“Why Africa is Poor” – some quotes

I have started reading Greg Mills’ book, “Why Africa is Poor: and what Africans can do about it.” It is a very insightful book and I would like to give you some quotes from the book.

“The way in which the world has preferred to deal with Africa’s poverty and development challenges has been with increased volumes of aid. As will be seen [in this book], no country has developed solely through aid. Most of the donors themselves did not develop in this way. To the contrary: aid can have a rash of unintended and negative consequences which make development less, not more, likely. ... Not only was aid not working; aid was doing harm across the continent and further afield.” (p7,8)

“Yet no amount of money was going to ‘fix’ African states if their leaders continued to make wrong development choices. Very few Africans (or other recipients) will admit to making big mistakes. This might be because of Africa’s turbulent and painful colonial history, when the sort of development plans attempted by colonial powers were really little different in practical (as opposed to political) terms to those tried today. As Easterly observed in his development tour de force, The White Man’s Burden, while there was a shift in language from ‘uncivilised’ to ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘savage peoples’ to the ‘Third World’ as part of a ‘genuine change of heart away from racism and towards respect for equality ... a paternalistic and coercive strain survived’. As a result, ‘Soon was born the development expert, the heir to the missionary and the colonial officer.’” (p9-10)

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Affirmative Action is not a cure all

Here in South Africa a lot has been made of Affirmative Action (AA). In fact, here it is called Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). To the ANC and its cohorts, this is the solution to all South Africa’s problems. However, after 18 years of being in power, the ANC still hasn’t made much headway concerning the poverty of the masses.

One of the major problems with this government, is that it is severely inept when dealing with the problems of this country. For instance, the Department of Education (DOE) battles to deliver textbooks to schools on time almost every single year. The South African school year runs from mid-January to the beginning of December. The stark reality of education in South Africa is that the DOE is still trying to get textbooks to many schools, more than halfway through the year. Clearly, AA has not benefited any of these children that must face end-of-year exams with a major backlog. The fact that many of these children are poor, is not what holds them back, but the very government that promises them the moon and the stars every election cycle. If only these people who run these government departments will stop looking for excuses, and produce what they are supposed to produce. In the case of the DOE, educated children!

But, of course, AA is easier, since people don’t have to work so hard to move ahead in this system. At least for the already wealthy, that is!

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Affirmative Action not likely to bring actual equality in society

Thomas Sowell wrote:

“In short, the even representation of groups that is taken as a norm is difficult or impossible to find anywhere, while the uneven representation that is regarded as a special deviation to be corrected is pervasive across the most disparate societies. People differ—and have for centuries. It is hard to imagine how they could not differ, given the enormous range of differing historical, cultural, geographic, demographic, and other factors shaping particular skills, habits, and attitudes of different groups. Any ‘temporary’ policy whose duration is defined by the goal of achieving something that has never been achieved before, anywhere in the world, could more fittingly be characterizes as eternal.”
Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2004, p7.

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Aborted because the father is a rapist

While reading the news at News24 today, I came upon an opinion piece by one Simon Williamson called “Accept the gifts that come with rape.” In this article of his, he rants against anyone who calls himself a conservative, especially in the areas of abortion and women fighting in the frontlines of warzones!  It doesn’t take him long to call people like this “delusional.” In fact, this happens in the opening paragraph! Then, in the very next paragraph he calls them bigots!

Now, we all know that a “bigot” is “a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion” (see dictionary.com). After reading Mr. Williamson’s article, I found it quite amazing how he writes his article with the same demeanour and attitude he claims for these conservatives, a bigot! Once you read the comment section, it is mind blowing to find so many people with that same attitude of a bigot.

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ANC speaks through both sides of its mouth

Over the many years of the ANC’s existence—100 years in 2012—we have now learnt with great clarity that the ANC will change strategies and policies as the circumstances demand, whatever their end-goal is!

The case in point is that several months ago, Julius Malema and his Pied Piper mice wanted to charge into Botswana to “help establish” a regime change in that country. With great fanfare the ANC chastised him and ANCYL for bringing the ANC into disrepute.

Of course, the ANC has a long-standing disrepute that all clear thinking people can clearly see and understand, since the ANC regularly rams controversial laws through parliament when they perceive resistance to their proposed laws. This was clearly the case with abortion on demand, legalised pornography, legalised same-sex whatever-it-is-but-it-is-not-marriage and now lately the secrecy bill. With each of these bills, the ANC simply rammed them through parliament, while not listening at all to what people were saying in consultation with the government. In fact, with each of these votes in parliament, ANC Members of Parliament (MPs) had no right to a vote of conscience. They were told what to vote! Democracy has no meaning to this monster!

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Defend and protect the family–Stop TopTV porn!

Television companies are going full-out to corrupt the minds of people by pushing for pornography on their channels. e-TV has taken porn from their offering quite recently after many people complained about their late night transmission of porn (I hope it is still off!). Next came DSTV who also wanted to create a porn channel on their bouquet of offerings. After many complaints they also decided not to go ahead with this imbecilic idea! Now, TopTV, after claiming in their launch last year that they will keep their offerings clean, have succumbed to the smut-sells idea and want to add porn channels to their offering. The message we have is clear!

STOP PORN-TV IN SOUTH AFRICA!

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Overruled: American government invasion of citizens’ parental rights

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Abortionist had to sign abortion survivor’s birth certificate. The story of Gianna Jessen.

Abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen, spoke passionately and with conviction on the subject of abortion at Queen's Hall, Parliament House, Victoria, Australia - on the eve of the debate to decriminalize abortion in Victoria, in 2008. Below is the 2 part series (altogether 15 minutes) of her speech, in which she gives all the credit to Christ. Truly a woman of conviction!

More videos of Gianna can be found here. She can also be followed on Twitter.

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The story of David and Goliath like you’ve never seen it before!

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Julius Malema is the “Lady Gaga” of South African politics

Image created by me, freely hosted on Turbo Image Host

Lady Gaga has said herself that she craves attention and cannot live without it, and from watching her antics and the way she dresses, we can see that she believes that the only way for her to get attention, is to be “waaaayyyy out theeerrre,” and to be controversial. The funny thing is, she could have become a respectable artist without the antics, based on the merits of her voice alone! But, because she has not matured in life to becoming a proper adult, she continues to crave attention, just like a child does!

Of course, here in South Africa, we have the equivalent of Lady Gaga in Julius Malema! Just in the political scene. Should we call him Julius Gaga, or Lady Malema? If it were not for Malema’s outrageous statements and claims, he would not have had a fraction of the attention that he is getting currently. For Malema, if it isn’t going to be controversial, it is not worth saying anything about it, according to how Lady Malema thinks.

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Hit by a buck or hit by a cyclist

A little humour for today is good. It is after all the first day after Monday!

In order to understand this . . .

© 2010 - 2011 Zapiro (All rights reserved) Printed with permission from www.zapiro.com For more Zapiro cartoons visit www.zapiro.com

. . . you need to read this . . .

. . . and watch this . . .

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Ice Age 4: Continental Drift

Have you ever wondered how the continents drifted apart? Well, now you will know the truth!

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7 Billion People! No problem!

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Watching Youtube videos faster

Nope! I am not going to teach you to watch or read or whatever faster. Simply, Youtube has started their HTML5 trial, through which you can select how fast you want to watch their videos. They have speeds as follows: 1/4 Speed, 1/2 Speed, Normal Speed, 1.5x Speed and 2x Speed.

All you need to do is visit the Youtube HTML5 Trial page and click on the link that says “Join the HTML5 Trial.” Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to select the speed of the video you are watching. You probably have to be logged in to Youtube. I haven’t tested that part!

HT: Brian Auten

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What I was doing on 9/11 ten years ago

This was the first image I saw on television

Ten years ago, on this day, one of the greatest modern, human-made disasters occurred. It was then that a group of Muslims from the “religion of peace,” attacked non-combatants (excluding the Pentagon), innocent by-standers, killing 2,977 victims, plus the 19 hijackers.

I can remember the day as if it were yesterday. I was busy buying a car in Centurion (South Africa), and as we were going to start the paper work, one of the salesmen came out of the coffee room saying that America was being attacked. We all rushed in to see what was happening, and I just could not believe what I was seeing. Just 9 months before that, we returned to South Africa after living in Columbus, Ohio for two years. While living there I came to love the country and its people, so when I saw this happening I could almost start feeling a physical ache in my heart as I saw the destruction and death of so many people. Watching the people running in the streets and the billowing dust from the buildings that came thundering down, I could see the fear in their faces and the panic that ensued. It was unbelievable. It was like watching one of Bruce Willis’ Die Hard movies! I couldn’t fathom how this could all be real! I sat and watched there for a very long time, until I could take it no longer.

The car salesman and I completed the paper work, I transferred the money to them, and then I rushed back to work to tell everyone there what had happened. Everyone tried to check out different news sites like CNN, but CNN’s website had so many people trying to get in that from our vantage point, it seemed to have died from all the pressure. At the end of the working day I rushed home to switch on the television. This must be the longest single “program” I ever watched on television. I watched as they replayed all the different scenes over and over again till I simply had to go to bed that night, feeling numb.

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