The worst blindness is only using the eye to see!!!!
>From: MOMODOU BUHARRY GASSAMA <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Hopeless Africa?
>Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 14:15:22 +0200
>
>Hi Madiba!
> Thanks for your post. While I found some of the
>author's
>arguments bordering on racism, I was quite amused by some statements. They
>are reproduced below together with some rather true statements.
>
>1. Much of Africa is ruled more by rainfall than politics.
>2. Liberia is, in fact, Charles Taylor Inc.
>3. Besides, the money accumulated by the politicians and crooks
> in Africa is rarely reinvested there.
>4. Abolishing debt would help to create a fresh balance- sheet, but for
>many countries debt-relief would only benefit Ukrainian arms- dealers.
>5. Today, still, Africans' strongest qualities are fortitude to the point
>of
>fatalism, close family and communal ties, tolerance and an ability to
>enjoy life.
>6. Most African businesses are one-man-bands that rarely survive the
>death of their founder.
>7. The most damaging impact of imperial rule on Africa was neither
>economic nor even political. It was psychological.
>8. One example: the East African reported recently that a white
>foreigner had been appointed to head the Kenya Commercial Bank,
>since "it became clear that the appointment of an indigenous Kenyan
>might lead to a run on the bank."
>9. African states were not forged by ethnicity, nationalism and war.
>They were simply bequeathed by departing imperial powers who left
>highly centralised, authoritarian states to a tiny group of western-
>educated Africans who rushed in and took over.
>10. Independence often meant little more than a change in the colour of
>the faces of the oppressors.
>11. The African state, as invented by Europeans, has been neither
>deconstructed nor reconstituted.
>12. By personalising power, African leaders have undermined rather than
>boosted national institutions
>13.Their loyalties are regional or tribal, and they support the president
>because he is the big chief. "I will vote for you when you are
>president," challengers are sometimes told.
>14. Most African presidents make no distinction between their party
>and the government, using the panoply of state institutions in their
>election campaigns.
>15. The aid donors, whose support is essential for African rulers,
>demand multi-party democracy on a western model. But they have applied
>it inconsistently. Cynics call it donor democracy-just enough fair
>voting and respect for human rights to satisfy the aid donors.
>16. Few African palaces have anything in them made in Africa.
>
>
>Thanks.
>
>Buharry.
>
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