Maybe ... I guess the same as anything, it's all about context again ... I've heard it said in a derogatory way while I was travelling.
Ah lighten up, lifes to short to be getting all emotional about a term someone uses to refer to you on an internet board, if someone referred to me as 'paddy' although it can be used in a derogatory way, I'd get over it.
Rhodesia was fucking awesome (so i'm told) poms just a word for english people...like yank is one for americans...and kiwis is for new zelanders....and slope for afrikaaners
I don't think western colonialism in Zimbabwe was any better than Mugabe. Mugabe is a product of white imperialism, he's a reaction to it. Hatred and oppression can only breed hatred and oppression. Racism truly is colour blind....
Fucking hell thats a deep way of looking at it....I do agree in some respects but the situation he's created is inexcusable...when it was white owned nothing like this happened
For a non racist that is a very bigoted thing to say. How about ... when it wasn't owned by anyone at all nothing like this happened?
Nothing like that happened to the white people, but reverse the situation and look at how black people were treated. In a land that was their homeland, they were ruled by an invading minority. South Africa, under Apartheid is the most striking example of racism and oppression of black people in modern times. Mugabe is forcing the white people off the land in Zimbabwe, because the white people had stolen the land from the black people in the first place. This doesn't make what Mugabe is doing right, I hate the man, he's a racist; but so were the people who stole the land of his ancestors. Not to use a pun, but none of this is black and white. Like you say, racism is colour blind, and it exists on both sides. What is happening now is a product of the past. As ye sow, so shall ye reap....
I don't think he's being racist, at least not intentionally, I think he just needs to know a bit more about the situation....
All_Rhodesian_Reject, please read these articles, I think they'll explain a lot about what I mean, and help to disple some of the illusions that you have. http://www.guardian.co.uk/unracism/story/0,1099,548088,00.html http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Zimb.html
wow, i didn't know about the land allocation...theres something people have to understand and i'm not being racist its just the way peoples minds work...africans can't farm its just the way things are and goes back centuries, they never farmed when everything was purely tribal, so when white people were farming rhodesia (which can in itself can fully sustain all of africa the land is so good) everything was swell, then when the blacks "reclaimed the farms" they were unable to farm it because of the mindset "that someone else should do it for me" now i realise how racist this sounds but its the way things are. Of the articles i found the second one too biast...but they made interesting reading. I agree that if africa had never been colonised and farmed then nothing like this would have happened but at the same time the colonisation was inevitable and created a fantastic society for those who lived there. this is a cool discussion...
Africa was only colonised by the British to help facilitate their disastrous colonial rule over India. And it's not the African people can't farm, it's that they often didn't farm. It's impossible to categorise a race and say one thing it can or cannot do, humans are all the same, skin colour is only an outward difference, and a very minor one. It's a cultural difference mainly. Tribal societies do not have an agricultural mode of production, they revolve around the hunter-gatherer means of subsistence. Societies in the west began like that as well. Faming to tribal societies simply isn't necessary. But with colonialism, and the oppression of tribal societies, and the enslavement of the African people, agriculture did spread at a greater rate - history accelerated. And you can't tell all of the modern African farmers to go back to the tribes their grand fathers came from. It's not a life that they know. So what can they do? Carry on living in poverty because they've been forced onto the poorest, least fertile land? It's a difficult situation, and their demands for land rights come because they were, and still are, an oppressed people in their own homeland. Mugabe is a reaction to it - but he's no Martin Luther King, black people suffer just as much as white under Mugabe. It's a mess, but it was a mess long before Mugabe, colonialism was a brutal and tyrannical project, and is responsible for much of the troubles we see in the world today.
Thats what i'm saying, there culture prevents them from being any good at farming...I fail to see what the problem with colonialism is, it did a lot of good for africa and if things had been mangaed better without all the racism then things would have turned out better. Sorry man i won't be turned against it
But history backs it up completely....Look at the mess Africa is in....We pretty much did that...As well as doing it to the indians, the Aboriginals, the Maori's, etc. Colonisation was for white people to have a nice "exotic" life at the people who lived there expense..I am not blaming everyone and some colonists did do good things but on the whole we went over there and fucked with people's lives to make ours nicer... Africa was doing just fine on its own for the last few thousand years before we got there..We were not some kind of saviours.. There is somuch literature on this around ...I dunno read something like "Leopold's Ghost" —A story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild ... Hochschild examines how, in the nineteenth century European drive for possessions in Africa, the moral rationalisation of the "civilising" mission was used to justify colonialism.
