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My first African ancestor arrived in Table Bay in South Africa in 1688. He was a French surgeon, fleeing religious persecution in Europe. Unlike the attitude towards indigenous people prevalent in a number of other Western nations, my African ancestors took it upon themselves to "save" the tribal people they found by attempting to turn them to the Christian God. History documents how other nations, (for example the USA and Australia) set about systematically destroying their own indigenous people. We never did what the USA did to its Indians and had nothing like the KKK. And, we never had events like Australian Abo-hunts, where indigenous people were hunted and killed for fun. It is ironic that, when I was a boy, growing up in Rhodesia, these nations set about attacking us, making out that we white Rhodesians were the ultimate racial scum of the earth. Whereas they had closets stuffed full of skeletons and were merely trying to turn attention away from their own dark past by focusing the spotlight on us whilst ignoring their own horrific histories. They were nothing but hypocrites. However, the "sheople" of the world fell for it all hook, line and sinker. Precious little was ever mentioned of the good that a few white people, my ancestors, achieved in Rhodesia. It was only when I was older and able to travel the world that I began to see, first hand, how hypocritical so many of these nations were and still are today.
It is so simple for the media to distort the facts. I could take a video camera today and easily make, shall we say the UK, France, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, etc. look really bad - but would that mean it is true? It is flawed logic to take a few bad examples and apply them to the whole. The media tried to make it look like all of the white people in Rhodesia lived in the lap of luxury off the backs of the black people and that we all treated them badly. It tried to make out that events in Rhodesia were purely racist, a black/white struggle, and that , in plain and simple terms, is a flawed over-simplification and a lie. The situation was far more complex than that. In essence it was a clash of first world and third world cultures coupled with the incongruity of western democratic ideals and stone-age tribalism.
The sad story of black Africa is that once the colonial governments were thrown out, tribalism returned with a vengeance - and the majority of the new black leaders revealed their true colors and became brutal dictators intent on destroying their opponents and terrorizing their people into silent submission. Just go and try to speak out against Mugabe in Zimbabwe today and see how much freedom you have - if you continue to live that is. And where are the cries from the liberal media and politicians about that? Oh, but of course, they don't care about that because it's black on black violence and abuse and, to the media, that's not big news.
Rhodesia was a wonderful place to live for all of the races that were there. Sure, it was not perfect, there were problems, but the government had a plan in place and was working on protecting, educating and uplifting the indigenous people. Due to the tremendous clash of cultures, this was not something that could happen overnight. It is never proclaimed in the media how about 250,000 white people, (men women and children, so we only had about 60,000 tax payers) built the country, from absolutely nothing, in about 90 years, to one having a national power grid, a bustling economy, a stable government, national healthcare, the highest standard of education in Africa, a national transportation system and a farming community that made the country the breadbasket of Africa, actually feeding the enemies that surrounded us. No-one mentions how these few white tax payers also supported a population of, back then, over 5,000,000 black people and subsidized their housing, electricity, water, sanitation, transportation, education and healthcare. No-one seems to question why, at the end of about 18 years of terrorist war, with sanctions and embargos from the world, the Rhodesian Dollar was worth about $1.40 US. and today, (April 2008) after 20 years of Mugabe's rule, with no sanctions and billions of dollars of aid pouring in, the Zimbabwe Dollar is worth about $0.0000001 US and inflation stands at 100,000%. Mugabe and his government sit there blaming the West and no-one in the West has the guts to take him to task over this and nor do they care about how he has abused his own people, backed by the Chinese.
The above cartoon was sent to me by a friend. It is by Vic MacKenzie who was editorial cartoonist for the Herald and Sunday Mail. He is now retired and this cartoon pretty much sums up what I wrote. See my "Zimbabwe" page for my opinion of Mugabe.
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