Enough is enough

Subject: Enough is enough 

Listening to the condemnation of a person who came from mixed parenthood and where, in her world, all the ills of the people who became the Caribbean group of nations and especially those who had left the islands and settled here in the UK, is to be traced to slavery. Of course without slavery they wouldn't have made the crossing from Africa to the Americas and would instead be citizens of Senegal, Guinea, The Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone or perhaps Liberia, all now princely homes of the democratic principle they so aspire to whilst living here. 
Even in the West Indies each island is different, populated by people who see rivalries in each other and are as different as the colonial powers who were in charge 200 years ago. The Dutch, French, Spanish and the British ruled the various islands and todays political demographic echo's the temperament of each European nation who ruled them. Like a child is dependent on its mother for guidance when growing up so each island community reflects the care it received in those early years. The character of the Trinidadian is different to Jamaica, the Dutch run Antilles is different to the French Guadeloupe or the Martinique islands. Even tiny islands living cheek by jowl such as St Kits and Nevis who are at odds with their close neighbour and genetic cousin Anguilla. It makes a mockery of this picture of a down trodden people and rather highlights the frailty of the human beings to get on no matter what the skin colour. 
The political back bitting and the revolt between Black and Indian and those with mixed blood is as complex as it is in any part of the world when cultural heritage clash. 
Today's call for reparations are claimed by what we now call Afro Americans but not the Indian who themselves were brought over from India or the Chinese who were shipped over in their thousands to provide labour in all four corners of the world. If we are to go back in history should the Italians pay reparations to us for what the Roman Empire did or the Scandinavians for the pillaging caused by the Vikings in Britain. 
It's only now that the voices are heard and given a platform by the very people they seem to hate so much. Try protesting in Beijing or on the streets of Karachi, give it a go in Cairo or Riyadh, don't upset the authorities in Jerusalem or Abuja otherwise you might bring the wrath down of people far less inclined to hear your case and still less inclined to encourage you to make it. 
We in the UK seem to enjoy some sort of sadistic pleasure in lining people up to abuse us for the sins of our great, great, great grandfathers. It's probably the result of that confidence we once had, believing our actions were constructive in parts of the world where tribal custom was more primitive. The economic drive to encourage  a country's prosperity through trade and exports demanded that ports be built and railways constructed and functioned long before the locals had seen the need. For this we are damned since it disturbed a natural indolence, a disruption of the way things were done then in many of the world. Were we wrong to explain the importance of the security that contracts brought  or the laws of commerce, and instead these days it's suggested it was all self interest and our feverish desire to exploit the indigenous population.
You takes your pick when you try to extrapolate the causes of why things were done 200 years ago and especially the effect it had on the settled population. In many places the infrastructure has been willfully destroyed under local mismanagement with railways and roads abandoned for a general apathy which seems to say that maintenance is too expensive and simply too much trouble. 
Even in mature economies such as South Africa the lack of investment and the corruption of government has seen the much vaunted South African industry and standards destroyed. Escom (the electrical power generating company) which in the 1980s was the equal to any in the world, is now plagued with regular electrical outages that have sadly become a way of life for many South Africans. 

The hospitals, not only the racially assigned ones such as the Johannesburg General but hospitals such as  Baragwanath which were designated, non white and were cutting edge in the 80s and early 90s but now are a pale image of what they once were. Corruption and mismanagement from the government has devastated this once proud indicator of South African excellence, including the worlds first Heart Transplant which was carried out at Groote Schuur Hospital on the slopes of Table Mountain in 1967.   South Africa was the first and perhaps the only country to dismantle its nuclear bombs (6 of them) prior to the hand over of power in 1994 to the ANC, another perspective of South Africa's technological ability which only USA, Russia, Britain and France held at that time. Now the hospitals are under-equipped and understaffed, unable to offer any hope to patients with Covid 19.
Very little is said or heard, (still less the perpetrators brought to book), in an Africa where the offspring of the forefathers of so many of our detractors still live. The contrast between most of post colonial Africa and Europe, especially Britain, which seems to be such a racially corrupt place to bring up their children, when the graft and corruption across the continent of Africa is ignored for the 'god given' (actually a political enactment of 1833) right to let off steam over here is used to great advantage for all but the ones with the courage to say, enough is enough.