| We are in agreement that self- government is the goal. Implementing it, though, can be tricky, and it is clear from the general failure of the newly independent countries to either establish decent governments, or to avoid terrible intercommunal or intertribal violence, that they were not ready. Perhaps you are right, and they all had to go through a lot of blood- letting, dictatorship, kleptocracy, famine, reduced per capita incomes (they almost universally became poorer after independence), and so forth, to find their way to a better future, but I don't buy it. More experience with local self- government and further education, along with improved infrastructure, would have spared them at least some of the trauma, I think........ |
