Rhodesia
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Again I find myself agreeing with ORAC in his 21st Aug post.
This is an excellent thread and the powerful arguments being presented make my brain hurt (some might say that's not hard to do).
But it is entirely politico/historical and there is nothing about it that is to do with Professional Military Aviation.
Percy's post above points out something we all know; that this Forum ismoderated in spite of the empty box on the Forum Contents Page.
Why can't this thread go to Jet Blast? It might get a wider audience and, in spite of what some might say, they're not all buffoons down there.
This is an excellent thread and the powerful arguments being presented make my brain hurt (some might say that's not hard to do).
But it is entirely politico/historical and there is nothing about it that is to do with Professional Military Aviation.
Percy's post above points out something we all know; that this Forum ismoderated in spite of the empty box on the Forum Contents Page.
Why can't this thread go to Jet Blast? It might get a wider audience and, in spite of what some might say, they're not all buffoons down there.
Join Date: Dec 2000
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Yes I know the country isn't called Rhodesia
But here's today's piece from Parris - the cartoon with 'two jags' was fun as well
A little less swagger would do Africa a power of good
matthew parris
It was fitting in Johannesburg this week that John Prescott should, on his arrival on African soil, have been accorded five Mercedes-Benz motorcars, for Mr Prescott is truly the most African politician on the government front bench. He is a bruiser, he has charm, and he does not do much. Behind the ever-grander names for the ever-grander departments over which he presided during new Labour’s first term sat a big ego, plenty of punch and no grip.
Magnified a thousandfold and projected on to the African map, the modest administrative failure of Mr Prescott’s old regime at Transport etc here in Britain points us to the causes of the colossal political failure of Africa. The reasons are swagger, indolence, self-indulgence and hot air. Beside that problem nothing encountered by world leaders at their conference matters. You might as well throw away the text of their accord now.
Our Deputy Prime Minister would mingle easily in any group of dictators from that continent. The people of Africa admire sheer physical size in a leader, and Prescott has it. They like to think their leaders capable of flooring a man with a single blow, and Prescott can. In keeping with many of the statesmen in Johannesburg, Prescott loves luxury, cares about appearances and prizes expensive motor cars. He dances in public, before the television cameras. He spends generously on clothes.
In accordance, too, with the African habit, Mr Prescott is edgy about criticism, flies quickly off the handle when twitted, and is liable to turn violent. In most of Africa and parts of the North of England, criticism is taken by politicians as a treacherous affront. The man we call the Mouth of the Humber spent his formative political years in a one-party state called Hull.
And yet with John Prescott, no less than with African presidents of a dodgier sort, there is something likeable — irresistible, or almost so.
It was what made Idi Amin simultaneously murderous and fun. “Ooh John,” we say.“You are awful. But we like you.”
More tribal electors than we pretend in rural Mashonaland, Zimbabwe, would say the same of Robert Mugabe. He is awful but they like him. He is a thug, but he is their thug.
The quality, however, which above all marks the Member for Hull East is the quality which in Africa is almost synomymous with power: swagger.
Africans do swagger well and they do it big. They also do submissiveness well. And they can switch with bewildering speed. Nelson Mandela is the only counter- example, famous, I am afraid, because that is what he is: untypical, the unwitting Robben Island creation of Afrikaner idiotdom, not the natural democratic product of his own people.
An occupational hazard for newspaper columnists are the letters we get from supporters we do not want. Whenever you suggest in print that between peoples there might be cultural differences so marked as to make it useful to generalise, letters come in from racists congratulating you. Such correspondents seek reasons to hate and hurt people on the basis of their race, and commonly believe that race determines behaviour, a theory which permits them to set their face against an entire race on the ground that its members are unalterably inferior.
So when on this page two weeks ago I wrote about an airline queue at Gatwick for a flight to Gabon, and offered my picture of cheating, rule-breaking and showing-off as an illustration of the way the “waBenzi” at the top of the heap in black Africa abuse their power, I expected a few letters from white racists. They duly arrived. I ignored them. Much more encouraging have been letters from people who love and know Africa, and who do not dislike its peoples. Every such correspondent has agreed with me. The problem is not the genes but the culture.
Culture can change, from within and from without. Western liberals are not afraid to pillory racism, sexism, anti-Semitism. Pillorying works: look at the change in public attitudes towards drink-driving. We are beginning to find our voice against what offends us in some Asian cultures, too: the caste system, the relegation of women. We must also find our voice for Africa.
Swagger, and the meekness in the face of swagger which exalts it, are the problem. They are ingrained in the way African culture treats the ideal of maleness and manhood and, even after centuries of estrangement from its roots, some echo of this survives in Afro-Caribbean culture, insults women, exalts lawlessness, glorifies cheating, disparages conscientiousness and holds back West Indian boys in British schools.
Listen to rap music, hear the words, feel the empty bravado and jack-the-lad bombast, and you will have the whole damn strutting coxcombery in a nutshell. In Africa, statesmen fail to disentangle their rap from their politics.
To remark on this is not at all to say that an unassuming bookishness or a self-denying devotion to others is seldom observed among African men. One often observes it. I have seen altruism and met wonderful examples of quiet goodness on the continent. Beyond the continent, working within organisations whose culture demands that rules of discipline, reliability and industry are respected by the bosses as much as their underlings, African men do as well as any.
But within African culture itself these qualities are less likely to get a man noticed and admired, or secure for him the deference they might within British culture. The corollary is also true: boastful and arrogant behaviour, putting yourself above the law, indolence, extravagance and treading on those smaller than you — behaviour which would be resented and held against anyone in our culture — help a man to cut a figure in African politics and business, and beyond them.
There is undoubtedly respect for learning, but education tends to be prized not as a deepening of knowledge but as a possession — like the philospher’s stone — which, once acquired, will give its possessor special powers, not least over those who lack it.
Far from bolstering the racist argument, to understand this gives the lie to racism. African countries’ chronic failure to achieve has nothing to do with any failure of potential on the part of their people: their people are victims of their own culture. Released from a culture which exalts what is vain- glorious and undervalues what is worthwhile, what could they not achieve?
But first they, and we, have to admit the problem. It is of limited use spouting in Johannesburg about the importance of water, or of finding and funding low-tech ways of providing it, if once the pipe is installed the community it serves does not organise itself to maintain it, stop cattle trampling on it, and dissuade people from peeing into the river upstream. Talk to anyone who has actually lived and worked with ordinary people and in everyday situations in Africa, and they will bear me out: time and again failures of leadership, the failure of the whole concept of the ascription of responsibility to individuals, mean that what is created or started is not maintained.
It need not be so. Of course the West must change, must open its markets to Africa, but Africans must change, too. They need new role models and they need to understand how we despise — how the world despises — the role models they have. Press, politicians and the public in Europe and America must put Africa’s villainous leaderships in the media stocks. We must not be afraid to laugh, sneer and rage at them. World indignation does work; however slowly, it can gather immense power. It is time to start.
Let nobody question African muscle. Ask yourself why black slaves were imported in the first place into countries with native peasant masses of their own. Let nobody denigrate the African mind: where would the world’s literature, art and music be without it? Let nobody deny African willpower or African courage: in battle and in sport they are legendary. Let nobody doubt the potential for big-heartedness of the ordinary people of Africa: there is something generous, uncircumspect, in their spirit which none who have travelled there can have missed and which is fitfully almost sublime.
Working mindlessly in gangs under orders, or working ingeniously and creatively alone, African people have proved themselves capable of tremendous feats of strength and endurance on the one hand, and skill and imagination on the other. But between the two, mind and muscle, something in the African nation state keeps short-circuiting, and it is a sad waste and a crying shame. On Planet Earth, Africa is a stain and a glory.
Removing the stain is not a problem in Africa: it is the problem. No other problems would defeat us if it was solved; all will defeat us until it is. And I will bet you all five of John Prescott’s Mercedes-Benzes that nobody so much as mentions it at the Johannesburg summit.
But here's today's piece from Parris - the cartoon with 'two jags' was fun as well
A little less swagger would do Africa a power of good
matthew parris
It was fitting in Johannesburg this week that John Prescott should, on his arrival on African soil, have been accorded five Mercedes-Benz motorcars, for Mr Prescott is truly the most African politician on the government front bench. He is a bruiser, he has charm, and he does not do much. Behind the ever-grander names for the ever-grander departments over which he presided during new Labour’s first term sat a big ego, plenty of punch and no grip.
Magnified a thousandfold and projected on to the African map, the modest administrative failure of Mr Prescott’s old regime at Transport etc here in Britain points us to the causes of the colossal political failure of Africa. The reasons are swagger, indolence, self-indulgence and hot air. Beside that problem nothing encountered by world leaders at their conference matters. You might as well throw away the text of their accord now.
Our Deputy Prime Minister would mingle easily in any group of dictators from that continent. The people of Africa admire sheer physical size in a leader, and Prescott has it. They like to think their leaders capable of flooring a man with a single blow, and Prescott can. In keeping with many of the statesmen in Johannesburg, Prescott loves luxury, cares about appearances and prizes expensive motor cars. He dances in public, before the television cameras. He spends generously on clothes.
In accordance, too, with the African habit, Mr Prescott is edgy about criticism, flies quickly off the handle when twitted, and is liable to turn violent. In most of Africa and parts of the North of England, criticism is taken by politicians as a treacherous affront. The man we call the Mouth of the Humber spent his formative political years in a one-party state called Hull.
And yet with John Prescott, no less than with African presidents of a dodgier sort, there is something likeable — irresistible, or almost so.
It was what made Idi Amin simultaneously murderous and fun. “Ooh John,” we say.“You are awful. But we like you.”
More tribal electors than we pretend in rural Mashonaland, Zimbabwe, would say the same of Robert Mugabe. He is awful but they like him. He is a thug, but he is their thug.
The quality, however, which above all marks the Member for Hull East is the quality which in Africa is almost synomymous with power: swagger.
Africans do swagger well and they do it big. They also do submissiveness well. And they can switch with bewildering speed. Nelson Mandela is the only counter- example, famous, I am afraid, because that is what he is: untypical, the unwitting Robben Island creation of Afrikaner idiotdom, not the natural democratic product of his own people.
An occupational hazard for newspaper columnists are the letters we get from supporters we do not want. Whenever you suggest in print that between peoples there might be cultural differences so marked as to make it useful to generalise, letters come in from racists congratulating you. Such correspondents seek reasons to hate and hurt people on the basis of their race, and commonly believe that race determines behaviour, a theory which permits them to set their face against an entire race on the ground that its members are unalterably inferior.
So when on this page two weeks ago I wrote about an airline queue at Gatwick for a flight to Gabon, and offered my picture of cheating, rule-breaking and showing-off as an illustration of the way the “waBenzi” at the top of the heap in black Africa abuse their power, I expected a few letters from white racists. They duly arrived. I ignored them. Much more encouraging have been letters from people who love and know Africa, and who do not dislike its peoples. Every such correspondent has agreed with me. The problem is not the genes but the culture.
Culture can change, from within and from without. Western liberals are not afraid to pillory racism, sexism, anti-Semitism. Pillorying works: look at the change in public attitudes towards drink-driving. We are beginning to find our voice against what offends us in some Asian cultures, too: the caste system, the relegation of women. We must also find our voice for Africa.
Swagger, and the meekness in the face of swagger which exalts it, are the problem. They are ingrained in the way African culture treats the ideal of maleness and manhood and, even after centuries of estrangement from its roots, some echo of this survives in Afro-Caribbean culture, insults women, exalts lawlessness, glorifies cheating, disparages conscientiousness and holds back West Indian boys in British schools.
Listen to rap music, hear the words, feel the empty bravado and jack-the-lad bombast, and you will have the whole damn strutting coxcombery in a nutshell. In Africa, statesmen fail to disentangle their rap from their politics.
To remark on this is not at all to say that an unassuming bookishness or a self-denying devotion to others is seldom observed among African men. One often observes it. I have seen altruism and met wonderful examples of quiet goodness on the continent. Beyond the continent, working within organisations whose culture demands that rules of discipline, reliability and industry are respected by the bosses as much as their underlings, African men do as well as any.
But within African culture itself these qualities are less likely to get a man noticed and admired, or secure for him the deference they might within British culture. The corollary is also true: boastful and arrogant behaviour, putting yourself above the law, indolence, extravagance and treading on those smaller than you — behaviour which would be resented and held against anyone in our culture — help a man to cut a figure in African politics and business, and beyond them.
There is undoubtedly respect for learning, but education tends to be prized not as a deepening of knowledge but as a possession — like the philospher’s stone — which, once acquired, will give its possessor special powers, not least over those who lack it.
Far from bolstering the racist argument, to understand this gives the lie to racism. African countries’ chronic failure to achieve has nothing to do with any failure of potential on the part of their people: their people are victims of their own culture. Released from a culture which exalts what is vain- glorious and undervalues what is worthwhile, what could they not achieve?
But first they, and we, have to admit the problem. It is of limited use spouting in Johannesburg about the importance of water, or of finding and funding low-tech ways of providing it, if once the pipe is installed the community it serves does not organise itself to maintain it, stop cattle trampling on it, and dissuade people from peeing into the river upstream. Talk to anyone who has actually lived and worked with ordinary people and in everyday situations in Africa, and they will bear me out: time and again failures of leadership, the failure of the whole concept of the ascription of responsibility to individuals, mean that what is created or started is not maintained.
It need not be so. Of course the West must change, must open its markets to Africa, but Africans must change, too. They need new role models and they need to understand how we despise — how the world despises — the role models they have. Press, politicians and the public in Europe and America must put Africa’s villainous leaderships in the media stocks. We must not be afraid to laugh, sneer and rage at them. World indignation does work; however slowly, it can gather immense power. It is time to start.
Let nobody question African muscle. Ask yourself why black slaves were imported in the first place into countries with native peasant masses of their own. Let nobody denigrate the African mind: where would the world’s literature, art and music be without it? Let nobody deny African willpower or African courage: in battle and in sport they are legendary. Let nobody doubt the potential for big-heartedness of the ordinary people of Africa: there is something generous, uncircumspect, in their spirit which none who have travelled there can have missed and which is fitfully almost sublime.
Working mindlessly in gangs under orders, or working ingeniously and creatively alone, African people have proved themselves capable of tremendous feats of strength and endurance on the one hand, and skill and imagination on the other. But between the two, mind and muscle, something in the African nation state keeps short-circuiting, and it is a sad waste and a crying shame. On Planet Earth, Africa is a stain and a glory.
Removing the stain is not a problem in Africa: it is the problem. No other problems would defeat us if it was solved; all will defeat us until it is. And I will bet you all five of John Prescott’s Mercedes-Benzes that nobody so much as mentions it at the Johannesburg summit.
Kiting for Boys
Excellent piece, I couldn't agree more.
Oh, for fobotcso, ultimately solving this problem would have tremendous value for future aviation in Africa.
We need to get rid of this crazy notion that a requirement of a racist is that you must have a white skin. Whatever the ills of the white population in the past, we have learnt and continue to strive to accept other cultures within our communities. We also protect the minorities within our community. Africa can't even accept their various tribes into their communities. Our efforts to address the wrongs of the past are seen as a sign of weakness within the African community. Africa continues to demand our aid and yet fails to protect our people?
It is time for Africa to look inwards and for us to stand up for ourselves. The current situation can not be allowed to continue, all of our futures depend on it.
Oh, for fobotcso, ultimately solving this problem would have tremendous value for future aviation in Africa.
We need to get rid of this crazy notion that a requirement of a racist is that you must have a white skin. Whatever the ills of the white population in the past, we have learnt and continue to strive to accept other cultures within our communities. We also protect the minorities within our community. Africa can't even accept their various tribes into their communities. Our efforts to address the wrongs of the past are seen as a sign of weakness within the African community. Africa continues to demand our aid and yet fails to protect our people?
It is time for Africa to look inwards and for us to stand up for ourselves. The current situation can not be allowed to continue, all of our futures depend on it.
Plastic PPRuNer
Interesting stuff here - read Parris' last one (thanks Kiting) and it was spot on, just as this one is.
One of my senior trainees is black, well connected, and well aware of all the thievery going on. "Why don't you speak up Joe?", says I. "Eeeeh, they will just start saying, "Oh, you getting clever now Joe? You spending too much time with the whiteys now Joe" so what can I do? Eeeeh, it's tough...."
As Parris says it's hard getting things done when you're dealing with folks whose whole culture and value system is so different. That isn't to say that it isn't valid, just that it is inappropriate for long term survival and success in the 21st Century. However much one regrets history and current global realities one can't just unwish them and trust that they will magically go away. HIV is a reality and the fact is that peoples who are unwilling or unable to alter their sexual behaviour will end up dead - gays have done, so why not black people? It just isn't any good trusting that the mzungu (pejorative term for whites) will eventually come up with a vaccine or better drugs. Sadly, magical thinking on many levels is such a core part (and a not unattractive one) of African culture that suspending it will change the culture profoundly and irrevocably.
When the old SA dispensation was dying, whites were told "Adapt or die!" - well, most of then have adapted and are coping reasonably well. Adaptability, the ability to change attitudes and often long ingrained habits in response to evolutionary pressures has always been a large ingredient in the continuance of species and peoples. Unfortunately a majority of black Africans seem to find this particularly difficult, though as Parris says, there is no reason to doubt their potential for success once the mindset changes.
One of my senior trainees is black, well connected, and well aware of all the thievery going on. "Why don't you speak up Joe?", says I. "Eeeeh, they will just start saying, "Oh, you getting clever now Joe? You spending too much time with the whiteys now Joe" so what can I do? Eeeeh, it's tough...."
As Parris says it's hard getting things done when you're dealing with folks whose whole culture and value system is so different. That isn't to say that it isn't valid, just that it is inappropriate for long term survival and success in the 21st Century. However much one regrets history and current global realities one can't just unwish them and trust that they will magically go away. HIV is a reality and the fact is that peoples who are unwilling or unable to alter their sexual behaviour will end up dead - gays have done, so why not black people? It just isn't any good trusting that the mzungu (pejorative term for whites) will eventually come up with a vaccine or better drugs. Sadly, magical thinking on many levels is such a core part (and a not unattractive one) of African culture that suspending it will change the culture profoundly and irrevocably.
When the old SA dispensation was dying, whites were told "Adapt or die!" - well, most of then have adapted and are coping reasonably well. Adaptability, the ability to change attitudes and often long ingrained habits in response to evolutionary pressures has always been a large ingredient in the continuance of species and peoples. Unfortunately a majority of black Africans seem to find this particularly difficult, though as Parris says, there is no reason to doubt their potential for success once the mindset changes.
