Conference on World Affairs

Overall Impression:William King was the moderator and he started us off in interesting fashion by specifying how things would go and that at the end there would be "no speechifying questions" allowed. Other than that it was a very interesting talk with insights that mostly centered colonialism and its effects on Africa.

Kenneth Kaunda

Colonialism was defined as a government going out and using power to conquer a people. The government would take over a people and their resources. The exploiter often acted against the best interests of the people. As an example, ill slaves on boat trips were tossed overboard rather than have them waste precious resources.

When the European conquerers divided up Africa they made boundaries that followed geographic lines. This usually divided up tribes and nations. Of course they have been left that way because to move them would only start more wars.

To close Kenneth noted that governments and the people they govern may be two very different beasts. When he was president, all he met were presidents. Now that he is teaching on the East Coast, he gets to meet regular people and finds them to be quite different.

Kathy Christison

Kathy does an excellent job of drawing an analogy between the above defined definition of colonialism and Israels actions towards the Palestinians. Basically she draws the comparison of how Israel has taken over and settled great stretches of former Palestinian land. As sit and write this I find that analogy falling apart in my head.

As I understand colonialism a country travels a great distance and conquers a people and land to be exploited. I contrast this with my understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian situation whereby the Palestinians have a nasty habit of attacking the Israelis and losing. At every turn in that situation I find more questions rather than anything becoming clearer. I'll leave with two questions that came up while she was speaking. There is an assumption that it is the Palestinian's land. On what is that based? Second, we usually talk about post-1948 and post-1967 arrangements. How does the local view before 1948 change things?

As near as I can tell the current conflict vastly predates anything that can be called colonialism.

Ken Rutherford

Ken had some great stories about conflict in Africa as a result of colonialism. He spoke about Mauritania, a country where he has spent some time. When the French left they divided up the country while in a Paris cafe. They used a river to divide the country. In the North there are the mostly Muslim Arabs. In the South are mostly black Christians. What they have been left with is the longest running war in the Sudan. I asked him after the panel if there was anything we could do about that. He noted that they have actually been fighting for over a thousand years, and we are limited in what we can do to change that.

He also spoke about Somalia and its current dysfunctional state as being left over from colonialism and its side effects. What I got from his talk is that there is a whole continent with a lot of problems that we really aren't hearing about or doing much about. Even if we succeed in getting some balance and progress in the Middle East there is still another place we will have to worry about. There may even be others that aren't in our peripheral vision yet.

Anthony Sinclair

Anthony started out with the great observation that he struggles to gain a sense of objectivity, but that it comes at a cost of some sensitivity. I think we need both and a dialogue between both sides to truly make progress. He spoke about some of the failures of colonialism.

Colonialism failed to address racial and ethnic differences. It failed to build a state, especially a state of civility. The people left behind were not taught how to use their indigenous assets. His final point related to something beyond geographical colonialism, in particular electronic colonialism. The web has allowed us to reach out with our culture and alter other cultures. The youth there can wind up missing tradition building activities in their own culture. [Although one might expect something similar to happen here.]

QUESTION PERIOD IDEAS

• President Kaunda was always very polite when answering questions and always began with, "My Dear Moderator."
• One of the questions was about lessons and prescriptions to which Kenny replied, "mission impossible." He did not mean that totally, but it is a daunting task.
• President Kaunda had a good line in one of his answers about "abused children acting like abused parents on a national scale.
• The possibility of using a European Union model of reinforcing local strengths was mentioned as a possible solution for the current troubles.
• One local strength might be developing a grassroots farmer movement. Development could proceed based on an agricultural society model. Once they can clearly grow their own food other development can progress. 200 years ago in our country 98% (or something large) of the jobs were agriculturally based.