This is a rather bleak view of Africa and the likelihood of a project such as this succeeding - but at least he believes there is hope - "The hope is a middle class that grows up with the notions of opportunity, striving for success, taking risks...... They, plus the diaspora, plus GSM and the Internet, equal hope." That hope of course translates directly to the dissemination of knowledge - and with that we, as a Foundation in the knowledge business, totally agree.
It could be said that this is at least a refreshing view - one presented by someone who has obviously travelled Africa with his eyes open - something most don't do - and that includes most of the western media. It is though becoming a little more common as we see a generation of "more enlightened" people in the west. One could also see "more enlightened" as meaning little more than "less racist" - perhaps a result of also seeing more and more African people in positions commanding respect - however seeing something clearly and understanding why it is so are not necessarily the same thing.
"Mugabe-esque leaders" is in itself a statement that demonstrates a failure to understanding why something is so - and Zimbabwe is a country that perhaps provides one answer to what lies behind the fundamental problems Africa faces - the ones that lead to the que sera, sera syndrome.
It is popular to "demonise" Robert Mugabe as the cause of Zimbabwes problems, at least in the West - most Africans don't however, perhaps simply because they have a better understanding of what happened.
That famous "culture of dependency," and the notion that white people screwed up the place, is perhaps no more than a simple and brutal truth many in the west would like not to believe or carry the burden of guilt for - it was after all our grandparents generation and we are much more "enlightened". Sadly the last British government that "screwed up" Zimbabwe, and could be equally blamed for triggering the decline there we see today, was Tony Blairs Labour and that was in 1997.
How? - simply by defaulting on a previous agreement that was fundamental to any functioning transfer of land ownership back to the real African owners. The reason quoted by the new minister responsible? She didn't see why Britain should be responsible - and that was OK because she was Irish - and they were colonised themselves. Justification apparently for doing nothing.
Just three years after this the people of Zimbabwe - having patiently waited for twenty years for that agreement to be fulfilled - simply grabbed their land back by force and in the process destroyed the Agro-industrial base that had become the wealth of their nation - albeit channeled through 6000 white frontmen. A sad and predictable outcome to a then insoluble problem - blaming cronyism, poor governance, or anything else, is no more than a meaningless need to apportion blame for the final sad chapter in one of the sorriest sagas in Britains colonial history.
A saga that began 108 years before the British governments inaction led to the final chapter. In 1889, the Ndebele ruler Lobengula received Charles Rudd, a representative of Rhodes' British South Africa Company (BSAC). Rudd offered Lobengula weapons and a pension for life in return for the rights to his kingdom's mineral resources. Rhodes then promoted white settlement in Ndebele and Shona lands and dispatched a group of colonists to the region in 1890, under military guard. Finding the gold reserves seriously depleted, the white newcomers instead turned to farming and cattle ranching.
By this time, Lobengula was becoming seriously alarmed at Rhodes' and the settlers' intentions, and appealed directly to Queen Victoria to curb Rhodes and the BSAC and respect his people's rights to their land. But Lobengula's entreaties went unanswered, and the British Colonial Office in London gave Rhodes permission to continue with his settlement and exploitation of the area. In 1893 Rhodes deputy Leander Starr Jameson led a military force into the Ndebele kingdom. Employing the newly invented Maxim machine gun with deadly effect, Jameson's forces inflicted a crushing defeat on Lobengula's troops, who were armed only with spears and shields. Over 3000 Ndebele warriors fell in battle, against only one white casualty.
In the years that followed, Lobengula's people were forced into tribal reserves, while the best lands were seized by a steady influx of settlers from Britain and South Africa. After the king's followers raised one last desperate rebellion in 1896-7, which was brutally suppressed, the Ndebele and Shona peoples were subdued and became second-class citizens in their own homelands. It would be nearly 70 years before they would rise again against their white masters.
In 1923, the BSAC formally handed over control of its territory to the British government. The northern and southern areas, which now comprise Zambia and Zimbabwe, were named Northern and Southern Rhodesia respectively in honour of the man who had sponsored white colonial settlement! The black majority was relegated to the position of non-citizens, without the right to vote, and British settlers consolidated their economic and political control.
In 1960, Harold Macmillan, then British prime minister, made a statement in Cape Town referring to what was taking place in southern Africa as "the wind of change." He had correctly read the feelings of the black masses and eventually, the British government abolished the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In 1964, Northern Rhodesia became Zambia and Nyasaland became Malawi. This caused some consternation among the white rulers in Salisbury (now Harare), the capital of Southern Rhodesia. Fearing that their part of the dissolved federation would be the next to undergo black majority rule, most white Rhodesians rallied around a political leader named Ian Smith, whose Rhodesia Front party swept to victory in a whites-only election. In November 1965, Smith defied both Britain and world opinion by declaring a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) for Rhodesia, under the rule of his white-minority government.
South Africa's apartheid regime was a natural ally of Ian Smith, and extended considerable economic and military assistance to him. Secure in their sense of racial superiority and supremacy, most white Rhodesians were confident that their government could weather international opposition and mounting black domestic discontent. But during the 1970s, the tide finally began to turn. By 1972, the two main black liberation movements that had been founded in the 1960s, Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African Political Union (ZAPU), and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) formed an alliance known as the Patriotic Front and were engaged in a full-scale guerrilla war with the Smith regime.
By 1979, it was clear that they were gaining the upper hand. Desperate to maintain power, Smith offered a limited degree of political control to some black leaders outside the Patriotic Front, and changed the name of the country to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in 1978. But whites still controlled a majority of seats in parliament, and dominated the economic and social life of the nation. This arrangement was totally unacceptable to Nkomo and Mugabe, who insisted on a new government, founded on the basis of majority rule.
In the end it was Britain's then new prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who agreed Britain would hold a conference on the future of Zimbabwe in London. At the talks, the people of Zimbabwe were assured that they were going to be independent the following year, 1980. But that was conditional. The new government of Zimbabwe was not to deal with land issues but was to "leave that in the hands of the British government". Nationalists from Zimbabwe accepted this rather complicated condition purely for the practical reason that it involved the agro-industrial economic base of the country - the agreement effectively guaranteed whites important political and economic power in the new country for the first 10 years after independence.
After an overwhelming election victory Mugabe's new government immediately undertook an ambitious effort to redress old colonial wrongs and provide a better life for Zimbabwe's previously disenfranchised majority while honouring the agreement to let the British Government "sort out" the land issue. Massive investments were made in education, health care, and social programs, especially in rural areas of the country where the local population's basic needs had long gone unmet.
The Thatcher government had begun to deal with the land issue, as did her successor, John Major - but the intransigence of the settlers desperate to hang on to what their forefathers had taken, and their reluctance to pass on the knowledge needed to run such an industry, did not make the task an easy one. The 1990's saw the once favourable conditions that had stimulated Zimbabwe's economic growth during the previous decade begin to change for the worse. The country experienced a prolonged drought that damaged its main export crop, tobacco, and also brought hardship and starvation to many subsistence farmers.
The later decision - or non-decision - of Blair's government to simply drop their obligations under the earlier agreement effectively left Zimbabwe in a position where nothing could be done and the outcome was inevitable. Zimbabwes people had waited patiently for 20 years after they had regained control of their country - then been again threatened with military intervention to protect the white settlers by a government that had made it very clear their grievences were of no importance.
One must ask the question as to why the Africans couldn't then run the farms they grabbed or were allocated - Zimbabwe's education system produced first rate and hard working doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers and so-on - but it could not substitute for the directly learned hard won knowledge needed to run an agro-industrial business or maintain engines pumps and power stations. Any more than any western educational institute could.
That lack of directly learned knowledge of what industrialisation is about - is perhaps the one key factor keeping Africans dependant on the west and it's industry - and in a position of accepting "whatever will be" - while relying on Providence for better times. This is covered in m0re detail here (training and education)
