Category Archives: Africa

Updated: Barack Wants More History From Below

Affirmative Action, Africa, America, Barack Obama, History, Pseudo-history, Race, Racism

For the Atlantic slave trade, contemporary Americans and Britons have been expiating at every opportunity. But as historian Jeremy Black points out in The Slave Trade, Europeans also brought about the demise of this despicable practice in Africa.
Having made the obligatory pilgrimage to Ghana, Barack told Anderson Cooper—the “journalist” noted for introducing the country to the practice of tea bagging—that “slavery is a terrible part of the United States’ history and should be taught in a way that connects that past cruelty to current events, such as the genocide in Darfur.”

What a change that makes, doesn’t it?

Does our overlord seek to repetitively rub in the never-changing theme of the white man’s burden, the theme WASPs welcome like wimps? Or is he open to teaching Americans about the robust slave trade conducted by Arabs across the Sahara Desert? Or across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to markets in the Middle East. How about the vibrant, indigenous slave trade conducted well into the nineteenth century in the interior of West Africa?

I suggest that Africa’s own Little Lord Fauntleroy read the words of a brother who’s seldom seen on the idiot’s lantern, and whose works are not distributed widely across the racial tyranny that is America: Keith B. Richburg.

Wrote Richburg in Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa:

“I feel for [Africa’s] suffering, I empathize with her pain, and now, from afar, I still recoil in horror whenever I see yet another television picture of another tribal slaughter, another refugee crisis. But most of all I think: Thank God my ancestors got out, because, now, I am not one of them. In short, thank God that I am an American.”

Repeat after Richburg, Mr. president.

Update (July 14): Myron, I had objected to the use of “slavery” with reference to the West. Alistair addressed the so-called plight of women in the West. The Third World is a different matter (or is it what remains of the Second World that you decried?). There, statutes may declare slavery illegal, but tradition sees nothing wrong with forms of it. Guess what wins out?

Big Man Barack

Africa, Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Economy, Ethics, IMMIGRATION, Intellectualism, Israel, Journalism, Law

To go by the dictionary, and “within the context of political science, big man, big man syndrome, or bigmanism refers to corrupt and autocratic rule of countries by a single person.”

Back in February, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), “a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House,” warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab.

According to Politico, “Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions ‘can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.'”

Byrd is an old Southern gentleman after whom Republicans are always chasing for his past indiscretions. George Will follows in Byrd’s footsteps in making a similar point, only later in the game, and leveled at a president he did not support.

“The Obama administration is … careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness,” writes Will. After detailing the flouting of contracts, the use of TARP as a slush fund, and the bullying of business, Will concludes:

“The Obama administration’s agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of ‘economic planning’ and ‘social justice’ that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.”

Madonna Accessorizing Again

Africa, Celebrity, Hollywood, The Zeitgeist

Ankle biters are still a chic accoutrement in Hollywood. You know, “Angie” has not yet launched a trendy, new fashion line, so brown babies are still very much “in” with the idiots.

As toxic as a Madonna-style upbringing will be, you must admit that it is far preferable to growing up in Malawi.

Also, when “the Malawian man thought to be the biological father of a four-year-old girl Madonna hopes to adopt says he’s opposed to it,” you just know he’s looking to be bought out—enticed away from the baby bidding business.

“James Kambewa,” reports the Christian Science Monitor,” wears a necklace he made bearing his daughter’s name, has never held or even met her, and says he’s only seen her ‘in newspapers and TV, not face to face.'”

Suffer the children.

Update II: The ANC “Slipping”? (& On What Raw Democracy Has Wrought)

Africa, Colonialism, Communism, Democracy, South-Africa, The West

The consistently moronic mainstream media’s angle on the forthcoming elections in the One-Party state that is South Africa: The ANC “is finally starting to slip.”

Let’s correct this bit of remedial revisionism. That my homeland is only now collapsing irretrievably into a black hole is a testament to the strength of the institutions and infrastructure—economic and civil society—planted there by the founders of South Africa, Boer and British.

Zimbabwe also took time to crumble; and that was not because Mugabe “started to slip,” although the same morons who castigate him now, cheered him on initially, and looked surprised when another African Big Man shifted into savage mode.

A strong economy and institutions take time to collapse. Zimbabwe was once an oasis in the desert that is Africa because of the phantom Ian Smith, prime minister of Rhodesia, RIP.

The ANC has not “slipped”; they’ve always been a scourge on the face of the earth.

As to what’s afoot, here’s an excerpt from my upcoming book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa:

“Having spent most of his adult life abroad in exile, Mbeki’s mannerisms are those of an English gent, not a man of the people. But the baton has been passed from the pukka proper Mbeki to the populist polygamist Jacob Zuma, who dances half naked in tribal dress. In one of his Noble-Savage moments, Zuma promised, disarmingly, after forcing sex on an HIV-positive acquaintance, that he took a shower as a prophylactic against AIDS.”

Our friend, Dr. Dan Roodt, founder of the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG), has a different angle. It’s interesting and certainly congruent with his perspective on the destructive role the Anglo axis–American and British—played in his country.

I’m skeptical.

Update I (April 22): Election day has arrived. Or as Dan Roodt calls it, Racial Census Day. The CSM is chirpy:

High turnout could favor the ANC, since the vast majority of South Africa’s population are poor and black, and while voters criticize the ANC for failing to deliver on its election promises, they see the ANC as the strongest voice for their demands.

The higher turnout seems to be driven as much by public enthusiasm for (or revulsion toward) the ANC’s new populist leader, Jacob Zuma, as it is by a palpable desire for dramatic change, a sentiment expressed by all social and economic levels here.

Update II (April 23): What raw democracy has wrought. A one-party state it is with no protection for minorities; this is raw, ripe, rank democracy.

From the SABC:

As general election results keep trickling in, the ANC has passed the two-thirds mark, which, if sustained, will enable it to change the South Africa’s Constitution. However the ruling party has said it has no desire to do so.

With 74% of the voting districts declared, the ANC has captured 66.85% of the vote. The Democratic Alliance is a distant second [at] 16%.

Third-placed Congress of the People has so far managed to get only 7.7% of the vote.

Meanwhile, ANC President Jacob Zuma has thanked party supporters for helping them win the general election by a landslide. He was addressing supporters during a victory celebration outside Luthuli House in Johannesburg. Zuma says credit must go to volunteers and others who ensured the ANC was returned to power.