CNN: Can Democracy Thrive in Africa?

[Dayuhan]

There are universally accepted human rights. If necessary they need to be enforced. Sadly for the world we have only a tired and wounded US prepared sometimes to make an attempt to protect those suffering under some dictator's jackboot. The world needs to be thankful to the US for their interventions over the years.

This isn't about what needs to be done or what should be done, it's about what can be done. The US can't enforce human rights, in Africa or anywhere else. We haven't the money or the manpower. Neither, realistically, has anybody else.

The difference between then and now is that we have a benchmark to measure just about everything against now so those behind on the curve have little or no excuse not to strive to comply with haste.

Who is this "we" of which you speak? The inmates here at SWJ? The White People? The process of political evolution is messy and violent. It always is, it has been everywhere. The former colonies are "behind the curve" in this process because the process was interrupted for several centuries. Now the process has restarted, and surprise surprise, it's just as messy and violent as it always has been. "We" - whoever "we" are - may or may not have the "right" to demand or expect that Africa will comply with our standards, but since "we" haven't the capacity to enforce compliance, the "right" is irrelevant.

Who, in your view, are "we", and what exactly do you propose that "we" do?

Yes they probably did... but do you have any idea how Africans dealt with Africans before the European thugs arrived?

Of course. They dealt with each other the same way that Europeans dealt with each other in their centuries of thuggery. They dealt with each other in the same way that European settlers dealt with native populations in North America and Australia. The strong crushed the weak. This is not an African trait, it is a human trait. The Africans are no better, no worse, no different than anyone else... why should we expect or demand that they should be?

Not a moot point at all. The sad truth is that the powers just can't leave Africa and its resources alone.

What would you have "the powers" do... assuming without evidence that "the powers" are capable of doing anything on a collective basis?

If there was an African leader of the stature of Peter the Great who would take his country by the scruff of its neck and drag it kicking and screaming into the 21 century and thereby set a standard for the rest of Africa to emulate then things can be "fixed".

There isn't one, nor can we create one. Maybe someday there will be one. Russia existed as a distinct political entity for several centuries before it generated Peter; maybe with luck Africa can generate an equivalent within a century or two... or it might turn out that a personal saviour isn't what generates change in Africa at all.

Why is it that all you seem to consider is military intervention and throwing money at the problem? Ever thought that having so few options in itself may be part of the problem?

What option do you propose?

Can't leave Africa to the Chinese, the West needs the resources too.

The Africans, like everybody else, will sell the resources to the highest bidder, regardless of who intervenes or who invests. If investors get pissy about the terms of the deal, the deal will be changed, unilaterally. How long do you think it will be before some multi-billion dollar Chinese resource extraction enterprise gets nationalized? What do you think the Chinese will do about it?

I guess the hope is that one day there will be a US administration which will comprise people who have the smarts to figure this all out... not happened so far.

Perhaps you should enlighten us. What would you have us do?

And from M-A...

The idea that all plagues in Africa are due to colonisation is a non sense.

Of course it is. The idea that colonizers have no responsibility for the current state of affairs is equal nonsense. If nothing else, the egregiously perverse "national" boundaries inherited from the colonial age constitute a massive obstacle to progress.

All people, everywhere, have to gradually sort out the political identities that suit them, and to find ways for the entities they define to coexist without destroying each other. In Europe this process required centuries of almost continuous bloodshed. In the colonies the process was delayed by foreign occupation. That doesn't mean the process was made harder or easier, more or less complex, it was just delayed. When the colonists left the process picked up where it had stopped. It's going to be messy, as it has been everywhere else.

Such approach of this continent does participate to the counter efforts of several leaders and their clique to justify that what applies all around the world should not apply to the African continent because they are different and have suffered a lot.

Does it make any more sense to expect that Africans should be able to bypass stages in their political development that every other region has had to pass through just because we find those stages distasteful?

It will take time but things will change, with or without the US, UN or EU or even the Chinese. It will most probably requires that a generation of leaders pass away and all the state servants they put in place too.

With this I agree... if they do it in a single generation that would actually be a quite remarkable achievement. I would expect several.