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Colonization will cost Africa dearly in the next few decades but hopefully Africans will overcome and decide their own destinies. The long and demoralizing subjugation of Africans under a repressive Apartheid, and similar systems, has left a hopeless effect on the mindsets of Africans.

This is easy to see at one important time in a country's life cycle: elections. African countries are more likely to choose popular, powerful leaders that will throw orders and appeal to the more primal instincts than choosing a wily statesman interested in the welfare of the economy. It's quite clear to see the terrible consequences of African elections: Robert Mugabe, Mobuto Sese Seko, Omar Al-Bashiri, Laurent Kabila to name a few.

The psychological bludgeoning on Africans has been enormous and has purposefully made the typical African voter reliant on the government and slow to protest wrongdoing. This is the foot print that Colonialism has left and it will take a while to fade away. Africans do not have a strong concept of freedom like they once did and they feel obliged to blame externalities for the running down of their own countries.

For instance, I am Zimbabwean and have noticed the way my fellow countrymen shy away from responsibility for their own actions and votes. All blame is cast on neighbors or "the West" without any consciousness of self-determination.

Apartheid was intended to make the people docile and supple to government handiwork, it has done this and much worse. The downtrodden people of southern Africa now think it is their right to act without taking blame for the consequences, they think others will solve their problems and that things will right themselves free of intervention. There is a definite psychological reliance that is unhealthy and incoherent to a fully functional populace.

In time I think Africans will realize what has been done to them. As some African youth study abroad and return with ideas and realizations I think more and more people will understand what covert suppression has been exacted upon them and they will correct it. I don't think this is some conspiracy or intended act that has drowned the will of Africa but I think it is an unintentional remnant of a time gone by and will pass like all times do. Africa will come into its own this century as the continent of major commodities, wealth and cultural splendor. Africa will blossom as its political ship is corrected and steered toward harmony rather than despotism.

Learn more about this author, Uhuru Uhlanya.
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