It took me a while to decide to respond to the liberal hysteria surrounding Donald Trump’s recent “shithole” comment. I do my best to stay out of politics. But, I finally decided that I needed to say something about this – mainly because I have more first hand knowledge about Africa than 99% of American people.
I first need to make it clear that this post is not about individual people. It has nothing to do with immigration, with whether these people have a right to immigrate to the USA, or whether there is any intrinsic difference between individual African people and individual Norwegian people. This post has absolutely nothing to do with those types of judgements. It will be a challenge for committed liberals to separate “country” from “people” and many readers will immediately reject this as another example of racist trash. This is to be expected in a country where many people refuse to even listen to opposing viewpoints.
I’ve been traveling worldwide for almost 50 years and have been to almost all countries that Western people typically travel to and to many countries that few people have even heard of. I’ve been to sub-Saharan Africa at least 20 times and have passed through many countries that would appear on Donald Trump’s list. This group of countries is so far removed from anything one might consider “civilized” that it makes me shutter to think that liberal Americans are trying to pass them off as just another group of standard Third World countries. Most of these liberals – many of whom actually broke down in tears after Trump’s statement – have never set foot in any of these African places. Many Americans think of the whole African continent as one country.
So let me state at this point that the vast majority of sub-Saharan countries are exactly as Donald Trump described them.
To get an idea of what I’m talking about, I’d recommend a trip to Africa. But, I’m not recommending the Serengeti or Victoria Falls. I’m recommending Dakar, Abidjan, Lagos or Kinshasa. You’ll arrive in one of these countries and, after the inevitable airport shake-down, you discover a completely dysfunctional place. There is almost no viable infrastructure anywhere outside of the capital city. Everything is covered by garbage, graffiti, human feces, and people laying in the street. The decrepit colonial buildings which haven’t been maintained since the Europeans left, are literally collapsing. The roads which have not been maintained for 60 years have turned into muddy swamps. The railways are non-existent.
LAGOS – NIGERIA
But these environmental challenges are probably the least of the problems. You’ll soon learn that Africa is not a place where people actually work to earn money. African people have grown up in a culture where the main goal is to take money from other people. You soon realize that you’re in a place populated by predators, and you are the preferred prey.
The police do not exist to protect the people. They exist to prey on the people. The army does not exist to protect the country from foreign invaders. The army exists to protect the Head of State from the general population. Airport officials have no interest in getting you through Customs and Immigration. They are strictly interested in fleecing you for every penny that they can pilfer. Border agents are not concerned that you might be entering their country illegally or bringing in contraband. Their sole purpose is to extract bribes. And you’re likely to be arrested as a spy if you don’t cooperate (a spy in Burkina Faso? What exactly would you be spying on?) The machine gun toting “soldiers” you see everywhere could be considered laughable – except that what they do to innocent people is anything but funny.
ETHIOPIA
I saw on television where a liberal journalist was planning to go down to Haiti to “see how things are going down there”. He’ll stay in the country’s only luxury hotel, travel around a bit, and return with heart warming stories about how friendly the people are and how hard they are trying to recover from the earthquake.
This is all fine and good, but what this guy really needs to do is to go to the Congo. Why waste time in Haiti – probably the easiest country on Trump’s list to manage. Why not jump in whole hog. Go to the Congo – the country that represents the absolute lowest point in the history of human civilization – the ultimate degradation of the human race. There are things going on in the Congo that even the most fertile literary mind in the world would have trouble making up – cannibalism, beheading of babies, rape on an industrial scale – the victims ranging from 3 to 83 years of age.
There are civil wars going on continuously in the Eastern Congo. But these are not civil wars in the conventional sense – the “soldiers” are not fighting for any noble cause. In fact, they’re not really fighting for anything. The “wars” serve strictly as an excuse for bands of drunken young men with automatic weapons to maraude across the countryside raping any woman they might encounter.
So, that’s the Congo, a place that every pontificating liberal should visit first before making definitive statements about the quality of African countries. Now, let’s look at Nigeria – the richest country in Africa and the second monster in this Rogues Gallery of “shitholes”.
About a week ago, I heard an experienced cable news anchor allow one of his liberal guests to make a statement that was so ludicrous that he should have been cut off and challenged immediately. Instead, he was allowed to get away with the statement, proving how little Americans really know about Africa – even news anchors who are supposed to be well-informed.
He claimed that the average salary in Nigeria was higher than the average salary in Norway. What he failed to mention is that 120 million Nigerians live on less than 2 dollars a day. Most Nigerians spend there lives trying to get enough money together to feed their families for another day. Many Nigerian women have turned to prostitution to generate a few dollars. The typical Nigerian lives a life not fit for a dog. The tiny middle class averages around $500 per month – high for Africa – but try living in Oslo on $15 a day. 99% of the money generated by Nigeria’s vast oil reserves goes directly into the pockets of the small group of kleptocrats who run the country, and to foreign businessmen. None of it trickles down to the people.
I could go on for a long time, but it would begin to get repetitious. The story is always the same no matter what country you are considering – a few fabulously wealthy kleptocrats stealing all of the country’s money, while the vast general population lives under conditions that few Americans could even imagine. There are a few more very bad actors involved. South Sudan is starting to compete with Congo as the asshole of the universe. Central African Republic and Burundi are not far behind. And then, there is the whole list of decaying, decrepit, dysfunctional countries that populate the rest of the continent – Ivory Coast, Mali, Togo, Angola, Somalia…
In summary – are these places “shitholes”? You bet they are!!! But, it’s not the individual Africans that put them in that category. Most poor African people are just trying to make the best of a bad situation. The real cause of Africa’s plight are the African leaders. Almost to a man, they have shown themselves to be greedy, selfish, rapacious, and incapable of running a country. Most African presidents have fleets of Rolls Royces, a large collection of private jets, multiple wives, and palaces in London, Paris and New York.
The characters on this list have done things that are hard for a naive American to imagine.
Mobutu Seke Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Congo) for the last half of the 20th Century, drained his country dry while depositing billions of dollars into his own private bank account. He built a fabulous palace in the jungle where he constructed a landing strip long enough to accommodate the Concorde. He then had pink champagne and caviar flown in daily from Paris – all while his people were starving.
Jean-Bedel Bokassa who ran the Central African Republic in the 1970’s decided to have himself crowned emperor. He renamed his country the Central African Empire and threw a fabulous coronation which ate up half of the country’s gross national product – this in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Sani Abacha ruled Nigeria during the 1990’s. He managed to bankrupt his oil-rich country while depositing more than 6 billion dollars in his private account. He died while in bed with a pair of Indian prostitutes.
South Africa, under the leadership of the African National Congress, is gradually turning into Zimbabwe, a place that went from a moderately affluent country (by African standards) to Africa’s basket case and one of the poorest countries on earth. This was accomplished in a few short years by the policies of Robert Mugabe who decided that it would be a good idea to enact land redistribution by allowing “war veterans” to seize white-owned farms, killing many of the white families and forcing the survivors to leave the country. The new “farmers” knew nothing about farming and the economy immediately collapsed.
During my last trip to South Africa, less than a year ago, I had a long talk with several South African people – they all, to a man, black and white, claimed that the current government is more corrupt than the Apartheid Government that it replaced.
I’ve traveled to South Africa many times. It is certainly one of the most beautiful countries in the world. But, I’ve never felt comfortable traveling in South Africa. I’m always looking over my shoulder. On a recent self-drive safari, I noticed signs placed at strategic intervals along the highways saying – “Do not stop – carjacking hotspot”.
Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, Jacob Zuma – the list goes on. But the end result is always the same – a few ultra-rich kleptocrats living in a country where the rest of the population scratches out the most meagre existence imaginable. It’s high time that Americans begin to pay attention to this tragedy – especially those liberal Americans who feel they are qualified to make judgements about the quality of African countries with absolutely no ground level experience.
It’s time to stop sending money to these countries. None of it makes it down it to the people. Even medical supplies and food donations are at risk. In South Sudan, these supplies are routinely pilfered and re-sold with the profits going to the kleptocrats. Who cares if the children get vaccinated when the corrupt leaders can easily line their pockets.
Can any of this be changed? Certainly not in the near future. But before we can even think about improving African countries, we need to face reality and call them what they are – “shitholes”. If liberal Americans could take a short break from obsessing about Donald Trump, racism, white privilege and political correctness and take a cold, hard look at what is actually happening in Africa, they might begin to understand what needs to be done.
And my final word of advice for people who want to wax eloquent about how wonderful Africa is – skip the Botswana Safari and spend a week or two in the Democratic Republic of Congo. You won’t believe you’re still on planet Earth.