Person Soldiers in Africa – Rhodesia: What a Belgian wrote: People have lost their CONFIDENCE in themselves!

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[One of my readers wrote this. I am not aware of this Belgian. I did a bit of digging and see that he wrote about pygmies in central Africa. Central Africa, the Congo is where the Belgians had an enormous expanse of territory. I will say that when I was a kid, the people mostly respected us. Behind the scenes the communists and Liberals were at work of course. But for the most part, the people behaved respectfully to us. This is a FAR CRY from 2020 where US Police have to kneel before BLM for example. It was very different when I was young. A male had authority and confidence. This remained true in South Africa well into the 1980s. But here too it has gone. The Boer does retain a bit of it. Jan]

This is what the reader wrote:

I enjoyed the latest team very much. Both of you are excellent analysts. As for person soldiers, I remember an NBC documentary on Africa in the late 60’s, and one British officer said ‘The African is probably the worst fighting man in the world.’

I also recall a book, Congo Katabu by a Belgian in the Congo. He spoke of the chaos of independence, and yet he, with only one arm, was approached by some Congolese soldiers at a checkpoint, ready to rob him, and he called them to attention and ordered them to stay at their post, and they did so, surprised at this man’s authority. They were used to having someone order them around, and seemed ready to fall back into those habits.

He always said a major failing of the People was they lost their sense of superiority, and people sensed People wouldn’t try to keep them in check, and people could sense the weakness of liberals and outside (UN) types.

Many of the soldiers and people, after independence, kept running around shouting ‘dependence!’, when they meant ‘independence.’ The author, JeanClaude Allet (I think), didn’t hate people. He thought they had admirable qualities and their primitive life was understandable considering the Congo, but thought they were easily misled by politicians and foreigners, and they certainly shouldn’t be running a country.