Dear Shadow Minister,

Your song book is out of date.

All those bleating about the injustices by Whites upon the Aborigines, would you please stand up & vacate the land you reside upon & hand it back !

Belly,

You certainly can write some unbelievable garbage. Sorry, I don't know where to start on your misconceptions of Africa, I'm too pissed off with wasting my time on half-wits like Misopinionated, so I'll leave it. Do some reading, for Christ sake.

Joe

Oh great - we don't need to hear any more about the
"protections"
that the White man provided the
Indigenous people of the land.

And Belly - if you're going to do any reading -
make sure its all written from the white man's
point of view. Otherwise you'll get corrupted.
(smile).

Foxy,

You completely misunderstand my point, perhaps I should have spelt it out: Africans have been farming for thousands of years. It's possible that agriculture spread from west and north Africa TO Egypt, not the other way around. Until a thousand years ago or so, their technologies were equivalent to those employed in Europe.

The Muslim slave trade with Europeans, and the European imperialism which followed it after the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, certainly impoverished many African societies, especially in regions where Europeans could survive, and where land was seized.

But there are not too many regions where, in Belly's imagination, Africa is over-populated - rather, it is currently under-technologised, i.e. its farming technology is under-funded, mainly due to poverty and the corruption and incompetence of governments. Of course, family planning would bring down the birth-rate, but that depends on moves towards greater equality for women, and particularly better educational opportunities for them: better-educated women have more job opportunities, so marry later and have fewer children.

Actually, John caldwell, many years ago, showed that compulsory education from, say, five . until fourteen, massively reduces the birth-rate, since children in rural societies are utilised much less as farm labour, and in fact become a cost rather than an asset for the years they are in school. Even so, in Africa, women and girls seem to still do much of the farm work.

Africa is as big as five Europes (or Australias); it has immense rivers and many potential irrigation projects. It certainly could be far more productive than either Europe or Australia, if the infrastructure was in place. So we come back to poverty and corruption. But it certainly isn't over-populated.

Joe

Loudmouth known your posts for a very long time thought much more of you
But old age gets in the way and you are on the way to being just another angry old fart
I read, boy do I read and tell me the Belgium Congo was civilized talk to me of that British son of unwed parents Rhodes
Talk to me about the lovable Dutch colonialist we called Boer?
I missed the chapters on white saints
Africa today is, [even south Africa] in need of good government
I will continue to read all your posts and wounder is it a must do? must we as we get older become more unfocused and angry?