Uganda: Why Black People Have Remained Backward

[azrom]

{snip}

Uganda has been fairly stable long enough. The conditions for an economic takeoff have been there for 20 years. Mr. Museveni has enjoyed generous goodwill from nearly all the world’s rich governments. Their largesse has poured in ceaselessly and in hefty amounts.

Uganda should have taken off. We haven’t. We’re stuck. And so is Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Eritrea, Malawi, Congo Republic and pretty much all of Black Africa, excluding the region’s sole economic power, South Africa. This led me to pose a question to myself: can Black people build prosperous societies?

Just about every reason-from slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism to inequitable world trade rules-cited for the backwardness of Black African nations has been so debunked by time that it has now become necessary to look beyond the realm of such contemporary explanations. The maddening inertia of Black people and the mystical forces that keep tamping down our nations, in fact, seem to have their roots deep within us, not from without as has been argued for decades.

{snip}

According to a news report in New York Times on October 25, 2006, Vietnam now sells “nine times as much to Americans as it buys from there.” Since 1990, a space of 15 short years, Vietnam has pulled off one of the most stunning economic feats: reducing absolute poverty-World Bank standard: subsisting on $1 a day-from 51 to 8% of its population.

Vietnam

Back home here, the sort of wars and the scale of devastation that Uganda has suffered since independence can hardly be said to be as crippling as the cataclysm that struck Vietnam.

This is true for many of the Black African nations. But the difference is staggering. Vietnam’s economy is roaring. Sub Saharan Africa is dead stuck known more for: constant disease outbreaks, emergency food relief appeals, civil strive, genocide, chronic corruption, flimsy or nonexistent infrastructure, constitution breaches, state failure than anything else. This disgusting state of affairs after, according to an estimate by South Africa’s Brenthurst Foundation, a colossal $580 billion worth of donor money has been poured into the region since independence. Why have the Vietnamese overcome their historical setbacks and prospered while Black Africans stagnated or regressed?

Or if we may ask another question: why is it that White people prosper wherever they settle while Black people head for the opposite direction. The British crown started asserting its colonial rule over small territories on the continent of Australia in 1788, taking several decades before it brought all the areas into a unified Australian colony.

Throngs of Europeans emigrated en masse and settled there throughout the 1800s. These émigrés went ahead, starting from really little or nothing, and established one of the world’s economic and military powers that is Australia today. The history of New Zealand, the other White country in the Southern Hemisphere, is pretty much the same.

Now contrast these nations with Haiti, the only black nation outside of Africa. It gained independence in 1804. It’s near the US, the richest market on earth and Haiti has a coastline unlike other African nations whose landlocked status is blamed for their underdevelopment. And fine, it has had a fairly brutal past but nowhere near Vietnam’s horrors. But what have our Haitian brothers made of these generous natural advantages: it remains the most backward country in the Western hemisphere, bound up by privation, cyclical coups, spasms of mayhem and blood-thirsty gangs. At home and away, that’s your Black people!

In fact Haiti is perhaps just about the best that we can achieve in nation building. Ethiopia never had colonialism. It registered impressively high levels of literacy as early as 1970, a fact a friend of mine brought to my attention recently. It has a rich and widely shared cultural heritage, a common ancestry. This should have propelled Ethiopia but see the shameful portrait of hunger and disease that this country projects to the world.

And so, to go back to that question that I have been chewing over and over again of late: can Black People build prosperous societies; I firmly believe the answer is a sad NO.

The dumbfounding incompetence of President Museveni thus is not a failure of an individual. It’s a failure of a people: Black People. Museveni only rose and touched our low ceiling. The shamefully limited achievement of his “fundamental change” regime thus should be interpreted in this cruel context.



http://inverted-world.com/index.php/news/news/uganda_why_black_people_have_remained_backward/

[fjack]

This will go on and on. I actually heard one liberal sociology prof. say that the reason africa is in such bad shape is because all their 'best a bightest' are coming to the US and Europe. Well, if what I see is their 'best and brightest' can you imagine the 'dumbest' ones that are left in the motherland. Their best and brightest are a joke. All they are are drug dealers, street vendors and reggae noise makers, if this is the best they can come up with, africa will remain the same or worse.

[MassuhDGoodName]

fjack writes:  "...Well, if what I see is their 'best and brightest' can you imagine the 'dumbest' ones...

Fjack, I watched a documentary on PBS years ago, showing the countries in Africa in which Ebola was recurring.

The film makers showed a day in a major capital city during lunch time; focusing primarily on the living habits of "educated" & "middle class" professional workers (in hopes of pinning down the source of the Ebola outbreaks).

All of them were wearing modern western clothing, and working as bank tellers, secretaries, nurses, etc...

All of them were enjoying for their lunch meal a fresh boiled RAT.

I'm serious as a heart-attack!

They consider A DEAD RAT the choice deli meat for a delicious meal.

The downtown vendors and cafes sell them boiled, the ENTIRE WHOLE RAT....COMPLETE WITH THE HEAD, TAIL, CLAWS, AND FUR ATTACHED!....wrapped fresh and steaming in a piece of greasy paper.

The camera crews were focusing in on close ups of the women who were taking their lunch break from their office buildings, biting big chunks right out of a fur-covered rat's head with the beady rat's eyes bulging out of their sockets, with the most savory lip-smacking and smiles on their faces, making remarks like "oooooh!....hooouw deelishus!....an' soooooo velly tasteeeeey!"

Obviously "the white man" must have stolen and took home with them all the steak and caviar when they left Africa!

If those natives every caught glimpse of a KFC outlet, they'd think that they'd done died and gone to Heaven! (that is; after they'd ransacked the place, raped & murdered the staff & management, and then burned it to the ground).

[Fruit of thy loins]

I've met some intelligent Kenyan bio students. 

I've met some highly intelligent blacks.  One even kept repulsing the advances of a blonde girl.  Highly unusual.

[fjack]

Was the white blonde woman that was replused by this black intellectual giant your mother or your sister, or was it Sarah.