Dictatorland

[Apollonius]

Heart of darkness - Theodore Dalrymple, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2019
https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/h ... -darkness/



Review of: Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa by Paul Kenyon (Head of Zeus, 2018)

The only man I’ve ever known who was executed by hanging was Ken Saro-Wiwa. I used to visit him in Port Harcourt in south-eastern Nigeria, or whenever he came to London. Once when I was driving with him to his office on the Aggrey Road in Port Harcourt we passed the naked corpse of a man, bloating with decomposition, by the side of the road. An announcer over the car radio was making a plea at the time for the owner of the body to come and collect it. “Only in Nigeria,” said Saro-Wiwa. ...

[Simple Minded]

Heart of darkness - Theodore Dalrymple, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2019
https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/h ... -darkness/



Review of: Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa by Paul Kenyon (Head of Zeus, 2018)

The only man I’ve ever known who was executed by hanging was Ken Saro-Wiwa. I used to visit him in Port Harcourt in south-eastern Nigeria, or whenever he came to London. Once when I was driving with him to his office on the Aggrey Road in Port Harcourt we passed the naked corpse of a man, bloating with decomposition, by the side of the road. An announcer over the car radio was making a plea at the time for the owner of the body to come and collect it. “Only in Nigeria,” said Saro-Wiwa. ...

thanks for posting Apollonius. Dalrymple has long been one of my favorite authors, in terms of social observation.

Hopefully, some visionary leaders in Africa will start a "Black Lives Matter!" PR campaign as a remedy to this systemic racism.

[noddy]

without wanting to get into the white guilt industry, it is hard to argue that africa didnt cop the worst of european colonialism horror stories.

China and India both had far more robust local cultural structures and dealt with foreign control far better than the mish mash of african tribes who got dragged kicking and screaming into world power politics - its more like europe during the post roman chaos than anything else.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

without wanting to get into the white guilt industry, it is hard to argue that africa didnt cop the worst of european colonialism horror stories.

China and India both had far more robust local cultural structures and dealt with foreign control far better than the mish mash of african tribes who got dragged kicking and screaming into world power politics - its more like europe during the post roman chaos than anything else.

Hard to argue is my forte

I think South America could give Africa a run for it's money for the best anticolonial argument, which I think a different one from inhumane treatment.

[noddy]

round 1: the congo vs venezula.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Dalrymple's After Empire is a nice supplement to his above article.

After several years in Africa, I concluded that the colonial enterprise had been fundamentally wrong and mistaken, even when, as was often the case in its final stages, it was benevolently intended. The good it did was ephemeral; the harm, lasting. The powerful can change the powerless, it is true; but not in any way they choose. The unpredictability of humans is the revenge of the powerless. What emerges politically from the colonial enterprise is often something worse, or at least more vicious because better equipped, than what existed before. Good intentions are certainly no guarantee of good results.