Feigning corruption as the cause of Africa’s woes.

If you ask nine out to ten people what is the major factor causing Africa’s continued entrenched poverty, they will answer with corrupt and inept leadership. Surprisingly enough, even most Africans will tell you the same thing. But what is it, if African leaders are more corrupt than others, that makes this so? Is it the fact that African leaders come from a pool of corrupt and inept people, thus making such predictable? Or is it the situation, meaning history and outside influences, that has manifested an environment of corruption?


For anyone to accept the notion that Africans, and hence African leaders, are more corrupt and inept than leaders in other continents and races is simply racist. The core of that racism is the belief that blacks biggest problem is either themselves or other black people. It says that blacks, in a relative world and in juxtaposition with other groups of people, are more harmful to themselves than others are harmful to them or that others are harmful to themselves. This is pure and simply the doctrine of racial inferiority being propagated through the cowardly act of stealth and or ignorance.


I have yet to hear the logical repudiation of the proposition that the present is the creation and summation of the past. Everything that exist today has its origin in events of the past. Thus, in order to properly understand phenomenon or events of the present, one must seek the answer from actions and reactions that manifested over time in the past. Every action creates a reaction. Yet, popular sentiment and propaganda will have you ignore, if not dismiss both these natural laws of existence and would have you dismiss their influence on the African condition.


When one talks about outside influences and environmental factors upon Africa, you have over 4 centuries of documented history of European influence and manipulation. You had the Europeans demand for African prisoners of wars, to be converted to slaves in the West. You had the drawing of national borders which split up natural homogenous groupings and combined tribally dissimilar peoples, fermenting division. You had colonization and the imposing of European cultural, political, economic and religious imperialism upon Africa. Then you had the Cold war manipulation of Africa by Europeans trying to spread white capitalism or white communism upon black people, propping up ruthless dictators in the process if only they would fight against the rivals ideology. Then you have the peonage and manipulation of economies and resources by virtue of loans from the West that are spent of Western goods and services, as a precondition to the loans.


These 400 years of actions from Europeans is ignored and dismissed from having had a major influence on the problems of Africa today. Instead, the focus or suspect is black inferiority which is qualified in stealth by the claim that Africa’s problems today are the product of black leaders who are corrupt and inept and who squander or pocket millions of dollars for their personal benefit, hence, keeping or making the people poor. Even though there are many African rulers who pocket millions, those millions can make one man rich, but spread out among 20 or more million people…really amounts to very little. A million dollars do not go very far these days. To turn most African countries economics, you need many billions of dollars spent on infrastructure, public health, education, economic investments and other.


The reality of why so many African leaders are corrupt is born from learned behavior and the template left by their former colonial masters, as well as, the power of multination corporations. When the European and Western powers abdicated their direct political control over Africa, they left a template and structure that was exploitive, because that is how the Europeans created it to exploit the masses and their resources. The post colonial African political leaders inherited the construct and hence many fall for the temptations to do the same thing. Also, Western governments and corporations influence the politics of many nations by supporting leaders or candidates who will allow their Corporations to own and exploit the Africans nations natural resources. They do this by offering bribes in the form of Loans from the IMF and World Bank, with the understanding that some of these monies for projects can go into the rulers pocket as his reward for cooperation with Western interest.


In conclusion, Africa’s many problems, like every thing else in existence, is the product of its past. If Africa was a booming success story today, like America, that too would be the product of things that happened in the past and not simply the product of phenomenon of the present. Indeed, the decline and or stagnation of Africa is a direct correlation with the rise of the West. Every action creates reactions and the reaction to European and Western Activity upon the continent of Africa, worked to lift up the West as the profit that resulted from putting the Africans down. It is what I call “seesaw economics”, which is the phenomenon of lifting up one entity by placing the weight of exploitation or burden upon another entity. Today, after 400 years of this “seesaw” economics the resultant in plan to see for those who seek profound truth and not superficial ones.