits on google.

It is for this very reason that I try to make
my responses as short and precise as possible.
What you do is to portray the Afrikaner as less
than sub-human species.

I try to correct that misconception by admitting
that we have made mistakes in the past that
some of our security forces have been guilty
of gross human violations.

You on the other hand and you are not alone in
your approach try to sugarcoat the African tribes
violent past which in some cases led to cannibalism
East coast tribes tahr willingly participated in
the slave trade.

That the Zulus were equally responsible for the
disappearance of the San peple.

That the famous MK committed terrible crimes in
their concentration camps and you appear to have
no quarrel that people that have blown up innocent
citizens and now are about to have street named
after them.

You have been moaning about the high number of
graduates what were unemployed during the Apartheid
years and simulteouneosly complain about
the lack of education.

Now any international reader would be left totally
confused and bewildered by this because you
left them under the impression that no higher
education for Blacks was available under the
Apartheid regime.

If you want to enter into an honest and straight-forward debate you should start by acknowledging
your own interest groups shortcommings before
you start attacking the regime under which it
appears to me you got your qualifications.

The TL topic here is about colonialism, and whether blacks were advantaged or disadvantaged by it.
I have covered all sorts of subtopics/subthemes (call it what you like) about colonialism around the world, the extreme brutality of colonialsm in some other countries (i.e. NOT in South Africa), some South African history from 1910-1994, a little of 19th century history, brief mention of archaeological evidence of occupation of SA by Bantu tribes around 500 AD, the introduction of crops from the New World by Europeans that enabled people in Africa to support higher population densities. I have disputed the view that most of what we call civilization originates in Europe, particularly Western Europe, as such a view disregards the major contrbutions by particularly Asia and the Middle East.

Now you say I have focussed on the 48 years of Nationalist Party govt. rule.

I have used the word Apartheid only 5 times (one of these in a quoted article on music), in all my posts on this particular TL thread. Only twice have I used the period “1910-1994″ on this particular TL thread.

There are several other threads deling with failings of the current government. Recently, several new TL threads have appeared on Xenophobia.
This thread dealt with “In defence of colonialism” and I covered material related to that thread.

I can’t see the linkage between xenophobia (which first surfaced in SA lets say in the last 12 years) and either the topic of this thread or my posts on this thread.

Once again, I am being vilified for reading up on history and posting some historial information here.

I could have written sme really ugly stuff from the 48 years in question, but there was no point in focussing on the exceptions. The Dimbaza and Limehill relocations were govt. policy, and not spur-of-the-moment racist actions, so I mentioned these two places as they are of historical significance.

On some other TL thread, I think I have written that the problem in modern (or post colonial)Africa has been poor leadership by the top policial leaders, but this subtopic is unrelated to the thread here, In defence of colonialism.

As for your comments about (by implication, ignorant) people overseas, I can’t tailor my writing to suit such people (who may well misinterpret what I write anyway, no matter how I word my responses)

Now let us assume that you are correct and they
were here let us say 500 years before 1652
and put them here in the year 1100.

Why then would you elect to concentrate on a
very short period in our history. 48 years
would represent about 5% of that period,a hundred
years 10%.

Any international reader following your postings
especially the Americans who cannot even find Africa on a map and think like my American penfriend says ‘Africa is a place where black people die of aids and has no whites’ would conclude that all the calamities this continent
has suffered are the results a colonialism and
that Africa before the Whites came was a
undiscovered paradise destroyed by greedy
whites who could not keep their greedy paws
at home as far as the continents treasures were
concerned and that included the female species as
well.

By the time you are finished reading this and
are ready to admit that the African continent
has produced it own share of dictators and
that African tribes have been and are still
causing as much mayhem as their colonial masters
are accused of, this debate might still prove
to be a fruitful on.

But let us end it right here and in terms of
our foreign minister and president once again
blame the foreign media, observers and ask
ourselves .

“What crisis,what arms,what ship’ Zimbawe in crisis! no the situation is grossly overstated and Chinese soldiers are just once again a figment of western observers imagination.

All these people want to do is to portray us
inept people unable to solve our own problems.”

This is the curse of the African continent and its
leaders, no one is ever prepared to accept responsibility and acknowledge their own turbulent
past and mistakes.

It is far easier to point fingers,sit back
and think about the next bosberaad,meeting,indaba
whatever your fancy is.

Whites and the West are easy scapegoats as you’ll discover by reading the thought leaders postings.

So go in peace and remain in one piece because
xenophobia is not imagined but real.

Your posting of May 20th, 2008 at 11:53 am
“..Black people as Angels who happened to be victims of a regime hell bent on their total extermination.”

I never implied any such thing!

The SA agricultural sector grew very big, even by world standards. Much of the growth relied on cheap black labour, including cheap skilled labour.
Large scale mechanization on maize farms only began in the 1970s.
Mining too grew on the back of cheap labour.
The governments from 1910-1994 did some silly and stupid things, but extermination (let alone “total extermination”) of blacks was never ever under consideration, as farming and mining was heavily dependant upon black labour.

My views only appear one sided because I respond to a point in someone’s post, and I try to keep on topic. (I get mauled when I deviate from the topic)
Everyone is biased to some extent. I try to be even handed.

The following is off topic. Concerns the only two good things I can think of, about apartheid policies – promotion of African languages, and promotion of indigenous music.
Interest in African languages at universities declined after the demise of apartheid, as these were not promoted to the same extent as under the Nat govt.

As for indigenous music, some of the only musical recordings of indigenous music of certain types are in the SABC archives – some of the music forms are now extinct, and there seems to be no interest of the present govt. to preserve this important aspect of Africa culture. [ a music dept. at a university could revive an extinct musical form, but this requires funding ]

The following is en extract from an article.
The indigenous music of South Africa …..was ridiculed to the extent that very few Africans wanted anything to do with what was called “mampara music”. However, like the spirit of the people, the music thrived in rural areas and on the mines. SABC radio fortunately encouraged the (indigenous) music in its programming – even if it was for reasons other than noble ones. For them it was one way of perpetuating the tribal story as part of grand apartheid. They went to the extent of going to musicians in remote places with their sophisticated recording equipment. There is a wealth of traditional music in the archives of the SABC. [ for full article see http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=206986&area=%2farchives%2farchives__print_edition%2f ]

>”or do you think the Black tribes would have caught up with their European counter parts on their own?”

Now we’re back to the e-mails circulating around months ago (and newspaper letters to the editor I first saw 20 years ago) and the David Bullard article in the Sunday Times.

Africa WOULD have progressed had European colonists not arrived. Humans around the world have always progressed (not necessarily i.t.o. morals though) for millenia, although sometimes there were setbacks, like the Dark Ages lasting 5 centuries in Europe.
How much and how fast the process would have been in Africa is impossible to estimate. West Africa had yams in ancient times (good source of food that can grow in a forest) and some precolonial populations there were large. Nigeria’s culture/civilization goes back 8000 – 9000 years.
The rest of Sub Saharan Africa would not have supported large populations without 3 crops brought from the New world – maize, cassava and potatoes, unless of course African had developed new crops or other farming techniques.
An advanced civilization normally required a large population (ancient Greece was an exception) which in turn required adequate water, fertile soil and suitable crops.
Alternatively, an advanced ancient empire would get its knowledge (and much of its food) from across the empire, e.g. Roman Empire which ruled the conquered peoples mainly by force, or the Persian empire founded by Cyrus the Great, which respected the religions and traditions of the conquered peoples.

In the rest of the world (i.e. outside Africa), people were formed into large nations by military conquest, e.g. Aztec empire in 14th century, Germany in 19th century.
Sub Saharan Africa consisted of some 10 000 tribes. A subcontinent of 10 000 tribes would have been economically disadvantaged when it came to foreign trade, or building vast projects requiring enormous numbers of people. Shaka was the first African ruler that I know of, who formed a larger, more powerful nation out of force.
So how Africa would have progressed without colonization, would have depended so some extent upon how many other Africa rulers would have arisen, and formed larger nations out of conquest.

Black Africans DID have some knowledge of some things much earlier than the Europeans, it would seem (but in future, archaeologists may of course discover even older evidence in Europe) see article below:

http://wysinger.homestead.com/ironage.html
Africa’s Storied Past
Archaeological Institute of America
Volume 52 Number 3, May/June 1999
“…But 50 years of archeology have shown that the continent has pottery thousands of years older than that of the Near East and Europe, true steel two and a half millenia before its nineteenth-century European “invention,” and urban civilizations without despots and wars….”

But I think its silly to to ask “what would Africa be, had it not been colonized or had contact with Europeans” if one does not ask” what would Europe have been, without the knowledge, innovations and philosophies from other “non European” nations, e.g.
India: Zero and decimal number system, and many surgical techniques (cataract removal and plastic surgery 2700 years ago)
Arabs & Muslims: universities, chemistry, algebra
China: paper, iron plough, public examination system and meritocracy, gunpowder, crossbow with trigger guard & safety catch and of course many more.
Persia: first universal declaration of human rights, over 2500 years ago,

How long would it have taken the Europeans to discover the above by itself? Could have been centuries.
In the 1960s, German surgeons rediscovered a plastic surgery technique known to have been used in India 2700 years ago, namely to pull a flap of skin from the forehead onto the nose to let the nose heal.

And for China’s contribution to education of primary school children, and more on the public examination system, see my post at
http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/lazolandamase/2008/05/05/university-students-racist-don%e2%80%99t-blame-the-kids-ask-the-parents/
dated May 17th, 2008 at 12:40 am

I first did a mini study of the Mfecane a few months ago. I posted my views on another TL blog.
And it seem as though you read my post!

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sandilememela/2008/03/01/whites-need-not-apologize-for-apartheid/
re: Shaka and Mfecane

I read several articles on Shaka, including the Wikipedia entry and an article on Shaka by Truman R. Strobridge and originally published in Military History Magazine in October 2002 at http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/19_century/3032216.html?showAll=y&c=y
Here is a quote from the latter reference.
“At his death, Shaka ruled over 250,000 people and could muster more than 50,000 warriors, whose iron discipline equaled that of the Roman legions in their prime. His 10-year-long kingship had resulted in more than 2 million deaths by warfare alone, not counting the deaths during mass tribal migrations to escape his armies. ……establishing Shaka, king of the Zulus, among the great commanders of all time”

The word Mfecane, describing a set of wars or a period, had first been used in a work of history by E.A. Walker in his History of South Africa (1st edn. 1928).
The Mfecane has long been used to justify occupation by whites of lands that supposedly became vacant during the period of dislocation from around 1820-1840.

There are Zulucentric and Eurocentric perspectives of the Mfecane
Both are mentioned in e.g. State Formation in Nineteenth-century South Africa http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/library-resources/online%20books/turningpoints/bk3/chapter1.htm
The Zulucentric view holds that the Zulus alone were entirely to blame for initiating the Mfecane. The Eurocentric holds that the British, Boers and slave traders in Mozambique also played a role.

Wikipedia entry on Mfecane is Zulucentric. Here is a short extract:
“Populations had increased greatly in Zululand. The introduction of maize (corn) from the Americas through the Portuguese in Mozambique was a factor. Maize produced more food than indigenous grasses on the same land, and thus could sustain the larger population, at the price of greater water usage. It also allowed Shaka to raise a standing army, growing crops not being a part of their duties. By the end of the 1700s much of the arable land was now occupied. Declining rainfall, and ten-year drought in the early 1800s meant that a battle for land and water resources began in earnest.”

Shaka formed a Zulu nation out of many clans and tribes. Those who fled the embryonic Zulu nation caused much death and destruction other tribes in their paths, but this too resulted in some smaller tribes being assimilated into larger ones. The Basotho nation being one of these. Shaka by most accounts became a tyrant during his last few years, but so were many rulers in history.

Congo DRC has seven hundred local languages and dialects, Nigeria has 510 living languages. Having many tribes and languages in a single country is of interest to , for example, linguists, anthropologists and tourists. The downside is more difficult administration and governance, more political divisions, and increased risk of civil war, as occurred in Nigeria and DRC, or major civil strife, as in occurred Kenya.
So, while the so called Mfecane was undeniably terrible for those caught up in it, maybe this contributed to stability and economic development generations later.
Of course, historians from various nations and tribes affected by this Mfecane should themselves research the topic, and write their own histories.

Wars to unite e.g. Italy or Germany during the same century as Shaka’s reign were not bloodless. Several wars were fought to unite Germany in the 19th century, the largest of which was the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, also called the Seven Weeks War, the Unification War, or the German Civil War which cost over 100 000 casualties i.e. dead, wounded and missing. (actually a relatively low figure considering there were 1.4 million combatants).
Were it not for Bismark’s great diplomatic skill, the number of casualties in Germany’s unification could have been far higher, maybe in the millions.

China’s unification took place in two stages, first regional warlords annexed smaller states around them and consolidated their rule, forming 7 major states. Each had different laws, sets of weights and measures, different writing etc. Then in about 17 years, with with great brutality and at an enormous cost of lives, the first emperor unified China. After just one major battle, he reportedly had 400 0000 defeated enemy troops buried alive. He is reported to have buried 460 Confucian scholars alive too. Chinese today have mixed feelings about their tyrannical first emperor – many say if he had not been so brutal, he would not have managed to unite such a vast and diverse country. And they say if he did not, maybe no one after him would have managed to unite China.

Is it fair to use the moral standards of the late 20th century/early 21st century, to judge the means Shaka used to unify the Zulu nation about 190 years ago?

oldfox on March 20th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
————————————————-
Old Fox
Time does not diminish the atrocities.I am
grateful that you made this post because it
it puts South African history in perspective.

cool down. on March 22nd, 2008 at 2:23 pm

“.. by 1825 two and half million starving,homeless people wandering about
Southern Africa..”

These figures are the estimates of one historian, and some historians were known to have deliberately inflated the numbers, as you yourself claim elsewhere. So we don’t know the true figures.
Clearly though, the upheavals in SA in the 1820s were devastating for the communities affected. My view on this, is in the next post.

You are so biased in your outlook that you simply
are not capable to put an unbiased view forward
and like I said before you dip your hand into
history and select only those parts that support
your arguments, which to many uninformed
especially international readers portrays the Whites as the reincarnation of the Devil here
on earth and Black people as Angels who happened
to be victims of a regime hell bent on their
total extermination.

I gather from your writings that you are an Engineer so perhaps you’ll admit at least that
you would not have been an Engineer if the
whites had never settled here or do you think
the Black tribes would have caught up with their
European counter parts on their own?