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Typical whiteman’s thinking of Africans

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Outwork
By John Hollaway
Published by Capricorn books (2005)
ISBN: 0-7974-3063-6

THE book under review this week is John Hollaway’s Outwork.
The book discusses Africa’s problems, including global warming, HIV and AIDS, poverty and development.
Hollaway, who sees nothing good coming from Africa, uses a tone of mockery when he addresses these issues.
His views on Africa reflect a whiteman’s way of thinking which regards Africans as ‘barbaric and ignorant’.
Hollaway, like his kith and kin, Rhodesians, blames Africans for the state Africa is in.
He forgets Africa is in the state in which it is because of effects of colonisation and neo-colonisation that drained and continue to drain Africa’s resources.
Just like views he raised in his book A Great Deal of Nonsense, which was reviewed in this publication last month, Hollaway talks of aid as a way that can assist Africa’s development.
It is important to know aid does not come without conditions.
The World Bank and IMF are Bretton Woods institutions that have ‘crippled’ Africa through debt conditionalities.
Controlled by the US, the two institutions remain empowered to monitor African states through debt.
To Hollaway, lack of democracy and the involvement of politicians in aid money hamper development.
On global warming, the author questions the position of the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement of nations to curb problems associated with climate change.
Without the ratification of the US on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions it means the protocol is not worth the paper it’s printed on.
It is against this background operations of the Kyoto Protocol are challenged.
“If the money for curbing carbon dioxide emissions was spent instead on delivering clean water for the poor, everybody on the planet could be supplied within three years,” writes Hollaway.
“This would avert two million deaths every year and prevent half billion people from becoming seriously ill.
“In the meantime the Kyoto Protocol has become institutionalised, with predictable results.”
Hollaway crudely points out the reason he thinks Africa is a continent that cannot further its development.
He reckons it is due to the existence of corrupt politicians who exploit and loot the economy for selfish ends.
“The answer is because it seems unable to stop ethnic tensions escalating in anarchy, because despite about US$20 billion a year in aid most Africans are as poor now as they can remember and because the political will to halt preventable diseases like malaria and AIDS diseases is lacking,” writes the author.
It is true that corruption remains one of the aspects affecting states worldwide.
However, it must be pointed out that development is disturbed and stalled by neo-colonialists.
What Hollaway forgets is that Africa’s resources contributed to the development of Western countries.
Today, Africa is told some of its resources are harmful to the environment and its people but multi-national companies continue to plunge into and exploit the same.
Zimbabwe has faced the problem of its asbestos being condemned as a health hazard, but the truth of the matter is that the white chrysotile type has not been scientifically condemned and remains the best in the world today.
In his book, Hollaway mocks Africa’s land which he says has no asset value but he forgets that it is the rich soils of Africa that saw his kith and kin converging at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 to divide and share the African States among themselves.
In Zimbabwe, the First Chimurenga uprising was a result of the discrimination of the black majority who were forced off fertile land to barren lands in the reserve areas.
“The soils of Africa are generally leached and infertile so a semi-nomadic lifestyle based on slash and burn agriculture had to be adopted,” writes Hollaway.
Up to now, former colonisers such as France still rely on resources from their former colonies like Burkina Faso, Benin, Senegal, Mali and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Hollaway’s mockery of the continent stems from ignorance.
“For Africa is not only the home of mankind, it is also that of its main diseases
And now, in the 21st Century, they are still dominated by their hereditary chiefs, land is still largely communal, polygamy and the bride price still almost universal,” writes Hollaway.
The solution that Hollaway provides for creating wealth for Africans is cultural change.
Africa must adopt Western ways which apparently have not and will never serve or save the continent.

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