Have to hand it to The Peacemaker of Zimbabwe... no, scratch that. The Peacemaker of Ivory Coast? Uh, no. That one didn't fly, either. Peacemaker of the Great Lakes? Like, man, splat. Try this for size: The Peacemaker of - drum roll - Darfur! Former president Thabo Mbeki was lauded this week for his work as chairman in the report of the African Union high-level panel on Darfur.
This, you will recall, unleashed (cliche warning) a major paradigm shift away from the oh, so passe attitude that the genocide in Sudan had something to do with the Arab ruling class bossing the mainly Christian southerners. Or - perish the thought - that it was about who got their sweaty paws on all the oil under those sands. (Chinese, of course: they'll get the oil, so it's more a case of who gets the bribes.)
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No, The Peacemaker of - drum roll again - Darfur revealed in his report that it was a "manifestation of Sudan's historic problem", for at "independence in 1956, the Sudanese nation inherited a gross disparity from colonial days".
Sure, most things can be blamed on the Brits. As I've noted before: "Why didn't the sun ever set on the British Empire? Because God didn't trust the thieving imperialist so-and-sos in the dark." But to suggest that today's behaviour is all the fault of something that ended - if indeed it had happened at all - some 53 years ago, is deeply demeaning to Africa as a whole. It suggests that 50 years isn't enough to cure the ills of the past. That it's always someone else's fault, and that we Africans are perpetual victims. Germany can be bombed until the rubble jumps, but rebuilds itself into Europe's wealthiest nation. Japan can be nuked and fares similarly. But poor old Mother Africa, cradle of humanity and all that, stays traumatised by those pith-helmeted, chinless-wonder Poms who quit half a century ago?
In the same week that Thabo the Peacemaker was being so praised, the former colonial power, aka the devil, announced that survivors of the Darfur conflict would no longer be deported from Britain.
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