Thomas Sowell on Black Africans Blaming Imperialism for Post-Independence Failure

Thomas Sowell is a Black American conservative intellectual, and fierce critic of affirmative action, which he argues is actively harmful to Black improvement and uplift. I’ve been reading his Conquests and Cultures: An International History (New York: Basic Books), his examination of the effects of imperialism on both the conquerors and conquered peoples, concentrating on four groups of peoples: the British, Black Africans, the Slavs and western hemisphere Indians. In his chapter on Africans, he states very clearly that the western imperial powers committed atrocities, including the imposition of forced labour. This was widely resented and also caused innumerable deaths. The mortality for rate for porters on one route in colonial Tanzania, for example, was 20-25 per cent. However, he also describes the political, social and economic chaos that swept many African nations after they gained independence with coups, ethnic violence and economic collapse. Africans compensated for the disappointment of their political hopes by blaming the former imperial masters and the US. He writes

‘African governments by the dozens were toppled by military coups in the post-independence era. The swift disappearance of newly attained democracy, as brutal dictatorships took over, led to the cynical phrase: “one man, one vote – one time.” The elaborately fragmented peoples of Africa turned upon one another, sometimes with massive bloodbaths. Approximately 30,000 Ibos were slaughtered by Moslem mobs in Nigeria, 200,000 Hutus were slaughtered by the Tutsis in Burundi, and Idi Amin’s regime slaughtered 300,000 people in Uganda. A continent once virtually self-sufficient in food, Africa became a massive importer of food as its own production faltered and in some places declined absolutely, in the face of rising population. It was not uncommon for national output as a whole to decline absolutely for years in various African nations. In Equatorial Guinea, for example, the growth rate was negative for the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, averaging nearly minus 4 per cent per annum for the 1980s and minus 9 per cent for the 1970s. In Burundi the annual “growth” rate of national output was minus 6 per cent in 1994 and minus 18 per cent in 1995, while in Rwanda it ranged from minus 3.2. per cent in 1992 to minus 50 per cent in 1994.

After the soaring rhetoric and optimistic expectations at the beginning of independence were followed by bitter disappointment and painful retrogressions that reached into virtually every aspect of African life, the immediate political response was not so much a re-evaluation of the assumptions and policies which had led to such disastrous results, but instead a widespread blaming of the departed imperialism, or racial minorities such as the Indians, or even the United States, which has had relatively little role in African history, for good or ill.’ (p. 120).

The British Conservative historian Jeremy Black says much the same in his The British Empire: A History and a Debate (Farnham: Ashgate 2015), where he discusses the way contemporary commonwealth politicians have used the history of British colonialism to divert domestic attention away from the failures of their own regimes.

The same attitude is held by some elements of the recent anti-racist movements. Post-Colonial Theorists, for example, will not criticise indigenous colonised societies, but will only attack western nations for the horrors of imperialism. At a Zoom event a few years ago held as part of the Arise festival of left-wing ideas, ‘Why Socialists Should Oppose Imperialism’, Barbara Barnaby, the head of Black Lives Matter UK, demanded that Britain allow in immigrants from the former colonies ‘because you oppressed us under colonialism’. But colonialism was at least fifty years ago in the cases of many of these countries. Western meddling and international capitalism has contributed greatly to many of these nations’ misery, but it cannot be considered the sole cause. These countries had the opportunity of creating better societies and economies for themselves during independence. By and large, they didn’t, at least, not in the immediate post-independence period. Since then it has been African oppressing and exploiting other Africans. The argument that Britain should take in more African immigrants because of imperial oppression is invalid, and is a piece of deliberate anti-White racism by Barnaby and those like her.

There are other, better arguments for allowing entry to Black asylum seekers – common humanity, the moral imperative of giving sanctuary to those genuinely persecuted or oppressed, and common historical ties through the empire and commonwealth.

But not a vengeful attitude of entitlement by Black militants unable to come to terms with the oppression of Blacks by their fellow Blacks.

History Debunked on the Genocidal Brutality of the Hero of ‘Hotel Rwanda’

Simon Webb, the main man of the History Debunked channel on YouTube, has today put up a very revealing video exposing the horrific reality behind the hero of the 1990s film, Hotel Rwanda. Set during the Rwandan genocide, the film told the story of how its hero, Paul Rusavajena, a Hutu, saved the lived of a thousand Tutsis by providing them sanctuary in the hotel he managed. He claimed he did this on his own, but the fact is that the hotel was occupied by UN peacekeeping forces, who were the real protectors of the Tutsis. Survivors have alleged that instead Rusavajeni extorted money from them and gave room numbers to Hutu murder gangs. Despite this a film was made of the events with Rusavajena’s collaboration, which made him into a hero. And he did very well from the film. It was very popular with what Webb describes as White liberals. Rusavajeni became rich and bought two houses, one in Texas and the other in Belgium. However, after the war in Rwanda ended, Rusavajeni was actively involved in the terrorist group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, which particularly targets women and children in its attacks, and founded his own terrorist group, the FLM. He has been exposed however and arrested. Last week he was tried for his crimes and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Webb tells this unedifying story in order to attack the double standards he believes White liberals have towards Blacks. If a White man commits and assault, he is punished with the full force of the law. If a Black man commits a similar offence during a robbery he is committing, White liberals will attempt to excuse him by saying that he was desperate because he was unable to get a job through racism. And while Webb claims that he believes that all peoples and politicians, whether White, Black or Asian, can be just as greedy, brutal, prejudiced and xenophobic, White liberals believe non-Whites to be somehow far nobler. Thus, if a famine occurs in Africa, Webb wonders whether it is due to the local leader stealing aid money and spending it on guns or hiding it in a Swiss bank account. White liberals, however, will blame it on the international banking system and colonialism. And if Black Africans turn on each other and fight terrible genocidal wars, like Europeans did in World War II and the Holocaust, this should be offset by finding a Black hero, who shows the essential nobility of his people by standing against it. This all shows the low standards White middle class liberals apply to Blacks, and consequently their low and patronising view of them.

Much of the poverty in Africa and elsewhere in the Developing World is due to the West in one way or another. It has been hampered by crippling debts with international banks with resulted in the nations of the Third World making huge interest payments which were far larger than the initial sums borrowed. Africa and other nations like it are kept poor through the neo-colonial agreements made with their former imperial masters during decolonisation. These agreements forced the newly independent nations to concentrate on producing raw materials, such as agricultural products and minerals and prevented them from industrialising. There are a large number of such nations producing the same goods and because competition is great, prices can be kept low. The strictures against industrialisation prevents them from developing industries producing finished products, such as, say, cars, for which they could charge more and diversify their economies.

However, much of the poverty in the Developing World really is through the corruption and brutality of the region’s rulers. Way back in the 1990s the Financial Times stated that the corruption in many African nations was so great that they were kleptocracies, who were only called states by the grace of their western partners. Just how nasty this corruption is was described by a visitor our local church hosted last year from Africa. This gentleman had had a very hard childhood, and was several times at death’s door from starvation. His family had had some property to support themselves at one point, but this was stolen from them. As for xenophobia and racism, many African countries were created by amalgamating territory from different tribes, many of which were historical enemies. Nigel Barley in his book, The Innocent Anthropologist, describes how some Cameroonians would angrily denounce western racism, while sneering and reviling their own country’s Dowayo people whom Barley was researching. They did not, however, regard this as racism. And famine and the looting of western aid money have been used as an instrument of genocide by the continent’s dictators.

Some of you will remember Band Aid, the charity record produced by various western pop stars, and the Live Aid global concert in 1985, organised by Bob Geldof to raise money to help the victims of a terrible famine in Ethiopia. But it’s been revealed since then that precious little money or food actually reached the victims. It was stolen by the Communist military dictatorship to prevent it reaching the victims of the famine, who were part of a tribal rebellion.

As for middle class White liberals viewing Blacks and other non-Whites as somehow nobler, I’m afraid there’s something to this too. This ultimately comes from the myth of the Noble Savage which emerged in the 17th century. This viewed the First Nations of America as somehow more noble than Europeans as they were uncorrupted by civilisation. Diderot and the philosophes of the French Enlightenment produced a similar myth of the people of Tahiti when they were encountered by western explorers in the 18th century. To European intellectuals like Diderot, the people of Tahiti lived a freer, more natural life untouched by the artificiality of European culture. In the 1960s and ’70s one of the currents among western left-wing intellectuals was Third Worldism. Impressed by the experiments in socialism by some Third World governments and the apparent lack of materialism amongst their traditional societies, these intellectuals similarly believed that these peoples were somehow more nobler than those of the west. They looked to them to start the socialist transformation they hoped would soon spread throughout the world

As for the left excusing Black criminality and violence through appeals to poverty and deprivation due to racism, that has also occurred. One of the right-wing YouTube channels last week posted a video showing how the supposedly left-wing American media had provided such excuses when covering the case of a Black man responsible for a racial assault.

Against this is the far more obvious obvious, and far better known negative view of Blacks and other non-Whites, which has resulted in their abuse and exploitation and which still supports continuing discrimination against them in the west. One result of this is that not only may Blacks and some other ethnic groups have a higher unemployment rate and experience greater poverty than Whites, but they may also receive tougher sentences for crimes they have committed.

Rusavajeni isn’t the only supposed hero who has been exposed as a much darker figure than portrayed in film. Oscar Schindler, whose rescue of his Jewish employees from the horrors of the Third Reich was depicted in the 90’s film, Schindler’s List, has similarly been alleged to have been an extremely exploitative employer. And it’s fair to say that many of the great heroes of history are far darker and more morally ambivalent, especially when viewed by modern standards.

Blacks and other ethnic groups aren’t any more or less virtuous than Whites, and should deserve the same treatment. Just as they shouldn’t be demonised, monsters like Rusavajeni shouldn’t be idealised either because of the colour of their skin.