Tim > Almost all these problems have been solved" (these problems being "overvalued currencies, civil war, experiments with socialism, or apartheid").
One of these so-called experiments is being conducted in South Africa at the moment. In fact, it is never spoken about, almost as if it doesn't exist. One could call it reverse apartheid -- where whites, who were formerly the dominant group, now have to live as a minority, and without minority rights, in a country with an overwhelming black majority and dominated by a black elitist clique intent on "Africanizing" everything in the name of democracy. For many whites, this situation is too ghastly to even contemplate and they have emigrated. For others, like myself for example, it requires major adjustments in attitude and expectation, adjustments which often are almost impossible to effect. So one just takes each day as it comes, the longer term simply doesn't exist.
As an experiment, the SAn scenario is relevant not only for Africa but also for the Palestinian-Israeli situation where many pundits have considered that a unitary, merged Palestinian-Israeli state is the only true democratic outcome for what, at present, seems to be a situation of never-ending oppression and war, indeed, something similar to South Africa under apartheid.
As for Africa itself, it seems to me the continent is firmly resistant to all Western solutions. Perhaps one day Western academics will come to realise that the African has ideas of his own for his own salvation, and these are not Western. Indeed, to an African politician any and every Western idea smacks of colonialism and imperialism -- also racism. It is for this reason, for example, that the SAn government resists the use af anti-retroviral drugs in the treatment of the AIDS pandemic, even under pressure -- they see it as the "white man's" solution and therefore resent it. They also see the Western drug companies benefiting from the African misfortune -- in other words, economic imperialism. |
