As much as there's a bit of evidence supporting the fact that black people are incapable of governing themselves, this doesn't span across all black people or non-white people for that matter. I've heard black people saying that white people govern better than black people. While white-run countries are generally wealthier, I think it's because they aren't destabilised as much as black-led countries & use the correct formula not because they're inherently better leaders due to the colour of their skin. This is evident in white-run Latin American countries who still have large parts of their populations in poverty, they have simply failed to emulate the winning formula. Black-led countries have achieved some success but their successes are limited due to several foreign-imposed hinderances which add up & prevent them from reaching further heights. The stereotype of black-led countries being unable to govern themselves is spread by media when African leaders are shown as corrupt & citizens are shown as being incapable of feeding themselves. One could even assume that former President Zuma of South Africa was put in power to portray a certain majority group of people in South Africa as illiterate & corrupt. Again, spreading the myth that black people are incapable of governing themselves by putting incompetent & corrupt people as their leaders.
Why Africa lagged behind...
When we read or hear about events in colonial history, they sometimes seem so far removed from modern reality & almost inconceivable in today's world that when you explain why things are the way they are to common people, (e.g. the common drug addict on the street) they would simply claim you're lying. Many Africans don't even know that African political borders were drawn up in Berlin (Germany). So to contextualize this & give it some gravity; most of Europe & Far East Asia are nation states which makes it easier for government to reach every forgotten crevice of the land, whereas in Africa, we are not so much nation states or ethno-states. This could contribute in the altruistic spirit people & leaders of a country have. I've seen this in sporting events, Nigerian superstars are brilliant for their football clubs but are almost shells of themselves when playing for their country, Nigeria. In Africa, we have lands where the leaders sometimes show little intent or initiative in developing their lands. The lands they govern almost mean little to them, as if they are not of the same kind as the people they govern. We've seen ethnic wars which set African countries back, you could say it's lack of education or lack of resources that cause ethnic conflicts & prevent African countries from moving forward but how do the same problems last 50 years? Yes, there have been declassified documents from intelligence agencies in the developed world that indicate that African countries have been destabilised to get cheaper natural resources & cheap labour but why hasn't that problem been solved? Citizens in black African countries almost seem detached from their lands when determining the fate of their countries, this could be because they use foreign (un-African) systems to govern their lands so they need to bring the country closer to home i. e. common citizens knowing the why & what of their countries.
Why South Africa lags behind...
When South Africa was at it's "peak of development" in the 70s & 80s, it was due to labour of the indigenous black people & exclusive development for the minority white population. You may ask, why black people can't emulate this among their own people after the Apartheid government relinquished power. Simple, it's 1) lack of education, 2) lack of ownership/knowledge of this new country they'd been given governing powers over & 3) it also doesn't help that the Apartheid government made sure to take most of the land's wealth, ensure state institutions continue to benefit certain previously advantaged (white) groups & dispose of the state's nuclear weapons. This made sure that blacks had the political power in South Africa but not the "fruits of the land"... To this day, the gold mined in South Africa is not kept in South Africa but sent abroad. As to why leaders won't stop this, I'm not sure myself but I'm willing to bet that if they did, foreign entities would try all they could to destabilise the land for the gold again.
As a layman & average South African, I sometimes look at the society of this land from an outsider's view on purpose just to see why things are the way they are. Many South Africans, myself included, feel no ownership of the land. They speak English in parliament, a language the majority of the land doesn't understand. No one seems capable of bringing the governance of the land closer to the people despite all the best efforts of programmes like RDP houses & social grants. South Africa has failed to be a representation of the people of South Africa. A large population doesn't identify with a singing Zulu president, a larger population doesn't identify with a populist Pedi Marxist & even less identify with a Xhosa-speaking German lady. Many are growing disillusioned with Mandela's legacy because of many red tape factors against black South Africans even in 2023. I don't think people of mixed identities have the capability of bringing South Africa home either. What I noticed in nation-states is that they use a single language that they have ownership of, this can't happen in South Africa because no language has an overwhelming majority for it to be used as a lingua franca, not even the English that's often used in media. So should we learn English by force to have a common language or should we retain our indigenous languages & develop them to the level of English so we can use one indigenous dialect as a common language? I support the latter because no matter how fluent we are in speaking English, we'll never be owners of it. We are not Anglo-Saxons or Europeans. This is why it's so tricky to bring top-level governance down to the common man on the street so that he may know the why & what of South Africa, language. We see impoverished countries like Burundi doing well in education because they have ownership of their language & land, African systems are easier to grasp for an African child than the Roman-Dutch principles of South African legislation.
So, in essence, while redrawing the borders of Africa by ethnicity may seem backwards & counterproductive, it makes it easier to bring the land closer to it's people because smaller & culturally similar countries are easier to govern. Even massive empires are easier to govern when they speak one language & share a similar culture.
The glaring problem I notice with South Africa is we don't identify with our leaders, whether this problem is due to education or multiculturalism, it could be solved by indigenous systems used in autonomous ethnic regions. We may not identify with "elected" leaders but we definitely identify with traditional (indigenous) leaders & homegrown governance because we are of the same heritage as the people involved in such systems.
Black people have governed themselves successfully in history, examples being ancient Mali, Benin in fact any precolonial African state that couldn't govern itself simply perished. No food? You die. No defences against foreign threats? You die. So African chiefs, kings, emperors & leaders in the precolonial world simply had to govern well or be killed. It boils down to what system of governance is being used, maybe reverting back to our own African systems would be better than systems that were forced on us & dispel the myth that black people are "incapable of governing themselves" when they are at an obvious disadvantage while governing themselves with systems of governance that are not truly theirs.
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