A War Within

The tyrannies and atrocities currently, as well as for the past couple of decades, that are being committed in Africa is indeed a dynamic problem. Most of which are perpetuated by age old embittered battles of race, politics, and so on. This in itself can only be further amplified by the colonial powers, which leaves us to Africa today. In my past blog, I posed the question of how and why the nations that are in power today, ended up in power. How did those countries far surpass those such as the ones in the continent of Africa?? So here I pose another question, after independence, how is it that most African nations are still struggling when under the rule of their own people?? What has brought about their demise so to speak??

This is simply answered than most would like to think. Simply said, the answer to the question is one simple word: racial injustice. In this sense, a false sense of racial injustice perpetuated by common place stereotypes, mitigated by leaders. This sounds simpler said than done. Basically, if one were to rise up and rally a group of people, one must create a scapegoat in order to rally said troops. Hilter did it. So did other so called "radical" leaders throughout history. Yet again, it is not as simple as that.

Let's put it this way, as the colonial powers left their posts in the former colonies, they also left Africa with barely anything to stabilize themselves with. Structurally, Africa was a mess. Most importantly though, there was few and far between that could potentially lead the nations to prosperity. There were, of course, the couple that did have an education and that did take the opportunity to thus become tyrants within their nations. I will say it over and over again, education can make or break a group of people. In Africa's case, their lack of education has in a way brought about their demise.

With the tyrants in place and the majority of people uneducated, poor, starving, and everything in between, this sets up the most perfect situation for one to rule a nation. In this case, a handful to rule a continent. Tyrants are more or less and in this case a dictator. Perhaps in this sense, the worse of it's kind. Greed rules their power and they could not care about the welfare of their people. Perhaps to them, the injustice that they had faced calls for a bitter sort of rule, but this does not mean that the people should suffer for it.

For a dictator to come into power, one must need a catch. I guess in a way you could call it a scapegoat, but more or less, it is not such. In some cases, such as Nazi German, or even Rwanda, race became the biggest factor. Let me cite Rwanda as an example. The Hutus and Tutsis have and for hundreds of years prior to the genocide remained in absolute peace with each other. There was no antipathy, and nothing of that sort. In fact, they got along just fine. First off, the colonists did sort of stir up the beginnings of the racial strife that came in between the two, but it was only further increased by the tyrants themselves as well as the people.

These racial conflicts can only be mirrored by what occurred in the most infamous of genocides, the Holocaust. Similar to that, the Rwandan conflict used the Tutsi people as a scapegoat. The Hutu people claimed that the Tutsi minority held a monopoly of power and thus brought their country and their people to the ground. This similar formula as we all know was used during the regime of Nazi Germany. Has anything really changed? It seems that one event seems to only mirror the other and in the end, war never changes.....