Interesting interview with Namibian Presiden Nujoma.

[AP]

I know this won't get any posts, and really isn't relevant to some of the more important issues today. However, bookmark it and read it after the elections.

Some of the things Nujoma describes that the Boers did in Namibia remind me of what Republicans do to people who work for a living in the US:

Baffour: What about painting, you say in the book that painting was equally for white men. Blacks could climb the ladder to clean the old paint, but a white man would come and do the painting. What a ridiculous society you lived in as a youth?

Nujoma: Yes, of course. The whites thought that if you knew how to paint, you might employ yourself one day as a painter and paint other people's houses.

Baffour: The really hilarious one was the trousers edict, which said trousers worn by blacks should have one leg shorter than the other so that blacks would be seen to be different from whites even in their clothing.

Nujoma: Yes, the idea of the minority white settlers was that blacks were confined to cleaning the floor, making tea, cooking for them or serving them. That's all. As a result, they deliberately denied us education and training. If you have no education and training, then you won't know anything except cheap labour.

http://www.swans.com/library/art9/ankomah9.html

[AP]

1. Kissinger gets a mention too:

Baffour: In your book, you say that "saving the whites and ensuring unhindered and continued access to raw materials, strategic minerals and sea lanes was really the rescue mission that brought Henry Kissinger to Southern Africa on the so-called 'peace shuttle' of 1978, not self-determination, independence and human rights of the black majority." Can you explain?

Nujoma: Yes, the main aim of the colonialists was to enrich themselves. They were against genuine independence and freedom for our people.

Baffour: But Kissinger managed to get Ian Smith to agree to Zimbabwean independence, something Smith had earlier said would not happen in his lifetime, "not even in a thousand years," he added for good measure.

Nujoma: Well, I think what really forced the British to act against Ian Smith was the threat by Nigeria to nationalise the Shell oil company and the other British interests in Nigeria. It was not because of Kissinger's shuttle. Kissinger was just trying to strengthen the whites -- the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, the white minority in Rhodesia, and here in Namibia apartheid South Africa. But it was already too late, because the Portuguese soldiers who were fighting in Angola and Mozambique got tired of being bitten by mosquitoes and snakes, and they staged a coup d'etat in Portugal and that strengthened the Frontline States. You know, Nigeria played a vital role supporting the Frontline States.

[noiretextatique]

3. saw him on tv last night with ben wattenberg

he pretty much admitted that he didn't give a damn about people...he was more concerned about "geopolitical strategy." that was his answer to america's support of folks like pinochet and the shah of iran.

[AP]

5. Well, he's not running from his record.

Wonder if he'll admit that the world is probably poorer and more dangerous because he held back so much of the world from building up wealthy middle classes and democracies so that Wall St could rip off the natural resources of the rest of the non-European world.

[noiretextatique]

2. interesting...i saw an interview with the world bank president

last night and he was saying something similar...i forget which country he was talking about. when the colonial powers left africa, all the people with skills with them. the example he used was was telling: train operations. all the black africans were shoveling to coal, so when the colonialists left, their was no one trained to run the trains. the coal shovellers had to run the trains, and the only training they had was from watching other doing it.
actually, slavery and jim crow had the same effect here.

[AP]

4. Not totally related, but not totally unrelated...

...and an opportunity to plug a book that's on my list to read:

Rising from the Rails : Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class
by Larry Tye

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805070753/ref=wl_it_dp/104-1051199-0789522?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=IWFFH2D110J9A&v=glance&colid=2YRWDUP4MTFCM

[noiretextatique]

7. thanks...i think it's totally related

actually, but i'll check out the book.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. The neo-colonialist corporations are doing much the same thing.

Exploiting 3rd world countries for resources and labor and them abandoning them for greener fields to destroy.

Ain't capitalism swell?

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

8. kick

[noiretextatique]

9. kick

well, AP...at least you knew this wouldn't get many comments :D

[Generic Other]

10. Interesting article

Thanks for posting

[AP]

11. Nujoma on military service (ie, he's no Poppy Bush):

Baffour
Anybody reading your book is going to be surprised that you, the leader of the struggle, did send all your three sons into battle at a go. What if they were all killed in that battle?

Nujoma
Well, but the liberation of our country was supposed to be done by all Namibians irrespective of birth.