Introduction— The War Outside South Africa
“Beggar Your Neighbours” is a historical piece by author Joseph Hanlon that identifies and examines the effect Apartheid had on the southern region of the African Continent. Contrary to popular belief, Apartheid was not isolated system but rather a widespread ideology that impacted South Africa’s eight neighboring countries: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In the coming weeks, I’m going to summarize and reflect on Hanlon’s work. By doing so, I hope to paint a complete picture that will provide a concise explanation so that you have a profound understanding as to why BitMari was started and why it is so important for the future of African prosperity.
The first chapter of this book does an important job of setting up the narrative of our journey. Before 1980, South Africa had done just about everything in its power to cripple its neighboring countries, such as: attempted assassinations of two prime ministers, backing dissident groups, disrupting oil supplies, attacking railways thus hindering trade between the region. As a result of the constant turmoil, 100,000 people lost their lives and about a million people were displaced. This chaos was then use as propaganda by the South African regime to justify the notion that Africans needed European rule to bring about order and peace. At the end of the chapter, Hanlon sets the stage to explore the conditions of each individual nation after the creation of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference which was formed to combat the South African regime.
Despite only being the first chapter of the book, there is a lot of information to take away. The main idea being that Apartheid wasn’t just a South African problem it was a Southern African problem. It crippled the region to the brink of war and there are still lasting effects visible today. I hope to educate you all, as well as myself, on the history of southern Africa so that we have the better understanding of what is going on in present day southern Africa. If we have a better understanding of the situation then we can create better solutions to the problem and this is where BitMari comes into the picture.
