Letters to the Editor
African Culture Henry C. Oguehi Arabs v. Israel Neil Hughes-Onslow Local Government Loyalties Thomas Harper The Munnings Exhibition Thomas Bodkin Mother of God Martin Price Gloucestershire's Laureate Brian Waters The Precedent Denis Branagan Laski and the Universities Senator Owen Sheehy Skeffington Devon Loch Helen Reid AFRICAN CULTURE
Sta,—To say that 'without the white man, Africa would still have been a primitive welter of ignorance and suffering' as you did in your commentary is, no doubt, typical of the paternalistic condescension exhibited by Western European liberals' towards Africans and, not so long ago, towards Asians as well.
Such a statement assumes, and quite wrongly, that there is a homogeneous writ of the human race belonging to a 'white' man's bloc, with the same way of thought, habits and customs. Well, look at the very heart of the white man's aboriginal habitat, Europe; it is fiercely torn into bits by an ideological conflict that is as bitter as it is fundamental.
What has happened in Africa is not neces- sarily that a 'white' man's civilisation came into being, but that the imposition of an alien culture which inevitably follows imperial con- quest has taken place—as no doubt was the case in Europe of Roman times, and is, with the new imperialism of Russia which manifests itself in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. Both instances concern master and servant relations between 'white' races.
May I suggest that before the 'white' man came to Africa certain cultures in certain parts of Africa were superior to those of other remoter parts, for instance the Gonghai Empire which, in the sixteenth century, extended over the greater part of the Sudan and Western Africa. These higher cultures would, undisturbed, have permeated farther afield, imposing their particular civilisation on their subjugated peoples, and with the passage of time, Africa could have evolved its own distinctive civilisations. But the 'white' man camel—Yours faithfully,
H. C. COUEHI
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