WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-03-19 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[One of our Asian readers spotted this gem. 50 Years of Black rule and Ghana is totally bust up.
Here in Johannesburg… I see food prices going up. The CEO of Eskom says we’ll see more than one electricity price increase. Agriculture is slipping badly… Bit by bit the ANC’s policies are taking effect and we’re walking down the well-worn path that all black nations have walked.
I think after 50 years we’ll be no different. Look at Kenya – hailed as a great African success story – also sinking into a quagmire.
But looking at the ANC it is clear they’ve learned nothing and care even less. We’ll be no different – in fact – I am willing to bet that S.Africa won’t take 50 years to sink – it will be much faster than that. Jan]
The 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence is an appropriate time for reflection.
Formerly the Gold Coast, Ghana was the first black African state to attain independence.
How do we measure success? What criteria do we use?
If we look at economic data, infrastructural development and so on, are we imposing inappropriate Western ideals?
This is not an idle question. In material terms Ghana is worse off today.
And if we compare Ghana to modern East Asian countries which were underdeveloped in the 1950s, there is no contest.
Oxford historian Martin Meredith notes that no other African state was launched with so much promise for the future.
In his authoritative tome, The State of Africa, Meredith says, “Ghana embarked on independence as one of the richest tropical countries in the world, with an efficient civil service, an impartial judiciary and a prosperous middle class.”
It was the world's leading producer of cocoa, “with huge foreign currency reserves … it possessed gold, timber and bauxite”.
As we noted on these pages yesterday, Ghana is now ranked 136th out of 177 on the UN Human Development Index.
Electricity is in short supply, and water often has to be bought by the bucket. As a crowning irony, the country that once exported cloth to Britain had to import jubilee celebration cloth from China.
On such measures Ghana is a failure. But are we missing something?
What must we look for? The latest SA Sunday Times reprints an editorial saying there is hope for Ghana, because the new leadership is committed to good governance and the African peer review mechanism. Well, okay.
City Press, whose slogan is “distinctly African”, published a piece by a Ghanaian journalist acknowledging things were not good “but we've now got the right to seek our own path to political, social and economic progress. No longer will anyone of a different race decide for us whether we live or die. And that's an achievement of no mean measure.”
Yes, but you've had that for five decades. No doubt there is value and dignity in being able to choose your path, if that ability has not been usurped by some self-aggrandizing politician. But it's slim pickings for 50 years of freedom.
I hope we're in better shape when South Africa's golden uhuru jubilee rolls around.
Source: The Citizen
URL: http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?p…/p>