Laugh-out-loud award of the day!! 
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Blimey Fay you have done it again… my Name is Ann COE not COLE !!
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Abject apologies Ann Coe!
Simon Armstrong, It is more so than the continent I mentioned. thanks anyway for the lol!
In which country? RSA or others?
I truly can’t believe you can think this let alone write it. Do you mean all South Aricans are not ready to be civilised or Black South Africans or White South Africans ?
Rhodes would have loved you!
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A majority of white South Africans did believe it, and some of those who live in South Africa still do, Teresa.
A minority of pre-independence white and Indian South Africans did not believe in the innate cultural, intellectual and political inferiority of their black compatriots, and struggled alongside them for freedom.
A majority of white British people supported apartheid, notably Margaret Thatcher, but some us didn’t, and joined the struggle to overturn it.
But racism is a tenacious and fiercely defended ideology, which some are not able to let go of. Or willing to try. They took it in “with their mother’s milk”, as the saying goes
I suspect that Fay is regrettably one such. But she is not to be blamed or disbelieved.
She seems just a relic of history, who has not woken up from an imperialist, supremacist dream-world inhabited by loveable but childish simpletons living on a lush, sunlit and yet unenlightened continent, who have bitten the noble hand that fed them, tried to civilise them, and will always be misunderstood.
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Teresa Shipley, I should have written ‘continent’ not ‘country’
How did you get the idea that racism came into it? You are correct in assuming I meant ‘continent’. Imperialism of course belongs to many European countries.
Because, Fay, your views seem to be strongly allied to those of racist brigands like Rhodes, Roy Welensky, and Ian Smith, all of whom were unabashed and relentless white-supremacist ideologues who tried to thwart and suffocate the rise of black solidarity against the racist suppression of indigenous self-determination for almost a century. By putting their boots on the necks of your “lovable but uncivilised locals”, perhaps?
Like Verwoerd, Botha and other criminal despots over the Limpopo, “Good Old Smithie” and his crowd are all rightly in the dustbin of history IMO.
I think you will disagree, you don’t have to put yourself out to tell me so. 
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If one sincerely believes " When all is said and done they are still not ready to be able to be as civilised as the western world." I would ask that such thoughts remain hidden in the dark recesses of the brain.
Personally, I find the voicing of such a a belief to be highly offensive… but that is me, others may or may not agree.
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I’m not offended by Fay’s opinions, but I do think that to hold them suggests that she has been misguided. We all tend not to question the norms and values of the societies into which we were born. Or do so at our peril!
The white minorities in SA and other African colonies had to believe in their own superiority to justify their controlling position over the black majority.
Many must have realised the folly of supposed supremacy, through their interaction with African people, especially those whites who worked and lived amongst them, and learned to understand and speak indigenous languages.
Africans did not generally live in cities, where civilisation was borne of necessity, but had a more widely spread form of association and social intercourse based on chiefdoms, tribes and clans. These were and still are as sophisticated and intelligent as those of the northern hemispheres, and of the west, and as well adapted to well-being, trade, and prosperity in the context of the biggest (and most sparsely populated ) habitable unitary continent on earth.
Like all ethnicities who come into contact with other ‘more technologically developed’ people, African were quick to learn and adapt to what aspects of the incomer culture they wanted and found sustainable.
I don’t think Fay should be censored, and hope she will be willing to engage with others who hold different points of view, and different experiences of the Africa we both love and miss.
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Whatever world it is you live in now @fayjay - be it the ‘civilised’ or ‘uncivilised’ one - did you have a choice I wonder?
…AND…
the bloke in Norauto fixed my e,bike gears and brakes, NO CHARGE.
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…plus…
I think a major source of misunderstanding and aggravation, is quite often caused by the mixing together of observations about different cultures…and the “people” who live with/in them.
Anyone who has found themselves culture hopping, by accident or design, might recognise how certain obligatory behaviours in one culture, will get you lynched, in another, regardless of any intrinsic goodness or badness to be examined in the actual deeds, done. So when Fay wrote about ‘civilisation’ and ‘people’ I think of her point of view as a view of different cultures. No one can, seriously, claim to know the character or ability of others. So its all ok. To suggest eg, that ‘the French’ enjoy good food. Is an observation about culture. Not about Jean Pierre who eats every day in Macds.
Yes I used to get into trouble when I went back to whichever side of the Channel, before I had adjusted (hands on table at meals or not, kissing old ladies hello or not etc etc) also I was quote old before I realised not everyone was at least bilingual Fr/Eng, that led to some quiproquos…
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…some things work out pretty well…!! Vero!! …the compulsory, multi level, business bow, in Japan is surprisingly well received, sometimes, as a sub. for all kinds of bon mots and polite phrases I should remember, but don’t. It seems to work as quite a calming gesture, for the irate.
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