Waffling Atop the Fence

Ms. McArdle writes four perfectly reasonable paragraphs on the situation in Zimbabwe, & Africa in general, & then makes a 180° turn & denies that she was defending colonialism. (It was only Ian Smith's minority gov't. of Rhodesia that she was defending.)

Apparently much of the problem is Western gov'ts. (Nothing about any corporate interests doing any enabling, of course.) And not that they invaded & occupied any place w/ a $1.98's worth of resources, but that they figured as Mugabe was black, they might as well "enable" him. (And keep the corporate entities making as much money as possible on the deal.)

[T]hey didn't look, say, at the different ethnic groups within the country, because aren't all Africans the same? Nor did they look very hard at how he might rule, so long as he managed to be black. This is a way of infantilizing Africa--acting as if Mugabe is really the best they're capable of. Nearly every government in Africa is better than Mugabe's. We should have expected better.

Um, uh, well, we might want to note that there probably is tribal dissension, as she mentions, which has to do w/ various tribes being suddenly unified under a colonial administration by decisions made among European colonial powers. And isn't it also infantilizing to suggest that Euros should have had some say in who would run any post-colonial entity? And how would that have been achieved?

Commentariat Note: So far, only one "Look, IQ proves I'm better than they are!!" comment. So far.