Posted on 01/12/2004 7:32:58 AM PST by Clive
Berlin - A high-ranking representative of the Herero tribe in Namibia said there could be a Zimbabwe-style backlash against ethnic German whites if Berlin refuses to pay reparations.
"Don't forget, our young generation does not have the angelic patience of the elders," Mburumba Kernina, an advisor to Herero Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako, told Berlin daily, Der Tagesspiegel.
"If there is not agreement (on reparations), they will probably take matters into their own hands. What happened in Zimbabwe can easily repeat itself here," referring to the eviction of white farmers - sometimes violently - orchestrated by President Robert Mugabe in the name of land reform.
Germany's ambassador to Namibia, Wolfgang Massing, at a ceremony on Sunday expressed "regret" over the ruthless quelling of a Herero tribe uprising 100 years ago in which tens of thousands were killed by German troops.
His statement is the closest a German government representative has come to an apology - a demand repeatedly made by the Herero - for what historians have described as a genocide. But he stopped short of offering reparations.
The Herero have filed a lawsuit in the United States demanding payment from the German government and companies which allegedly benefited from German rule.
"The future of this country - reconciliation, development and security - depends on the outcome of the suit against Germany," Kerina said.
Namibia has a population of 1.82 million people, of whom about 25,000 people are German-speaking whites, most of them descendants of colonists.
Since 1990, Germany, Namibia's largest donor, has pumped $644m into the southern African country.
The Germans should send Kernina's head back to the "Paramount Chief" in a bowling bag. That seems to be the only message these savages understand.
Since 1990, Germany, Namibia's largest donor, has pumped $644m into the southern African country.That's $27 a year per person, to a country where there's nothing to spend money on.
Bush proposes more grants, fewer loans at World BankIn a speech at World Bank headquarters Tuesday, President Bush also called on the world's lending institutions to make major increases in loans and grants aimed at boosting education in Africa and other poor and developing nations. "Specifically, I propose that up to 50 percent of the funds provided by the developing banks to the poorest countries be provided as grants for education, health, nutrition, water supplies, sanitation and other human needs. The idea of converting World Bank loans to grants is one of the recommendations made by a blue-ribbon panel chaired by Alan Meltzer, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and endorsed by conservative Republican leaders in Congress. World Bank officials estimate that if the United States ended up persuading other bank members to agree to convert half of the bank's loans to grants, the United States would have to double its current $803 million annual contribution just to keep the bank's pool of aid at current levels.
by Lawrence L. Knutsonchapter 1, "Things are getting better"When the water supply and sanitation services were improved in cities throughout the developed world in the nineteenth century, health and life expectancy improved dramatically. Likewise, the broadening of education from the early nineteenth century till today's universal school enrolment has brought literacy and democratic competence to the developed world. These trends have been replicated in the developing world in the twentieth century. Whereas 75 percent of the young people in the developing world born around 1915 were illiterate, this is true for only 16 percent of today's youth. And while only 30 percent of the people in the developing world had access to clean drinking water in 1970, today about 80 percent have... There are still more than a billion people in the Third World who do not have access to clean drinking water.
by Bjorn Lomborg
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