I wont reply to each & every moronic post, I'd never finish.
However I served in N. Rhodesia for 3 years, travelled to Kenya, S. Rhodesia, S. Africa and the old Belgian Congo while I was there. My experience in a country that had only seen a white man less than a hundred years ago. showed me many things.
There are good and bad in ALL races.
Our Police and other Africans in Govt. service were in the main very good. Many other Africans who worked on the mines & other industries and rural Africans were the same, with one massive difference, witchcraft and superstition which was rife. The worst excesses, ritual murder, cannibalism etc. had been more or less eliminated.
Tribalism, fighting, raiding etc. too had been more or less controlled.
As British policy set down in Whitehall for N. Rhodesia, African development was a no.1 priority from the commencement of British rule.
Basic education had been extended to all parts of the country, even in remote areas, with secondary schools in many areas and even the first University formed.
Hospitals & clinics had been provided so that on independence no African was more than about 15 - 20 miles away from basic healthcare, even in the remotest parts.
Govt. schemes to improve farming & fishing had been in operation for many years, providing a back up of grain etc in years of poor harvests.
There was an ongoing Govt. policy of training Africans to take over post being held by Europeans. In the Police there were one or two African police senior to me and good chaps they were as well.
This in a country over 2 1/2 times the size of the UK with a population of approx. 2 million with only one rail line and very few metalled roads, all really achieved in 50-60 years when the British Govt. had really taken over at the turn of the century.
For those that say we imposed our ways on them, what were we to do?
It was those very do gooders, the Christian missionaries who had flooded in after Livingstone told of the barbaric ways of that part of Africa, who begged the British Govt. to send in troops to stop the Arab slave raiders & tribal wars/raiding and the excesses of the witchdoctors. These troops became my Police force and very proud I am to say I served.
If we hadn't gone in it would probably been the Belgians or Germans who would have.
To those of a snowflake disposition who say we were racist, I say categorically NO we were not, you might say we were paternalistic as we treated our constables occasionally like children especially when dealing with superstition. Was this wrong? I don't think so, when on bush patrols for a couple of days I would sit around the fire in the evening and talk with my men, they would often ask me about life in the UK and I would explain as best I could. Sometimes African ways & our ways were poles apart. In my thread on my time there I told the tale of the bride price for a wife. There are no words in their language for "love or wife" its like & my woman.
Superstition was rife and risible to us Europeans but we had to take it serious in our day to day dealings with our police as I soon discovered.
So our attitude might be considered paternalistic but with good reason.
The Africans I did not like were the radical politicians who I had to suffer in silence whilst monitoring political rallies. Like the X left wing here, they promised the earth to their would be electorate whilst doing nothing but line their own pockets.
I think listening to Corbyn's garbage he must have attended Lumumba University in Moscow which several of the leading African nationalists did when I was there.
