Douglas Schorr

From 100 million to a billion: liberals’ promise of a bridge to progress proved to be a tightrope of peril for Africans.

People ask why I lay so much of the blame for sub-Saharan Africa’s chaos on ultra-liberals and their woke offspring chasing fairy-tale “fairness.” Easy: They sold a lie–told folks they could leap a canyon they weren’t ready to cross, then pointed fingers at the wind when they crashed. Here’s the real deal.

Back in the second half of the 1800s, from the comfort of sophisticated Europe, liberals whispered that Africans had simply “chosen” simpler lifestyles and certainly didn’t need colonialism-given the education and the tools, their leaders could themselves construct a road out of the age of “Us and Them” tribalism into modernity. Somehow, they chose to forget that every Eurasian had graduated from the Great Eurasian University-there’s none tougher.

African royalty was indeed regal and exuded an aura of trust, but they were rooted in ways little changed in thousands of years. Folks lived in flat tribes where brains got you sold or a spear in the back. Kings owned it all; progress rusted, stalling IQ at hunter-gatherer lows. But it was comfortable–enjoy! And the liberals had rubbed elbows with the sharpest elites in tailored suits at Ivy League powwows. Thinking “This is Africa,” they gawked and fawned before the top 0.1%, blind to the 85% frantically scratching dirt in the bush. Yes, by 1900, Sub-Saharan Africa was a mass of tribes all subscribing to the same collective ownership model, fighting for survival over the same resources. The hunter-gatherer days were numbered; raiding for plunder was the only way forward, and that mindset was to prove catastrophically incompatible with modern economic systems requiring individual accountability and initiative.

By the 1940s, amped up on Roosevelt’s anti-colonial vibe, they too pushed globalization, swearing blacks were well primed to rule. Well, decolonization dropped like a brick; every new nation again ate the dirt of poverty. This time they fell from a great height–the ultra-liberal’s heavenly vision. The left went from nudgers to wreckers–stoking unrest, feeding the elites dreams the masses couldn’t touch. Cruelty disguised as kindness. Picture kids in a heavyweight boxing ring, told they’ll win if they just swing harder at the champ’s knees. South Africa’s the bloody proof–violence up, pride torched, jobs and health vaporized.

Fast-forward to the ’90s: the woke grabbed that blind spot and swung it like a club. “Oppression!” they yelled, ignoring that sub-Saharan setups echoed pre-Roman Britain–collective, king-led, king-owned, frozen. These newbie social justice warriors didn’t bother find out that when Europeans showed up, hunter-gathering was toast–tribes boxed in, fumbling to farm with no tools. That they needed a boost, not promises of 4 bed-roomed homes with all the trimmings because “you’re free and have a constitution that says, “claim your rights.’” That’s woke math: pump up skills that don’t exist, go home, sob when they fall flat.

In demanding immediate equality of outcomes, they rejected any suggestion of cognitive differences or developmental gaps as inherently racist. That, despite substantial evidence that geographically, populations develop at different rates and that isolation is an intellect killer. Sub-Saharan Africa’s average IQ of 70 is evidence of a much isolated society at an earlier developmental stage. The woke did nothing tangible for Africa. Their beliefs smashed it. Reality doesn’t bend.

The fix is not fancy: Sub-Saharan Africa needs the proposed SANNA: South Africa’s New National Army. It will not happen because the ruling politicians, walking in the footsteps of the woke, have driven all the instructors away. Sweat, not suits. Simple, true.