- From Jan Lamprecht pbs@iafrica.com 8-30-1
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- I thought this article, from Gordon Frisch, a US geopolitical
analyst, was worth forwarding and reposting. Gordon spent many years in
Africa as a geologist and has seen more of Africa than most of us who live
here. He has had personal contact with governments and even befriended
one of Idi Amin's wives (who told him she opened the deep freeze one day
and saw the decapitated heads of people and decide it was time to make
a run for it...). Gordon wrote an article last year which may be years
ahead of its time. He said it was time to recolonise Africa.
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- Regards, Jan
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- Africa - Staring Into The Abyss Send In The Mercenaries
And Re-Colonize
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- By Gordon Frisch
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- Looking at Africa today, one can't help but think of
a line from Dante's Inferno: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"
AIDS is devastating sub-Saharan Africa on a scale rivaling the worst plagues
to ever besiege mankind. Annually, AIDS kills more people in sub- Saharan
Africa than all of the continent's wars combined -- 2 million in 1999,
85% of the world's total AIDS deaths, on top of 13.7 million Africans who've
already died of AIDS.70% of the world's HIV-positive people live in sub-Saharan
Africa, & most will die in the next 10 years, leaving shattered families
& economic devastation in their wake.
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- AIDS by itself is bad enough. Throw in rotten dictatorships,
Marxism, corruption, illiteracy, racism, genocide, tribal & national
wars, & the term "utter hopelessness" is inadequate to describe
Black Africa's horrible plight. For years we've counseled investors to
avoid sub-Saharan Africa, saying it was headed down a corrupt one-way road
to collapse. It's arrived. Black Africa now teeters on the edge of a yawning
abyss, & at the bottom lies total anarchy & chaos. Many say it
can't get much worse. We say: it can & it will.
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- 20 years of failed Marxist policies have caught up with
President Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe is in economic & political meltdown
due to rampant corruption, Marxism's fatal flaws, 25% HIV positive AIDS
test rates, runaway inflation, etc. The crowning blow to this once vibrant
economy was Mugabe himself; he emptied the treasury at the rate of $1 million
per day to support 11,000 troops he sent to support fellow traveler Laurent
Kabila, Congo's Marxist leader. In a last ditch attempt at survival, Mugabe
is lambasting every scapegoat on the planet -- foreign media, British govt,
the IMF, opposition political parties, white Zimbabweans, etc.
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- But Zimbabwe's white farmers, among Zimbabwe's most valuable
assets, are bearing the brunt of Mugabe's misplaced wrath. They own 30%
of the farmland, produce the bulk of agricultural products, employ 350,000
Blacks, & bring vital export income. Mugabe has sent state-supported
thugs to attack white farmers, brutalize their black workers & grab
their land "to right colonial injustices of the past."
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- At the end of April, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe's justice
(?) minister said "Within 10 days the legal framework to take land
& redistribute it to the people [without compensation to white owners]
will be in place & we will immediately proceed." About the same
time, an unregistered Ilyushin 76 former Soviet cargo plane arrived in
Harare from Marxist Angola carrying a shipment of 21,000 AK-47's for Mugabe.
They were promptly distributed to police & land- grabbing squatters.
Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi, Mugabe's farm invasion organizer said:
"All those with British passports must go back to Britain. If they
don't, they will go into the ground."
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- Mugabe's land-grabbing contagion is spreading more rapidly
than AIDS. Fear that South African Blacks could go on a similar rampage
has caused the rand to plummet. It doesn't help that South Africa's President
Thabo Mbeki recently joined ranks with Mugabe at a trade fair & Nelson
Mandela avoids direct criticism of Mugabe. And it seems no one buys the
assurances of KGB Joe Slovo's widow, Helena Dolny, that South Africa won't
follow Zimbabwe into a black land-grab. Namibian Blacks are now chanting
Zimbabwe's land-grab rhetoric.
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- In North Africa, Ethiopia & Eritrea are in a needless,
stupid war, fueled by recent Russian arms deliveries to both sides. In
West Africa, the UN's feckless peacekeepers got caught in the middle of
Sierra Leone's civil war & taken hostage by murderous RUF rebels, led
by Foday Sankoh. It's noteworthy that in 1997, mercenaries captured Sankoh
& turned him over to Sierra Leone's democratically elected president
& peace ensued. Sankoh was saved from certain execution & released
last year under terms of a peace process godfathered by none other than
Rev. Jesse Jackson & the US.
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- We never cease to be appalled at the incredible ignorance
& denial displayed by the supposedly "civilized" world toward
resolution of Africa's problems. Africa has immense economic potential,
but is its own worst enemy & needs help. All the best intentions, trade
negotiations, debt forgiveness, & blue helmets, are wasted efforts
& ineffective. What is the solution?
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- Before any political solution can work, law & order,
almost totally lacking in sub-Saharan Africa, must prevail. To accomplish
this, as history has proven time & again in Africa, the most effective
means is by the use of mercenaries. Neither the UN nor "civilized"
govts have the mandate or the will to do the job.
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- Once peace has been "made," then perhaps the
UN could participate in "keeping" it. Then, African govts should
invite former colonists back as partners in running their countries, developing
their economies & educating their people. The "politically correct"
hacks of the world will bristle at these proposals, but millions of Africans
are dying while the "politically correct" civilized world looks
on in ignorant smugness. When all ivory tower theories fail, try something
that has proved workable.
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- Comment
- Not A Racist Article
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- From Gordon
gordon18@qwest.net
8-31-1
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- Dear Jan,
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- Thanks for forwarding to me Alvin's and your comments
to Jeff Rense. I would like to respond to Alvin to set the record straight.
Alvin is not the first person whose instant [completely mistaken] reaction
to the article was that it was racist. I assure you, and Alvin, and any
others, that nothing could be farther from the truth.
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- I have lived internationally for many years, on several
continents, including Africa. I met and developed many friendships in all
those places, including Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and many others from
other nationalities and ethnic origins. Many remain good friends to this
day and it has never occurred to me to differentiate between them on the
basis of race. They are all people, with individual personalities and cultures,
who receive or do not receive my respect on a case by case basis, depending
on the person, just as with Whites.
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- The article I wrote on Recolonizing Africa derived its
inspiration from several directions. Yes, I saw Frederick Forsythe's article
having a similar theme, and I mostly agreed with it.
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- Also, a few years ago I spent a few hours (off the record)
talking with two Black Africans, who had quite lofty positions with the
UN in Geneva. They both had PhD's, were highly educated, and they were
greatly concerned about the future of sub-Saharan Africa. One was from
the Ivory Coast, the other from Nigeria, and we had a totally frank talk
about the mess that is Black Africa.
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- Astoundingly, and with no prompting whatsoever from me,
they said sub-Saharan Africa's only hope was a return of colonialism in
some form. We all agreed that apartheid-like attitudes should never play
any part in any recolonization. But there were many good aspects to the
era of colonialization in Africa, I saw it firsthand when I worked there.
The positive aspects should be welcomed and encouraged, the negative discouraged
and prohibited, simple as that.
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- Most of my views and inspiration for the article were
derived from personal experience. I lived in Africa for a number of years
and worked with Black, White and Arab Africans on a daily basis. My firsthand
observations led me to suggest recolonialization as a possible constructive
solution to sub-Saharan Africa's problems. I was directly involved in training
Blacks in Africa and there is no question that most are extremely eager
and willing to learn and work. They just need the opportunity and they
are not receiving it under the utterly corrupt leadership they must endure.
Their own leaders are their downfall. This is not racism, this is fact,
it could matter less what color the leaders are. There are similar faults
in White-ruled countries too, it's just that it's worst in Africa. The
reasons are bound up in Marxism, corruption, nepotism, etc, the many things
we talk about on a daily basis.
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- There is much negativism in today's world against multi-national
corporations, and some of the criticism is indeed well founded. But the
flip side is that multi-national corporations also probably offer the last
best hope many Third World countries have to conquer poverty, disease and
corruption. Multi-nationals bring money, expertise, opportunity, jobs and
build infrastructures. No alphabet agency in the world -- IMF, World Bank,
UN -- can offer a fraction as much.
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- I would encourage any Blacks to communicate with others
through your site. The only "apparent" Blacks that I have ever
seen doing so were obviously so tainted with Marxist bias that they made
a laughingstock of themselves. A few "apparent" Whites also had
similar outlandish leftist views and made outright fools of themselves,
because the historical failures of Marxism are indefensible. Nonetheless,
let them try; throw all the cards on the table, let's see how they can
manage to defend their views. Simple truth is more powerful than all the
lies in the world, if exposed. That is what your site does, much to its
credit. Of course, not all who contribute things to your site have what
might be considered unprejudiced views, but let them speak, they will learn
along with all of us.
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- I might add that the greatest racism and prejudice I
have ever seen anywhere in the world is in Africa, by Blacks. There is
a Black on Black apartheid at work in Africa today that is infinitely more
devastating than anything Whites foisted on Blacks. As you rightly point
out, at the peak of apartheid in South Africa, Blacks from the rest of
Africa were still busting across the borders into White-ruled South Africa
because that's where the greatest opportunity was. Today, Mugabe's Zimbabwe
is one of the most racist and corrupt spots on Earth. And Blacks are suffering
as much or more under his brand of Marxist totalitarism than Whites.
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- Sometime in the next 2 months, I will see Dr. George
Ayittey, a renowned Ghanian professor at American University in Washington
D.C. He will speak to an international forum where I live and I was instrumental
in getting him here. We share many similar views on Africa, and I hope
to talk with him about the idea of some form of neo-colonialism as a solution
to Africa's problems. He has alluded to this before, but never addressed
the issue head-on that I am aware of. I respect his views greatly and want
to hear what he, one of the most respected Black African nationals, has
to say on the issue.
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- Meanwhile, I probably understand as well as anyone Alvin's
knee-jerk reaction to the very idea of "recolonization" as abhorable.
America has its ghosts of slavery, which amount to much the same thing.
And there are still many bigots left in the USA and everywhere today who
live in that bygone era. If the world is ever to move on, it must come
to grips with issues of importance and bury the ghosts of racism. Regrettably,
I see racism surging in today's world, not subsiding, and that saddens
me.
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- But the idea of "recolonization" in sub-Saharan
Africa (perhaps it should be termed something else more appropriate without
negative connotations) is meant to be a constructive solution, not a return
to a bygone era laden with many negative attributes.
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- I certainly left a part of my soul in Africa. It is a
wonderful continent with many wonderful people and I have mostly very fond
memories of it. Regrettably, it is deterioriating beyond anything imaginable
and I am immensely saddened to see it. I do what I can to help the situation,
through talks, articles, correspondence, etc. But until Africa gets its
politics sorted out, no amount of external help will accomplish anything
significant.
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- Jan, through your site and the book you are writing,
hopefully a few more people will begin to see the "REAL" nature
of what's going on in Africa. The world media sugarcoats everything to
the point that virtually no one sees the utter travesty that is "really"
occurring in Africa. Understanding is the first step to solving a problem.
Thus far the world does not even understand Africa's problems, so we haven't
yet arrived as step one in solving them. I am very heartened to see people
like Jeff Rense give you a hearing as this is vital to really solving Africa's
problems. Thank you Jeff!
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- Take heart Alvin, I'm not a racist and I'm most certainly
not anti-African. I would dare say I love Africa more than almost anyone
... including yourself. I've been there, I've experienced it firsthand,
and I came away loving it forever. It's a wonderful, mystical place that
will always be a part of me.
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- Respectfully,
Gordon
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