Out Of Africa

1. When I finished reading Martin Meredith's "The State of Africa" a couple of things stuck in my mind. Amongst them are:

2. Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa once said. Africa was renowned for the pyramids of Egypt, the Benin bronzes of Nigeria, the obelisks of Aksum in Ethiopia, the libraries of Timbuktu in Mali, the stone fortresses of Zimbabwe and the ancient rock arts of South Africa. What had happened to all these .....

3. In July 2002, President Muamar Gadaffi of Libya once stated, "Africa for Africans. the land is ours.No more slavery. No more colonisation.. It is a new dawn.We are bigger than the Whites. We are mighty. If they want to serve us, okay. If they want to go back, okay" .

4. These are pure rhetorics. After 2002, African dictators went on to plunder the natural resources of their own countries to enrich themselves and their cronies. They had their accounts in Europe. And today Africa was where it was after Independence, far worst when they were under colonialism. I am not saying colonialism was good, far from it, but the African dictators simply betrayed democracy and their own peoples.

5. There was similarity with Malaysia after her Independence. We had "Bersih, Cekap and Amanah", we had "Masyarakat Madani" and we have 1Malaysia". Though we didn't have military dictators, we had corruption of high level, evidences of cronyism, we had patronage in sports and party politics, etc that attempted to plunder our rich natural resources, namely forests, wildlife, petroleum, gas, flora and fauna, and our beautiful and clean environment.
It is not too late to be sober and go for more transparency in running the accounts of PETRONAS, awarding logging concessions, awarding negotiated business deals and mega-projects; handling corruption by MACC, handling students demonstration by Police, newspaper reporting, TV news reporting etc.

6. Please forgive me for saying all these simply because I love Malaysia and the only country I can make a home and I don't want to see my country going the African way of governance and independence. "Malaysia Boleh" is one slogan of ego-centric arrogance, if used in negative ways. Tun Mahathir meant well with that slogan, but was misused by many in sports and business transactions. Malaysian soccer has gone below unknown countries like Vanuatu in international ranking. However, thanks to Nicols David and Lee Chong Wei for putting us on the squash and badminton maps. Why do we have to run the Sepang circuit and a FI Lotus with foreign drivers?