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Effect of imperialism on african politics
Effect of imperialism on african politics
Effect of imperialism on african politics
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After years of bickering President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was finally given an official invitation to attend the 2007 Africa-EU summit-with this, a place on the rostrum to address delegates. What was the rationale in the delay? Did the EU bow to threats of boycotts from African leaders to let Uncle Bob sit with the “righteous”? What lessons can be drawn from this in future African EU talks and relations?
There has been a continuous debate in this forum on Mugabe and the crisis in Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s legacy and the independence movement in Africa are symbolic of a continent’s defiance to western dictations and imposed standards of measure. To understand Mugabe’s present antagonism with the west it is important to trace its roots into the wars of liberation and Mugabe’s rise to power. The ZANU-PF party that led Zimbabwe into independence was built on a platform of liberation against white domination and economic empowerment of the masses. Their ideology was tied to socialism. Fighting against a minority white led government and threatening foreign interest alienated Bob from the central and conservative western political-aristocracy into closer ties with the Kremlin and Cuba. His stance against the power sharing arrangements under the March 3rd 1978 agreement in Governor’s Lodge in Salisbury endeared him to more nationalist heroes and intensified nationalist campaigns for total liberation.
The central issue however, are the mining concessions granted the British South African Company (under Cecil Rhodes) by HM government and the subsequent encroachment and expropriation of native lands that is at the centre of today’s crisis.
Many would argue that the land redistribution has been used as a pretext to further political gains...
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... labour being something that largely available within traditional black families, they now have two major production factors that can help in the production of goods (if only food crops) to improve their livelihood. The present economic stalemate in Zimbabwe is meant to discredit Mugabe. It is intended to continue the racist doctrine that blacks are stupid, that when the whites owned the lands they could boost the economy but with lands coming into the possession of blacks they are unable to produce.
Mugabe is the elected president of Zimbabwe. He is endorsed with the same legitimacy as all other “elected dictators” in Africa supported by Britain, France and America. South Africa’s political class is sympathetic to Mugabe not because they enjoy the suffering of the Zimbabwean people but because they understand the reasons behind the hate campaign against Mugabe.
Images of whiteness in Zimbabwe projected in the media have been of white population as victims being disposed of land and exposed to violence. In the award-winning documentary, Mugabe and the White African, the film focuses on white Zimbabwean family who challenges the Fast Track land redistribution program. David McDermott Hughes’ interprets the perspectives of land and landscape and its origins. In Whiteness in Zimbabwe, David McDermott Hughes principal argument is that European settlers identified themselves with the African landscape rather than with the social characteristics of the native Africans. The importance of landscape to white identity led to the engineering and structural development of the landscape. Hughes contends that the white colonizers used the land, nature and ecology to escape the social problems, to avoid ‘the other’ which in this case was the black Zimbabweans that were sharing the same living space. Through such landscape engineering, the white Zimbabweans believed that they would belong to Zimbabwe and Africa. However, Hugh argues that “by writing themselves to single-mindedly into the landscape, many whites wrote themselves out of society (p. 25).” Furthermore, Hughes argues that this was not a form of racism, but rather escaping the social surrounding to avoid conflict. This concept has led to Hughes to wanting to stop romanticizing of land in order to avoid social issues.
Throughout the twentieth century, Rhodesia from 1960’s to the late 1970’s have always been in a struggle to fight for their independence. They had to deal with the British colonist that settled into their land and had taken over control of the country for the past couple of years. Due to the decolonisation of African countries after the second world war it gave many influences and reasons for Rhodesia to search to become an independent country. That all changed when they fully receive their independence in 1980 and during that time they fought for the control of their country, Rhodesia. The name was later changed to Zimbabwe due to a revolutionary struggle they had in their country. The battle to govern Rhodesia and also by the agreement of the Internal Settlement between the fighting forces to find and create peace
Around the 1970s, due to South Africa’s internal contradictions with its economy and people, the Apartheid began its slow demise. Soon the united nation began to take notice of South Africa and began to get involved. With South Africa now in the spot light, Prime Minister P.W Botha left office due to his belief that he had failed to keep order in the country. After the reassignment of P.W Botha, F.W Klerk had taken office. The final stage of the demise of the Apartheid began when Klerk lifted the ban off the ANC and other African political parties. The last blow was the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison. Now that South Africa’s hope was out of prison he continued to ...
"Mugabe Rival Quits Election Race." BBC News. BBC, 22 June 2008. Web. 15 May 2014.
Human history has been marked with long and painful struggles that fought for human rights and freedoms. Discrimination and racial oppression has always been one of the most controversial struggles for mankind. For South Africa, it was a country where black people were oppressed by the white minority. The colonization of South Africa began in the 18th century by the Dutch empire after Dutch trading companies started using its cape as a center for trading between Asia and Europe (sahistory.org.za). Soon after, the British took over the country and declared it part of the British Empire (sahistory.org.za). Decades after, Afrikaners, who descended from the original Dutch settlers that occupied South Africa, started working on creating a state that separates between black people and whites. Their plans were to create a separation between black people and whites that involved excluding blacks from all types of social, economic, and political activities within the country. All South African natives knew the bad conditions that their people were forced to live in but only a few of them took the responsibility of sacrificing their lives and freedom for the rights of their people. One South African citizen, Nelson Mandela, can be considered the main hero for the South African freedom revolution and the hero for millions of people fighting for their freedoms worldwide. Mandela’s long walk for freedom defined South African history and entered world history as one of the most influential fights for freedom and human rights in the world.
Marley was a highly political lyricist, in 1979 penning a song titled Zimbabwe calling for Zimbabwe’s liberation from England. The next year he played in Zimbabwe in celebration of their independence. (biography.com, 2014)
Dr. Noah Zerbe is a professor and chair of the department of politics at Humboldt State University in California and someone who has spent time in both South Africa and Zimbabwe. Dr. Zerbe goes in depth into the factors that surrounded the 2002 famine in Africa, where 14 million Africans were on the brink of starvation. The Malawi president, just a season before the famine, sold off all of Mal...
The first European to arrive to Great Zimbabwe was a German explorer named Karl Mauch, in 1871. It was Mauch’s friend, Adam Render, who was also German and was living in the tribe of Chief Pika, that has lead him to Great Zimbabwe. When Mauch first saw the ruins, he abruptly concluded that Great Zimbabwe wasn’t erected by Africans. He felt that the handiwork was too delicate and the people who constructed this showed they were way too civilized to have been the work of Africans.
...but after the war Blacks were cut off from economic empowerment because Boer racism became legally protected. Friedman’s identifications of the players in the struggle of late twentieth-century globalization applies to the players in South Africa around the time of the Boer War, but Friedman’s optimism is not confirmed by the facts. While South Africa became an increasingly industrialized society, certain social elements overpowered economic shifts to prevent the full empowerment of Blacks especially that Friedman predicts. The long-term outcomes in South Africa—the resurgence of Boer nationalism in the 1940s that brought apartheid, and the movement forty years later to end apartheid—reveal that racism and conservative political ideology were stronger forces than globalization and industrialization were in shaping the lives and futures for Blacks in South Africa.
To fully understand Zimbabwe’s current situation, and the rule of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF, it is important to first outline their rise to power. Zimbabwe’s independence came fairly late in relation to most other African nations. Furthermore, the current iteration of Zimbabwe won its independence through armed struggle. These two factors are the result of a somewhat unique situation in Zimbabwe’s colonial history. By the late 19th century what is now Zimbabwe came under the control of Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Country. When Rhodes obtained concession over valuable mining areas from the locals he was granted a Royal Charter by the United Kingdom to incorporate all of the territory that now makes up Zambia, Zimbabwe, and parts of Mozambique into the British colony of Rhodesia. Later, the territory south of the Zambezi River would become known as Southern Rhodesia, while the territory north of the Zambezi became Northern Rhodesia.
...ellent policies, 5) the Constitution had come into existence through the working together of various groups that had composed South Africa, 6) South Africa's political and economic institutions are well established, 7) and that South Africa is by far the most developed country in Africa. However, there are still avenues that can impede further progress, more so economically then politically. Primarily the lack of foreign investment, especially when South Africa's gold and diamond reserves are emptied as other parts of economy are not as developed. Secondly, the economic gap between whites and blacks that was stretched during the time of apartheid needs to be tightened or else it could become dangerous to the stability of the political system. However, due to the leadership of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s current government structure exists to solve these issues.
Meredith, Martin. Mugabe: power, plunder, and the struggle for Zimbabwe. New York: Public Affairs, 2007. Print.
The stranger still lives among the people of Zimbabwe, though the colonial political authority has left. Yet I wonder if the town elder speaking in the above passage from Yvonne Vera's Nehanda would recognize current Zimbabwean authorities as strangers or countrymen. Could he relate to today's government officials and understand the languages which they speak? Would he feel at home in an African country with borders defined by European imperial powers without regard to the various ethnic nations involved? Post-colonial theory attempts to explain problems such as these, yet it does so almost exclusively in the languages of the European colonial powers. Europeans even created the word Africa. "To name the world is to 'understand' it, to know it and to have control over it" (Ashcroft 283). Because knowledge is power, and words, whether written or spoken, are the medium of exchange, using words incurs responsibility.
The geography, socio-economical and political background of Malawi is very much important in discussing and understanding the foreign policy of Malawi since independence. Also it can be said that both domestic and international politics decided the kind of foreign policy that Malawi adopted since independence.1
“I believe that the biggest factor which changed South Africa’s government was the international pressure it got, mostly from the UN. I would love to believe that South Africa’s government eventually understood their mistakes but the UN played a huge role. Without the tension from the United Nations, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get out of prison as soon as I did.”