Africa in Perspective

After perusing The African Nettle, this reviewer, who has been several times to Africa in recent years, could not but emit a grunt of deep satisfaction. Here, at long last, is a well-balanced symposium on “Black Africa,” a healthy antidote to all the monumental nonsense one constantly hears in the United States about the Dark Continent. In none of these essays does one encounter ugly racialist prejudice or blind belief in the spotless record of colonialism or unstinted praise for the present régime in the Union of South Africa; but at the same time we find no idle speculation about the possibility of free governments in Africa in the near future and no illusions whatsoever about the grave setback civilization has suffered through decolonization.

In a short review it is difficult to detail adequately the contents of this ably assembled treasure box. The contribution of the French journalist Gilbert Comte gives a very good overall picture of Africa and helps us to understand the frightening inferiority complex of its more educated inhabitants, which is the main stumbling block to an urgently necessary cooperation. All the “new nations” of Africa, he points out, are creations of the colonizers, with the tribal realities continuing under the veneer of a foreign-language civilization. With tribes at the bottom and the collective frenzy of a New Racialism at the top, the going is indeed tough.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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After perusing The African Nettle, this reviewer, who has been several times to Africa in recent years, could not but emit a grunt of deep satisfaction. Here, at long last, is a well-balanced symposium on “Black Africa,” a healthy antidote to all the monumental nonsense one constantly hears in the United States about the Dark Continent. In none of these essays does one encounter ugly racialist prejudice or blind belief in the spotless record of colonialism or unstinted praise for the present régime in the Union of South Africa; but at the same time we find no idle speculation about the possibility of free governments in Africa in the near future and no illusions whatsoever about the grave setback civilization has suffered through decolonization.

In a short review it is difficult to detail adequately the contents of this ably assembled treasure box. The contribution of the French journalist Gilbert Comte gives a very good overall picture of Africa and helps us to understand the frightening inferiority complex of its more educated inhabitants, which is the main stumbling block to an urgently necessary cooperation. All the “new nations” of Africa, he points out, are creations of the colonizers, with the tribal realities continuing under the veneer of a foreign-language civilization. With tribes at the bottom and the collective frenzy of a New Racialism at the top, the going is indeed tough.