White Man's Burden: AFRICA

Two weeks ago the Ethiopian Army invaded Somalia on the eastern coast of Africa (who knew where either of these two places were?). Certainly when one mentions Somalia the immediate thought will be of the Hollywood production “Blackhawk Down”. Of course, who knew that for the last few decades Somalia has been without a functional government and has basically been in a prolonged state of anarchy? Ethiopia, the primarily Christian neighbor to the north, determined it to be in its own national security interests to invade Somalia. Backed by a force of Somalis, dubbed the Somali Army and supposedly a remnant of the virtually nonexistent Somali government, Ethiopia quickly put down the Union of Islamic Courts. The UIC is the element of insurrection that had taken control and established some semblance of order in Somalia. This order, based on Sharia or Islamic Law (as was the order in Afghanistan under the Taliban prior to the U.S. invasion in 2002), seemed more troublesome to the Ethiopian government than did the anarchy that prevailed previously.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, independent from French rule since 1960, has in the past 4 decades experienced several government overthrows, political assassinations, civil wars, rigged elections, more violent civil unrest, and over the last few months has survived an insurgency instigated by a prominent Army General named Laurent Nkunda. Today the government negotiated a peace accord in which his militia will be integrated into the Congo’s army and he will be granted asylum in some foreign country. Who Knew? Even the people at CNN don’t even know. In fact, today CNN’s leading Africa headline reads, “Rebels kill, eat endangered gorillas.” How juvenile is that when there is so much more going on in Africa?

An estimate I saw recently said that by 2010 there will be 18 million orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as a direct result of the spread of AIDS, and a decade from now there will be 42 million AIDS orphans in SSA. 2 percent of the population of the African continent will be orphans by 2010 as a direct result of AIDS, by 2016 more than 4 percent. Right now the number of known AIDS cases worldwide is about 40 million, the number in SSA is 26 million. The number seems to be leveling off but only because of a high rate of death among sufferers. Four countries in SSA are known to have at least 20 percent infection rates among adults; including Swaziland with an adult infection rate of 33.4 percent (1 in 3 adults is currently infected with HIV/AIDS). Only 1 in 10 AIDS cases in SSA are currently treated with antiretroviral drugs.

Rwanda, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Liberia; civil wars, military coups and overthrows, assassinations, invasions, genocides, AIDS, corruption and abuse of power; in a nutshell Africa is a basket case. In my view this is largely because of the still prevalent, although publicly shunned concept, “White Man’s Burden”. In other words, “why should we white folks care about the barbaric and less intelligent Negros in Africa?” Even today, Africa is being raped of its natural resources (diamonds, oil, tobacco and cotton among them) by the west and being victimized by innumerable corrupt influences from outside.

Over the next few decades, and as this and future generations of young Africans mature and become the future leaders in Africa, Africa will become the world’s greatest nightmare if the civil(ized) and thinking people in the west don’t sit up and take notice.